Indeed. Speculation on future UIs can be interesting, but what has that got to do with any potential Apple product? There are plenty of companies who have and are making tablets (actually ones, not vaporware like the istale).
I might as well make up a long list of what I'd like to see in a computer, and then post a story saying "The New Amiga Must Be Like This".
If this was an Apple site, I could understand, but otherwise, why not keep it generic? Oh wait, there's my answer - this is an Apple site. (There are only three stories mentioning the Iphone today! The joke about the Daily Iphone story is obviously old hat...)
Sure, but their revenue has dropped. In the past year they have lost billions of Euros
Why, anyone would think there wasn't this great big recession. Is that really a reason to assume that they're going to stop updating, therefore this is worthless? Face it, you're just spreading FUD. One could make the same claim of any navigation system.
have only recently came out with a good competitor phone to Android, the iPhone and the Pre and really, "dumb" phones are on the way out.
But now you're conflating market success, with your own personal opinion. Which are we debating? If the latter, here's mine - my old Motorola V980 from 2005 did things the Iphone took years to catch up on, and now Nokia have the 5800 which works just as well as any Iphone, at half the price. (Android isn't a phone, it's an OS, btw.)
really, "dumb" phones are on the way out. Think about it, 5 years ago, unless you were a corporate user, you didn't get a smartphone. Today, almost everyone wants a smartphone, and prices for the phones are sharply declining. Eventually, non-smartphones will fade away.
So what's your definition of smartphone?
If you're defining smartphone as "not a dumbphone" then non-smartphones died years ago. Any feature phone can run apps, access the Internet, they run operating systems and it's been this way for at least 5 years. Any phone today (except the absolute bottom of the market) is a smartphone, in the sense of what we once understood by the term. If we define smartphone in terms of features, then either all feature phones are smartphones, or the Iphone doesn't deserve to be a smartphone.
In this market, Nokia are still solid.
But when you see news articles talking about the smartphone market, they don't mean this, they simply mean some ill-defined category that covers the most expensive phones. Therefore, "smartphone" is simply the high end of whatever phones are available at the time, therefore it will never go away (unless all phones become dirt cheap). And it will also never be the case that everyone will have "smartphones" by this definition, because there'll still be people who buy the lower end phones.
People would then praise how it Just Works, because if you want to search for the Apple home page, it does so without you even having to tell it. Questions about searching for other pages are dismissed with "But why would I want to do that?"
Piss weak market share of what? Smart phones? Personal music players?
Phones yes, music players no. But given he was talking about Microsoft, I presume he meant operating systems - and he's right, it would be reasonable for MS to consider Google more of a threat than Apple.
Indeed, their focus on music players, music stores and phones, rather than Macs and OS X, adds to that point. With the "istale", if it's actually released, rumoured to be an Iphone device rather than a Mac, this trend will continue, making them even less direct competition to Microsoft.
Yes, no handheld device ever ran applications before the Apple "Islate" came along. This vaporware is so good, it can travel back in time, and beat all the phones that were doing it 5+ years ago...
Really though, the whole of the last decade has been a continual trend of convergence (and even that word was a buzzword for years in the '90s).
And even if you mean in the sense of people making up claims that the "Islate" will be a colour e-reader, there are already models out there doing that (e.g., the Fujitsu Flepia, released last year). By that, I mean ones actually released, not "rumuoured".
People spend 7.5 hours or more in a day being productive. This is about people's spare time.
Do you have evidence that things are any different in other countries? Indeed, my impression was that working hours tending to be longer in the US, compared with Europe... Not that length of time alone is a good measure of productivity, anyway.
What about yourself? Shouldn't you be doing something productive instead of posting on Slashdot? I mean, just look at what it's doing to your writing abilities!
Ah, proof by YouTube. You forgot to post evidence that correlates this with age, and then shows that people today didn't have the same sloppy spelling when they were younger.
Your typical teenager probably doesn't even use a pen
Your typical adult Slashdotter probably doesn't even use a pen...
Do you have evidence that (a) spelling is in decline, and (b) there is a causative link due to computers and the Internet? Or are you just pushing "Get off my lawn" arguments without evidence?
Is it really that much more efficient to type "Im going 2 da park"?
In most cases no, but it is for people paying per 140 characters in a text, or people on most low end or older phones who haven't mastered the text prediction option. And counter argument.
As technology gets smarter, we as a society will be getting dumber.
Well, perhaps people are more likely to post claims without evidence... so citation please?
I agree there's no need for panic. But even for TV:
Almost entirely negative
It may be positive, but does that make it negative? And I bet many adults spend a few hours everyday watching TV in the evening, probably more so for older people, as they don't use the Internet instead.
Well you can watch TV on far more lower cost devices than an Iphone, and there's connection over WiFi. My 5800 does BBC Iplayer fine. In fact I remember video on your phone being all the rage on bog standard phones around 2005 when 3G became popular.
(Although I'd still rather watch on a bigger screen if I'm at home, and yes if you're not at home, data usage costs would be a problem.)
Not sure why you were modded down - I completely agree also. Whilst it's true that Apple and Google are now competing in the phone market, here they are both minor players - the more important ones to watch in this battleground are Nokia, and a load of other companies like Samsung, Motorola, LG. To claim that this is "most important rivalry" is taking the RDF to absurdly new heights.
The area where Apple lead is mp3 players, where Google are not in competition. And in the market of search engines, Google are in competition with Microsoft, not Apple.
The default search engine battle has ranged on many devices - yet the sad thing is that this probably only made Appledot because of the Iphone mention, and we haven't had our Iphone story for today.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. I always marvel at how Apple PC fans can twist and spin a bad point into a good point, even when the same argument is used as a bad point against PCs.
Next time there's an article about patches for Windows, and Apple fans are falling over themselves to get first post with the "Look how insecure it is" comments, I'll be sure to post your comment, and get +4 informative too.
Consider, Windows seems to have had far more patches than OS X, or so Apple fans tell us - so by your logic, it must be far more secure, right?
Indeed. An even more worrying issue is that (which, IIRC, has happened at least once): someone could port your open source software to the Iphone, with or without your permission, and get it on the Apple Store. But if you then decide to port it yourself, Apple won't allow it on their store - thus no one will be able to run your version (except a few who have hacked their phones).
One obvious issue is that they're now making money from your free work. Whilst open source has always allowed commercial use, a key point is that anyone, including you, could compete on a level playing field with anyone trying to make money - so in practice they have to add value, otherwise people could just download it for free. But here, Apple have granted a monopoly to another developer, for them alone to make money over your work.
Even if you don't care about the money, what about sharing control? They alone now have a monopoly right over the Iphone version of your software, even if you later decide you want to release it for Iphone, and do things differently.
Thanks Apple.
I don't know if there are any plans to update open source licences to deal with this problem, e.g., by not allowing others to take away control and have a monopoly on the product for a particular platform.
It has 40-50 hours battery life, so yes, it is reasonable to consider this as an e-reader (as opposed to most handheld devices that only have a few hours of battery life).
I found this with a trivial Google search. Although it's sad that from reading Slashdot, I'd have no idea of it's release (I can't find any stories for it?), yet for the Apple iVaporware, we've already had endless stories about just rumours, and if the thing is actually ever released, no doubt we'll get daily stories on it like Apple's phone. Bottom line - this site is good for Apple rumours, but don't rely on it for "news for nerds", or geek stuff that matters in general.
Of course, I predict that you will redefine the category so that it doesn't include this device, but makes Apple "first".
Earning interest or money from shares is something you get because you've given your money to someone else. Obviously there are ways to make money without working, no one is questioning that - other examples would be hiring out a car.
But it doesn't follow that therefore copyright terms should be 70 years after life, or whatever it is now. I'm not sure how interest/shares is analogous to copyright. With interest or investment, or hiring, I have to continue to let the person have my money/car/etc. What does one have to do to earn money continually through copyright?
The only real difference is that ownership of shares doesn't expire.
Shares are ultimately physical property. This is just a variation of "But my ownership of my money/house/car doesn't expire!"
Sounds like being self-employed - do they get free life insurance and pension too?
For the other problems you list, this would be solved by either having it as a fixed term, or something like "life, or 10 years, whichever is longest".
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. And there we have the answer - as in, there is no answer, and anyone who dares raise the question will get modded down instead.
Well let me ask again: What UI revolution did the Iphone start?
I don't know, did it let people copy and paste perhaps?
Indeed. Speculation on future UIs can be interesting, but what has that got to do with any potential Apple product? There are plenty of companies who have and are making tablets (actually ones, not vaporware like the istale).
I might as well make up a long list of what I'd like to see in a computer, and then post a story saying "The New Amiga Must Be Like This".
If this was an Apple site, I could understand, but otherwise, why not keep it generic? Oh wait, there's my answer - this is an Apple site. (There are only three stories mentioning the Iphone today! The joke about the Daily Iphone story is obviously old hat...)
Indeed - everyone knows the only useful measure here of market success is "Which company gets more market share on Slashdot front page?"
Sure, but their revenue has dropped. In the past year they have lost billions of Euros
Why, anyone would think there wasn't this great big recession. Is that really a reason to assume that they're going to stop updating, therefore this is worthless? Face it, you're just spreading FUD. One could make the same claim of any navigation system.
have only recently came out with a good competitor phone to Android, the iPhone and the Pre and really, "dumb" phones are on the way out.
But now you're conflating market success, with your own personal opinion. Which are we debating? If the latter, here's mine - my old Motorola V980 from 2005 did things the Iphone took years to catch up on, and now Nokia have the 5800 which works just as well as any Iphone, at half the price. (Android isn't a phone, it's an OS, btw.)
really, "dumb" phones are on the way out. Think about it, 5 years ago, unless you were a corporate user, you didn't get a smartphone. Today, almost everyone wants a smartphone, and prices for the phones are sharply declining. Eventually, non-smartphones will fade away.
So what's your definition of smartphone?
If you're defining smartphone as "not a dumbphone" then non-smartphones died years ago. Any feature phone can run apps, access the Internet, they run operating systems and it's been this way for at least 5 years. Any phone today (except the absolute bottom of the market) is a smartphone, in the sense of what we once understood by the term. If we define smartphone in terms of features, then either all feature phones are smartphones, or the Iphone doesn't deserve to be a smartphone.
In this market, Nokia are still solid.
But when you see news articles talking about the smartphone market, they don't mean this, they simply mean some ill-defined category that covers the most expensive phones. Therefore, "smartphone" is simply the high end of whatever phones are available at the time, therefore it will never go away (unless all phones become dirt cheap). And it will also never be the case that everyone will have "smartphones" by this definition, because there'll still be people who buy the lower end phones.
We're talking about the iPhone and mobile devices and search - not personal computers. Apple's marketshare is pretty darn good (to say the least).
Apple are about 5% max in the phone market last time I looked. Which is what I thought the Mac's market share was around, too.
As far as Windows Mobile goes... I know some guys that work in that group, and they don't currently expect it to even exist in another year or two.
Which just adds to his point - since MS aren't in that market significantly, they're even less in competition with Apple these days.
Which would take you to the Apple home page.
People would then praise how it Just Works, because if you want to search for the Apple home page, it does so without you even having to tell it. Questions about searching for other pages are dismissed with "But why would I want to do that?"
Piss weak market share of what? Smart phones? Personal music players?
Phones yes, music players no. But given he was talking about Microsoft, I presume he meant operating systems - and he's right, it would be reasonable for MS to consider Google more of a threat than Apple.
Indeed, their focus on music players, music stores and phones, rather than Macs and OS X, adds to that point. With the "istale", if it's actually released, rumoured to be an Iphone device rather than a Mac, this trend will continue, making them even less direct competition to Microsoft.
Yes, no handheld device ever ran applications before the Apple "Islate" came along. This vaporware is so good, it can travel back in time, and beat all the phones that were doing it 5+ years ago...
Really though, the whole of the last decade has been a continual trend of convergence (and even that word was a buzzword for years in the '90s).
And even if you mean in the sense of people making up claims that the "Islate" will be a colour e-reader, there are already models out there doing that (e.g., the Fujitsu Flepia, released last year). By that, I mean ones actually released, not "rumuoured".
Choose Your Own Adventure games.
People spend 7.5 hours or more in a day being productive. This is about people's spare time.
Do you have evidence that things are any different in other countries? Indeed, my impression was that working hours tending to be longer in the US, compared with Europe... Not that length of time alone is a good measure of productivity, anyway.
What about yourself? Shouldn't you be doing something productive instead of posting on Slashdot? I mean, just look at what it's doing to your writing abilities!
In fact, a friend of mine complained his kids were into noisecore. Ha! He grew up being into heavy metal
It was a sure sign of getting old, when I first saw metal compilations being advertised on TV, complete with "Get it for Dad!" voiceover...
(I agree with you btw - also see this recent article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8468351.stm .)
Ah, proof by YouTube. You forgot to post evidence that correlates this with age, and then shows that people today didn't have the same sloppy spelling when they were younger.
Your typical teenager probably doesn't even use a pen
Your typical adult Slashdotter probably doesn't even use a pen...
Do you have evidence that (a) spelling is in decline, and (b) there is a causative link due to computers and the Internet? Or are you just pushing "Get off my lawn" arguments without evidence?
Is it really that much more efficient to type "Im going 2 da park"?
In most cases no, but it is for people paying per 140 characters in a text, or people on most low end or older phones who haven't mastered the text prediction option. And counter argument.
As technology gets smarter, we as a society will be getting dumber.
Well, perhaps people are more likely to post claims without evidence ... so citation please?
I agree there's no need for panic. But even for TV:
Almost entirely negative
It may be positive, but does that make it negative? And I bet many adults spend a few hours everyday watching TV in the evening, probably more so for older people, as they don't use the Internet instead.
Well you can watch TV on far more lower cost devices than an Iphone, and there's connection over WiFi. My 5800 does BBC Iplayer fine. In fact I remember video on your phone being all the rage on bog standard phones around 2005 when 3G became popular.
(Although I'd still rather watch on a bigger screen if I'm at home, and yes if you're not at home, data usage costs would be a problem.)
Not sure why you were modded down - I completely agree also. Whilst it's true that Apple and Google are now competing in the phone market, here they are both minor players - the more important ones to watch in this battleground are Nokia, and a load of other companies like Samsung, Motorola, LG. To claim that this is "most important rivalry" is taking the RDF to absurdly new heights.
The area where Apple lead is mp3 players, where Google are not in competition. And in the market of search engines, Google are in competition with Microsoft, not Apple.
The default search engine battle has ranged on many devices - yet the sad thing is that this probably only made Appledot because of the Iphone mention, and we haven't had our Iphone story for today.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. I always marvel at how Apple PC fans can twist and spin a bad point into a good point, even when the same argument is used as a bad point against PCs.
Next time there's an article about patches for Windows, and Apple fans are falling over themselves to get first post with the "Look how insecure it is" comments, I'll be sure to post your comment, and get +4 informative too.
Consider, Windows seems to have had far more patches than OS X, or so Apple fans tell us - so by your logic, it must be far more secure, right?
If a computer is secure - as you claim - it shouldn't matter what most people try to hack.
None of the malware-infested machines I have cleaned up in the last few days were running OS X, just Windows.
I bet none of them were running AmigaOS, either.
Meanwhile, I go home at night and surf with impunity on my Mac running OS X, just like I've done for the last 8 years.
Meanwhile, I go home at night and surf with impunity on my computer running Windows, just like I've done for the last 10 years.
Indeed. An even more worrying issue is that (which, IIRC, has happened at least once): someone could port your open source software to the Iphone, with or without your permission, and get it on the Apple Store. But if you then decide to port it yourself, Apple won't allow it on their store - thus no one will be able to run your version (except a few who have hacked their phones).
One obvious issue is that they're now making money from your free work. Whilst open source has always allowed commercial use, a key point is that anyone, including you, could compete on a level playing field with anyone trying to make money - so in practice they have to add value, otherwise people could just download it for free. But here, Apple have granted a monopoly to another developer, for them alone to make money over your work.
Even if you don't care about the money, what about sharing control? They alone now have a monopoly right over the Iphone version of your software, even if you later decide you want to release it for Iphone, and do things differently.
Thanks Apple.
I don't know if there are any plans to update open source licences to deal with this problem, e.g., by not allowing others to take away control and have a monopoly on the product for a particular platform.
That and the battery life - I presume your laptop doesn't do 122 hours.
The Fujitsu FLEPia is already released, last year in fact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujitsu_FLEPia
http://ezinearticles.com/?Fujitsu-Flepia-E-Reader-Review&id=3326541
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22332/?a=f
It has 40-50 hours battery life, so yes, it is reasonable to consider this as an e-reader (as opposed to most handheld devices that only have a few hours of battery life).
I found this with a trivial Google search. Although it's sad that from reading Slashdot, I'd have no idea of it's release (I can't find any stories for it?), yet for the Apple iVaporware, we've already had endless stories about just rumours, and if the thing is actually ever released, no doubt we'll get daily stories on it like Apple's phone. Bottom line - this site is good for Apple rumours, but don't rely on it for "news for nerds", or geek stuff that matters in general.
Of course, I predict that you will redefine the category so that it doesn't include this device, but makes Apple "first".
Earning interest or money from shares is something you get because you've given your money to someone else. Obviously there are ways to make money without working, no one is questioning that - other examples would be hiring out a car.
But it doesn't follow that therefore copyright terms should be 70 years after life, or whatever it is now. I'm not sure how interest/shares is analogous to copyright. With interest or investment, or hiring, I have to continue to let the person have my money/car/etc. What does one have to do to earn money continually through copyright?
The only real difference is that ownership of shares doesn't expire.
Shares are ultimately physical property. This is just a variation of "But my ownership of my money/house/car doesn't expire!"
without copyright law ...
Wait, who was arguing that copyright law shouldn't exist at all?
The argument was about the length of the terms.
Sounds like being self-employed - do they get free life insurance and pension too?
For the other problems you list, this would be solved by either having it as a fixed term, or something like "life, or 10 years, whichever is longest".