I think Cell phones are too small for many pda-ish things, currently.
Unless someone comes up with a better display method, perhaps holographic, they are limited. Oh, and they need a better input interface
Personally, since no one can make a good all-in-one device, I'd like to see a real separation into two devices-- one that does phone, calendar, address book, bluetooth, whatever. Make that your PDA/cell-phone/communications-device. Let that have the complicated interface and everything. Then, separately, have a portable multimedia device that plays music, video, games, has a built in camera, etc.
The reason I say this is, for most multimedia tasks, such as playing games, taking a picture, listening to music, you want something with simple controls (many times, controls with enough tactile feedback that you don't have to look a them). You don't usually need text-input for these things, but you might want really nice sound/video, a big hard drive, etc.
By contrast, for managing contacts, calendars, and calling people, you don't need a super-high-quality screen. Something that shows text clearly should be good enough. You don't need much memory either. Your interface needs to be more complex, allowing for text input, but doesn't need to be very tactile since you won't probably be adding text without looking at the device.
Now, I'm not saying that I wouldn't prefer to have a single device that does it all, but since nobody seems to be able to make a single device that does everything well, I think they should try breaking it down into two devices that each do half the things well.
...so the spam-perpetuating ISPs won't lose much money...
At the very least, they'll lose the money from any spammers who are paying them to relay spam, since the spammers won't want to use them once they're blacklisted.
Yes, terrific idea. If only Apple made something like the iMac with a battery already installed. In fact, if they made a portable version of the battery-powered iMac, I'd buy one and finally ditch my Powerbook.
Bah... and what are you going to do for input? You can install a screen, but then you'd still have to carry around a keyboard and mouse. What, you're going to attach a keyboard and mouse to this whole setup? It's patently absurd.
Well, I think for the most part it's not intentional. You know, there are occasional rendering bugs-- not the sort of thing you see on most pages. Usually it's in aspects of the standards that aren't used that often, and so they just tend to go unnoticed by users, and they aren't a big priority for the developers.
Sometimes the standards are just vague enough that cases pop up where it's not clear what the rendering engine is supposed to do, or the standards don't cover every possible case, so each browser might handle those cases a little differently.
So, I guess the thing to remember is that the W3C sets down what each tag should do and how, but then the people making the browsers have to actually come up with a system that takes those tags and does those thing with them. It's just not as easy as plugging in the W3C standards and you have a web browser.
Unfortunately, it would also hurt a lot of legitimate businesses that rely on services or traffic from those ISPs.
I don't think that makes it a bad idea. I mean, maybe you want to warn ISPs first in order to give them a chance to rectify things, or maybe you want to make it easy for them to get access again when they do cut off the spam, but the GP is right, there isn't much in the way of legal action you can take to shut down foreign spammers. If it hurts legitimate businesses, hopefully those businesses will stop using ISPs who perpetuate spam, driving those ISPs to either clean up their act or shut down.
"Not responding" sounds like a good idea, until you realize that you can't keep people from responding. You and I might agree to not-respond, but I don't think you and I are the problem.
Well, it certainly doesn't make sense to buy an OSS company in order to get their software. If Microsoft wanted access to Redhat's software, they could just download the source code.
The only possible reasons Microsoft might want to buy Redhat would be if they wanted the employees (which doesn't make any sense), if redhat had some other property that MS wanted, IP or otherwise (customer records, branding, troubleshooting database, etc), or just plain sabotage.
The only thing I could see bluetooth being used for on the iPod is playlist syncing-- not music syncing. Right now, smart playlists don't really update until you connect to a computer. So I could see bluetooth being used as a way of updating playcounts (and other such metadata) as well as playlists, but I'm not sure it'd be worth all the price and trouble.
I'll say the same thing I said about adding a color screen to the iPod (before the iPod photo came out). If this feature greatly decreases battery life or greatly increases size or price, Apple shouldn't do it and probably won't. However, if Apple's engineers find a way to add in this feature without any major downside, then they should and probably will.
I think it's likely that as Apple will continue to add new features into the iPod until it becomes an all encompassing portable device (PIM, music/video, camera, games, maybe a phone, wifi/bluetooth, web browser, e-mail, whatever). Especially now that the PSP is out and positioned to be a competing product.
However, I'd look for Apple to only integrate these new products as they are able to do it without:
increasing the price above $500
increasing the size dramatically
dropping battery life below 8 hours
screwing up the interface
Yes, that last one is bold for a reason, in that it's the thing that many people would forget about. Apple won't add a feature until they figure out how to work it into the current interface sensibly, and that's the problem with adding in a phone or anything that requires text input. I wouldn't put it past them to figure something out, given enough time, but text input is doubtful for the foreseeable future. Adding video support into the interface, however, wouldn't be hard. I suspect the major problem would be battery life.
Yeah, but if you code to the test it makes the test worthless.
Not if the purpose of the test was to give developers something to code toward. To use the example of ati/nvidia tweaking their drivers, if a test was created, the entire purpose of which was to give vid cards a true-to-life workout (i.e. it collected several of the levels from various games that give video cards a hard time, enforced that no meaningful corners were cut, and compiled the results in an accurate way) then coding to that test would be likely to ensure that the card performed well.
I mean, the problem with ATI/Nvidia "tweaking their drivers" is only in that the test doesn't represent a real test of what video cards need to do. In that case, it's the test being insufficient, because ATI and Nvidia SHOULD be tweaking their drivers to perform well at what we need their cards to do. That's why I said, if web browsers impliments all the changes necessary to pass the Acid2 test, and there are still problems, then we should create an Acid3 test to display all those rendering problems and go back to the browser developers and say "fix it".
That was the purpose of the Acid2 test. To point web developers at it and say "fix it".
And all this hubbub is in order to refute some Slashdotters? If so, these developers are frickin' crazy, and probably emotionally unstable.
And who thought Apple and KDE were hanging out and playing WoW together? I think some of us just assumed that Apple's version wasn't a completely severed branch.
I think it's a good idea, but doesn't really make sense for this particular issue. As I recall, the issue is that the default for Widgets when downloaded is to install them. Though this doesn't present a real security risk (widgets can't access local files and report back), it presents an opportunity for websites to autoinstall advertisements.
So I don't think there is any real "offending code". The whole thing of a download commencing when you visit a page is used for a lot of download sites (instead of a direct link to the download, they point to a page which initiates a download). The OS then recognized it was a widget and installed it. It's not like your system is suddenly rooted, but you might end up with some widgets you don't want.
Safari only passed the Acid 2 Test because the developer David Hyatt spent time over two weeks to make it pass.
Wasn't that the purpose of the Acid 2 test? To give an example of common rendering problems so that browser developers could see what their browser was doing wrong? Now, I'm not saying that passing the Acid2 test means the rendering is perfect, but the challenge was placed out there, and the Safari developers took it up. It's exactly what Mozilla and MS and KDE should do, too.
Now, if after all that, we can come up with a new series of serious rendering errors not addressed by the Acid2 test, then let's make an Acid3 test, or whatever. But I don't see the grounds for complaint. It's like saying, "well the only reason Firefox renders HTML properly is because the Mozilla team spent time to make it render HTML properly." Well, good. That's what they should be doing.
What about the fact that this all started because Apple created a build of webcore that passed the Acid2 test? I don't think the accusation was that Apple wasn't adhering to standards, but simply that the code was "messy" by KDE standards.
Still, it'd be nice if, when I bought a 40 GB hard drive and installed it, it registered as having a capacity of 40 GB instead of 37.14 GB. Just to avoid a lot of nonsense, you know, one way or the other, they should make up their minds and stick with a defined way of dealing with things. And since people are used to dealing with base 10, I would think it'd probably be better to stick with the 1 KB = 1000 B definition.
Really, I don't even care why the issue exists. I just think it'd be easier for my poor mother to understand how much space she's getting.
Yeah, but something as "complicated" as installing an alternative browser, most people who don't know how to do it and haven't already heard of Firefox won't do it anyhow. The key is to get it so, when their friendly neighborhood geek comes around, they say, "I saw this ad for Firebox, or whatever. You know that one with the guy yelling? Well, I need that, right?"
I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that's how a lot of computer decisions get made. Someone who doesn't know anything gets convinced that they need something that they don't know what it is. I know people who don't understand that they can have e-mail without AOL. I know people who don't know the difference between Outlook Express and "the internet". And do you know why these people get uneasy when I mention the idea of installing Firefox? Because they've never heard of it.
Re:Um, You're right it's not that simple
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Safari vs. KHTML
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yeah, but people aren't attracted to OSX for the darwin core. They could use Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, whatever. It's Aqua and the things that run on top that people are after, and that's why it's that portion of the OS that isn't open sourced. If they open-sourced it and someone came out with a free x86 port, their hardware sales would likely drop.
I agree with every one of your objections.... for now. Big and clunky? The tech for each of these things is constantly shrinking. Poor battery life? Batteries are improving. Low res camera? Where a VGA camera fits today, maybe a 5 megapixel will fit next year. Limited storage? Again, storage sizes are shrinking.
Horrible UI. I think that one is going to be the hardest. There aren't a lot of companies who are really good at UI. And no matter how far the technology progresses, it's still hard to make a good UI.
Cellphone makers have been horribly clueless in building a "convergence device" that really meets people's needs. Look at the latest "cream of the crop" PDA/camera/phones, for example. Take the Treo 650. Still so new, you can't even get on through many major carriers like Verizon, but if you do - you find out it's very fragile/breakable, not to mention still almost too large to carry around comfortably. Battery life could be better too, and as a portable music player, it doesn't hold a candle to something like even a first generation iPod. Meanwhile, like most all other camera phones, it takes lousy low-resolution photos. Where's the desirability in that??
This is why I think Apple needs to either get in the cell-phone business or partner with someone who is and lend some design experience. Both in terms of the interface and the physical device, the people designing cell phones generally stink. They're expensive, ugly, cheap-feeling, and fall apart. Maybe that's part of the scam-- to get you to buy new phones, sign up for a longer contract, buy the more expensive models, etc.
But even more than the physical device, there interfaces still feel like something hacked together by amateurs. PDAs too, I have the same problem with them. I don't know how people actually use them. Everything is too complicated, too flakey, too error prone.
Anyway, maybe I'm being too harsh, but both of these areas are where Apple really shines. I've said it many times before, but the reason I didn't own an MP3 player before my iPod was that they weren't worth the trouble, but Apple simplified the syncing process and simplified the interface on the device, and now Iuse my iPod all the time. Well, right now I feel PDAs just aren't worth the trouble, and cell phones with PDA functions and cameras aren't worth the trouble, so I stick with one of those simple phones that let you put in phone numbers and call people, and that's it.
Why aren't they worth the trouble? Ok, a camera phone should have:
a one-button picture-taking capability, meaning you don't have to flip it open and navigate through a menu to get it to take a picture. You should be able to pull it out of your pocket, press ONE button, and have a picture.
decent memory. 16MB won't cut it. at minimum, there should be 128MB
Greater than 2 megapixels
a flash
decent image quality
Until that's available, I'm not buying it. I mean, really, the cameras in all these phones stink. An MP3 player should have an interface as simple and efficient as the iPod's, syncing as easy as the iPod's, and a substantial amount of space (at least a GB or two). Until it does, I'm not buying it. A cell phone should have the ability to make and receive phone calls with good audio quality. A PDA should be able to sync with my computer in a way that I don't even have to think about it so that I can carry my calendar and address book with me, as well as an interface that I can use without thinking while squeezed in a crowd of people on the subway (no stylus). And each one of these devices should come in a small, light, but sturdy casing, or I'm not buying any of them.
However, if you can get me one device that pulls all these things together and doesn't have any huge sucky drawbacks, I'd spend a decent chunk of change to get it. And though I don't care who makes it, I'm guessing that its first incarnation is not going to come in the form of a Microsoft smart phone.
... the iPod is not stagnant. It's development is ongoing and dynamic, so Microsoft is going to have not not only copy, but out innovate a moving target.
Now, I think there's the real point. Maybe he's right that PDAs and MP3 players will eventually disappear, and in the end we'll have cell phones with PDA features and MP3 playback. Maybe the cameras in phones will become good enough that amateur point-and-shooters won't ever buy stand alone cameras again. And maybe it will be cheap enough that these phones will even be the free phones you get with a 2 year contract. In fact, I'm not sure "maybe" is quite right. I think all this will "probably" happen sooner or later. As tiny cameras, mp3 players, cell phones, and everything else get smaller and cheaper, we'll probably see more and more multifunction all-in-one type devices. So in that sense, yeah, Gates is probably right.
Of course, pretty much everyone has been saying this for years and years on top of that. Wasn't the reason Steve Jobs didn't like the Newton was that he thought the functionality should just be built into cell-phones? (I remember reading something to that effect)
So considering how blatantly obvious it is, who's to say that Apple won't get there first? I mean, that's the real question, isn't it, who will get there first? Will it be the phone companies building MP3 players into their phones, or will it be the MP3 companies building phones into their players, or will Palm release a hard-drive based version of the Trio?
Well, Apple's already built some photo functionality into their iPod, and it seems like it's only a matter of time before we see a iPod/camera hybrid (I think so, anyway). Motorola is releasing an iTunes phone in a few months. Apple has address-book and calendar syncing in the iPod, and it's not hard to imagine essentially integrating the tech from an iPod shuffle into a cell-phone. So I don't know, I wouldn't count Apple out yet.
So, I guess I'm saying that I don't think this is an issue of Bill Gates' vision of the future of technology being different that others'. It's solely an issue of who can put all the pieces of hardware together, write software that will run it in an easy and intuitive manner so people are comfortable with it, and put it all into a reasonably-priced physically-small package. It's anybody's game right now, but I'd certainly put Apple (either by itself or by partnering with another company) among the top contenders.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless someone comes up with a better display method, perhaps holographic, they are limited. Oh, and they need a better input interface
Personally, since no one can make a good all-in-one device, I'd like to see a real separation into two devices-- one that does phone, calendar, address book, bluetooth, whatever. Make that your PDA/cell-phone/communications-device. Let that have the complicated interface and everything. Then, separately, have a portable multimedia device that plays music, video, games, has a built in camera, etc.
The reason I say this is, for most multimedia tasks, such as playing games, taking a picture, listening to music, you want something with simple controls (many times, controls with enough tactile feedback that you don't have to look a them). You don't usually need text-input for these things, but you might want really nice sound/video, a big hard drive, etc.
By contrast, for managing contacts, calendars, and calling people, you don't need a super-high-quality screen. Something that shows text clearly should be good enough. You don't need much memory either. Your interface needs to be more complex, allowing for text input, but doesn't need to be very tactile since you won't probably be adding text without looking at the device.
Now, I'm not saying that I wouldn't prefer to have a single device that does it all, but since nobody seems to be able to make a single device that does everything well, I think they should try breaking it down into two devices that each do half the things well.
At the very least, they'll lose the money from any spammers who are paying them to relay spam, since the spammers won't want to use them once they're blacklisted.
Yes, terrific idea. If only Apple made something like the iMac with a battery already installed. In fact, if they made a portable version of the battery-powered iMac, I'd buy one and finally ditch my Powerbook.
Bah... and what are you going to do for input? You can install a screen, but then you'd still have to carry around a keyboard and mouse. What, you're going to attach a keyboard and mouse to this whole setup? It's patently absurd.
But an UPS would be big and clunky. If you're using a mini for any kind of a headless server, size is probably an issue.
Sometimes the standards are just vague enough that cases pop up where it's not clear what the rendering engine is supposed to do, or the standards don't cover every possible case, so each browser might handle those cases a little differently.
So, I guess the thing to remember is that the W3C sets down what each tag should do and how, but then the people making the browsers have to actually come up with a system that takes those tags and does those thing with them. It's just not as easy as plugging in the W3C standards and you have a web browser.
I don't think that makes it a bad idea. I mean, maybe you want to warn ISPs first in order to give them a chance to rectify things, or maybe you want to make it easy for them to get access again when they do cut off the spam, but the GP is right, there isn't much in the way of legal action you can take to shut down foreign spammers. If it hurts legitimate businesses, hopefully those businesses will stop using ISPs who perpetuate spam, driving those ISPs to either clean up their act or shut down.
"Not responding" sounds like a good idea, until you realize that you can't keep people from responding. You and I might agree to not-respond, but I don't think you and I are the problem.
Hell, I'd be collecting on every e-mail sent to me. Friends, family, I don't care.
The only possible reasons Microsoft might want to buy Redhat would be if they wanted the employees (which doesn't make any sense), if redhat had some other property that MS wanted, IP or otherwise (customer records, branding, troubleshooting database, etc), or just plain sabotage.
Which "proprietory format"? MP4?
The only thing I could see bluetooth being used for on the iPod is playlist syncing-- not music syncing. Right now, smart playlists don't really update until you connect to a computer. So I could see bluetooth being used as a way of updating playcounts (and other such metadata) as well as playlists, but I'm not sure it'd be worth all the price and trouble.
I think it's likely that as Apple will continue to add new features into the iPod until it becomes an all encompassing portable device (PIM, music/video, camera, games, maybe a phone, wifi/bluetooth, web browser, e-mail, whatever). Especially now that the PSP is out and positioned to be a competing product.
However, I'd look for Apple to only integrate these new products as they are able to do it without:
Yes, that last one is bold for a reason, in that it's the thing that many people would forget about. Apple won't add a feature until they figure out how to work it into the current interface sensibly, and that's the problem with adding in a phone or anything that requires text input. I wouldn't put it past them to figure something out, given enough time, but text input is doubtful for the foreseeable future. Adding video support into the interface, however, wouldn't be hard. I suspect the major problem would be battery life.
Not if the purpose of the test was to give developers something to code toward. To use the example of ati/nvidia tweaking their drivers, if a test was created, the entire purpose of which was to give vid cards a true-to-life workout (i.e. it collected several of the levels from various games that give video cards a hard time, enforced that no meaningful corners were cut, and compiled the results in an accurate way) then coding to that test would be likely to ensure that the card performed well.
I mean, the problem with ATI/Nvidia "tweaking their drivers" is only in that the test doesn't represent a real test of what video cards need to do. In that case, it's the test being insufficient, because ATI and Nvidia SHOULD be tweaking their drivers to perform well at what we need their cards to do. That's why I said, if web browsers impliments all the changes necessary to pass the Acid2 test, and there are still problems, then we should create an Acid3 test to display all those rendering problems and go back to the browser developers and say "fix it".
That was the purpose of the Acid2 test. To point web developers at it and say "fix it".
And who thought Apple and KDE were hanging out and playing WoW together? I think some of us just assumed that Apple's version wasn't a completely severed branch.
So I don't think there is any real "offending code". The whole thing of a download commencing when you visit a page is used for a lot of download sites (instead of a direct link to the download, they point to a page which initiates a download). The OS then recognized it was a widget and installed it. It's not like your system is suddenly rooted, but you might end up with some widgets you don't want.
Wasn't that the purpose of the Acid 2 test? To give an example of common rendering problems so that browser developers could see what their browser was doing wrong? Now, I'm not saying that passing the Acid2 test means the rendering is perfect, but the challenge was placed out there, and the Safari developers took it up. It's exactly what Mozilla and MS and KDE should do, too.
Now, if after all that, we can come up with a new series of serious rendering errors not addressed by the Acid2 test, then let's make an Acid3 test, or whatever. But I don't see the grounds for complaint. It's like saying, "well the only reason Firefox renders HTML properly is because the Mozilla team spent time to make it render HTML properly." Well, good. That's what they should be doing.
And who benefits from that?
What about the fact that this all started because Apple created a build of webcore that passed the Acid2 test? I don't think the accusation was that Apple wasn't adhering to standards, but simply that the code was "messy" by KDE standards.
You mean external fights between two different (and I might add, competing) projects?
Really, I don't even care why the issue exists. I just think it'd be easier for my poor mother to understand how much space she's getting.
I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that's how a lot of computer decisions get made. Someone who doesn't know anything gets convinced that they need something that they don't know what it is. I know people who don't understand that they can have e-mail without AOL. I know people who don't know the difference between Outlook Express and "the internet". And do you know why these people get uneasy when I mention the idea of installing Firefox? Because they've never heard of it.
yeah, but people aren't attracted to OSX for the darwin core. They could use Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, whatever. It's Aqua and the things that run on top that people are after, and that's why it's that portion of the OS that isn't open sourced. If they open-sourced it and someone came out with a free x86 port, their hardware sales would likely drop.
Horrible UI. I think that one is going to be the hardest. There aren't a lot of companies who are really good at UI. And no matter how far the technology progresses, it's still hard to make a good UI.
This is why I think Apple needs to either get in the cell-phone business or partner with someone who is and lend some design experience. Both in terms of the interface and the physical device, the people designing cell phones generally stink. They're expensive, ugly, cheap-feeling, and fall apart. Maybe that's part of the scam-- to get you to buy new phones, sign up for a longer contract, buy the more expensive models, etc.
But even more than the physical device, there interfaces still feel like something hacked together by amateurs. PDAs too, I have the same problem with them. I don't know how people actually use them. Everything is too complicated, too flakey, too error prone.
Anyway, maybe I'm being too harsh, but both of these areas are where Apple really shines. I've said it many times before, but the reason I didn't own an MP3 player before my iPod was that they weren't worth the trouble, but Apple simplified the syncing process and simplified the interface on the device, and now Iuse my iPod all the time. Well, right now I feel PDAs just aren't worth the trouble, and cell phones with PDA functions and cameras aren't worth the trouble, so I stick with one of those simple phones that let you put in phone numbers and call people, and that's it.
Why aren't they worth the trouble? Ok, a camera phone should have:
- a one-button picture-taking capability, meaning you don't have to flip it open and navigate through a menu to get it to take a picture. You should be able to pull it out of your pocket, press ONE button, and have a picture.
- decent memory. 16MB won't cut it. at minimum, there should be 128MB
- Greater than 2 megapixels
- a flash
- decent image quality
Until that's available, I'm not buying it. I mean, really, the cameras in all these phones stink. An MP3 player should have an interface as simple and efficient as the iPod's, syncing as easy as the iPod's, and a substantial amount of space (at least a GB or two). Until it does, I'm not buying it. A cell phone should have the ability to make and receive phone calls with good audio quality. A PDA should be able to sync with my computer in a way that I don't even have to think about it so that I can carry my calendar and address book with me, as well as an interface that I can use without thinking while squeezed in a crowd of people on the subway (no stylus). And each one of these devices should come in a small, light, but sturdy casing, or I'm not buying any of them.However, if you can get me one device that pulls all these things together and doesn't have any huge sucky drawbacks, I'd spend a decent chunk of change to get it. And though I don't care who makes it, I'm guessing that its first incarnation is not going to come in the form of a Microsoft smart phone.
Now, I think there's the real point. Maybe he's right that PDAs and MP3 players will eventually disappear, and in the end we'll have cell phones with PDA features and MP3 playback. Maybe the cameras in phones will become good enough that amateur point-and-shooters won't ever buy stand alone cameras again. And maybe it will be cheap enough that these phones will even be the free phones you get with a 2 year contract. In fact, I'm not sure "maybe" is quite right. I think all this will "probably" happen sooner or later. As tiny cameras, mp3 players, cell phones, and everything else get smaller and cheaper, we'll probably see more and more multifunction all-in-one type devices. So in that sense, yeah, Gates is probably right.
Of course, pretty much everyone has been saying this for years and years on top of that. Wasn't the reason Steve Jobs didn't like the Newton was that he thought the functionality should just be built into cell-phones? (I remember reading something to that effect)
So considering how blatantly obvious it is, who's to say that Apple won't get there first? I mean, that's the real question, isn't it, who will get there first? Will it be the phone companies building MP3 players into their phones, or will it be the MP3 companies building phones into their players, or will Palm release a hard-drive based version of the Trio?
Well, Apple's already built some photo functionality into their iPod, and it seems like it's only a matter of time before we see a iPod/camera hybrid (I think so, anyway). Motorola is releasing an iTunes phone in a few months. Apple has address-book and calendar syncing in the iPod, and it's not hard to imagine essentially integrating the tech from an iPod shuffle into a cell-phone. So I don't know, I wouldn't count Apple out yet.
So, I guess I'm saying that I don't think this is an issue of Bill Gates' vision of the future of technology being different that others'. It's solely an issue of who can put all the pieces of hardware together, write software that will run it in an easy and intuitive manner so people are comfortable with it, and put it all into a reasonably-priced physically-small package. It's anybody's game right now, but I'd certainly put Apple (either by itself or by partnering with another company) among the top contenders.