I agree they should be using the Mac as the reference model, but here's the problem. MS has been copying Apple since 1984, and they still do it poorly. If they produced an exact duplicate of OS X, they would be sued into the Stone Age. So they've tried to make Windows "Mac-like", but their deviations have made their copy a pale imitation.
Apple makes a good UI because they have an outstanding, but relatively small team doing it. They polish the hell out of everything to use just the right colors, just the right spacing, and make all the little details right. MS doesn't know how to do this, and neither do the hordes of Linux developers. It's not just pretty graphics - the actions behind the scenes have to be consistent throughout the OS, and EVERY application that runs on it.
Ubuntu is hailed as the most refined UI, but it is still a rough draft. It will never be properly finished either - developers will lose interest and move on to try something else
Scientists have been warning that the Arctic has been heading for trouble for some time, but it wasn't until *now* that politicians world-wide have given a flying fuck about it, because someone said they can make MONEY off of it.
Fuck humanity. We deserve the shit that's coming our way.
You probably think Marx was Russian. If you take the time to actually READ his work instead of dropping names, you'd understand he was commenting on the sad state that existed in his time, and what still exists now. A whole lot of people are doing all the work, with the reward for their work going to their bosses. Capitalism, when you get down to it, is not much different from feudalism.
What I meant was "what would happen if Microsoft were to do with Swing what Apple did with Swing?". What Microsoft did was a deliberate attempt to fork Java, not make Java work better on a Windows platform.
In retrospect, Microsoft was just being Microsoft.
One of the best classes I ever took in Engineering was Industrial Relations, delivered by an engineer who worked at GM for many years. His take was the best thing management could do to reduce a union's power is to treat employees well enough that they wouldn't want or need a union. What a concept! Give them good wages and benefits and don't screw them over, and they won't want to pay union dues.
Good management will think that way. The result is a talented, hard-working, happy, dedicated, and loyal work force. That's the step between 1. Steal Underpants and 3. Profit!
Like just about ANY toolkit, a lot depends on the ability of the developer using it. You can write lousy Swing apps, but if you know what you're doing, you can also write a pretty good one too. You might well argue that it's too difficult to write a good Swing app, but don't conclude from your failures that everyone is doomed.
One thing that too many people here don't appreciate is that what Sun set out to do is almost impossible to get right the first time. Think about it, a cross platform, highly customizable GUI toolkit that mimics the look and feel of every platform it runs on. With one very major player (MS) set to break it.
Look at what Apple did with Swing. A Swing app running on OS X can look almost like a native app, without breaking cross platform compatibility, because Apple EMBRACED Java and Swing. What would have happened if Microsoft did the same thing?
The traditional way to recruit more people into a profession is to up the ante: more money, better benefits, more chance at career advancement. Trouble is, the offshore competition makes this route less desirable. Why would a company jack up their expenses to hire locally when they can outsource and save money? I know this is very simplistic, but don't hold your breath waiting for that 20% raise or big fat hiring bonus.
Because Mac users will treat any Windows apps running on OS X like second class citizens. They'll stomach it, but not for long.
People credit Apple for how apps are consistently Mac-like and interoperate with each other, but the users are the ultimate enforcers. Any developer who steps out of line is crucified.
Why? The obvious point is that he's a respected environmentalist, and not a bought and paid for lobbyist of the nuclear industry. Many people will listen to him just for who is he. Second, it shows he doesn't live with blinders on. A summary of his article is that many huge problems have been dealt with to the point that dumping coal for uranium is a no brainer. No hysteria, no name-calling, just an intelligent opinion.
It's great things turned out well for you. I also have many friends who have done well, but also have many friends who have been chewed up and spat out the machine. The assertions I have made are based on real experiences. They are not just
"wrong stereotypes" as you claim. If you are indeed over 50 and still in the industry, you probably have a number of
anecdotes to back my claims, or you have lived a very sheltered and fortunate professional life.
For me, the telling sign was a recent high school reunion. The classmates who ended up with truly wonderful careers (in all aspects, not just money) were the doctors, lawyers, and accountants. The doctors, yes, they are in a special category and deservedly so because they deal with human life on a daily basis, but do you think the others had any of the horror stories that are accepted as commonplace in our business? Nope, unless you count missing tee off time being stuck in traffic as a horror story. Otherwise, it's a lot less work, a lot less stress, and a LOT more money.
This field has the following black marks against it:
Relatively low salary relative to the education required.
Often insane workloads with zero compensation (anyone here who HASN'T done unpaid overtime?).
Little chance at career advancement.
Casting off senior people (married, with kids) as liabilities.
Sure, if this is your passion (or possibly you have some mental illness), you may want to follow this career path. It may even work out for you. Lots of people end up just fine.
But it sounds like the smarter ones are looking elsewhere.
For Linux to catch up with OS X, the following will have to happen:
The OS user experience will have to be cleaned up considerably and consistently. Installing is STILL a bugger compared to OS X. Configuring is a mess and a half. The desktops are still half-baked, designed by committee of nerds, beta quality at best.
All (ok some) applications will have to conform to standard practices and WORK TOGETHER.
Apple will have to stop dead in its tracks for about ten years.
Look, I do like Linux. It would be my second choice of environments, as I am very much a *nix
guy since prehistoric times. But to suggest it will even be in the same ballpark as OS X is
just plain unrealistic.
Someone described business as war, and this is a classic example of warfare. Boot Camp came out because Apple decided it was to their advantage to do so. You'll be able to (reliably) run OS X on a Dell if and when Apple decide it will be to their advantage. In the meantime, they'll do a fair amount of work to prevent it. It has NEVER been about having the technical ability, as you suggest.
Steve should bring out a wheelbarrow of newspaper and magazine articles about "beleaguered Apple" or "Apple going out of business" and light them up in the parking lot. And maybe send a get well card to Michael Dell.
The best lectures I've attended also used this method. Before class, you downloaded and printed out the powerpoint slides and brought them to class. As the lecture progressed, you sat and listened and scribbled on the printouts of the slides to add extra explanations, comments, etc.
The important thing to note was that the lecturers were very well organized, and put a lot of thought and effort to put the slides and the lecture together. If they hadn't done it right, the result would have been awful.
Notice how this guy responds to the charges of whipping his employees by talking about process and efficiency? Clearly, the only thing these employees should do is sue the bastards into the ground.
Heh. There are more appropriate measures, but they all lead to lengthy jail time.
If Americans want Bush running your country for another four years, fine, you deserve it. Now, please try to keep him from fucking up the rest of the world. And don't be surprised with the way you get treated when you are abroad.
Leave your hangups alone for a minute and read the Communist Manifesto. The gist is this:
Technology pushes more and more people into the lower class. Eventually, doctors and garbage collectors will be more or less the same. About now, IT workers are about the same as Walmart employees, except Walmarters don't get their jobs shipped to India.
The ones left at the top grow more powerful and less numerous until only a few are running everything.
At some point, the lower class decides enough is enough, and overthrow the people at the top. About five bullets will be enough.
When Marx wrote this, he was thinking about England during the Industrial Revolution. Compare this with what's happening in the world today, and predict which country reaches stage 3 first.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree they should be using the Mac as the reference model, but here's the problem. MS has been copying Apple since 1984, and they still do it poorly. If they produced an exact duplicate of OS X, they would be sued into the Stone Age. So they've tried to make Windows "Mac-like", but their deviations have made their copy a pale imitation.
Apple makes a good UI because they have an outstanding, but relatively small team doing it. They polish the hell out of everything to use just the right colors, just the right spacing, and make all the little details right. MS doesn't know how to do this, and neither do the hordes of Linux developers. It's not just pretty graphics - the actions behind the scenes have to be consistent throughout the OS, and EVERY application that runs on it.
Ubuntu is hailed as the most refined UI, but it is still a rough draft. It will never be properly finished either - developers will lose interest and move on to try something else
If it was tough for me, it should be tough for them. Make them kick it old school.
For an AC, you sure know a lot about this guy's circumstances. Why else would you respond like such a pompous ass?
Scientists have been warning that the Arctic has been heading for trouble for some time, but it wasn't until *now* that politicians world-wide have given a flying fuck about it, because someone said they can make MONEY off of it.
Fuck humanity. We deserve the shit that's coming our way.
You probably think Marx was Russian. If you take the time to actually READ his work instead of dropping names, you'd understand he was commenting on the sad state that existed in his time, and what still exists now. A whole lot of people are doing all the work, with the reward for their work going to their bosses. Capitalism, when you get down to it, is not much different from feudalism.
What I meant was "what would happen if Microsoft were to do with Swing what Apple did with Swing?". What Microsoft did was a deliberate attempt to fork Java, not make Java work better on a Windows platform.
In retrospect, Microsoft was just being Microsoft.
One of the best classes I ever took in Engineering was Industrial Relations, delivered by an engineer who worked at GM for many years. His take was the best thing management could do to reduce a union's power is to treat employees well enough that they wouldn't want or need a union. What a concept! Give them good wages and benefits and don't screw them over, and they won't want to pay union dues.
Good management will think that way. The result is a talented, hard-working, happy, dedicated, and loyal work force. That's the step between 1. Steal Underpants and 3. Profit!
Like just about ANY toolkit, a lot depends on the ability of the developer using it. You can write lousy Swing apps, but if you know what you're doing, you can also write a pretty good one too. You might well argue that it's too difficult to write a good Swing app, but don't conclude from your failures that everyone is doomed.
One thing that too many people here don't appreciate is that what Sun set out to do is almost impossible to get right the first time. Think about it, a cross platform, highly customizable GUI toolkit that mimics the look and feel of every platform it runs on. With one very major player (MS) set to break it.
Look at what Apple did with Swing. A Swing app running on OS X can look almost like a native app, without breaking cross platform compatibility, because Apple EMBRACED Java and Swing. What would have happened if Microsoft did the same thing?
The traditional way to recruit more people into a profession is to up the ante: more money, better benefits, more chance at career advancement. Trouble is, the offshore competition makes this route less desirable. Why would a company jack up their expenses to hire locally when they can outsource and save money? I know this is very simplistic, but don't hold your breath waiting for that 20% raise or big fat hiring bonus.
Because Mac users will treat any Windows apps running on OS X like second class citizens. They'll stomach it, but not for long.
People credit Apple for how apps are consistently Mac-like and interoperate with each other, but the users are the ultimate enforcers. Any developer who steps out of line is crucified.
Why? The obvious point is that he's a respected environmentalist, and not a bought and paid for lobbyist of the nuclear industry. Many people will listen to him just for who is he. Second, it shows he doesn't live with blinders on. A summary of his article is that many huge problems have been dealt with to the point that dumping coal for uranium is a no brainer. No hysteria, no name-calling, just an intelligent opinion.
It's great things turned out well for you. I also have many friends who have done well, but also have many friends who have been chewed up and spat out the machine. The assertions I have made are based on real experiences. They are not just "wrong stereotypes" as you claim. If you are indeed over 50 and still in the industry, you probably have a number of anecdotes to back my claims, or you have lived a very sheltered and fortunate professional life.
For me, the telling sign was a recent high school reunion. The classmates who ended up with truly wonderful careers (in all aspects, not just money) were the doctors, lawyers, and accountants. The doctors, yes, they are in a special category and deservedly so because they deal with human life on a daily basis, but do you think the others had any of the horror stories that are accepted as commonplace in our business? Nope, unless you count missing tee off time being stuck in traffic as a horror story. Otherwise, it's a lot less work, a lot less stress, and a LOT more money.
This field has the following black marks against it:
Sure, if this is your passion (or possibly you have some mental illness), you may want to follow this career path. It may even work out for you. Lots of people end up just fine.
But it sounds like the smarter ones are looking elsewhere.
For Linux to catch up with OS X, the following will have to happen:
Look, I do like Linux. It would be my second choice of environments, as I am very much a *nix guy since prehistoric times. But to suggest it will even be in the same ballpark as OS X is just plain unrealistic.
Someone described business as war, and this is a classic example of warfare. Boot Camp came out because Apple decided it was to their advantage to do so. You'll be able to (reliably) run OS X on a Dell if and when Apple decide it will be to their advantage. In the meantime, they'll do a fair amount of work to prevent it. It has NEVER been about having the technical ability, as you suggest.
Calculus? You rate them too highly...
Sounds like you haven't felt the touch of a woman in a very long time, if ever.
Sounds like you work for Dell.
Steve should bring out a wheelbarrow of newspaper and magazine articles about "beleaguered Apple" or "Apple going out of business" and light them up in the parking lot. And maybe send a get well card to Michael Dell.
The best lectures I've attended also used this method. Before class, you downloaded and printed out the powerpoint slides and brought them to class. As the lecture progressed, you sat and listened and scribbled on the printouts of the slides to add extra explanations, comments, etc.
The important thing to note was that the lecturers were very well organized, and put a lot of thought and effort to put the slides and the lecture together. If they hadn't done it right, the result would have been awful.
Because nerds should know about the real world too.
All you have to do is state you're a member of your local Gays for Communism campus club, and they'll leave you alone.
Notice how this guy responds to the charges of whipping his employees by talking about process and efficiency? Clearly,
the only thing these employees should do is sue the bastards into the ground.
Heh. There are more appropriate measures, but they all lead to lengthy jail time.
If Americans want Bush running your country for another four years, fine, you deserve it. Now, please try to keep him from fucking up the rest of the world. And don't be surprised with the way you get treated when you are abroad.
Leave your hangups alone for a minute and read the Communist Manifesto. The gist is this:
When Marx wrote this, he was thinking about England during the Industrial Revolution. Compare this with what's happening in the world today, and predict which country reaches stage 3 first.