1. Police have generally been favorable to or at least tolerant of Tea Party protests. They have been hostile and violent towards Occupy Wall St.
I live in Portland, where one of the largest ongoing Occupy events is occurring. The police have been extraordinarily supportive. There have been very few "violent" incidents, no mass arrests, and the police have been facilitating various marches and camps that have been started.
Except that isn't what's happening. You don't have to buy Apple products. No one's forcing anything on you. If you don't like the Apple way, buy Android. Buy Palm. Buy Windows Phone 7. There are plenty of options. Some of them aren't even all that bad.;)
Not at all, but RIM's sort of in its own little bubble catering to the enterprise crowd. Neither Apple nor Google is eating their market share because neither one cares all that much about that sector of the market. More people need good personal phones than awesome email phones. Plus, BlackBerry apps are a joke.
I view no Flash as a plus, but I hear you. Fragmentation may be a blown-out problem, but it isn't nearly as bad on iPhone as it is on Android. The 1.6 SDK is trash, and the apps bear that out.
That may be the case, but I don't think that's sustainable for Apple. At some point they saturate the market, just like they did for iPod. They need to keep expanding, and at some point the only way to do that is to allow other carriers in on the action.
Bullshit. How do you think the PC took off in the first place? Who were the first people to buy PCs? Developers. Developers had to build software that consumers would want, thereby making consumers buy the hardware that ran that software. Here, Apple made a device that consumers wanted -- the original iPhone never ran native software. It didn't matter. They sold a boatload, and cemented their status. It wasn't until after they were firmly established that iPhone OS 2.0 was released, bringing with it an SDK for developers.
And in that respect, you're probably right. Apple could easily give us the option to turn on full multitasking and out-of-band app installs. Consumers at large don't seem to care, and until they do, we won't see it. This is - again - the beauty of Apple's positioning. If any of this ever starts to matter to the mass market, they can turn these things on. I'm not saying Apple's decision is the right one; I'm saying they're positioned to win because average consumers don't seem to mind.
The difference is the open platform was better than what Apple had to offer. The PC won because it was technically superior. That isn't the case re: iOS vs Android. Restrictions or no, Android as a platform has quite a ways to go to catch up to iOS. If you need proof, look at the HTC EVO 4G. Beautiful phone, well-designed, powerful CPU, lots of RAM, lots of features, and a huge battery => can't make it a day of even light usage. Someone's doing something wrong, here. Add in market fragmentation, and the problems multiply. Adobe just shipped Flash Player 10.1 for mobile, which requires an OS that most Android users currently don't have, and who won't for a while. That "open" platform isn't doing much for actual customers.
Yes, and how does iPhone do relative to Android in countries where it's available as well? How many different Android devices have to be sold to make up those comparable numbers? Sure there are lots of Android devices, but the amount of money companies like Motorola, HTC, et al are making is a pittance compared to what Apple is making with its strategy.
You can make statistics say whatever you want. 90% of the apps in the app store are trash, and I can say that as a happy iPhone owner. The guys who are putting major time into creating good apps are actually making money. How many fscking flashlight apps do the numbers from that article include? How many fart apps? Just saying.
You (and most of the rest of the/. community) represent a tiny, tiny sliver of the consumer market. They've sold nearly 100M iOS devices. Apple haters love to say it's all marketing, but marketing only sells a shitty product the first time. People learn after that. If people keep coming back to buy, they're getting what they want. What you really mean to say is that Apple isn't giving you what you want; not the average consumer in general.
AT&T may be a crappy carrier, but you're missing the point. iPhone customers come back year after year. The phone is so good (to the average consumer) that it's worth dealing with the carrier. And that's my point. When Apple makes iPhone available on other carriers, it's going to be eating directly from Android's pie. Put yourself in the average consumer's shoes. How many average users buy Android because it's the only smartphone option? Average consumers never bought WinMo en masse. Pre is dead in the water for the time being. Many - I'd wager even most - of these people will switch to an iPhone if given the opportunity. This isn't fanboy talk. It's pragmatic economics.
I own an iPhone, but I'd vastly prefer the open system we all know is never going to happen. Guess people around here just assume that posting anything contrary to dogma must be intended to piss people off.
It's the only modern alternative available outside AT&T. If you don't have AT&T and you want a smartphone, you buy Android. Don't kid yourself. The day Apple makes iPhone available on Verizon, the market for Android devices will take an enormous hit. That's the beauty of the way Apple has positioned itself. Also bear in mind that Android users don't actually buy apps in any serious number. From a developer's perspective, iOS is the platform to beat.
I hear your concerns, but I actually have to wonder how much you're really losing in your ability to tinker. Today's hardware is so advanced and so condensed it isn't practical for you to be able to fiddle with. So far as software goes, you're free to tinker with Xcode and the like as you wish. Granted, there are restrictions, but that doesn't equate to you not being able to tinker in the general sense. I certainly hear, understand, and appreciate the argument that "it's my hardware and I'll damn well do as I please with it," but the tinkering argument doesn't really swim for me. You can play with the device and the software at will. It's only when it comes time to publish that the restrictions come into play.
I'm 27, and you're still a dinosaur. The difference is you're young enough to adapt. The old-timers around here are going to have a really rough times in the years ahead. Their way of doing things is dead. They just don't know it.
Hate to say it, but you - like most Slashdotters - are a dinosaur. Things are only going to get more closed. Contest it if you must, but the day of consumer hardware being sold based on the needs of the developers who write for it, is over. That day is simply over. Consumers rule. The ones who learn that fast are the ones that'll be able to profit.
tl;dr, but:
No browser today does printing really well. If you want to accurately get out of a web browser what you see in the web browser, your best bet is to effectively generate documents that are native to paper, like PDF. Tell your devs to look at PDFKit. It uses WebKit to generate PDFs on the backend. Built in Ruby and includes Rails integration and a Rack Middleware. Works as advertised.
Not to mention you have to consider which Android people are actually getting. Lots of brand new devices are sold _today_ that still have 1.5 and 1.6 (read: Sprint's Android phones). Those devices don't have any of the latest built-in features, and apps targeting the newer SDKs don't work.
This is another reason why Flash coming to Android won't mean the end of Adobe's problems. If Flash only works on 2.1+ devices, and most existing devices are 2.0 and lower with no upgrade path in sight, Adobe has to wait for an entire generation of existing users to upgrade. If Apple adds a Verizon iPhone, it's pretty much game over for Flash. I'm willing to bet - although it's entirely conjecture - that many current Verizon Android users will jump ship should iPhone become an option.
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1. Police have generally been favorable to or at least tolerant of Tea Party protests. They have been hostile and violent towards Occupy Wall St.
I live in Portland, where one of the largest ongoing Occupy events is occurring. The police have been extraordinarily supportive. There have been very few "violent" incidents, no mass arrests, and the police have been facilitating various marches and camps that have been started.
It worked for Microsoft.
And you know all this... how?
The 10%.
Except that isn't what's happening. You don't have to buy Apple products. No one's forcing anything on you. If you don't like the Apple way, buy Android. Buy Palm. Buy Windows Phone 7. There are plenty of options. Some of them aren't even all that bad. ;)
There's probably nothing I can say to convince you that I'm not a fanboy, so I'm not going to address that.
Not at all, but RIM's sort of in its own little bubble catering to the enterprise crowd. Neither Apple nor Google is eating their market share because neither one cares all that much about that sector of the market. More people need good personal phones than awesome email phones. Plus, BlackBerry apps are a joke.
I view no Flash as a plus, but I hear you. Fragmentation may be a blown-out problem, but it isn't nearly as bad on iPhone as it is on Android. The 1.6 SDK is trash, and the apps bear that out.
That may be the case, but I don't think that's sustainable for Apple. At some point they saturate the market, just like they did for iPod. They need to keep expanding, and at some point the only way to do that is to allow other carriers in on the action.
Bullshit. How do you think the PC took off in the first place? Who were the first people to buy PCs? Developers. Developers had to build software that consumers would want, thereby making consumers buy the hardware that ran that software. Here, Apple made a device that consumers wanted -- the original iPhone never ran native software. It didn't matter. They sold a boatload, and cemented their status. It wasn't until after they were firmly established that iPhone OS 2.0 was released, bringing with it an SDK for developers.
And in that respect, you're probably right. Apple could easily give us the option to turn on full multitasking and out-of-band app installs. Consumers at large don't seem to care, and until they do, we won't see it. This is - again - the beauty of Apple's positioning. If any of this ever starts to matter to the mass market, they can turn these things on. I'm not saying Apple's decision is the right one; I'm saying they're positioned to win because average consumers don't seem to mind.
The difference is the open platform was better than what Apple had to offer. The PC won because it was technically superior. That isn't the case re: iOS vs Android. Restrictions or no, Android as a platform has quite a ways to go to catch up to iOS. If you need proof, look at the HTC EVO 4G. Beautiful phone, well-designed, powerful CPU, lots of RAM, lots of features, and a huge battery => can't make it a day of even light usage. Someone's doing something wrong, here. Add in market fragmentation, and the problems multiply. Adobe just shipped Flash Player 10.1 for mobile, which requires an OS that most Android users currently don't have, and who won't for a while. That "open" platform isn't doing much for actual customers.
Yes, and how does iPhone do relative to Android in countries where it's available as well? How many different Android devices have to be sold to make up those comparable numbers? Sure there are lots of Android devices, but the amount of money companies like Motorola, HTC, et al are making is a pittance compared to what Apple is making with its strategy.
You can make statistics say whatever you want. 90% of the apps in the app store are trash, and I can say that as a happy iPhone owner. The guys who are putting major time into creating good apps are actually making money. How many fscking flashlight apps do the numbers from that article include? How many fart apps? Just saying.
You (and most of the rest of the /. community) represent a tiny, tiny sliver of the consumer market. They've sold nearly 100M iOS devices. Apple haters love to say it's all marketing, but marketing only sells a shitty product the first time. People learn after that. If people keep coming back to buy, they're getting what they want. What you really mean to say is that Apple isn't giving you what you want; not the average consumer in general.
AT&T may be a crappy carrier, but you're missing the point. iPhone customers come back year after year. The phone is so good (to the average consumer) that it's worth dealing with the carrier. And that's my point. When Apple makes iPhone available on other carriers, it's going to be eating directly from Android's pie. Put yourself in the average consumer's shoes. How many average users buy Android because it's the only smartphone option? Average consumers never bought WinMo en masse. Pre is dead in the water for the time being. Many - I'd wager even most - of these people will switch to an iPhone if given the opportunity. This isn't fanboy talk. It's pragmatic economics.
I own an iPhone, but I'd vastly prefer the open system we all know is never going to happen. Guess people around here just assume that posting anything contrary to dogma must be intended to piss people off.
Flamebait, really? Man, I forget how testy Slashdotters are with their mod points.
It's the only modern alternative available outside AT&T. If you don't have AT&T and you want a smartphone, you buy Android. Don't kid yourself. The day Apple makes iPhone available on Verizon, the market for Android devices will take an enormous hit. That's the beauty of the way Apple has positioned itself. Also bear in mind that Android users don't actually buy apps in any serious number. From a developer's perspective, iOS is the platform to beat.
I hear your concerns, but I actually have to wonder how much you're really losing in your ability to tinker. Today's hardware is so advanced and so condensed it isn't practical for you to be able to fiddle with. So far as software goes, you're free to tinker with Xcode and the like as you wish. Granted, there are restrictions, but that doesn't equate to you not being able to tinker in the general sense. I certainly hear, understand, and appreciate the argument that "it's my hardware and I'll damn well do as I please with it," but the tinkering argument doesn't really swim for me. You can play with the device and the software at will. It's only when it comes time to publish that the restrictions come into play.
I'm 27, and you're still a dinosaur. The difference is you're young enough to adapt. The old-timers around here are going to have a really rough times in the years ahead. Their way of doing things is dead. They just don't know it.
Hate to say it, but you - like most Slashdotters - are a dinosaur. Things are only going to get more closed. Contest it if you must, but the day of consumer hardware being sold based on the needs of the developers who write for it, is over. That day is simply over. Consumers rule. The ones who learn that fast are the ones that'll be able to profit.
tl;dr, but: No browser today does printing really well. If you want to accurately get out of a web browser what you see in the web browser, your best bet is to effectively generate documents that are native to paper, like PDF. Tell your devs to look at PDFKit. It uses WebKit to generate PDFs on the backend. Built in Ruby and includes Rails integration and a Rack Middleware. Works as advertised.
Apple's just proving the point that consumers don't care how "fast" a chip is if the experience is that the device is fast.
Not to mention you have to consider which Android people are actually getting. Lots of brand new devices are sold _today_ that still have 1.5 and 1.6 (read: Sprint's Android phones). Those devices don't have any of the latest built-in features, and apps targeting the newer SDKs don't work. This is another reason why Flash coming to Android won't mean the end of Adobe's problems. If Flash only works on 2.1+ devices, and most existing devices are 2.0 and lower with no upgrade path in sight, Adobe has to wait for an entire generation of existing users to upgrade. If Apple adds a Verizon iPhone, it's pretty much game over for Flash. I'm willing to bet - although it's entirely conjecture - that many current Verizon Android users will jump ship should iPhone become an option.