Well, I'm pretty sure that they've both taken their respective OSs a long, long way from the fairly humble beginnings.
You know what the process for those improvements can be called?
Innovation.
It doesn't have to be extreme, change the world stuff. Incremental improvements can be innovative.
As for Apple not participating in open standards - have you not heard of WebKit? Do you not understand their push away from Flash towards HTML5? Have you ever looked at a file saved by an Apple app (hint - it's a gzipped set of simple, open files)? Do you know what the iTunes database is (hint - it's XML)?
You're a troll, and not a very bright one. I'm sorry for you, that you fail to understand the world around you. Simple ignorance can be cured, but your wilful ignorance is tragic. Earlier you admitted to having trouble working an iPhone, the single easiest phone most people have ever used. It may not have every feature they want (and thankfully, no-one is forcing them to buy it) but I've never before heard anyone claim it was hard to work out.
You're just not suited to technology. Leave it to those of us who care, please.
It's the modus operandi of the troll - miss the first sentence in your post and invent a straw man for the rest.
If his post weren't so mired in stupidity, it'd be sad.
Remember, this is the bozo who couldn't manage to make a call on an iPhone, something children find trivial. His opinion can't be counted upon for anything. He clearly is unable to use basic technology. I can't imagine how he could have posted a comment on/.
Do you believe that security would be better if applications were coded in assembly, rather than higher-level languages?
I can't see why assembly language makes any difference to coding standards and practices. You can screw up in assembly just as easily as C++, and generally assembly is harder to debug.
I admire the intent of your post, but the US is so utterly in bed with China that your nation will never put up bans or tariffs.
You'll accept most of their conditions regardless of political posturing - the voters in the US will demand the politicians kowtow if it means higher prices otherwise.
As for international courts... are you guys ever going to join the International Criminal Court? It's hard to take your presence in the other courts seriously when you pick and choose which ones have jurisdiction over you. It's a bit off-topic (and possibly trolly) but when you bring up international courts, remember that the US isn't looking particularly good.
Apple has had absolute control of their standards (Quicktime, proprietary audio formats/encryption, device lockin (itunes only works with ipod, and will update itunes to break compatibility with any other device)... Apple has always been very aggressive about vendor lockin, and only uses "open" standards when it serves their purpose to break into a market, and quickly lose interest once they have a substancial market share (see also: embrace, extend, extinguish).
Quicktime uses 'normal' formats - H264, mp4, etc. Apple don't have any proprietary audio or video formats. You're confusing format with DRM, and there's none of that in their music either.
Palm decision to use someone else's software to manage their device is a bad move in every sense. They become reliant on the experience provided by someone else, and open themselves up to being locked out. When Apple also provide APIs for accessing the iTunes database (hell, it's just an XML file, any dev worth their salt can write a parser, and there are plenty of open-source XML parsers out there) then Palm's decision looks more like posturing and using their own customers as a weapon.
Still, many of the/. crowd fell for Palm on this, hook line and sinker. It became an issue of 'freedom' or something, and not just a shabby development decision that was almost certainly going to bite them later.
As for EEE, can you give an example? I can understand how Microsoft could do that with IE, as they had market dominance. I can't see how Apple can do that in any market but mp3 players, and clearly they've not done so in that market.
The iPad seems a nice device. It's not for everyone, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It may not be for you, but again, there's nothing wrong with that.
I find the backlash you mention exactly as bad as the breathless fans you berate and to be honest I'm just as tired of either side of the pundits on this one. Extremes on both sides are misrepresenting the truth, either intentionally or not, and I see some of that in the little squad of straw-men lurking in your post.
The only people that matter in this are the people who will buy the device. If there aren't enough of them, it'll fail. If there are, it'll succeed. All this back-and-forth garbage is a waste of electrons.
Nothing you or I say will make a jot of difference on that, and judging by the posts on/. this is a good thing.
That whole anti-trust thing just went over your head, eh? I can see how the stories from remote locations like the US and EU would be hard for you to spot. It's not like there was any coverage around here or on any tech enthusiast site.
everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing
Yup, very few posts on/. critical of Apple lately. It's not at all the dominant meme when talking about smartphones.
Seriously - do you actually read/. ? Half the posts in a thread about Apple are criticising it for exactly the things you mention, and the other half are defending it.
Therefore, ACPI suspend features are really not as important to Linux users as maybe they are to Windows users - as a Linux user of some 15 years experience, I've never found the need to use suspend in all honesty...
Boot time may be 30 seconds, but what about the time to set up your workspace? Those apps you keep open in the background, or that you had open last time and need now. What about the files you need?
You're there fiddling around for a minute or two, waiting on your system, getting it set up how you had it last time. An OS X user is there in 1-2 seconds. Sure, that's not a lot of time difference in the scheme of things, but why should your OS hold you back like that?
Right. In which case you then go speak to the hardware manufacturers and request they write proper Linux drivers for ACPI, or publish their hardware specs properly so the kernel developers can write the drivers.
It's a circular problem. Linux is not important enough to write drivers for, and the poor driver support for Linux holds it back.
It's certainly not the user's problem. They'll just go to an OS that does what they want. The problem lies with the nature of Linux itself. Who will campaign to manufacturers for better driver support? Who represents Linux?
It's an easy question to answer for OS X and Windows, but pretty murky for Linux.
The end result though is that users either miss out on features, or they choose against Linux.
Hmm... random abuse from some twit who presents a trivial example of developer stupidity and believes everyone must be as stupid as they demonstrably are.
Good trolling, coward. Good trolling. Most trolls try to show others are stupid, but you're more focused on your own failures.
It's lovely to remember what was, but not so great to forget what we have today.
Sure, we generally don't know the whole widget from top to bottom, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get a program up and running. It's not just frameworks either - the choice of languages we have today beats the crappy BASIC we had then, or the assembly language tools we had.
The first machine I knew inside-out was the ZX-Spectrum. While I like to remember it fondly, I would never want a return to those primitive times.
It's a bit like object-oriented programming - we hide the details of an object and only deal with the interface. It's more scalable and leads to faster development.
I remember back to 1980 and I still don't think you really know what you're talking about when you say that Apple came from the same mold as Microsoft.
Can you elaborate, or is this just the new faulty Slashdot meme (ie "Apple is the new Microsoft")?
Apple's DRM: My computer, containing all my downloaded iTunes TV series and movies is destroyed in a fire. I can call Apple and beg them to let me re-download them, but this is described "as more a favor then a policy." [about.com]
That's not DRM that you're describing. That's an artifact of the delivery system. Even if Apple allowed you to authorise your replacement computer and re-download all the files you purchased, each file would have DRM (or not) regardless.
Rule number one of buying a Mac - get the minimum possible RAM and upgrade it yourself from third-party items. You'll save a massive amount.
Rule number two - if you've got a machine with a user-accessible hard drive, look at the options around buying a larger drive from a third party. For laptops and iMacs, get the Apple option. For Mac Pros, shop around before you buy.
It's a common error, but needs to be picked up. Apple's boards are all designed by Apple, regardless of who builds them, and as such have different design tolerances.
I think I'll conclude you were trolling or astroturfing. The jury is still out, but since you clearly have nothing to back up the claims you made, I think it's a fair cop.
Apple have always claimed the private frameworks are subject to change, and so including them in a third-party app is a terrible thing to do. When Apple make a change for their own reasons, they'll break the app or introduce undesired behaviours.
If they use their own APIs, the issue is removed, as they know the changes and if their new API breaks their apps or their OS, they will know either through dependencies or testing. It's their problem.
When Apple review apps, they're meant to check for private APIs and reject the app at that point if they find any evidence that they're being used. This whole story seems to be that they failed to check properly up-front and are picking the ball back up by advising the developers that private APIs were used and removing the apps from the store.
The side-issue is that there may be no API for the functionality the developers want, which is why they went down the path of private APIs and all the risks their use entails. Apple could have managed this better, but the developers can't claim innocence on the private API thing. It's been made pretty clear by Apple.
As for relating this to Microsoft's use of private APIs in the past... well there may be some similarities if Apple are using the APIs to lock competing products out of the market. That case can be made, but Apple don't provide WiFi stumbler functionality so it's not a strong case.
Sadly this critical part of the story is being submerged under the usual "Apple is the great Satan" Slashdot groupthink. It seems to be an easy road to be modded up if a poster makes a short criticism of Apple, even if they don't know any of the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, you really do fail hard.
Apple and Microsoft fail at innovation?
Well, I'm pretty sure that they've both taken their respective OSs a long, long way from the fairly humble beginnings.
You know what the process for those improvements can be called?
Innovation.
It doesn't have to be extreme, change the world stuff. Incremental improvements can be innovative.
As for Apple not participating in open standards - have you not heard of WebKit? Do you not understand their push away from Flash towards HTML5? Have you ever looked at a file saved by an Apple app (hint - it's a gzipped set of simple, open files)? Do you know what the iTunes database is (hint - it's XML)?
You're a troll, and not a very bright one. I'm sorry for you, that you fail to understand the world around you. Simple ignorance can be cured, but your wilful ignorance is tragic. Earlier you admitted to having trouble working an iPhone, the single easiest phone most people have ever used. It may not have every feature they want (and thankfully, no-one is forcing them to buy it) but I've never before heard anyone claim it was hard to work out.
You're just not suited to technology. Leave it to those of us who care, please.
It's the modus operandi of the troll - miss the first sentence in your post and invent a straw man for the rest.
If his post weren't so mired in stupidity, it'd be sad.
Remember, this is the bozo who couldn't manage to make a call on an iPhone, something children find trivial. His opinion can't be counted upon for anything. He clearly is unable to use basic technology. I can't imagine how he could have posted a comment on /.
Honest question - is it really worth their time (and costs) to write open-sourced drivers for Linux?
Has anyone quantified the sales to show that Linux is a worthwhile market segment?
WebKit ships in the box that says "OS X" on it.
True, but I thought the point being made was that WebKit affects more than just Safari. Isn't it the core of Firefox these days? And others?
Do you believe that security would be better if applications were coded in assembly, rather than higher-level languages?
I can't see why assembly language makes any difference to coding standards and practices. You can screw up in assembly just as easily as C++, and generally assembly is harder to debug.
Not at 3GHz.
Real developers have electrodes attached to their head so that they can read the native machine code directly.
I admire the intent of your post, but the US is so utterly in bed with China that your nation will never put up bans or tariffs.
You'll accept most of their conditions regardless of political posturing - the voters in the US will demand the politicians kowtow if it means higher prices otherwise.
As for international courts... are you guys ever going to join the International Criminal Court? It's hard to take your presence in the other courts seriously when you pick and choose which ones have jurisdiction over you. It's a bit off-topic (and possibly trolly) but when you bring up international courts, remember that the US isn't looking particularly good.
Apple has had absolute control of their standards (Quicktime, proprietary audio formats/encryption, device lockin (itunes only works with ipod, and will update itunes to break compatibility with any other device)... Apple has always been very aggressive about vendor lockin, and only uses "open" standards when it serves their purpose to break into a market, and quickly lose interest once they have a substancial market share (see also: embrace, extend, extinguish).
Quicktime uses 'normal' formats - H264, mp4, etc. Apple don't have any proprietary audio or video formats. You're confusing format with DRM, and there's none of that in their music either.
Palm decision to use someone else's software to manage their device is a bad move in every sense. They become reliant on the experience provided by someone else, and open themselves up to being locked out. When Apple also provide APIs for accessing the iTunes database (hell, it's just an XML file, any dev worth their salt can write a parser, and there are plenty of open-source XML parsers out there) then Palm's decision looks more like posturing and using their own customers as a weapon.
Still, many of the /. crowd fell for Palm on this, hook line and sinker. It became an issue of 'freedom' or something, and not just a shabby development decision that was almost certainly going to bite them later.
As for EEE, can you give an example? I can understand how Microsoft could do that with IE, as they had market dominance. I can't see how Apple can do that in any market but mp3 players, and clearly they've not done so in that market.
The iPad seems a nice device. It's not for everyone, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It may not be for you, but again, there's nothing wrong with that.
I find the backlash you mention exactly as bad as the breathless fans you berate and to be honest I'm just as tired of either side of the pundits on this one. Extremes on both sides are misrepresenting the truth, either intentionally or not, and I see some of that in the little squad of straw-men lurking in your post.
The only people that matter in this are the people who will buy the device. If there aren't enough of them, it'll fail. If there are, it'll succeed. All this back-and-forth garbage is a waste of electrons.
Nothing you or I say will make a jot of difference on that, and judging by the posts on /. this is a good thing.
That whole anti-trust thing just went over your head, eh? I can see how the stories from remote locations like the US and EU would be hard for you to spot. It's not like there was any coverage around here or on any tech enthusiast site.
everybody seems to forget that Apple is doing exactly what the slashdot community rallied against Microsoft for doing
Yup, very few posts on /. critical of Apple lately. It's not at all the dominant meme when talking about smartphones.
Seriously - do you actually read /. ? Half the posts in a thread about Apple are criticising it for exactly the things you mention, and the other half are defending it.
Therefore, ACPI suspend features are really not as important to Linux users as maybe they are to Windows users - as a Linux user of some 15 years experience, I've never found the need to use suspend in all honesty...
Boot time may be 30 seconds, but what about the time to set up your workspace? Those apps you keep open in the background, or that you had open last time and need now. What about the files you need?
You're there fiddling around for a minute or two, waiting on your system, getting it set up how you had it last time. An OS X user is there in 1-2 seconds. Sure, that's not a lot of time difference in the scheme of things, but why should your OS hold you back like that?
Right. In which case you then go speak to the hardware manufacturers and request they write proper Linux drivers for ACPI, or publish their hardware specs properly so the kernel developers can write the drivers.
It's a circular problem. Linux is not important enough to write drivers for, and the poor driver support for Linux holds it back.
It's certainly not the user's problem. They'll just go to an OS that does what they want. The problem lies with the nature of Linux itself. Who will campaign to manufacturers for better driver support? Who represents Linux?
It's an easy question to answer for OS X and Windows, but pretty murky for Linux.
The end result though is that users either miss out on features, or they choose against Linux.
Hmm... random abuse from some twit who presents a trivial example of developer stupidity and believes everyone must be as stupid as they demonstrably are.
Good trolling, coward. Good trolling. Most trolls try to show others are stupid, but you're more focused on your own failures.
It's lovely to remember what was, but not so great to forget what we have today.
Sure, we generally don't know the whole widget from top to bottom, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get a program up and running. It's not just frameworks either - the choice of languages we have today beats the crappy BASIC we had then, or the assembly language tools we had.
The first machine I knew inside-out was the ZX-Spectrum. While I like to remember it fondly, I would never want a return to those primitive times.
It's a bit like object-oriented programming - we hide the details of an object and only deal with the interface. It's more scalable and leads to faster development.
I remember back to 1980 and I still don't think you really know what you're talking about when you say that Apple came from the same mold as Microsoft.
Can you elaborate, or is this just the new faulty Slashdot meme (ie "Apple is the new Microsoft")?
Apple's DRM: My computer, containing all my downloaded iTunes TV series and movies is destroyed in a fire. I can call Apple and beg them to let me re-download them, but this is described "as more a favor then a policy." [about.com]
That's not DRM that you're describing. That's an artifact of the delivery system. Even if Apple allowed you to authorise your replacement computer and re-download all the files you purchased, each file would have DRM (or not) regardless.
Rule number one of buying a Mac - get the minimum possible RAM and upgrade it yourself from third-party items. You'll save a massive amount.
Rule number two - if you've got a machine with a user-accessible hard drive, look at the options around buying a larger drive from a third party. For laptops and iMacs, get the Apple option. For Mac Pros, shop around before you buy.
UT2K4 runs fine on 10.6 today, without any new patches. Last time I updated it, I was running 10.4.
I reckon games apps are more likely to use system calls sparingly, and so be more resistant to OS changes. Certainly this has been my experience.
Fabrication != design
It's a common error, but needs to be picked up. Apple's boards are all designed by Apple, regardless of who builds them, and as such have different design tolerances.
Apple are not just another OEM.
I'm still waiting.
I think I'll conclude you were trolling or astroturfing. The jury is still out, but since you clearly have nothing to back up the claims you made, I think it's a fair cop.
Apple have always claimed the private frameworks are subject to change, and so including them in a third-party app is a terrible thing to do. When Apple make a change for their own reasons, they'll break the app or introduce undesired behaviours.
If they use their own APIs, the issue is removed, as they know the changes and if their new API breaks their apps or their OS, they will know either through dependencies or testing. It's their problem.
When Apple review apps, they're meant to check for private APIs and reject the app at that point if they find any evidence that they're being used. This whole story seems to be that they failed to check properly up-front and are picking the ball back up by advising the developers that private APIs were used and removing the apps from the store.
The side-issue is that there may be no API for the functionality the developers want, which is why they went down the path of private APIs and all the risks their use entails. Apple could have managed this better, but the developers can't claim innocence on the private API thing. It's been made pretty clear by Apple.
As for relating this to Microsoft's use of private APIs in the past... well there may be some similarities if Apple are using the APIs to lock competing products out of the market. That case can be made, but Apple don't provide WiFi stumbler functionality so it's not a strong case.
Sadly this critical part of the story is being submerged under the usual "Apple is the great Satan" Slashdot groupthink. It seems to be an easy road to be modded up if a poster makes a short criticism of Apple, even if they don't know any of the facts.
"Kafkaesque" = "boring" as far as I can tell. I'm not sure that's what you meant though.
I just ran a search for WiFi in the app store, and plenty of free finders appeared.
Was there something about these specific apps, or is this just about those apps using reserved (ie subject to change) frameworks?
In short - let's not panic just yet, hm?