I'm pretty sure Notion Ink has been talking about the rear touchpad for longer than 11 months. Of course, as you sew, so shall you reap: Notion Ink claims to have patented their rotating camera, even though there was one in a Samsung phone I got from T-mobile five years ago.
The key here is "secret." Most people don't notice that they're doing it, so they don't get any bad press. The average user isn't likely to see the significance of the issue unless you take the time to explain it, so the headline by itself doesn't do much damage.
Trojaning the passphrase would actually be criminal, plus it's unnecessary in almost all cases, so there's no point in them doing it.
Yup, using the master password key would solve the problem. However, this only protects people who are smart about security, which is to say almost nobody.
You are right in principle, but not in practice. The problem is that the security model for software package installations allows for privilege escalation in an unconstrained (not chrooted) environment. This means that the installer can do whatever it wants to Mozilla, and there's nothing Mozilla can do to stop it.
The solution to this problem is to use a different installation model and a different security model. Two examples are Bitfrost and iOS. Both use a security model where apps are constrained as to what they can access, and how they can access it. Installers aren't allowed to scribble all over the filesystem. Consequently, app installers would not be *able* to modify the Mozilla install, so this simply wouldn't be an issue.
So basically what's going on here is that these companies are taking advantage of a broken security model while they can. Hopefully as technology marches forward, this broken security model will become obsolete, although I see no evidence that Microsoft or Apple are working on it.
Um. The title is absurd. You don't "control the web" by adopting open standards. None of these three is "controlling the web." If you want to look for someone controlling the web, look at all the legislation going around allowing governments to seize domain names, and treat traffic differently based on its source, and shut down peoples' access to the web based on mere allegations. That's "controlling the web."
This assumes that the cabin crew counts the knives when collecting the refuse. Otherwise, the terrorist can just palm it and wait for everyone else to be disarmed.
I can see through a resistive screen, but it's like my computer is wearing a condom. Why would you want all that blurring? Why would you want to have to use a stylus to get an accurate hit?
The problem with what you are saying is that you are stating *your* preferences and claiming that they are universal. All I'm telling you is that they aren't. I've used devices with resistive screens. They suck. I had an N770. It had a very pretty screen, behind a resistive touchscreen that, with any ambient light at all, stood out like a sore thumb. It had no battery life, and utterly crappy software that barely worked. It was a complete waste of money.
The iPad works, and there's no screen condom, and I don't have to fumble for a stylus, nor worry about losing it. I just touch the screen with my finger, and the right thing happens.
Ease of Use and Cost of Use are not the same thing. There are two sides to the price/performance tradeoff. Apple wins over Ubuntu here because the prices on the App Store are generally not unreasonable, and what you get for your money is much nicer than what you get for free from Ubuntu.
Using software with bad UIs costs time, and time is money. Would you rather pay $10 and save 100 hours of wasted time over the course of a year, or save the $10? If your time is free, you'll save the $10. If it's worth something, you'll spend the money.
For free software to succeed on the desktop, it has to be as good as or better than the thing it's replacing, even though the thing it's replacing costs money, because the thing it's replacing doesn't cost *enough* money to make money the overriding concern.
Did it have a non-sucking screen, and decent battery life, and a useable UI? You said "penpoint," so I'm going to assume the answer is no, because you needed a pen to operate it.
The newton was a miserable market failure, even though it was a cool device.
Why does nobody mention the Palm Pilot? If you're going to mention the Newton, you clearly think dinky CPUs, monochrome screens and resistive touchscreens are okay. There's no need to mention PenPoint unless you worked on it and were disappointed that it failed. If so, I have great sympathy for you. It sucks to back a great idea that hits the market at the wrong time.
But this is why Apple won with the iPad: they released *nothing* until what they had was unassailable. I'm guessing PenPoint had to release before they'd gotten rid of everything that sucked, because they needed a revenue stream, and the only plausible revenue stream was unit sales. Apple didn't have that problem. Sucks, but it's true.
You're talking about UMPCs? Yes, I looked into those too. But they mostly had hard drives, Intel CPUs, and no battery life. And crappy screens. There's a reason why they hit the market like a lead balloon. They were not just as good as the iPad, and what differentiated the iPad from them was not "marketing." It was non-suckitude.
Resistive touchscreens are better for content creation? Maybe in some market that barely exists, I don't know. In the real world, the first time I ever really wanted a computer with a touch screen was the iPhone, because it was the first computer that had a touch screen I could see through.
It doesn't matter if resistive touchscreens are more accurate, because they suck--they make it difficult to read the underlying content, and they scratch up and wear out quickly.
So basically what you're saying is that Apple timed it right. I'd tend to agree with you on this, but really you're just restating my argument from a different angle.
Also, if the technological shift you're referring to is the reason Apple succeeded where others failed, doesn't the fact that Apple caught the curve at the sweet spot, and nobody else came close, indicate that Apple did *something* right?
Otherwise, you would have seen an HP tablet, and a Dell tablet, and a Microsoft Tablet, all hitting the market right in the same timeframe. As it stands, the only real competitor to hit the market so far is the Samsung, and it's nearly a year late.
The Palm Pilot in particular was a huge success, so if you include PDAs you're correct that my whole line of reasoning falls over. Which should make it obvious that I wasn't referring to PDAs.
I realize the Newton was bigger than a Palm Pilot, but it had similar capabilities. It was hella cool--way cooler than the Palm Pilot. But if someone came out with one now to compete against the iPad it would fail horribly. It failed in the market because it tried to do way too much with way to little. Personally, I think the iPad is a worthy successor.
Um, maybe you should try one out before you start criticizing it. You probably still won't like it, but at least then you won't embarrass yourself with all these weasel words. You might also criticize it for sucking at things it actually sucks at. Mine is fine in broad daylight, as long as the brightness is turned up.
They bought 30 iPads without a plan for how to use them? And the manager that signed off on that still works there? That's not how you do things--you buy new devices to address needs, not because they're cool, or might be useful. If the device doesn't address a need, don't buy it. Generally speaking, the way you tell that the device addresses a need is that people in the department are asking for it, and providing concrete justifications for why they want it. You don't buy it for them, and try to cram it down their throats.
Dude, this is hooey. If you want to run stuff that's not in the App Store, you have to pay $100 for a developer license. Then you can run whatever you want. You can complain about *that*--I would certainly rather be able to do it for free. But $100 is not an insurmountable obstacle, if you like the form factor.
Huh. I watched about ten hours of video on my iPad on the way back from the Beijing IETF. The screen felt a bit small, although adequate. I liked it a lot better than the screen on the back of the seat, which was probably closer to 4.8". Sure, you can get by with 4.8", but the larger screen is really nice. That's why there's a market for 50" TV sets.
Er, they did. You have two options: the keyboard dock, and the bluetooth keyboard. Both work great for entering lots of data. The bluetooth keyboard is even portable, although I am not really in the habit of bringing it along--it turns out not to be necessary most of the time when I'm out and about, but the iPad itself is damned useful, particularly if you're in a strange city.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny too. Until I remembered back to the days before the Free Software movement, when Unix machines that came without compilers were par for the course, and a development toolkit for any commercial platform would set you back O($10k).
$100/year is actually pretty cheap, although admittedly not free.
Bwahahahaha! You're trolling, right? I'm a huge believer in open source software as a political movement, and as a basis for a free society, but are you *seriously* proposing that it's easier to use than the App Store? *Seriously*? Have you ever *used* the App Store?
I'd *love* to see a Linux distro that's as easy to use as the iPad. Let's fork Qt and build one!
No, it's not. The article makes some good points, sure. But the real reason the iPad succeeds where other laptops fail is that it's the first tablet that didn't suck. Every tablet before it has had a resistive touchscreen and a swivel-hinge keyboard, with the CPU under the keyboard. The iPad has the CPU with the display, and no keyboard. If you want a keyboard, you buy an external one.
Every tablet before the iPad had a hard drive. Hard drives are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad had an Intel CPU. Intel CPUs are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad ran Windows. Windows is designed for PCs. For tablets, it sucks.
Every tablet before the iPad weighed in at over three pounds, because of the Intel CPU, the hard drive, the hinge, and the battery required to support all that. You couldn't hold them in your hands unsupported for ten minutes, much less an hour--you'd have to cradle them. They were designed to do too many things, so they sucked at the one thing tablets really need to do--replace a pad of paper or a book.
Every tablet before the iPad had a battery life of maybe five or six hours, if you were really careful, and two or three, if you weren't. The iPad's battery will last through a full work day of full time use. It doesn't suck.
That's why it's the first tablet to succeed in the market.
A 757 crashed on takeoff from LGA a couple of months after 9/11. It landed in a neighborhood in Queens, destroying several buildings. A total of five people were reported missing after the crash (everyone on board died). So no, blowing a wing off an airplane in flight at random is not equivalent to controlled flight into a crowded building. Not even remotely.
This is a bad analogy. Suppose someone punches you once. And then, for the next ten years, you insist that everyone in your presence has to wear handcuffs so they can't punch you. That's a better analogy.
This is a bad argument. Prior to 9/11, people hadn't used box cutters to hijack airplanes. That's why it worked. The right argument for this discussion is "how much are you willing to pay in terms of money and invasiveness, in exchange for how much reduction of risk?" Because the price here is quite high, and the return is quite low.
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I'm pretty sure Notion Ink has been talking about the rear touchpad for longer than 11 months. Of course, as you sew, so shall you reap: Notion Ink claims to have patented their rotating camera, even though there was one in a Samsung phone I got from T-mobile five years ago.
The key here is "secret." Most people don't notice that they're doing it, so they don't get any bad press. The average user isn't likely to see the significance of the issue unless you take the time to explain it, so the headline by itself doesn't do much damage.
Trojaning the passphrase would actually be criminal, plus it's unnecessary in almost all cases, so there's no point in them doing it.
Yup, using the master password key would solve the problem. However, this only protects people who are smart about security, which is to say almost nobody.
You are right in principle, but not in practice. The problem is that the security model for software package installations allows for privilege escalation in an unconstrained (not chrooted) environment. This means that the installer can do whatever it wants to Mozilla, and there's nothing Mozilla can do to stop it.
The solution to this problem is to use a different installation model and a different security model. Two examples are Bitfrost and iOS. Both use a security model where apps are constrained as to what they can access, and how they can access it. Installers aren't allowed to scribble all over the filesystem. Consequently, app installers would not be *able* to modify the Mozilla install, so this simply wouldn't be an issue.
So basically what's going on here is that these companies are taking advantage of a broken security model while they can. Hopefully as technology marches forward, this broken security model will become obsolete, although I see no evidence that Microsoft or Apple are working on it.
Um. The title is absurd. You don't "control the web" by adopting open standards. None of these three is "controlling the web." If you want to look for someone controlling the web, look at all the legislation going around allowing governments to seize domain names, and treat traffic differently based on its source, and shut down peoples' access to the web based on mere allegations. That's "controlling the web."
This assumes that the cabin crew counts the knives when collecting the refuse. Otherwise, the terrorist can just palm it and wait for everyone else to be disarmed.
On Lost, they got most of the stuff they used for survival out of the checked luggage.
I can see through a resistive screen, but it's like my computer is wearing a condom. Why would you want all that blurring? Why would you want to have to use a stylus to get an accurate hit?
The problem with what you are saying is that you are stating *your* preferences and claiming that they are universal. All I'm telling you is that they aren't. I've used devices with resistive screens. They suck. I had an N770. It had a very pretty screen, behind a resistive touchscreen that, with any ambient light at all, stood out like a sore thumb. It had no battery life, and utterly crappy software that barely worked. It was a complete waste of money.
The iPad works, and there's no screen condom, and I don't have to fumble for a stylus, nor worry about losing it. I just touch the screen with my finger, and the right thing happens.
Ease of Use and Cost of Use are not the same thing. There are two sides to the price/performance tradeoff. Apple wins over Ubuntu here because the prices on the App Store are generally not unreasonable, and what you get for your money is much nicer than what you get for free from Ubuntu.
Using software with bad UIs costs time, and time is money. Would you rather pay $10 and save 100 hours of wasted time over the course of a year, or save the $10? If your time is free, you'll save the $10. If it's worth something, you'll spend the money.
For free software to succeed on the desktop, it has to be as good as or better than the thing it's replacing, even though the thing it's replacing costs money, because the thing it's replacing doesn't cost *enough* money to make money the overriding concern.
Did it have a non-sucking screen, and decent battery life, and a useable UI? You said "penpoint," so I'm going to assume the answer is no, because you needed a pen to operate it.
The newton was a miserable market failure, even though it was a cool device.
Why does nobody mention the Palm Pilot? If you're going to mention the Newton, you clearly think dinky CPUs, monochrome screens and resistive touchscreens are okay. There's no need to mention PenPoint unless you worked on it and were disappointed that it failed. If so, I have great sympathy for you. It sucks to back a great idea that hits the market at the wrong time.
But this is why Apple won with the iPad: they released *nothing* until what they had was unassailable. I'm guessing PenPoint had to release before they'd gotten rid of everything that sucked, because they needed a revenue stream, and the only plausible revenue stream was unit sales. Apple didn't have that problem. Sucks, but it's true.
You're talking about UMPCs? Yes, I looked into those too. But they mostly had hard drives, Intel CPUs, and no battery life. And crappy screens. There's a reason why they hit the market like a lead balloon. They were not just as good as the iPad, and what differentiated the iPad from them was not "marketing." It was non-suckitude.
Resistive touchscreens are better for content creation? Maybe in some market that barely exists, I don't know. In the real world, the first time I ever really wanted a computer with a touch screen was the iPhone, because it was the first computer that had a touch screen I could see through.
It doesn't matter if resistive touchscreens are more accurate, because they suck--they make it difficult to read the underlying content, and they scratch up and wear out quickly.
So basically what you're saying is that Apple timed it right. I'd tend to agree with you on this, but really you're just restating my argument from a different angle.
Also, if the technological shift you're referring to is the reason Apple succeeded where others failed, doesn't the fact that Apple caught the curve at the sweet spot, and nobody else came close, indicate that Apple did *something* right?
Otherwise, you would have seen an HP tablet, and a Dell tablet, and a Microsoft Tablet, all hitting the market right in the same timeframe. As it stands, the only real competitor to hit the market so far is the Samsung, and it's nearly a year late.
The Palm Pilot in particular was a huge success, so if you include PDAs you're correct that my whole line of reasoning falls over. Which should make it obvious that I wasn't referring to PDAs.
I realize the Newton was bigger than a Palm Pilot, but it had similar capabilities. It was hella cool--way cooler than the Palm Pilot. But if someone came out with one now to compete against the iPad it would fail horribly. It failed in the market because it tried to do way too much with way to little. Personally, I think the iPad is a worthy successor.
"Presumably?" "Probably?"
Um, maybe you should try one out before you start criticizing it. You probably still won't like it, but at least then you won't embarrass yourself with all these weasel words. You might also criticize it for sucking at things it actually sucks at. Mine is fine in broad daylight, as long as the brightness is turned up.
They bought 30 iPads without a plan for how to use them? And the manager that signed off on that still works there? That's not how you do things--you buy new devices to address needs, not because they're cool, or might be useful. If the device doesn't address a need, don't buy it. Generally speaking, the way you tell that the device addresses a need is that people in the department are asking for it, and providing concrete justifications for why they want it. You don't buy it for them, and try to cram it down their throats.
Dude, this is hooey. If you want to run stuff that's not in the App Store, you have to pay $100 for a developer license. Then you can run whatever you want. You can complain about *that*--I would certainly rather be able to do it for free. But $100 is not an insurmountable obstacle, if you like the form factor.
Huh. I watched about ten hours of video on my iPad on the way back from the Beijing IETF. The screen felt a bit small, although adequate. I liked it a lot better than the screen on the back of the seat, which was probably closer to 4.8". Sure, you can get by with 4.8", but the larger screen is really nice. That's why there's a market for 50" TV sets.
Er, they did. You have two options: the keyboard dock, and the bluetooth keyboard. Both work great for entering lots of data. The bluetooth keyboard is even portable, although I am not really in the habit of bringing it along--it turns out not to be necessary most of the time when I'm out and about, but the iPad itself is damned useful, particularly if you're in a strange city.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny too. Until I remembered back to the days before the Free Software movement, when Unix machines that came without compilers were par for the course, and a development toolkit for any commercial platform would set you back O($10k).
$100/year is actually pretty cheap, although admittedly not free.
Bwahahahaha! You're trolling, right? I'm a huge believer in open source software as a political movement, and as a basis for a free society, but are you *seriously* proposing that it's easier to use than the App Store? *Seriously*? Have you ever *used* the App Store?
I'd *love* to see a Linux distro that's as easy to use as the iPad. Let's fork Qt and build one!
No, it's not. The article makes some good points, sure. But the real reason the iPad succeeds where other laptops fail is that it's the first tablet that didn't suck. Every tablet before it has had a resistive touchscreen and a swivel-hinge keyboard, with the CPU under the keyboard. The iPad has the CPU with the display, and no keyboard. If you want a keyboard, you buy an external one.
Every tablet before the iPad had a hard drive. Hard drives are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad had an Intel CPU. Intel CPUs are big, and draw a lot of power. That is, they suck.
Every tablet before the iPad ran Windows. Windows is designed for PCs. For tablets, it sucks.
Every tablet before the iPad weighed in at over three pounds, because of the Intel CPU, the hard drive, the hinge, and the battery required to support all that. You couldn't hold them in your hands unsupported for ten minutes, much less an hour--you'd have to cradle them. They were designed to do too many things, so they sucked at the one thing tablets really need to do--replace a pad of paper or a book.
Every tablet before the iPad had a battery life of maybe five or six hours, if you were really careful, and two or three, if you weren't. The iPad's battery will last through a full work day of full time use. It doesn't suck.
That's why it's the first tablet to succeed in the market.
A 757 crashed on takeoff from LGA a couple of months after 9/11. It landed in a neighborhood in Queens, destroying several buildings. A total of five people were reported missing after the crash (everyone on board died). So no, blowing a wing off an airplane in flight at random is not equivalent to controlled flight into a crowded building. Not even remotely.
This is a bad analogy. Suppose someone punches you once. And then, for the next ten years, you insist that everyone in your presence has to wear handcuffs so they can't punch you. That's a better analogy.
Won't work--they wear latex gloves for the pat-downs.
This is a bad argument. Prior to 9/11, people hadn't used box cutters to hijack airplanes. That's why it worked. The right argument for this discussion is "how much are you willing to pay in terms of money and invasiveness, in exchange for how much reduction of risk?" Because the price here is quite high, and the return is quite low.