There is a need, from time to time, to start anew and bring forth new ideas without giving the luxury of people to cling to the old forever. Sometimes people will not move to something better until they have no other choice.
And that's exactly what Apple is facing with their undeniably forward-thinking move to USB-C.
How much indie Windows software added ARM and Titanium support?
ALL Mac indie software has (by necessity) followed Apple through architecture and pretty dramatic OS changes, especially in terms of frameworks (Windows programming has evolved, but is Windows programming today really so different from older Win32 development)?
Well, considering that Windows essentially stopped progressing at NT 3.51, and has just made the UI uglier and more useless as time went on, it isn't any surprise that many software packages support so many versions.
Right, because people can't make their own minds without ThE MeDiA!1!, uh? There's a lot of reasons to despise the church beyond its rampant pedophilia.
The price of flash memory would have reduced with or without Apple and this is what allowed USB thumb drives to exist. Apple strongly pushed for external ZIP disk drives and it failed. Just because Apple pushes something doesn't make it a success. Removing the floppy from the first iMac was still a mistake, like it or not.
Do not confuse your fanboyism for any hate on my side.
ZIP drives failed because iOmega couldn't make them correctly. Not Apple's fault.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' Isaac Asimov
ALL great discoveries are made by accident!
In fact, I actually trust a "discovery" MORE when I hear that it was some sort of "happy accident" or "unintended side-effect", rather than a hypothesis that was attempting to be proven/disproven.
Every day we use things that work despite the fact that we, as individuals don't know how or why they work.
Every day we rely on gravity and yet nobody knows how that works. We live in a universe that we do not fully understand and possibly never will. Understanding something often helps us to find a way to exploit it to do something useful but, as you said, it is not required.
Perhaps especially in the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals, there are plenty of products that we see working, but nobody knows exactly how. Wikipedia has an entire category for just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In fact, I used to joke that the Physician's Desk Reference (standard Reference book for Pharmaceuticals) could be printed on two sides of a piece of letter-sized paper if they just reduced the phrase "The exact mechanism of this compound is not completely understood." to a single symbol...
I applaud your healthy skepticism; however, in this case, the vast majority of non-Apple-Hating tech experts would agree that Apple, through the iMac, pretty much singlehandedly put USB "on the map".
" Apple Inc.'s iMac was the first mainstream product with USB and the iMac's success popularized USB itself.[12] Following Apple's design decision to remove all legacy port from the iMac, many PC manufacturers began building legacy-free PCs, which led to the broader PC market using USB as a standard.[13][14][15]"
12. "Eight ways the iMac changed computing". Macworld. 15 August 2008. Archived from the original on 22 December 2011. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
13. "Compaq hopes to follow the iMac". Archived from the original on 22 October 2006.
14. "The PC Follows iMac's Lead". Business week. 1999. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015.
15. Popular Mechanics: Making Connections. Hearst Magazines. February 2001. p. 59. ISSN 0032-4558. Archived from the original on 15 February 2017.
So, no; in this particular case, the consensus is that the iMac made USB into a viable alternative to parallel and RS-232 Serial (as well as other buses, such as ADB) interfaces popular at the time.
And considering that USB Thumb Drives first appeared on the market in 2000, it is fairly certain that, if the iMac had not come along and, through its popularity, given USB the critical "push" it needed to get past the "chicken and egg" problem faced by every new technology, those USB Thumb Drives would certainly not happened in 2000, and likely not until much, much later.
Heck, I'm sure that you remember: While Apple was just a few months from launching the iMac, Microsoft couldn't so much as plug in a USB SCANNER without Blue-Screening W '98, even though Windows advertises USB Support as early as W '95 OSR2.1!
And, BTW, note that Windows didn't even HAVE Storage Device USB Support until W '98 SE (May, 1999). AFAIK, Apple supported Storage-Class Devices from the first release of the iMac in August, 1998 (running (Classic) MacOS 8.1 !!!).
...and let's not even talk about Linux's sad and late adoption of USB. It wasn't even added until the 2.2 Kernel in 1999, although that was experimental support. Mainstream USB support wasn't really available in Linux until the 2.4 Kernel was released in 2001:
Why is a phone that works for multiple years with a functional battery so notable? Why so defensive?
You actually have to ask why someone who supports Apple often has to take a Defensive posture on Slashdot? You must be new here!
And you deceptively didn't include "...and receives regular OS and Security Updates for multiple years" in your "Why is...?" "question". That's pretty notable.
Great then for people who use Apple products almost exclusively and don't mind spending $159 on AirPods...let me know when this becomes a standard feature on every new BT-enabled device, and works seamlessly across devices with different manufacturers. The way many other transmission standards do (like WiFi).
Hey the rest of every other BT earbud OEM is free to do the same thing. AFAIK, Apple's "Pairing" method isn't patented.
The other OEMs are evidently just too greedy, lazy, and stupid to do it.
It was a bad purchase decision to buy iMacs without floppy drives when they first came out. Floppy drives would have disappeared with or without Apple, mostly because of USB thumb drives. We don't need new tech to be pushed down our throat. We need it to be good enough so that we choose to use it instead of the old one.
Strawman argument.
Why? Because there NEVER would have BEEN USB Thumb Drives in the first place, if not for Apple and the iMac.
Proof? USB Ports had been on EVERY Wintel motherboard for YEARS with virtually NOTHING to plug into them... UNTIL THE IMAC CAME ALONG.
Sorry. You stepped in it big time.
Now deflect with something offtopic like complaining about my use of Caps instead of ridiculous manual HTML tags for emphasis.
So, when I go to the Brainiac Grove or Consumer Nirvana or whatever they call it this year, I expect they will show me where the easy toolless release for the battery cover is, and let me buy a couple extra battery packs to have on hand, right?
Wait a minute, silly me, I overlooked the bravery, the principles at play here... It's adhesive strips, not glue! What a game changer - Android manufacturers better watch out, once consumers hear about Apple's new adhesive strips, their marketshare will be on the downturn...
Nice snarkiness; but I wasn't trying to say that replacing globs of obnoxious, hard-to-release glue with a couple of pieces of essentially high-tech double-sided tape was groundbreaking or earth-shattering; but it was an huge advance in repairability over the glob-o'-glue method, and, IMHO, was a meme that needed to be put to rest.
However, at some point I agree it might become obsolete. Just not in 2016. So there is nothing wrong mocking Apple for doing so. Apple also killed the floppy drive too early. I remember my college had a computer lab full of iMacs, each with an expensive USB floppy drive adapter. Just because everybody followed (since floppy became obsolete) doesn't mean Apple was right to do it so early.
But if Apple didn't push people into adopting new tech, who would?
I have a new iphone XS and a new macbook pro and can't plug one into the other, I actually have to buy a dongle to do that. That is fucking retarded unless you just want to extract some more profit from your userbase by doing asshole things like upselling dongles.
Or, you could just buy a CABLE, like SANE people do.
Here's one that is MFi-certified, Lightning to USB-A. a WHOLE $6:
And here is a (non MFi) Lightning to USB-C cable for $8. Note that Apple's cable (not DONGLE!) is $20; but Apple just changed the MFi-program rules to allow 3rd Party USB-C -> Lightning cables; so cheap MFi-Certified ones are right around the corner.
Apple used to mock Intel CPUs before switching to them shortly after.
Yes I had those "Switch" ads in mind as well when I wrote my post. They were amusing at the time for sure, but they too were a self-own for Apple as Apple had to go down the Intel path as well... probably other aspects apply these days if you went back and watched them.
A little less direct a self-own, in that more time had passed before they applied - but still.
But Apple didn't just DECIDE to switch to Intel; they were FORCED to, because neither Motorola nor IBM were interested in creating a laptop-version of the G5 CPU, nor were they interested in breaking the 3 GHz barrier.
If you use just one pair of equipment (a single set of headphones with a single phone for example) it'll work OK most of the time but once you start swapping pairs around the problems multiply. Which headset do you pair to this device? Which is the default audio output? Did it automatically pair with another nearby device with which it was paired in the past and currently has its Bluetooth on? Etc. etc.
I have great news for you! Apple has already figured ALL of this out with its Airpods.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a need, from time to time, to start anew and bring forth new ideas without giving the luxury of people to cling to the old forever. Sometimes people will not move to something better until they have no other choice.
And that's exactly what Apple is facing with their undeniably forward-thinking move to USB-C.
Windows has long supported ARM and Itanium.
How much indie Windows software added ARM and Titanium support?
ALL Mac indie software has (by necessity) followed Apple through architecture and pretty dramatic OS changes, especially in terms of frameworks (Windows programming has evolved, but is Windows programming today really so different from older Win32 development)?
Well, considering that Windows essentially stopped progressing at NT 3.51, and has just made the UI uglier and more useless as time went on, it isn't any surprise that many software packages support so many versions.
That is, as long as everything was 32 bit...
Right, because people can't make their own minds without ThE MeDiA!1!, uh? There's a lot of reasons to despise the church beyond its rampant pedophilia.
Tru dat.
Parents have secrets :) Who knows.
And some Foster Parents have some real secrets...
In the past if you said: 'A voice made me do it', you went to crazytown, now you might get millions from Amazon.
I like it!
Two thumbs up!
The price of flash memory would have reduced with or without Apple and this is what allowed USB thumb drives to exist.
Apple strongly pushed for external ZIP disk drives and it failed. Just because Apple pushes something doesn't make it a success. Removing the floppy from the first iMac was still a mistake, like it or not.
Do not confuse your fanboyism for any hate on my side.
ZIP drives failed because iOmega couldn't make them correctly. Not Apple's fault.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' Isaac Asimov
ALL great discoveries are made by accident!
In fact, I actually trust a "discovery" MORE when I hear that it was some sort of "happy accident" or "unintended side-effect", rather than a hypothesis that was attempting to be proven/disproven.
Every day we use things that work despite the fact that we, as individuals don't know how or why they work.
Every day we rely on gravity and yet nobody knows how that works. We live in a universe that we do not fully understand and possibly never will. Understanding something often helps us to find a way to exploit it to do something useful but, as you said, it is not required.
But I don't believe in Gravity. Now what???
Every day we use things that work despite the fact that we, as individuals don't know how or why they work.
What's really scary is the number of medicines which fall into this category.
Heck, we don't even completely understand how aspirin works.
See my post on this point:
https://science.slashdot.org/c...
Perhaps especially in the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals, there are plenty of products that we see working, but nobody knows exactly how.
Wikipedia has an entire category for just that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In fact, I used to joke that the Physician's Desk Reference (standard Reference book for Pharmaceuticals) could be printed on two sides of a piece of letter-sized paper if they just reduced the phrase "The exact mechanism of this compound is not completely understood." to a single symbol...
Bet you're one of those crazy people who think one day we will be able to look at images on our phone to?
Never!
Do you KNOW how much STORAGE that would take, and how long it would take to transmit?!?
Unpossible.
That is just way too old.
I know what some of that was.
Don't feel bad: I not only know what ALL of that shit was, I used to USE some of it!
Strawman argument.
Why? Because there NEVER would have BEEN USB Thumb Drives in the first place, if not for Apple and the iMac.
HAHA good one.
Proof? USB Ports had been on EVERY Wintel motherboard for YEARS with virtually NOTHING to plug into them... UNTIL THE IMAC CAME ALONG.
That's hardly a proof. http://tylervigen.com/spurious...
I applaud your healthy skepticism; however, in this case, the vast majority of non-Apple-Hating tech experts would agree that Apple, through the iMac, pretty much singlehandedly put USB "on the map".
https://www.macworld.com/artic...
" Apple Inc.'s iMac was the first mainstream product with USB and the iMac's success popularized USB itself.[12] Following Apple's design decision to remove all legacy port from the iMac, many PC manufacturers began building legacy-free PCs, which led to the broader PC market using USB as a standard.[13][14][15]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Citations from above:
12. "Eight ways the iMac changed computing". Macworld. 15 August 2008. Archived from the original on 22 December 2011. Retrieved 5 September 2017.
13. "Compaq hopes to follow the iMac". Archived from the original on 22 October 2006.
14. "The PC Follows iMac's Lead". Business week. 1999. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015.
15. Popular Mechanics: Making Connections. Hearst Magazines. February 2001. p. 59. ISSN 0032-4558. Archived from the original on 15 February 2017.
So, no; in this particular case, the consensus is that the iMac made USB into a viable alternative to parallel and RS-232 Serial (as well as other buses, such as ADB) interfaces popular at the time.
And considering that USB Thumb Drives first appeared on the market in 2000, it is fairly certain that, if the iMac had not come along and, through its popularity, given USB the critical "push" it needed to get past the "chicken and egg" problem faced by every new technology, those USB Thumb Drives would certainly not happened in 2000, and likely not until much, much later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Heck, I'm sure that you remember: While Apple was just a few months from launching the iMac, Microsoft couldn't so much as plug in a USB SCANNER without Blue-Screening W '98, even though Windows advertises USB Support as early as W '95 OSR2.1!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
And, BTW, note that Windows didn't even HAVE Storage Device USB Support until W '98 SE (May, 1999). AFAIK, Apple supported Storage-Class Devices from the first release of the iMac in August, 1998 (running (Classic) MacOS 8.1 !!!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://kernel.readthedocs.io/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And even now, USB and Linux is sometimes an exercise in frustration (but I guess that applies to all things Linux, doesn't it?)
https://www.google.com/search?...
Why is a phone that works for multiple years with a functional battery so notable? Why so defensive?
You actually have to ask why someone who supports Apple often has to take a Defensive posture on Slashdot? You must be new here!
And you deceptively didn't include "...and receives regular OS and Security Updates for multiple years" in your "Why is...?" "question". That's pretty notable.
And telling.
Uhm, and the iPhone is the only smartphone lineup in existence?
It's the only one the GP mentioned as being "too thin"; so, in this case, "Yes".
Dumbass.
Great then for people who use Apple products almost exclusively and don't mind spending $159 on AirPods...let me know when this becomes a standard feature on every new BT-enabled device, and works seamlessly across devices with different manufacturers. The way many other transmission standards do (like WiFi).
Hey the rest of every other BT earbud OEM is free to do the same thing. AFAIK, Apple's "Pairing" method isn't patented.
The other OEMs are evidently just too greedy, lazy, and stupid to do it.
It was a bad purchase decision to buy iMacs without floppy drives when they first came out. Floppy drives would have disappeared with or without Apple, mostly because of USB thumb drives. We don't need new tech to be pushed down our throat. We need it to be good enough so that we choose to use it instead of the old one.
Strawman argument.
Why? Because there NEVER would have BEEN USB Thumb Drives in the first place, if not for Apple and the iMac.
Proof? USB Ports had been on EVERY Wintel motherboard for YEARS with virtually NOTHING to plug into them... UNTIL THE IMAC CAME ALONG.
Sorry. You stepped in it big time.
Now deflect with something offtopic like complaining about my use of Caps instead of ridiculous manual HTML tags for emphasis.
Oh, Apple has put a headphone jack back on their phones now? Great news!
Mods, Parent is Offtopic, Redundant, and Trollish.
So, when I go to the Brainiac Grove or Consumer Nirvana or whatever they call it this year, I expect they will show me where the easy toolless release for the battery cover is, and let me buy a couple extra battery packs to have on hand, right?
Wait a minute, silly me, I overlooked the bravery, the principles at play here... It's adhesive strips, not glue! What a game changer - Android manufacturers better watch out, once consumers hear about Apple's new adhesive strips, their marketshare will be on the downturn...
Nice snarkiness; but I wasn't trying to say that replacing globs of obnoxious, hard-to-release glue with a couple of pieces of essentially high-tech double-sided tape was groundbreaking or earth-shattering; but it was an huge advance in repairability over the glob-o'-glue method, and, IMHO, was a meme that needed to be put to rest.
However, at some point I agree it might become obsolete. Just not in 2016. So there is nothing wrong mocking Apple for doing so.
Apple also killed the floppy drive too early. I remember my college had a computer lab full of iMacs, each with an expensive USB floppy drive adapter. Just because everybody followed (since floppy became obsolete) doesn't mean Apple was right to do it so early.
But if Apple didn't push people into adopting new tech, who would?
Laptops with cheap flimsy power cords like Apple provides need it. I've never broken a Thinkpad cord.
You've never broken an Apple one either; but I notice you don't mention THAT.
I have a new iphone XS and a new macbook pro and can't plug one into the other, I actually have to buy a dongle to do that. That is fucking retarded unless you just want to extract some more profit from your userbase by doing asshole things like upselling dongles.
Or, you could just buy a CABLE, like SANE people do.
Here's one that is MFi-certified, Lightning to USB-A. a WHOLE $6:
https://www.amazon.com/AmazonB...
And here is a (non MFi) Lightning to USB-C cable for $8. Note that Apple's cable (not DONGLE!) is $20; but Apple just changed the MFi-program rules to allow 3rd Party USB-C -> Lightning cables; so cheap MFi-Certified ones are right around the corner.
https://www.amazon.com/METRANS...
That took about 2 minutes on Amazon's site.
So, it seems it is YOU that is the retarded one.
Apple used to mock Intel CPUs before switching to them shortly after.
Yes I had those "Switch" ads in mind as well when I wrote my post. They were amusing at the time for sure, but they too were a self-own for Apple as Apple had to go down the Intel path as well... probably other aspects apply these days if you went back and watched them.
A little less direct a self-own, in that more time had passed before they applied - but still.
But Apple didn't just DECIDE to switch to Intel; they were FORCED to, because neither Motorola nor IBM were interested in creating a laptop-version of the G5 CPU, nor were they interested in breaking the 3 GHz barrier.
If you use just one pair of equipment (a single set of headphones with a single phone for example) it'll work OK most of the time but once you start swapping pairs around the problems multiply. Which headset do you pair to this device? Which is the default audio output? Did it automatically pair with another nearby device with which it was paired in the past and currently has its Bluetooth on? Etc. etc.
I have great news for you! Apple has already figured ALL of this out with its Airpods.
See this post:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...