Post ignorant comment, get modded up. Apple will never lock the desktop Mac OS X to an App Store. It sees the desktop OSs as a completely different market to the iPhone and iPad.
The future will be full of "locked-down" computing appliances like iPhone and iPad. Eventually only the geeks will be running regular desktop computers. This terrifies a lot of geeks, but it's exactly how it was always going to pan out. Computers in the future will work just like in Star Trek, with no need for users to know how to fiddle with its insides. It'll be just like magic.
I love it how the zealous cases keep saying Apple should be prevented from doing this, prevented from doing that. They make great products, and that's why they're so popular. If you don't like their politics and locked down approach, then make a better "open" product. Just don't expect the rest of the world to put up with the shitty UI and user experience.
You're just an ignorant dumbass. Most iPhone-optimised sites use a liquid layout. You know, the type that stretch to fit the width of the browser window. If you knew at all what you were talking about, you would have realised this.
Rave about some made-up bullshit and get modded up, nice plan.
Re:The real "secret" of Apple
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's the basic tenets of good usability/UX design. You don't ask your users exactly what they want/need, because often they don't have a clear idea in the first place. So you do lots of testing and research to figure out what to put in. Iterate and refine the hell out of it. Ruthlessly cut features which are rarely used.
A lot of ignorant geeks feel this is a load of bullshit and hence they fear and loathe Apple and other user-centered design companies. Non-geeks have no such hangups, because they instinctively know that these kinds of products are better and easier for them to use.
I get cramps when playing certain FPS-style games on iPhone for an hour or more, but that's basically a cue that I've been spending too much time on it. I'm not sure whether the iPad's bigger form factor will lessen the RSI factor.
Point taken, though I suspect your eyes would be just as wrecked if you spent 10 hours reading on a Kindle or a real paperback book. At least, my eyes feel like that after a marathon reading session.
It's important to take breaks, no matter what device/medium you're reading on, and no matter how addictive the book is.
There's a lot more geeks open minded enough about usability and user interfaces these days. I've seen a lot of my geek friends change over to Macs and iPhones over the years. I have no doubt quite a few of them will be using iPads soon.
I don't understand why people encourage jailbreaking. I think it's completely pointless. There are other great phones out there -- if Apple devices don't let you run what you want, just use something else. The way I see it, jailbreaking makes your iPhone potentially unstable and introduces vulnerabilities. Yet I know a fair few geeks who are crazy about jailbreaking and proceed to load up their iPhone with lots of weird utilities and other junk that runs in the background. It baffles me -- I think they could be a lot more productive on something like the N900 or the Google Nexus.
I love my iPhone and I don't have a use for any of the apps that you can run with jailbreaking, so I'm happy with it in the vanilla state.
I was a bit disappointed in the rather low-res nature of the iPad display. I wish they'd gone for something like 150dpi or higher, like the Kindle. I suppose the iPad can make up for that in part through anti-aliasing -- I wonder if it'll use subpixel anti-aliasing? IPS display is superb, but I sort of treated that as a given.
I too am hoping the ambient light adjustment works superbly on the iPad, but I'll have to wait and see. It's fairly horrible and unreliable on my 2G iPhone at the moment.
It's just the usual bunch of hardware geeks dismissing anything to do with usability and user experience design. "OMG we don't want to dumb down computers for the unwashed masses" etc
I generally agree with your assessment on Tablet PCs becoming more popular and so on, but I have to say the iPad doesn't fall into that category at all. It's not a "computer" in the normal sense -- you can't run a desktop operating system on it. It really is a new category of device.
Personally, I have an Eee PC 901 and I hardly ever use it now. I think netbooks and the upcoming nettablets are an unacceptable compromise, with too many shortcomings. We don't just need smaller, lighter, slower and more unergonomic computers. What average consumers really want is something that can perform everyday lifestyle computing tasks, designed from the ground up to be an intuitive and easy-to-use handheld device. Steve Jobs recognised that, and that is what the iPad addresses. But hey, that's just my opinion.
The same old tired excuse -- did you even look at the article and linked blog entry? This isn't about stealing of ideas, this is stealing work pixel-for-pixel. That's never OK, and has nothing to do with open source or "artistic inspiration".
I think Steve Jobs was just waiting for CPU/memory/battery capacity to catch up to the point where multitasking will be smooth enough that he's happy with it. He's a control freak and a perfectionist, and if something doesn't work just right, he'd rather omit it altogether than include an inferior implementation. That's why Copy & Paste took so long to arrive on iPhone OS.
I'm still using an original 2G iPhone, and I'm wondering whether iPhone OS 4.0 will be able to run on my device. Steve might decide to disallow it if the multitasking performance is not up to par on older devices.
I'm not trying to troll you or anything here, but in what ways was the Apple II so open that the current Macs aren't? And just to be clear, we're talking about computers, not the "appliances" like iPods or iPhones.
Steve Jobs is an industrial design geek. He sees the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad as appliances, not full-blown computers, so to him they don't need to be open and hackable. In fact, to Jobs, as appliances it's desirable to limit them and lock them down -- it's less likely to confuse novice users and they can't break things as easily. Despite what some foolish pundits say, Macintosh computers aren't going to be locked down in the same way. But what we will see in the future is more and more "appliances" being sold, which will supplant traditional computers. Eventually, only the hardcore geeks and tinkerers will be using "computers" as we know them.
Agreed, definitely. I would love the option to buy a mid-range tower Mac. I just can't afford a Mac Pro, and gaming on an iMac with its limited mobile GPU kind of scares me...
I dread to think what other publishers will come up with when it comes to DRM for Mac games. Bearing in mind that Steam in itself has DRM already -- though I think it's unobtrusive enough (like Apple's DRM) that it doesn't really bother me.
I also think that the piracy scene on Mac is seriously underestimated. To me at least, it seems piracy is as popular on the Mac as it is on Windows. I think the key to fighting this is to do what Valve did with Steam: make it easy and convenient for people to buy games, and offer value through regular sales with big savings.
With the current 13" MBPs, they only have the 9400M available. Strange, I know, but I suspect it's because of heat dissipation issues.
Hopefully Apple will soon figure out a way to get a decent dedicated GPU into the 13" MBP line.
The "problem" with Apple's desktop computers is that most of them are compact/slim and hence use mobile GPUs. This cripples their capabilities significantly. It's a trade-off.
Slashdot Mirror
Post ignorant comment, get modded up. Apple will never lock the desktop Mac OS X to an App Store. It sees the desktop OSs as a completely different market to the iPhone and iPad.
The future will be full of "locked-down" computing appliances like iPhone and iPad. Eventually only the geeks will be running regular desktop computers. This terrifies a lot of geeks, but it's exactly how it was always going to pan out. Computers in the future will work just like in Star Trek, with no need for users to know how to fiddle with its insides. It'll be just like magic.
I love it how the zealous cases keep saying Apple should be prevented from doing this, prevented from doing that. They make great products, and that's why they're so popular. If you don't like their politics and locked down approach, then make a better "open" product. Just don't expect the rest of the world to put up with the shitty UI and user experience.
You're just an ignorant dumbass. Most iPhone-optimised sites use a liquid layout. You know, the type that stretch to fit the width of the browser window. If you knew at all what you were talking about, you would have realised this.
Rave about some made-up bullshit and get modded up, nice plan.
It's the basic tenets of good usability/UX design. You don't ask your users exactly what they want/need, because often they don't have a clear idea in the first place. So you do lots of testing and research to figure out what to put in. Iterate and refine the hell out of it. Ruthlessly cut features which are rarely used.
A lot of ignorant geeks feel this is a load of bullshit and hence they fear and loathe Apple and other user-centered design companies. Non-geeks have no such hangups, because they instinctively know that these kinds of products are better and easier for them to use.
So what would make it really special then?
What a ridiculous, extremist and fundamentalist argument.
It's none of your business what other people choose to buy.
I get cramps when playing certain FPS-style games on iPhone for an hour or more, but that's basically a cue that I've been spending too much time on it. I'm not sure whether the iPad's bigger form factor will lessen the RSI factor.
Point taken, though I suspect your eyes would be just as wrecked if you spent 10 hours reading on a Kindle or a real paperback book. At least, my eyes feel like that after a marathon reading session.
It's important to take breaks, no matter what device/medium you're reading on, and no matter how addictive the book is.
Did you apply the handbrake as well? That's one of my fears too, that the brakes will slow the car but not enough to actually stop it.
There's a lot more geeks open minded enough about usability and user interfaces these days. I've seen a lot of my geek friends change over to Macs and iPhones over the years. I have no doubt quite a few of them will be using iPads soon.
This is Slashdot. UI is for weak-willed whiners and pussies.
I don't understand why people encourage jailbreaking. I think it's completely pointless. There are other great phones out there -- if Apple devices don't let you run what you want, just use something else. The way I see it, jailbreaking makes your iPhone potentially unstable and introduces vulnerabilities.
Yet I know a fair few geeks who are crazy about jailbreaking and proceed to load up their iPhone with lots of weird utilities and other junk that runs in the background. It baffles me -- I think they could be a lot more productive on something like the N900 or the Google Nexus.
I love my iPhone and I don't have a use for any of the apps that you can run with jailbreaking, so I'm happy with it in the vanilla state.
I was a bit disappointed in the rather low-res nature of the iPad display. I wish they'd gone for something like 150dpi or higher, like the Kindle. I suppose the iPad can make up for that in part through anti-aliasing -- I wonder if it'll use subpixel anti-aliasing? IPS display is superb, but I sort of treated that as a given.
I too am hoping the ambient light adjustment works superbly on the iPad, but I'll have to wait and see. It's fairly horrible and unreliable on my 2G iPhone at the moment.
It's just the usual bunch of hardware geeks dismissing anything to do with usability and user experience design.
"OMG we don't want to dumb down computers for the unwashed masses" etc
We need more usability geeks here.
I generally agree with your assessment on Tablet PCs becoming more popular and so on, but I have to say the iPad doesn't fall into that category at all. It's not a "computer" in the normal sense -- you can't run a desktop operating system on it. It really is a new category of device.
Personally, I have an Eee PC 901 and I hardly ever use it now. I think netbooks and the upcoming nettablets are an unacceptable compromise, with too many shortcomings. We don't just need smaller, lighter, slower and more unergonomic computers. What average consumers really want is something that can perform everyday lifestyle computing tasks, designed from the ground up to be an intuitive and easy-to-use handheld device. Steve Jobs recognised that, and that is what the iPad addresses. But hey, that's just my opinion.
The same old tired excuse -- did you even look at the article and linked blog entry? This isn't about stealing of ideas, this is stealing work pixel-for-pixel. That's never OK, and has nothing to do with open source or "artistic inspiration".
I think it may be an option that you have to turn on in the settings. Kinda like the caps lock feature.
I think Steve Jobs was just waiting for CPU/memory/battery capacity to catch up to the point where multitasking will be smooth enough that he's happy with it. He's a control freak and a perfectionist, and if something doesn't work just right, he'd rather omit it altogether than include an inferior implementation. That's why Copy & Paste took so long to arrive on iPhone OS.
I'm still using an original 2G iPhone, and I'm wondering whether iPhone OS 4.0 will be able to run on my device. Steve might decide to disallow it if the multitasking performance is not up to par on older devices.
I love how some jackass modded you Flamebait just for sharing your experiences.
Brilliant!
I'm not trying to troll you or anything here, but in what ways was the Apple II so open that the current Macs aren't? And just to be clear, we're talking about computers, not the "appliances" like iPods or iPhones.
Steve Jobs is an industrial design geek. He sees the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad as appliances, not full-blown computers, so to him they don't need to be open and hackable. In fact, to Jobs, as appliances it's desirable to limit them and lock them down -- it's less likely to confuse novice users and they can't break things as easily. Despite what some foolish pundits say, Macintosh computers aren't going to be locked down in the same way. But what we will see in the future is more and more "appliances" being sold, which will supplant traditional computers. Eventually, only the hardcore geeks and tinkerers will be using "computers" as we know them.
You can use other programs instead of iTunes to put music on your iPod. Do a Google search.
I've had this problem too. I still put up with Steam, mostly for the Valve games, because they're so damn good.
Agreed, definitely. I would love the option to buy a mid-range tower Mac. I just can't afford a Mac Pro, and gaming on an iMac with its limited mobile GPU kind of scares me...
I dread to think what other publishers will come up with when it comes to DRM for Mac games. Bearing in mind that Steam in itself has DRM already -- though I think it's unobtrusive enough (like Apple's DRM) that it doesn't really bother me.
I also think that the piracy scene on Mac is seriously underestimated. To me at least, it seems piracy is as popular on the Mac as it is on Windows. I think the key to fighting this is to do what Valve did with Steam: make it easy and convenient for people to buy games, and offer value through regular sales with big savings.
With the current 13" MBPs, they only have the 9400M available. Strange, I know, but I suspect it's because of heat dissipation issues.
Hopefully Apple will soon figure out a way to get a decent dedicated GPU into the 13" MBP line.
The "problem" with Apple's desktop computers is that most of them are compact/slim and hence use mobile GPUs. This cripples their capabilities significantly. It's a trade-off.