They may have claimed this at one time, but I've seen plenty of petitions with over 500 still waiting for a response.
But yes, it's basically just an exercise for them to tell us why we are wrong.
However, to be honest I'd much rather that petitions were ignored, than listened to, as they are poor indicators of public opinion, and are often biasedly worded, and signed by people who haven't considered the facts. Plenty of bad lawmaking has come as a response to well publicised petitions.
The problem is that the Government ignores petitions it doesn't like, but will still wave the ones it does agree with as "proof" that it's listening to the people.
I see. I never saw that post, so I take umbrage that I was criticised for something I never even saw, let alone responded to.
But you claimed that "nobody said Pan's Labyrinth isn't a good film", so it's fair game to point out that that isn't true. You then followed up with "What they said was," - who is "they" if you're now saying you weren't referring to anyone?
Obviously the person you responded to didn't say it - he was the one saying it was a good film.
I agree. And even if the claim is true - having 30% of all products in existence by your latest product is pretty damn good going! I'm astonished how anyone could think this is not good, let alone a flop. I guess people are just conflating installed userbase, with market share of new PCs - for the latter, the figure would be much higher for Vista.
The argument seems to be "Because only 30% of every computer user in existence has gone out and bought Vista, it must be a flop", which is ludicrous when you consider that includes old PCs that can't run Vista, or there is no point to upgrading. The issue that people should be looking at is sales figures - MS make their money from sales, particularly on new PCs, and not from people who upgrade their 10 year old computer.
Imagine saying "Nokia are doing crap, because less than 30% of people with a phone have the latest Nokia phone"? Even if we restricted it to just look at people with Nokia phones, there's no reason to expect that 30% of them would have the latest product, since people tend to keep a phone for several years before upgrading. Same with computers.
I believe something like 8 years is common for the average non-geek user - so getting 30% in just 2 years is doing well.
Well, it's true that Vista could be said to be a flop in comparison to XP, and I agree with:
Well.... not to offend any Linux users, or Mac users, but those operating systems are entirely irrelevant.
But it's still worth mentioning. All too often Mac fans telling us that Vista is a flop, therefore OS X is better. Just yesterday I saw a BBC article claiming that people were flocking to Macs as a result of Vista. No, the biggest competition is, as you say, is Microsoft themselves.
I still disagree it's a flop though - most people here are making the fallacy of conflating market share with entire installed userbase. Getting 30% of every computer in existence running a new OS in just two years is amazing success. I don't think any other company in any other industry could claim such figures - even if we only look at their own customers, and not all customers.
Consider, when Ford release a new model, are more than 30% of Ford cars in existence the latest model? Or are 30% of people with a Nokia phone running the latest Nokia phone?
I also wonder what the installed userbase of XP was, just 2 years after its release.
I have downgraded more Vista machines due to instability, driver issues, compatibility issues, etc. then I care to mention. Adoption rates were horrible.
That's anecdotal. What are the figures for Vista's market share (not installed userbase)? Even if we factored in downgrades, how would that change?
When businesses refuse to upgrade to Vista and keep XP machines plodding along, and consumers keep asking for downgrades continually, it cannot be considered anything but a failure.
They don't "refuse to upgrade", there's simply no point in upgrading operating systems unless they're buying new machines. Same happened with 2000 versus XP.
Vista was a repeat of Windows MilleniSuck(tm). Everyone knows this. Not just IT people either.
But Windows ME wasn't bad in comparison to 98 - the problem was that it was bad compared to 2000. The whole Windows 95, 98, Me line was awful, and by Windows 2000, people were starting to see how one OS line was far more stable than the other. Windows 2000 was intended for consumer use too, but then they deferred that to XP, and brought out ME. A better comparison would be when XP itself came out - people ridiculed it simply because it was new, and they preferred 2000. Same now with Vista vs XP.
And non-IT people only "know" what they're told, usually by a Mac or Linux fan who's hoping that by ridiculing Vista, he can tempt them onto his preferred OS, despite the fact that XP is what they should use as the alternative.
I am betting on Windows 7 having many times the adoption rates of Vista.
Perhaps, but "adoption rates" is again not really what they care about - it's market share, i.e., sales. And no one has provided any data on this, not in the article, nor in the comments. MS have always made most of their money from OSs shipped with new machines, rather than relying on hardcore upgraders.
The biggest problem with this discussion is that to some, to some people, saying anything about Vista means you are anti-MS. Not true. I am just anti-Vista.
Indeed, I agree. I'm no fan of Vista either, but I think throwing around misleading stats like "only" 30% like this article does doesn't help either. I fully agree with Vista's flaws, and look forward to Windows 7 resolving them - I just disagree that Vista has been any kind of flop, when you look at hard sales figures.
Sorry, not doing quite as well as they'd hoped isn't a "flop". It might harm their share price, sure, but "flop" has more implications than that.
Moreover, the quoted 30% statistic doesn't support this claim anyway - it's a survey of all computers, so it tells us nothing of what the market share of sales is. Even if 100% of operating systems sold were Vista, it might take a while to replace all the existing machines in existence.
The problem is that the survey is a survey of all PCs in existence, not market share of PCs being sold.
Go on, show me where Microsoft expected mass adoption of Vista on every PC - including ones too old to run it? Even if Microsoft had Vista on 100% of the market of new computers sold, it still might be true that the total proportion of all computers is less than 30%. Getting 30% of every computer in existence is pretty good going!
I'd be curious to know how many computers in existence were running XP, just two years after its release?
Indeed - the problem here is conflating bandwidth with latency.
The fact that offline methods can have higher bandwidth is nothing new or surprising - just shove a hard drive in the post or whatever, as you suggest, or for even more dramatic examples, the classic is a van or jumbo jet full of DVDs/hard drives.
There's nothing here that suggests the S African network is slow. Indeed, even on my home wifi, I can trivially move a hard drive, thumb drive or flash card between my two computers, much faster than the time it takes to transmit it through the network. A pigeon could too.
When we talk about networks being "fast" compared with offline methods, it's the latency we're talking about - how long does it take for a given piece of information to be transmitted?
Ah yes, didn't take long for the mod abuse to come along.
Come back when you have an actual argument, rather than mod points to abuse.
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true
The problem isn't that they control their developers, the problem is that they want to control the users - their customers, the products that you've bought.
---statement about fact, against a straw man argument. How is that a troll?
but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high.
Heh - Quicktime and Itunes have high usability? Typing is easier if you can't copy and paste? If you say so. But let's pretend your assertion is true, how does enforcing control on their platforms, such as banning C64 emulators, make it easy to use?
---Again, if you disagree about UI, say why? If you can only go running for the mod box, it suggests you have no argument. How is asking a simple question a troll?
As for Microsoft's website, the company's main product has a number of different interfaces for different things, when there's no sensible reason for it to be different (Office uses the Ribbon, but Internet Explorer doesn't, to take one example).
You are complaining that completely different kinds of applications have different interfaces? On the contrary, the reverse is true - the ribbon has it's place, but what's annoying is all the applications that have blindly copied the ribbon, even where it is completely unhelpful or inappropriate.
And Quicktime's interface looks different to Itune's, so is that bad too?
And Internet Explorer and Office are not different "things" within a single "product". They are what we call "applications". Internet Explorer and Officer are different "applications", which are two different products, and then Windows is an "operating system", another product. Even if you argued that IE is part of Windows, Office is not (and the point is moot, as different applications are shipped with OS X too, and they have different interfaces).
--- If anything, it's the nonsensical claim that Windows has different interfaces for the same product that is a troll.
Read about the Windows Shutdown Crapfest and think about the implications for their website.
Yeah, all large companies have their embarrassing stories of fail. Remind me again how much effort Apple spent trying to modernise Mac OS (Copeland, etc), before eventually they had to ditch it altogether and buy out another company to get an existing OS that could do the job better?
--- see how this mod would pretend that Copeland didn't exist, by modding down a mere mention of it? How can we ever get a fair comparison of companies, when any evidence that doesn't toe this mod's pro-Apple agenda is modded down?
Come out and join the debate, rather than hiding anonymously behind mod points.
Yet mere rumours about a possible new Apple product that might be launched some time in the future makes front page Slashdot news. And you complain about a mere comment? Nice double standard there.
I've never understood why it's mocked - a product being popular doesn't negate criticism of it. By that reasoning, we should equally be mocking anyone who's criticised Windows.
Also very limiting and confusing the way they divide the search results into different categories. If I don't know what category it's in (e.g., is something a product or a download?), I have to search each category separately.
Also annoying that you have to click twice to get to the full listing (first for "view next 5", then to the full list), again, basic UI mistakes.
Apple's site has three decades worth of hardware and software documentation on it. The Apple site still has manuals and system software for Apple II series machines, if you go looking for it.
Are all these things findable from direct links? And that doesn't negate the point - just because a company's been around for as long, doesn't mean it has as many products on its website.
Even using their search, the UI is so bad I can't find, e.g., downloads for System 7 (is it in products, or downloads?)
Sorry, their search is appalling. If you want to go to "View all search results", it takes me to a page with no results, just a search window. I hit enter again, in case it needs it (bad UI, as I've already said I wanted all results), wait absolutely ages for it to load, and then still get no results. What's going on? I tried it a bit later, and it worked, but it only seems to work about 50% of the time. If something went wrong, there's no error message - again, fundamentally bad UI mistakes.
I've learned over the years, however, that pretty much anything you want from an Apple web site can be found by typing 'apple/foo' in your location bar. Your browser will autofill the 'apple' to 'www.apple.com' and Apple maps all of their resources to the first part of the path - even if it ends up redirecting you to 'foo.apple.com' in the end. So, try 'apple/quicktime' or 'apple/developer' (or 'safari', or 'macosx' or 'iphone', etc). Very handy.
Doesn't work for me. Tested in IE and Opera.
Yes, it works if I do things like apple.com/developer, but big deal, I can do microsoft.com/windows, microsoft.com/office or microsoft.com/support. Microsoft have thought up obvious names for subfolders and redirects too.
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true
The problem isn't that they control their developers, the problem is that they want to control the users - their customers, the products that you've bought.
but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high.
Heh - Quicktime and Itunes have high usability? Typing is easier if you can't copy and paste? If you say so. But let's pretend your assertion is true, how does enforcing control on their platforms, such as banning C64 emulators, make it easy to use?
As for Microsoft's website, the company's main product has a number of different interfaces for different things, when there's no sensible reason for it to be different (Office uses the Ribbon, but Internet Explorer doesn't, to take one example).
You are complaining that completely different kinds of applications have different interfaces? On the contrary, the reverse is true - the ribbon has it's place, but what's annoying is all the applications that have blindly copied the ribbon, even where it is completely unhelpful or inappropriate.
And Quicktime's interface looks different to Itune's, so is that bad too?
And Internet Explorer and Office are not different "things" within a single "product". They are what we call "applications". Internet Explorer and Officer are different "applications", which are two different products, and then Windows is an "operating system", another product. Even if you argued that IE is part of Windows, Office is not (and the point is moot, as different applications are shipped with OS X too, and they have different interfaces).
Read about the Windows Shutdown Crapfest and think about the implications for their website.
Yeah, all large companies have their embarrassing stories of fail. Remind me again how much effort Apple spent trying to modernise Mac OS (Copeland, etc), before eventually they had to ditch it altogether and buy out another company to get an existing OS that could do the job better?
Agreed - that, and Quicktime too. Appalling UIs. Now sure, normally one might say it's unfair to judge Macs here based on their Windows software, but given that "But they are good at UIs" is the one thing we hear about them, and given that there's no reason why Windows is to blame for Quicktime's and Itune's poor UIs (indeed, as you note, they specifically avoid the Windows GUI and guidelines), it makes me very suspicious about the claims of "good UIs" in general.
But apparently, because Apple's website is slightly less cluttered than Microsoft's, I should be basing my decision to buy a Mac solely on that. Hell, even Slashdot's UI beats those two.
Go to get QuickTime, and when you run it, find the good UI grounds to a halt.
To be honest I'm not bothered about whether Apple's or Microsoft's website is less crap, when they're both awful compared to many other websites, and I hardly ever visit them. I'm more concerned about the applications I run.
Microsoft's website spams me about IE 8. Apple shove a full screen image with an Ipod advert, meaning I have to click to get to anything else. Microsoft might seem a bit more cluttered. But when you go to one of the Apple sub-pages (e.g., Mac), there's just as much clutter. Honestly, who cares - they're both designed by people who know little about creating decent websites. It's just a shame that with Apple, the bad UI team got let loose on Quicktime and Itunes, and god knows what else too.
"Windows" and "Office" are product lines. What is "All Products"? "Buy Now" is an action, not a product line. The rest of the categories are a continued mixed bag of products, types of customers, and actions. There are too many of them, they are poorly sorted.
Why on earth should the banner only contain "product lines"? And by that logic, "store", "downloads" and "support" aren't product lines either! Indeed, as you list yourself, Apple's banner is also a "mixed bag".
and a relatively cluttered batch of what I'm sure are important marketing messages and stuff, but are unlikely to be relevant to me on a home page. When I click on "Office", you can tell me about the latest Office, I don't need a marketing blurb about it cluttering up the home page thanks.
Yeah, there's obviously no marketing blurb on Apple's website. Not the full screen ad image. Not the "news" that brags "Snow Leopard a software platform for the future", or the claim of "The World's Most Advance Operating System"(!) Or "Why you'll love a Mac".
I agree that Apple have less clutter on the front page, but that's only because they've shoehorned it into all the subpages, and there's still plenty of marketing blurb, on the front page, and elsewhere.
But that doesn't make sense either - why should worshipping the dollar mean throwing away trillions on a war? It's not private enterprise that's going to war, it's the Government. War is bad for economies.
I remember those days - Mac users would brag about "Think Different" due to not running Windows, and then run a whole suite of Microsoft products such as Office, Internet Explorer etc...
(Although I see that now, "Think Different" is replaced with "Get an iSomething to be like everyone else"...)
People have emotions and a desire to be free and independent. A machine will not.
People are machines. Unless you are going to invoke supernatural nonsense like "souls", there is no reason why a machine constructed by humans couldn't have the same emotions and desires that humans have (and indeed, this article is about motivation, which would give you that desire).
Now this doesn't mean that any artificially intelligence machine is necessarily sentient. But unless you've cracked the problem of consciousness, I don't think you can be sure.
We may hit an ethical problem where we are able to build machines with intelligence and behaviour indistinguishable from humans, before we know whether they are conscious or not. Should they have rights? Are you willing to take the risk of condemning generations of sentient machines to slavery, when you have no scientific way to distinguish between them and humans? (And yes, I realise I'm quoting Captain Picard here, in his defence of Data.)
I think the whole point of AI is
There is no one point of AI. Many researchers have different goals. If it's possible to build machines that aim for human behaviour, then someone will.
And why do you think so much importance is given to the Turing Test, if behaving as a human is considered unimportant in AI?
But I'll criticise a story about a poor platform, just like everyone complains about Windows bugs and stupid actions from Microsoft or any other company round here. Why should Apple and the Iphone platform be held to any different standard?
Plus maybe it'll be nice to have some more news coverage of the numerous other mobile phones available.
And you know, it isn't a competition. People who complain about CCTV are more likely to be people who complain about this sort of thing - they are hardly going to be supporting it. Unless you have evidence that the DHS is bitching about UK CCTV, your attempt to criticise people for hypocrasy is a straw man argument.
(I'm British too, but your argument makes no sense.)
Slashdot Mirror
They may have claimed this at one time, but I've seen plenty of petitions with over 500 still waiting for a response.
But yes, it's basically just an exercise for them to tell us why we are wrong.
However, to be honest I'd much rather that petitions were ignored, than listened to, as they are poor indicators of public opinion, and are often biasedly worded, and signed by people who haven't considered the facts. Plenty of bad lawmaking has come as a response to well publicised petitions.
The problem is that the Government ignores petitions it doesn't like, but will still wave the ones it does agree with as "proof" that it's listening to the people.
I see. I never saw that post, so I take umbrage that I was criticised for something I never even saw, let alone responded to.
But you claimed that "nobody said Pan's Labyrinth isn't a good film", so it's fair game to point out that that isn't true. You then followed up with "What they said was," - who is "they" if you're now saying you weren't referring to anyone?
Obviously the person you responded to didn't say it - he was the one saying it was a good film.
I agree. And even if the claim is true - having 30% of all products in existence by your latest product is pretty damn good going! I'm astonished how anyone could think this is not good, let alone a flop. I guess people are just conflating installed userbase, with market share of new PCs - for the latter, the figure would be much higher for Vista.
The argument seems to be "Because only 30% of every computer user in existence has gone out and bought Vista, it must be a flop", which is ludicrous when you consider that includes old PCs that can't run Vista, or there is no point to upgrading. The issue that people should be looking at is sales figures - MS make their money from sales, particularly on new PCs, and not from people who upgrade their 10 year old computer.
Imagine saying "Nokia are doing crap, because less than 30% of people with a phone have the latest Nokia phone"? Even if we restricted it to just look at people with Nokia phones, there's no reason to expect that 30% of them would have the latest product, since people tend to keep a phone for several years before upgrading. Same with computers.
I believe something like 8 years is common for the average non-geek user - so getting 30% in just 2 years is doing well.
Sure, most ordinary people happily bought new machines with XP. But the same is true now of Vista, despite what some people like to claim.
And just as geeks round here hate Vista and prefer XP, we were the ones who were running 2000, and hating XP back then.
So in both senses, the analogy is valid.
Well, it's true that Vista could be said to be a flop in comparison to XP, and I agree with:
Well.... not to offend any Linux users, or Mac users, but those operating systems are entirely irrelevant.
But it's still worth mentioning. All too often Mac fans telling us that Vista is a flop, therefore OS X is better. Just yesterday I saw a BBC article claiming that people were flocking to Macs as a result of Vista. No, the biggest competition is, as you say, is Microsoft themselves.
I still disagree it's a flop though - most people here are making the fallacy of conflating market share with entire installed userbase. Getting 30% of every computer in existence running a new OS in just two years is amazing success. I don't think any other company in any other industry could claim such figures - even if we only look at their own customers, and not all customers.
Consider, when Ford release a new model, are more than 30% of Ford cars in existence the latest model? Or are 30% of people with a Nokia phone running the latest Nokia phone?
I also wonder what the installed userbase of XP was, just 2 years after its release.
I have downgraded more Vista machines due to instability, driver issues, compatibility issues, etc. then I care to mention. Adoption rates were horrible.
That's anecdotal. What are the figures for Vista's market share (not installed userbase)? Even if we factored in downgrades, how would that change?
When businesses refuse to upgrade to Vista and keep XP machines plodding along, and consumers keep asking for downgrades continually, it cannot be considered anything but a failure.
They don't "refuse to upgrade", there's simply no point in upgrading operating systems unless they're buying new machines. Same happened with 2000 versus XP.
Vista was a repeat of Windows MilleniSuck(tm). Everyone knows this. Not just IT people either.
But Windows ME wasn't bad in comparison to 98 - the problem was that it was bad compared to 2000. The whole Windows 95, 98, Me line was awful, and by Windows 2000, people were starting to see how one OS line was far more stable than the other. Windows 2000 was intended for consumer use too, but then they deferred that to XP, and brought out ME. A better comparison would be when XP itself came out - people ridiculed it simply because it was new, and they preferred 2000. Same now with Vista vs XP.
And non-IT people only "know" what they're told, usually by a Mac or Linux fan who's hoping that by ridiculing Vista, he can tempt them onto his preferred OS, despite the fact that XP is what they should use as the alternative.
I am betting on Windows 7 having many times the adoption rates of Vista.
Perhaps, but "adoption rates" is again not really what they care about - it's market share, i.e., sales. And no one has provided any data on this, not in the article, nor in the comments. MS have always made most of their money from OSs shipped with new machines, rather than relying on hardcore upgraders.
The biggest problem with this discussion is that to some, to some people, saying anything about Vista means you are anti-MS. Not true. I am just anti-Vista.
Indeed, I agree. I'm no fan of Vista either, but I think throwing around misleading stats like "only" 30% like this article does doesn't help either. I fully agree with Vista's flaws, and look forward to Windows 7 resolving them - I just disagree that Vista has been any kind of flop, when you look at hard sales figures.
hehe it seems some MS morons got offended. Should I call mommy?
Eh? Looks to me more like an "Apple moron" got offended, since one of them decided to mod him down.
Sorry, not doing quite as well as they'd hoped isn't a "flop". It might harm their share price, sure, but "flop" has more implications than that.
Moreover, the quoted 30% statistic doesn't support this claim anyway - it's a survey of all computers, so it tells us nothing of what the market share of sales is. Even if 100% of operating systems sold were Vista, it might take a while to replace all the existing machines in existence.
The problem is that the survey is a survey of all PCs in existence, not market share of PCs being sold.
Go on, show me where Microsoft expected mass adoption of Vista on every PC - including ones too old to run it? Even if Microsoft had Vista on 100% of the market of new computers sold, it still might be true that the total proportion of all computers is less than 30%. Getting 30% of every computer in existence is pretty good going!
I'd be curious to know how many computers in existence were running XP, just two years after its release?
Indeed - the problem here is conflating bandwidth with latency.
The fact that offline methods can have higher bandwidth is nothing new or surprising - just shove a hard drive in the post or whatever, as you suggest, or for even more dramatic examples, the classic is a van or jumbo jet full of DVDs/hard drives.
There's nothing here that suggests the S African network is slow. Indeed, even on my home wifi, I can trivially move a hard drive, thumb drive or flash card between my two computers, much faster than the time it takes to transmit it through the network. A pigeon could too.
When we talk about networks being "fast" compared with offline methods, it's the latency we're talking about - how long does it take for a given piece of information to be transmitted?
Ah yes, didn't take long for the mod abuse to come along.
Come back when you have an actual argument, rather than mod points to abuse.
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true
The problem isn't that they control their developers, the problem is that they want to control the users - their customers, the products that you've bought.
---statement about fact, against a straw man argument. How is that a troll?
but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high.
Heh - Quicktime and Itunes have high usability? Typing is easier if you can't copy and paste? If you say so. But let's pretend your assertion is true, how does enforcing control on their platforms, such as banning C64 emulators, make it easy to use?
---Again, if you disagree about UI, say why? If you can only go running for the mod box, it suggests you have no argument. How is asking a simple question a troll?
As for Microsoft's website, the company's main product has a number of different interfaces for different things, when there's no sensible reason for it to be different (Office uses the Ribbon, but Internet Explorer doesn't, to take one example).
You are complaining that completely different kinds of applications have different interfaces? On the contrary, the reverse is true - the ribbon has it's place, but what's annoying is all the applications that have blindly copied the ribbon, even where it is completely unhelpful or inappropriate.
And Quicktime's interface looks different to Itune's, so is that bad too?
And Internet Explorer and Office are not different "things" within a single "product". They are what we call "applications". Internet Explorer and Officer are different "applications", which are two different products, and then Windows is an "operating system", another product. Even if you argued that IE is part of Windows, Office is not (and the point is moot, as different applications are shipped with OS X too, and they have different interfaces).
--- If anything, it's the nonsensical claim that Windows has different interfaces for the same product that is a troll.
Read about the Windows Shutdown Crapfest and think about the implications for their website.
Yeah, all large companies have their embarrassing stories of fail. Remind me again how much effort Apple spent trying to modernise Mac OS (Copeland, etc), before eventually they had to ditch it altogether and buy out another company to get an existing OS that could do the job better?
--- see how this mod would pretend that Copeland didn't exist, by modding down a mere mention of it? How can we ever get a fair comparison of companies, when any evidence that doesn't toe this mod's pro-Apple agenda is modded down?
Come out and join the debate, rather than hiding anonymously behind mod points.
Yet mere rumours about a possible new Apple product that might be launched some time in the future makes front page Slashdot news. And you complain about a mere comment? Nice double standard there.
I've never understood why it's mocked - a product being popular doesn't negate criticism of it. By that reasoning, we should equally be mocking anyone who's criticised Windows.
Also very limiting and confusing the way they divide the search results into different categories. If I don't know what category it's in (e.g., is something a product or a download?), I have to search each category separately.
Also annoying that you have to click twice to get to the full listing (first for "view next 5", then to the full list), again, basic UI mistakes.
Apple's site has three decades worth of hardware and software documentation on it. The Apple site still has manuals and system software for Apple II series machines, if you go looking for it.
Are all these things findable from direct links? And that doesn't negate the point - just because a company's been around for as long, doesn't mean it has as many products on its website.
Even using their search, the UI is so bad I can't find, e.g., downloads for System 7 (is it in products, or downloads?)
Sorry, their search is appalling. If you want to go to "View all search results", it takes me to a page with no results, just a search window. I hit enter again, in case it needs it (bad UI, as I've already said I wanted all results), wait absolutely ages for it to load, and then still get no results. What's going on? I tried it a bit later, and it worked, but it only seems to work about 50% of the time. If something went wrong, there's no error message - again, fundamentally bad UI mistakes.
I've learned over the years, however, that pretty much anything you want from an Apple web site can be found by typing 'apple/foo' in your location bar. Your browser will autofill the 'apple' to 'www.apple.com' and Apple maps all of their resources to the first part of the path - even if it ends up redirecting you to 'foo.apple.com' in the end. So, try 'apple/quicktime' or 'apple/developer' (or 'safari', or 'macosx' or 'iphone', etc). Very handy.
Doesn't work for me. Tested in IE and Opera.
Yes, it works if I do things like apple.com/developer, but big deal, I can do microsoft.com/windows, microsoft.com/office or microsoft.com/support. Microsoft have thought up obvious names for subfolders and redirects too.
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true
The problem isn't that they control their developers, the problem is that they want to control the users - their customers, the products that you've bought.
but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high.
Heh - Quicktime and Itunes have high usability? Typing is easier if you can't copy and paste? If you say so. But let's pretend your assertion is true, how does enforcing control on their platforms, such as banning C64 emulators, make it easy to use?
As for Microsoft's website, the company's main product has a number of different interfaces for different things, when there's no sensible reason for it to be different (Office uses the Ribbon, but Internet Explorer doesn't, to take one example).
You are complaining that completely different kinds of applications have different interfaces? On the contrary, the reverse is true - the ribbon has it's place, but what's annoying is all the applications that have blindly copied the ribbon, even where it is completely unhelpful or inappropriate.
And Quicktime's interface looks different to Itune's, so is that bad too?
And Internet Explorer and Office are not different "things" within a single "product". They are what we call "applications". Internet Explorer and Officer are different "applications", which are two different products, and then Windows is an "operating system", another product. Even if you argued that IE is part of Windows, Office is not (and the point is moot, as different applications are shipped with OS X too, and they have different interfaces).
Read about the Windows Shutdown Crapfest and think about the implications for their website.
Yeah, all large companies have their embarrassing stories of fail. Remind me again how much effort Apple spent trying to modernise Mac OS (Copeland, etc), before eventually they had to ditch it altogether and buy out another company to get an existing OS that could do the job better?
Agreed - that, and Quicktime too. Appalling UIs. Now sure, normally one might say it's unfair to judge Macs here based on their Windows software, but given that "But they are good at UIs" is the one thing we hear about them, and given that there's no reason why Windows is to blame for Quicktime's and Itune's poor UIs (indeed, as you note, they specifically avoid the Windows GUI and guidelines), it makes me very suspicious about the claims of "good UIs" in general.
But apparently, because Apple's website is slightly less cluttered than Microsoft's, I should be basing my decision to buy a Mac solely on that. Hell, even Slashdot's UI beats those two.
go to get QuickTime
Go to get QuickTime, and when you run it, find the good UI grounds to a halt.
To be honest I'm not bothered about whether Apple's or Microsoft's website is less crap, when they're both awful compared to many other websites, and I hardly ever visit them. I'm more concerned about the applications I run.
Microsoft's website spams me about IE 8. Apple shove a full screen image with an Ipod advert, meaning I have to click to get to anything else. Microsoft might seem a bit more cluttered. But when you go to one of the Apple sub-pages (e.g., Mac), there's just as much clutter. Honestly, who cares - they're both designed by people who know little about creating decent websites. It's just a shame that with Apple, the bad UI team got let loose on Quicktime and Itunes, and god knows what else too.
"Windows" and "Office" are product lines. What is "All Products"? "Buy Now" is an action, not a product line. The rest of the categories are a continued mixed bag of products, types of customers, and actions. There are too many of them, they are poorly sorted.
Why on earth should the banner only contain "product lines"? And by that logic, "store", "downloads" and "support" aren't product lines either! Indeed, as you list yourself, Apple's banner is also a "mixed bag".
and a relatively cluttered batch of what I'm sure are important marketing messages and stuff, but are unlikely to be relevant to me on a home page. When I click on "Office", you can tell me about the latest Office, I don't need a marketing blurb about it cluttering up the home page thanks.
Yeah, there's obviously no marketing blurb on Apple's website. Not the full screen ad image. Not the "news" that brags "Snow Leopard a software platform for the future", or the claim of "The World's Most Advance Operating System"(!) Or "Why you'll love a Mac".
I agree that Apple have less clutter on the front page, but that's only because they've shoehorned it into all the subpages, and there's still plenty of marketing blurb, on the front page, and elsewhere.
Please someone deliver the west from the mindless, fanatical Christians and Internet Atheists...two sides of the same bent coin.
Wow, I wish the worse that the fanatics ever did was "post things I disagree with on Slashdot".
Please, someone save us from this!
But that doesn't make sense either - why should worshipping the dollar mean throwing away trillions on a war? It's not private enterprise that's going to war, it's the Government. War is bad for economies.
Maybe he meant worship of Oil...
I remember those days - Mac users would brag about "Think Different" due to not running Windows, and then run a whole suite of Microsoft products such as Office, Internet Explorer etc...
(Although I see that now, "Think Different" is replaced with "Get an iSomething to be like everyone else"...)
People have emotions and a desire to be free and independent. A machine will not.
People are machines. Unless you are going to invoke supernatural nonsense like "souls", there is no reason why a machine constructed by humans couldn't have the same emotions and desires that humans have (and indeed, this article is about motivation, which would give you that desire).
Now this doesn't mean that any artificially intelligence machine is necessarily sentient. But unless you've cracked the problem of consciousness, I don't think you can be sure.
We may hit an ethical problem where we are able to build machines with intelligence and behaviour indistinguishable from humans, before we know whether they are conscious or not. Should they have rights? Are you willing to take the risk of condemning generations of sentient machines to slavery, when you have no scientific way to distinguish between them and humans? (And yes, I realise I'm quoting Captain Picard here, in his defence of Data.)
I think the whole point of AI is
There is no one point of AI. Many researchers have different goals. If it's possible to build machines that aim for human behaviour, then someone will.
And why do you think so much importance is given to the Turing Test, if behaving as a human is considered unimportant in AI?
Already done that.
But I'll criticise a story about a poor platform, just like everyone complains about Windows bugs and stupid actions from Microsoft or any other company round here. Why should Apple and the Iphone platform be held to any different standard?
Plus maybe it'll be nice to have some more news coverage of the numerous other mobile phones available.
They discovered someone could do this:
10 PRINT "APPLE SUCKS!"
20 GOTO 10
False dichotomy.
And you know, it isn't a competition. People who complain about CCTV are more likely to be people who complain about this sort of thing - they are hardly going to be supporting it. Unless you have evidence that the DHS is bitching about UK CCTV, your attempt to criticise people for hypocrasy is a straw man argument.
(I'm British too, but your argument makes no sense.)