JavaScript is a great language, but using it for full-blown enterprise app development would be a major setback.
True, but what might make sense is to use a client/server architecture with a Javascript/HTML client and a server written in.Net, Java or lovingly-hand-crafted-C. That gives you a client which could potentially run across iOS, Android, ChromeOS, OS X, Linux and WIndows from substantially the same codebase. That could be a boon if your boss is pestering you for an iPhone app, your managers want a web interface to work from hotel bedrooms or if Google actually manages to produce a thin client that actually costs less than a full PC.
Alternatively, HTML/JS might just be used to provide the "tile" aspect of your software (analogous to a widget in Android or on the OS X Dashboard) with some preview/current doc information but which fires up the "classic mode" app when you need it. You could even imagine "hybrid" laptops with a (maybe ARM-based) tablet in the lid that let you use widgets and only woke up the main computer for serious work.
Remember, Win8 is all about tablets and touchscreens, where Apple and Android are currently eating Microsoft's lunch (the corporates are going to be running Win7, if not XP, for a while yet) - and what Appledroid have shown is that software with a UI custom designed for tablets trumps "legacy" software. So, This could also be Microsoft being strategic, to try and ensure that developers go back to the drawing board and implement proper tablet interfaces, not just make minimal tweaks to their.Net forms UI to make things useable-ish.
Granted, this is not the way I like to read documents and it's totally superfluous, but from a design standpoint it's kind of cool.
...but its in Flash, which is an evil carbuncle upon the face of the internet (unless the article is about Apple, in which case Flash is an essential part of the internet experience).
Remind me why I have to download a PDF file to read text on the Internet?
Because, for better or worse, some people still like to print out hard copies (a) to read on the toilet/train/plane without having to faff about with a laptop and (b) just in case the online version changes without notice... It may even be required to deliver hard copies of the report. Also, there's still a certain amount of preference, particularly in academia, for ISBN numbers and page references over URLs. Silly, but not always within your gift to ignore.
The one thing HTML doesn't do is give you more than hit-and-miss control over pagination and page numbering, any control over headers or footers or margins or browser settings like "fit to page" or "print page backgrounds" (or, rather, nobody has implemented the parts of CSS that would allow you to do this, beyond "page-break: before/after"). In fact, creating *any* complex page layout in CSS is more of a pain in the butt than it should be.
So, the choice is (a) create a single PDF version for printing *and* download, or (b) maintain both PDF and HTML versions. (Personally, where possible, I do (b) by including an @media print stylesheet, tweak the HTML so it will print out adequately in at least one browser/version/OS combination, generating a PDF and then pimping it a bit in Acrobat, but then I'm a glutton for punishment).
Sadly, the paperless office is still about as practical as the paperless lavatory (and I'd bet on Mr Dyson producing some amazing pneumatic bum-cleaner before the paperless office happens).
First, you benefit anytime somebody else installs a compiler, and there always seem to be people willing to do it.
True, but the days when you had to spend $$$$ to get hold of development tools and docs for proprietary OSs are long gone. MS have schemes for getting free dev tools, and I think Apple XCode costs a princely two bucks to satisfy some bizzarre accounting rule.
Second, if you build an important product around open source software and the project really does dry up, you can hire yourself people to maintain it for you until you're able to transition to somebody else. It is analogous to code escrow with any other vendor, except that it will be easier to find people who are already familiar with the code.
Absolutely true for that sort of enterprise. Not so helpful when granny posts a question on a forum and gets six people asking why the fsck she wants to do that when you can write a short Python script instead, 3 people calling her a fsckwit for re-posting Bug #2765349 (which was closed, status "works for me") and one incomprehensible request for core dumps and trace info.
Actually, I wouldn't fault Linux for "serious" computing, especially anything without a GUI, or as a kernel (e.g. Android and half the NAS and router appliances in the world). The "linux paradox" comes when linux tries to do "user friendly" - its like a snake trying to tapdance, its just not in its DNA. I use Linux quite a lot, but inevitably the first thing I do is fire up a bash shell & we're cooking with gas. On OS X, sometimes hours go past before I have to start Terminal, and I even know some people who don't have Terminal in their dock! Inconceivable!
Of course, proprietary software does crap support, too - but then you've paid money and are allowed to be angry.
Okay, that says the iPad was therefore a beta test unit for iPad 2 - therefore an incomplete device.
By that measure, almost every phone, camera, PC, software product on the market - Apple or otherwise - is incomplete. Heck, sign a NDA with most big tech companies and they'll show you a "roadmap" that spells this out. In other news: Google are probably already planning Android 4.0, Amazon probably have the Kindle 3 on the drawing board, and Intel almost certainly have the next two successors to "Sandy Bridge" in the pipeline. Or do you think these products spring into existence fully formed a few weeks before launch?
Clearly we have different requirements - you care about the look and weight of the device, I care about functionality and expandability
For mobile/handheld devices, size and weight are part of the functionality (the clue is in the words "mobile" and "handheld"). Lots of people commented that the original iPad was a bit hefty for sustained reading or viewing. The iPad2 (if you can be bothered to pick one up) is lighter and thinner enough to show a noticable improvement. If you'd rather have a brick that you could chain to the table with a dozen cables, good luck.
Reports emerge of poor conditions and suicides at Foxconn.
Bashspeak: Nobody else in the electronics industry relies on cheap Far East labor. All PCs/Android devices are manufactured in [insert home country of basher] by workers paid above-average rates with full dental and medical, working a maximum 35-hour week 12 weeks paid holiday and free tea and coffee. And yes we mean manufactured, not assembled.
English: iCloud sues Apple over iCloud name usage.
English: Apple sues iCloud over iCloud name usage.
Hater-speak: Apple thinks it owns the letter "i" - kill them with fire!!!
English: Given the absurd amount of hype surrounding Apple products (fueled by haters and fanbois in equal measure), anyone in the IT or consumer electronics business who, in the last decade, chose a name beginning with a lower-case "i" should have known what to expect.
The Fanboi Paradox: "OS X is great as it's based on BSD UNIX" & "Linux is bad due to too much UNIX shell reliance".
The Linux Paradox: "Linux is the best OS bar none" & "Why do you want to do that? - its open source, so go learn C, familiarize yourself with a zillion lines of source code and fix it yourself!".
As others have pointed out, Google is not a charity. Google Kids would be a lot more expensive to run than Google search (because it would need human monitoring) and they'd want money.
That means that, if they ran Google Kids, they'd want to sell things to your kids (or get your kids to pester you to buy things). Don't you get enough of that from TV?
If that's the case then why did iPad 2 come out only ONE YEAR after iPad 1?
The iPad 2 was probably being developed even before the original launched, because after 1 year, it was inevitable that serious competitors would start to appear, and the iPad would need a "bump" to maintain interest. It helps that the semiconductor industry is quite predictable (Moore's law and all that) so they can guess what components are going to be available and affordable 18 months down the line.
Making the 2 a bit thinner, a bit lighter (dont diss the apparently small changes in size and weight until you've held both - its very noticable) and adding cameras was the ideal "bump" - enough to drum up new business and keep ahead of the game without pissing off iPad 1 owners (who I guess will mostly wait for iPad 3). Apple also used the time to come up with their own videophone system (which is about the only point of having cameras on a tablet).
Its called marketing strategy, and everybody does it. It can be annoying, but its one reason why you get to buy nice things at reasonable prices.
Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt leaves as legal tender, we have of course all become immensely rich. But we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three major deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut. So in order to obviate this problem and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on an extensive defoliation campaign and, er... burn down all the forests. I think that's a sensible move, don't you?
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the Sixth
We're really, really needing that 3-Ark plan about now!
they still can easily afford to compensate him and publicly acknowledge his invention.
What invention? Syncing an iDevice but - get this - over WiFi instead of a cable!!!! That's exactly the sort of "invention" that turns up in junk software patents and gets derided on forums like this.
That's not to say it didn't need skill and effort to implement (including getting around the App Store sandbox, which he should have known would get it rejected... but then getting rejected from the App store is a pretty good way of getting publicity for your Cydia app) but then the guy seems to have made a 5-6 digit sum off Cydia sales, which sounds like a happy ending to me. I bet he's sold a few more thanks to all this publicity.
So if a wi-fi syncing app called Wi-Fi Sync is obvious, therefore Apple can steal...er...appropriate it for its own use without repercussions, then I would assume by the same token that a store selling apps called App Store is obvious, therefore anyone can appropriate the name for their own use as well. Apple, what say you?
Did the author of WiFi Sync register it as a trademark? Did he get a patent on syncing via WiFi? If so, he may have a case, but I suspect the answer is no. If Apple now try to stop him selling his app (without stumping up some cash to oil the wheels) then it would be a bloody cheek but AFAIK that hasn't happened.
Basically, if the first person to open a bookshop had trademarked "The Book Shop" it would have been fair game. See: "The Sock Shop", "Carphone Warehouse" or even "Radio Shack" (pretty sure radio hams were using that term long before Tandy).
Meanwhile, on the whole "Apple ripped off WiFi sync" front, since when did the Slashdot community support the notion that people could "own" obvious ideas?
If they hadn't taken Amazon to task for using App Store, this bit would be pretty much non-issue
...and you seriously think that, Amazon's decision to launch a service called "App Store" was not inspired in any way by the success of the Apple "App Store"?
If so, I have this bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy.
Is Amazon's MP3 download section titled "The MP3 Store?" (Clue: No its "AmazonMP3" - I'm betting they'd have got away with AmazonApps) Is the CD section called "The Amazon Record Shop"? (To be fair, they do say "Welcome to the Amazon Music store in the text at the top, but its not a title and there's no logo - again, they may have got away with this sort of reference to an app store). Is their "Toys and Games" section called "The Toy Shop" (No - they seem to prefer to use "Department" for this).
Do they even use the words "Book Shop" to describe their original business line (I don't see it in on the current home page - its certainly not in the title or logo). Yet when they offer their software download service it was completely natural and obvious to slap an "Amazon AppStore" logo on it. Really?
Riiiight. Just like Nintendo has a "monopoly" on Wii's and Ford has a "monopoly" on Mustangs.
...and Waddingtons (or whoever) have a monopoly on Monopoly(tm):-)
You're using that word, "monopoly", it it doesn't mean whatever it is you think it means.
Not quite (trademarks, copyright, patents all create and legally support "monopolies" of a sort) - the point is the offense being discussed here is monopoly abuse - i.e. using your monopoly to distort the market by (e.g.) using it to take over a related market - not simply having a monopoly. Whether or not "Brand X corp" can be said to have a monopoly on "Brand X Widgets(tm)" doesn't count towards monopoly abuse.
In the UK we have (had?) the Monopolies Commission to oversee such things. People often asked why there was only one Monopolies commission...
Microsoft were guilty of anti-competitive behaviour
...because they tried to leverage their (at the time) near-total monopoly on personal computer operating systems to drive competitors out of the existing application software market.
If and when someone convinces a court that Apple have a near-monopoly on mobile device operating systems then they may be forced to open up iOS to competition. It was already determined (in the PsyStar case) that arguing "Apple has a monopoly on Apple-branded devices" doesn't cut the mustard. Catching someone at Apple saying "iOS ain't done 'till DropBox won't run!" might also help your case.
Pope passes within 1000m of a synagogue - is he still a catholic?
ANY STATEMENT WRITTEN IN BLOCK CAPS - should you be worried?
So can we stop importing over-the-top Apple-bashing from The Register and stick to the (comparatively) intelligent, civilized debate on the relative merits of Apple vs. other platforms that we usually enjoy on Slashdot?
(Like, how the fuck am I supposed to upgrade 10 mac users at work to Lion without asking them all to buy it via their personal iTunes accounts?)
Tables weren't designed to handle complex layouts either.
But they do a far better job of it than CSS - even properly implemented CSS.
The concept of separating semantics and presentation was around well before CSS. CSS was designed for this.
Except it does a bloody lousy job because, to achieve particular effects with CSS (e.g. the sort of multi-column layout that is ubiquitous on websites) your "semantic" mark-up has to be written with precisely the right hierarchy of properly-named "div" elements in the correct order.
Unfortunately, CSS gives the impression of being "designed" by a committee who had never visited a late-1990s-era webpage, used a DTP package, or used a GUI layout manager API.
"Some of" isn't true.
Care to name any MS or non-MS browsers that support "page-break: avoid" in any useful fashion? (Hint: if HTML/CSS had better facilities for controlling printed output then maybe more online journals would put stuff online in nice, semantically-marked-up HTML form rather than as PDFs).
Paul Revere was not warning the American colonists that the British were coming, but rather warning the British were not 'going to taking away our [guns]'."
In AD 1775 War was Beginning.
John Hancock: What Happen?
Paul Revere: Somebody set us up the cannon!
British: All of your forts are belong to us! Ha ha ha ha!
Samuel Adams: Take off every HORSE!
Paul Revere: For great justice!
The difference this time time is it will use open, cross-platform standards that haven't been "embraced and extended" into a proprietary system by Microsoft. It may also have something resembling a security model.
The alternative, in a world where productivity apps (at least) will increasingly be expected to offer tablet & online, cloud-y versions, is to continue to need multiple incompatible codebases for application front ends.
God knows, there should be better choices than HTML/CSS/Javascript for writing GUIs, but the Real World has spoken and, for better or for worse, it is the emerging standard for platform-independent GUIs and already runs across OSX, iOS, Windows, Android and various *nix flavours.
We seem to be sliding from one extreme (development being held back by the need to support 10+ year old legacy systems) to the other (updates every few months, obsolescence after a year). From corporates taking 18 months to approve and roll-out a software update to bloody auto-update encouraging users to fix what ain't broke every morning.
Now, in the not-too-distant-future there will come a time to draw a line in the sand and say "From now on we'll only support browsers that correctly implement these HTML5/CSS features..." - although from what I've seen of HTML5 support we're not there yet (it would help if the HTML5 standard was actually finished, came with a reference implementation to resolve any ambiguity in the standards and, basically, was being developed by IETF instead of W3C) but this sort of mechanistic "last but one version" plan, with no consideration given to timing or what had actually changed between browsers sounds a bit too simplistic.
Incorrect. You will have to change to a new version of Firefox every time Google Apps starts depending on a feature of the latest two Firefox versions that is not in your version which they don't test on anymore. This is very, very unlikely to be every six months. Probably not even every two years...
Nope - if you are doing anything important with Google Apps you'll have to continually upgrade Firefox as often as necessary to stay with a "supported" version if you want any sort of confidence that Google won't permanently break apps for your browser overnight.
Sure, you can try to install and run, say, a Windows 3.1 app in modern Windows
I'm not talking about trying to install 20 year old apps on new operating systems - I'm talking about trying to install a 3-month-old app on a 6-month-old OS without (as you say) grabbing a.deb and crossing your fingers or knowing how to build a tarball.
Slashdot Mirror
JavaScript is a great language, but using it for full-blown enterprise app development would be a major setback.
True, but what might make sense is to use a client/server architecture with a Javascript/HTML client and a server written in .Net, Java or lovingly-hand-crafted-C. That gives you a client which could potentially run across iOS, Android, ChromeOS, OS X, Linux and WIndows from substantially the same codebase. That could be a boon if your boss is pestering you for an iPhone app, your managers want a web interface to work from hotel bedrooms or if Google actually manages to produce a thin client that actually costs less than a full PC.
Alternatively, HTML/JS might just be used to provide the "tile" aspect of your software (analogous to a widget in Android or on the OS X Dashboard) with some preview/current doc information but which fires up the "classic mode" app when you need it. You could even imagine "hybrid" laptops with a (maybe ARM-based) tablet in the lid that let you use widgets and only woke up the main computer for serious work.
Remember, Win8 is all about tablets and touchscreens, where Apple and Android are currently eating Microsoft's lunch (the corporates are going to be running Win7, if not XP, for a while yet) - and what Appledroid have shown is that software with a UI custom designed for tablets trumps "legacy" software. So, This could also be Microsoft being strategic, to try and ensure that developers go back to the drawing board and implement proper tablet interfaces, not just make minimal tweaks to their .Net forms UI to make things useable-ish.
Granted, this is not the way I like to read documents and it's totally superfluous, but from a design standpoint it's kind of cool.
...but its in Flash, which is an evil carbuncle upon the face of the internet (unless the article is about Apple, in which case Flash is an essential part of the internet experience).
Do keep up.
Remind me why I have to download a PDF file to read text on the Internet?
Because, for better or worse, some people still like to print out hard copies (a) to read on the toilet/train/plane without having to faff about with a laptop and (b) just in case the online version changes without notice... It may even be required to deliver hard copies of the report. Also, there's still a certain amount of preference, particularly in academia, for ISBN numbers and page references over URLs. Silly, but not always within your gift to ignore.
The one thing HTML doesn't do is give you more than hit-and-miss control over pagination and page numbering, any control over headers or footers or margins or browser settings like "fit to page" or "print page backgrounds" (or, rather, nobody has implemented the parts of CSS that would allow you to do this, beyond "page-break: before/after"). In fact, creating *any* complex page layout in CSS is more of a pain in the butt than it should be.
So, the choice is (a) create a single PDF version for printing *and* download, or (b) maintain both PDF and HTML versions. (Personally, where possible, I do (b) by including an @media print stylesheet, tweak the HTML so it will print out adequately in at least one browser/version/OS combination, generating a PDF and then pimping it a bit in Acrobat, but then I'm a glutton for punishment).
Sadly, the paperless office is still about as practical as the paperless lavatory (and I'd bet on Mr Dyson producing some amazing pneumatic bum-cleaner before the paperless office happens).
First, you benefit anytime somebody else installs a compiler, and there always seem to be people willing to do it.
True, but the days when you had to spend $$$$ to get hold of development tools and docs for proprietary OSs are long gone. MS have schemes for getting free dev tools, and I think Apple XCode costs a princely two bucks to satisfy some bizzarre accounting rule.
Second, if you build an important product around open source software and the project really does dry up, you can hire yourself people to maintain it for you until you're able to transition to somebody else. It is analogous to code escrow with any other vendor, except that it will be easier to find people who are already familiar with the code.
Absolutely true for that sort of enterprise. Not so helpful when granny posts a question on a forum and gets six people asking why the fsck she wants to do that when you can write a short Python script instead, 3 people calling her a fsckwit for re-posting Bug #2765349 (which was closed, status "works for me") and one incomprehensible request for core dumps and trace info.
Actually, I wouldn't fault Linux for "serious" computing, especially anything without a GUI, or as a kernel (e.g. Android and half the NAS and router appliances in the world). The "linux paradox" comes when linux tries to do "user friendly" - its like a snake trying to tapdance, its just not in its DNA. I use Linux quite a lot, but inevitably the first thing I do is fire up a bash shell & we're cooking with gas. On OS X, sometimes hours go past before I have to start Terminal, and I even know some people who don't have Terminal in their dock! Inconceivable!
Of course, proprietary software does crap support, too - but then you've paid money and are allowed to be angry.
Okay, that says the iPad was therefore a beta test unit for iPad 2 - therefore an incomplete device.
By that measure, almost every phone, camera, PC, software product on the market - Apple or otherwise - is incomplete. Heck, sign a NDA with most big tech companies and they'll show you a "roadmap" that spells this out. In other news: Google are probably already planning Android 4.0, Amazon probably have the Kindle 3 on the drawing board, and Intel almost certainly have the next two successors to "Sandy Bridge" in the pipeline. Or do you think these products spring into existence fully formed a few weeks before launch?
Clearly we have different requirements - you care about the look and weight of the device, I care about functionality and expandability
For mobile/handheld devices, size and weight are part of the functionality (the clue is in the words "mobile" and "handheld"). Lots of people commented that the original iPad was a bit hefty for sustained reading or viewing. The iPad2 (if you can be bothered to pick one up) is lighter and thinner enough to show a noticable improvement. If you'd rather have a brick that you could chain to the table with a dozen cables, good luck.
You missed:
Reports emerge of poor conditions and suicides at Foxconn.
Bashspeak: Nobody else in the electronics industry relies on cheap Far East labor. All PCs/Android devices are manufactured in [insert home country of basher] by workers paid above-average rates with full dental and medical, working a maximum 35-hour week 12 weeks paid holiday and free tea and coffee. And yes we mean manufactured, not assembled.
English: iCloud sues Apple over iCloud name usage.
English: Apple sues iCloud over iCloud name usage.
Hater-speak: Apple thinks it owns the letter "i" - kill them with fire!!!
English: Given the absurd amount of hype surrounding Apple products (fueled by haters and fanbois in equal measure), anyone in the IT or consumer electronics business who, in the last decade, chose a name beginning with a lower-case "i" should have known what to expect.
The Fanboi Paradox: "OS X is great as it's based on BSD UNIX" & "Linux is bad due to too much UNIX shell reliance".
The Linux Paradox: "Linux is the best OS bar none" & "Why do you want to do that? - its open source, so go learn C, familiarize yourself with a zillion lines of source code and fix it yourself!".
As others have pointed out, Google is not a charity. Google Kids would be a lot more expensive to run than Google search (because it would need human monitoring) and they'd want money.
That means that, if they ran Google Kids, they'd want to sell things to your kids (or get your kids to pester you to buy things). Don't you get enough of that from TV?
If that's the case then why did iPad 2 come out only ONE YEAR after iPad 1?
The iPad 2 was probably being developed even before the original launched, because after 1 year, it was inevitable that serious competitors would start to appear, and the iPad would need a "bump" to maintain interest. It helps that the semiconductor industry is quite predictable (Moore's law and all that) so they can guess what components are going to be available and affordable 18 months down the line.
Making the 2 a bit thinner, a bit lighter (dont diss the apparently small changes in size and weight until you've held both - its very noticable) and adding cameras was the ideal "bump" - enough to drum up new business and keep ahead of the game without pissing off iPad 1 owners (who I guess will mostly wait for iPad 3). Apple also used the time to come up with their own videophone system (which is about the only point of having cameras on a tablet).
Its called marketing strategy, and everybody does it. It can be annoying, but its one reason why you get to buy nice things at reasonable prices.
As ever, Douglas Adams saw this coming:
We're really, really needing that 3-Ark plan about now!
they still can easily afford to compensate him and publicly acknowledge his invention.
What invention? Syncing an iDevice but - get this - over WiFi instead of a cable!!!! That's exactly the sort of "invention" that turns up in junk software patents and gets derided on forums like this.
That's not to say it didn't need skill and effort to implement (including getting around the App Store sandbox, which he should have known would get it rejected... but then getting rejected from the App store is a pretty good way of getting publicity for your Cydia app) but then the guy seems to have made a 5-6 digit sum off Cydia sales, which sounds like a happy ending to me. I bet he's sold a few more thanks to all this publicity.
So if a wi-fi syncing app called Wi-Fi Sync is obvious, therefore Apple can steal...er...appropriate it for its own use without repercussions, then I would assume by the same token that a store selling apps called App Store is obvious, therefore anyone can appropriate the name for their own use as well. Apple, what say you?
Did the author of WiFi Sync register it as a trademark? Did he get a patent on syncing via WiFi? If so, he may have a case, but I suspect the answer is no. If Apple now try to stop him selling his app (without stumping up some cash to oil the wheels) then it would be a bloody cheek but AFAIK that hasn't happened.
Basically, if the first person to open a bookshop had trademarked "The Book Shop" it would have been fair game. See: "The Sock Shop", "Carphone Warehouse" or even "Radio Shack" (pretty sure radio hams were using that term long before Tandy).
Meanwhile, on the whole "Apple ripped off WiFi sync" front, since when did the Slashdot community support the notion that people could "own" obvious ideas?
If they hadn't taken Amazon to task for using App Store, this bit would be pretty much non-issue
...and you seriously think that, Amazon's decision to launch a service called "App Store" was not inspired in any way by the success of the Apple "App Store"?
If so, I have this bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy.
Is Amazon's MP3 download section titled "The MP3 Store?" (Clue: No its "AmazonMP3" - I'm betting they'd have got away with AmazonApps) Is the CD section called "The Amazon Record Shop"? (To be fair, they do say "Welcome to the Amazon Music store in the text at the top, but its not a title and there's no logo - again, they may have got away with this sort of reference to an app store). Is their "Toys and Games" section called "The Toy Shop" (No - they seem to prefer to use "Department" for this). Do they even use the words "Book Shop" to describe their original business line (I don't see it in on the current home page - its certainly not in the title or logo). Yet when they offer their software download service it was completely natural and obvious to slap an "Amazon AppStore" logo on it. Really?
Riiiight. Just like Nintendo has a "monopoly" on Wii's and Ford has a "monopoly" on Mustangs.
...and Waddingtons (or whoever) have a monopoly on Monopoly(tm) :-)
You're using that word, "monopoly", it it doesn't mean whatever it is you think it means.
Not quite (trademarks, copyright, patents all create and legally support "monopolies" of a sort) - the point is the offense being discussed here is monopoly abuse - i.e. using your monopoly to distort the market by (e.g.) using it to take over a related market - not simply having a monopoly. Whether or not "Brand X corp" can be said to have a monopoly on "Brand X Widgets(tm)" doesn't count towards monopoly abuse.
In the UK we have (had?) the Monopolies Commission to oversee such things. People often asked why there was only one Monopolies commission...
Microsoft were guilty of anti-competitive behaviour
...because they tried to leverage their (at the time) near-total monopoly on personal computer operating systems to drive competitors out of the existing application software market.
If and when someone convinces a court that Apple have a near-monopoly on mobile device operating systems then they may be forced to open up iOS to competition. It was already determined (in the PsyStar case) that arguing "Apple has a monopoly on Apple-branded devices" doesn't cut the mustard. Catching someone at Apple saying "iOS ain't done 'till DropBox won't run!" might also help your case.
Brand new product (announced this week & not even available yet) doesn't run on 10 year-old version of competing OS!
In other news:
Apple Desktops stop working during power cut!!!
10-year-old PowerBook won't run Portal 2!!!
$3000 Apple laptop can be damaged by hitting repeatedly with a hammer!!!
7" tablet smaller and lighter than 10" iPad!!!
Apple has teenager arrested <font size="4pt">for ram-raiding Apple store.</font>
Steve Jobs once said "Fuck"
Independent <font size="4pt">Microsoft</font> report questions Apple's "Bears shit in woods" claim
Pope passes within 1000m of a synagogue - is he still a catholic?
ANY STATEMENT WRITTEN IN BLOCK CAPS - should you be worried?
So can we stop importing over-the-top Apple-bashing from The Register and stick to the (comparatively) intelligent, civilized debate on the relative merits of Apple vs. other platforms that we usually enjoy on Slashdot?
(Like, how the fuck am I supposed to upgrade 10 mac users at work to Lion without asking them all to buy it via their personal iTunes accounts?)
Tables weren't designed to handle complex layouts either.
But they do a far better job of it than CSS - even properly implemented CSS.
The concept of separating semantics and presentation was around well before CSS. CSS was designed for this.
Except it does a bloody lousy job because, to achieve particular effects with CSS (e.g. the sort of multi-column layout that is ubiquitous on websites) your "semantic" mark-up has to be written with precisely the right hierarchy of properly-named "div" elements in the correct order.
Unfortunately, CSS gives the impression of being "designed" by a committee who had never visited a late-1990s-era webpage, used a DTP package, or used a GUI layout manager API.
"Some of" isn't true.
Care to name any MS or non-MS browsers that support "page-break: avoid" in any useful fashion? (Hint: if HTML/CSS had better facilities for controlling printed output then maybe more online journals would put stuff online in nice, semantically-marked-up HTML form rather than as PDFs).
50 bucks for the add-on.
Or 35 quid in the UK. What, not £49.95 inc VAT!? 20% of my enthusiasm for online distribution just returned.
According to the Apple website (look for "Internet Restore and Utilities") it uses a recovery partition.
Ugh.
How about making it so I don't have re-download 3+GB every time a minor dot-release of Xcode is released?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html - look for 'Efficient app updates'
Paul Revere was not warning the American colonists that the British were coming, but rather warning the British were not 'going to taking away our [guns]'."
In AD 1775 War was Beginning.
John Hancock: What Happen?
Paul Revere: Somebody set us up the cannon!
British: All of your forts are belong to us! Ha ha ha ha!
Samuel Adams: Take off every HORSE!
Paul Revere: For great justice!
So we've come full circle back to IE again?
The difference this time time is it will use open, cross-platform standards that haven't been "embraced and extended" into a proprietary system by Microsoft. It may also have something resembling a security model.
The alternative, in a world where productivity apps (at least) will increasingly be expected to offer tablet & online, cloud-y versions, is to continue to need multiple incompatible codebases for application front ends.
God knows, there should be better choices than HTML/CSS/Javascript for writing GUIs, but the Real World has spoken and, for better or for worse, it is the emerging standard for platform-independent GUIs and already runs across OSX, iOS, Windows, Android and various *nix flavours.
We seem to be sliding from one extreme (development being held back by the need to support 10+ year old legacy systems) to the other (updates every few months, obsolescence after a year). From corporates taking 18 months to approve and roll-out a software update to bloody auto-update encouraging users to fix what ain't broke every morning.
Now, in the not-too-distant-future there will come a time to draw a line in the sand and say "From now on we'll only support browsers that correctly implement these HTML5/CSS features..." - although from what I've seen of HTML5 support we're not there yet (it would help if the HTML5 standard was actually finished, came with a reference implementation to resolve any ambiguity in the standards and, basically, was being developed by IETF instead of W3C) but this sort of mechanistic "last but one version" plan, with no consideration given to timing or what had actually changed between browsers sounds a bit too simplistic.
Incorrect. You will have to change to a new version of Firefox every time Google Apps starts depending on a feature of the latest two Firefox versions that is not in your version which they don't test on anymore. This is very, very unlikely to be every six months. Probably not even every two years...
Nope - if you are doing anything important with Google Apps you'll have to continually upgrade Firefox as often as necessary to stay with a "supported" version if you want any sort of confidence that Google won't permanently break apps for your browser overnight.
Sure, you can try to install and run, say, a Windows 3.1 app in modern Windows
I'm not talking about trying to install 20 year old apps on new operating systems - I'm talking about trying to install a 3-month-old app on a 6-month-old OS without (as you say) grabbing a .deb and crossing your fingers or knowing how to build a tarball.