"You simply can't escape poor management in the software world..."
When I said, "Better managed alternatives", I was being positive about some part of a very negative situation. I didn't make that clear. Pale Moon and Waterfox are better than nothing, but still part of a situation that is, overall, poorly managed.
Also, it is mostly hidden how Pale Moon and Waterfox are managed, and why.
It's important that this issue not become off-topic. All that is being theorized is that Apple CEO Tim Cook, like almost everyone, is not sufficiently capable of being the top-level manager of a huge company like Apple.
That is my experience with Pale Moon, also. The latest version, 27.6.0 (64-bits), is far more stable than Firefox. Recently I had to do a lot of research. I had 55 windows and 135 tabs open. There were no problems.
1) I agree. The other companies are often worse at communicating.
It is difficult to understand the underlying issues because it is difficult to get basic information. For example, the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is often useless. I found little evidence in the book that Isaacson knows about technology, or has an interest in knowing.
Steve Jobs was often excellent at communicating. I don't see evidence of that understanding of the need to communicate clearly in the Apple of today.
2) The success of Apple is partly due to an amazingly self- and other-destructive failure by Google. Cell phone companies could use Google Android, but prevent updates! The cell phone company message: Want to avoid newly discovered vulnerabilities? Buy a new phone and throw the original phone away; we want easy money.
Another reason for Apple's success is due to social issues. In many countries, if you don't have the latest iPhone, you are considered a poor person, or socially inferior.
Underlying that is the fact that having a cell phone gives many advantages. Part of what has made Apple so rich is that having a cell phone is worth a considerable amount of money because it makes life more efficient.
3) I agree. All the cell phone companies have arranged product confusion for themselves.
Good point. This is an example of a common problem of understanding management. Who is responsible for Apple's success? What part of Apple's success is due to Tim Cook being CEO?
An extremely important contribution of Steve Jobs was making sure nothing flawed was released. The iPhone 4 was released with antenna problems on June 24, 2010. It was a mistake someone with experience with radio frequency transmission would easily have understood. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, and was not managing long before that. Tim Cook officially became CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011.
2) "Stop and ask what real world problems the iPhone X answers. There are a lot of cute answers but on a practical sense the iPhone X offers very little on top of the iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus, which in turn are only incremental bumps over last year's models."
3) Product confusion: "Now it takes a ridiculous amount of research and comparison to find the iPhone that may suit your needs, and there is not a single device that offers all of features in a single package - every iPhone has some form of limitation and restriction designed into it."
Maybe they should make a movie, "Why Intel went bankrupt."
How can you deliver Intel (and AMD) computers to customers knowing that there is secret control by unknown agencies? Do you tell the customers? If you don't tell the customers, can you be taken to court and sued for damages?
Does anyone think that secret government agencies are well-managed? No one at a secret agency would ever steal?
Could the problem be solved by isolating Intel computers from the Internet, providing internet access from other computers, and providing some secure method of data transfer?
The problem of hidden access is not just with Intel and AMD. Microsoft does it: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC.
"The odds of new customers heeding [corrected] this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule,..."
It seems to me it was very self-destructive for Logitech to do something that caused there to be a story on Slashdot about bad management at Logitech.
I think most Slashdot readers don't realize how many people read Slashdot. Each one of those readers has family and friends who sometimes ask for advice.
Some Slashdot readers buy products for sale at stores or online.
"This is cloud appliancing: Better get used to it. It's the future!"
I agree, it's cloudy thinking by Logitech managers. Saves Logitech how much money? Then subtract the damage to Logitech's reputation. The loss, I'm guessing, is in the tens of millions.
You are doing something people often do on Slashdot. You are trying to find something wrong with what I said, and avoiding the logic.
Amazon competes with bookstores. Bookstores have traditionally been badly managed. Yes, in many cases Amazon is better than physical bookstores.
Going into the edge of space requires EXTREMELY careful management. I have never seen an indication that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is good at handling huge numbers of details. The sloppiness and self-defeat I see in the design of Amazon web pages is an example of not handling details well. Anyone have any information against that idea?
Blue Origin "spacecraft" don't orbit, they just go to the edge of space. The Blue Origin website home page requires loading some data from Cloudfront.net, and is badly designed in other ways. The Blue Origin home page says: "Our reusable rocket made history with the first ever vertical landing from space. Soon it will launch you into history too, as a pioneer in the next era of human spaceflight."
It is possible that Mr. Bezos has little involvement in the day-to-day management of Blue Origin. However, if there are sloppy details on the Blue Origin web site home page, do you think the company is, overall, good with details?
Do you want to be a tourist "launched into history" by a company that is sometimes excellent with details, and sometimes sloppy? Does it make sense to risk your life to view Earth from space, when you can get very clear high-definition photos and videos and view them safely at home?
Would you fly into space with a company owned by a CEO of a company that can't make a sensible web page?
Almost every Amazon web page has poor design. Book listings don't tell when the book was published, so you don't know the edition. Amazon web pages distract you by trying to sell you something else rather than the product you are considering. There are many other examples. Often an attractive low price is listed, but the shipping cost is huge.
"You cannot give a mathematical proof of something in the physical world. At most, you can give a mathematical proof that something is true in some model of the physical world."
Thanks for saying that. This Slashdot story is about a nonsense article with a click-bait title.
Any theoretical model of biochemical aging must include all facts that have already been gathered, such as these:
You are trying to see areas in which I am wrong, instead of cooperating and trying to see how what I said could be correct.
Nothing I said was intended to be a complete analysis of Google management of the last few years. I agree that GMail is a wonderful contribution.
I'm studying how successful companies eventually fail. For me, it was painful to watch Hewlett-Packard destroy itself. One article: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way (May 8, 2012).
Google allowed Android cell phone company customers to prevent installation of Android updates. That has been extraordinarily destructive. There are many complaints about Google selling services that allow it to track web site visitors. There are smaller failures that indicate there has been insufficient oversight by Google management.
The fact that Google has succeeded very nicely in some areas does not take away from a study of the scary self-defeat.
Add-ons marked as Legacy: All but CanvasBlocker, Ghostery, Nuke Anything, and uBlock Origin in the list below. Wow! NoScript is marked as legacy!
Add-ons Links Firefox, WaterFox, and Pale Moon Browsers
For security: Get add-ons only from Mozilla.org web pages. Pale moon add-ons
List:
Adblock
LatitudeFor Pale Moon browser only. Blocks display of ads.
"Adblock Latitude is a direct fork of Adblock Plus made specifically for the Pale
Moon browser."
BetterPrivacy
Deletes Local Shared Objects, LSOs. LSOs are files placed on your computer by the
Adobe Systems Flash plug-in. Use of Adobe Flash allows web sites to track you,
permanently even though your browser is configured to delete the files known as
"Cookies" after each re-starting of your operating system.
CanvasBiocker
Prevents websites from using the Javascript <canvas> API to fingerprint
them.
"This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017."
"This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017 and Mozilla
drops support for XUL / XPCOM / legacy add-ons. It should still work on Firefox 52
ESR until ESR moves to Firefox 59 ESR in 2018 (~Q2)".
"There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the
entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets
dropped without replacement."
Facebook
Blocker Prevents Facebook from following you everywhere there are
Facebook "Like" buttons.
Firebug
"Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your
fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and
JavaScript live in any web page..."
FlashStopper
Stops video autoplay and shows a preview thumbnail. On Sept. 9, 2017 does not work
with YouTube because it prevents reading comments; there is a working version in the
development branch.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, it says in Antigua and Barbuda the suicide rate is zero.
I also Google all numbers not in my list. Never answer robocalls. That encourages them.
It's good to see the U.S. government acting as it should. About 15 years late, but better than never.
The article linked in the Slashdot summary has little information.
The FCC meets today to discuss the new rules: FCC Commission Meets Tomorrow; Will Address Robocall Blocking (Nov. 15, yesterday)
I found a PDF of the FCC's ideas about helping prevent robocalls at the November 2017 Open Commission Meeting -- Blocking Unlawful Robocalls (PDF).
The summary? Nothing has been done yet.
"You simply can't escape poor management in the software world..."
When I said, "Better managed alternatives", I was being positive about some part of a very negative situation. I didn't make that clear. Pale Moon and Waterfox are better than nothing, but still part of a situation that is, overall, poorly managed.
Also, it is mostly hidden how Pale Moon and Waterfox are managed, and why.
Alternatives:
Waterfox portable.
Pale Moon 64-bits
Pale Moon 32-bits
Pale Moon Portable
Ghostery does not install in Pale Moon, so I use the Disconnect extension. Disconnect's interface is not as well-designed.
More evidence of insufficient management at Apple:
iPhone X Owners Complain About Distortion, Crackling Sounds From Earpiece
It's important that this issue not become off-topic. All that is being theorized is that Apple CEO Tim Cook, like almost everyone, is not sufficiently capable of being the top-level manager of a huge company like Apple.
Is the iPhone X face ID a good idea? Watch a 10-Year-Old's Face Unlock His Mom's iPhone X
That is my experience with Pale Moon, also. The latest version, 27.6.0 (64-bits), is far more stable than Firefox. Recently I had to do a lot of research. I had 55 windows and 135 tabs open. There were no problems.
Pale Moon 64-bits
Pale Moon 32-bits
Pale Moon Portable
Ghostery does not install in Pale Moon, so I use the Disconnect extension.
I like Waterfox portable.
Another example of sloppy management at Apple? Hackers Say They've Broken Face ID a Week After iPhone X Release.
Is body ID a good idea? Maybe not: Flight diverted after woman discovers her husband is cheating on her. Her husband was sleeping. She pressed the phone on his fingers.
1) I agree. The other companies are often worse at communicating.
It is difficult to understand the underlying issues because it is difficult to get basic information. For example, the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is often useless. I found little evidence in the book that Isaacson knows about technology, or has an interest in knowing.
Steve Jobs was often excellent at communicating. I don't see evidence of that understanding of the need to communicate clearly in the Apple of today.
2) The success of Apple is partly due to an amazingly self- and other-destructive failure by Google. Cell phone companies could use Google Android, but prevent updates! The cell phone company message: Want to avoid newly discovered vulnerabilities? Buy a new phone and throw the original phone away; we want easy money.
Apple didn't do that: Update the iOS on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Another reason for Apple's success is due to social issues. In many countries, if you don't have the latest iPhone, you are considered a poor person, or socially inferior.
Underlying that is the fact that having a cell phone gives many advantages. Part of what has made Apple so rich is that having a cell phone is worth a considerable amount of money because it makes life more efficient.
3) I agree. All the cell phone companies have arranged product confusion for themselves.
Good point. This is an example of a common problem of understanding management. Who is responsible for Apple's success? What part of Apple's success is due to Tim Cook being CEO?
An extremely important contribution of Steve Jobs was making sure nothing flawed was released. The iPhone 4 was released with antenna problems on June 24, 2010. It was a mistake someone with experience with radio frequency transmission would easily have understood. Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, and was not managing long before that. Tim Cook officially became CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011.
Since then, management of Apple has apparently become far more sloppy, For example: iPhone X Is Everything Wrong With Tim Cook's Apple
Here are problems mentioned in that article:
1) Announced before being ready.
2) "Stop and ask what real world problems the iPhone X answers. There are a lot of cute answers but on a practical sense the iPhone X offers very little on top of the iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus, which in turn are only incremental bumps over last year's models."
3) Product confusion: "Now it takes a ridiculous amount of research and comparison to find the iPhone that may suit your needs, and there is not a single device that offers all of features in a single package - every iPhone has some form of limitation and restriction designed into it."
To me, that looks like poor overall management. There is sloppiness that didn't exist when Steve Jobs was in control. Steve Jobs was far from perfect; he had wacky ideas about health care, for example: Steve Jobs 'regretted trying to beat cancer with alternative medicine for so long'.
Jobs was known for delivering an excellent customer experience. That's what made Apple different from competitors.
The link helps people remember some details.
There seems to be no evidence that Tim Cook is able to lead Apple.
Epoxy is easily removed using a Dremel tool.
Maybe they should make a movie, "Why Intel went bankrupt."
How can you deliver Intel (and AMD) computers to customers knowing that there is secret control by unknown agencies? Do you tell the customers? If you don't tell the customers, can you be taken to court and sued for damages?
Does anyone think that secret government agencies are well-managed? No one at a secret agency would ever steal?
Could the problem be solved by isolating Intel computers from the Internet, providing internet access from other computers, and providing some secure method of data transfer?
This Ask Slashdot story didn't get sufficient attention, in my opinion: Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Isolate a Network And Allow Data Transfer?
The problem of hidden access is not just with Intel and AMD. Microsoft does it: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made Quote: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC.
"The odds of new customers heeding [corrected] this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule, ..."
It seems to me it was very self-destructive for Logitech to do something that caused there to be a story on Slashdot about bad management at Logitech.
I think most Slashdot readers don't realize how many people read Slashdot. Each one of those readers has family and friends who sometimes ask for advice.
Some Slashdot readers buy products for sale at stores or online.
"This is cloud appliancing: Better get used to it. It's the future!"
I agree, it's cloudy thinking by Logitech managers. Saves Logitech how much money? Then subtract the damage to Logitech's reputation. The loss, I'm guessing, is in the tens of millions.
Could someone at Google steal your book, or ideas from your book?
Stephen Hawking is not a socially aware person. He is intelligent in other ways.
You are doing something people often do on Slashdot. You are trying to find something wrong with what I said, and avoiding the logic.
Amazon competes with bookstores. Bookstores have traditionally been badly managed. Yes, in many cases Amazon is better than physical bookstores.
Going into the edge of space requires EXTREMELY careful management. I have never seen an indication that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is good at handling huge numbers of details. The sloppiness and self-defeat I see in the design of Amazon web pages is an example of not handling details well. Anyone have any information against that idea?
Blue Origin "spacecraft" don't orbit, they just go to the edge of space. The Blue Origin website home page requires loading some data from Cloudfront.net, and is badly designed in other ways. The Blue Origin home page says: "Our reusable rocket made history with the first ever vertical landing from space. Soon it will launch you into history too, as a pioneer in the next era of human spaceflight."
It is possible that Mr. Bezos has little involvement in the day-to-day management of Blue Origin. However, if there are sloppy details on the Blue Origin web site home page, do you think the company is, overall, good with details?
Do you want to be a tourist "launched into history" by a company that is sometimes excellent with details, and sometimes sloppy? Does it make sense to risk your life to view Earth from space, when you can get very clear high-definition photos and videos and view them safely at home?
Would you fly into space with a company owned by a CEO of a company that can't make a sensible web page?
Almost every Amazon web page has poor design. Book listings don't tell when the book was published, so you don't know the edition. Amazon web pages distract you by trying to sell you something else rather than the product you are considering. There are many other examples. Often an attractive low price is listed, but the shipping cost is huge.
"You cannot give a mathematical proof of something in the physical world. At most, you can give a mathematical proof that something is true in some model of the physical world."
Thanks for saying that. This Slashdot story is about a nonsense article with a click-bait title.
Any theoretical model of biochemical aging must include all facts that have already been gathered, such as these:
Longest-living animal species
400-year-old Greenland shark 'longest-living vertebrate'
Longest-living mammal: Bowhead whale. Quote: "... over 200 years."
"... cloud, which is actually water vapor..."
Funny.
You are trying to see areas in which I am wrong, instead of cooperating and trying to see how what I said could be correct.
Nothing I said was intended to be a complete analysis of Google management of the last few years. I agree that GMail is a wonderful contribution.
I'm studying how successful companies eventually fail. For me, it was painful to watch Hewlett-Packard destroy itself. One article: How Hewlett-Packard lost its way (May 8, 2012).
Another example: Tektronix was once a wonderful leader in electronic measuring devices. Now: Tektronix, five years after sale to Danaher, continues to shed jobs and struggle (Dec. 08, 2012).
Google allowed Android cell phone company customers to prevent installation of Android updates. That has been extraordinarily destructive. There are many complaints about Google selling services that allow it to track web site visitors. There are smaller failures that indicate there has been insufficient oversight by Google management.
The fact that Google has succeeded very nicely in some areas does not take away from a study of the scary self-defeat.
"... I can't help feel that our lives have been nothing but improved by these companies."
Google search improved our lives ENORMOUSLY, I agree. In other areas, Google is not as well-managed, in my opinion.
Wow! You are more knowledgeable than I about add-ons. I will do some research and modify my list.
Add-ons Links
Firefox, WaterFox, and Pale Moon Browsers
For security: Get add-ons only from Mozilla.org web pages.
Pale moon add-ons
List:
"This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017."
"This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017 and Mozilla drops support for XUL / XPCOM / legacy add-ons. It should still work on Firefox 52 ESR until ESR moves to Firefox 59 ESR in 2018 (~Q2)".
"There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets dropped without replacement."