No, no - the slashdot crowd said "it will tank, like the Apple TV, no one will buy one.
Now that it has sold at twice the rate of the iPhone at launch, slashdot will attempt to retcon their predictions of failure into statements like yours.
And for the record, I have not bought one - I can't see a personal need for one at the moment since I do most of my browsing and TV watching from my iMac.
I think there is an enormous chip on many people here about a device (and company as a whole) who do things differently to the way prescribed by the tech elite crowd who "know how things should be done" and despite this difference still being able to successfully sell their products. The only way to soothe their hurt pride is to declare that "only retards and yuppies" are buying those products because "they have clearly been conned by slick marketing".
Newsflash: not everyone has the same set of criteria when making purchasing decisions. But then, you already knew that.
You need to add "it's a piece of crap in [your] opinion" to be in line with reality.
You're sitting at your hand-built Linux box, writing 24/7 about how the iPad is a worthless product that no one should buy, right?
When you come home from your 9-5 job in front of a computer, you sit in front of another almost identical computer to browse the web and check up on a few friends, right?
As you may have noticed, if you look at the timestamp on my reply to myself, I added a correction to my typo immediately - well, immediately +30, since the flood protection wouldn't let me reply that quickly.
The original article was from Fox News - I'm just amazed they realised it was a damn, and not a giant vacuum cleaner given the quality of their fact checking.
It really depends on the circumstances. The crowd who like to promote the "UK is a police state! You can get arrested for buying a knife in a store and carrying it home on the bus!" sort of scaremongering would have you believe that, yes, you *will* be arrested for that, but the reality is it's down to the police to make a judgement. If you're carrying that in the door pocket of your car, then it is likely to be confiscated. If you are carrying it in toolbox of chef knives in the same car, they are unlikely to.
It's all about context. As a general rule, if you are carrying a blade whose primary use is as a weapon (even if it was designed for something else, like a kitchen knife originally), either for offence or defence, you face trouble from the police if you are caught with it.
Because not everyone on slashdot is deluded into thinking Apple are the second coming of Mephistopheles.
And not every slashdotter is the same - some may even have a use for a device that another slashdotter may find totally useless.
Im my world, Linux is the "Toy OS" (literally - I don't use it for any work, I am just learning and experimenting), but I would never say that because I personally don't think it suits my needs that it is shocking to me that other people do use it on their own hardware.
This is why it was such an annoyance that the US version of Harry Potter was not only renamed "sorcerer's stone" (wtf, Americans won't know what a philosopher's stone is?), but references like "torch" being changed to "flashlight" just... dilute it.
It's no wonder people have trouble with terms they don't hear often.
The ad platform is *for the developers* to make it easier to add an app framework if they want to.
Ads already exist on some apps in the store, the new ad framework just makes it easier to implement *if the developer chooses*. There's no obligation and they are free to have no ads, or keep with their home-rolled ad serving.
Your analogy is suggesting operating systems - Apple does not sign apps to run on OS X.
A more accurate description would be "imagine MS controlling what apps and what developer environment was used for mobile Windows"... oh wait, they do.
It's a major strength, but it is also a weakness - it's all swings and roundabouts, when Johnny Handset A user suggests an app to Sally Handset B user and she can't use it, despite both using android and having similar phones (in terms of hardware).
Fragmentation is a concern for Android and the plethora of phones it runs on at the moment - it's not insurmountable, but it needs to be addressed.
I think that in terms of usability, it is one area where the iPhone soundly competes with the OHA.
Knock the app store ecosystem all you like, but the actual experience of *using* the hardware is very similar on the iPhone and iPad vs hardware from the OHA.
iPhone OS 4 is supported, but some features (that will not affect apps that much) will not be supported, like being able to use the multi tasking feature - you'll have to do it the current way the iPhone does it which will be less feature-rich, but not broken. This is similar to moving forwards with things like the 3G chip itself (which the first iPhone does not have) and the magnetic compass (that the 3G does not have) and video recording (that the 3G does not have). Hardware progression is inevitable.
I'm not bashing Android per se, but the concern I have seen from some people here is that two near-identical hardware phones from different handset makers are hit and miss with apps - one will work, one won't etc, for no technical reason. They're both Android phones that should be essentially transparent to the user, so even if you have an HTC Desire you can tell your friend who has a Nexus One to go and grab ($cool_app) and he'll be able to install and use it with no issues.
The fragmentation and open nature of Android's app ecosystem is one of its strengths (you install what you like) but it also has downsides - it's the opposite of Apple's App Store, where you give up the open install ability for a set of apps that are going to work on your phone, with any incompatibilities (like the need for a compass, or the video recording feature) noted specifically ahead of time; it's far less hit-and-miss.
I want Android to be a strong competitor to Apple - (a decent competitor encourages improvements to both product lines), and with the company support it has I see no reason why it won't continue to grow, but it needs to sort out issues like the GP mentioned.
The BBC were doing just fine, even with iPlayer - I was using XBMC to watch beautiful HD content until they switched on swf verification on their streams. If they disabled this, or just offered up h.264 without the flash wrapper I would be happy again.
Imagine trying to run underwater, assuming you are weighted down so that you can stand on the bottom of a swimming pool.
You running the length of the pool underwater compared to someone standing on the side doing the same thing should give you an indication of just how bad the performance of flash on OS X-based hardware is, combined with mobile computing power, even with hardware acceleration for h.264.
Theoretically though, if he announced tomorrow that the iPhone OS was getting VP3 support, what would your reaction be?
I think that GP has a point that regardless of what Jobs does, the level of resentment from some people here (not necessarily you) and at the FSF will twist his meaning. If he announces Theora support I'm sure someone will claim it is an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish move in some way.
The current video situation on the Web is not ideal - H.264 is technically excellent, but it is patented. It is the "next mp3" - ubiquitous, and hampered for free software. It is a big step forward from what we did have though, where WMV (as just-different-enough to mp4 to be broken) stood a chance of becoming the defacto standard.
Little steps - HTML5 container first, then video formats.
He doesn't know what he's talking about - crashes on OS X are pretty graceful - at least as graceful as on Linux. An app crash can't bring down the whole OS, even if the Finder crashes the system brings it back up with minimal fuss.
Now that Safari hands off the flash plugin to a separate process, a flash crash doesn't even bring the browser down any more. This has been the case since Safari 4.
What he likely means is that crashes on OS X are mainly due to Flash, not that the whole system comes down. I haven't had a full on deadlock or a kernel panic on OS X for a very long time, and the last one I had was hardware failure, but I do have software issues from time to time. Looking back over my crash log, unexpected quits (crashes) are the very, very slanted towards the flash plugin. I have a couple of misbehaving apps in there (Illustrator CS crashes on startup in 10.6, and the Finder has occasionally barfed), but it's mainly flash.
In the time before Safari 4, a flash crash would bring down the browser for sure, these days, now that plugins for Safari are handled by a separate process a flash crash just brings down that process and often leaves Safari untouched.
What Flash *doesn't* do is bring down the whole OS when it crashes, but it by far the biggest contributor to process crashes on my box. When it crashes the processes just restart and everything carries on as normal. When the Finder crashes (very rarely, usually due to a funky file preview) you just have to wait a few seconds for launchd to bring it back up again and you carry on. Underlying stability of OS X is pretty good in crash situations.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no - the slashdot crowd said "it will tank, like the Apple TV, no one will buy one.
Now that it has sold at twice the rate of the iPhone at launch, slashdot will attempt to retcon their predictions of failure into statements like yours.
And for the record, I have not bought one - I can't see a personal need for one at the moment since I do most of my browsing and TV watching from my iMac.
I think there is an enormous chip on many people here about a device (and company as a whole) who do things differently to the way prescribed by the tech elite crowd who "know how things should be done" and despite this difference still being able to successfully sell their products. The only way to soothe their hurt pride is to declare that "only retards and yuppies" are buying those products because "they have clearly been conned by slick marketing".
Newsflash: not everyone has the same set of criteria when making purchasing decisions. But then, you already knew that.
You need to add "it's a piece of crap in [your] opinion" to be in line with reality.
Because you never have down time right?
You're sitting at your hand-built Linux box, writing 24/7 about how the iPad is a worthless product that no one should buy, right?
When you come home from your 9-5 job in front of a computer, you sit in front of another almost identical computer to browse the web and check up on a few friends, right?
Try it.
Pay for it for me.
Go to the Apple store and try it.
As you may have noticed, if you look at the timestamp on my reply to myself, I added a correction to my typo immediately - well, immediately +30, since the flood protection wouldn't let me reply that quickly.
... and my spelling. I guess I am taking lessons from Fox.
Dam, not damn.
The original article was from Fox News - I'm just amazed they realised it was a damn, and not a giant vacuum cleaner given the quality of their fact checking.
It really depends on the circumstances. The crowd who like to promote the "UK is a police state! You can get arrested for buying a knife in a store and carrying it home on the bus!" sort of scaremongering would have you believe that, yes, you *will* be arrested for that, but the reality is it's down to the police to make a judgement. If you're carrying that in the door pocket of your car, then it is likely to be confiscated. If you are carrying it in toolbox of chef knives in the same car, they are unlikely to.
It's all about context. As a general rule, if you are carrying a blade whose primary use is as a weapon (even if it was designed for something else, like a kitchen knife originally), either for offence or defence, you face trouble from the police if you are caught with it.
My ancestors did not go through all zat just so you could make cheap joke on interweb!
Because not everyone on slashdot is deluded into thinking Apple are the second coming of Mephistopheles.
And not every slashdotter is the same - some may even have a use for a device that another slashdotter may find totally useless.
Im my world, Linux is the "Toy OS" (literally - I don't use it for any work, I am just learning and experimenting), but I would never say that because I personally don't think it suits my needs that it is shocking to me that other people do use it on their own hardware.
This is why it was such an annoyance that the US version of Harry Potter was not only renamed "sorcerer's stone" (wtf, Americans won't know what a philosopher's stone is?), but references like "torch" being changed to "flashlight" just... dilute it.
It's no wonder people have trouble with terms they don't hear often.
As opposed to... mechanical light?
There's my new patented method for data transfer. Measuring the impact of photons on a force transducer.
But that's not OS X! (when the argument is whether it is a full multitasking OS), but now it is?!
The irony!
Strictly speaking, the OS that runs on the iPhone and iPad is called "iPhone OS", and it is based on OS X.
The ad platform is *for the developers* to make it easier to add an app framework if they want to.
Ads already exist on some apps in the store, the new ad framework just makes it easier to implement *if the developer chooses*. There's no obligation and they are free to have no ads, or keep with their home-rolled ad serving.
No, the phrase "Finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge!" was banned from the app store.
Little bit of a difference there. Like the inference of promotion of a third party competition.
The word "Android" itself is *not* banned.
Don't let "facts" get in the way though.
Your analogy is suggesting operating systems - Apple does not sign apps to run on OS X.
A more accurate description would be "imagine MS controlling what apps and what developer environment was used for mobile Windows"... oh wait, they do.
It's a major strength, but it is also a weakness - it's all swings and roundabouts, when Johnny Handset A user suggests an app to Sally Handset B user and she can't use it, despite both using android and having similar phones (in terms of hardware).
Fragmentation is a concern for Android and the plethora of phones it runs on at the moment - it's not insurmountable, but it needs to be addressed.
The Google app on my iPhone would beg to disagree with you. Do you even look any of this garbage up before you spout it as "fact"?
Also, this commenter is no longer affiliated with Apple, so anything she says are not "Apple's complaints".
Reality, meet tzenes and the person who modded him insightful - they have been gone for a while.
I think that in terms of usability, it is one area where the iPhone soundly competes with the OHA.
Knock the app store ecosystem all you like, but the actual experience of *using* the hardware is very similar on the iPhone and iPad vs hardware from the OHA.
iPhone OS 4 is supported, but some features (that will not affect apps that much) will not be supported, like being able to use the multi tasking feature - you'll have to do it the current way the iPhone does it which will be less feature-rich, but not broken. This is similar to moving forwards with things like the 3G chip itself (which the first iPhone does not have) and the magnetic compass (that the 3G does not have) and video recording (that the 3G does not have). Hardware progression is inevitable.
I'm not bashing Android per se, but the concern I have seen from some people here is that two near-identical hardware phones from different handset makers are hit and miss with apps - one will work, one won't etc, for no technical reason. They're both Android phones that should be essentially transparent to the user, so even if you have an HTC Desire you can tell your friend who has a Nexus One to go and grab ($cool_app) and he'll be able to install and use it with no issues.
The fragmentation and open nature of Android's app ecosystem is one of its strengths (you install what you like) but it also has downsides - it's the opposite of Apple's App Store, where you give up the open install ability for a set of apps that are going to work on your phone, with any incompatibilities (like the need for a compass, or the video recording feature) noted specifically ahead of time; it's far less hit-and-miss.
I want Android to be a strong competitor to Apple - (a decent competitor encourages improvements to both product lines), and with the company support it has I see no reason why it won't continue to grow, but it needs to sort out issues like the GP mentioned.
No, no conversion needed - you'll just install a plugin.
The article is phrased in a very anti-MS way - IE9 will support any another codec via plugin, including the older WMV and other MS formats.
The BBC were doing just fine, even with iPlayer - I was using XBMC to watch beautiful HD content until they switched on swf verification on their streams. If they disabled this, or just offered up h.264 without the flash wrapper I would be happy again.
Imagine trying to run underwater, assuming you are weighted down so that you can stand on the bottom of a swimming pool.
You running the length of the pool underwater compared to someone standing on the side doing the same thing should give you an indication of just how bad the performance of flash on OS X-based hardware is, combined with mobile computing power, even with hardware acceleration for h.264.
Theoretically though, if he announced tomorrow that the iPhone OS was getting VP3 support, what would your reaction be?
I think that GP has a point that regardless of what Jobs does, the level of resentment from some people here (not necessarily you) and at the FSF will twist his meaning. If he announces Theora support I'm sure someone will claim it is an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish move in some way.
The current video situation on the Web is not ideal - H.264 is technically excellent, but it is patented. It is the "next mp3" - ubiquitous, and hampered for free software. It is a big step forward from what we did have though, where WMV (as just-different-enough to mp4 to be broken) stood a chance of becoming the defacto standard.
Little steps - HTML5 container first, then video formats.
He doesn't know what he's talking about - crashes on OS X are pretty graceful - at least as graceful as on Linux. An app crash can't bring down the whole OS, even if the Finder crashes the system brings it back up with minimal fuss.
Now that Safari hands off the flash plugin to a separate process, a flash crash doesn't even bring the browser down any more. This has been the case since Safari 4.
What he likely means is that crashes on OS X are mainly due to Flash, not that the whole system comes down. I haven't had a full on deadlock or a kernel panic on OS X for a very long time, and the last one I had was hardware failure, but I do have software issues from time to time. Looking back over my crash log, unexpected quits (crashes) are the very, very slanted towards the flash plugin. I have a couple of misbehaving apps in there (Illustrator CS crashes on startup in 10.6, and the Finder has occasionally barfed), but it's mainly flash.
In the time before Safari 4, a flash crash would bring down the browser for sure, these days, now that plugins for Safari are handled by a separate process a flash crash just brings down that process and often leaves Safari untouched.
What Flash *doesn't* do is bring down the whole OS when it crashes, but it by far the biggest contributor to process crashes on my box. When it crashes the processes just restart and everything carries on as normal. When the Finder crashes (very rarely, usually due to a funky file preview) you just have to wait a few seconds for launchd to bring it back up again and you carry on. Underlying stability of OS X is pretty good in crash situations.