It's because the huge profit margins on the iPhone come at the cost of the carriers; I still only pay the carrier offer price of $199. They'd charge me the same for the plan/contract whether or not I bring my own phone or use an Android or whatever, so to the extent that you're eating into a carrier's profits is a good thing, the iPhone is the best way to do it.
The iPhone is still the (or one of the) single most popular phone models. People like iPhones. There are reasons not to buy the iPhone, but they're good phones on a solid platform that look nice and have lots of apps. You may disagree with Apple's legal policies or walled garden or whatnot, but the experience is good, by and large.
$199 is the price you pay to the carrier for a phone locked to them, and in Canada, a three year contract. (In the USA, the contracts are 2 years.)
Every two years, a Canadian carrier will offer you an upgrade to your phone for $199! The only catch is that you have to sign on for another 3 year contract. (This is a terrible deal, it turns out.)
Apple will sell you an unlocked phone themselves, and you can take it to any carrier. But the phone will cost you $600, and the carrier won't give you a discount for bringing your own phone along because they're right bastards.
You don't have to input your password for free updates in iOS6.
The iPad doesn't have a standard USB interface because the standard USB isn't good enough. The current connector carries more information than USB provides, like control data, video, etc., etc. (Also, the 30 pin connector is a bit of a holdover from when the iPod was firewire only.) I'm not sure how they managed to get the port down to 9 pins with the rumoured new connector, but it's still not ordinary USB because ordinary USB doesn't meet Apple's needs for other things.
As for the point about not being able to attach drives, well, I guess Apple doesn't want people to do that. For myself, I don't even know why you'd WANT to do that. Drives are attached to desktop machines because they need that kind of mass storage. If I'm finding my iPad can't hold enough data, I'm trying to figure out what to delete; 16GB holds everything I need for the short periods of time that I want to be using it (i.e., 1hr - 2 days). Anything longer, and I can find an internet connection to change the data out.
But that's just my use case; obviously not everyone's needs are the same.
While it's true that climate models don't predict the weather per se, they do implicitly forecast what sorts of weather we will see as a result of climate change.
If, for instance, the climate model predicted that the average temperature of Earth would drop by 20 kelvin, you can bet that the implication is that what we'll see is a lot of snowy weather.
It's good that people are starting to learn that climate and weather aren't equivalent, but the former certainly leads to the latter. A study of climate is a study of broad, long term weather trends. You can't say that we'll see more drought in certain areas of the world without implying that there will be less precipitation. They can't tell you the days where it will or won't rain, but they CAN tell you it will rain less.
As for the actual history of the name, I couldn't tell you for sure. But I suspect it was scientists hedging their bets. They knew climate was worth studying and that it might be changing, but picking a name for the panel that pre-supposed a possible climate change direction would have been unscientific.
I suspect that no matter what, this particular lander would have been scrapped anyway. Regardless of whether or not this test went exactly the way they planned, this particular incarnation would not have been the one to go into space. So there would be NO way to avoid 'losing' this spacecraft, and it's ONLY purpose in life was to gather data to ensure that the final incarnation is successful.
In a very meaningful sense, this test was a success in that it will ensure that the final product works. Even if this test had gone 100% as planned, there would still be more tests to validate the design. I would be surprised if this changed the timeline of the project by even a day.
So the title says a lot. I've used only a small bit of the whole field of mathematics over the years. Quaternions, trig and some linear algebra are most of what it comes down to. I think I may have used a derivative ONCE. Stats can come into play, depending on what you're doing.
But I'm going to recommend something to you: take a bunch of math, and dive into a scientific field of endeavor that leverages that math. Most of the natural sciences require a good understanding of statistics. Physics obviously requires a lot of interesting math. Even if you decide to really study computing science itself, you'll need an enormous amount of abstract math knowledge; computing is little more than applied mathematics.
I've got a minor in Earth sciences (meteorology, geology, etc.), and it's rapidly becoming obvious to me that the most interesting problems for a programmer to work on are in the scientific fields, not in the 'industry'. Climate modelling, economic models, terrain simulation, CERN and the LHC...those are places where math is completely requisite, and they're the fields that are either shaping the world or are significantly being shaped by the changing situations in the wold.
Making games is interesting work, and I've enjoyed my time in this industry, but I'll probably make my way out in a few years to do more school in a physical science field. If you really want to have an interesting programming career--truly interesting and perhaps even world-shaping--you NEED math.
That's why it's actually 'Climate Change' not 'Global Warming'. If you read up on the subject, the prediction is for some areas to get colder, some to get warmer, the average temperature of the Earth to go up, and for strange weather events to increase. 'Global Warming' is a bit of a misnomer, in that it's easy to get confused and think that it means just everywhere on Earth will simultaneously get X degrees warmer. Those extra degrees represent extra energy in the system, and how the energy is dispersed is what drives the weather and the climate.
So, yeah. Those things that you said aren't just unsurprising, they're exactly what we can expect more of as the climate changes due to an average surface temperature warming.
This is why the nomenclature has changed in the last few years. It's not a matter of 'Global Warming' as much as 'Global Climate Change'. It isn't just a tactic to dress it up, there are changes happening that will make SOME areas colder and some areas warmer, but the global average temperature will go up.
Air and sea currents move a lot of energy around, and if they're diverted or stopped all together, you'll see cool water move to different areas of the ocean, and cause localised cooling where there wasn't any before. Similarly, places that historically were near cool water might see a big change as the water heats up, and they don't get the same weather effects from that body of water.
Weird weather seems to be everywhere this summer...which is actually what climate change models predict.
I'm sorry that I wasn't clear; I was fiddling with things on my desktop systems. I actually have no problem with FreeBSD and Linux as server platforms. My FreeBSD mail server was headless 99% of the time.
The reason THIS programmer thinks he knows how to do those things is because he did those things professionally. Like, as a job. It's two different things, but both are technical aspects of my career. Of course, that was 15 years ago. I mean, slackware was still relatively popular and ubuntu had just started as a project.
I agree that most people don't. But if you read the comment that I was responding to, it's pretty obvious that the guy just hates Apple and its customers.
"Usually the people that complain about too many features in phones and stuff, that I see, are either people getting on in their years or, to be frank, not very bright. I'm not impressed by his arguing because I've seen Apple fanboys argue that sdhc expandability is a bad thing because--get this--it's too complicated. I'm no android fanboy--i think Google really dropped the ball with Nexus 7 defects. It's just clear to me that iOS is made for A lower common denominator, technologically speaking. iOS is perfect for, say, teenage girls that get their computers swapped with crapware and 3 million toolbars in their browser but I would expect a little slashdot savvy on Slashdot."
Man, how many backhanded ways does he insult Mac users' intelligence?:/
This is many days old, but I'm just checking my comment reply backlog now.
In any case, your anecdotal experience is evidence of nothing much at all. For all I know, you put the machines on eBay with a starting bid of $1. Even if it's true that you only got $40+shipping, it doesn't indicate much to me.
Also, I said machines about 3 years old, not 8-10 years old. At that point, they're not terribly useful machines, I agree. But a 1 year old PC won't sell for as much as a 1 year old Mac. There is presumably a point of convergence (and then a new point of divergence as things become vintage, or someone is willing to pay to keep parts around to repair their old machines) after a number of years.
Anyway, it's very nice that you hate Apple so much, but none of what you say is terribly damning or relevant to my point. You've still not convinced me or even put forth a very meaningful argument that Apple computers have less value for the same specification (to most people). I'm willing to include that parenthetical caveat because some people just want a bare-bones PC with nothing on it. When I buy a Mac, I want XCode and iPhoto and the iWork suite and all those other things that come packaged with the machine. Those are part of the value for me. Maybe not you, fair enough.
Lastly, I had no wifi problems with 10.7 on my iMac, and I upgraded on day 1. There was definitely an issue with some machines, but it was hardly like the entire Mac population lost wifi internet simultaneously when they upgraded. Operating systems have bugs. Even Linux and FreeBSD systems.
It's worth pointing out that Apple's high margins are effectively the only thing that doesn't bankrupt the other manufacturers.
To hear them tell it, they're making razor thin margins on every phone. If Apple reduced the price of their phones to something more consumer friendly, and dropped the prices, you'd see a lot of manufacturers losing money on each phone made. Even Samsung, perhaps. (Though, obviously, their component manufacturing division would still be rollin' in the bucks.)
I use my iPad more than my desktop computer. The reality is that most of my use cases are fulfilled by my iPad. The functionality may be limited, but it's limited to all the things I want to do. Programming is practically speaking the only thing I don't do on my iPad, but I pretty much get my fill of that at work.
Besides, what's there to be nervous about? Nobody takes my Apple gear away if an Android device has a good quarter. Most Apple users and fans couldn't possibly care less about other devices. That's why they have Apple hardware.
Your analysis is needlessly insulting and, frankly, wrong as near as I can tell.
I make video games for a living. I've worked on triple-A Xbox (original and 360) titles as a programmer. I've got a decent math background, more than a passing interest in physics, climate science, etc., etc. I don't really feel it's necessary to divulge all my credentials, but I'm trying to make the point that I'm not just some random idiot. I was a pro Unix sysadmin in University to help pay for school. I ran my own Slackware and FreeBSD mail servers.
I'm typing this on an iPad. It's not because it's so simple it saves me from myself, it's because it's so simple it saves me any extra hassle. It's a good environment. I get things done on my iPad. I use it more than I was expecting to, to the point where I don't feel it terribly necessary to sit at my desktop machine more than a couple times a week.
Having my own servers opened my eyes to the tyranny of choice. I think Linux and BSD are great, but I spent just as much time obsessively fiddling with things as anything. Different window managers, new browsers, random command line tools...none of which objectively added to my productivity.
And that's what studies find, too. You can offer users choices that make them feel subjectively better and more productive while having the opposite effect. Users don't always know what they want or need. Sometimes you have to give them just one thing that works really well and leave it at that. I could design a door a thousand different ways, and 950 of them would be terrible. (Don't believe me? Read "The Design of Everyday Things". You'll never look at a door the same again.) Why would I give people the choice of a zillion bad doors? I should just give them one or two really good ones.
iPads are popular because they fulfil their function very well. Don't sit and bash on both Apple and Apple users for a well designed product and the desire to use a well designed product. I won't cast aspersions on Android tablets; I'm sure many of them are also quite good. But all you're doing here is calling names and vaguely dressing up some Apple hate.
I re-read your post, and you're right, you didn't imply that. I was getting a different vibe from your post than I think you intended, so I apologise for that.
Not published = Trash is a statement whose truth can't really accurately be assessed, but the reality is that it's more likely than not. Publishing is the best we can do right now. Every method suffers from bias, so the only hope is to try to publish more and get more qualified eyes on the research. The trend to open up scientific papers to the public if they're publicly funded in places like the UK will probably help matters along.
Did you know that there's not actually much of a difference between the way newborn boys look at faces and blocks and the way newborn girls do?
There was a single study, quite a long time ago, with fairly bad scientific controls (i.e., the researchers were the ones administering the experiment, knew the outcome that they were predicting, etc.) that still holds sway to this day that claims that newborn boys look at objects like mobiles fractionally longer than faces, and that baby girls are the opposite, proving a difference between males and females at the 'nature' level when it comes to interaction in the world. That boys will naturally be better with tools and math and girls will be better with people and relationships, all other things being equal.
It turns out that peer reviewed papers debunking this have come up several times, but nobody cares. Because the assumption has to be that boys and girls are the same, a paper that maintains the status quo is insufficiently interesting to see widespread release. As a result, people keep citing the flawed study and completely pass the new study by (mainly in the mainstream media rather than in the field itself).
Controversy sells. Weird 'discoveries' and statistical correlations sell (e.g., the ratio of a man's index finger to ring finger correlates to aggression; I'm not making that stupid study up http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4314209.stm)
I agree that published work can be garbage; we see it all the time, and I just cited a good example of it. But to ignore hundreds of iterations on the data both through peer review AND experimental reproduction is just putting your head in the sand.
Having the same specs is not the same as being equally functional. For one thing, you don't get OS X on a PC. Clearly that doesn't matter to you, but it does matter to some people.
Have you factored in resale value? For whatever reason, Apple products retain a great deal of value. I've always partially funded my new computer purchases with selling my old Apple hardware. I can get 30-40% of the purchase price of a new machine if I sell something 3 years old. So the fact that the new price is double isn't actually true if you're willing to sell after you feel that you're done with it.
Reliability? Tech support? Maybe you don't need them, but other people do. Apple's tech support consistently ranks at the top of the lists year after year.
Sure, the SPECS are the same, but I'm not convinced that the VALUE is the same.
Because people look at things. People decide a lot of things based on aesthetics. And because this isn't just about a rectangle with rounded corners as the headlines here would have you believe, there is value in an aesthetic design that guides you using familiar cues and particular design elements.
Designing something that is both functional and aesthetic is not trivial. We see examples of bad design all the time. I can give you an incredibly powerful computer, but it's trivial for me to make the interface so pathological that you can't get anything done. Even if I'm not trying to trip you up, I can definitely make an interface that doesn't let you use the full power of the computer that you're at. When you're talking about interfaces, the form IS the function.
ONE of Apple's features and strengths has long been its design sense. It's an important part of their marketing, and it's an important part of their design in the sense that they believe that they can make a device more usable and inviting with the right effort applied to the creation of the interface.
Is that something patentable? Well, I don't know. But it seems to me that patents are there so you can (temporarily) have a monopoly on a good idea, to encourage people to come up with good ideas and make some money off of them. If Apple's UI and iPad design, TAKEN AS A WHOLE, are a superior functional experience, I think it fits the bill.
I miss the NeXTstep dock. It was the most functional dock I've ever used. And the menu system. Man, the whole UI and 'finder' were so much better. I miss my cube.:(
I read an article that said the worst thing that ever happened to Canadian health care was for us to be situated next to the USA. Our system is leaps and bounds ahead of theirs, but because that's the metric by which we compare everything, we end up with a lousier system than somewhere like Mexico, or what they have in Scandinavia.
A friend of mine went to Holland to visit family. For her to get an ultrasound booked (because her family can't be back in Canada for the birth) was faster and cheaper in Holland--where she doesn't have insurance--than it would be here. AND when they found out that she was in from Canada, they threw in some freebie scans. Just like that.
I appreciate our system, I really do. It's taken care of me in some bad accidents, and when my family has had trouble (cancer, old age, heart disease) they've gotten really good care, without the rest of the family worrying about how we're going to live while paying for treatment. But being better than a place that has so many demonstrable, objective deficiencies doesn't make our system the best.
Ah, so it's okay to put racial slurs in source code? I mean, it's all in good fun, right? What do I care if someone is offended--that's out of my hands!
What an asinine argument. You're the one that's telling people how to think. You're saying, "Don't be offended." But they ARE. So now what?
I suppose it's your right, strictly speaking, to do this sort of juvenile thing. But if I'm your boss and I'm offended, that's probably not a good thing. If I'm your boss and someone else is offended, it's almost as bad. If I saw this sort of thing, you better believe I would fire your ass without the least remorse. It's not good for morale, and it's not a professional thing to do.
But I can't change your mind; I can already see that. You'll believe what you believe. But if you ever think about doing this sort of thing, consider the impact it'll have on the people around you. Is it possible that you'll upset someone? Is that person important to your team? Is it simply outside the boundaries of good manners?
You can't go through life without offending people, but you should be selective about the people you DO offend, and you should do it with full intent and awareness of the consequences. This 'big boobs' thing is just a shitty joke that gives programmers even more of a reputation for sexist neanderthals. It's a lame embarrassment to our industry.
Nowhere in my post did I say that people should be governed by laws or physically restrained from saying stupid, offensive things.
However, not being bothered by comments that others can or are likely to feel offended by doesn't mean you can write them off and say, "Well, I'm not offended; this issue doesn't matter and we should stop making a fuss."
This is what was in the post I was responding to:
"People are sometimes too sensitive over things.
It's just a term. As far as sexist terms, it's not in the top 5.
Most people here (which is a representative group similar to the people that read Linux source code) are not particularly insulted by this term getting into the source. Therefore, if an individual has a problem with the term, it's their problem."
The fact that it's 'not in the top 5' doesn't mean it isn't discouraging for women to see this sort of behaviour. This is the sort of stuff that keeps them out of our boy's club. This is what makes it hard for them to work with us. It's things like this that are cited time and time again by women leaving the industry as the reason that they do it.
Why isn't that problematic? And why IS it problematic that I feel it SHOULD be a matter of concern? Everyone is so upset that they can't be puerile and sexist when they're hacking.
But ultimately, I'm not here to change anyone's mind or make anyone do anything. I can't actually reasonably expect to do either. I AM trying to make people consider the view that it's stuff like this that gives IT/Programming the anti-woman reputation that it has.
Well, it's worth pointing out that Canada has a much lower gun violence rate than either of those places, and there ARE strict gun laws in place. In fact, the gun laws are getting much stricter in an attempt to quash the gun violence that we DO have. There was recently a shooting here, and it was a big deal that TWO people were killed. 12 with 50 injured would be a national catastrophe and on the front page of every major newspaper.
The USA and Canada are different; I wouldn't suggest that you adopt our system per se, because your circumstances aren't the same. But it seems obvious to me that sufficiently strict gun laws CAN work if they have an appropriate societal context to exist.
Slashdot Mirror
It's because the huge profit margins on the iPhone come at the cost of the carriers; I still only pay the carrier offer price of $199. They'd charge me the same for the plan/contract whether or not I bring my own phone or use an Android or whatever, so to the extent that you're eating into a carrier's profits is a good thing, the iPhone is the best way to do it.
The iPhone is still the (or one of the) single most popular phone models. People like iPhones. There are reasons not to buy the iPhone, but they're good phones on a solid platform that look nice and have lots of apps. You may disagree with Apple's legal policies or walled garden or whatnot, but the experience is good, by and large.
$199 is the price you pay to the carrier for a phone locked to them, and in Canada, a three year contract. (In the USA, the contracts are 2 years.)
Every two years, a Canadian carrier will offer you an upgrade to your phone for $199! The only catch is that you have to sign on for another 3 year contract. (This is a terrible deal, it turns out.)
Apple will sell you an unlocked phone themselves, and you can take it to any carrier. But the phone will cost you $600, and the carrier won't give you a discount for bringing your own phone along because they're right bastards.
You don't have to input your password for free updates in iOS6.
The iPad doesn't have a standard USB interface because the standard USB isn't good enough. The current connector carries more information than USB provides, like control data, video, etc., etc. (Also, the 30 pin connector is a bit of a holdover from when the iPod was firewire only.) I'm not sure how they managed to get the port down to 9 pins with the rumoured new connector, but it's still not ordinary USB because ordinary USB doesn't meet Apple's needs for other things.
As for the point about not being able to attach drives, well, I guess Apple doesn't want people to do that. For myself, I don't even know why you'd WANT to do that. Drives are attached to desktop machines because they need that kind of mass storage. If I'm finding my iPad can't hold enough data, I'm trying to figure out what to delete; 16GB holds everything I need for the short periods of time that I want to be using it (i.e., 1hr - 2 days). Anything longer, and I can find an internet connection to change the data out.
But that's just my use case; obviously not everyone's needs are the same.
While it's true that climate models don't predict the weather per se, they do implicitly forecast what sorts of weather we will see as a result of climate change.
If, for instance, the climate model predicted that the average temperature of Earth would drop by 20 kelvin, you can bet that the implication is that what we'll see is a lot of snowy weather.
It's good that people are starting to learn that climate and weather aren't equivalent, but the former certainly leads to the latter. A study of climate is a study of broad, long term weather trends. You can't say that we'll see more drought in certain areas of the world without implying that there will be less precipitation. They can't tell you the days where it will or won't rain, but they CAN tell you it will rain less.
As for the actual history of the name, I couldn't tell you for sure. But I suspect it was scientists hedging their bets. They knew climate was worth studying and that it might be changing, but picking a name for the panel that pre-supposed a possible climate change direction would have been unscientific.
I suspect that no matter what, this particular lander would have been scrapped anyway. Regardless of whether or not this test went exactly the way they planned, this particular incarnation would not have been the one to go into space. So there would be NO way to avoid 'losing' this spacecraft, and it's ONLY purpose in life was to gather data to ensure that the final incarnation is successful.
In a very meaningful sense, this test was a success in that it will ensure that the final product works. Even if this test had gone 100% as planned, there would still be more tests to validate the design. I would be surprised if this changed the timeline of the project by even a day.
So the title says a lot. I've used only a small bit of the whole field of mathematics over the years. Quaternions, trig and some linear algebra are most of what it comes down to. I think I may have used a derivative ONCE. Stats can come into play, depending on what you're doing.
But I'm going to recommend something to you: take a bunch of math, and dive into a scientific field of endeavor that leverages that math. Most of the natural sciences require a good understanding of statistics. Physics obviously requires a lot of interesting math. Even if you decide to really study computing science itself, you'll need an enormous amount of abstract math knowledge; computing is little more than applied mathematics.
I've got a minor in Earth sciences (meteorology, geology, etc.), and it's rapidly becoming obvious to me that the most interesting problems for a programmer to work on are in the scientific fields, not in the 'industry'. Climate modelling, economic models, terrain simulation, CERN and the LHC...those are places where math is completely requisite, and they're the fields that are either shaping the world or are significantly being shaped by the changing situations in the wold.
Making games is interesting work, and I've enjoyed my time in this industry, but I'll probably make my way out in a few years to do more school in a physical science field. If you really want to have an interesting programming career--truly interesting and perhaps even world-shaping--you NEED math.
That's why it's actually 'Climate Change' not 'Global Warming'. If you read up on the subject, the prediction is for some areas to get colder, some to get warmer, the average temperature of the Earth to go up, and for strange weather events to increase. 'Global Warming' is a bit of a misnomer, in that it's easy to get confused and think that it means just everywhere on Earth will simultaneously get X degrees warmer. Those extra degrees represent extra energy in the system, and how the energy is dispersed is what drives the weather and the climate.
So, yeah. Those things that you said aren't just unsurprising, they're exactly what we can expect more of as the climate changes due to an average surface temperature warming.
This is why the nomenclature has changed in the last few years. It's not a matter of 'Global Warming' as much as 'Global Climate Change'. It isn't just a tactic to dress it up, there are changes happening that will make SOME areas colder and some areas warmer, but the global average temperature will go up.
Air and sea currents move a lot of energy around, and if they're diverted or stopped all together, you'll see cool water move to different areas of the ocean, and cause localised cooling where there wasn't any before. Similarly, places that historically were near cool water might see a big change as the water heats up, and they don't get the same weather effects from that body of water.
Weird weather seems to be everywhere this summer...which is actually what climate change models predict.
I'm sorry that I wasn't clear; I was fiddling with things on my desktop systems. I actually have no problem with FreeBSD and Linux as server platforms. My FreeBSD mail server was headless 99% of the time.
The reason THIS programmer thinks he knows how to do those things is because he did those things professionally. Like, as a job. It's two different things, but both are technical aspects of my career. Of course, that was 15 years ago. I mean, slackware was still relatively popular and ubuntu had just started as a project.
I agree that most people don't. But if you read the comment that I was responding to, it's pretty obvious that the guy just hates Apple and its customers.
"Usually the people that complain about too many features in phones and stuff, that I see, are either people getting on in their years or, to be frank, not very bright. I'm not impressed by his arguing because I've seen Apple fanboys argue that sdhc expandability is a bad thing because--get this--it's too complicated. I'm no android fanboy--i think Google really dropped the ball with Nexus 7 defects. It's just clear to me that iOS is made for A lower common denominator, technologically speaking. iOS is perfect for, say, teenage girls that get their computers swapped with crapware and 3 million toolbars in their browser but I would expect a little slashdot savvy on Slashdot."
Man, how many backhanded ways does he insult Mac users' intelligence? :/
This is many days old, but I'm just checking my comment reply backlog now.
In any case, your anecdotal experience is evidence of nothing much at all. For all I know, you put the machines on eBay with a starting bid of $1. Even if it's true that you only got $40+shipping, it doesn't indicate much to me.
Also, I said machines about 3 years old, not 8-10 years old. At that point, they're not terribly useful machines, I agree. But a 1 year old PC won't sell for as much as a 1 year old Mac. There is presumably a point of convergence (and then a new point of divergence as things become vintage, or someone is willing to pay to keep parts around to repair their old machines) after a number of years.
Anyway, it's very nice that you hate Apple so much, but none of what you say is terribly damning or relevant to my point. You've still not convinced me or even put forth a very meaningful argument that Apple computers have less value for the same specification (to most people). I'm willing to include that parenthetical caveat because some people just want a bare-bones PC with nothing on it. When I buy a Mac, I want XCode and iPhoto and the iWork suite and all those other things that come packaged with the machine. Those are part of the value for me. Maybe not you, fair enough.
Lastly, I had no wifi problems with 10.7 on my iMac, and I upgraded on day 1. There was definitely an issue with some machines, but it was hardly like the entire Mac population lost wifi internet simultaneously when they upgraded. Operating systems have bugs. Even Linux and FreeBSD systems.
It's worth pointing out that Apple's high margins are effectively the only thing that doesn't bankrupt the other manufacturers.
To hear them tell it, they're making razor thin margins on every phone. If Apple reduced the price of their phones to something more consumer friendly, and dropped the prices, you'd see a lot of manufacturers losing money on each phone made. Even Samsung, perhaps. (Though, obviously, their component manufacturing division would still be rollin' in the bucks.)
If you mean, "experienced enough to know better," I guess we agree. That still only puts me in my 30s. :)
I use my iPad more than my desktop computer. The reality is that most of my use cases are fulfilled by my iPad. The functionality may be limited, but it's limited to all the things I want to do. Programming is practically speaking the only thing I don't do on my iPad, but I pretty much get my fill of that at work.
I agree.
Besides, what's there to be nervous about? Nobody takes my Apple gear away if an Android device has a good quarter. Most Apple users and fans couldn't possibly care less about other devices. That's why they have Apple hardware.
Your analysis is needlessly insulting and, frankly, wrong as near as I can tell.
I make video games for a living. I've worked on triple-A Xbox (original and 360) titles as a programmer. I've got a decent math background, more than a passing interest in physics, climate science, etc., etc. I don't really feel it's necessary to divulge all my credentials, but I'm trying to make the point that I'm not just some random idiot. I was a pro Unix sysadmin in University to help pay for school. I ran my own Slackware and FreeBSD mail servers.
I'm typing this on an iPad. It's not because it's so simple it saves me from myself, it's because it's so simple it saves me any extra hassle. It's a good environment. I get things done on my iPad. I use it more than I was expecting to, to the point where I don't feel it terribly necessary to sit at my desktop machine more than a couple times a week.
Having my own servers opened my eyes to the tyranny of choice. I think Linux and BSD are great, but I spent just as much time obsessively fiddling with things as anything. Different window managers, new browsers, random command line tools...none of which objectively added to my productivity.
And that's what studies find, too. You can offer users choices that make them feel subjectively better and more productive while having the opposite effect. Users don't always know what they want or need. Sometimes you have to give them just one thing that works really well and leave it at that. I could design a door a thousand different ways, and 950 of them would be terrible. (Don't believe me? Read "The Design of Everyday Things". You'll never look at a door the same again.) Why would I give people the choice of a zillion bad doors? I should just give them one or two really good ones.
iPads are popular because they fulfil their function very well. Don't sit and bash on both Apple and Apple users for a well designed product and the desire to use a well designed product. I won't cast aspersions on Android tablets; I'm sure many of them are also quite good. But all you're doing here is calling names and vaguely dressing up some Apple hate.
I re-read your post, and you're right, you didn't imply that. I was getting a different vibe from your post than I think you intended, so I apologise for that.
Not published = Trash is a statement whose truth can't really accurately be assessed, but the reality is that it's more likely than not. Publishing is the best we can do right now. Every method suffers from bias, so the only hope is to try to publish more and get more qualified eyes on the research. The trend to open up scientific papers to the public if they're publicly funded in places like the UK will probably help matters along.
Did you know that there's not actually much of a difference between the way newborn boys look at faces and blocks and the way newborn girls do?
There was a single study, quite a long time ago, with fairly bad scientific controls (i.e., the researchers were the ones administering the experiment, knew the outcome that they were predicting, etc.) that still holds sway to this day that claims that newborn boys look at objects like mobiles fractionally longer than faces, and that baby girls are the opposite, proving a difference between males and females at the 'nature' level when it comes to interaction in the world. That boys will naturally be better with tools and math and girls will be better with people and relationships, all other things being equal.
It turns out that peer reviewed papers debunking this have come up several times, but nobody cares. Because the assumption has to be that boys and girls are the same, a paper that maintains the status quo is insufficiently interesting to see widespread release. As a result, people keep citing the flawed study and completely pass the new study by (mainly in the mainstream media rather than in the field itself).
Controversy sells. Weird 'discoveries' and statistical correlations sell (e.g., the ratio of a man's index finger to ring finger correlates to aggression; I'm not making that stupid study up http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4314209.stm)
I agree that published work can be garbage; we see it all the time, and I just cited a good example of it. But to ignore hundreds of iterations on the data both through peer review AND experimental reproduction is just putting your head in the sand.
Having the same specs is not the same as being equally functional. For one thing, you don't get OS X on a PC. Clearly that doesn't matter to you, but it does matter to some people.
Have you factored in resale value? For whatever reason, Apple products retain a great deal of value. I've always partially funded my new computer purchases with selling my old Apple hardware. I can get 30-40% of the purchase price of a new machine if I sell something 3 years old. So the fact that the new price is double isn't actually true if you're willing to sell after you feel that you're done with it.
Reliability? Tech support? Maybe you don't need them, but other people do. Apple's tech support consistently ranks at the top of the lists year after year.
Sure, the SPECS are the same, but I'm not convinced that the VALUE is the same.
Because people look at things. People decide a lot of things based on aesthetics. And because this isn't just about a rectangle with rounded corners as the headlines here would have you believe, there is value in an aesthetic design that guides you using familiar cues and particular design elements.
Designing something that is both functional and aesthetic is not trivial. We see examples of bad design all the time. I can give you an incredibly powerful computer, but it's trivial for me to make the interface so pathological that you can't get anything done. Even if I'm not trying to trip you up, I can definitely make an interface that doesn't let you use the full power of the computer that you're at. When you're talking about interfaces, the form IS the function.
ONE of Apple's features and strengths has long been its design sense. It's an important part of their marketing, and it's an important part of their design in the sense that they believe that they can make a device more usable and inviting with the right effort applied to the creation of the interface.
Is that something patentable? Well, I don't know. But it seems to me that patents are there so you can (temporarily) have a monopoly on a good idea, to encourage people to come up with good ideas and make some money off of them. If Apple's UI and iPad design, TAKEN AS A WHOLE, are a superior functional experience, I think it fits the bill.
I miss the NeXTstep dock. It was the most functional dock I've ever used. And the menu system. Man, the whole UI and 'finder' were so much better. I miss my cube. :(
I read an article that said the worst thing that ever happened to Canadian health care was for us to be situated next to the USA. Our system is leaps and bounds ahead of theirs, but because that's the metric by which we compare everything, we end up with a lousier system than somewhere like Mexico, or what they have in Scandinavia.
A friend of mine went to Holland to visit family. For her to get an ultrasound booked (because her family can't be back in Canada for the birth) was faster and cheaper in Holland--where she doesn't have insurance--than it would be here. AND when they found out that she was in from Canada, they threw in some freebie scans. Just like that.
I appreciate our system, I really do. It's taken care of me in some bad accidents, and when my family has had trouble (cancer, old age, heart disease) they've gotten really good care, without the rest of the family worrying about how we're going to live while paying for treatment. But being better than a place that has so many demonstrable, objective deficiencies doesn't make our system the best.
Ah, so it's okay to put racial slurs in source code? I mean, it's all in good fun, right? What do I care if someone is offended--that's out of my hands!
What an asinine argument. You're the one that's telling people how to think. You're saying, "Don't be offended." But they ARE. So now what?
I suppose it's your right, strictly speaking, to do this sort of juvenile thing. But if I'm your boss and I'm offended, that's probably not a good thing. If I'm your boss and someone else is offended, it's almost as bad. If I saw this sort of thing, you better believe I would fire your ass without the least remorse. It's not good for morale, and it's not a professional thing to do.
But I can't change your mind; I can already see that. You'll believe what you believe. But if you ever think about doing this sort of thing, consider the impact it'll have on the people around you. Is it possible that you'll upset someone? Is that person important to your team? Is it simply outside the boundaries of good manners?
You can't go through life without offending people, but you should be selective about the people you DO offend, and you should do it with full intent and awareness of the consequences. This 'big boobs' thing is just a shitty joke that gives programmers even more of a reputation for sexist neanderthals. It's a lame embarrassment to our industry.
Nowhere in my post did I say that people should be governed by laws or physically restrained from saying stupid, offensive things.
However, not being bothered by comments that others can or are likely to feel offended by doesn't mean you can write them off and say, "Well, I'm not offended; this issue doesn't matter and we should stop making a fuss."
This is what was in the post I was responding to:
"People are sometimes too sensitive over things.
It's just a term. As far as sexist terms, it's not in the top 5.
Most people here (which is a representative group similar to the people that read Linux source code) are not particularly insulted by this term getting into the source. Therefore, if an individual has a problem with the term, it's their problem."
The fact that it's 'not in the top 5' doesn't mean it isn't discouraging for women to see this sort of behaviour. This is the sort of stuff that keeps them out of our boy's club. This is what makes it hard for them to work with us. It's things like this that are cited time and time again by women leaving the industry as the reason that they do it.
Why isn't that problematic? And why IS it problematic that I feel it SHOULD be a matter of concern? Everyone is so upset that they can't be puerile and sexist when they're hacking.
But ultimately, I'm not here to change anyone's mind or make anyone do anything. I can't actually reasonably expect to do either. I AM trying to make people consider the view that it's stuff like this that gives IT/Programming the anti-woman reputation that it has.
Well, it's worth pointing out that Canada has a much lower gun violence rate than either of those places, and there ARE strict gun laws in place. In fact, the gun laws are getting much stricter in an attempt to quash the gun violence that we DO have. There was recently a shooting here, and it was a big deal that TWO people were killed. 12 with 50 injured would be a national catastrophe and on the front page of every major newspaper.
The USA and Canada are different; I wouldn't suggest that you adopt our system per se, because your circumstances aren't the same. But it seems obvious to me that sufficiently strict gun laws CAN work if they have an appropriate societal context to exist.