I don't think its as simple as that. People complain more about the GIMP's interface than just about any other piece of software, why would that be? I really do think it's messy and confusing. You may like it, but that doesn't negate the problem.
You seem to be arguing against Apple's primary motivation being ethical. That's not what I said, either in my original comment or my followup. I think the motivation at Apple is complex, mostly comprising power, money and aesthetics, and a technological vision. Ethical considerations are in there, but they will probably be trumped by the others, all things being equal. I also think you're mistaking your ethics for being universal -- interoperability and technological freedom (which isn't identical with intellectual freedom) may simply not be seen as a good thing by many of these people. Your money-only explanation seems attractive because Apple has made an awful lot of it. But it did not get there by doing the things most people would have done to make money. A lot of their actions are very akin to artists ho get fiercely protective of their work. Controlling user experience is part of that, their patenting another. This part seems to be somewhat aesthetically motivated, and as an artist I recognise it (although I think it mostly counterproductive).
An example I think I can point to of Apple's non-money motivation is Apple's relatively benign relationship to the web. They have not made anything like the aggressive moves to control it that Microsoft, Google and Facebook have made. They have made significant contributions to web technology in an open way.
The best way to show that you understand someone's motivation is to predict their future behaviour. I predict Apple will maintain and probably increase the tight control they have on their platforms. They will aggressively bully companies they feel are copying them aesthetically, while largely ignoring the ones that don't (regardless of the actual patents involved). They will take a hands-off approach to web content and will keep developing the technological web platform, regardless of how tight their native platform control gets. In the longer term, they will scale iOS so that it can be the primary computing platform for most people. At that point they may make OS X (or a derivative) some sort of more flexible beast aimed at the cutting edge; this will have some sort of restriction to define who uses it rather than what it will do (very expensive is my guess).
Except that mobile apps are much more likely to reach people than the web. Mobile apps require the user to do fewer things and can better take advantage of the client's hardware. Telling developers to just write web apps is telling them to wait in line while the VIPs get to just walk past.
Huh? I spend more time in the web browser of computing devices than anything else. I don't think I'm unusual. And as easy as it is to install an app, it's easier to visit a web page. There's virtually no friction.
What liberal values? Apple has no liberal values, they are just like any other large corporation: money first, values never.
I'm tempted to give you a snarky reply, because you just baldly state this like you're certainly right, and I'm a naive fool. However, I will try to explain why I think you're wrong on this and leave out the snark. People (and corporations are just a bunch of people) are rarely, if ever, motivated by a single thing. Most people like to think they are doing good in the world. Most people have an ideology, and seek to justify, defend, and promote it. Steve Jobs did, other people at Apple do, and I think it's very naive to ascribe a single motivation to what they are doing.
The "money is the motivation" explanation is sophomoric, and leaves you blind to the complex reality and explanatory power of other motivations and causes. I think this particularly the case with Apple and other technology companies that have been hugely shaped by one person.
Now, I think Apple should have stuck to rejecting technically harmful, misleading and illegal apps, and not concerned themselves with content, but I think worries about censorship are way overblown. There is a powerful platform that runs on every iOS device, and is not censored by Apple in any way: the web.
I suspect you'll find that this is their philosophical stance (I've seen quotes from Jobs that echo this, but I can't find them at the moment): native apps are their curated platform, whereas the web is where you can do whatever you like, and is for the free exchange of ideas. The app store is important, but the web is crucial. The evidence for this is that they do put a decent effort into providing a very good web platform. I think that's how they square this stuff with liberal values.
I assembled the ePub version myself, and used Calibre to convert it to.mobi. Amazon didn't do anything at all to my file as far as I know. They are a dumb pipe for people's money.
Actually, the book is doing just fine, we're making decent money from it. I doubt I'd take an offer from a publisher, I don't see how the economics would work out. The system works!
Having just published an ebook, I can tell you that DRM is a choice made by the publisher. Amazon will happily sell ebooks without DRM, and are doing so with mine right now, I didn't check "provide copy protection".
Perhaps, but I also had experience with a Samsung phone of the same era, and it wasn't much better. I agree that there have always been better Android phones out there, but the low-end stuff was pretty poor last I looked about 18 months ago.
Hmm, I'll get labelled an Apple fanboy, but I disagree. Android made great inroads with cheap phone that were underpowered and in many ways a poor experience. The HTC Desire is one phone that springs to mind, web browsing like molasses, horrible jerky scrolling, games would get 4-10fps, etc. There were quite a few of those sorts of phones on the market, and they drove Android adoption like crazy. They were cheap in the cheap sense.
No, Apple is a patent bully. They make products, or intend to make products, that utilise their patents. They also make that vast majority of their money on actual products, not litigation. Neither of these things is consistent with a patent troll.
Where is this "Windows XP was good" coming from recently? It wasn't, its security was terrible, it's playschool interface embarrassing, and its usability poor. People got used to it, and its worst blunders (security) were somewhat patched up, but it wasn't ever good. The reason Vista bombed was because it had to reverse a heap of XP shit, and that was always going to hurt.
This is cool tech, but there is no way that "bendable" is a killer feature for a phone. I've never wanted to bend my phone, and I very much doubt enough people do to make this primary application of this technology. I suspect it will be used in ways that people haven't though of yet.
A bit off topic, but why do you have your computer off at all? I mean I can see using a calculator in some situations, but I am a little surprised people still turn their computers off.
Pretty much every Linux person I've ever talked to that has to due tech support for family has reported that their "monthly fix-it-for-me calls" dropped to yearly calls the instant they switched said family members to Linux.
"He seemed to really like this Linbox thing, I just couldn't bring myself tell him that it broke and I haven't used my computer for six months."
Now, I don't actually want you to start watching television again, but if you think there hasn't been any good television since the 90s, you're sorely mistaken. Lots of shows made more recently are good, even great. The new Battlestar Galactica (the first couple of seasons), The Wire, and Mad Men spring to mind.
Sometimes* it's good for you to passively watch something. Constant interaction or feeling like you have control is not a good thing.
*Okay maybe not hours and hours a day watching just your television.
Handwriting or not, a good stylus is essential to the tablet "experience". Jobs was unimaginably wrong on that one. Here's hoping that future tablets take a cue from the Galaxy Note. I'd bet that good stylus product from Microsoft or RIM could easily take-out a second-rate tablet like iPad.
And here we have all of Slashdot's delusions about want-the-fuck-is-going-on wrapped up in a neat little paragraph. As the previous reply pointed out, reality says the exact opposite thing you do. What the hell do you think is going on in the world? (Good god, I bet you're gong to say "marketing"...)
I say this as someone that wants a (pressure sensitive) stylus for an iPad!
It's pretty much certain at this point. The skeletal anatomical evidence alone would be enough, but now there's a whole slew of independent confirmation from soft tissues, molecular studies, and behavioural evidence. We are more certain birds are dinosaurs than we are most other dinosaurs are dinosaurs.
Those quotes aren't contradictory. In fact, he says also "rock solid" in the first quote to refer to Ringo varying the tempo at the right place and time.
XP was a piece of shit in the hands of everyone but Windows experts. Prone to malware, gradually degrading performance for no particular reason (requiring re-installs every 3-6 months), and an ugly, intrusive GUI. I really don't understand this new-found reverence of XP. It was a pile of poo, and nowhere near as good as any modern operating system.
You got used to it, I guess. But that didn't make it fine.
So no link then? Because I have checked out people's stories before, and it always turns out the situation is more complicated than people like to let on.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think its as simple as that. People complain more about the GIMP's interface than just about any other piece of software, why would that be? I really do think it's messy and confusing. You may like it, but that doesn't negate the problem.
You seem to be arguing against Apple's primary motivation being ethical. That's not what I said, either in my original comment or my followup. I think the motivation at Apple is complex, mostly comprising power, money and aesthetics, and a technological vision. Ethical considerations are in there, but they will probably be trumped by the others, all things being equal. I also think you're mistaking your ethics for being universal -- interoperability and technological freedom (which isn't identical with intellectual freedom) may simply not be seen as a good thing by many of these people. Your money-only explanation seems attractive because Apple has made an awful lot of it. But it did not get there by doing the things most people would have done to make money. A lot of their actions are very akin to artists ho get fiercely protective of their work. Controlling user experience is part of that, their patenting another. This part seems to be somewhat aesthetically motivated, and as an artist I recognise it (although I think it mostly counterproductive).
An example I think I can point to of Apple's non-money motivation is Apple's relatively benign relationship to the web. They have not made anything like the aggressive moves to control it that Microsoft, Google and Facebook have made. They have made significant contributions to web technology in an open way.
The best way to show that you understand someone's motivation is to predict their future behaviour. I predict Apple will maintain and probably increase the tight control they have on their platforms. They will aggressively bully companies they feel are copying them aesthetically, while largely ignoring the ones that don't (regardless of the actual patents involved). They will take a hands-off approach to web content and will keep developing the technological web platform, regardless of how tight their native platform control gets. In the longer term, they will scale iOS so that it can be the primary computing platform for most people. At that point they may make OS X (or a derivative) some sort of more flexible beast aimed at the cutting edge; this will have some sort of restriction to define who uses it rather than what it will do (very expensive is my guess).
What are your predictions?
Except that mobile apps are much more likely to reach people than the web. Mobile apps require the user to do fewer things and can better take advantage of the client's hardware. Telling developers to just write web apps is telling them to wait in line while the VIPs get to just walk past.
Huh? I spend more time in the web browser of computing devices than anything else. I don't think I'm unusual. And as easy as it is to install an app, it's easier to visit a web page. There's virtually no friction.
What liberal values? Apple has no liberal values, they are just like any other large corporation: money first, values never.
I'm tempted to give you a snarky reply, because you just baldly state this like you're certainly right, and I'm a naive fool. However, I will try to explain why I think you're wrong on this and leave out the snark. People (and corporations are just a bunch of people) are rarely, if ever, motivated by a single thing. Most people like to think they are doing good in the world. Most people have an ideology, and seek to justify, defend, and promote it. Steve Jobs did, other people at Apple do, and I think it's very naive to ascribe a single motivation to what they are doing.
The "money is the motivation" explanation is sophomoric, and leaves you blind to the complex reality and explanatory power of other motivations and causes. I think this particularly the case with Apple and other technology companies that have been hugely shaped by one person.
Now, I think Apple should have stuck to rejecting technically harmful, misleading and illegal apps, and not concerned themselves with content, but I think worries about censorship are way overblown. There is a powerful platform that runs on every iOS device, and is not censored by Apple in any way: the web.
I suspect you'll find that this is their philosophical stance (I've seen quotes from Jobs that echo this, but I can't find them at the moment): native apps are their curated platform, whereas the web is where you can do whatever you like, and is for the free exchange of ideas. The app store is important, but the web is crucial. The evidence for this is that they do put a decent effort into providing a very good web platform. I think that's how they square this stuff with liberal values.
I assembled the ePub version myself, and used Calibre to convert it to .mobi. Amazon didn't do anything at all to my file as far as I know. They are a dumb pipe for people's money.
Actually, the book is doing just fine, we're making decent money from it. I doubt I'd take an offer from a publisher, I don't see how the economics would work out. The system works!
Having just published an ebook, I can tell you that DRM is a choice made by the publisher. Amazon will happily sell ebooks without DRM, and are doing so with mine right now, I didn't check "provide copy protection".
So we should tie our counters to how much of a (fairly) useless metal we can dig out of the ground? Why?
Perhaps, but I also had experience with a Samsung phone of the same era, and it wasn't much better. I agree that there have always been better Android phones out there, but the low-end stuff was pretty poor last I looked about 18 months ago.
Hmm, I'll get labelled an Apple fanboy, but I disagree. Android made great inroads with cheap phone that were underpowered and in many ways a poor experience. The HTC Desire is one phone that springs to mind, web browsing like molasses, horrible jerky scrolling, games would get 4-10fps, etc. There were quite a few of those sorts of phones on the market, and they drove Android adoption like crazy. They were cheap in the cheap sense.
I don't know what the situation is now though.
The problem is that Apple is a patent troll [...]
No, Apple is a patent bully. They make products, or intend to make products, that utilise their patents. They also make that vast majority of their money on actual products, not litigation. Neither of these things is consistent with a patent troll.
Where is this "Windows XP was good" coming from recently? It wasn't, its security was terrible, it's playschool interface embarrassing, and its usability poor. People got used to it, and its worst blunders (security) were somewhat patched up, but it wasn't ever good. The reason Vista bombed was because it had to reverse a heap of XP shit, and that was always going to hurt.
This is cool tech, but there is no way that "bendable" is a killer feature for a phone. I've never wanted to bend my phone, and I very much doubt enough people do to make this primary application of this technology. I suspect it will be used in ways that people haven't though of yet.
A bit off topic, but why do you have your computer off at all? I mean I can see using a calculator in some situations, but I am a little surprised people still turn their computers off.
Link us to the relevant discussion pages or diffs.
Pretty much every Linux person I've ever talked to that has to due tech support for family has reported that their "monthly fix-it-for-me calls" dropped to yearly calls the instant they switched said family members to Linux.
"He seemed to really like this Linbox thing, I just couldn't bring myself tell him that it broke and I haven't used my computer for six months."
I kid! ...sorta.
Why is sex still a taboo subject, and violence considered normal?)
Because sex is more pleasurable precisely because of it taboo nature. If you take away the taboo, you take a out a lot of the intensity and intimacy.
Violence, on the other hand, is more public -- in fact a lot of the time that is the point.
Now, I don't actually want you to start watching television again, but if you think there hasn't been any good television since the 90s, you're sorely mistaken. Lots of shows made more recently are good, even great. The new Battlestar Galactica (the first couple of seasons), The Wire, and Mad Men spring to mind.
Sometimes* it's good for you to passively watch something. Constant interaction or feeling like you have control is not a good thing.
*Okay maybe not hours and hours a day watching just your television.
Handwriting or not, a good stylus is essential to the tablet "experience". Jobs was unimaginably wrong on that one. Here's hoping that future tablets take a cue from the Galaxy Note. I'd bet that good stylus product from Microsoft or RIM could easily take-out a second-rate tablet like iPad.
And here we have all of Slashdot's delusions about want-the-fuck-is-going-on wrapped up in a neat little paragraph. As the previous reply pointed out, reality says the exact opposite thing you do. What the hell do you think is going on in the world? (Good god, I bet you're gong to say "marketing"...)
I say this as someone that wants a (pressure sensitive) stylus for an iPad!
It's pretty much certain at this point. The skeletal anatomical evidence alone would be enough, but now there's a whole slew of independent confirmation from soft tissues, molecular studies, and behavioural evidence. We are more certain birds are dinosaurs than we are most other dinosaurs are dinosaurs.
Those quotes aren't contradictory. In fact, he says also "rock solid" in the first quote to refer to Ringo varying the tempo at the right place and time.
XP was a piece of shit in the hands of everyone but Windows experts. Prone to malware, gradually degrading performance for no particular reason (requiring re-installs every 3-6 months), and an ugly, intrusive GUI. I really don't understand this new-found reverence of XP. It was a pile of poo, and nowhere near as good as any modern operating system.
You got used to it, I guess. But that didn't make it fine.
Huge from Twitter's point of view, though, surely? An investment like that would keep them afloat indefinitely.
Err, you don't get mobile phone reception in the London Underground either (well, you do in the overground parts, obviously).
So no link then? Because I have checked out people's stories before, and it always turns out the situation is more complicated than people like to let on.