Actually, if the iDevices are considered not innovative because of taking existing ideas and putting marketing spin on them, then so is VMWare since virtualization and hypervisors are simply consumer-polished versions of old school 1970s mainframe tech from IBM.
So, it all comes back to the definition of "innovative" and how somebody decides to spin the word. In this particular case, it's either both Apple and VMWare are innovative or both arn't.
Likewise, Blackberry is just another marker on the smartphone evolution chart. Want to see where stuff came from? Take one step further back and look at Sharp Zaurus, Palm, MagicCap, and the Apple Newton.
In general, who the hell cares if a company is considered "innovative"? I just want kick ass stuff to buy.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I've been in a situation where I had to find out how worthless all the "GPS-capable" smartphones in my hiking group really were. For the discussion at hand, it doesn't matter if it's an Android, WinMo, or Apple. They're the same: absolute crap.
You're looking at a few crappy metal traces which are shared with all sorts of other radio gear compared to an actual hard-core ceramic patch antenna.
Want to see quick numbers? Let's go to sparkfun.com:
Cell phone class antenna: GPS-09131 Gain: 2.6dBi
Mini wussy GPS helical antenna: GPS-09871 Gain: 18dB (typical, they claim)
Old school generic ceramic GPS antenna: GPS-00177 Gain: 26dB
A group of us got lost in the hills hiking. Given that most phones depend on cell tower assistance for GPS, all of them couldn't tell us where we were. So after wandering into the next park's guest station, they drove us 45 minutes back to our starting location. Next time, I'm bringing an old WinMo2003 handheld with a GPS CF card because it actually has the right kind of antenna. (as well as WAAS support, etc)
In other words, Solaris is everything !Linux. Hmm... upsides and downsides.
Stable driver ABI. Extremely scalable. No open source community infighting. Doesn't work on a mobile devices. Has a file system worth using. Slow moving development speed. Predictable deployment environment. Dtrace.
I thought Android wasn't started by Google, but purchased from a small startup? (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm)
So it was logical to continue the startup's plan instead of, you know, commit suicide like WinMoPho7?
Given what I've seen, some people simply like how much eye candy they get.
Using only eye candy as a metric is how you end up with people saying stuff like, "I skinned my WinXP box to look like OSX! Now I don't need to buy a Mac!"
I haven't used an OLPC XO before but after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U , I'm convinced that "being easy to use, being polished, and being better" in terms of usability DOES get you very far.
In other words, watching the quick tour of OLPC XO's interface has given me the opinion that Sugar/Linux doesn't get the same attention because it is not easier to use nor polished. I mean, look at that, and look at an iPad.
For starters, the iPad UI didn't need a bunch of chat bubbles to explain it. Am I really supposed to know off the top of my head what those icons or the circle means? Cuz there certainly isn't anything obvious sticking out at first glance. Like, what's the star trek communication badge icon do? And the shooting star? I'm taking a guess but this has tic-tac-toe installed?
And I have to drag the mouse to the edge to activate the menu? That's discoverable.... but would be very annoying. (I have a friend who sets at least 3 corners on his mac to trigger Expose. When using his machine, it triggers all the time on accident and drives me nuts.)
Mostly, yes. The guts of the Mac are mostly from the same companies as the guts in a Dell. After all, there's only one source for Intel Core 2 Duos, chipsets, and a handful of HD and memory sources. Are they the exact same parts? Some yes, some not.
The major difference is in how they're arranged and put together, and who decided on that.
According to UVA, it looks like 2004 was the year of Linux on the desktop.
In all seriousness, I'm not surprised. As a student who graduated from UCB in 2003, I would not have run Linux as my main computer. The plain and simple reason is it's more work to maintain than a Mac, and less engineering tools than Windows. (I had one of each.)
Yeah, I remember hearing about those and thinking it must have been a journalist's mistaken interpretation. Then I went to a more techie review site (probably arstechnica) and my only reaction was "really? Intel management took years to realize the P4 was awful, and now this?"
Glad to know somebody on the inside objected to it:)
But "introducing innovation to the world" != "making the large public want it". The one talks about technical merits, hard facts and "measurable" quality. The other emphasises marketing, sales tactics and soft skills.
Indeed, they are not the same. If we were to simply use the word "innovate," it's a little vague. But I guess the inventor would be the "innovator." If we to use the wording "introducing innovation to the world", I'd think about who was the first to bring to market. They don't necessarily have to be the same. But the one who "makes the large public want it" doesn't necessarily have to be either the innovator himself nor the one who introduces the innovation to the world. It also doesn't have to be the one who successfully sells to the large public either. I also think they all should get some historical credit. But it's a little sad when there's that many distinguishable parties involved since it typically means those who first created the idea, probably didn't get rewarded for their innovation. But then again, that's evolution for you.
In my mind (not heavily researched, so could be pretty wrong): 1) Inventor of the tablet computer idea (unknown) 2) Introduced the tablet computer idea to the world (not sure; I'm thinking GriD, MagicCap or AT&T EO?) 3) "makes the large public want it" (Microsoft's Tablet PC initiative; the earlier Pen Computing for Windows initiative didn't seem to make any impact at all) 4) successful market adoption (iPad)
I guess my other question would be, where does UI design sit between technical and marketing? In one way, it's about making stuff look cool. In the other way, it's about making stuff measurably more useable. (Fitt's law, usability research, etc). Or is it really between the two?
Is the iPhone and iPad all marketing fluff? Or is there technical merit to it that most devices do not have? The iPhone 4 buyer doesn't seem to actually make clear in his quote what aspects of it. If he were talking about components like the display, then yes, I'd say a high-DPI screen where most people can't see the pixels is a technically superior screen. If he's talking about it being made of shiny glass and a polished steel band, then that's a lot cheesier; loosely translated to "it looks so cool, therefore it must be good inside!" If he's talking about how scrolling on the iPhone isn't as lagged as on most Android phones, then it's kind of in-between. It's both a technical problem (bad programming for the app selector screen scrollview), as well as a fluffy aesthetic problem. (I know it's weird, but this scroll issue is the single biggest reason that I've not bought an Android phone. I can feel the lag and it annoys me to no end. And even though my WinMo phone lags heavily too, I'm okay with that because I know it's WinMo and with that, my expectations are much lower.)
I doubt most people think this way because they read the facts, because I doubt most people actually read or understand any technical parts of in-depth reviews of phones and tablets. I doubt people think this way purely because of marketing either, at least I hope or else we're all doomed. I would have expected it to be somewhere in between, especially with the experience of actually using the device in question. The marketing sets a high bar of what you'd expect. There's an opportunity for a heavy fall if it doesn't meet those expectations.
In summary, regarding:
Tell me, do people think this way because they read the facts or because of Apple's marketing and the admittedly nice looking exterior of their devices?
I think people make statements like the newspaper quote because whatever it is they care about gets associated with the entirety of the device and generalized, and what they don't care about simply isn't part of the equation.
Yes, Xerox made the Alto well before the Mac/Lisa came along. I wasn't sure if we were talking about inventing it or introducing to the world.
The quote you responded to was:"[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it." Your response was : "No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market."
I contend that Apple has introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
Maybe we have a different understanding of "introduce"... If I interpret you correctly, you'd say that Microsoft introduced the GUI (which Apple had before them, mind you) and IBM introduced mice to the market? As I see it, not being the most successful company with a certain product doesn't mean you haven't introduced it to the market.
I think we and the far parent have a similar understanding of "introduce." But that the sentences above talk about "introducing change". Perhaps we should have used the word "shifted" or something, but that's hindsight. (cue English sux jokes here):)
Apple/Xerox(since there was cooperation) introduced the GUI. But Microsoft introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
Likewise, a similar situation.
Intel introduced USB, a connectivity standard which would be the first major attempt in the industry to unify the accessory interface across all platforms. Despite USB support being in tons of PCs and in Win95, there were nearly no USB devices available on the market until the launch of the iMac. Therefore, I would say that Apple introduced a significant change (with regards to getting rid of legacy ports and unifying accessory interfaces) to the market successfully when it popularized USB. Would USB devices eventually become popular on its own? Hard to say. Would a lot of USB devices eventually exist? Perhaps, but given the amount of devices that had been created in the years before the iMac and the first year of the iMac, it's kinda hard to argue against Apple being a significant force in it's adoption.
And a completely different situation.
Rio introduced the MP3 player. Apple introduced the iPod, another MP3 player with a different design. Given that people were buying MP3 players already, and that many many manufacturers had all sorts of MP3 players including those which covered one or more aspects of the iPod, Apple did not introduce any significant change (in MP3 player design, nor in MP3 player popularity) in the market. Apple simply went in and ate their lunch while everybody stared slackjawed. (yeah, I was one of those people who saw the first ipod announcement and was like "wtf? is this a joke?")
And so back to the beginning. Did Apple introduce tablets and touchscreens? Definetely no. Did Apple introduce successfuly a significant user interface change to the market utilizing tablets and touchscreens? I would say yes.
The way I see the far parent's quote is simply: "Well, for almost all my career, I've been using keyboards and mice because that's what worked. The iPad appears to be the first time the general public cares about actually buying and using tablets."
The quote you responded to was:"[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it." Your response was : "No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market."
I contend that Apple has introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
The poster above talks about the iPad's interface. You listed devices that have a touchscreen which were introduced much earlier than the iPad. (and you acknowledged that there's a question of how similar you want to get.)
Yes, touchscreen devices have existed for a long time as you've mentioned. I'm just highlighting that he's not talking about having a touchscreen in a tablet sized form factor, but that the software platform be written around the hardware in a way that doesn't feel like it's just pieces bolted together. Simply listing off devices which have similar hardware doesn't negate his opinion that the iPad represents a significant shift in computer interfaces in recent history.
You're building a strawman there. The applications would have come like they have come to Maemo, iOS, Android,... I don't see any reason why there wouldn't have been a wealth of applications perfectly fitting the form factor if the marketing and developer baiting were comparable with Apple's.
Perhaps they would have. Perhaps marketing and developer baiting is what we needed more than the hardware. But given that the tablet form factor and touch screens dates back to the 1990s and that even Microsoft had failed at popularizing a tablet platform, it's kinda hard to avoid the question of "why did it take so long?"
I knew tons of people who wanted a Tablet PC when they first came out, both normal folks and software developers. I also see plenty of slashdot posters who think that because Maemo can use Ubuntu repositories, that there's already software for it. This completely disregards why iPad is successful and Maemo probably won't be. I played with a N800 when they first came out and thought it was kinda cool. None of these went anywhere. Why?
(in case you wanted to know, I don't own an iPad.)
No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market.
Really? The Archos, the N800, and the CrunchPad are completely different from the iPad.
The Archos doesn't do apps out of the box. And the FOSS repos for the N800 and CrunchPad would result in desktop apps on a tablet. Sure, you'd have a ton of apps. All of which would have poor usability since they're not designed to work on a tablet form factor. Would I really care about using OpenOffice on a tablet? That'd be frustrating.
The point isn't who did it first. The point isn't who has more apps. The point isn't who's cheaper and who's marketing fluff.
The point is which device makes it easier to do stuff on the go than other devices of similar form factors and price ranges.
Want to know where I think Apple made the most brilliant move ever? Shipping a product and then an SDK which encouraged people to make apps tailored to a capacitive touchscreen form factor with just enough computing power to do the job (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) , and then hold off until people got used to working in that constrained environment to release stuff with bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. (iPhone 3GS and iPad) The end result? You now have developers trained to consider the limits of mobile hardware and optimize accordingly. Why does that matter? The quality of apps improve, therefore the quality of the experience improves overall.
The iPod's continued dominance in the field of media players suggests that sometimes "lots of hardware choice (including a lot of cheaper hardware), service supplier choice and of course 'free' application choice" doesn't matter.
The fact isn't that iPhone is going to win or that Android is going to win. The fact is that we don't know until it happens.
Because if it's not possible for me to screw around with, it's highly likely that it's not possible for other people to screw around with too.
I get it, it's nice to have the freedom to do whatever you want your hardware.
That said, if the entire thing was locked down so tight that I can't do anything with it, then I at least have the piece of mind that it's highly unlikely anybody else can tamper with mine either.
You know what? It's a pacemaker. It's got a specific purpose a QA department tested and then got certified. It's an embedded device that is a matter of life or death.
I think I would prefer that it be impossible for other software to run on the hardware.
Where will they go? There's iPhone of course... There's even WinMo 6.5. There's even Palm Pre. Blackberry? Or... N900? Okay, so the N900 one's more a joke. But there's plenty of choices.
To me, there's no reason why 80% of customers not returning is unreasonable. There's plenty of options. There's plenty of reasons. Some might not like Android. Some might think that smartphones cost them too much money. Some might have been turned off by the bloatware.
If you counted it on paper, I'm technically an iPhone to WinMo 6 convert on my main cell line. I do have an iPhone, and I'm planning on upgrading to another iPhone even as a secondary line. But despite that, my main phone is running WinMo.
One of my friends works for Google and has ditched both of the free Android phones she's been given for an iPhone. At least she sold the N1 instead of giving it away as if it wasn't worth anything.
Another guy I know just bought a Palm Pre. Yeah, after the Palm HP merger occurred. Not just announced but actually merged. I asked why and he was more confident in HP supporting the platform than Google. Plus, comparison between the Palm SDK and the Android SDK, the Palm SDK felt more polished.
I went to Japan over new years and rented a sim for NTT Docomo at the airport. Dropped it into a unlocked iPhone 3G and used that to keep in touch with friends (voice only, no data on that rental sim) for 2 weeks.
Between the SF Bay Area and Tokyo, there's a world of difference. I drop calls and switch to EDGE all the time in the bay area. In Tokyo, I could talk on a train. While it went through tunnels. While underground. In department stores where there's assloads of people. Stuff just worked. In Sendai, out in the countryside, stuff still worked fine. The experience is about the same as Verizon in the SF Bay area.
I've used OSX Server on the side at work (I'm NOT a sysadmin).
OSX Server 10.3 very stable. Very old. But very stable. We kinda left a machine there in an automation lab and forgot about maintaining it. It was still working fine with a uptime of over 3 years when we did the "oh, what's this.....I remember now..." I kept providing for the network, so that was good.
OSX Server 10.4 pretty darn stable. Less stable than 10.3. Samba would sometimes give out. LDAP had some quirkyness. We just stopped using it when that happened. Uptime was in the range of 6 months since we still applied security updates.
OSX Server 10.5 is shit. Uptimes around the order of 1-2 months forced by a necessary reboot when something dies or the machine just slows down with no explanation.
My bet is on Altivec. If the app does large amounts of vector calcs and is optimized for both Altivec and SSE3/SSE4, Altivec still wins despite being half a decade older.
Even if the Core2's loading much more than it needs, it's also got probably to 6x more memory bandwidth than the G4 does and probably around 4x more cache. In order to have the cache line size affect things, the program would need to load a wasteful chunk of data and not use it for long time. For something like that, I'm still not sure we'd end up with a factor of two difference in favor of a computer with quarter of the general computing power.
I kinda wished that Freescale would have been faster on working on the dual core e600s. If Apple had adopted those as a 2nd option, it would have been pretty nice laptop option. Basically they would have been dual core G4s with 2MB cache and DDR2 and a much faster memory bus. On paper, similar to a Core Duo. The difference is that it'd be faster in general than the Core Duo, and use less power since the northbridge was integrated and the whole package barely cost a few watts over just a Core Duo.
When Apple gave out a free iPhone to almost all their employees, most of them tried it out and enjoyed it. You're always going to end up with one or two people like my coworker who sold hers and bought a $400 ladder. (pretty fancy ladder)
When Google gave out a G1 to all their employees, I know of several people who still have those. And I had a friend give hers away cuz she just didn't want to use it.
Whether or not the company gives them away isn't an issue. The real question is how many of the employees hang onto theirs before the next rev gets released.
The reasons is that having the phone be predictable from their point of view can also save time and money on their side. QA is easier when there's less variables. This has been known well before smartphones became popular but we can see what happens when people are motivated.
Look at what happened with the original iPhone. 1) iPhone got released SIM-locked to AT&T. 2) Jailbroken. (Not a big deal) 3) People wrote apps and mods that wern't well written and could crash your phone or severely impact battery life when they interact. (Look at MobileSubstrate which monkeypatches stuff. It's the basis for many modifications like Winterboard, etc.) There are plenty of people who've jailbroken, then installed a bunch of apps, and then complain about battery life. Some of the people who do it "cuz it's cool and make me feel l33t" will invariably blame it on the hardware and try to force a return. 3) (Here's the big one) The first round of SIM unlocks for the iPhone corrupted part of the cellular modem's firmware. Flashing it with a legit firmware bricks the cellular modem. Despite it being the fault of the modders screwing up, Apple got blamed for "bricking" in 1.1.1. They knew it was going to happen, but they had no reliable fix ready. It makes no sense to screw your legitimate customers by delaying updates. Apple did release a fix later, but it was on the other of months with little press. I'm guessing it was once it was understood what kind of damage anySIM did. Not surprising since it'd require understanding the compiler-optimized version of the firmware as opposed to the source code.
So, if letting people mod your product can result in bad press AND extra work for fixing other people's bugs? Then yes, it could make sense to utilize a lockdown feature that already existed in the CPU product Moto chose.
The TI OMAP is simply an application processor. There should be another Qualcomm chip in the phone to handle cellular communications. They are separate chips.
This is essentually the same as a PC/Mac with a Modem. One handles your apps. The other handles communications. They talk to each other via UART or USB.
Locking down the modem part is a good thing for the most part since control over this can screw up connectivity for you as well as others on your cell network. But it also is where the SIM-lock goes. Locking down the app processor is more debatable.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if the iDevices are considered not innovative because of taking existing ideas and putting marketing spin on them, then so is VMWare since virtualization and hypervisors are simply consumer-polished versions of old school 1970s mainframe tech from IBM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor
So, it all comes back to the definition of "innovative" and how somebody decides to spin the word.
In this particular case, it's either both Apple and VMWare are innovative or both arn't.
Likewise, Blackberry is just another marker on the smartphone evolution chart. Want to see where stuff came from? Take one step further back and look at Sharp Zaurus, Palm, MagicCap, and the Apple Newton.
In general, who the hell cares if a company is considered "innovative"? I just want kick ass stuff to buy.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I've been in a situation where I had to find out how worthless all the "GPS-capable" smartphones in my hiking group really were. For the discussion at hand, it doesn't matter if it's an Android, WinMo, or Apple. They're the same: absolute crap.
You're looking at a few crappy metal traces which are shared with all sorts of other radio gear compared to an actual hard-core ceramic patch antenna.
Want to see quick numbers? Let's go to sparkfun.com:
Cell phone class antenna: GPS-09131
Gain: 2.6dBi
Mini wussy GPS helical antenna: GPS-09871
Gain: 18dB (typical, they claim)
Old school generic ceramic GPS antenna: GPS-00177
Gain: 26dB
A group of us got lost in the hills hiking. Given that most phones depend on cell tower assistance for GPS, all of them couldn't tell us where we were. So after wandering into the next park's guest station, they drove us 45 minutes back to our starting location. Next time, I'm bringing an old WinMo2003 handheld with a GPS CF card because it actually has the right kind of antenna. (as well as WAAS support, etc)
Android phone as a GPS in the woods? Hell no.
In other words, Solaris is everything !Linux.
Hmm... upsides and downsides.
Stable driver ABI.
Extremely scalable.
No open source community infighting.
Doesn't work on a mobile devices.
Has a file system worth using.
Slow moving development speed.
Predictable deployment environment.
Dtrace.
I thought Android wasn't started by Google, but purchased from a small startup? (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm)
So it was logical to continue the startup's plan instead of, you know, commit suicide like WinMoPho7?
Given what I've seen, some people simply like how much eye candy they get.
Using only eye candy as a metric is how you end up with people saying stuff like, "I skinned my WinXP box to look like OSX! Now I don't need to buy a Mac!"
*facepalm*
I haven't used an OLPC XO before but after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwzCsOFxT-U , I'm convinced that "being easy to use, being polished, and being better" in terms of usability DOES get you very far.
In other words, watching the quick tour of OLPC XO's interface has given me the opinion that Sugar/Linux doesn't get the same attention because it is not easier to use nor polished. I mean, look at that, and look at an iPad.
For starters, the iPad UI didn't need a bunch of chat bubbles to explain it. Am I really supposed to know off the top of my head what those icons or the circle means? Cuz there certainly isn't anything obvious sticking out at first glance. Like, what's the star trek communication badge icon do? And the shooting star? I'm taking a guess but this has tic-tac-toe installed?
And I have to drag the mouse to the edge to activate the menu? That's discoverable.... but would be very annoying. (I have a friend who sets at least 3 corners on his mac to trigger Expose. When using his machine, it triggers all the time on accident and drives me nuts.)
Mostly, yes. The guts of the Mac are mostly from the same companies as the guts in a Dell. After all, there's only one source for Intel Core 2 Duos, chipsets, and a handful of HD and memory sources. Are they the exact same parts? Some yes, some not.
The major difference is in how they're arranged and put together, and who decided on that.
According to UVA, it looks like 2004 was the year of Linux on the desktop.
In all seriousness, I'm not surprised. As a student who graduated from UCB in 2003, I would not have run Linux as my main computer. The plain and simple reason is it's more work to maintain than a Mac, and less engineering tools than Windows. (I had one of each.)
Yeah, I remember hearing about those and thinking it must have been a journalist's mistaken interpretation. Then I went to a more techie review site (probably arstechnica) and my only reaction was "really? Intel management took years to realize the P4 was awful, and now this?"
Glad to know somebody on the inside objected to it :)
So... uh... The 2nd Coming of FB-DIMMs?
If that happens, I'm not thinking performance, I'm thinking short Intel stock.
Indeed, they are not the same. If we were to simply use the word "innovate," it's a little vague. But I guess the inventor would be the "innovator." If we to use the wording "introducing innovation to the world", I'd think about who was the first to bring to market. They don't necessarily have to be the same. But the one who "makes the large public want it" doesn't necessarily have to be either the innovator himself nor the one
who introduces the innovation to the world. It also doesn't have to be the one who successfully sells to the large public either. I also think they all should get some historical credit. But it's a little sad when there's that many distinguishable parties involved since it typically means those who first created the idea, probably didn't get rewarded for their innovation. But then again, that's evolution for you.
In my mind (not heavily researched, so could be pretty wrong):
1) Inventor of the tablet computer idea (unknown)
2) Introduced the tablet computer idea to the world (not sure; I'm thinking GriD, MagicCap or AT&T EO?)
3) "makes the large public want it" (Microsoft's Tablet PC initiative; the earlier Pen Computing for Windows initiative didn't seem to make any impact at all)
4) successful market adoption (iPad)
I guess my other question would be, where does UI design sit between technical and marketing? In one way, it's about making stuff look cool. In the other way, it's about making stuff measurably more useable. (Fitt's law, usability research, etc). Or is it really between the two?
Is the iPhone and iPad all marketing fluff? Or is there technical merit to it that most devices do not have? The iPhone 4 buyer doesn't seem to actually make clear in his quote what aspects of it. If he were talking about components like the display, then yes, I'd say a high-DPI screen where most people can't see the pixels is a technically superior screen. If he's talking about it being made of shiny glass and a polished steel band, then that's a lot cheesier; loosely translated to "it looks so cool, therefore it must be good inside!" If he's talking about how scrolling on the iPhone isn't as lagged as on most Android phones, then it's kind of in-between. It's both a technical problem (bad programming for the app selector screen scrollview), as well as a fluffy aesthetic problem. (I know it's weird, but this scroll issue is the single biggest reason that I've not bought an Android phone. I can feel the lag and it annoys me to no end. And even though my WinMo phone lags heavily too, I'm okay with that because I know it's WinMo and with that, my expectations are much lower.)
I doubt most people think this way because they read the facts, because I doubt most people actually read or understand any technical parts of in-depth reviews of phones and tablets. I doubt people think this way purely because of marketing either, at least I hope or else we're all doomed. I would have expected it to be somewhere in between, especially with the experience of actually using the device in question. The marketing sets a high bar of what you'd expect. There's an opportunity for a heavy fall if it doesn't meet those expectations.
In summary, regarding:
I think people make statements like the newspaper quote because whatever it is they care about gets associated with the entirety of the device and generalized, and what they don't care about simply isn't part of the equation.
Yes, Xerox made the Alto well before the Mac/Lisa came along. I wasn't sure if we were talking about inventing it or introducing to the world.
I think we and the far parent have a similar understanding of "introduce." But that the sentences above talk about "introducing change". Perhaps we should have used the word "shifted" or something, but that's hindsight. (cue English sux jokes here) :)
Apple/Xerox(since there was cooperation) introduced the GUI.
But Microsoft introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
Likewise, a similar situation.
Intel introduced USB, a connectivity standard which would be the first major attempt in the industry to unify the accessory interface across all platforms.
Despite USB support being in tons of PCs and in Win95, there were nearly no USB devices available on the market until the launch of the iMac.
Therefore, I would say that Apple introduced a significant change (with regards to getting rid of legacy ports and unifying accessory interfaces) to the market successfully when it popularized USB. Would USB devices eventually become popular on its own? Hard to say. Would a lot of USB devices eventually exist? Perhaps, but given the amount of devices that had been created in the years before the iMac and the first year of the iMac, it's kinda hard to argue against Apple being a significant force in it's adoption.
And a completely different situation.
Rio introduced the MP3 player.
Apple introduced the iPod, another MP3 player with a different design. Given that people were buying MP3 players already, and that many many manufacturers had all sorts of MP3 players including those which covered one or more aspects of the iPod, Apple did not introduce any significant change (in MP3 player design, nor in MP3 player popularity) in the market. Apple simply went in and ate their lunch while everybody stared slackjawed. (yeah, I was one of those people who saw the first ipod announcement and was like "wtf? is this a joke?")
And so back to the beginning.
Did Apple introduce tablets and touchscreens? Definetely no.
Did Apple introduce successfuly a significant user interface change to the market utilizing tablets and touchscreens? I would say yes.
The way I see the far parent's quote is simply: "Well, for almost all my career, I've been using keyboards and mice because that's what worked. The iPad appears to be the first time the general public cares about actually buying and using tablets."
The quote you responded to was :"[...] the iPad represents the first new change in computer interfaces in my lifetime. If there is something which is even similar, I'm unaware of it."
Your response was : "No, Apple neither revolutionised anything nor introduced an interface change to the market."
I contend that Apple has introduced a significant interface change to the market successfully.
The poster above talks about the iPad's interface. You listed devices that have a touchscreen which were introduced much earlier than the iPad. (and you acknowledged that there's a question of how similar you want to get.)
Yes, touchscreen devices have existed for a long time as you've mentioned. I'm just highlighting that he's not talking about having a touchscreen in a tablet sized form factor, but that the software platform be written around the hardware in a way that doesn't feel like it's just pieces bolted together. Simply listing off devices which have similar hardware doesn't negate his opinion that the iPad represents a significant shift in computer interfaces in recent history.
Perhaps they would have. Perhaps marketing and developer baiting is what we needed more than the hardware.
But given that the tablet form factor and touch screens dates back to the 1990s and that even Microsoft had failed at popularizing a tablet platform, it's kinda hard to avoid the question of "why did it take so long?"
I knew tons of people who wanted a Tablet PC when they first came out, both normal folks and software developers.
I also see plenty of slashdot posters who think that because Maemo can use Ubuntu repositories, that there's already software for it. This completely disregards why iPad is successful and Maemo probably won't be.
I played with a N800 when they first came out and thought it was kinda cool.
None of these went anywhere. Why?
(in case you wanted to know, I don't own an iPad.)
Really? The Archos, the N800, and the CrunchPad are completely different from the iPad.
The Archos doesn't do apps out of the box.
And the FOSS repos for the N800 and CrunchPad would result in desktop apps on a tablet. Sure, you'd have a ton of apps. All of which would have poor usability since they're not designed to work on a tablet form factor. Would I really care about using OpenOffice on a tablet? That'd be frustrating.
The point isn't who did it first. The point isn't who has more apps. The point isn't who's cheaper and who's marketing fluff.
The point is which device makes it easier to do stuff on the go than other devices of similar form factors and price ranges.
Want to know where I think Apple made the most brilliant move ever? Shipping a product and then an SDK which encouraged people to make apps tailored to a capacitive touchscreen form factor with just enough computing power to do the job (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) , and then hold off until people got used to working in that constrained environment to release stuff with bigger screens, more memory, and faster processors. (iPhone 3GS and iPad)
The end result? You now have developers trained to consider the limits of mobile hardware and optimize accordingly. Why does that matter? The quality of apps improve, therefore the quality of the experience improves overall.
There's just one problem.
The iPod's continued dominance in the field of media players suggests that sometimes "lots of hardware choice (including a lot of cheaper hardware), service supplier choice and of course 'free' application choice" doesn't matter.
The fact isn't that iPhone is going to win or that Android is going to win. The fact is that we don't know until it happens.
Because if it's not possible for me to screw around with, it's highly likely that it's not possible for other people to screw around with too.
I get it, it's nice to have the freedom to do whatever you want your hardware.
That said, if the entire thing was locked down so tight that I can't do anything with it, then I at least have the piece of mind that it's highly unlikely anybody else can tamper with mine either.
You know what? It's a pacemaker. It's got a specific purpose a QA department tested and then got certified. It's an embedded device that is a matter of life or death.
I think I would prefer that it be impossible for other software to run on the hardware.
Where will they go? There's iPhone of course... There's even WinMo 6.5. There's even Palm Pre. Blackberry? Or... N900? Okay, so the N900 one's more a joke.
But there's plenty of choices.
To me, there's no reason why 80% of customers not returning is unreasonable. There's plenty of options. There's plenty of reasons.
Some might not like Android. Some might think that smartphones cost them too much money. Some might have been turned off by the bloatware.
If you counted it on paper, I'm technically an iPhone to WinMo 6 convert on my main cell line. I do have an iPhone, and I'm planning on upgrading to another iPhone even as a secondary line. But despite that, my main phone is running WinMo.
One of my friends works for Google and has ditched both of the free Android phones she's been given for an iPhone. At least she sold the N1 instead of giving it away as if it wasn't worth anything.
Another guy I know just bought a Palm Pre. Yeah, after the Palm HP merger occurred. Not just announced but actually merged. I asked why and he was more confident in HP supporting the platform than Google. Plus, comparison between the Palm SDK and the Android SDK, the Palm SDK felt more polished.
So, I actually have.
I went to Japan over new years and rented a sim for NTT Docomo at the airport.
Dropped it into a unlocked iPhone 3G and used that to keep in touch with friends (voice only, no data on that rental sim) for 2 weeks.
Between the SF Bay Area and Tokyo, there's a world of difference. I drop calls and switch to EDGE all the time in the bay area.
In Tokyo, I could talk on a train. While it went through tunnels. While underground. In department stores where there's assloads of people. Stuff just worked.
In Sendai, out in the countryside, stuff still worked fine. The experience is about the same as Verizon in the SF Bay area.
(yes, I have an active account on Verizon too.)
I've used OSX Server on the side at work (I'm NOT a sysadmin).
OSX Server 10.3 very stable. Very old. But very stable. We kinda left a machine there in an automation lab and forgot about maintaining it. It was still working fine with a uptime of over 3 years when we did the "oh, what's this.....I remember now..." I kept providing for the network, so that was good.
OSX Server 10.4 pretty darn stable. Less stable than 10.3. Samba would sometimes give out. LDAP had some quirkyness. We just stopped using it when that happened.
Uptime was in the range of 6 months since we still applied security updates.
OSX Server 10.5 is shit. Uptimes around the order of 1-2 months forced by a necessary reboot when something dies or the machine just slows down with no explanation.
My bet is on Altivec. If the app does large amounts of vector calcs and is optimized for both Altivec and SSE3/SSE4, Altivec still wins despite being half a decade older.
Even if the Core2's loading much more than it needs, it's also got probably to 6x more memory bandwidth than the G4 does and probably around 4x more cache.
In order to have the cache line size affect things, the program would need to load a wasteful chunk of data and not use it for long time. For something like that, I'm still not sure we'd end up with a factor of two difference in favor of a computer with quarter of the general computing power.
I kinda wished that Freescale would have been faster on working on the dual core e600s. If Apple had adopted those as a 2nd option, it would have been pretty nice laptop option. Basically they would have been dual core G4s with 2MB cache and DDR2 and a much faster memory bus. On paper, similar to a Core Duo. The difference is that it'd be faster in general than the Core Duo, and use less power since the northbridge was integrated and the whole package barely cost a few watts over just a Core Duo.
Oh come on.
When Apple gave out a free iPhone to almost all their employees, most of them tried it out and enjoyed it. You're always going to end up with one or two people like my coworker who sold hers and bought a $400 ladder. (pretty fancy ladder)
When Google gave out a G1 to all their employees, I know of several people who still have those. And I had a friend give hers away cuz she just didn't want to use it.
Whether or not the company gives them away isn't an issue. The real question is how many of the employees hang onto theirs before the next rev gets released.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/atts_first_android_phone_doesnt_allow_nonmarket_apps
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/05/sprint-htc-evo-4g-ota-update-here-to-save-your-sd-card-issues-and-kill-your-root-acces/
So.... uh... "black!"
The reasons is that having the phone be predictable from their point of view can also save time and money on their side. QA is easier when there's less variables.
This has been known well before smartphones became popular but we can see what happens when people are motivated.
Look at what happened with the original iPhone.
1) iPhone got released SIM-locked to AT&T.
2) Jailbroken. (Not a big deal)
3) People wrote apps and mods that wern't well written and could crash your phone or severely impact battery life when they interact. (Look at MobileSubstrate which monkeypatches stuff. It's the basis for many modifications like Winterboard, etc.) There are plenty of people who've jailbroken, then installed a bunch of apps, and then complain about battery life. Some of the people who do it "cuz it's cool and make me feel l33t" will invariably blame it on the hardware and try to force a return.
3) (Here's the big one) The first round of SIM unlocks for the iPhone corrupted part of the cellular modem's firmware. Flashing it with a legit firmware bricks the cellular modem. Despite it being the fault of the modders screwing up, Apple got blamed for "bricking" in 1.1.1. They knew it was going to happen, but they had no reliable fix ready. It makes no sense to screw your legitimate customers by delaying updates. Apple did release a fix later, but it was on the other of months with little press. I'm guessing it was once it was understood what kind of damage anySIM did. Not surprising since it'd require understanding the compiler-optimized version of the firmware as opposed to the source code.
So, if letting people mod your product can result in bad press AND extra work for fixing other people's bugs? Then yes, it could make sense to utilize a lockdown feature that already existed in the CPU product Moto chose.
The TI OMAP is simply an application processor. There should be another Qualcomm chip in the phone to handle cellular communications.
They are separate chips.
This is essentually the same as a PC/Mac with a Modem. One handles your apps. The other handles communications. They talk to each other via UART or USB.
Locking down the modem part is a good thing for the most part since control over this can screw up connectivity for you as well as others on your cell network. But it also is where the SIM-lock goes.
Locking down the app processor is more debatable.