It's interesting that on/. when the Fukushima reactor issue began, there appeared to be two camps forming: one that said, "maybe we should be concerned about this,' and another that said, "fucking libtards are going to use this as an excuse to push for tougher limitations on the expansion of nuclear power in other countries!"
With this issue, the two camps appear to be coming down to, "this may not be a huge issue; hopefully Apple will begin truncating this file with an upcoming update" and "fucking Apple fanbois will take anything that His Steveness rams up their rear! This is an outrage!"
It'd be interesting to track the outrage quotient on various issues and see where various/. users land on that chart. I wonder how many people who are vigorously defending nuclear power are busting a blood vessel over this iPhone thing.
Well, I'd consider that a different question, not a better one. There are many who would say the same thing about a computer, a smartphone, or even a cell phone. For this audience, your answer may not agree with the majority.
Good point. You know, don't you, that Apple negotiated some pretty slick pay-as-you-go plans with Verizon and ATT for their 3G iPads. I think with ATT, for example, it's $15.00 for 250MB in a 30-day period. Not super-awesome on a per-MB cost, but there's no startup cost, no recurring cost unless you choose to re-up, and you can stop it any time.
It's way better than paying an extra $20/mo commitment for tethering when maybe you'll only need it for the two weeks you're on that bike trip and staying at cheap motels.
You do realize, don't you, that this answer was in the context of the question of, "Should your tablet have just wifi, or wifi+3g?" The GP doesn't say anywhere that the tablet is useless without a network connection, but only enumerates the locations where a network connection would be useful, but where--in their estimation--Wifi is good enough and 3G may not even be available.
I disagree on one point. The 3G versions (at least of the iPad) come with GPS built in--I assume that it's because of OEM chipsets, so it's probably the same for other tablets--and while it's been demonstrated that by tethering to a smartphone, you get to take advantage of the phone's GPS info, the advantage (for me at least) to a 3G tablet would be the ability to attach it to my car's dashboard and use it as a GPS for my passenger to navigate by, even if neither of us had a smartphone handy, or if we didn't have a tethering plan.
But that being said, your response was a total troll.
The main thing that numbers (or at least the people trumpeting them) exaggerate is their own importance. That is to say, for example, "X OS outsells Y OS on Z type of platform, so X wins!" To which the retort is, "Well, Y OS earns ten times the revenue, so Y OS wins!"
People like to use car analogies (Yugo vs. BMW), but I've recently decided that, at least in the mobile market (I know, off topic, but related), a better parallel would be a comparison with restaurants. These days, anyone but the most ironic hipster would probably be hesitant to drive a Yugo, but every day, people choose to eat at MacDonald's, or PF Changs, or Chez Panisse. If you look at the profits, the unit sales, the societal impact, the "objective" quality of the product, the status associated with each, you could make a case for each and every one of them "winning". However, doing so really just exposes your own bias.
Back to the main topic, Microsoft and Apple each have their own strengths and weaknesses. In general, I prefer Apple products to MS's, but while I've never considered buying "Numbers", I have purchased multiple versions of Excel over the years. While I like my iPhone, I might give WP7 a try when my current contract is up if it looks like developers have taken to it and there's a good app market. And so on.
The point is that no level of quality on the menu at Chez Panisse will ever make MacDonald's go away, and no level of cost cutting at MacDonald's will ever make PF Chang's go away, and so on. Similarly, Apple and Microsoft (and a few of the other giants) are all big enough and diversified enough that it doesn't matter if they lead a particular market. They're not going away.
The biggest question, of course, is whether a particular product is sustainable for them. Google is notorious for dropping products that don't have enough of a following (Wave?); Microsoft has done the same thing (Kin?). I can't think of any big recent ones from Apple--after Steve's return, they've pretty much pared down their offerings and remained close-lipped about them so the projects they kill die before release. But that's the only thing that would really matter to me when choosing a device or OS or other product platform: will it be orphaned.
I don't believe Google is evil and I don't work with OSM, but if Google is not evil it has to realize the negative impacts its actions can have on the kinds of grassroots open-source efforts it claims to support.
I once interviewed for a job at Google. Made it through 13 rounds. During interview #14, I was pontificating on the "don't be evil" mantra and suggested that, even without evil intent, the reverberating effects of radical changes in technology shouldn't be ignored. I said something along the lines that I'm sure that Google could come up with a way to offer absolutely free web hosting--no Geocities-esque banners or anything--and absolutely kill hundreds or thousands of small service vendors overnight.
The interviewer's words were, "That's an interesting insight." But the look on his face was, "And how is it our problem that these other vendors can't keep up?"
So why hasn't production increased? The businesses who are seeing increased demand will also see increased profit. If they choose to, they can plow those profits back into operations and expand. The re-investment in their infrastructure isn't taxed, as it's an expense. The problem is instead that the CEOs get millions of dollars in bonuses, and that money gets concentrated in a few places where it doesn't do anyone in the economy any good.
I think that the rich could stand to bear a significantly greater tax burden than they do. If David Letterman only gets to take home $5 million dollars a year instead of 15, nobody's going to cry for him. He can still afford a chicken for dinner, and he can still afford to make those investments.
There's a bell curve to everything. The problem is that knee jerk conservatives have seen the economy experience explosive short-term growth with tax cuts for the wealthy, and so they assume that if a little was good, a little more must be better. But it's like the cotton farmers in the 20s; they are ignoring the fact that there are negative repercussions as well that may simply not be apparent at the outset. I mean, heck, what's wrong with higher unemployment, right? From the corporate perspective, that means that there's a greater labor pool, so you can pay less! Unemployment is good for business! Total short-term thinking.
I don't think we should nationalize all wealth or any such thing; however, we've seen things get more and more difficult for the average person over the last couple of generations of tax policy shifts which increasingly favor the super-wealthy. I think it's time to move towards something a little more progressive again. My recommended end-state might seem a little extreme, but if we were to move towards it slowly, we might see some amazing benefits.
How about this: 0.5% additional taxes for every $250,000 earned, with a cap at 50% maximum taxes. Balance that with tax cuts at the lower end of the income spectrum. Ratchet that up every year until the zero-tax level is, say, 75% of the median income.
You know another way you could increase profits for corporations? Raise the minimum income required for taxes much higher--say, to $50,000--and put the money back in the hands of the people who spend basically every penny they have. The real incentive to expand and create jobs comes from greater demand for products and services. Just cutting the taxes means, for a lot of corporations, bigger bonuses for the e-team. But if all of a sudden they get 30% more demand because their target market has 30% more money to spend...
Bah. The worst thing about the Tenderloin is that on Sunday, you can't find anywhere to park because so many bridge-and-tunnel people come into town to go to Glide.
Re:As long as I can still play my old favourites
on
The New Commodore 64
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· Score: 1
There were some great, great, great games on that machine. And don't even get me started on the Amiga. For some reason, that computer inspired a shareware development community that dwarfed every other platform at the time; it was for computers what the iPhone is for mobile devices today. It's a pity that Commodore moved into PC compatibles, infringed on a heavily defended VGA patent, refused to negotiate any licensing, and thus had their PC business shut down in the US, effectively killing the company. I'd love to have a phone with the C= logo on the back.
Yes. My use of "such as" implies that there are other cases that I wasn't mentioning, left as an exercise for the reader to find.
When else would you need a program to actually "do something" in the background that's not covered by one of those?
If you look at the post I was responding to, they were asking if Garage Band would run in the background while they were using their guitar tab app and still function. The implication was that they wanted Garage Band to continue recording while they were playing using a separate tab app. And "multi-track" recording is not one of those seven core faux-multitasking services.
Listen, I'm not down on the way Apple's implemented multitasking; it's a fine trade-off. But it's not true app-level multi-tasking. If someone wants to start recording in one window and view tabs for a song in another window while the recording is still going, that's just not possible, currently, on an iPad or most (all?) competing similar devices.
Re:As long as I can still play my old favourites
on
The New Commodore 64
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· Score: 1
You're absolutely correct. I don't know why the other respondents have chosen to deny what I described. I don't think Apple's made a bad decision, but it is what it is. My comment about them not wanting to miss a sale was really just pulling punches; what they were really trying to do was to avoid some geek who doesn't understand the design tradeoffs required in a product like the iPad having a complete melt-down on the sales floor.
Really? I'm pretty much quoting Apple. I didn't list all of the seven exceptions, but the point is that when you swap apps, with those seven exceptions, whatever you swapped out of is paused.
If I'm wrong, please show me documented evidence that it works differently than I (and Apple) have described.
No, they have not. There's fast switching and state caching, and certain services can be evoked that give the appearance of multitasking (i.e. the Pandora app invokes the core system's data streaming and music playback features so you can continue to listen to music even after you switch over to another app), but at this time, there is no true app-level multitasking.
I'm not arguing whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I, for one, think they made some good design decisions. But there is no true app-level multitasking. But don't believe me: get it from the horse's mouth
simple question of whether garageband would run in the background
Answer: No. No apps run in the background on the iPad (or iPod touch or iPhone). The system does, core features and services such as music playback and push notifications. But no downloadable apps run in the background; they page out nicely so that you can get back i quickly, but if you're recording and you move into a different interface for playing guitar, the recording stops.
If they seemed like they couldn't answer it, it was probably because they didn't know how to say it without losing the sale.
If you consider your previous comment to be vitriol, then you are truly a calm and pleasant person. While I feel your argument was based on an inference that I did not--or at least did not mean to--imply and was thus misdirected, your points were clear, simply stated and free of the ad hominem which so often accompanies these discussions.
I'll take your 'vitriol' over many others' 'reasoned arguments' any day, friend.
Remember that the majority of Android phone buyers do not care what OS it runs. All they want is a phone of great value or from a particular OEM.
Absolutely true. But people get turned off if they see a friend's phone running something that they can't run. "But my phone is Android, too!" "Well, you have to upgrade. We can root it, and then do this and that..."
Most people don't want to deal with that BS. Again, I think that the increased restrictions will have the effect of improving the intra-manufacturer Android experience, and while it may slow Android's explosive growth, it'll make for greater long term success.
Of course, don't forget, Google doesn't care, really, if Android beats the iPhone. The whole point was to put the web (and thus web advertisements) in people's hands. Every new, fast mobile device that Apple (or HTC or Samsung or Nokia) releases which allows for easy browsing of the web, which supports web standards, and especially those that allow users to choose Google as a default search engine, helps Google's bottom line.
The brilliance of Android is not that it's better than iOS or WP7 or anything else. That's arguable, of course, but the real brilliance is that it quickly took the phone-as-handheld-computer market that Apple was pumping up with the iPhone and made it explode beyond what anyone was imagining just a few years ago.
Don't worry, I don't think that Apple invented the market, but to use a TV metaphor, Palm wrote the Pilot, Apple put it in prime time, and Android took it to syndication. All important steps, and all the survivors are going to benefit from the competition that put touch-screen computers in our pockets.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting that on /. when the Fukushima reactor issue began, there appeared to be two camps forming: one that said, "maybe we should be concerned about this,' and another that said, "fucking libtards are going to use this as an excuse to push for tougher limitations on the expansion of nuclear power in other countries!"
/. users land on that chart. I wonder how many people who are vigorously defending nuclear power are busting a blood vessel over this iPhone thing.
With this issue, the two camps appear to be coming down to, "this may not be a huge issue; hopefully Apple will begin truncating this file with an upcoming update" and "fucking Apple fanbois will take anything that His Steveness rams up their rear! This is an outrage!"
It'd be interesting to track the outrage quotient on various issues and see where various
How many barrels did you say were in a hogshead?
Well, I'd consider that a different question, not a better one. There are many who would say the same thing about a computer, a smartphone, or even a cell phone. For this audience, your answer may not agree with the majority.
Good point. You know, don't you, that Apple negotiated some pretty slick pay-as-you-go plans with Verizon and ATT for their 3G iPads. I think with ATT, for example, it's $15.00 for 250MB in a 30-day period. Not super-awesome on a per-MB cost, but there's no startup cost, no recurring cost unless you choose to re-up, and you can stop it any time.
It's way better than paying an extra $20/mo commitment for tethering when maybe you'll only need it for the two weeks you're on that bike trip and staying at cheap motels.
You do realize, don't you, that this answer was in the context of the question of, "Should your tablet have just wifi, or wifi+3g?" The GP doesn't say anywhere that the tablet is useless without a network connection, but only enumerates the locations where a network connection would be useful, but where--in their estimation--Wifi is good enough and 3G may not even be available.
I disagree on one point. The 3G versions (at least of the iPad) come with GPS built in--I assume that it's because of OEM chipsets, so it's probably the same for other tablets--and while it's been demonstrated that by tethering to a smartphone, you get to take advantage of the phone's GPS info, the advantage (for me at least) to a 3G tablet would be the ability to attach it to my car's dashboard and use it as a GPS for my passenger to navigate by, even if neither of us had a smartphone handy, or if we didn't have a tethering plan.
But that being said, your response was a total troll.
The main thing that numbers (or at least the people trumpeting them) exaggerate is their own importance. That is to say, for example, "X OS outsells Y OS on Z type of platform, so X wins!" To which the retort is, "Well, Y OS earns ten times the revenue, so Y OS wins!"
People like to use car analogies (Yugo vs. BMW), but I've recently decided that, at least in the mobile market (I know, off topic, but related), a better parallel would be a comparison with restaurants. These days, anyone but the most ironic hipster would probably be hesitant to drive a Yugo, but every day, people choose to eat at MacDonald's, or PF Changs, or Chez Panisse. If you look at the profits, the unit sales, the societal impact, the "objective" quality of the product, the status associated with each, you could make a case for each and every one of them "winning". However, doing so really just exposes your own bias.
Back to the main topic, Microsoft and Apple each have their own strengths and weaknesses. In general, I prefer Apple products to MS's, but while I've never considered buying "Numbers", I have purchased multiple versions of Excel over the years. While I like my iPhone, I might give WP7 a try when my current contract is up if it looks like developers have taken to it and there's a good app market. And so on.
The point is that no level of quality on the menu at Chez Panisse will ever make MacDonald's go away, and no level of cost cutting at MacDonald's will ever make PF Chang's go away, and so on. Similarly, Apple and Microsoft (and a few of the other giants) are all big enough and diversified enough that it doesn't matter if they lead a particular market. They're not going away.
The biggest question, of course, is whether a particular product is sustainable for them. Google is notorious for dropping products that don't have enough of a following (Wave?); Microsoft has done the same thing (Kin?). I can't think of any big recent ones from Apple--after Steve's return, they've pretty much pared down their offerings and remained close-lipped about them so the projects they kill die before release. But that's the only thing that would really matter to me when choosing a device or OS or other product platform: will it be orphaned.
I don't believe Google is evil and I don't work with OSM, but if Google is not evil it has to realize the negative impacts its actions can have on the kinds of grassroots open-source efforts it claims to support.
I once interviewed for a job at Google. Made it through 13 rounds. During interview #14, I was pontificating on the "don't be evil" mantra and suggested that, even without evil intent, the reverberating effects of radical changes in technology shouldn't be ignored. I said something along the lines that I'm sure that Google could come up with a way to offer absolutely free web hosting--no Geocities-esque banners or anything--and absolutely kill hundreds or thousands of small service vendors overnight.
The interviewer's words were, "That's an interesting insight." But the look on his face was, "And how is it our problem that these other vendors can't keep up?"
And they never called back after that.
You track your Kinect.
So why hasn't production increased? The businesses who are seeing increased demand will also see increased profit. If they choose to, they can plow those profits back into operations and expand. The re-investment in their infrastructure isn't taxed, as it's an expense. The problem is instead that the CEOs get millions of dollars in bonuses, and that money gets concentrated in a few places where it doesn't do anyone in the economy any good.
I think that the rich could stand to bear a significantly greater tax burden than they do. If David Letterman only gets to take home $5 million dollars a year instead of 15, nobody's going to cry for him. He can still afford a chicken for dinner, and he can still afford to make those investments.
There's a bell curve to everything. The problem is that knee jerk conservatives have seen the economy experience explosive short-term growth with tax cuts for the wealthy, and so they assume that if a little was good, a little more must be better. But it's like the cotton farmers in the 20s; they are ignoring the fact that there are negative repercussions as well that may simply not be apparent at the outset. I mean, heck, what's wrong with higher unemployment, right? From the corporate perspective, that means that there's a greater labor pool, so you can pay less! Unemployment is good for business! Total short-term thinking.
I don't think we should nationalize all wealth or any such thing; however, we've seen things get more and more difficult for the average person over the last couple of generations of tax policy shifts which increasingly favor the super-wealthy. I think it's time to move towards something a little more progressive again. My recommended end-state might seem a little extreme, but if we were to move towards it slowly, we might see some amazing benefits.
How about this: 0.5% additional taxes for every $250,000 earned, with a cap at 50% maximum taxes. Balance that with tax cuts at the lower end of the income spectrum. Ratchet that up every year until the zero-tax level is, say, 75% of the median income.
Scully? What about Mulder?
You know another way you could increase profits for corporations? Raise the minimum income required for taxes much higher--say, to $50,000--and put the money back in the hands of the people who spend basically every penny they have. The real incentive to expand and create jobs comes from greater demand for products and services. Just cutting the taxes means, for a lot of corporations, bigger bonuses for the e-team. But if all of a sudden they get 30% more demand because their target market has 30% more money to spend...
Bah. The worst thing about the Tenderloin is that on Sunday, you can't find anywhere to park because so many bridge-and-tunnel people come into town to go to Glide.
There were some great, great, great games on that machine. And don't even get me started on the Amiga. For some reason, that computer inspired a shareware development community that dwarfed every other platform at the time; it was for computers what the iPhone is for mobile devices today. It's a pity that Commodore moved into PC compatibles, infringed on a heavily defended VGA patent, refused to negotiate any licensing, and thus had their PC business shut down in the US, effectively killing the company. I'd love to have a phone with the C= logo on the back.
Your poor hamster...
So you left out five.
Yes. My use of "such as" implies that there are other cases that I wasn't mentioning, left as an exercise for the reader to find.
When else would you need a program to actually "do something" in the background that's not covered by one of those?
If you look at the post I was responding to, they were asking if Garage Band would run in the background while they were using their guitar tab app and still function. The implication was that they wanted Garage Band to continue recording while they were playing using a separate tab app. And "multi-track" recording is not one of those seven core faux-multitasking services.
Listen, I'm not down on the way Apple's implemented multitasking; it's a fine trade-off. But it's not true app-level multi-tasking. If someone wants to start recording in one window and view tabs for a song in another window while the recording is still going, that's just not possible, currently, on an iPad or most (all?) competing similar devices.
Raid on Bungeling Bay
DROLL
Choplifter!
Jumpman
I'm so jealous. Mine was stolen.
No, what the GP is saying is that you could hire somebody in India to do your job for you and take on a second job in all your spare time.
You're absolutely correct. I don't know why the other respondents have chosen to deny what I described. I don't think Apple's made a bad decision, but it is what it is. My comment about them not wanting to miss a sale was really just pulling punches; what they were really trying to do was to avoid some geek who doesn't understand the design tradeoffs required in a product like the iPad having a complete melt-down on the sales floor.
Really? I'm pretty much quoting Apple. I didn't list all of the seven exceptions, but the point is that when you swap apps, with those seven exceptions, whatever you swapped out of is paused.
If I'm wrong, please show me documented evidence that it works differently than I (and Apple) have described.
No, they have not. There's fast switching and state caching, and certain services can be evoked that give the appearance of multitasking (i.e. the Pandora app invokes the core system's data streaming and music playback features so you can continue to listen to music even after you switch over to another app), but at this time, there is no true app-level multitasking.
I'm not arguing whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I, for one, think they made some good design decisions. But there is no true app-level multitasking. But don't believe me: get it from the horse's mouth
Trust me, my response went through a few drafts as well.
simple question of whether garageband would run in the background
Answer: No. No apps run in the background on the iPad (or iPod touch or iPhone). The system does, core features and services such as music playback and push notifications. But no downloadable apps run in the background; they page out nicely so that you can get back i quickly, but if you're recording and you move into a different interface for playing guitar, the recording stops.
If they seemed like they couldn't answer it, it was probably because they didn't know how to say it without losing the sale.
If you consider your previous comment to be vitriol, then you are truly a calm and pleasant person. While I feel your argument was based on an inference that I did not--or at least did not mean to--imply and was thus misdirected, your points were clear, simply stated and free of the ad hominem which so often accompanies these discussions.
I'll take your 'vitriol' over many others' 'reasoned arguments' any day, friend.
Remember that the majority of Android phone buyers do not care what OS it runs. All they want is a phone of great value or from a particular OEM.
Absolutely true. But people get turned off if they see a friend's phone running something that they can't run. "But my phone is Android, too!" "Well, you have to upgrade. We can root it, and then do this and that..."
Most people don't want to deal with that BS. Again, I think that the increased restrictions will have the effect of improving the intra-manufacturer Android experience, and while it may slow Android's explosive growth, it'll make for greater long term success.
Of course, don't forget, Google doesn't care, really, if Android beats the iPhone. The whole point was to put the web (and thus web advertisements) in people's hands. Every new, fast mobile device that Apple (or HTC or Samsung or Nokia) releases which allows for easy browsing of the web, which supports web standards, and especially those that allow users to choose Google as a default search engine, helps Google's bottom line.
The brilliance of Android is not that it's better than iOS or WP7 or anything else. That's arguable, of course, but the real brilliance is that it quickly took the phone-as-handheld-computer market that Apple was pumping up with the iPhone and made it explode beyond what anyone was imagining just a few years ago.
Don't worry, I don't think that Apple invented the market, but to use a TV metaphor, Palm wrote the Pilot, Apple put it in prime time, and Android took it to syndication. All important steps, and all the survivors are going to benefit from the competition that put touch-screen computers in our pockets.