ReplayTV came out a bit before Tivo (though not by much). I rather liked the ReplayTV interface, and they never tried doing anything stupid like putting ads in while I'm trying to skip them. But they were far worse at marketing than Tivo. I've never used a Tivo, so I can't comment on their UI. But from what I've heard from others, the ReplayTV did have a few features up on Tivo (eg. the various commercial skip modes actually worked well).
These day's I'm using AT&T U-Verse's DVR, even though my ReplayTV still works fine... largely because of the integration with U-Verse. And while I really miss some of the features of my ReplayTV, it's hard to beat Microsoft's business model... cheap and good-enough.
Despite how well a $100-200 DVR can be, the fact that cable companies are giving them away means it's now a commodity... Most people just won't be willing to pay that much for something they can get for free.
This is the traditional way cellphone companies have dealt with their phones. This exactly why the "openness" of Android would be it's own down-fall in this market.
Despite what anyone says, Apple's "walled garden" is one of the greatest innovations in cell phone operating systems in that they actually managed to prevent the carriers from having the control to be stupid.
I think you're missing the point. What's going on is people think that the tablet is just about the hardware. So when they say "making a good tablet isn't good enough to sell a good tablet" they're talking about the hardware. The key ingredient no one seems to be talking about that really made the iPad was iOS and the developer infrastructure they had setup for it. Not only did they leverage the SDK from Mac to iPhone to iPad, but they also setup the whole distribution chain for 3rd party developers, which is what gave them a huge advantage in apps.
The combination of JITs and faster hardware has mitigated the performance issues of Java. But I do know that to this day, I *still* dread when I hit upon a website that causes my JVM to load. My Mac (and I believe Windows?) deals with this problem by pre-loading the JVM on startup.. And I believe the JVM is something like 500-700 MBs of memory.
If you run a Java app on a smaller embedded system (think i386-i586 class), you'll definitely notice the difference.
However, I'll grant that in many cases you may not care about that difference.
It's really sad, though, because Inferno was out and usable even back in 1995, and really did offer a small footprint (smaller than flash: http://slashdot.org/story/00/12/15/0428227/Inferno-Plugin-for-IE---An-OS-In-Your-Browser), run-anywhere JIT, etc. etc... it delivered on every one of Sun's promises for Java (which other than platform-independence, I don't think Java has yet delivered quite as nicely)... it just couldn't beat Sun's hype machine.
I agree part of the problem is cultural... it can be summed up in this nice little quip:
"When Java is your hammer, every problem looks like a thumb."
Java makes it really easy to use things like XML... But the language does also make it really difficult to do things at a binary level. This inherently makes all the Java people make everything use XML when it doesn't need it... And that's what gets you started down the slipper slope of layers and layers of additional complexity.
Yes, I'm perhaps overgeneralizing. But that's my 10,000 ft view.
A slightly different topic, but one that I've been curious about regarding header files... Some header files are not merely interfaces. The kernel's linked list approach, for example, makes clever use of macros with no supporting.c file.
If I use that in my code, am I bound to the GPL? It's "technically" not linking of any sort, since it's all macro expansion... But there is logic there, and I could certainly see it being worth copyrighting.
I end up just re-writing it myself, but the end result looks very very similar... there's only so many ways one would commonly implement linked lists in C. And even fewer ways as macros.
Exactly. The problem is that information is a form of power. So, then, people with the right secrets will always be able to exert form of control over those without the secrets.
In order for a truly honest society to work, we need to have a Borg-like collective connection between everyone, where it simply wasn't a choice to lie or hide information.
I for one think this would be a good thing, contrary to how it was portrayed in Star Trek.
It's clear from Apple's movements that they've pulled out of the Enterprise market, and justifiably so as you described very well. And while lots of people on Slashdot may want Apple to support the Enterprise, I don't think this move has much to do with that market.
I'm surprised no one else caught this (so maybe I'm way off base), but I suspect the main reason they're now incorporating OSX Server into Lion now is because of the iPad. As you can see in their feature list, they've streamlined file sharing with the iPad. I suspect they're anticipating many households (and businesses) to have multiple iPads but needing better synchronization/sharing. So while they don't necessarily want to support the enterprise, they do need the enterprise-like features to manage multiple users, file/resource sharing, etc. in a more convenient format.
Better synchronization/integration with OSX also means iPads will lend themselves to work better in an OSX environment, perhaps adding to the list of reasons for people to convert from Windows.
The way this *may* tie in with the Enterprise space is also I think due to iPads for the same reason. Perhaps Apple doesn't see the need for a rack system, but wants to provide an Enterprise way of managing large numbers of iPads. In this case, server processing is probably(?) not huge and a Mac mini may be sufficient. This doesn't sound like as strong an argument to me, but it's possible there's some motivation there.
I think what you're missing here is that there are actually several big players in the music space:
- content creators (the artists)
- content distributors (Apple, Amazon, Walmart, etc.)
- content publishers (music labels)
I don't know about Microsoft or Walmart, but I believe that was the general atmosphere back then. The music labels wanted to control all of digital music, so they heavily pushed DRM. But at some point, Apple was really the only one who was really successful at distributing music to a large number of people. The labels started to realize that it wasn't them getting all the power, it was Apple. So they turned around and said "no more DRM." But that was after Jobs' open letter.
You may say the distributors shouldn't restrict your purchase, but if the publishers won't provide them with content otherwise, then what choice do they have? If you're pointing fingers, I say point them at the labels.
But regardless I agree, DRM is stupid and should die. (I'm actually not sure whether it should be illegal, largely because I'm not sure how it should be worded that would make sense and not have horrible unintended side effects... but that's a whole other story).
I'd also like add that Apple is the only mobile company I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) that actually seemed to seriously address these issues when they said "multitasking." (Personally I think they should've given it a new name and branded it, but that's another story.) In true Apple fashion, if they couldn't address those issues, they simply weren't going to release the feature. All the techies complained about it, but when they finally did implement it, they went all the way. It took them time to figure out the issues and figure out the use-cases that developers really wanted when they said "multitasking."
Google, on the other hand, capitalized on Apple's bad press by saying, "here you go you can have multitasking" And they just did it the same way that the desktop did. And of course people ran into performance and battery life issues.
Microsoft had multitasking even in WinCE devices. But every person I knew that had the thing constantly had to jumble through the task manager, closing apps.
In Apple's approach, while I do understand and appreciate what they've done technically, I love the fact that I don't *have* to know anything about how they did it to use the device. It just works and I don't have to worry about apps burning my battery life.
To offer a better analogy, it's more like your kids demanding to know who's going to take care of them if you and your spouse "take a long nap" next July.
Maybe you want to tell them, maybe you won't. But it's not unreasonable for your kids to ask, even if it might be slightly morbid and highly forward thinking of them.
I dunno, for a government, I think I'd prefer a higher degree of transparency. So I'd definitely want to hear from the people "in the trenches" if the government's doing something stupid and needs to be fixed.
As for companies, I'm a little on the fence on this one. But as long as it doesn't rule out a person from bad mouthing a company after they leave, I guess it's good.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Agency Model.. that's rather interesting.
I can certainly understand people complaining about the competition angle. But at the same time, I think it's understandable. I mean Nooks for example are no longer just about books... they're trying to position themselves as a generic tablet as well. Since they're a competing tablet platform, I think it's well within reason for Apple to say: "You know what this is our platform and we sell books on it. If you want to sell books and use our distribution infrastructure and manufacturing process, etc. etc., then we're going to get a cut".
If the book sellers remained just book sellers (ie. if the ebooks really were nothing but ebooks) then I could see the argument. But if they're trying to compete as a tablet and own their platform, then I don't see why Apple can't compete with books and own their platform.
All that being said, I'm not sure I think it's a great business move. I think part of the appeal of the iOS platform is that you can have such diversity... and having the option of loading books from Amazon or B&N or where-ever is a huge advantage over the book sellers' proprietary platforms. And for the reasons you point out, the only thing this move will do is cause them to not want to have an iOS app.
That's correct. However, I'd also point out that Kindle and other eBook readers are just as closed if not more so.
Yes, they'll all read PDFs, and that's great. But their standard eBook format isn't distributed as PDFs (I think). This means you're locked into the platform.
If you're looking to compare apples to Apples... Apple has at least demonstrated that they won't remotely do stuff to your end device. eg. if you purchased an App that they later decide is horrible and pull it from the market, they don't retroactively remove it from all devices.
Amazon, however, has demonstrated their willingness to do this even after saying they wouldn't.
From a user perspective, I don't understand the problem. Their requirement is that they have this option. Which means users can purchase from either Amazon or Apple.
I can understand however that in the publishing business, 30% may be a bit large.
Personally I don't see a problem with this. It's consistent with Apple's model... arguably generous (to eBook sellers) in that most apps, Apple doesn't allow sales outside of the App Store. And it's actually somewhat odd that they didn't do this to begin with. I think the book sellers really just found a loophole that Apple's trying to correct.
But you're right, most people will want to use the easiest option. The question then is how many Kindle users are there vs iPad users that get eBooks from Amazon? I'd guess that most have either one or the other and it's really a small subset that have both.
If that's true, then is the difference in price (to the eSeller) going to be that big of a deal?
There's of course the question of whether the eSeller can just raise the price on the Apple App store, but I'm going to guess Apple would have a problem with that as well.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I really don't understand what the hoopla is about. Google search the web, indexes the results, and offers users a way of getting at that information.
If Bing searched Google for this information and used it in it's results, how is this any different?
Couldn't you just think of it as a Google Portal? Maybe there's no reason why I'd use it, but what's inherently wrong about it? And (I don't know if they do this, but...) if they managed to reorganize the data, present it in new ways, or even offered different ways of sorting the data, wouldn't that be fair use? I mean Google does that with the rest of the web.
I've been a big proponent of the OSS movement since before it was called that. But I don't think Apple is evil. As far as iOS is concerned, I think they do have legitimate reasons for why they keep it a closed environment... but that's another debate.
As someone who's been dabbling with iOS for some time and who's an avid vi/gcc/scons type of developer (no fancy IDEs for me), I can say that I absolutely love Apple's development environment and I've gotten quite accustomed to XCode. I still wish it had VI bindings, but I manage to do quite well just the way it is. In addition, I think Apple has amazing foresight in that they continuously improve their developer tools and address developer issues with every release. If you look at what they're putting into the next release of the developer tools, it's an amazing level of integration between previously disparate tools that I haven't seen in any IDE before. The SDK is also quite powerful. And they do continually try to improve to developer needs.
I also happen to think Objective-C is one of the best object oriented languages out there. But that could but a subjective argument. But less subjective is one of my main arguments against Java in general... code re-use. There's still a lot of old code that either I have lying around, or under a free software license, or that you can purchase. And while the Java people have done quite well in reproducing all of that over the years, there's still just less of it.
But if we're talking about evil, I'd also point out that Google also takes 30% from you when you publish into their marketplace. However, they do something much more evil... they give it right back to the carriers... that's part of their incentive to use the Android platform. I actually have no problems with Apple taking 30% for me because I feel they actually provide a service for this:
- They handle all the financial transactions
- They deal with taxes
- They test the apps
For example, I used an Android app in the store once (one of the demo apps) that went blank and unresponsive for 10+ seconds when I launched it. I sat there wondering if I'd somehow crashed the phone. Apple would never allow an app like that.
I also feel that Google's stance that Android is "open" is a bit of an evil political move. While it's technically true that Android OS is open, the main argument anyone has is between Android on phones vs iPhones. In this case, the OS is open... to the carriers, but it's a closed platform to the end-users.
I happen to like Google for a lot of things they do, but I find a the way they're competing with the iPhone to be a bit underhanded in marketing and quite honestly, half-hearted technically.
I recently purchased the iWork suite for Mac. And I gotta say I absolutely love it. If we should be taking any hints on UI design, it should be from that office suite.
One of the things I like is they *finally* blended the best of word processors and graphic design. This always seems to come up, even if you're doing reports... you want to put an image somewhere or flow text in a slight different way on one page. It's not necessarily often, but when it happens it's always frustrating.
The other thing I really like is their spreadsheet package. For quite some time, I had been using spreadsheets, creating little mini-tables for my data, but formatting and graphing was always a bit of a pain. They managed to incorporate this in a way that was extremely natural to the way I already use spreadsheets, but make it easier and more beautiful.
I don't get what the problem is. Yeah, you might have a few die hards that skip ahead, but I think most people actually want to take the full journey of the show from the comfort of their living room, not youtube shakey cam.
As for spoilers, I don't see that as a problem either. I know plenty of die hard Lost fans that would DVR the show and watch "as soon as they could." But sometimes that could be a few days after it aired, after everyone else in the world has seen it and is talking about it. But they'd still go about, trying to avoid the spoilers until they could watch the show themselves.
The worst thing that'll happen is you generate buzz... lots of people talking about "I can't believe they did that!" or whatever... If the worst thing that happens is you become hugely popular like this... well I'd gladly take that problem off your hands.
You know what, I think this all works out in the end... (ie, I think the current system is fair).
There's value in knowledge, and some knowledge is more valuable than others. It's the whole buggy whip thing again. It doesn't matter if I'm the worlds expert on buggy whip designs, if the market just wasn't what it once was, then yes a new engineer that knows something about steering wheels should be paid more.
Now if we're talking transferable knowledge... ie, I'm a C programmer and they decide to hire a C++ programmer for a huge amount more, then I'd say why not give the C guy a chance and see what he could do. A company that doesn't do that may not be giving the "old" guy much of a raise.
But he risks the old guy leaving and getting a new job that's willing to pay more. On the other hand (as you pointed out), the old guy is getting something for his less pay, which is the convenience and comfort of his old job. And maybe that's not worth it to some people, but to I imagine it is worth it to many people.
So I don't think it's "evil" of the business. Both sides just have to weigh the risks vs the desired outcomes.
Oh yes, Linux's repositories for storage and delivery of packages is awesome. Haven't seen anything else come close to it.
I was actually referring to the.app structure when I said "application distribution method". I didn't want to call it a "package" exactly, because I think rpm/deb packages really are a different animal.
Slashdot Mirror
ReplayTV came out a bit before Tivo (though not by much). I rather liked the ReplayTV interface, and they never tried doing anything stupid like putting ads in while I'm trying to skip them. But they were far worse at marketing than Tivo. I've never used a Tivo, so I can't comment on their UI. But from what I've heard from others, the ReplayTV did have a few features up on Tivo (eg. the various commercial skip modes actually worked well).
These day's I'm using AT&T U-Verse's DVR, even though my ReplayTV still works fine... largely because of the integration with U-Verse. And while I really miss some of the features of my ReplayTV, it's hard to beat Microsoft's business model... cheap and good-enough.
Despite how well a $100-200 DVR can be, the fact that cable companies are giving them away means it's now a commodity... Most people just won't be willing to pay that much for something they can get for free.
Source code is useless if you're locked from installing your custom OS on the device.
This is the traditional way cellphone companies have dealt with their phones. This exactly why the "openness" of Android would be it's own down-fall in this market.
Despite what anyone says, Apple's "walled garden" is one of the greatest innovations in cell phone operating systems in that they actually managed to prevent the carriers from having the control to be stupid.
I think you're missing the point. What's going on is people think that the tablet is just about the hardware. So when they say "making a good tablet isn't good enough to sell a good tablet" they're talking about the hardware. The key ingredient no one seems to be talking about that really made the iPad was iOS and the developer infrastructure they had setup for it. Not only did they leverage the SDK from Mac to iPhone to iPad, but they also setup the whole distribution chain for 3rd party developers, which is what gave them a huge advantage in apps.
The combination of JITs and faster hardware has mitigated the performance issues of Java. But I do know that to this day, I *still* dread when I hit upon a website that causes my JVM to load. My Mac (and I believe Windows?) deals with this problem by pre-loading the JVM on startup.. And I believe the JVM is something like 500-700 MBs of memory.
If you run a Java app on a smaller embedded system (think i386-i586 class), you'll definitely notice the difference.
However, I'll grant that in many cases you may not care about that difference.
It's really sad, though, because Inferno was out and usable even back in 1995, and really did offer a small footprint (smaller than flash: http://slashdot.org/story/00/12/15/0428227/Inferno-Plugin-for-IE---An-OS-In-Your-Browser), run-anywhere JIT, etc. etc... it delivered on every one of Sun's promises for Java (which other than platform-independence, I don't think Java has yet delivered quite as nicely)... it just couldn't beat Sun's hype machine.
I agree part of the problem is cultural... it can be summed up in this nice little quip:
"When Java is your hammer, every problem looks like a thumb."
Java makes it really easy to use things like XML... But the language does also make it really difficult to do things at a binary level. This inherently makes all the Java people make everything use XML when it doesn't need it... And that's what gets you started down the slipper slope of layers and layers of additional complexity.
Yes, I'm perhaps overgeneralizing. But that's my 10,000 ft view.
No programs should ever migrate to the web.
What if they migrate back to the desktop every spring?
Depends if it's an African or European program.
A slightly different topic, but one that I've been curious about regarding header files... Some header files are not merely interfaces. The kernel's linked list approach, for example, makes clever use of macros with no supporting .c file.
If I use that in my code, am I bound to the GPL? It's "technically" not linking of any sort, since it's all macro expansion... But there is logic there, and I could certainly see it being worth copyrighting.
I end up just re-writing it myself, but the end result looks very very similar... there's only so many ways one would commonly implement linked lists in C. And even fewer ways as macros.
Exactly. The problem is that information is a form of power. So, then, people with the right secrets will always be able to exert form of control over those without the secrets.
In order for a truly honest society to work, we need to have a Borg-like collective connection between everyone, where it simply wasn't a choice to lie or hide information.
I for one think this would be a good thing, contrary to how it was portrayed in Star Trek.
For a commercial organization, it is rather innovative.
It's clear from Apple's movements that they've pulled out of the Enterprise market, and justifiably so as you described very well. And while lots of people on Slashdot may want Apple to support the Enterprise, I don't think this move has much to do with that market.
I'm surprised no one else caught this (so maybe I'm way off base), but I suspect the main reason they're now incorporating OSX Server into Lion now is because of the iPad. As you can see in their feature list, they've streamlined file sharing with the iPad. I suspect they're anticipating many households (and businesses) to have multiple iPads but needing better synchronization/sharing. So while they don't necessarily want to support the enterprise, they do need the enterprise-like features to manage multiple users, file/resource sharing, etc. in a more convenient format.
Better synchronization/integration with OSX also means iPads will lend themselves to work better in an OSX environment, perhaps adding to the list of reasons for people to convert from Windows.
The way this *may* tie in with the Enterprise space is also I think due to iPads for the same reason. Perhaps Apple doesn't see the need for a rack system, but wants to provide an Enterprise way of managing large numbers of iPads. In this case, server processing is probably(?) not huge and a Mac mini may be sufficient. This doesn't sound like as strong an argument to me, but it's possible there's some motivation there.
I think what you're missing here is that there are actually several big players in the music space:
- content creators (the artists)
- content distributors (Apple, Amazon, Walmart, etc.)
- content publishers (music labels)
In Apple's case (from what Steve is claiming anyway) it was the music labels that forced the DRM issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#Steve_Jobs.27_Thoughts_on_Music_open_letter
I don't know about Microsoft or Walmart, but I believe that was the general atmosphere back then. The music labels wanted to control all of digital music, so they heavily pushed DRM. But at some point, Apple was really the only one who was really successful at distributing music to a large number of people. The labels started to realize that it wasn't them getting all the power, it was Apple. So they turned around and said "no more DRM." But that was after Jobs' open letter.
You may say the distributors shouldn't restrict your purchase, but if the publishers won't provide them with content otherwise, then what choice do they have? If you're pointing fingers, I say point them at the labels.
But regardless I agree, DRM is stupid and should die. (I'm actually not sure whether it should be illegal, largely because I'm not sure how it should be worded that would make sense and not have horrible unintended side effects... but that's a whole other story).
I'd give you +insightful points if I had any.
I'd also like add that Apple is the only mobile company I know of (please correct me if I'm wrong) that actually seemed to seriously address these issues when they said "multitasking." (Personally I think they should've given it a new name and branded it, but that's another story.) In true Apple fashion, if they couldn't address those issues, they simply weren't going to release the feature. All the techies complained about it, but when they finally did implement it, they went all the way. It took them time to figure out the issues and figure out the use-cases that developers really wanted when they said "multitasking."
Google, on the other hand, capitalized on Apple's bad press by saying, "here you go you can have multitasking" And they just did it the same way that the desktop did. And of course people ran into performance and battery life issues.
Microsoft had multitasking even in WinCE devices. But every person I knew that had the thing constantly had to jumble through the task manager, closing apps.
In Apple's approach, while I do understand and appreciate what they've done technically, I love the fact that I don't *have* to know anything about how they did it to use the device. It just works and I don't have to worry about apps burning my battery life.
To offer a better analogy, it's more like your kids demanding to know who's going to take care of them if you and your spouse "take a long nap" next July.
Maybe you want to tell them, maybe you won't. But it's not unreasonable for your kids to ask, even if it might be slightly morbid and highly forward thinking of them.
I dunno, for a government, I think I'd prefer a higher degree of transparency. So I'd definitely want to hear from the people "in the trenches" if the government's doing something stupid and needs to be fixed.
As for companies, I'm a little on the fence on this one. But as long as it doesn't rule out a person from bad mouthing a company after they leave, I guess it's good.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the Agency Model.. that's rather interesting.
I can certainly understand people complaining about the competition angle. But at the same time, I think it's understandable. I mean Nooks for example are no longer just about books... they're trying to position themselves as a generic tablet as well. Since they're a competing tablet platform, I think it's well within reason for Apple to say: "You know what this is our platform and we sell books on it. If you want to sell books and use our distribution infrastructure and manufacturing process, etc. etc., then we're going to get a cut".
If the book sellers remained just book sellers (ie. if the ebooks really were nothing but ebooks) then I could see the argument. But if they're trying to compete as a tablet and own their platform, then I don't see why Apple can't compete with books and own their platform.
All that being said, I'm not sure I think it's a great business move. I think part of the appeal of the iOS platform is that you can have such diversity... and having the option of loading books from Amazon or B&N or where-ever is a huge advantage over the book sellers' proprietary platforms. And for the reasons you point out, the only thing this move will do is cause them to not want to have an iOS app.
That's correct. However, I'd also point out that Kindle and other eBook readers are just as closed if not more so.
Yes, they'll all read PDFs, and that's great. But their standard eBook format isn't distributed as PDFs (I think). This means you're locked into the platform.
If you're looking to compare apples to Apples... Apple has at least demonstrated that they won't remotely do stuff to your end device. eg. if you purchased an App that they later decide is horrible and pull it from the market, they don't retroactively remove it from all devices.
Amazon, however, has demonstrated their willingness to do this even after saying they wouldn't.
From a user perspective, I don't understand the problem. Their requirement is that they have this option. Which means users can purchase from either Amazon or Apple.
I can understand however that in the publishing business, 30% may be a bit large.
Personally I don't see a problem with this. It's consistent with Apple's model... arguably generous (to eBook sellers) in that most apps, Apple doesn't allow sales outside of the App Store. And it's actually somewhat odd that they didn't do this to begin with. I think the book sellers really just found a loophole that Apple's trying to correct.
But you're right, most people will want to use the easiest option. The question then is how many Kindle users are there vs iPad users that get eBooks from Amazon? I'd guess that most have either one or the other and it's really a small subset that have both.
If that's true, then is the difference in price (to the eSeller) going to be that big of a deal?
There's of course the question of whether the eSeller can just raise the price on the Apple App store, but I'm going to guess Apple would have a problem with that as well.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I really don't understand what the hoopla is about. Google search the web, indexes the results, and offers users a way of getting at that information.
If Bing searched Google for this information and used it in it's results, how is this any different?
Couldn't you just think of it as a Google Portal? Maybe there's no reason why I'd use it, but what's inherently wrong about it? And (I don't know if they do this, but...) if they managed to reorganize the data, present it in new ways, or even offered different ways of sorting the data, wouldn't that be fair use? I mean Google does that with the rest of the web.
I've been a big proponent of the OSS movement since before it was called that. But I don't think Apple is evil. As far as iOS is concerned, I think they do have legitimate reasons for why they keep it a closed environment... but that's another debate.
As someone who's been dabbling with iOS for some time and who's an avid vi/gcc/scons type of developer (no fancy IDEs for me), I can say that I absolutely love Apple's development environment and I've gotten quite accustomed to XCode. I still wish it had VI bindings, but I manage to do quite well just the way it is. In addition, I think Apple has amazing foresight in that they continuously improve their developer tools and address developer issues with every release. If you look at what they're putting into the next release of the developer tools, it's an amazing level of integration between previously disparate tools that I haven't seen in any IDE before. The SDK is also quite powerful. And they do continually try to improve to developer needs.
I also happen to think Objective-C is one of the best object oriented languages out there. But that could but a subjective argument. But less subjective is one of my main arguments against Java in general... code re-use. There's still a lot of old code that either I have lying around, or under a free software license, or that you can purchase. And while the Java people have done quite well in reproducing all of that over the years, there's still just less of it.
But if we're talking about evil, I'd also point out that Google also takes 30% from you when you publish into their marketplace. However, they do something much more evil... they give it right back to the carriers... that's part of their incentive to use the Android platform. I actually have no problems with Apple taking 30% for me because I feel they actually provide a service for this:
- They handle all the financial transactions
- They deal with taxes
- They test the apps
For example, I used an Android app in the store once (one of the demo apps) that went blank and unresponsive for 10+ seconds when I launched it. I sat there wondering if I'd somehow crashed the phone. Apple would never allow an app like that.
I also feel that Google's stance that Android is "open" is a bit of an evil political move. While it's technically true that Android OS is open, the main argument anyone has is between Android on phones vs iPhones. In this case, the OS is open... to the carriers, but it's a closed platform to the end-users.
I happen to like Google for a lot of things they do, but I find a the way they're competing with the iPhone to be a bit underhanded in marketing and quite honestly, half-hearted technically.
I recently purchased the iWork suite for Mac. And I gotta say I absolutely love it. If we should be taking any hints on UI design, it should be from that office suite.
One of the things I like is they *finally* blended the best of word processors and graphic design. This always seems to come up, even if you're doing reports... you want to put an image somewhere or flow text in a slight different way on one page. It's not necessarily often, but when it happens it's always frustrating.
The other thing I really like is their spreadsheet package. For quite some time, I had been using spreadsheets, creating little mini-tables for my data, but formatting and graphing was always a bit of a pain. They managed to incorporate this in a way that was extremely natural to the way I already use spreadsheets, but make it easier and more beautiful.
I don't get what the problem is. Yeah, you might have a few die hards that skip ahead, but I think most people actually want to take the full journey of the show from the comfort of their living room, not youtube shakey cam.
As for spoilers, I don't see that as a problem either. I know plenty of die hard Lost fans that would DVR the show and watch "as soon as they could." But sometimes that could be a few days after it aired, after everyone else in the world has seen it and is talking about it. But they'd still go about, trying to avoid the spoilers until they could watch the show themselves.
The worst thing that'll happen is you generate buzz... lots of people talking about "I can't believe they did that!" or whatever... If the worst thing that happens is you become hugely popular like this... well I'd gladly take that problem off your hands.
You know what, I think this all works out in the end... (ie, I think the current system is fair).
There's value in knowledge, and some knowledge is more valuable than others. It's the whole buggy whip thing again. It doesn't matter if I'm the worlds expert on buggy whip designs, if the market just wasn't what it once was, then yes a new engineer that knows something about steering wheels should be paid more.
Now if we're talking transferable knowledge... ie, I'm a C programmer and they decide to hire a C++ programmer for a huge amount more, then I'd say why not give the C guy a chance and see what he could do. A company that doesn't do that may not be giving the "old" guy much of a raise.
But he risks the old guy leaving and getting a new job that's willing to pay more. On the other hand (as you pointed out), the old guy is getting something for his less pay, which is the convenience and comfort of his old job. And maybe that's not worth it to some people, but to I imagine it is worth it to many people.
So I don't think it's "evil" of the business. Both sides just have to weigh the risks vs the desired outcomes.
Oh yes, Linux's repositories for storage and delivery of packages is awesome. Haven't seen anything else come close to it.
I was actually referring to the .app structure when I said "application distribution method". I didn't want to call it a "package" exactly, because I think rpm/deb packages really are a different animal.