I agree. And there's one big way in which things for phones are better - because of Java. It might not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than any situation we had in the 80s. It means that any bog standard cheap phone can run things like Opera Mini, Google Maps and so on, without worrying about if the developers wrote for their specific model of phone.
And then Apple come along, only supporting native apps (which is why we now see software having to be written especially for the Iphone, when it's already working on all other phones), taking us back to the dark ages of the 80s.
It's clearly Apple vs. Google vs. Everyone else as it is.
I don't know what mobile market you're looking at, but it's not one on planet Earth.
The actual share is more like Nokia and everyone else - everyone else being Motorola, Samsung, LG. Then RIM. Somewhere in the noise after that are companies like Apple and Google.
But let's not let something like facts get in the way of the Apple world view:)
On other platforms that is more or less true, but what Apple has succeeding in doing is creating an environment where people DO pay for apps.
Do you have evidence that people use apps on the Iphone more than other platforms, and that this is due to Apple? (I'm not sure the paying for it matters - sure, it's great for Apple, but it's not a good point for us if you have to pay for things that on other platforms you download for free.)
I do not think the next Windows7 mobile platform will let you do so.
Do you have evidence for this? If it's true, I'll equally criticise them - and I'll blame Apple for starting this model of locked down computing. I really hope that others don't follow them.
Yes they started off with a single screen size, but not with the bunch of simple assumptions - from the outset for example all the tools totally supported defining resizing behaviors for any GUI element in Interface Builder, the GUI development tool.
OOI, are there platforms out there that can't do this anymore? I got this as standard when I started GUI programming in, ooh, about fifteen years ago. I don't think there's anything noteworthy about it now.
So mobile devices the size of the iPhone get 320x480, but devices the size of the iPad get 1024x768.
So that's not supporting resizable GUIs/screens, that's the old model of only allowing a few predefined fixed sizes.
One thing that allows the Apple app store to be so popular
It couldn't possibly be anything to do with the fact that Iphone users have to use it, as they can't download from anywhere else? It's true, 100% of Iphone users download from Apple's app store.
Actually, the UK already does have this kind of filtering, similar to Australia's - most notably seen recently with the censorship of a Wikipedia page.
Of course I'm glad to see companies opposing this, but from someone in the UK, I have to wonder - did they make similar statements against the UK scheme? Much of what they say in their statement applies to countries such as the UK, also.
Considering that AmigaOS 1.0 was doing pre-emptive multitasking in 1985, on a 256KB 68000 machine, I don't think that Mac OS 9, released 14 years later, with minimum requirements of a PowerPC and 40MB of RAM, can use "Considering the resources of the machines of the era" as an excuse.
"Vaporware" tends to be used for more than just purely fictional products though - the obvious example being Duke Nukem Forever, which is a product that people are really working on. Even products that were released have won Wired's Vaporware Award (e.g., Windows 2000 in 1999, and Mac OS X in 2000).
I lose track, because I can't be arsed to tell actual likely news, from hyped up vaporware, when it comes to media coverage of anything that Apple might do in future. I'll do what I do with every other product, and wait until it's actually shipping, and not vaporware.
I don't see what's derogatory about Islate, that was the supposed name at one point - of course it turned out to be false.
It may fail utterly, but no one can actually predict that accurately.
I agree with not including it on the list - if for no other reason that it's still vaporware. Similarly, let's stop with the endless hype over it. The burden of proof is also upon anyone who think it's going to be some kind of "game changing" device, or comparable to the Ipod, and so on.
It clearly did not, suggesting that the success or failure of products is not solely based on their raw on-paper merits
Indeed, I'm sure this is obvious to most Slashdotters, given the examples of Windows and Internet Explorer. That was my point - the quote was about how good he though the product was, yet now people assume that his opinion was stupid, based on the commercial success of it.
Right, so my initial point stands - one opinion from a guy on/. who doesn't like the iPad... doesn't qualify it for a place on this list.
That wasn't your initial point. If you're now saying it's your point - well, I don't think anyone's claiming it should be on the list because of "one opinion from a guy on/.". He's claiming it should be on the list because of the reasons given. His opinion is just as valid as yours, which is also just "one opinion from a guy on/.".
(and real mature on the name there, I see what you did there. Should I just go back to writing M$ for instant mod points?)
I honestly lose track of what the alleged product is being called this week, as it's had so much reports and rumour over it. Itablet 5 years ago, Islate last week, Ipad this week, what next week?
I personally have no idea if the iPad will succeed or fail. It will probably do better than anything based on LameDroid though. oooooh I went there.
What do you base that on? Motorola are far bigger than Apple in mobile market share.
OOI, why not just get a (much cheaper) netbook? Or one of the various other tablets already available? If you don't care about e-ink, then there's a range of much cheaper devices to choose from, already available. Why wait, just to pay more for a product with worse battery life?
Indeed. The interesting thing is that, when non-Apple colour "e-readers" are announced, there's no end of comments from people pointing out the e-ink issue, and the real benefits of devices like Sony's and the Kindle, even if it's not clear if the new product doesn't have these. But with the Ipad, there's been no end of hype about it being some kind of super e-reader, even though we know it doesn't have these features...
So let's see - some people want their Internet connection filtered, other people don't. How about this for a radical solution - we let the people who want it have it, and the people who don't, don't have it?
Wow, I've just solved the problem!
Or not. The problem with censorship is not that people want to filter their own connection. It's that they want to filter other people's connection. How many requests for those have you had in your shop? None of the anecdotal examples you cite are examples of people supporting censorship.
Oh, and if you're in favour of censorship - let's start with you. No more posts from you, please:)
The market is flooded with "portable devices with LCD screens that let you read things and access the Internet". I thought this was supposed to be a geek place, yet people act as if there'll be nothing available until the Ipad is released...
It's still irrelevant - the point is that if you're happy using a standard LCD to read from, then every single phone, tablet and netbook now count as an "e reader", and many of them are vastly cheaper than Apple's.
What's the point in paying more to get worse quality? And it's not just about screen quality, there's also battery life.
Not to mention that the Ipad doesn't even exist yet.
I fully agree. The fallacy in the press, and my users here, seems to be "The Ipod was successful, therefore anything else from them will be".
The fact that the Mac has always been a niche product, and the Iphone is a niche product, is ignored. Indeed, the press hype it up as if the Iphone was as successful as the Ipod!
The annoying thing is, these people aren't even consistent. By their logic, since Windows is massively successful, we should all be talking about Microsoft's Zune as if it's going to be the next big thing...
I agree about PowerPC - but as for MacOS, I'd put the entirety of classic MacOS in there. Before they ditched it for Next, even in its day it was a poor OS (e.g., couldn't even multitask - something that Apple has seemed to enjoy doing again, with the Iphones...). This was especially true by the time it got to MacOS 9.
* Where does this often-quoted phrase make claims that the Ipod would fail or succeed in the market? It doesn't. As an opinion of the product, it's valid no matter how successful it is (or are you saying that criticisms of Windows are stupid, because Windows is the most used OS?)
* "Slashdot" is not a single entity. There is no reason to judge squiggleslash, by a quote made by a different person, many years ago.
* Just because Apple have one successful product doesn't mean the Istale will be, and that is no argument to dismiss his opinion.
Putting it on a "worst apple products of all time" list is just ludicrously premature and speculative.
I entirely agree - just as every blimmin story we get about it is ludicrously premature and speculative. Let's get back to covering story about actually released products, not speculation about vaporware.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. And there's one big way in which things for phones are better - because of Java. It might not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than any situation we had in the 80s. It means that any bog standard cheap phone can run things like Opera Mini, Google Maps and so on, without worrying about if the developers wrote for their specific model of phone.
And then Apple come along, only supporting native apps (which is why we now see software having to be written especially for the Iphone, when it's already working on all other phones), taking us back to the dark ages of the 80s.
It's clearly Apple vs. Google vs. Everyone else as it is.
I don't know what mobile market you're looking at, but it's not one on planet Earth.
The actual share is more like Nokia and everyone else - everyone else being Motorola, Samsung, LG. Then RIM. Somewhere in the noise after that are companies like Apple and Google.
But let's not let something like facts get in the way of the Apple world view :)
On other platforms that is more or less true, but what Apple has succeeding in doing is creating an environment where people DO pay for apps.
Do you have evidence that people use apps on the Iphone more than other platforms, and that this is due to Apple? (I'm not sure the paying for it matters - sure, it's great for Apple, but it's not a good point for us if you have to pay for things that on other platforms you download for free.)
I do not think the next Windows7 mobile platform will let you do so.
Do you have evidence for this? If it's true, I'll equally criticise them - and I'll blame Apple for starting this model of locked down computing. I really hope that others don't follow them.
Yes they started off with a single screen size, but not with the bunch of simple assumptions - from the outset for example all the tools totally supported defining resizing behaviors for any GUI element in Interface Builder, the GUI development tool.
OOI, are there platforms out there that can't do this anymore? I got this as standard when I started GUI programming in, ooh, about fifteen years ago. I don't think there's anything noteworthy about it now.
So mobile devices the size of the iPhone get 320x480, but devices the size of the iPad get 1024x768.
So that's not supporting resizable GUIs/screens, that's the old model of only allowing a few predefined fixed sizes.
One thing that allows the Apple app store to be so popular
It couldn't possibly be anything to do with the fact that Iphone users have to use it, as they can't download from anywhere else? It's true, 100% of Iphone users download from Apple's app store.
Actually, the UK already does have this kind of filtering, similar to Australia's - most notably seen recently with the censorship of a Wikipedia page.
Of course I'm glad to see companies opposing this, but from someone in the UK, I have to wonder - did they make similar statements against the UK scheme? Much of what they say in their statement applies to countries such as the UK, also.
Considering that AmigaOS 1.0 was doing pre-emptive multitasking in 1985, on a 256KB 68000 machine, I don't think that Mac OS 9, released 14 years later, with minimum requirements of a PowerPC and 40MB of RAM, can use "Considering the resources of the machines of the era" as an excuse.
"Vaporware" tends to be used for more than just purely fictional products though - the obvious example being Duke Nukem Forever, which is a product that people are really working on. Even products that were released have won Wired's Vaporware Award (e.g., Windows 2000 in 1999, and Mac OS X in 2000).
I lose track, because I can't be arsed to tell actual likely news, from hyped up vaporware, when it comes to media coverage of anything that Apple might do in future. I'll do what I do with every other product, and wait until it's actually shipping, and not vaporware.
I don't see what's derogatory about Islate, that was the supposed name at one point - of course it turned out to be false.
It may fail utterly, but no one can actually predict that accurately.
I agree with not including it on the list - if for no other reason that it's still vaporware. Similarly, let's stop with the endless hype over it. The burden of proof is also upon anyone who think it's going to be some kind of "game changing" device, or comparable to the Ipod, and so on.
It clearly did not, suggesting that the success or failure of products is not solely based on their raw on-paper merits
Indeed, I'm sure this is obvious to most Slashdotters, given the examples of Windows and Internet Explorer. That was my point - the quote was about how good he though the product was, yet now people assume that his opinion was stupid, based on the commercial success of it.
Right, so my initial point stands - one opinion from a guy on /. who doesn't like the iPad ... doesn't qualify it for a place on this list.
That wasn't your initial point. If you're now saying it's your point - well, I don't think anyone's claiming it should be on the list because of "one opinion from a guy on /.". He's claiming it should be on the list because of the reasons given. His opinion is just as valid as yours, which is also just "one opinion from a guy on /.".
(and real mature on the name there, I see what you did there. Should I just go back to writing M$ for instant mod points?)
I honestly lose track of what the alleged product is being called this week, as it's had so much reports and rumour over it. Itablet 5 years ago, Islate last week, Ipad this week, what next week?
I personally have no idea if the iPad will succeed or fail. It will probably do better than anything based on LameDroid though. oooooh I went there.
What do you base that on? Motorola are far bigger than Apple in mobile market share.
OOI, why not just get a (much cheaper) netbook? Or one of the various other tablets already available? If you don't care about e-ink, then there's a range of much cheaper devices to choose from, already available. Why wait, just to pay more for a product with worse battery life?
Indeed. The interesting thing is that, when non-Apple colour "e-readers" are announced, there's no end of comments from people pointing out the e-ink issue, and the real benefits of devices like Sony's and the Kindle, even if it's not clear if the new product doesn't have these. But with the Ipad, there's been no end of hype about it being some kind of super e-reader, even though we know it doesn't have these features...
By that logic, every phone and netbook out there is an "e reader".
So let's see - some people want their Internet connection filtered, other people don't. How about this for a radical solution - we let the people who want it have it, and the people who don't, don't have it?
Wow, I've just solved the problem!
Or not. The problem with censorship is not that people want to filter their own connection. It's that they want to filter other people's connection. How many requests for those have you had in your shop? None of the anecdotal examples you cite are examples of people supporting censorship.
Oh, and if you're in favour of censorship - let's start with you. No more posts from you, please :)
You seem happy to be posting on Slashdot. Isn't this rather naive? Wouldn't it be better to run your own web server, and post on that instead?
So get a netbook.
The market is flooded with "portable devices with LCD screens that let you read things and access the Internet". I thought this was supposed to be a geek place, yet people act as if there'll be nothing available until the Ipad is released...
It's not an e-reader.
It's still irrelevant - the point is that if you're happy using a standard LCD to read from, then every single phone, tablet and netbook now count as an "e reader", and many of them are vastly cheaper than Apple's.
What's the point in paying more to get worse quality? And it's not just about screen quality, there's also battery life.
Not to mention that the Ipad doesn't even exist yet.
exclusive, high priced item, for collectors.. that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product
But wait ... I thought that was all Apple products?
I fully agree. The fallacy in the press, and my users here, seems to be "The Ipod was successful, therefore anything else from them will be".
The fact that the Mac has always been a niche product, and the Iphone is a niche product, is ignored. Indeed, the press hype it up as if the Iphone was as successful as the Ipod!
The annoying thing is, these people aren't even consistent. By their logic, since Windows is massively successful, we should all be talking about Microsoft's Zune as if it's going to be the next big thing...
I agree about PowerPC - but as for MacOS, I'd put the entirety of classic MacOS in there. Before they ditched it for Next, even in its day it was a poor OS (e.g., couldn't even multitask - something that Apple has seemed to enjoy doing again, with the Iphones...). This was especially true by the time it got to MacOS 9.
"32GB is enough for anyone".
* Where does this often-quoted phrase make claims that the Ipod would fail or succeed in the market? It doesn't. As an opinion of the product, it's valid no matter how successful it is (or are you saying that criticisms of Windows are stupid, because Windows is the most used OS?)
* "Slashdot" is not a single entity. There is no reason to judge squiggleslash, by a quote made by a different person, many years ago.
* Just because Apple have one successful product doesn't mean the Istale will be, and that is no argument to dismiss his opinion.
Putting it on a "worst apple products of all time" list is just ludicrously premature and speculative.
I entirely agree - just as every blimmin story we get about it is ludicrously premature and speculative. Let's get back to covering story about actually released products, not speculation about vaporware.
Vaporware doesn't make the list, I guess... Can't be bad if it isn't even released.
Mod parent down, -1 actually thinks that most of the market cares about Apple, when the vaporware hasn't even been released yet!