[Jobs comes out on stage, walks to the front, and immediately falls to his knees, hands held clasped in front of him]
SJ[with tears streaming down his face]: Oh Heavenly Pundits, we do beseech thee in this our hour of need. Deliver us from the taint of Bad Publicity that has afflicted us and bring us once more into the light of your divine Good Graces and Four-star Reviews. [bows head in abject shame]
Droid-lovers: Stone Him!
SJ: I humbly beg thy indulgence that I might offer unto thee a most inadequate but heartfelt explanation of The Antenna Curse of Doom.
DLs: You but delay the inevitable, sinner. But we grant thee leave to offer your confession.
SJ: Tis' true, Oh Pundits, that mine device doth exhibit the ACOD, and for this I most humbly apologize to any who have been afflicted.
DLs: All are afflicted when in your vile presence, devil. But continue. We are amused.
SJ: We wouldst offer up the results of our Most Extensive Testing that shows all other devices of like manufacture doth exhibit the same ACOD when fondled in proper fashion.
DLs: Have a care blasphemer, that our patience not run too thin. Dost thou accuse OUR devices of such abominations? [many sidelong glances amidst hefting of stones for proper weight]
SJ: Twas likely an error in the data, your Droidness. Speaking for our abjectly substandard device alone, we most humbly offer a Worthless Placating Solution.
DLs: And what might this worthless solution consist of, worm?
SJ: We propose to wall up the Antenna Curse of Doom behind a Permeable Barrier of Cheap Plastic, oh sage one.
DLs: Well, we would much prefer that you be stoned and simply go away, that we might rule the earth in peace, as the great God Google intended.
SJ: Again, we would beseech thy awesomeness to allow us to distribute our PBCP solution, that we might Dodge The Issue and continue to develop devices that you can cop...er...make fun of.
DLs: Very well. You shall be allowed to Mask The Problem by giving away free crap.
SJ: Oh thank you, thank you!
DLs: Drool not on our cloak, worm. Begone. Next time we bring the rocks.
Whenever Apple comes out with a product that becomes a commercial success, commentary breaks down into two main groups:
1. Apple products are crap - the reason they are a success is that there is a rabid fanboy base that eagerly sucks up Apple's substandard stuff.
2. Apple products are revolutionary - the reason they are a success is that Apple has managed to combine usability and features in exactly the right mix to create a product everyone wants.
At this point in the history of technology, it doesn't much matter which viewpoint is correct - Apple's products get enormous play in the market - whether that is the result of fanboy pressure or because the stuff is insanely great. The result is that they sell millions of whatever they release. And because of that, they are in the drivers seat when it comes to defining the shape of things to come, whether it's what an MP3 player should look like and how it should operate, what a real smartphone should look like and how it should operate, or what a real tablet should look like and how it should operate.
Until Apple stumbles and falls on their face with a bad product (the external antenna goof probably won't make that happen), or some other manufacturer manages to create a revolutionary product that catches the public eye, or create a fanbase to rival Apple's, they will continue to define the future of portable consumer computing.
I agree that there were tablets way before Apple's iPad. My point was that I was tired of hearing yet another vaporware announcement of an upcoming tablet that doesn't yet exist. I define "exist" as available for purchase. Seems to me that once Apple managed to create a tablet that was commercially successful, that a bunch of wannabe tablet competitors are coming out of the woodwork with advance announcements that really amount to trial balloons. In my opinion it isn't really news - i.e. deserving of posting on Slashdot - until its reality, not illusion.
This certainly isn't news. Apple comes out with a popular device, so everyone else thinks they have to come out with one, too. Everybody makes future vaporware announcements to see what the reaction might be, but until they are actually on the market and you can buy one, they are just PR fluff.
Forthcoming....in develpment...soon to be released...in beta testing...
Why do we even pay attention to any of this crap? I can make up specs that stack up well against the iPad, but unless the hardware and OS and apps are actually available for purchase from a variety of retailers *right now*, it's all just vaporware and a monumental waste of time.
Time will tell, but I still see the overall trend as less freedom for the user. Back in the wild, woolly S-100 days, there were actually a ton of guys making systems and boards and a number of different OS's for a variety of processors (8080, Z-80, 6800, etc). Then came the PC, which reduced my choice to a single processor vendor but still allowed me to add boards. Today's laptops are typically configured at the factory when ordered, with users adding little to the internals afterwards, and now comes the smart phones and tablets which are locked down, with the exception of a blessed set of apps you can load (or non-blessed but remotely removable for you droid types).
Somewhere I think I've seen studies on new industries where - at the start - you have a bunch of eager beaver startups and lots of new innovation. Venture cap flows like water and there's fun, pioneering jobs for all. Later, a few successful ones emerge and a period of market consolidation occurs where the small guys get eaten. Finally, you end up with a mature industry with a set of known players, into which it is very hard for new guys to break in (think Tesla Motors here against GM, Ford, Toyota, etc).
Of course my original post was meant to be purely philosophical - I believe I am seeing a trend towards highly managed closed computing devices. May not happen, but I certainly see it as a possible scenario for a mature personal computing industry, rather than a continued focus on self-managed and self-configurable devices. I just don't see the bulk of users out there caring about App Store freedoms like we do in here. Sort of like the difference between your average car buyer and the weekend hotrodder that has his engine bored out and a high-end tranny put in. Room for both of course.
Point taken. On the other hand, if they were to delete ALL the applications, the device would be conceptually error free:-) A total brick, of course, but one that looks real pretty.
Speaking of bricks (and not meaning to be ageist here), do you recall the name of the hard disk drive manufacturer who- back in the early 80's could not meet a large OEM order so one of the boxes they shipped consisted of bricks.
Then there was the vendor bidding on a government modem contract who showed off his device which had lots of blinkenlights on the front and worked fine, but when the observers looked at the back of the device they discovered that the vendor simply took a competitors modem and built a new box around it.
My original post was, of course, meant to be a general observation on how applications are restricted on the current crop of devices and what I believe we can look forward to in the future. I could care less how either Google or Apple instigated, authorized, entrapped, enforced, or implemented whatever policies they have in place. My point was that both Apple-originated and Google-originated devices have restrictions on what is allowed to run.
So why don't we just stop this conversation here, since we are obviously talking on different topics.
I gotta admit, I am laughing my ass off. After a year of listening to Slashdotters slam Apple for it's overly restrictive App store policies (Waaaa - I can't run any piece of crap app I want - waaaaa), it is like a breath of fresh air to see a *real* big brother operation in action. Google can remotely yank apps directly off that "completely open" phone? Priceless.
The days of user-managed consumer computing devices is just about over. The future is stringently managed devices and no unapproved applications. Why? The device manufacturers must ensure a seamless user experience - any hiccup in either hardware or application just helps sink a product in this highly competitive space. And OS manufacturers (not to mention the users) are fed up with security breaches and malware - better just to lock it all down, and eliminate the complaints and problems. The vast majority of users have no desire whatsoever to manage anything on their computers - they just want to buy and play the games or run apps that never crash. Keeping up with the latest viruses is something only totally uncool people do anymore.
The cowboy days are over, folks. The wild, wild west is becoming settled.
Not sure about the "dumbed down" comment. The magazine is designed primarily for the embedded systems hobbyist market, using stuff like PIC and other microcontrollers. Lots of stuff on Basic Stamps, Parallax boards and sensors, and Arduino, etc. Advertisers are mostly dev board makers, short-run PC board service houses, and surplus barns. I've found the articles useful enough to keep my subscription current for over 10 years. Lots of robotics and balloon-sat goodies.
It ain't real - it's just a trial balloon to test the market.
We see all sorts of "iPad competitors" now that the iPad has shown it is possible to make a profit in this format, but unless it is actually for sale, it's just a marketing exercise. I get really tired of reading all these breathless "announcements" of products that never see the light of day...
They are breeding satellites to save on launch costs. Just raise the new satellite babies in orbit. Only the female sats need to stay aloft for 9 months though....
...with more digital data. Because all digital media becomes obsolete, it is impossible to guarantee that hardware will be extant at the point in the future when you wish to read the data. It may even be the case that the media is no longer even recognizable by future generations as something that contains information. How many 10 year olds can identify a potential information source simply by looking at an 8-inch floppy?
No, the *only* way to back up digital information is to make it non-digital - i.e. to make it eye-readable by a human. Think paper or perhaps microfilm. Stone. Clay tablets. These things are even today instantly recognizable as a means of storing information, even when the actual language has fallen into disuse. Once it has been recognized as an important source of information (think hieroglyphics), humans will expend effort to decipher the data. But it must be recognized as an information source first, and no digital medium meets that criteria over the long term.
Digital media does not store information, it simply acts as a slow conveyance mechanism to the next conveyance mechanism (think transfers from bus to train to plane), and if the cycle is interrupted, the data is lost.
One of the alien crew got so excited reading the plaque that he forgot to ground himself before he touched the spacecraft and caused a static short that flipped the bit.
Just kidding. Vger is simply testing us to see if any intelligent life remains on planet earth. Eventually, when he receives no reply, he will assume his rightful place as the godhead to the machine beings.
Ya gotta love the summarizers that - believing we are unable to either read or think for ourselves - attempt to simplify the problem for us dullards:
"It's all about money..."
"It's all about control..."
"It's all about Apple being vindictive..."
"It's all about Adobe wanting to sell Flash..."
Actually, it's all about a bunch of slashdotters wasting time arguing about stuff they have absolutely no control over.
Me? I'm laughing my ass off. Apple has been the marginal market has-been for years, getting bashed for being overpriced with a has-been OS. The MS and Linux fan-boys that wrote Apple off the business marketplace are *shocked* and *appalled* by Apple's success in the consumer arena, dismayed that their favorite player is unable to keep up. Now that Apple is starting to squeeze a few nads, everyone and his brother is up in arms about it being somehow unfair. Apple has always been about a quality user experience and now that this - combined with great design - appears to be an enormous draw to the average consumer, the MS and Linux folks are dumbfounded! Why can't buyers see the advantage in open source? Why won't they select my virus-magnet OS of choice? Please can we go back to 1999? Waaaaaaa!
A real fusion powerplant is the size of a trashcan and accepts any old garbage you have around as fuel. Puts out gigawatts of power.
Yeah, they might eventually fry a few teensy pellets at the NIF, but I mean really - huge impractical lasers perfectly synchronized onto tiny hard-to-make fuel pellets fed at precisely the right rate and positioned in precisely the right place at precisely the right instant to be imploded? Operating perfectly over months and years in industrial powerplant conditions? Maintained on a daily basis by a crew that goes home and watches American Idol and The Simpsons? All securely automated and monitored using the latest Windows OS? Not even in our grandkids lifetime.
What they *should* be concentrating on is designing a room-sized fission powerplant that can power a neighborhood using a replaceable fuel cartridge that a service weenie replaces for you once a year. Minimal moving parts, easy to replace if service is needed, and the entire grid isn't nuked when Rocky the squirrel suicides on a transformer.
C'mon Mr. Kamen, quit screwing around with third-world water filters and build this puppy.
Our company has been developing client-server cross-platform document management systems since 1988. We support native Mac and PC as well as thin clients and can store and index any desktop file as well as handle scanning from either client platform. All of the biggie commercial DBs are supported and we run with Unix, Linux, OS X and Windows servers. Install and train at your site in a week. Can also include sophisticated workflow and text search if needed. Check us out at mindwrap.com
A human spokesperson for the ServiceMonkey union today announced a general strike aimed at eliminating the "barbaric and demeaning mandate that all service monkeys be required to wear diapers while traveling. "Our selfless service monkeys cannot speak, and forcing them to wear diapers effectively silences their primary means of communication. We are here today to assert the right of all our union members to freely employ their perfectly natural inclination to anal and genital-based modes of expression."
Reporters who were granted interviews with selected union members were later observed to flee en masse, following an impromptu demonstration of the effectiveness of service monkey commentary.
Slashdot Mirror
"For the record, I personally think Apple makes decent products, they just aren't for me."
That comes real close to sounding like "they're OK, I just wouldn't let my daughter marry one" :-)
[Jobs comes out on stage, walks to the front, and immediately falls to his knees, hands held clasped in front of him]
SJ[with tears streaming down his face]: Oh Heavenly Pundits, we do beseech thee in this our hour of need. Deliver us from the taint of Bad Publicity that has afflicted us and bring us once more into the light of your divine Good Graces and Four-star Reviews. [bows head in abject shame]
Droid-lovers: Stone Him!
SJ: I humbly beg thy indulgence that I might offer unto thee a most inadequate but heartfelt explanation of The Antenna Curse of Doom.
DLs: You but delay the inevitable, sinner. But we grant thee leave to offer your confession.
SJ: Tis' true, Oh Pundits, that mine device doth exhibit the ACOD, and for this I most humbly apologize to any who have been afflicted.
DLs: All are afflicted when in your vile presence, devil. But continue. We are amused.
SJ: We wouldst offer up the results of our Most Extensive Testing that shows all other devices of like manufacture doth exhibit the same ACOD when fondled in proper fashion.
DLs: Have a care blasphemer, that our patience not run too thin. Dost thou accuse OUR devices of such abominations? [many sidelong glances amidst hefting of stones for proper weight]
SJ: Twas likely an error in the data, your Droidness. Speaking for our abjectly substandard device alone, we most humbly offer a Worthless Placating Solution.
DLs: And what might this worthless solution consist of, worm?
SJ: We propose to wall up the Antenna Curse of Doom behind a Permeable Barrier of Cheap Plastic, oh sage one.
DLs: Well, we would much prefer that you be stoned and simply go away, that we might rule the earth in peace, as the great God Google intended.
SJ: Again, we would beseech thy awesomeness to allow us to distribute our PBCP solution, that we might Dodge The Issue and continue to develop devices that you can cop...er...make fun of.
DLs: Very well. You shall be allowed to Mask The Problem by giving away free crap.
SJ: Oh thank you, thank you!
DLs: Drool not on our cloak, worm. Begone. Next time we bring the rocks.
SJ: [slinks away]
[end conference]
Whenever Apple comes out with a product that becomes a commercial success, commentary breaks down into two main groups:
1. Apple products are crap - the reason they are a success is that there is a rabid fanboy base that eagerly sucks up Apple's substandard stuff.
2. Apple products are revolutionary - the reason they are a success is that Apple has managed to combine usability and features in exactly the right mix to create a product everyone wants.
At this point in the history of technology, it doesn't much matter which viewpoint is correct - Apple's products get enormous play in the market - whether that is the result of fanboy pressure or because the stuff is insanely great. The result is that they sell millions of whatever they release. And because of that, they are in the drivers seat when it comes to defining the shape of things to come, whether it's what an MP3 player should look like and how it should operate, what a real smartphone should look like and how it should operate, or what a real tablet should look like and how it should operate.
Until Apple stumbles and falls on their face with a bad product (the external antenna goof probably won't make that happen), or some other manufacturer manages to create a revolutionary product that catches the public eye, or create a fanbase to rival Apple's, they will continue to define the future of portable consumer computing.
I agree that there were tablets way before Apple's iPad. My point was that I was tired of hearing yet another vaporware announcement of an upcoming tablet that doesn't yet exist. I define "exist" as available for purchase. Seems to me that once Apple managed to create a tablet that was commercially successful, that a bunch of wannabe tablet competitors are coming out of the woodwork with advance announcements that really amount to trial balloons. In my opinion it isn't really news - i.e. deserving of posting on Slashdot - until its reality, not illusion.
The Dell will suddenly die for no reason. That will teach 'em.
This certainly isn't news. Apple comes out with a popular device, so everyone else thinks they have to come out with one, too. Everybody makes future vaporware announcements to see what the reaction might be, but until they are actually on the market and you can buy one, they are just PR fluff.
Forthcoming....in develpment...soon to be released...in beta testing...
Why do we even pay attention to any of this crap? I can make up specs that stack up well against the iPad, but unless the hardware and OS and apps are actually available for purchase from a variety of retailers *right now*, it's all just vaporware and a monumental waste of time.
Time will tell, but I still see the overall trend as less freedom for the user. Back in the wild, woolly S-100 days, there were actually a ton of guys making systems and boards and a number of different OS's for a variety of processors (8080, Z-80, 6800, etc). Then came the PC, which reduced my choice to a single processor vendor but still allowed me to add boards. Today's laptops are typically configured at the factory when ordered, with users adding little to the internals afterwards, and now comes the smart phones and tablets which are locked down, with the exception of a blessed set of apps you can load (or non-blessed but remotely removable for you droid types).
Somewhere I think I've seen studies on new industries where - at the start - you have a bunch of eager beaver startups and lots of new innovation. Venture cap flows like water and there's fun, pioneering jobs for all. Later, a few successful ones emerge and a period of market consolidation occurs where the small guys get eaten. Finally, you end up with a mature industry with a set of known players, into which it is very hard for new guys to break in (think Tesla Motors here against GM, Ford, Toyota, etc).
Of course my original post was meant to be purely philosophical - I believe I am seeing a trend towards highly managed closed computing devices. May not happen, but I certainly see it as a possible scenario for a mature personal computing industry, rather than a continued focus on self-managed and self-configurable devices. I just don't see the bulk of users out there caring about App Store freedoms like we do in here. Sort of like the difference between your average car buyer and the weekend hotrodder that has his engine bored out and a high-end tranny put in. Room for both of course.
They are using white-out to cover up the bad words on screen.
You've got to hide it from the kids, koo-koo-a-choo!
Point taken. On the other hand, if they were to delete ALL the applications, the device would be conceptually error free :-) A total brick, of course, but one that looks real pretty.
Speaking of bricks (and not meaning to be ageist here), do you recall the name of the hard disk drive manufacturer who- back in the early 80's could not meet a large OEM order so one of the boxes they shipped consisted of bricks.
Then there was the vendor bidding on a government modem contract who showed off his device which had lots of blinkenlights on the front and worked fine, but when the observers looked at the back of the device they discovered that the vendor simply took a competitors modem and built a new box around it.
Way off topic, sorry.
My original post was, of course, meant to be a general observation on how applications are restricted on the current crop of devices and what I believe we can look forward to in the future. I could care less how either Google or Apple instigated, authorized, entrapped, enforced, or implemented whatever policies they have in place. My point was that both Apple-originated and Google-originated devices have restrictions on what is allowed to run.
So why don't we just stop this conversation here, since we are obviously talking on different topics.
DId you read the article? Google yanked the apps after they had been installed. Apple restricts things on the front end, Google on the back end.
Obviously they can disapprove an application after it has been installed. Same result, whether you prevent it's installation or yank it later.
I gotta admit, I am laughing my ass off. After a year of listening to Slashdotters slam Apple for it's overly restrictive App store policies (Waaaa - I can't run any piece of crap app I want - waaaaa), it is like a breath of fresh air to see a *real* big brother operation in action. Google can remotely yank apps directly off that "completely open" phone? Priceless.
The days of user-managed consumer computing devices is just about over. The future is stringently managed devices and no unapproved applications. Why? The device manufacturers must ensure a seamless user experience - any hiccup in either hardware or application just helps sink a product in this highly competitive space. And OS manufacturers (not to mention the users) are fed up with security breaches and malware - better just to lock it all down, and eliminate the complaints and problems. The vast majority of users have no desire whatsoever to manage anything on their computers - they just want to buy and play the games or run apps that never crash. Keeping up with the latest viruses is something only totally uncool people do anymore.
The cowboy days are over, folks. The wild, wild west is becoming settled.
Not sure about the "dumbed down" comment. The magazine is designed primarily for the embedded systems hobbyist market, using stuff like PIC and other microcontrollers. Lots of stuff on Basic Stamps, Parallax boards and sensors, and Arduino, etc. Advertisers are mostly dev board makers, short-run PC board service houses, and surplus barns. I've found the articles useful enough to keep my subscription current for over 10 years. Lots of robotics and balloon-sat goodies.
they also manufactured the on-board batteries.
It ain't real - it's just a trial balloon to test the market.
We see all sorts of "iPad competitors" now that the iPad has shown it is possible to make a profit in this format, but unless it is actually for sale, it's just a marketing exercise. I get really tired of reading all these breathless "announcements" of products that never see the light of day...
They are breeding satellites to save on launch costs. Just raise the new satellite babies in orbit. Only the female sats need to stay aloft for 9 months though....
...with more digital data. Because all digital media becomes obsolete, it is impossible to guarantee that hardware will be extant at the point in the future when you wish to read the data. It may even be the case that the media is no longer even recognizable by future generations as something that contains information. How many 10 year olds can identify a potential information source simply by looking at an 8-inch floppy?
No, the *only* way to back up digital information is to make it non-digital - i.e. to make it eye-readable by a human. Think paper or perhaps microfilm. Stone. Clay tablets. These things are even today instantly recognizable as a means of storing information, even when the actual language has fallen into disuse. Once it has been recognized as an important source of information (think hieroglyphics), humans will expend effort to decipher the data. But it must be recognized as an information source first, and no digital medium meets that criteria over the long term.
Digital media does not store information, it simply acts as a slow conveyance mechanism to the next conveyance mechanism (think transfers from bus to train to plane), and if the cycle is interrupted, the data is lost.
One of the alien crew got so excited reading the plaque that he forgot to ground himself before he touched the spacecraft and caused a static short that flipped the bit.
Just kidding. Vger is simply testing us to see if any intelligent life remains on planet earth. Eventually, when he receives no reply, he will assume his rightful place as the godhead to the machine beings.
Ya gotta love the summarizers that - believing we are unable to either read or think for ourselves - attempt to simplify the problem for us dullards:
"It's all about money..."
"It's all about control..."
"It's all about Apple being vindictive..."
"It's all about Adobe wanting to sell Flash..."
Actually, it's all about a bunch of slashdotters wasting time arguing about stuff they have absolutely no control over.
Me? I'm laughing my ass off. Apple has been the marginal market has-been for years, getting bashed for being overpriced with a has-been OS. The MS and Linux fan-boys that wrote Apple off the business marketplace are *shocked* and *appalled* by Apple's success in the consumer arena, dismayed that their favorite player is unable to keep up. Now that Apple is starting to squeeze a few nads, everyone and his brother is up in arms about it being somehow unfair. Apple has always been about a quality user experience and now that this - combined with great design - appears to be an enormous draw to the average consumer, the MS and Linux folks are dumbfounded! Why can't buyers see the advantage in open source? Why won't they select my virus-magnet OS of choice? Please can we go back to 1999? Waaaaaaa!
Welcome to the reality distortion field.
A real fusion powerplant is the size of a trashcan and accepts any old garbage you have around as fuel. Puts out gigawatts of power.
Yeah, they might eventually fry a few teensy pellets at the NIF, but I mean really - huge impractical lasers perfectly synchronized onto tiny hard-to-make fuel pellets fed at precisely the right rate and positioned in precisely the right place at precisely the right instant to be imploded? Operating perfectly over months and years in industrial powerplant conditions? Maintained on a daily basis by a crew that goes home and watches American Idol and The Simpsons? All securely automated and monitored using the latest Windows OS? Not even in our grandkids lifetime.
What they *should* be concentrating on is designing a room-sized fission powerplant that can power a neighborhood using a replaceable fuel cartridge that a service weenie replaces for you once a year. Minimal moving parts, easy to replace if service is needed, and the entire grid isn't nuked when Rocky the squirrel suicides on a transformer.
C'mon Mr. Kamen, quit screwing around with third-world water filters and build this puppy.
Our company has been developing client-server cross-platform document management systems since 1988. We support native Mac and PC as well as thin clients and can store and index any desktop file as well as handle scanning from either client platform. All of the biggie commercial DBs are supported and we run with Unix, Linux, OS X and Windows servers. Install and train at your site in a week. Can also include sophisticated workflow and text search if needed. Check us out at mindwrap.com
A human spokesperson for the ServiceMonkey union today announced a general strike aimed at eliminating the "barbaric and demeaning mandate that all service monkeys be required to wear diapers while traveling. "Our selfless service monkeys cannot speak, and forcing them to wear diapers effectively silences their primary means of communication. We are here today to assert the right of all our union members to freely employ their perfectly natural inclination to anal and genital-based modes of expression."
Reporters who were granted interviews with selected union members were later observed to flee en masse, following an impromptu demonstration of the effectiveness of service monkey commentary.