-- Hulu finds a way to serve H.264 content via HTML5 to mobile devices that support it, just like youtube is doing (in beta form) today?
-- OR --
-- Hulu says "Sorry, since Apple won't let Flash run on the iPad and iPhone, you guys can go fuck yourselves"?
Hulu does not heart Adobe. Youtube does not heart Adobe. The Flash Player was a way for them to accomplish their goal: making money off of serving video interspersed with advertisements. A new technology is poised to do the same thing, and allow them to write to an open standard that should work across multiple platforms. Which do you think they'll choose as a long-term strategy?
You are wrong. It will bring the effective end of Flash as a predominant web standard, for the very simple reason of economics:
As a content provider, you have three choices:
1) Serve your content in accordance with an open standard that will work in any of the "modern" browsers which will only increase their support for HTML5 as time passes.
2) Write 2 versions of your content, once using Flash, and once in an open standard.
3) Stay locked into your proprietary standard and refuse to serve content to any device which won't support it.
Why won't #3 happen? Because the iPhone OS devices represent a huge chunk of the mobile market. What's more, they represent a chunk of the mobile market which has a large amount of disposable income. Who do advertisers want to target, and who do you want coming to your site to support it with adviews & purchases of your product? If Apple is dead-set on NOT supporting Flash, then the proprietary Flash standard becomes increasingly irrelevant.
This leaves businesses with the choice of writing their content once & serving it up in accordance with an open standard, or writing it / encoding it twice. From a dollars-and-cents standpoint, #1 is the most likely for businesses to choose because it doesn't require serving two versions of everything they do - one for HTML5-only viewers, and one for Flash-supporting viewers. This means more staff, more testing, more time - you're spending more money in that scenario, and for what? To help prop up Adobe's Flash business? While I'm sure Adobe would appreciate that, I don't see how that's a compelling business case for anybody who's not Adobe.
There you go again with your silly logic. It's like this:
Flash is bad because it's not an open standard.
Steve Jobs is bad because he makes people buy products they don't want.
When Steve Jobs says he doesn't like Flash, Flash is good because "people want it."
In short: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Personally, I can't wait until slashdotters are forced into championing Microsoft solutions based on this premise. When will we start seeing Silverlight &.NET complaints?
They don't have an app monopoly. As with the post you're responding to, sloppy rhetoric doesn't help your point.
They control the distribution channel by which you can get native applications onto the device, certainly. But they are not restricting people from writing apps for their devices, as the fact that tens of thousands of non-Apple-written applications are available on the App Store will certainly demonstrate.
If you don't like that they control the channel that allows people to get new apps onto their devices, you should state that. Claiming that they have an "app monopoly" on their platform is pretty silly. If you want to write for their platform, spend the $99 for the SDK, and write an app. Your disapproval does not make their development & distribution model a "monopoly".
"handheld app monopoly"? You mean there's no other way to get an application for a handheld device but through apple, and on an apple device? That's amazing. Here I was thinking that there were dozens of sources of handheld apps for the multitude of handheld devices out there.
Sloppy rhetoric doesn't help your point, it only serves to distract. Just sayin'.
"full featured" and "full price" are pretty subjective calls.
What you call "limited features," lots of other people call "does everything I need it to do." Value is in the eye of the beholder - if the iPad isn't a good value proposition for you, then by all means you should not buy it, and should buy a netbook, or laptop, or desktop instead. For a lot of people, it does seem as if there's a pretty good value proposition to it - I'd guess that those people don't have "must have a USB port," as a requirement.
If I need a pickup truck, and I buy a Honda Civic, that's dumb. If I need a Honda Civic, and I buy a pickup truck, that's also pretty dumb. Different products suit different needs, and not all "needs" can be boiled down to a simple checklist of "has" or "doesn't have" items.
The issue, and it's not insignificant, is that you can't do what *you* want with *your* iPhone, no matter what it happens to be.
Fact: *I* can do everything *I* want to do with *my* iPhone.
I think I've just proved your theorem to be false. Perhaps you'd like to restate it in a way that doesn't take the intellectually sloppy route of claiming to speak for everybody who has ever bought, used, or wanted an iPhone?
Of course not, in exact the same way as the lack of something isn't automatically good or user friendly. If you really believe what you said above, then you should also agree with my previous sentence.
Of course I agree with that - I think either extreme is a ridiculous farce. With that in mind, however, Apple *has* demonstrated time and again that the "lack" of something initially (cf. Native iPhone SDK, copy & paste, and now multitasking) is usually because they are spending time "getting it right," for some value of "right" that they decide upon in the context of their design goals.
And for many of these things that they've added post-release, I'd submit that they do a surprisingly good job of making them user-friendly implementations - witness the positive responses to copy & paste, and ask an iPhone developer about the usability and usefulness of the APIs - I've heard nothing but positive feedback about how relatively simple coding to the APIs is.
Personally, I'd rather wait a little longer for a feature to be done right than have a device that was rushed to market with all the features Slashdot thinks it should have. That said, if I absolutely needed tethering for my laptop, I wouldn't own an iPhone. I sincerely hope that people criticizing these "must have" features have not done themselves the disservice of buying an iPhone which doesn't have the features they claim they need.
Tethering and wifi scanning are instantly dismissed as "geeky" even though tethering is a widely wanted function that can be invisible until you try to use it, and scanning is an entirely normal thing to do when using wifi and pretty much comes with the technology.
And you can do both of those with the iPhone today. You cannot tether on the AT&T network because AT&T has disallowed it, but the device (and OS) itself supports both. Incidentally, from the day it was released with a WiFi model, it supported wifi scanning, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that. And for the record, tethering *is* a fairly geeky use case. It's incredibly convenient, but it's more of a power-user function than it is a "common use" item.
As for your porn requirement, mobile.spankwire.com works great on my iPhone. Maybe you should check it out, plenty of free streaming porn, over 3G or WiFi. Perfect for that early morning wank when you just don't feel like walking over to the computer.
No deal. This is the Internet. I accept that you may say whatever you wish. Accept that I may reply as I wish, and you'll be happier.
The question was intended in the sense that I was asking if we can agree that there is no "one right tool" for all jobs and purposes, and that what is appropriate for your needs may not be universally appropriate for everyone else's needs.
But yeah, I can see how trading adversarial "this is the internet, fuck you's" would be a much better solution. It increases understanding on both sides of the issue, and really fosters civil discussion.
And why some people would drive at 60 miles an hour when it's physically possible to do 120 is beyond me sometimes - and why the state would set such an arbitrary maximum is beyond me! Why some people would buy a Jeep and then only drive it on a road is beyond me sometimes. Why some people would buy a camera that can take pictures underwater and then not go scuba diving with it is beyond me sometimes. Why some people would buy a high-end contractor's drill to hang a single picture is beyond me sometimes.
Sometimes - and this is true for most people - it's not about what the "theoretical maximum" is. Apple gets this, and they are choosing to trade maximum user flexibility for simplicity. For some users this will not be sufficient - and they absolutely should not buy apple products, and instead buy the products that do offer the features they need. For other users, it's exactly what they want: simple, don't care what it "can do," only care that it does what it "does do" well, and with minimum fuss.
For everybody who professes to not get it, you need to understand that YOUR requirements and desires are not universal. If you're reading slashdot, it's entirely likely that YOUR requirements and desires are at best a niche market which doesn't reflect much of the requirements and desires of the general public.
Except if the majority of users, who do not care at all if their phone runs "open source" software or not, will then buy and iPhone or similar.
Slippery slope is slippery! Why would the N900 die, if there is a small but vocal segment of the market which loves it so? And as long as the free market exists, Apple will never be able to exterminate all of its competitors. Just as Microsoft never did, despite its best efforts. There will always be alternatives, and you could even build one of your own in a free market system.
So Apple does something you don't approve of (selling locked-down devices), and since they don't appear to give two hot squirts of piss about the opinion of "That Guy from Slashdot," they continue on locking down their devices. You fear that in the future, your freedoms will be taken away if people aren't somehow brought into the light about open software today. What solution do you propose then? Should we restrict users' choices in an effort to force them to be free? Should there be a law preventing Apple from selling any device that isn't completely open, free and hackable, and forcing them to include every scrap of source code they've written?
Or would it be a better idea to vote with your dollars and support companies whose business model you find more amenable to your open source ideology, and continuing to evangelize about the benefits of open source for everybody?
Because I'm sorry, 90% of the arguments about Apple come across this way: "Apple should be forced to embrace freedom." And I find a rich irony in the fact that people who profess to love and desire freedom don't also see that that includes the freedom to make *bad* choices, as defined by your value system. Apple should be free to sell devices in any way it sees fit; if those devices offend the freedom-loving sensibilities of too many people, they will not sell, and Apple will have learned a valuable lesson about the value of openness to its potential customers.
Yes, I know. Every lack of anything in an Apple product is an user friendly feature.
So by this logic, throwing every piece of functionality everyone might want into an Apple product is, and then releasing a steaming pile of turd where nothing quite works right is more user friendly?
Apple has said, time and again, that they prefer to focus on getting a core set of features "right", and then expanding that set of features. This is exactly what their track record has shown with the iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, and Mac OS. Perhaps the expansion happens at a slower pace than you'd prefer, and I guess that's unfortunate for you. But for those of us who don't want to spend our time dicking around with someone else's application, I'd much prefer having a more-limited set of features that works reliably.
You like your N900. That's fabulous for you. I personally hate physical keyboards with little buttons that my thumbs always end up pressing several of - I have big hands. I've also had several terrible experiences with Nokia phones from Sprint in the past that simply refused to function properly - enough so that I steer clear of Nokia based on that experience. By contrast, my iPhone does what I want it to (makes phone calls, plays music, allows me to check and send some emails, and browse the web) and does it well, and I have very little need for the openness and advanced functionality of the N900. So I happen to like the iPhone. Different strokes for different folks, right?
Let's make a deal: I won't tell you that you don't need anything but a hammer to do home improvements if you'll agree to not tell me all I need is a ratchet set and screwdriver. Sound good?
Also available on the iPhone. Just point your browser to spankwire.com!
or tethering,
Also available on the iPhone, it's AT&T that's dragging their feet on this, other carriers have supported tethering with the iPhone for some time.
or scanning for wifi networks
Also quite possible on the iPhone. Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Choose a Network - if a network is found, it will display the name right there for you.
that list keeps shrinking.
So by adding hundreds of new API calls, and several new - and pretty major - features, Apple is *shrinking* the list of what is possible on the iPhone? More really is less, we finally have proof!
It's all marketing, friend. They simply use your platform of choice, which - surprise surprise - you approve of. If they thought it would sell more devices, they'd lock stuff down as far as they could in a new york second. But, since they get a mobile OS that's free, they can increase their margins and attract some customers who disapprove of a more locked down approach.
Or did you really think that Nokia chooses Linux because it wants to be your chum?
And if being able to install any application you choose from any source you choose is important to you, you will not buy an Apple iPhone.
I don't see Apple claiming that they allow you to put "whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, however you want," on the phone. They are very clear that the way to get apps is through the app store. So anybody who buys an iPhone and then complains about how its locked down nature prevents them from installing whatever they want is, to put it bluntly, retarded.
By all means, state your objections to Apples' closed approach. By all means, refuse to spend your money on their products as a result. By all means, support (or START) a company which uses different approaches. But let's dispense with the fiction that people are being misled into thinking they have complete freedom to do whatever they want with their iPhone. We all get it. And lots of people are buying it still. The people who *care* about complete freedom are not buying iPhones. The rest of the people are simply looking for a solution that isn't half-baked and buggy.
The success of Firefox shows that it's not just "tinkerers" and geeks who want the choice to try a different browser, but ordinary people too. And these people are buying phones that allow them to do that. They don't want to be told "Sorry, you can't install our application, because Apple doesn't allow you to".
No, the success of Firefox shows that Mozilla offered a browser that had substantially better features than the steaming pile of shit that is/was IE6. "Ordinary people" use Firefox because it's free and it works well (most of the time). Tinkerers and geeks care about "the freedom to try other browsers." My parents and many of my friends began using Firefox because I browbeat them into it because I was getting sick of answering "How come my computer is so sluggish?" questions. They continue using Firefox because it's a functional solution which does what it's intended to.
No, Steve Jobs said that the average iPhone user uses their phone for 30 minutes a day, and if they showed one ad every 3 minutes, each user would see 10 ads during that time. Multiply that by the number of iPhones out there, and you have 1 billion impressions per day.
He didn't say "We're gonna force them to using special clamps and eye glue." If you don't install & use ad-supported software, you won't get ads. Ads are implemented in each application, not at the iPhone OS level.
If you're going to choose between two apps for the same task, many people will choose the free-as-in-beer app supported by ads instead of shelling out $5-$20 for the non-ad-supported app.
Like Google's Gmail is hugely popular, and ad-supported. The same Google that supports Android. The same Google who gets most of its revenues from advertising online.
The objection is that the moment you see a single ad you did not wish to see, you have lost control over the device. That's completely unacceptable when you are already paying. That's why personal preferences towards advertising are completely irrelevant.
If you do not wish to see ads, do not install applications which are supported by ads.
For something like broadcast TV or broadcast radio, that's acceptable, since it costs money to produce those things and you are viewing ads instead of paying a bill. You are obtaining something of value to offset the cost of watching ads. That makes it a fair exchange. However, when you are paying for a phone, phone service, and the application, and still see ads, this is no longer justifiable. It's a form of double-dipping. Thus, it's an adversarial way of relating to your customers because it amounts to taking advantage of them.
This position is predicated on the assumption that what you pay for your phone service, phone, and the applications represents the "actual value" of what you are receiving. A simple look at the cost of an "unlocked" versus a "contract-subsidized" phone or other mobile device will show you that this is not, generally, the case. Another great example is newspapers and magazines: both full of ads, and both cost a few bucks still. Why? Because publication and creating the content costs more money than your $2-5 purchase fee would cover. So the company sells ad space in their publication, which helps lower the cost to the consumer. I expect this is the same model you'll see with the app store: free / ad-supported, expensive / no-ad, and "couple bucks" / "some ads" versions. I don't see any problem with this model, and I suspect many other people will not see a problem with it either. If somebody writes an application, wants to charge $30 for it, and then also wants to embed ads, I expect most people will balk at that, and the application will suffer as a result.
Please read this quote from the summary and tell me whether you believe Apple is going to restrict these ad functions to free apps only (emphasis mine):
Well, if CWmike says they're going to abuse their customers, then by golly, I guess it's a lock. I don't think Apple should have any restrictions or requirements for using the ad functions, personally. As someone who is working on a couple probably-very-small iPad / iPhone apps with a friend, I would absolutely consider whether the ads might be a helpful revenue stream to help us lower the cost of our app to people who might be interested, or at least cover the costs of the SDK & iPad we bought to test with. I hope Apple leaves that option available to us, and I think they probably will. You seem to think that Apple leaving the option on the table means that somehow, people will have *less* choice, and frankly I just don't see how having another option available equates to more limitation.
Man, you must really hate walking around in the real world, then!
Re:But Apple is known for screwing up from time to
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iPad Progress Report
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· Score: 1
Hype is not always a useful indicator of "overvalued". Google was roundly panned as 'not worth the hype,' when it's initial offering @ $85/share happened. And it's now worth nearly $570 a share.
Considering Apple has few (if any) debts, billions of dollars in cash (as I read it on Yahoo Finance, about 28 billion), a multitude of physical assets (land, office buildings, etc), is one of the (perhaps THE now) largest music retailers in the US, and a physical product line that is the envy of the tech world... I'd say that $210 billion isn't that hard to swallow as a "corporate net worth."
The original post I responded to cited Massachusetts laws (where I also live) which prevent utilities from turning off service for nonpayment under certain conditions - e.g., the gas company can't shut you off in the middle of winter. The whole point of these laws are because *people can, have, and will die* when they have no heat and it's below freezing outside.
You *can* heat your house many ways. You *can* get your water many ways. Most of these are not readily implemented workarounds for somebody who has gas heat & no fireplace, or their own well with an electric pump, who's staring at a thermometer that reads "Real fucking cold outside," and could very well die before an alternative is in place if their service is turned off. This is not to say that the companies are obligated to provide you with service forever, gratis. They can and will shut you off still, but there's a longer legal process they have to go through, and if the conditions are such that you actually could die from hypothermia or dehydration, the law says that the companies have to give you a stay of execution, as it were.
In the time that the law gives you as a reprieve, you can find an alternative - get a wood stove to replace your electric heat, get a generator to power your well, or switch from coal to oil for heat, or move someplace warmer where there's plenty of fresh water in the lake out back. You'll still owe for the service you received, and the company will still try to collect.
In the sense that these laws are written (and intended), defining "access to the internet" as a necessity is foolish. Nobody is going to die if they can't get on the internet for a few days, and defining access as a fundamental right demands an answer to the question of how we're going to go about hooking up the millions of people without broadband access. After all, if it's a civil rights issue, everybody has the right to access, right?
If you want to promote the goal of universal (neutral) internet access using a model similar to the Rural Electrification Act, I'd gladly concede that:
1) Getting everybody connected would be a powerful and wonderful thing;
2) The internet is much more like electricity or telephone service, in that it's not (in and of itself) a fundamental need for survival. It's an amazing convenience, and promotes economic growth, learning & literacy, and a host of other "goods".
But the original post I replied to used the "you can't shut it off" clauses of laws which apply to utilities under fairly narrow life-or-death situations. Using this model, and trying to treat internet access in the same way is foolish, because it will only make people arguing for neutrality provisions look like a bunch of porn-addicted loons.
A better question would be "what percentage of your activities MUST be performed online," and the answer to that is zero.
I pay bills online. I bank online. I send emails online. And for every single one of the systems I use online, there were (and are) systems in place for people to use if they don't have an internet connection. The internet is a convenience - it is not a critical need for basic survival.
Could I find a job without an internet connection? Certainly. Recruiters are more than happy to take my resume and shop it around. Could I pay my bills without an internet connection? Certainly. Service providers are more than happy to accept a check in the mail, perform a debit over the phone, direct-debit my account, or even accept cash at some walk-in offices for some providers. Could I bank without an internet connection? Certainly. My bank has walk-in branches where I could accomplish all my banking needs. Does the internet make all these things easier? Certainly. Will I die if I'm inconvenienced? No.
Enough with the wild hyperbole. As I've already acknowledged, there are compelling reasons for the FCC to prevent ISPs from filtering and shaping and restricting internet traffic. None of these require defining "internet access" as a utility which is necessary for biological survival, and attempting to define it as such makes you look like a bunch of fringe lunatics who are really just pissed that Comcast is stopping you from stealing movies and music online.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
Many game controllers weigh between 9 and 16 ounces. (PSP & DS both weight about 9.5 ounces; XBox wireless controller weighs just about a pound. Wii controller weighs about 10 ounces. PS3 controller weighs about 10 ounces.
By comparison, the iPad weighs a slight bit more - 18 ounces. Are you really saying that you couldn't hold 2 Wii controllers (~9.5 ounces apiece) for extended periods? Wii controllers require lots of gyration and movement to work, and I know lots of people who absolutely love their Wii and have a ton of fun playing "for extended periods."
It's almost as if you're so dedicated to disliking the iPad that you're overlooking the simple fact that you hold and manipulate things constantly that weigh just as much (if not more) than an iPad, and you've immediately assumed that the only way this will be used is by people standing up, arms fully extended parallel to the ground, in the most uncomfortable pose possible.
Slashdot Mirror
The same Hulu whose video - since 2008 - has been encoded in H.264? What's more likely:
-- Hulu finds a way to serve H.264 content via HTML5 to mobile devices that support it, just like youtube is doing (in beta form) today?
-- OR --
-- Hulu says "Sorry, since Apple won't let Flash run on the iPad and iPhone, you guys can go fuck yourselves"?
Hulu does not heart Adobe. Youtube does not heart Adobe. The Flash Player was a way for them to accomplish their goal: making money off of serving video interspersed with advertisements. A new technology is poised to do the same thing, and allow them to write to an open standard that should work across multiple platforms. Which do you think they'll choose as a long-term strategy?
You are wrong. It will bring the effective end of Flash as a predominant web standard, for the very simple reason of economics:
As a content provider, you have three choices:
1) Serve your content in accordance with an open standard that will work in any of the "modern" browsers which will only increase their support for HTML5 as time passes.
2) Write 2 versions of your content, once using Flash, and once in an open standard.
3) Stay locked into your proprietary standard and refuse to serve content to any device which won't support it.
Why won't #3 happen? Because the iPhone OS devices represent a huge chunk of the mobile market. What's more, they represent a chunk of the mobile market which has a large amount of disposable income. Who do advertisers want to target, and who do you want coming to your site to support it with adviews & purchases of your product? If Apple is dead-set on NOT supporting Flash, then the proprietary Flash standard becomes increasingly irrelevant.
This leaves businesses with the choice of writing their content once & serving it up in accordance with an open standard, or writing it / encoding it twice. From a dollars-and-cents standpoint, #1 is the most likely for businesses to choose because it doesn't require serving two versions of everything they do - one for HTML5-only viewers, and one for Flash-supporting viewers. This means more staff, more testing, more time - you're spending more money in that scenario, and for what? To help prop up Adobe's Flash business? While I'm sure Adobe would appreciate that, I don't see how that's a compelling business case for anybody who's not Adobe.
Personally, I can't wait until slashdotters are forced into championing Microsoft solutions based on this premise. When will we start seeing Silverlight & .NET complaints?
They don't have an app monopoly. As with the post you're responding to, sloppy rhetoric doesn't help your point.
They control the distribution channel by which you can get native applications onto the device, certainly. But they are not restricting people from writing apps for their devices, as the fact that tens of thousands of non-Apple-written applications are available on the App Store will certainly demonstrate.
If you don't like that they control the channel that allows people to get new apps onto their devices, you should state that. Claiming that they have an "app monopoly" on their platform is pretty silly. If you want to write for their platform, spend the $99 for the SDK, and write an app. Your disapproval does not make their development & distribution model a "monopoly".
"handheld app monopoly"? You mean there's no other way to get an application for a handheld device but through apple, and on an apple device? That's amazing. Here I was thinking that there were dozens of sources of handheld apps for the multitude of handheld devices out there.
Sloppy rhetoric doesn't help your point, it only serves to distract. Just sayin'.
"full featured" and "full price" are pretty subjective calls.
What you call "limited features," lots of other people call "does everything I need it to do." Value is in the eye of the beholder - if the iPad isn't a good value proposition for you, then by all means you should not buy it, and should buy a netbook, or laptop, or desktop instead. For a lot of people, it does seem as if there's a pretty good value proposition to it - I'd guess that those people don't have "must have a USB port," as a requirement.
If I need a pickup truck, and I buy a Honda Civic, that's dumb. If I need a Honda Civic, and I buy a pickup truck, that's also pretty dumb. Different products suit different needs, and not all "needs" can be boiled down to a simple checklist of "has" or "doesn't have" items.
Fact: *I* can do everything *I* want to do with *my* iPhone.
I think I've just proved your theorem to be false. Perhaps you'd like to restate it in a way that doesn't take the intellectually sloppy route of claiming to speak for everybody who has ever bought, used, or wanted an iPhone?
Of course I agree with that - I think either extreme is a ridiculous farce. With that in mind, however, Apple *has* demonstrated time and again that the "lack" of something initially (cf. Native iPhone SDK, copy & paste, and now multitasking) is usually because they are spending time "getting it right," for some value of "right" that they decide upon in the context of their design goals.
And for many of these things that they've added post-release, I'd submit that they do a surprisingly good job of making them user-friendly implementations - witness the positive responses to copy & paste, and ask an iPhone developer about the usability and usefulness of the APIs - I've heard nothing but positive feedback about how relatively simple coding to the APIs is.
Personally, I'd rather wait a little longer for a feature to be done right than have a device that was rushed to market with all the features Slashdot thinks it should have. That said, if I absolutely needed tethering for my laptop, I wouldn't own an iPhone. I sincerely hope that people criticizing these "must have" features have not done themselves the disservice of buying an iPhone which doesn't have the features they claim they need.
And you can do both of those with the iPhone today. You cannot tether on the AT&T network because AT&T has disallowed it, but the device (and OS) itself supports both. Incidentally, from the day it was released with a WiFi model, it supported wifi scanning, so I'm not sure what you're on about with that. And for the record, tethering *is* a fairly geeky use case. It's incredibly convenient, but it's more of a power-user function than it is a "common use" item.
As for your porn requirement, mobile.spankwire.com works great on my iPhone. Maybe you should check it out, plenty of free streaming porn, over 3G or WiFi. Perfect for that early morning wank when you just don't feel like walking over to the computer.
The question was intended in the sense that I was asking if we can agree that there is no "one right tool" for all jobs and purposes, and that what is appropriate for your needs may not be universally appropriate for everyone else's needs.
But yeah, I can see how trading adversarial "this is the internet, fuck you's" would be a much better solution. It increases understanding on both sides of the issue, and really fosters civil discussion.
And why some people would drive at 60 miles an hour when it's physically possible to do 120 is beyond me sometimes - and why the state would set such an arbitrary maximum is beyond me! Why some people would buy a Jeep and then only drive it on a road is beyond me sometimes. Why some people would buy a camera that can take pictures underwater and then not go scuba diving with it is beyond me sometimes. Why some people would buy a high-end contractor's drill to hang a single picture is beyond me sometimes.
Sometimes - and this is true for most people - it's not about what the "theoretical maximum" is. Apple gets this, and they are choosing to trade maximum user flexibility for simplicity. For some users this will not be sufficient - and they absolutely should not buy apple products, and instead buy the products that do offer the features they need. For other users, it's exactly what they want: simple, don't care what it "can do," only care that it does what it "does do" well, and with minimum fuss.
For everybody who professes to not get it, you need to understand that YOUR requirements and desires are not universal. If you're reading slashdot, it's entirely likely that YOUR requirements and desires are at best a niche market which doesn't reflect much of the requirements and desires of the general public.
Slippery slope is slippery! Why would the N900 die, if there is a small but vocal segment of the market which loves it so? And as long as the free market exists, Apple will never be able to exterminate all of its competitors. Just as Microsoft never did, despite its best efforts. There will always be alternatives, and you could even build one of your own in a free market system.
So Apple does something you don't approve of (selling locked-down devices), and since they don't appear to give two hot squirts of piss about the opinion of "That Guy from Slashdot," they continue on locking down their devices. You fear that in the future, your freedoms will be taken away if people aren't somehow brought into the light about open software today. What solution do you propose then? Should we restrict users' choices in an effort to force them to be free? Should there be a law preventing Apple from selling any device that isn't completely open, free and hackable, and forcing them to include every scrap of source code they've written?
Or would it be a better idea to vote with your dollars and support companies whose business model you find more amenable to your open source ideology, and continuing to evangelize about the benefits of open source for everybody?
Because I'm sorry, 90% of the arguments about Apple come across this way: "Apple should be forced to embrace freedom." And I find a rich irony in the fact that people who profess to love and desire freedom don't also see that that includes the freedom to make *bad* choices, as defined by your value system. Apple should be free to sell devices in any way it sees fit; if those devices offend the freedom-loving sensibilities of too many people, they will not sell, and Apple will have learned a valuable lesson about the value of openness to its potential customers.
So by this logic, throwing every piece of functionality everyone might want into an Apple product is, and then releasing a steaming pile of turd where nothing quite works right is more user friendly?
Apple has said, time and again, that they prefer to focus on getting a core set of features "right", and then expanding that set of features. This is exactly what their track record has shown with the iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, and Mac OS. Perhaps the expansion happens at a slower pace than you'd prefer, and I guess that's unfortunate for you. But for those of us who don't want to spend our time dicking around with someone else's application, I'd much prefer having a more-limited set of features that works reliably.
You like your N900. That's fabulous for you. I personally hate physical keyboards with little buttons that my thumbs always end up pressing several of - I have big hands. I've also had several terrible experiences with Nokia phones from Sprint in the past that simply refused to function properly - enough so that I steer clear of Nokia based on that experience. By contrast, my iPhone does what I want it to (makes phone calls, plays music, allows me to check and send some emails, and browse the web) and does it well, and I have very little need for the openness and advanced functionality of the N900. So I happen to like the iPhone. Different strokes for different folks, right?
Let's make a deal: I won't tell you that you don't need anything but a hammer to do home improvements if you'll agree to not tell me all I need is a ratchet set and screwdriver. Sound good?
Also available on the iPhone. Just point your browser to spankwire.com!
Also available on the iPhone, it's AT&T that's dragging their feet on this, other carriers have supported tethering with the iPhone for some time.
Also quite possible on the iPhone. Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Choose a Network - if a network is found, it will display the name right there for you.
So by adding hundreds of new API calls, and several new - and pretty major - features, Apple is *shrinking* the list of what is possible on the iPhone? More really is less, we finally have proof!
I think you mean:
It's all marketing, friend. They simply use your platform of choice, which - surprise surprise - you approve of. If they thought it would sell more devices, they'd lock stuff down as far as they could in a new york second. But, since they get a mobile OS that's free, they can increase their margins and attract some customers who disapprove of a more locked down approach.
Or did you really think that Nokia chooses Linux because it wants to be your chum?
And I think it's fantastic that your phone does all that for you, and that you chose a phone based on those requirements.
You are aware, however that your usage model is quite a bit more advanced than most "normal" users would ever approach, right?
I don't see Apple claiming that they allow you to put "whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, however you want," on the phone. They are very clear that the way to get apps is through the app store. So anybody who buys an iPhone and then complains about how its locked down nature prevents them from installing whatever they want is, to put it bluntly, retarded.
By all means, state your objections to Apples' closed approach. By all means, refuse to spend your money on their products as a result. By all means, support (or START) a company which uses different approaches. But let's dispense with the fiction that people are being misled into thinking they have complete freedom to do whatever they want with their iPhone. We all get it. And lots of people are buying it still. The people who *care* about complete freedom are not buying iPhones. The rest of the people are simply looking for a solution that isn't half-baked and buggy.
No, the success of Firefox shows that Mozilla offered a browser that had substantially better features than the steaming pile of shit that is/was IE6. "Ordinary people" use Firefox because it's free and it works well (most of the time). Tinkerers and geeks care about "the freedom to try other browsers." My parents and many of my friends began using Firefox because I browbeat them into it because I was getting sick of answering "How come my computer is so sluggish?" questions. They continue using Firefox because it's a functional solution which does what it's intended to.
Yeah... if only Google understood advertising, their company name would practically become a verb.
No, Steve Jobs said that the average iPhone user uses their phone for 30 minutes a day, and if they showed one ad every 3 minutes, each user would see 10 ads during that time. Multiply that by the number of iPhones out there, and you have 1 billion impressions per day.
He didn't say "We're gonna force them to using special clamps and eye glue." If you don't install & use ad-supported software, you won't get ads. Ads are implemented in each application, not at the iPhone OS level.
Like Google's Gmail is hugely popular, and ad-supported. The same Google that supports Android. The same Google who gets most of its revenues from advertising online.
If you do not wish to see ads, do not install applications which are supported by ads.
This position is predicated on the assumption that what you pay for your phone service, phone, and the applications represents the "actual value" of what you are receiving. A simple look at the cost of an "unlocked" versus a "contract-subsidized" phone or other mobile device will show you that this is not, generally, the case. Another great example is newspapers and magazines: both full of ads, and both cost a few bucks still. Why? Because publication and creating the content costs more money than your $2-5 purchase fee would cover. So the company sells ad space in their publication, which helps lower the cost to the consumer. I expect this is the same model you'll see with the app store: free / ad-supported, expensive / no-ad, and "couple bucks" / "some ads" versions. I don't see any problem with this model, and I suspect many other people will not see a problem with it either. If somebody writes an application, wants to charge $30 for it, and then also wants to embed ads, I expect most people will balk at that, and the application will suffer as a result.
Well, if CWmike says they're going to abuse their customers, then by golly, I guess it's a lock. I don't think Apple should have any restrictions or requirements for using the ad functions, personally. As someone who is working on a couple probably-very-small iPad / iPhone apps with a friend, I would absolutely consider whether the ads might be a helpful revenue stream to help us lower the cost of our app to people who might be interested, or at least cover the costs of the SDK & iPad we bought to test with. I hope Apple leaves that option available to us, and I think they probably will. You seem to think that Apple leaving the option on the table means that somehow, people will have *less* choice, and frankly I just don't see how having another option available equates to more limitation.
It's okay, nobody really wanted to spend time with you either.
Man, you must really hate walking around in the real world, then!
Hype is not always a useful indicator of "overvalued". Google was roundly panned as 'not worth the hype,' when it's initial offering @ $85/share happened. And it's now worth nearly $570 a share.
Considering Apple has few (if any) debts, billions of dollars in cash (as I read it on Yahoo Finance, about 28 billion), a multitude of physical assets (land, office buildings, etc), is one of the (perhaps THE now) largest music retailers in the US, and a physical product line that is the envy of the tech world... I'd say that $210 billion isn't that hard to swallow as a "corporate net worth."
The original post I responded to cited Massachusetts laws (where I also live) which prevent utilities from turning off service for nonpayment under certain conditions - e.g., the gas company can't shut you off in the middle of winter. The whole point of these laws are because *people can, have, and will die* when they have no heat and it's below freezing outside.
You *can* heat your house many ways. You *can* get your water many ways. Most of these are not readily implemented workarounds for somebody who has gas heat & no fireplace, or their own well with an electric pump, who's staring at a thermometer that reads "Real fucking cold outside," and could very well die before an alternative is in place if their service is turned off. This is not to say that the companies are obligated to provide you with service forever, gratis. They can and will shut you off still, but there's a longer legal process they have to go through, and if the conditions are such that you actually could die from hypothermia or dehydration, the law says that the companies have to give you a stay of execution, as it were.
In the time that the law gives you as a reprieve, you can find an alternative - get a wood stove to replace your electric heat, get a generator to power your well, or switch from coal to oil for heat, or move someplace warmer where there's plenty of fresh water in the lake out back. You'll still owe for the service you received, and the company will still try to collect.
In the sense that these laws are written (and intended), defining "access to the internet" as a necessity is foolish. Nobody is going to die if they can't get on the internet for a few days, and defining access as a fundamental right demands an answer to the question of how we're going to go about hooking up the millions of people without broadband access. After all, if it's a civil rights issue, everybody has the right to access, right?
If you want to promote the goal of universal (neutral) internet access using a model similar to the Rural Electrification Act, I'd gladly concede that:
1) Getting everybody connected would be a powerful and wonderful thing;
2) The internet is much more like electricity or telephone service, in that it's not (in and of itself) a fundamental need for survival. It's an amazing convenience, and promotes economic growth, learning & literacy, and a host of other "goods".
But the original post I replied to used the "you can't shut it off" clauses of laws which apply to utilities under fairly narrow life-or-death situations. Using this model, and trying to treat internet access in the same way is foolish, because it will only make people arguing for neutrality provisions look like a bunch of porn-addicted loons.
A better question would be "what percentage of your activities MUST be performed online," and the answer to that is zero.
I pay bills online. I bank online. I send emails online. And for every single one of the systems I use online, there were (and are) systems in place for people to use if they don't have an internet connection. The internet is a convenience - it is not a critical need for basic survival.
Could I find a job without an internet connection? Certainly. Recruiters are more than happy to take my resume and shop it around. Could I pay my bills without an internet connection? Certainly. Service providers are more than happy to accept a check in the mail, perform a debit over the phone, direct-debit my account, or even accept cash at some walk-in offices for some providers. Could I bank without an internet connection? Certainly. My bank has walk-in branches where I could accomplish all my banking needs. Does the internet make all these things easier? Certainly. Will I die if I'm inconvenienced? No.
Enough with the wild hyperbole. As I've already acknowledged, there are compelling reasons for the FCC to prevent ISPs from filtering and shaping and restricting internet traffic. None of these require defining "internet access" as a utility which is necessary for biological survival, and attempting to define it as such makes you look like a bunch of fringe lunatics who are really just pissed that Comcast is stopping you from stealing movies and music online.
Many game controllers weigh between 9 and 16 ounces. (PSP & DS both weight about 9.5 ounces; XBox wireless controller weighs just about a pound. Wii controller weighs about 10 ounces. PS3 controller weighs about 10 ounces.
By comparison, the iPad weighs a slight bit more - 18 ounces. Are you really saying that you couldn't hold 2 Wii controllers (~9.5 ounces apiece) for extended periods? Wii controllers require lots of gyration and movement to work, and I know lots of people who absolutely love their Wii and have a ton of fun playing "for extended periods."
It's almost as if you're so dedicated to disliking the iPad that you're overlooking the simple fact that you hold and manipulate things constantly that weigh just as much (if not more) than an iPad, and you've immediately assumed that the only way this will be used is by people standing up, arms fully extended parallel to the ground, in the most uncomfortable pose possible.