It does, I never have a problem sending a text. Oh do you mean posting on my Facebook wall?
Oh, oh, I know what you mean, you're talking about calling someone and talking to them. I'm pretty sure that works most the time, but to be honest I haven't used that feature in a while.
People are lazy. People are only patriotic when it comes to buying a $1 sticker and sticking it to their car. People think of themselves, only, even when they appear to be thinking of someone else, usually it is because it benefits themselves in some way. People are animals in fancy cloths, 3 foodless days away from running around in packs tearing apart anything that looks edible.
Ah Windows based networks, where running software on a workstation can bring down your network. Your network should be hardened from attacks, whether the DOS attack comes from outside your firewall or inside it, because with social engineering attacks, you can get inside a firewall faster than your office manager can tell the fake IT guy that her cat and her password share the same name.
A user should be able to install and use any piece of software they like in their little sandbox. If they want support for it, then they use apps that their IT department supports. If they don't, then they don't.
I also love the comment about chatting with your girlfriend during work. Fine, don't let me ask my wife on IM when she is getting off work so I can pick her up, I'll just take that 15 minute government mandated break (that I never ever take), walk outside and call her.
4) Stop supporting corporate stupidity by working at a company that acts like this. Find a new job. Yes, yes, I know they "all" act like this. Well, that's not true, some don't. And if every productive employee left lame companies and went to work for the few companies that actually have a clue, perhaps all the lame companies would finally die. It's called the free market. People get the companies they deserve, it's not the companies fault, it's yours, period.
Pure opinion of course, but: I think Perl was the best language for these things. But now I would choose either Python or Ruby; I personally would be happy with either. I choose Ruby because it fits my style better, but Python is an awesome language also. Both have great communities, both have a lot of libraries (python is better at this), and both have modern language features. The style and decisions each made are different, so neither is better, but one is better for you.
Performance is how fast a program can accomplish a task on a given piece of hardware. If a C program can perform some task 10x faster than Ruby can do on the same hardware then the C program has much higher performance. How that performance is achieved, wether through better memory usage, faster calculations, or a better algorithm doesn't matter. It is simply the amount of work you can perform in a duration of time.
Scalability is simply that when apply more resources the output increases proportionally. If something is perfectly scalable and you increase the resources by 10, then output will increase by 10. Rarely is anything perfectly scalable as there is overhead for adding resources (communication between the resources, etc).
This is all that scalability means, and in most large applications it is much more important than performance. If I have an application that outputs a certain amount of work in a certain time, and this application will have growth, I want to be able to achieve increased output simply by adding new resources (new servers usually, but could be faster CPUs or more memory). I'd rather have an app that performs 50% slower than another app, if it had very good scalability, rather than a high performant app that couldn't' scale well (first server gets 100% output, second server only adds another 60% output, third server only adds another 30% output, etc).
I pretty much did the same thing, I bought the PS3 mainly for the Blu-Ray. Why is this having "a lot of cash to burn"?
I wanted a Blu-Ray player, and the PS3 was only $80 more than a pure player, and it got good ratings on the quality of movie playback. I figured the extra $80 was worth getting a game console and media center thrown in. Seems like good economic sense to me.
It's called an internship, you work for free. And you demonstrate programming ability, I don't know how many people I've interviewed that have no project that they've worked on to show me. Would you hire an artist who doesn't have a painting to show you? That's insanity. Trust me, you get very few candidates that actually show an interest in development and are promising. If free sounds terrible to you, do the math on your university education (mind you, I really think you should get a degree, but not for a development job only).
True some companies have stupid HR departments that simply grep for keywords; which is just silly as no entry level person will know c, c++, java, Windows, Unix, AJAX, HTML, XML,.net. etc, etc. In that case, just lie to get through the HR department. Actually, once you have enough experience to pick your job, I'd just avoid these type companies altogether, as that is a red flag to me. Only technical people can interview technical people.
Second, like all good positions in the world, move to where the industry is. If I wanted to be an actor, I'd move to LA; it's infinitely harder to get started in acting in Omaha.
Sad commentary; unfortunately you are correct, this is the view of many people.
I think anyone who is spending 4 to 6 years getting an a degree in computer science only to get a high paying job when then get out, are a tad silly. They are really, really wasting their time. They can get an intern job right now, at a software consulting company, study their ass off (as we all have to do in this field). Within a year they will be making decent money, within 3 years making really good money. 4 years later when the person has their shiny degree, after studying Java (which probably wont' even be used then), they get the joy of getting a junior developers job.
There is an old adage: "How do you become a writer?" "Write... a lot". This is the same with programming. You can't fake your skills, and a PHD in CS won't matter if you can't bill your clients because your application doesn't fulfill requirements or even work.
Truthfully if all you care about is money, work in finance, or become a salesperson. The best developer in the world won't compete with a high end salesperson dollar for dollar; hell CEOs can't compete with top salespeople. Zero education required.
I very much value a university education, but it has nothing to do with making more money. Learn, create, become a very educated person; the money will follow; the money part really isn't that hard.
In response to today's Microsoft announcement the Apache Software Foundation announces that they will cut their price by 100% and increase the allowed number of users to googolplex + 1.
do you really need to point in every thread that you have an iphone and a macbook?. Yes, it makes me feel better for spending way too much for a phone that dropped in price by $200 a month later. Oh, and I didn't mention I have a MacBook this time, my mistake; I actually have a MacBook, a MacBook Pro, and and Mac Pro.
I appreciate you following my ongoing/. comments, it's very nice to have fans.
You have valid points, for sure. However, there are a few fundamental truths: Microsoft tends to develop proprietary rather than use open, standard, or de-facto standard technologies. They also have, in the past, introduced new technology, only to drop it shortly after (Webclasses, Visual J, j#, etc). They also have killed a technology (VB) before the market wanted it dead.
This contrasts with a company that creates tools and technologies bases on real or de-facto standards they don't control. A technology that has competing companies creating tools is good for the developer, even if it isn't as good, financially, for the companies involved. c#, becoming a standard, to give credit to Microsoft, was a very good thing.
17 years is a long time for VB, for sure, but compared that to c++'s 25 years and c's 36 years. Sure they evolved over time to accommodate the changing landscape of SE, but they still are going strong. If Microsoft created c and it was as popular as VB it wouldn't have existed past 1989.
Obviously there are benefits to each method, and if one chooses to accept the Microsoft truths and they get value from that choice, all power to them. However, having been around for a long time, I'd just warn them that the cons aren't as apparent at first, but they are very much there.
VB was one of the most popular languages when it was "retired". This isn't market forces working, this isn't new tech winning out over older less useful tech. I have no problem with that. I use newer tools, but they are tools that exist because they do it better, not because a single company decided to take a different business route to be able to sell more OSs.
There most certainly are real standards, as well as, more importantly de-facto standards. There is absolutely no reason you can't build new slick technology using the de-facto standards, unless your goal is completely control that technology; to the detriment to your developers. SQL, XML, Javascript, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, HTTP, JSON, REST, SOAP, are all standards off the top of my head. Learn those, and you can use any new technology. Learn View State in ASP.net, and well, you can program in.net.
If you seriously think that a Java developer using Eclipse, IntelliJ, or Netbeans (or Ruby on Rails developer) is 10 years behind a developer using Visual Studio, you need to leave your safe Windows world every once in a while.
Flash works on most everything, Youtube works just fine on my iPhone, and many small devices support flash. iPhone doesn't fully support Flash though, which IMO Apple should rectify as soon as possible.
I'm sure I'll be using Silverlight on my phone soon.
I gave Microsoft a chance in 1995, then I gave them a chance in 98, 99, and 2001, and 2003. I gave them a chance with Webclasses, with ActiveX, with Fox Pro, with Visual J, with DNA, with vbscript, with jscript, with J#, with VB. I gave them a chance with IE, then again with IE, then again.
I'm sure if I just give them this one more chance, they'll be fine, just this last chance, this is going to be the one that works out... I know it, I just know it.
A little background, I was a MCSD when there were only 6000 of us and it actually meant something. I was around when VB 3 was popular, when Microsoft bought and destroyed Fox Pro. And I worked with MS development products up to.net 2.0, so I'm very familiar with Microsoft's stuff. You will only believe me when you've been through it a few times, but there is a good reason people are so weary of Microsoft dev tools; it's called years of experience dealing with them.
It isn't for lack of quality, because they are very good at making technologies and tools that go with them. Sometimes buggy, true, but they are generally of high quality. But that's not the problem, the problem is that they completely control it, and can and WILL pull the plug on it when it suits them for business reasons. This has happened many times, and will happen in the future. They will come out with the next great thing, you will spend a lot of time and money learning it, getting certified in it, promoting it, etc. Then they will destroy it (Webclasses, VB, Visual J, j#, com/ActiveX, com+, DNA, etc) and move on to the next fad that some other company is getting traction in (c#/.net to copy Java's success, new MVC framework copying Ruby on Rails, Silverlight to copy Flash/Flex, etc).
They will tell you that VB doesn't need real OOP because it's too hard for the average developer, then they'll drop VB (one of the most popular languages at the time) and create vb.net (which only resembles VB in the most superficial ways) and now claim that full OOP is the obvious way to go. They claim that the current technology is the only way to do things, then in 6 months say the opposite, leaving the developers scratching their heads. I hear.net programmers say, with conviction, how statically typed languages are the only way to go for professional development; that dynamic languages are only good for 'scripts'. When Ruby, Python, and Scala start to get real traction, all of a sudden you'll see them pushing Ruby.net and F#. Then I'll here all the.net developers saying how, obviously, dynamic and functional languages are the way to go. Of course this will leave a whole swath people out in the cold, as they have no dynamic language training.
I had the same problem with Java, although Sun didn't fully control it, they controlled it enough to make me nervous. They finally did the right thing and completely opened it up, making Java much more viable.
The problem is, that many of their technologies are so proprietary that your skills aren't as transferable as they would be if you were working in a more standard technology. I've worked with ASP.net programmers that don't even know the basics of how HTTP works; they will be hurting when they have to move to some other technology that expects basic competency in these things (this is true of Java Server Faces too btw).
Don't believe me, assume that you'll be able to use your.net skills for years to come, and you might, but you'll have no control over that. They literally were pushing their DNA infrastructure as the next great thing right before they released.net which completely replaced it. I was an expert in COM I was fully investing my time into it, then I was told, no that's useless learn.net. This will happen to you, then happen to again, then again, then you'll finally give up, or not, perhaps you like the pain; many people do.
Microsoft makes more than computer OSs. There are plenty of reasons to visit Microsoft's site other than downloading the latest security patch. There is this little thing called the XBox.
Wether Microsoft likes or not, the world isn't all Windows anymore; and no, running on Windows and OS X is only 'technically' cross-platform. HTML/Javascript/Ajax IS cross-platform. I do a lot of my surfing on my iPhone, many people now do that on their PS3, or using mobile Opera. Make technology that doesn't work on all mobile platforms at your own peril, IMHO.
I hope I speak for everyone when I say: we are pleased to invite you to come live on the west-coast. We have snow to sand, high mountains to deep seas, conservatives and liberals, good jobs, pretty ladies, and sturdy gents. Leave your shame in the south, you won't need it here... Welcome.
It's very expensive (It's cheap to ask what is bad, but very expensive to make it good). Some companies do focus on usability, the most obvious one is Apple. Apple products cost more, for many reasons but a big one is all the attention they pay to such things (and hiring the best UI designers in the country; which don't come cheap). However, everyone on/. and in Wal*Mart complains about Apple's prices.
The truth is people get the products they deserve, and at this time, in this society, people value price above all else. Companies know this and provide what the customer wants, cheap products with very little time or money refining them.
I was in line at Carl's Junior. The guy in front of me was complaining about the horrible service. He then went up and paid for his $0.99 burger. People want everything for nothing, and are truly suprised when they don't get it. If he really cared about service, he would of went down the street to Joe's Hamburger, and got very good service from Joe, who's been serving hamburgers for 37 years; but he would have had to pay $3.99 for it; nope, he'd rather get his 99 cent burger and complain.
Of course most Mac users are sheep, most people, in general, are sheep. People buy ipods because that's what everyone uses. People buy Windows also because that is everyone uses. At least the Mac sheep spent some time and made a conscious decision to buy something that most of the other sheeple didn't; so there is some hope for them.
For most people computers are just appliances. My wife introduced me to Macs. She bought one solely because she loved her iPod, and when she went to Circuit City, she looked at both PCs and a Mac, and because of her experience with her iPod she bought an iBook (this was many years ago). She's a smart cookie, but doesn't have an interest in technical stuff, so she said to her self: if the iPod works well the Mac must too; and for her it has; she now has a MacBook.
When we started dating, I started learning OS X on her machine. I was kind of amazed of what she was doing with her computer. Sure you CAN do everything she was doing on Windows, but no-one in my family had ever figured out how to do it. She was doing it on her Mac without really thinking of it. That got me intrigued.
For me, I'm a developer, a *nix developer to be precise. I had never been interested in Macs pre OS X, as the OS was kind of lame. But I felt right at home in the Terminal in OS X; I did have to learn the BSD way of doing things, but that was very easy.
I bought the cheapest Mac Mini to play with; ripped it apart, upgraded it, installed and reinstalled everything, etc. I then started to KVM between my Linux workstation and my Mac Mini. The mini was slow, but I started using it more and more. My next computer was a MacBook Pro; at that point I had my Mac laptop and my desktop Linux workstation.
When my Linux workstation was getting long in the tooth, I debated between a new shiny 4 core PC, or a 4 core Mac Pro. I had just built a very nice 4 core Linux workstation for a co-worker, and that worked really well for him. In the end I decided on a Mac Pro, and I've been very happy; I now have no PCs for workstations, only servers. OS X makes an excellent Unix workstation, and a great development environment. I'd be happy with a Linux workstation too, but I really like that the things I don't want to mess with (music, creating movies, etc) "just work" on the Mac, and things I really care about (development, the command-line, unix environment) work really well on OS X. Plus little things like OS X is 64 bit, and I can put 16gigs of memory in my Mac Pro; you really don't have to think about it (yes I know the 64bit versions of Windows and Linux can too, but most people aren't using those)
So I think my wife and I show two ends of the Mac spectrum; it's not as easy as saying "Mac users are non-technical sheep" because there are many people like me who need high powered unix workstations. And there are many people like my wife, who just want to do what they need to do and get back to what really interests them.
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It does, I never have a problem sending a text. Oh do you mean posting on my Facebook wall?
Oh, oh, I know what you mean, you're talking about calling someone and talking to them. I'm pretty sure that works most the time, but to be honest I haven't used that feature in a while.
People are lazy. People are only patriotic when it comes to buying a $1 sticker and sticking it to their car. People think of themselves, only, even when they appear to be thinking of someone else, usually it is because it benefits themselves in some way. People are animals in fancy cloths, 3 foodless days away from running around in packs tearing apart anything that looks edible.
Oh, and water is wet.
Ah Windows based networks, where running software on a workstation can bring down your network. Your network should be hardened from attacks, whether the DOS attack comes from outside your firewall or inside it, because with social engineering attacks, you can get inside a firewall faster than your office manager can tell the fake IT guy that her cat and her password share the same name.
A user should be able to install and use any piece of software they like in their little sandbox. If they want support for it, then they use apps that their IT department supports. If they don't, then they don't.
I also love the comment about chatting with your girlfriend during work. Fine, don't let me ask my wife on IM when she is getting off work so I can pick her up, I'll just take that 15 minute government mandated break (that I never ever take), walk outside and call her.
4) Stop supporting corporate stupidity by working at a company that acts like this. Find a new job. Yes, yes, I know they "all" act like this. Well, that's not true, some don't. And if every productive employee left lame companies and went to work for the few companies that actually have a clue, perhaps all the lame companies would finally die. It's called the free market. People get the companies they deserve, it's not the companies fault, it's yours, period.
Pure opinion of course, but: I think Perl was the best language for these things. But now I would choose either Python or Ruby; I personally would be happy with either. I choose Ruby because it fits my style better, but Python is an awesome language also. Both have great communities, both have a lot of libraries (python is better at this), and both have modern language features. The style and decisions each made are different, so neither is better, but one is better for you.
No, not really.
Performance is how fast a program can accomplish a task on a given piece of hardware. If a C program can perform some task 10x faster than Ruby can do on the same hardware then the C program has much higher performance. How that performance is achieved, wether through better memory usage, faster calculations, or a better algorithm doesn't matter. It is simply the amount of work you can perform in a duration of time.
Scalability is simply that when apply more resources the output increases proportionally. If something is perfectly scalable and you increase the resources by 10, then output will increase by 10. Rarely is anything perfectly scalable as there is overhead for adding resources (communication between the resources, etc).
This is all that scalability means, and in most large applications it is much more important than performance. If I have an application that outputs a certain amount of work in a certain time, and this application will have growth, I want to be able to achieve increased output simply by adding new resources (new servers usually, but could be faster CPUs or more memory). I'd rather have an app that performs 50% slower than another app, if it had very good scalability, rather than a high performant app that couldn't' scale well (first server gets 100% output, second server only adds another 60% output, third server only adds another 30% output, etc).
I pretty much did the same thing, I bought the PS3 mainly for the Blu-Ray. Why is this having "a lot of cash to burn"?
I wanted a Blu-Ray player, and the PS3 was only $80 more than a pure player, and it got good ratings on the quality of movie playback. I figured the extra $80 was worth getting a game console and media center thrown in. Seems like good economic sense to me.
It's called an internship, you work for free. And you demonstrate programming ability, I don't know how many people I've interviewed that have no project that they've worked on to show me. Would you hire an artist who doesn't have a painting to show you? That's insanity. Trust me, you get very few candidates that actually show an interest in development and are promising. If free sounds terrible to you, do the math on your university education (mind you, I really think you should get a degree, but not for a development job only).
.net. etc, etc. In that case, just lie to get through the HR department. Actually, once you have enough experience to pick your job, I'd just avoid these type companies altogether, as that is a red flag to me. Only technical people can interview technical people.
True some companies have stupid HR departments that simply grep for keywords; which is just silly as no entry level person will know c, c++, java, Windows, Unix, AJAX, HTML, XML,
Second, like all good positions in the world, move to where the industry is. If I wanted to be an actor, I'd move to LA; it's infinitely harder to get started in acting in Omaha.
Sad commentary; unfortunately you are correct, this is the view of many people.
I think anyone who is spending 4 to 6 years getting an a degree in computer science only to get a high paying job when then get out, are a tad silly. They are really, really wasting their time. They can get an intern job right now, at a software consulting company, study their ass off (as we all have to do in this field). Within a year they will be making decent money, within 3 years making really good money. 4 years later when the person has their shiny degree, after studying Java (which probably wont' even be used then), they get the joy of getting a junior developers job.
There is an old adage: "How do you become a writer?" "Write... a lot". This is the same with programming. You can't fake your skills, and a PHD in CS won't matter if you can't bill your clients because your application doesn't fulfill requirements or even work.
Truthfully if all you care about is money, work in finance, or become a salesperson. The best developer in the world won't compete with a high end salesperson dollar for dollar; hell CEOs can't compete with top salespeople. Zero education required.
I very much value a university education, but it has nothing to do with making more money. Learn, create, become a very educated person; the money will follow; the money part really isn't that hard.
You almost had me there. We done sir, well done... classic sarcasm at its best.
In response to today's Microsoft announcement the Apache Software Foundation announces that they will cut their price by 100% and increase the allowed number of users to googolplex + 1.
I appreciate you following my ongoing
You have valid points, for sure. However, there are a few fundamental truths: Microsoft tends to develop proprietary rather than use open, standard, or de-facto standard technologies. They also have, in the past, introduced new technology, only to drop it shortly after (Webclasses, Visual J, j#, etc). They also have killed a technology (VB) before the market wanted it dead.
This contrasts with a company that creates tools and technologies bases on real or de-facto standards they don't control. A technology that has competing companies creating tools is good for the developer, even if it isn't as good, financially, for the companies involved. c#, becoming a standard, to give credit to Microsoft, was a very good thing.
17 years is a long time for VB, for sure, but compared that to c++'s 25 years and c's 36 years. Sure they evolved over time to accommodate the changing landscape of SE, but they still are going strong. If Microsoft created c and it was as popular as VB it wouldn't have existed past 1989.
Obviously there are benefits to each method, and if one chooses to accept the Microsoft truths and they get value from that choice, all power to them. However, having been around for a long time, I'd just warn them that the cons aren't as apparent at first, but they are very much there.
VB was one of the most popular languages when it was "retired". This isn't market forces working, this isn't new tech winning out over older less useful tech. I have no problem with that. I use newer tools, but they are tools that exist because they do it better, not because a single company decided to take a different business route to be able to sell more OSs.
.net.
There most certainly are real standards, as well as, more importantly de-facto standards. There is absolutely no reason you can't build new slick technology using the de-facto standards, unless your goal is completely control that technology; to the detriment to your developers. SQL, XML, Javascript, (X)HTML, XML, CSS, HTTP, JSON, REST, SOAP, are all standards off the top of my head. Learn those, and you can use any new technology. Learn View State in ASP.net, and well, you can program in
If you seriously think that a Java developer using Eclipse, IntelliJ, or Netbeans (or Ruby on Rails developer) is 10 years behind a developer using Visual Studio, you need to leave your safe Windows world every once in a while.
Flash works on most everything, Youtube works just fine on my iPhone, and many small devices support flash. iPhone doesn't fully support Flash though, which IMO Apple should rectify as soon as possible.
I'm sure I'll be using Silverlight on my phone soon.
I gave Microsoft a chance in 1995, then I gave them a chance in 98, 99, and 2001, and 2003. I gave them a chance with Webclasses, with ActiveX, with Fox Pro, with Visual J, with DNA, with vbscript, with jscript, with J#, with VB. I gave them a chance with IE, then again with IE, then again.
I'm sure if I just give them this one more chance, they'll be fine, just this last chance, this is going to be the one that works out... I know it, I just know it.
A little background, I was a MCSD when there were only 6000 of us and it actually meant something. I was around when VB 3 was popular, when Microsoft bought and destroyed Fox Pro. And I worked with MS development products up to .net 2.0, so I'm very familiar with Microsoft's stuff. You will only believe me when you've been through it a few times, but there is a good reason people are so weary of Microsoft dev tools; it's called years of experience dealing with them.
.net programmers say, with conviction, how statically typed languages are the only way to go for professional development; that dynamic languages are only good for 'scripts'. When Ruby, Python, and Scala start to get real traction, all of a sudden you'll see them pushing Ruby.net and F#. Then I'll here all the .net developers saying how, obviously, dynamic and functional languages are the way to go. Of course this will leave a whole swath people out in the cold, as they have no dynamic language training.
.net skills for years to come, and you might, but you'll have no control over that. They literally were pushing their DNA infrastructure as the next great thing right before they released .net which completely replaced it. I was an expert in COM I was fully investing my time into it, then I was told, no that's useless learn .net. This will happen to you, then happen to again, then again, then you'll finally give up, or not, perhaps you like the pain; many people do.
It isn't for lack of quality, because they are very good at making technologies and tools that go with them. Sometimes buggy, true, but they are generally of high quality. But that's not the problem, the problem is that they completely control it, and can and WILL pull the plug on it when it suits them for business reasons. This has happened many times, and will happen in the future. They will come out with the next great thing, you will spend a lot of time and money learning it, getting certified in it, promoting it, etc. Then they will destroy it (Webclasses, VB, Visual J, j#, com/ActiveX, com+, DNA, etc) and move on to the next fad that some other company is getting traction in (c#/.net to copy Java's success, new MVC framework copying Ruby on Rails, Silverlight to copy Flash/Flex, etc).
They will tell you that VB doesn't need real OOP because it's too hard for the average developer, then they'll drop VB (one of the most popular languages at the time) and create vb.net (which only resembles VB in the most superficial ways) and now claim that full OOP is the obvious way to go. They claim that the current technology is the only way to do things, then in 6 months say the opposite, leaving the developers scratching their heads. I hear
I had the same problem with Java, although Sun didn't fully control it, they controlled it enough to make me nervous. They finally did the right thing and completely opened it up, making Java much more viable.
The problem is, that many of their technologies are so proprietary that your skills aren't as transferable as they would be if you were working in a more standard technology. I've worked with ASP.net programmers that don't even know the basics of how HTTP works; they will be hurting when they have to move to some other technology that expects basic competency in these things (this is true of Java Server Faces too btw).
Don't believe me, assume that you'll be able to use your
It's cross-platform, which means it runs on Windows 2000 and XP (not Vista of course, but then what does).
Note: above is just a joke, I know it runs on Vista and OS X too. Get over-yourselves.
Microsoft makes more than computer OSs. There are plenty of reasons to visit Microsoft's site other than downloading the latest security patch. There is this little thing called the XBox.
Wether Microsoft likes or not, the world isn't all Windows anymore; and no, running on Windows and OS X is only 'technically' cross-platform. HTML/Javascript/Ajax IS cross-platform. I do a lot of my surfing on my iPhone, many people now do that on their PS3, or using mobile Opera. Make technology that doesn't work on all mobile platforms at your own peril, IMHO.
I hope I speak for everyone when I say: we are pleased to invite you to come live on the west-coast. We have snow to sand, high mountains to deep seas, conservatives and liberals, good jobs, pretty ladies, and sturdy gents. Leave your shame in the south, you won't need it here... Welcome.
Yup, and thus why the iPhone has a very limited, but vital, set of hard buttons, such as volume.
It's very expensive (It's cheap to ask what is bad, but very expensive to make it good). Some companies do focus on usability, the most obvious one is Apple. Apple products cost more, for many reasons but a big one is all the attention they pay to such things (and hiring the best UI designers in the country; which don't come cheap). However, everyone on /. and in Wal*Mart complains about Apple's prices.
The truth is people get the products they deserve, and at this time, in this society, people value price above all else. Companies know this and provide what the customer wants, cheap products with very little time or money refining them.
I was in line at Carl's Junior. The guy in front of me was complaining about the horrible service. He then went up and paid for his $0.99 burger. People want everything for nothing, and are truly suprised when they don't get it. If he really cared about service, he would of went down the street to Joe's Hamburger, and got very good service from Joe, who's been serving hamburgers for 37 years; but he would have had to pay $3.99 for it; nope, he'd rather get his 99 cent burger and complain.
Wow, yeah, they were so close to having you as a customer too... drat, foiled again; you showed them; take that Mr. Jobs!
Of course most Mac users are sheep, most people, in general, are sheep. People buy ipods because that's what everyone uses. People buy Windows also because that is everyone uses. At least the Mac sheep spent some time and made a conscious decision to buy something that most of the other sheeple didn't; so there is some hope for them.
For most people computers are just appliances. My wife introduced me to Macs. She bought one solely because she loved her iPod, and when she went to Circuit City, she looked at both PCs and a Mac, and because of her experience with her iPod she bought an iBook (this was many years ago). She's a smart cookie, but doesn't have an interest in technical stuff, so she said to her self: if the iPod works well the Mac must too; and for her it has; she now has a MacBook.
When we started dating, I started learning OS X on her machine. I was kind of amazed of what she was doing with her computer. Sure you CAN do everything she was doing on Windows, but no-one in my family had ever figured out how to do it. She was doing it on her Mac without really thinking of it. That got me intrigued.
For me, I'm a developer, a *nix developer to be precise. I had never been interested in Macs pre OS X, as the OS was kind of lame. But I felt right at home in the Terminal in OS X; I did have to learn the BSD way of doing things, but that was very easy.
I bought the cheapest Mac Mini to play with; ripped it apart, upgraded it, installed and reinstalled everything, etc. I then started to KVM between my Linux workstation and my Mac Mini. The mini was slow, but I started using it more and more. My next computer was a MacBook Pro; at that point I had my Mac laptop and my desktop Linux workstation.
When my Linux workstation was getting long in the tooth, I debated between a new shiny 4 core PC, or a 4 core Mac Pro. I had just built a very nice 4 core Linux workstation for a co-worker, and that worked really well for him. In the end I decided on a Mac Pro, and I've been very happy; I now have no PCs for workstations, only servers. OS X makes an excellent Unix workstation, and a great development environment. I'd be happy with a Linux workstation too, but I really like that the things I don't want to mess with (music, creating movies, etc) "just work" on the Mac, and things I really care about (development, the command-line, unix environment) work really well on OS X. Plus little things like OS X is 64 bit, and I can put 16gigs of memory in my Mac Pro; you really don't have to think about it (yes I know the 64bit versions of Windows and Linux can too, but most people aren't using those)
So I think my wife and I show two ends of the Mac spectrum; it's not as easy as saying "Mac users are non-technical sheep" because there are many people like me who need high powered unix workstations. And there are many people like my wife, who just want to do what they need to do and get back to what really interests them.