OK, I have had time to ponder Steve, and I'm here only to put thoughts in writing... I gave up my/. habit years ago, but I think this is the only place where my uber-nerd appreciation for Steve might have meaning to some. So please indulge me...
There are lots of visionaries in the tech world. Lots of people who have amazing ideas about where technology is going, or where it needs to go. It's not hard to deny that Steve was special, but for many, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly why.
After some thought, I have concluded that Steve's vision was not amazing because of how often he was right, but because of his passion about everything that he did. While he brought great innovations to the masses, his claim to fame is that he repeatedly bet the farm on them, and busted balls to see them happen.
Off the top of my head I can think of so many big things, and so many little things, that just had him written all over. In no particular order, here is a random selection of innovations both big and small, that are clearly "Jobs" things, including stuff we may have forgotten.
- GUI computing. Its origin has been discussed to death - it was the invention of Xerox. Whether Microsoft copied Apple or Xerox is irrelevant - Steve believed it was the most important thing for Apple to move towards, to the point of getting himself fired by the very stuffy, ignorant CEO he had hired. And Microsoft's products didn't even begin to approach the intuitiveness of the Mac until long after that happened. - The first iPod demonstrated that MP3 players were ready for non-nerds. It had a convenient form factor and responsive UI. Its built-in battery charged while it plugged into the computer. No weird counterintuitive software was required to copy music to it. It sounded great. It was comfortable to hold and operate with one hand. It proved to the world at large that functionally equivalent (or superior) products have no value if they are shittily designed. It also proved that Apple could make more than just computers. - Introduced as a trademark "One More Thing" during one of his keynotes, the PowerBook G4 was probably the most drool-inducing computer ever. This thing left all competing laptops in the dust - yes its wickedly fast G4/400 processor and discrete GPU were cool by themselves, but this freak of nature brought far more to the table: it was lightweight, only 1 inch thin, all-titanium construction, widescreen (never before seen in mainstream computing), and had amazing battery life. Technology has since made that machine obsolete (big surprise), but so many of its innovations live on in the computers we use today. (To digress just a little, the Titanium Powerbook G4 was, as far as I know, the first device to feature an auto-sensing ethernet port, so you no longer needed to worry about whether you had a crossover cable when you simply wanted to connect it to another computer. I imagine Jobs with a prototype TiBook in his office, trying to copy files from his desktop using a straight-through ethernet cable. It doesn't work, it pisses him off, so he calls up an engineer and says "fix this in by tomorrow or find another job") - While on the topic of laptops, the first G3 iBook laptop was the first ever computer to offer wireless networking. It was one of many emerging standards that Apple embraced under Steve's command, including... - USB on the iMac. Get rid of (almost) every other fucking connector. Jobs sees USB as the connectivity of the future, and the iMac as the future of the Mac. That powerful-enough computer did away with everything we thought we needed, including serial ports and a floppy drive. It was the first Mac in years with no SCSI. But it was more than that... the iMac was a celebration of the future of computer hardware. It eliminated all the legacy storage and connectivity, and celebrated with a bold new minimalist design. It was met with fear and disdain by the tech nerds, who always thoug
Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is about using documents generated by one application inside another application. ActiveX is a Microsoft rebranding of OLE with more focus on smart Windows controls. Automation is a simple but powerful way to link software together without having to share source code. It lets a client program "drive" a server program. Automation is also used for dynamically loadable "in-process" libraries.
ActiveX is Microsoft technology used for developing reusable object oriented software components. ActiveX is an alternate name for OLE automation, not a separate technology. While the term "Automation" refers to the overall technology, "ActiveX" refers to the objects that can be created and manipulated using Automation.
Due to Internet Explorer and Visual Basic's popularity in the late 1990s, many people incorrectly assume that all of ActiveX is related to ActiveX controls. An ActiveX control is a special type of ActiveX object that is designed to be used similar to a plugin. The most common use of ActiveX controls is to build plugins for Internet Explorer.
A little research also turned up that WinFX was rolled into.Net 3.0. I'll admit to being no expert on that one.
Or does microsoft rename all of their technologies when they realize how stale and unmarketable they are? Like OLE / ActiveX / DirectX, winfx /.net, microsoft messenger / windows messenger / msn messenger / windows live! messenger, others that I can't think of....... and now Passport > Live ID? Will Balmer change his name next?
I don't want my phone to return to any state after any period of inactivity. It means I have to start whatever I was doing over again when I put the phone down for a minute.
For example: I'm stopped at a traffic light. I find a contact I want to call in my phone book. I am about to call or text them and the light turns green. I start driving. A few minutes later I stop again - and my phone has gone back to the main menu!
All due apologies to the visually impaired, but I don't complain that they don't make white canes for people who see just fine. People with special needs need special products. The iPhone is simply not for the blind - for now.
BTW this is not an Apple thing. Mac OS has had accessibility features installed by default since long before Windows included any such stuff. (Back in System 7 it was called "Easy Access" I think)
I wouldn't mind a non-wireless PDA that plays music, takes pictures, lets me read and compose emails that send/receive when I sync to my Mac (or within WiFi areas), watch movies, hold my contacts, etc. My cell phone is my work phone and I really don't want to be carrying around an additional phone line, but I wouldn't mind being wired in all the other ways the way iPhone allows.
Maybe I could store a few pdf's and stuff on there too.
I would love an iPhone that is everything but the phone, for a bit less money and no contract.
The allure here is that any website that works in Safari will work on your iPhone. Forget about needing to download mobile versions of things like GMail (although there is a custom Google Maps app included with the iPhone which according to The Steve blows away anything Google has done).
I have trouble envisioning the web version of GMail on a 3.5" LCD, but iPhone's own Mail app is supposed to work with any POP or IMAP email.
Apple doesn't really stand to gain by edging Firefox out of the market. It's also been suggested a few times that Safari for Windows makes iPhone development more accessible, which is true, but even that assertion misses the big picture:
By releasing Safari for Windows, Apple is investing in Safari's relevance. The smart Windows users have it easy: run FF most of the time, until you come across a really dumb or poorly-authored website, then just use IE when you really need to load that page. Mac users don't really have that option. If it doesn't render properly in Camino/Firefox, try it in Safari - if that doesn't work, maybe try OmniWeb, but chances are you just aren't gonna view that site on a Mac.
Apple doesn't make money from Safari. It was developed for OS X because its then-default browser, IE, sucked. And they based Safari on KHTML, an open-source engine totally separate from Mozilla's. This is great stuff! Two separate OSS teams coding for standards-compliant browsing!
But back to my original point about relevance: I still have the Tiger version of Safari, but I mainly use Camino because it seems to generally be a bit zippier, and it works with the new Yahoo! mail UI while Safari doesn't.
--- what??? you heard me right - a major web player like Yahoo! is developing web apps and putting more priority on Gecko than OS X's, and iPhone's, default browser. Sure, Firefox has more marketshare than Safari, but for iPhone users who can't change their browser, and for OS X users who are not inclined to change their browser, this is a huge problem that undermines the value of Apple's products.
Apple's strategy: push Safari out to everybody who might be downloading iTunes. Include it on CD with every iPod sold. Make it install on Windows by default unless the user unchecks a box. Suddenly, Safari is in the hands of zillions of Windows users, and companies like Yahoo! take notice: "We'd better make our apps work with Safari!"
Mozilla should not feel threatened, excepting that Firefox will now have to compete on its merits, instead of just being "the alternative browser". Users who have installed Firefox on Windows already know how to choose their own browser, and they won't go to Safari without a reason.
Lilly's comments are ABSOLUTELY sour grapes, because he doesn't want to compete with another free (as in beer) product. When he sayd that the web is owned by people and not companies, he fails to mention that Safari's web rendering component is standards-compliant and open-source.
So, to summarize:
- Apple NEEDS Safari to be recognized as a major browser. - Safari will likely continue what Firefox has been doing: chipping away at IE's dominance. - Those who have switched from IE will choose between Safari/Firefox (and KHTML/Gecko) based on product merits. Plus some people will just use Safari because iTunes told them to.
I was very specific to say "the promise". Whether it actually follows through remains to be seen - I am observing the selling points, but not drinking the kool-aid.
Again /. readers miss the point.
on
FCC Approves iPhone
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· Score: 5, Insightful
People don't care whether their phone has GPRS or EDGE or EVDO or 3G. The points nobody's mentioning here that will make the phone take off are:
Decent resolution camera for a a phone. Sexy touchscreen with multi-touch! This is new to any consumer device, not just phones. Visual voicemail. A first for any phone. Display changes orientation when you turn the device. Again: HAWT. The promise of web browsing in your hand that sctually renders real web pages correctly. Built-in iPod functionality that syncs with iTunes, and lists of songs/movies you can "flip" through.
It's not how much memory it has or how fast it communicates, it is the "unquantifiable" that sells things like phones.
Maybe modular synthesizers from the 60's included schematics. No synth I have ever purchased (or perused the documentation of), dating back to 1978 - long before digital anything in synths - has included a schematic.
Apple's entitled to their secrecy. Endgadget has no obligation to Apple, and if they receive what looks like a scoop they will naturally act on it as soon as possible. They were within their rights.
If you invested in a stock you believe in and kept your money there, a single email on some pimple-faced teenager's blog about a delayed product or even the 2% dip in stock price that follows for a few hours wouldn't matter to you at all.
AppleTV was announced in September 2006 during one of Apple's dullest keynotes ever. Jobsie doesn't like to stand in front of the black screen without announcing something we can put our hands on.
Pretty much all carriers in North America do this. The sad thing is that the suits don't realize that by nickel and diming their bleeding-edge customers they are stifling the industry.
Example: "I'm a wireless carrier. I'll make an extra couple of bucks of StarKruzr this month for data/call display/voice mail/system access/roaming and pay no regard to the fact that his dissatisfaction with the overall mobile experience makes him unlikely to want to upgrade his hardware. I don't care that his only loyalty to me is the contract I forced him into."
Treating wireless customers like cattle is a shitty way to do business, and if just one of those carriers could open their eyes and see the forest for the trees, maybe we wouldn't all be so skeptical when we see nice new products like this one. I hope I'm wrong, but I actually expect to be disappointed about something that iPhone should do but can't. For example, did you notice that Steve said nothing about sending your 2-megapixel images back to your computer via USB or WiFi? If it's going to cost me 75 cents and take over a minute to transfer a crappy little picture from my phone's camera to my computer, I might as well just carry a separate digital camera that I really own.
Apple, if you're going to "reinvent the phone" that's great, but you have to do something about the bonehead carriers too. There's a lot of potential in this product, and if anybody has influence over carriers right now, it's you. Please don't let them disappoint us with something as dumb as "visual voicemail will cost $10 per month".
Carriers: We're not stupid. We know what our hardware is capable of. Forcing customers to transfer data over your network instead of a local link is obviously a cash grab and an insult to our intelligence. We know it costs you literally nothing to provide features like call display, yet you charge us for it. We puzzle over seeing some customers billed by the minute and others by the second. Instead of generating significantly more revenue, your practices actually detract from the value of hi-tech, data-enabled devices.
Every few weeks another exaggerated headline of another Apple security "hole" is posted. In every case, closer examination reveals that the hole really isn't a hole at all, and it requires physical access to the machine, etc.
From TFA:
"The vulnerability is real--it is possible for a local administrator account on the computer to gain root access, without any user confirmation, by replacing pieces of Application Enhancer's installation," said Fuller in his blog. "While this cannot be exploited remotely, it could be used in combination with a remote exploit to acquire escalated privileges. However, a remote exploit alone is sufficient to allow an attacker full access to your important personal data."
No remote exploit. Nothing to see here. This only affects machines with the third-party "Application Enhancer" (APE), which I have always been reluctant to install (and I now know why)
I noticed the new common form factor too, except that the apple tv is bigger - it's a 7.7" square vs. the 6.5" square that is the Mini and the Airport Extreme base station.
I suppose it probably doesn't matter since I don't think you'd be too likely to want to stack them, but maybe a bit more thought could have been put into that.
Some might argue that the apple tv needs the extra size to accomodate all those connections, but I think they could have stacked some of those RCA connectors to achieve the same size as the other two white Apple monolithic squares. Even a few extra mm of height would be acceptable.
Powerbook was introduced long before PowerPC, true.
But the first PowerPC Macs were called "Power Macintosh". I think that name directly reflects PowerPC. There were no non-PowerPC Power Macs.
The Mac "Quadra" got its name from the "4" in "68040", its processor. (First Macs had the 68000, and the Mac II had the 68020).
Performas were Macs for the home, bundled with home software. Apple kept using the Performa name on newer PowerPC machines. In most cases, Performas were just other models with a different badge.
Obviously you don't use the Mac. The Mac has different ways of doing things. Sure you can write a Mac app that does things the Windows way, but Mac users just won't buy it.
As a Mac user, I would not accept an app that had different keyboard shortcuts just because it is running under Windows virtualization. Any deviation from the consistent shortcuts across Mac apps is unacceptable. I don't like Windows-style toolbars. I don't like having to run a 'wizard' just to uninstall an app (and then trust it when it says it was removed). I don't like launching apps from the start menu or from desktop shortcuts. Believe it or not, I don't like apps that assume I have a 2-button mouse (even though I do, but I prefer to think of the right button as a quick way to get to frequently-used commands, but I don't like having options in that contextual menu that aren't available anywhere else). I don't like the look of the Windows GUI. I don't like Windows 'Save' dialog boxes that only let me save in tree view. I don't like browsing dialogs of any sort that default to 'list mode' (the one that has you scroll sideways).
If your app has any of the above Win-nonsense I won't use it. And if it has some capability that my Mac software doesn't have, I may hold on to it, but only to do that one task. And even then I certainly won't pay for it. (I pirate much less than most people, but I don't pay for crappy apps or Win apps).
-Pollution is evil if corporations do it, but if you're burning wood in your fireplace, and impacting my life much more, that's okay.
I burn wood in my fireplace to be warm. Big corporations spew filth into the sky to further their financial gains.
-If you kill someone wtih your car, you're on the hook for, what, $200,000? If a UPS driver does it, bump that up to a million.
Um, the liability's the same. What kind of price can you put on a human life? I'd rather keep my loved one than be entitled to a million. But if YOU kill my loved one, and you don't have a million, I don't want to destroy your life too -- so maybe I'll take $200,000. After all, maybe you were just driving to work to keep yourself fed. Maybe you were going to visit a loved one yourself. Maybe UPS could have searched a little harder for better drivers and trained them a bit better, and maybe they could have bought safer vehicles, but that would impact their bottom line.
-If a doctor botches an operation and kills someone, yep, $200,000. But if he has a big evil insurance corporation backing him, meh, they can afford a million or so, right?
Yes.
-If you want to hire someone to fix your toilet, you pay whatever they agree to. But if you're a corporation that wants to hire someoen to regularly fix toilets, well, that's just evil. You're going to have to pay his medical and dental, pay minimum wage, contribute to his social security account, be on the hook for discriminatory lawsuits, etc.
I would hope no plumber would fix my toilet for less than what it costs him to pay his own "minimum wage" and keep his teeth fixed. If he charges me less, I'm getting a bargain, and he's an idiot. Now if I'm a big corporation, how is it any different? It would still cost me less to keep a plumber on my payroll and pay all the aforementioned benefits than it would cost me to hire an independent plumbing contractor for every problem with every pipe.
-If a corporation annoys you to no end with autodialing, SHUT EM DOWN. But if it's "just" a non-profit organization doing the exact same thing, nah, let it slip.
A charitable organization shouldn't waste donation money paying for a call centre full of telemarketers. But using a machine to do the dirty work of calling thousands of people to sell them magazine subscriptions is deplorable.
You bother because it's healthy debate. If neither of us had anything to learn we probably wouldn't be on Slashdot. We must be open to the opinions of others. What offends me is your last sentence - even if my view is "overly simplistic" it doesn't mean I won't listen to what you have to say.
Valid, but my point is that the interviewee might as well not consent to give an interview if he intends to give non-answers. Did he really think the Slashdot populus would be satisfied with this?
You are very right in that the questions could have been worded better, but, well, the/. editors owe us nothing - after all we still read the shit, right?
I think you're reading a lot more into what he's saying than he meant.
Here's what he was saying:
1) They don't have the resources to completely rewrite the browser for full standards compliance within the time frame they had to ship the next version
Dude, this is Microsoft. If they don't have the resources to complete a project within a specified timeframe, who does?
They focused on the biggest problems developers were complaining about first, prioritizing them by what developers were telling them were the most important (ignoring that many developers say full standards compliance is the most important, since that's not feasible based on 1) above).
Riiiiiight. If I'm following what you're saying, it's that MS prioritized developer complaints based on which ones they wanted to fix first.
I'm not a web developer, but of the many I know, their biggest complaint about IE is its nasty CSS implementation.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I have had time to ponder Steve, and I'm here only to put thoughts in writing ... I gave up my /. habit years ago, but I think this is the only place where my uber-nerd appreciation for Steve might have meaning to some. So please indulge me ...
There are lots of visionaries in the tech world. Lots of people who have amazing ideas about where technology is going, or where it needs to go. It's not hard to deny that Steve was special, but for many, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly why.
After some thought, I have concluded that Steve's vision was not amazing because of how often he was right, but because of his passion about everything that he did. While he brought great innovations to the masses, his claim to fame is that he repeatedly bet the farm on them, and busted balls to see them happen.
Off the top of my head I can think of so many big things, and so many little things, that just had him written all over. In no particular order, here is a random selection of innovations both big and small, that are clearly "Jobs" things, including stuff we may have forgotten.
- GUI computing. Its origin has been discussed to death - it was the invention of Xerox. Whether Microsoft copied Apple or Xerox is irrelevant - Steve believed it was the most important thing for Apple to move towards, to the point of getting himself fired by the very stuffy, ignorant CEO he had hired. And Microsoft's products didn't even begin to approach the intuitiveness of the Mac until long after that happened. ... the iMac was a celebration of the future of computer hardware. It eliminated all the legacy storage and connectivity, and celebrated with a bold new minimalist design. It was met with fear and disdain by the tech nerds, who always thoug
- The first iPod demonstrated that MP3 players were ready for non-nerds. It had a convenient form factor and responsive UI. Its built-in battery charged while it plugged into the computer. No weird counterintuitive software was required to copy music to it. It sounded great. It was comfortable to hold and operate with one hand. It proved to the world at large that functionally equivalent (or superior) products have no value if they are shittily designed. It also proved that Apple could make more than just computers.
- Introduced as a trademark "One More Thing" during one of his keynotes, the PowerBook G4 was probably the most drool-inducing computer ever. This thing left all competing laptops in the dust - yes its wickedly fast G4/400 processor and discrete GPU were cool by themselves, but this freak of nature brought far more to the table: it was lightweight, only 1 inch thin, all-titanium construction, widescreen (never before seen in mainstream computing), and had amazing battery life. Technology has since made that machine obsolete (big surprise), but so many of its innovations live on in the computers we use today.
(To digress just a little, the Titanium Powerbook G4 was, as far as I know, the first device to feature an auto-sensing ethernet port, so you no longer needed to worry about whether you had a crossover cable when you simply wanted to connect it to another computer. I imagine Jobs with a prototype TiBook in his office, trying to copy files from his desktop using a straight-through ethernet cable. It doesn't work, it pisses him off, so he calls up an engineer and says "fix this in by tomorrow or find another job")
- While on the topic of laptops, the first G3 iBook laptop was the first ever computer to offer wireless networking. It was one of many emerging standards that Apple embraced under Steve's command, including...
- USB on the iMac. Get rid of (almost) every other fucking connector. Jobs sees USB as the connectivity of the future, and the iMac as the future of the Mac. That powerful-enough computer did away with everything we thought we needed, including serial ports and a floppy drive. It was the first Mac in years with no SCSI. But it was more than that
Or does microsoft rename all of their technologies when they realize how stale and unmarketable they are? Like OLE / ActiveX / DirectX, winfx / .net, microsoft messenger / windows messenger / msn messenger / windows live! messenger, others that I can't think of .... ... and now Passport > Live ID? Will Balmer change his name next?
I don't want my phone to return to any state after any period of inactivity. It means I have to start whatever I was doing over again when I put the phone down for a minute.
For example: I'm stopped at a traffic light. I find a contact I want to call in my phone book. I am about to call or text them and the light turns green. I start driving. A few minutes later I stop again - and my phone has gone back to the main menu!
All due apologies to the visually impaired, but I don't complain that they don't make white canes for people who see just fine. People with special needs need special products. The iPhone is simply not for the blind - for now.
BTW this is not an Apple thing. Mac OS has had accessibility features installed by default since long before Windows included any such stuff. (Back in System 7 it was called "Easy Access" I think)
I wouldn't mind a non-wireless PDA that plays music, takes pictures, lets me read and compose emails that send/receive when I sync to my Mac (or within WiFi areas), watch movies, hold my contacts, etc. My cell phone is my work phone and I really don't want to be carrying around an additional phone line, but I wouldn't mind being wired in all the other ways the way iPhone allows.
Maybe I could store a few pdf's and stuff on there too.
I would love an iPhone that is everything but the phone, for a bit less money and no contract.
The allure here is that any website that works in Safari will work on your iPhone. Forget about needing to download mobile versions of things like GMail (although there is a custom Google Maps app included with the iPhone which according to The Steve blows away anything Google has done).
I have trouble envisioning the web version of GMail on a 3.5" LCD, but iPhone's own Mail app is supposed to work with any POP or IMAP email.
Apple doesn't really stand to gain by edging Firefox out of the market. It's also been suggested a few times that Safari for Windows makes iPhone development more accessible, which is true, but even that assertion misses the big picture:
By releasing Safari for Windows, Apple is investing in Safari's relevance. The smart Windows users have it easy: run FF most of the time, until you come across a really dumb or poorly-authored website, then just use IE when you really need to load that page. Mac users don't really have that option. If it doesn't render properly in Camino/Firefox, try it in Safari - if that doesn't work, maybe try OmniWeb, but chances are you just aren't gonna view that site on a Mac.
Apple doesn't make money from Safari. It was developed for OS X because its then-default browser, IE, sucked. And they based Safari on KHTML, an open-source engine totally separate from Mozilla's. This is great stuff! Two separate OSS teams coding for standards-compliant browsing!
But back to my original point about relevance: I still have the Tiger version of Safari, but I mainly use Camino because it seems to generally be a bit zippier, and it works with the new Yahoo! mail UI while Safari doesn't.
--- what??? you heard me right - a major web player like Yahoo! is developing web apps and putting more priority on Gecko than OS X's, and iPhone's, default browser. Sure, Firefox has more marketshare than Safari, but for iPhone users who can't change their browser, and for OS X users who are not inclined to change their browser, this is a huge problem that undermines the value of Apple's products.
Apple's strategy: push Safari out to everybody who might be downloading iTunes. Include it on CD with every iPod sold. Make it install on Windows by default unless the user unchecks a box. Suddenly, Safari is in the hands of zillions of Windows users, and companies like Yahoo! take notice: "We'd better make our apps work with Safari!"
Mozilla should not feel threatened, excepting that Firefox will now have to compete on its merits, instead of just being "the alternative browser". Users who have installed Firefox on Windows already know how to choose their own browser, and they won't go to Safari without a reason.
Lilly's comments are ABSOLUTELY sour grapes, because he doesn't want to compete with another free (as in beer) product. When he sayd that the web is owned by people and not companies, he fails to mention that Safari's web rendering component is standards-compliant and open-source.
So, to summarize:
- Apple NEEDS Safari to be recognized as a major browser.
- Safari will likely continue what Firefox has been doing: chipping away at IE's dominance.
- Those who have switched from IE will choose between Safari/Firefox (and KHTML/Gecko) based on product merits. Plus some people will just use Safari because iTunes told them to.
I for one happened to LOVE cyberdog.
I was very specific to say "the promise". Whether it actually follows through remains to be seen - I am observing the selling points, but not drinking the kool-aid.
People don't care whether their phone has GPRS or EDGE or EVDO or 3G. The points nobody's mentioning here that will make the phone take off are:
Decent resolution camera for a a phone.
Sexy touchscreen with multi-touch! This is new to any consumer device, not just phones.
Visual voicemail. A first for any phone.
Display changes orientation when you turn the device. Again: HAWT.
The promise of web browsing in your hand that sctually renders real web pages correctly.
Built-in iPod functionality that syncs with iTunes, and lists of songs/movies you can "flip" through.
It's not how much memory it has or how fast it communicates, it is the "unquantifiable" that sells things like phones.
Maybe modular synthesizers from the 60's included schematics. No synth I have ever purchased (or perused the documentation of), dating back to 1978 - long before digital anything in synths - has included a schematic.
Apple's entitled to their secrecy. Endgadget has no obligation to Apple, and if they receive what looks like a scoop they will naturally act on it as soon as possible. They were within their rights.
If you invested in a stock you believe in and kept your money there, a single email on some pimple-faced teenager's blog about a delayed product or even the 2% dip in stock price that follows for a few hours wouldn't matter to you at all.
AppleTV was announced in September 2006 during one of Apple's dullest keynotes ever. Jobsie doesn't like to stand in front of the black screen without announcing something we can put our hands on.
Pretty much all carriers in North America do this. The sad thing is that the suits don't realize that by nickel and diming their bleeding-edge customers they are stifling the industry.
Example: "I'm a wireless carrier. I'll make an extra couple of bucks of StarKruzr this month for data/call display/voice mail/system access/roaming and pay no regard to the fact that his dissatisfaction with the overall mobile experience makes him unlikely to want to upgrade his hardware. I don't care that his only loyalty to me is the contract I forced him into."
Treating wireless customers like cattle is a shitty way to do business, and if just one of those carriers could open their eyes and see the forest for the trees, maybe we wouldn't all be so skeptical when we see nice new products like this one. I hope I'm wrong, but I actually expect to be disappointed about something that iPhone should do but can't. For example, did you notice that Steve said nothing about sending your 2-megapixel images back to your computer via USB or WiFi? If it's going to cost me 75 cents and take over a minute to transfer a crappy little picture from my phone's camera to my computer, I might as well just carry a separate digital camera that I really own.
Apple, if you're going to "reinvent the phone" that's great, but you have to do something about the bonehead carriers too. There's a lot of potential in this product, and if anybody has influence over carriers right now, it's you. Please don't let them disappoint us with something as dumb as "visual voicemail will cost $10 per month".
Carriers: We're not stupid. We know what our hardware is capable of. Forcing customers to transfer data over your network instead of a local link is obviously a cash grab and an insult to our intelligence. We know it costs you literally nothing to provide features like call display, yet you charge us for it. We puzzle over seeing some customers billed by the minute and others by the second. Instead of generating significantly more revenue, your practices actually detract from the value of hi-tech, data-enabled devices.
From TFA:
No remote exploit. Nothing to see here. This only affects machines with the third-party "Application Enhancer" (APE), which I have always been reluctant to install (and I now know why)
I noticed the new common form factor too, except that the apple tv is bigger - it's a 7.7" square vs. the 6.5" square that is the Mini and the Airport Extreme base station.
I suppose it probably doesn't matter since I don't think you'd be too likely to want to stack them, but maybe a bit more thought could have been put into that.
Some might argue that the apple tv needs the extra size to accomodate all those connections, but I think they could have stacked some of those RCA connectors to achieve the same size as the other two white Apple monolithic squares. Even a few extra mm of height would be acceptable.
Powerbook was introduced long before PowerPC, true.
But the first PowerPC Macs were called "Power Macintosh". I think that name directly reflects PowerPC. There were no non-PowerPC Power Macs.
The Mac "Quadra" got its name from the "4" in "68040", its processor. (First Macs had the 68000, and the Mac II had the 68020).
Performas were Macs for the home, bundled with home software. Apple kept using the Performa name on newer PowerPC machines. In most cases, Performas were just other models with a different badge.
Obviously you don't use the Mac. The Mac has different ways of doing things. Sure you can write a Mac app that does things the Windows way, but Mac users just won't buy it.
As a Mac user, I would not accept an app that had different keyboard shortcuts just because it is running under Windows virtualization. Any deviation from the consistent shortcuts across Mac apps is unacceptable. I don't like Windows-style toolbars. I don't like having to run a 'wizard' just to uninstall an app (and then trust it when it says it was removed). I don't like launching apps from the start menu or from desktop shortcuts. Believe it or not, I don't like apps that assume I have a 2-button mouse (even though I do, but I prefer to think of the right button as a quick way to get to frequently-used commands, but I don't like having options in that contextual menu that aren't available anywhere else). I don't like the look of the Windows GUI. I don't like Windows 'Save' dialog boxes that only let me save in tree view. I don't like browsing dialogs of any sort that default to 'list mode' (the one that has you scroll sideways).
If your app has any of the above Win-nonsense I won't use it. And if it has some capability that my Mac software doesn't have, I may hold on to it, but only to do that one task. And even then I certainly won't pay for it. (I pirate much less than most people, but I don't pay for crappy apps or Win apps).
That's why.
In this case the bar owner is also the performer.
-Pollution is evil if corporations do it, but if you're burning wood in your fireplace, and impacting my life much more, that's okay.
I burn wood in my fireplace to be warm. Big corporations spew filth into the sky to further their financial gains.
-If you kill someone wtih your car, you're on the hook for, what, $200,000? If a UPS driver does it, bump that up to a million.
Um, the liability's the same. What kind of price can you put on a human life? I'd rather keep my loved one than be entitled to a million. But if YOU kill my loved one, and you don't have a million, I don't want to destroy your life too -- so maybe I'll take $200,000. After all, maybe you were just driving to work to keep yourself fed. Maybe you were going to visit a loved one yourself. Maybe UPS could have searched a little harder for better drivers and trained them a bit better, and maybe they could have bought safer vehicles, but that would impact their bottom line.
-If a doctor botches an operation and kills someone, yep, $200,000. But if he has a big evil insurance corporation backing him, meh, they can afford a million or so, right?
Yes.
-If you want to hire someone to fix your toilet, you pay whatever they agree to. But if you're a corporation that wants to hire someoen to regularly fix toilets, well, that's just evil. You're going to have to pay his medical and dental, pay minimum wage, contribute to his social security account, be on the hook for discriminatory lawsuits, etc.
I would hope no plumber would fix my toilet for less than what it costs him to pay his own "minimum wage" and keep his teeth fixed. If he charges me less, I'm getting a bargain, and he's an idiot. Now if I'm a big corporation, how is it any different? It would still cost me less to keep a plumber on my payroll and pay all the aforementioned benefits than it would cost me to hire an independent plumbing contractor for every problem with every pipe.
-If a corporation annoys you to no end with autodialing, SHUT EM DOWN. But if it's "just" a non-profit organization doing the exact same thing, nah, let it slip.
A charitable organization shouldn't waste donation money paying for a call centre full of telemarketers. But using a machine to do the dirty work of calling thousands of people to sell them magazine subscriptions is deplorable.
You bother because it's healthy debate. If neither of us had anything to learn we probably wouldn't be on Slashdot. We must be open to the opinions of others. What offends me is your last sentence - even if my view is "overly simplistic" it doesn't mean I won't listen to what you have to say.
Now go lighten up.
Valid, but my point is that the interviewee might as well not consent to give an interview if he intends to give non-answers. Did he really think the Slashdot populus would be satisfied with this?
/. editors owe us nothing - after all we still read the shit, right?
You are very right in that the questions could have been worded better, but, well, the
Dude, this is Microsoft. If they don't have the resources to complete a project within a specified timeframe, who does?
Riiiiiight. If I'm following what you're saying, it's that MS prioritized developer complaints based on which ones they wanted to fix first.
I'm not a web developer, but of the many I know, their biggest complaint about IE is its nasty CSS implementation.