Why is it anytime something with Apple comes up people are so quick to get into a *#*ssing match over who did what. To simply belittle and discredit the company because every aspect of their product was not 100% unique and of their own design smacks of arrogance and jealousy, perhaps because in retrospect people think "if only I had done that". The long thread on multi-touch, and the others are just more examples of this time and time again when ever apple is mentioned.
To say that apple is not innovative is simply wrong. It's equal to saying that a great author can't exist because the word "the" had been used before they didn't create it. They used the same alphabet that's been used for years! they just have a good pulisher / marketing firm!. A great composer can't happen because all the notes have been used; yes apple took things that existed and put them together in a way that gained acceptance by the masses.
Masses is a critical part of their success, the 5% of geeks need to climb off their high horse and understand that Apples success is not grown from "If your to stupid to figure it out you shouldn't have our product" but that their success is driven from "Lets make this simple for you!" it's the same approach that put AOL ontop of the ISP wars who's only downfall came from connectivity limitations causing a cascade affect.
On the subject of patents I've got nothing, the system is horrible and does quash innovation out the gate. I see patent disputes so many times a year they make my head spin. I can't stand to be forced into a patent review that reads one "line" in a patent and says "see you have phone service over a coax medium!" and insists you owe them $$. Last year I had to deal with one that was based on receiving a fax and converting it to digital medium for delivery through an ip transport system using from: to: fields for delivery between individuals. That's right! some lawfirm had an obscure patent that had a small bit about fax -> email and and felt that it applied. Your options spend $$$ to invalidate the claim or spend $$ to just make them go away.
The biggest hurdle comes from the community and the source of the systems. There is an arrogance about Linux users that (I'm better than you) that doesn't come along as strong when needing help from others as it does in other operating environments. It also comes from distributions not picking a "white horse" and sticking with it, not providing a clean migration path from to the other which is the effect of the//free// nature of the OS.
Take sound drivers as a simple example. There are several infrastructures for sound control and functions, because "linux" is made of distributions who do their own thing this causes people to have to have to many choices, there are large swaths where things "don't work" as you would expect. You take the forums to find a solution to find that the forum goes back 6 years. With out-dates posts relative to your problem but not a solution that's applicable. It might have been discussed recently but burried, you get the response "Search!" or RTFM!. Sorry, I wanted to use my microphone, not invest 4 hours into getting my microphone to work.
Then when I find the solution I have to edit asound files, maybe recompile a module, maybe update dependencies, maybe change a library, This is stuff that all truly makes it a really tough sell.
When you find a problem, that truly kills a function, the solution to//fix it yourself// is good for some but certainly not all. Consumers want it to work, they don't want to learn to write code to fix something or get it usable. And at the same time even among those of us who//can fix it// we simply may not have the time to backtrack a very large program to add that much needed feature / function because it's not a project we are on. We have to learn that code tree from scratch and start working in the change. This makes it impossible.
Ubuntu has done good with their LTS version's in my opinion, but I think the question is going to be what//breaks// or stops working when the next release comes out. Knowing today that if I leave LTS to the normal current version I lost features and found bugs that broke atleast 25 *KEY* features for me. This is not something I can willfully recommend to anyone who isn't wanting to be involved in every aspect of their computer.
Take sound, I want a voip client, ok this one uses pulse, this one uses asound, do I have them them both? Do I have one and not the other, does the program conflict when I have both of them installed... again, not consumer friendly, Linux is a popularity contest, who does it//better// right now... and if you aren't willing to wipe and upgrade to the next greatest thing you quickly may find that your desired application is left in the dust.
Just jumping in here... I think the org poster had it write. Yes there are ways around Yes they can do it you can split the hairs of "well you *should* be able to do that" if you want. But this example and the large number of respondents as said is what really holds linux back. People in the linux community like to have a holier than thow attitude that's comparable to the mac users. Talk OS's and the guy who responds "I run linux" may have a smugness about them that you won't find with most windows users. It should be out of the gate right click "mount" that's it, no setup, no coding, no command line. That's a user experience.
Sorry as a old school developer and linux user for a very long time I'm still urked at the smugness and the attitude that "if you don't know how to do it this way then you have no business doing it!".
Just a thought
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Why is it anytime something with Apple comes up people are so quick to get into a *#*ssing match over who did what. To simply belittle and discredit the company because every aspect of their product was not 100% unique and of their own design smacks of arrogance and jealousy, perhaps because in retrospect people think "if only I had done that". The long thread on multi-touch, and the others are just more examples of this time and time again when ever apple is mentioned.
To say that apple is not innovative is simply wrong. It's equal to saying that a great author can't exist because the word "the" had been used before they didn't create it. They used the same alphabet that's been used for years! they just have a good pulisher / marketing firm!. A great composer can't happen because all the notes have been used; yes apple took things that existed and put them together in a way that gained acceptance by the masses.
Masses is a critical part of their success, the 5% of geeks need to climb off their high horse and understand that Apples success is not grown from "If your to stupid to figure it out you shouldn't have our product" but that their success is driven from "Lets make this simple for you!" it's the same approach that put AOL ontop of the ISP wars who's only downfall came from connectivity limitations causing a cascade affect.
On the subject of patents I've got nothing, the system is horrible and does quash innovation out the gate. I see patent disputes so many times a year they make my head spin. I can't stand to be forced into a patent review that reads one "line" in a patent and says "see you have phone service over a coax medium!" and insists you owe them $$. Last year I had to deal with one that was based on receiving a fax and converting it to digital medium for delivery through an ip transport system using from: to: fields for delivery between individuals. That's right! some lawfirm had an obscure patent that had a small bit about fax -> email and and felt that it applied. Your options spend $$$ to invalidate the claim or spend $$ to just make them go away.
The biggest hurdle comes from the community and the source of the systems. There is an arrogance about Linux users that (I'm better than you) that doesn't come along as strong when needing help from others as it does in other operating environments. It also comes from distributions not picking a "white horse" and sticking with it, not providing a clean migration path from to the other which is the effect of the //free// nature of the OS.
//fix it yourself// is good for some but certainly not all. Consumers want it to work, they don't want to learn to write code to fix something or get it usable. And at the same time even among those of us who //can fix it// we simply may not have the time to backtrack a very large program to add that much needed feature / function because it's not a project we are on. We have to learn that code tree from scratch and start working in the change. This makes it impossible.
//breaks// or stops working when the next release comes out. Knowing today that if I leave LTS to the normal current version I lost features and found bugs that broke atleast 25 *KEY* features for me. This is not something I can willfully recommend to anyone who isn't wanting to be involved in every aspect of their computer.
//better// right now... and if you aren't willing to wipe and upgrade to the next greatest thing you quickly may find that your desired application is left in the dust.
Take sound drivers as a simple example. There are several infrastructures for sound control and functions, because "linux" is made of distributions who do their own thing this causes people to have to have to many choices, there are large swaths where things "don't work" as you would expect. You take the forums to find a solution to find that the forum goes back 6 years. With out-dates posts relative to your problem but not a solution that's applicable. It might have been discussed recently but burried, you get the response "Search!" or RTFM!. Sorry, I wanted to use my microphone, not invest 4 hours into getting my microphone to work. Then when I find the solution I have to edit asound files, maybe recompile a module, maybe update dependencies, maybe change a library, This is stuff that all truly makes it a really tough sell.
When you find a problem, that truly kills a function, the solution to
Ubuntu has done good with their LTS version's in my opinion, but I think the question is going to be what
Take sound, I want a voip client, ok this one uses pulse, this one uses asound, do I have them them both? Do I have one and not the other, does the program conflict when I have both of them installed... again, not consumer friendly, Linux is a popularity contest, who does it
Just jumping in here... I think the org poster had it write. Yes there are ways around Yes they can do it you can split the hairs of "well you *should* be able to do that" if you want. But this example and the large number of respondents as said is what really holds linux back. People in the linux community like to have a holier than thow attitude that's comparable to the mac users. Talk OS's and the guy who responds "I run linux" may have a smugness about them that you won't find with most windows users. It should be out of the gate right click "mount" that's it, no setup, no coding, no command line. That's a user experience. Sorry as a old school developer and linux user for a very long time I'm still urked at the smugness and the attitude that "if you don't know how to do it this way then you have no business doing it!". Just a thought