What do they call the process where you say that you're better than the competition in a VERY loosely-related type of product?
e.g. "In the news today, Proctor and Gamble, Inc. has announced that it plans to compete with the largest trucking companies. P&G claims that its delivery processes are faster than all other trucking companies."
"Well, they USE trucking companies, so their food must be the best if they are competing with the other trucking companies, right?"
And for those that want to think of Siri as something as good as the average human.. I think most people have no problem figuring out if he meant "Work" or "Home" there...
I guess you didn't notice the big, fat "BETA" tag that Apple slapped on Siri? Siri isn't perfect at deriving meaning from speech; hell, HUMANS aren't perfect, or there would be far fewer domestic disputes. But it IS apparently good enough to put out there and get quite a bit of usefulness from, even in its present state of DEVELOPMENT.
Conversation mode does appear to require Android 2.2 though, which means it should work on fine on ~85% of Android devices out in the wild.
But, without integration into the OS, isn't this just a standalone app with limited usefulness? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious. How does something like this enhance the ability to schedule an event, play a song, ask for directions, etc. (all which require interacting with another app)?
Google Translate is as much a competitor with Siri as MS Word is a competitor with AutoDesk Inventor. They have nothing to do with each other, other than they are both "software".
MacOS began to use C instead of Pascal because the tools wouldn't scale. Without C, what would they have done? Tried to improve the pascal tools?
That wasn't the point. The GP postulated that "Without Ritchie, there would be no Apple."
I pointed out that Apple was already well-established before the first line of C code was used in their product development cycles.
If C hadn't come along, yes, they probably would have "extended" Pascal, or used one of the other 10 ^ 100 languages that eventually fell by the wayside because of C's popularity.
And, as I said before, this is by no way a slight on the contribution of C or the late Mr. Ritchie. I use C every single day in my embedded development work. However, to postulate that "There would be no Apple without Dennis Ritchie" is patently ridiculous.
Now, if you want to say that there would be no NeXTStep/OS X without Dennis Ritchie's contribution of C, you might have a small (although utterly speculative) point. But as far as Apple, per se, no way.
Without Bill Gates and Microsoft, you wouldn't even have a computer in your home.
Apparently you didn't look too closely at my Username...
Since 1976 (which predates the earliest DOS PC, let alone WINDOWS), I have NEVER used a non-Apple computer as my primary computing device at home. Work is another story; but as far as my HOME computer, it has always been an Apple.
So, unless you count the rather insignificant contribution of Applesoft BASIC for the Apple ][, Bill Gates and Microsoft have had limited positive impact on my HOME computing life.
But thanks for being both stupid and inconsiderate, you insensitive clod!
Chances are there wouldn't have been an Apple if not for Ritchie.
Hmmm. I think not.
I don't think that C (even Objective-C) was used by Apple until later on in the Mac days. The Apple 1 through/// were all 6502 Assembler-based. "BIOS" (Monitor ROM), DOS (all versions) and all applications were either 6502 Assembler or BASIC (neither of which BASICs were C-based).
Then along came the Lisa, which was a combination of 68k Assembler and Pascal, with bits and pieces of SmallTalk and even Apple's Dylan thrown in. But no C. Same with the 68k Macs.
Later, C began to be used instead of Pascal, perhaps when the PPC Macs began to appear in the early 1990s. I would imagine that Apple's first Unix, A/UX, was C-based as well. But that wasn't until 1988, long after Apple was well-established as a company.
Objective-C at Apple didn't come along until much later, as the language in which NeXTStep was written.
So, no, I really don't think that Mr. Ritchie had all that much to do with the success of Apple, sorry.
BTW, that is in no way intended as a slight against the achievements of the late, great Dennis Ritchie. Most of us who call ourselves "developers" wouldn't have careers if it weren't for his part in computing history...
I'd rather have a more powerful system that forces me to learn something about it.
Oh, so you'd rather work on your computer than with your computer?
Grow up. I got all that out of my system thirty years ago with my Apple ][. Wrote tens of thousands of lines of Assembly code. Designed and built interfaces for everything from home control to stage lighting. etc, etc, etc. Still an embedded developer to this day. BUT... I am ever so glad to not HAVE to play IT Guy on my Mac.
I want to get things done; not become an expert in (yet another) piece of arcane OS-dom that will be nothing but wasted brain cells. There are plenty of other puzzles much more worthy of our geek skills. At this point, if a simple PC requires any sort of "attention" more than once every few years, it is because of a serious failing on the part of the OS (or possibly app or peripheral) designer, and I for one will move quickly away from that sort of unnecessary bullshit.
Unless it is your job to do so, life's too short to waste it troubleshooting peripheral drivers.
People who view Apple as an enabler of freedom are those who think the same thing of their EZpass for road tolls. Someday, they will see their "internal passport" as an enabler of travel.
The fact is, that the "1984" campaign was a propaganda ruse. Jobs and Hertzfeld and crew were already working with DARPA and the spooks.
Read all of the following - including the links - and understand that it is no exaggeration to understand that with the introduction of "Siri", George Orwell's "Telescreen" is on the verge of reality - in your pocket.
Roughly 35%. But if I use it that much, I have an outlet.
Wow. Shitty battery life. Sucks to be you, I guess.
Of course, the iPad can be used for about 10 hours without an outlet; and while YOU may have an outlet [nearby], not everyone likes having to turn their laptop into a desktop (by tying it to an AC outlet) all the time.
WTF good in REAL life is a "portable" computing device that you can only use for a few hours before it MUST have an AC outlet, or else?
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
Why is it that there are only TWO general use-cases that tablet-haters seem to recognize?
1. Writing War and Peace or the Linux Kernel from scratch.
2. Watching a movie or playing Angry Birds.
Nothing else seems to count. Why?
You DO realize, of course, that there are a whole bevy of use-cases for an information appliance like the iPad that don't fall into those two categories, e.g., Review and approval of documents, form-completion, correspondence review and creation, process monitoring/control, media creation and editing, etc.
Yes, you CAN do those with a laptop, but for some, the concept of an "electronic clipboard", that can be interacted with directly, rather than through the actions of mouse and keyboard, is an appealing one.
ok so since someone does not need a 500$ toy with a fart app they must be a total looser... go fanboi go
Your attempt at superiority kind of falls flat when there are something like SIX grammatical/syntactic errors in a single run-on sentence. Here's what you meant to type:
Ok. So, since someone does not need a $500 toy with a fart app, they must be a total loser... Go, fanboi, go.
You are also very inconsistent with your opinion, considering you earlier claim to own the same "500$ toy with a fart app" [sic].
My artist friend knew what it was, when he bought a Mac last year. I thought it was great that his big Dell monitor was incompatible with the Mac Mini he brought even though it was HDMI that he connected it with. His TV and other LCD monitor worked just fine with HDMI Apple's support line was any help either.
You do realize, of course, that there are like 4 different HDMI "standards". HDMI is a minefield of incompatibilities and semi-compatibilities. And since two out of three HDMI devices he had worked fine, the issue is clearly with the Dell monitor, not the Mac.
I agree completely. The relationship between the fanboys and their products is creepy. I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
And that is different from, say, many people who claim to be Windows "power users" in what way?
All we have to go on is one analyst's guess at component cost, and that guess is 5% more than price. I've been involved with projects of significant scale and without being a party to the whole situation, you cannot accurately assess the negotiated prices of all the components.
Exactly.
There is a BUNCH of give-and-take with Contract Manufacturers. You simply can't take even a SWAG at the BOM cost when dealing with a large contract like Apple or Amazon. And unless you are privy to the negotiations, no amount of guesswork will be even remotely accurate on the custom components (case, packaging, and in the case of Apple, the A SoC).
Add to that the fact that most of the people "guessing" seem to have an agenda of one sort or another, and there is probably below a 50% correlation between these "cost estimates" and reality.
If you believe they are not truthful in their 10K report you should report them to the feds, they will bring criminal charges to the accountants and CEO who signed it.
Um, prosecuting the CEO WHO SIGNED THEM might prove problematic at this particular point in time...
Exactly. Apple is like Wal-Mart - they practically own the suppliers. They buy up all capacity and tell them at what price they are allowed to sell their products to Apple.
Apple isn't selling hardware at a loss. I would guess that they spend more money on things that matter visually, like displays and the cases for the devices, but the internals are probably similar in cost to what Lenovo or anyone else is using.
The stuff they buy in large quantities is the stuff that can't be easily "second sourced", like display, Flash and RAM. The CPU and case-parts are all custom, so, other than supplier capacity, there is no competition for those parts.
The components that are "commodity", like all the passives, and commonplace semiconductors (diodes, transistors, etc.) ARE probably purchased in normal quantities directly by their Contract Manufacturer (Foxconn, et al.)
That's why Atari lost the console war and were forever banned to a reputation of poor graphics and slow actions.
I don't know shit about Steve Jobs, but from what you told me Steve Jobs outsourced a lot of things like the high suicide rates of Foxconn. Let the fucker die, and watch the NASDAQ AAPL drop like a dead garden fly.
Exactly what I thought. The busted dealer only had 2 oz of marijuana; but, he had 10,000 zip lock baggies. Hey! That's over 156 lbs of marijuana he's attempting to deliver! Score!
You jest; but in marijuana cultivation arrests, they count every single 2 inch tall seedling/clone as a kilo of processed marijuana, even though many won't make it to adulthood, and even in indoor growing operations, where the per-plant yield is likely to be closer to an ounce than a kilogram, due to the radically smaller size of indoor plants.
No. Microsoft development doesn't pay attention to Research very much. Too much management fubar.
But Kinect (an actually impressive innovation, if useless) did come from Research.
Um, Kinect came from an outside company.
The "Kinect" technology was actually offered to Apple first; but the third party company (can't remember the name) turned it down, saying that Apple had too many "conditions" in their offer.
The trend in computing is pretty clear: outside of some small niches here and there, it goes: mainframe -> workstation -> PC -> mobile (tablets/smartphones). Ribbonization makes products more suitable for the up and coming mobile world, and it seems like about the only time I can remember that Microsoft was actually on the leading side of the curve rather than the trailing side.
Ubutu has tried this too with Unity, but their attempt at mobile friendliness is a bit of a disaster.
Having had to deal with RE-LEARNING MSOffice pretty much from the ground-up due to "ribbonization", I have to ask: What is the difference between a "Ribbon" and a "Toolbar"? They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
Like so, so many of MS' "innovations", the Ribbon seems like change for change's sake. Now, instead of pawing through menus to find the command I am looking for, I now have to paw through Ribbons (plural) to figure out the icon I am looking for (not that the old toolbar icons were any better...)
So, tell me how MS was "ahead of the curve", since Toolbars have been used for at least a couple of decades now.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
What do they call the process where you say that you're better than the competition in a VERY loosely-related type of product?
e.g. "In the news today, Proctor and Gamble, Inc. has announced that it plans to compete with the largest trucking companies. P&G claims that its delivery processes are faster than all other trucking companies." "Well, they USE trucking companies, so their food must be the best if they are competing with the other trucking companies, right?"
I think they call that Strawman Advertising...
You are exactly right. Perfect analogy, too.
Well, not that good at getting the gist of it..
And for those that want to think of Siri as something as good as the average human.. I think most people have no problem figuring out if he meant "Work" or "Home" there...
I guess you didn't notice the big, fat "BETA" tag that Apple slapped on Siri? Siri isn't perfect at deriving meaning from speech; hell, HUMANS aren't perfect, or there would be far fewer domestic disputes. But it IS apparently good enough to put out there and get quite a bit of usefulness from, even in its present state of DEVELOPMENT.
"Open the refrigerator doors, HAL."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."
Wow! A great new diet aid product!
Appliances with "Diet Mode"!
The app itself is free to download from the android market and will run on any Android device running Andorid 1.5+. That's pretty much everything.
Conversation mode does appear to require Android 2.2 though, which means it should work on fine on ~85% of Android devices out in the wild.
But, without integration into the OS, isn't this just a standalone app with limited usefulness? I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious. How does something like this enhance the ability to schedule an event, play a song, ask for directions, etc. (all which require interacting with another app)?
Google Translate is as much a competitor with Siri as MS Word is a competitor with AutoDesk Inventor. They have nothing to do with each other, other than they are both "software".
MacOS began to use C instead of Pascal because the tools wouldn't scale. Without C, what would they have done? Tried to improve the pascal tools?
That wasn't the point. The GP postulated that "Without Ritchie, there would be no Apple."
I pointed out that Apple was already well-established before the first line of C code was used in their product development cycles.
If C hadn't come along, yes, they probably would have "extended" Pascal, or used one of the other 10 ^ 100 languages that eventually fell by the wayside because of C's popularity.
And, as I said before, this is by no way a slight on the contribution of C or the late Mr. Ritchie. I use C every single day in my embedded development work. However, to postulate that "There would be no Apple without Dennis Ritchie" is patently ridiculous.
Now, if you want to say that there would be no NeXTStep/OS X without Dennis Ritchie's contribution of C, you might have a small (although utterly speculative) point. But as far as Apple, per se, no way.
Without Bill Gates and Microsoft, you wouldn't even have a computer in your home.
Apparently you didn't look too closely at my Username...
Since 1976 (which predates the earliest DOS PC, let alone WINDOWS), I have NEVER used a non-Apple computer as my primary computing device at home. Work is another story; but as far as my HOME computer, it has always been an Apple.
So, unless you count the rather insignificant contribution of Applesoft BASIC for the Apple ][, Bill Gates and Microsoft have had limited positive impact on my HOME computing life.
But thanks for being both stupid and inconsiderate, you insensitive clod!
So how do I get this gene to express itself as greater penis size?
Chances are there wouldn't have been an Apple if not for Ritchie.
Hmmm. I think not.
/// were all 6502 Assembler-based. "BIOS" (Monitor ROM), DOS (all versions) and all applications were either 6502 Assembler or BASIC (neither of which BASICs were C-based).
I don't think that C (even Objective-C) was used by Apple until later on in the Mac days. The Apple 1 through
Then along came the Lisa, which was a combination of 68k Assembler and Pascal, with bits and pieces of SmallTalk and even Apple's Dylan thrown in. But no C. Same with the 68k Macs.
Later, C began to be used instead of Pascal, perhaps when the PPC Macs began to appear in the early 1990s. I would imagine that Apple's first Unix, A/UX, was C-based as well. But that wasn't until 1988, long after Apple was well-established as a company.
Objective-C at Apple didn't come along until much later, as the language in which NeXTStep was written.
So, no, I really don't think that Mr. Ritchie had all that much to do with the success of Apple, sorry.
BTW, that is in no way intended as a slight against the achievements of the late, great Dennis Ritchie. Most of us who call ourselves "developers" wouldn't have careers if it weren't for his part in computing history...
Bill Gates did do a hell of a lot more for personal computing than Steve Jobs ever did.
Yes, and most of the corporate world and a good portion of the private one, is STILL suffering for what Gates did...
I'd rather have a more powerful system that forces me to learn something about it.
Oh, so you'd rather work on your computer than with your computer? Grow up. I got all that out of my system thirty years ago with my Apple ][. Wrote tens of thousands of lines of Assembly code. Designed and built interfaces for everything from home control to stage lighting. etc, etc, etc. Still an embedded developer to this day. BUT... I am ever so glad to not HAVE to play IT Guy on my Mac.
I want to get things done; not become an expert in (yet another) piece of arcane OS-dom that will be nothing but wasted brain cells. There are plenty of other puzzles much more worthy of our geek skills. At this point, if a simple PC requires any sort of "attention" more than once every few years, it is because of a serious failing on the part of the OS (or possibly app or peripheral) designer, and I for one will move quickly away from that sort of unnecessary bullshit.
Unless it is your job to do so, life's too short to waste it troubleshooting peripheral drivers.
Android fanboys should get on their knees and thanks Jobs that he made the mass production of those devices possible.
Righty-O!
And here's about 4 dozen other reasons that F/OSS advocates should be kissing Jobs' cold, dead feet for...
FWIW, I own a MacBook Air and an iPhone 3GS.
People who view Apple as an enabler of freedom are those who think the same thing of their EZpass for road tolls. Someday, they will see their "internal passport" as an enabler of travel.
The fact is, that the "1984" campaign was a propaganda ruse. Jobs and Hertzfeld and crew were already working with DARPA and the spooks.
Read all of the following - including the links - and understand that it is no exaggeration to understand that with the introduction of "Siri", George Orwell's "Telescreen" is on the verge of reality - in your pocket.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=25289 http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/13/shadowy-government-project-spins-off-siri-to-help-direct-your-affairs/
If you think either Jobs or Wozniak was EVER a fan of Big Brother, you don't know your Apple history very well.
He specifically states he was not happy to see Jobs die. I see you trollin'.
But it's clear that the only reason he DIDN'T say exactly that is because even he realizes that he'd better keep that thought to himself.
Roughly 35%. But if I use it that much, I have an outlet.
Wow. Shitty battery life. Sucks to be you, I guess.
Of course, the iPad can be used for about 10 hours without an outlet; and while YOU may have an outlet [nearby], not everyone likes having to turn their laptop into a desktop (by tying it to an AC outlet) all the time.
WTF good in REAL life is a "portable" computing device that you can only use for a few hours before it MUST have an AC outlet, or else?
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
Why is it that there are only TWO general use-cases that tablet-haters seem to recognize?
1. Writing War and Peace or the Linux Kernel from scratch.
2. Watching a movie or playing Angry Birds.
Nothing else seems to count. Why?
You DO realize, of course, that there are a whole bevy of use-cases for an information appliance like the iPad that don't fall into those two categories, e.g., Review and approval of documents, form-completion, correspondence review and creation, process monitoring/control, media creation and editing, etc.
Yes, you CAN do those with a laptop, but for some, the concept of an "electronic clipboard", that can be interacted with directly, rather than through the actions of mouse and keyboard, is an appealing one.
ok so since someone does not need a 500$ toy with a fart app they must be a total looser ... go fanboi go
Your attempt at superiority kind of falls flat when there are something like SIX grammatical/syntactic errors in a single run-on sentence. Here's what you meant to type:
Ok. So, since someone does not need a $500 toy with a fart app, they must be a total loser... Go, fanboi, go.
You are also very inconsistent with your opinion, considering you earlier claim to own the same "500$ toy with a fart app" [sic].
Tool.
My artist friend knew what it was, when he bought a Mac last year. I thought it was great that his big Dell monitor was incompatible with the Mac Mini he brought even though it was HDMI that he connected it with. His TV and other LCD monitor worked just fine with HDMI Apple's support line was any help either.
You do realize, of course, that there are like 4 different HDMI "standards". HDMI is a minefield of incompatibilities and semi-compatibilities. And since two out of three HDMI devices he had worked fine, the issue is clearly with the Dell monitor, not the Mac.
So, what's your point, again?
I agree completely. The relationship between the fanboys and their products is creepy. I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
And that is different from, say, many people who claim to be Windows "power users" in what way?
All we have to go on is one analyst's guess at component cost, and that guess is 5% more than price. I've been involved with projects of significant scale and without being a party to the whole situation, you cannot accurately assess the negotiated prices of all the components.
Exactly.
There is a BUNCH of give-and-take with Contract Manufacturers. You simply can't take even a SWAG at the BOM cost when dealing with a large contract like Apple or Amazon. And unless you are privy to the negotiations, no amount of guesswork will be even remotely accurate on the custom components (case, packaging, and in the case of Apple, the A SoC).
Add to that the fact that most of the people "guessing" seem to have an agenda of one sort or another, and there is probably below a 50% correlation between these "cost estimates" and reality.
If you believe they are not truthful in their 10K report you should report them to the feds, they will bring criminal charges to the accountants and CEO who signed it.
Um, prosecuting the CEO WHO SIGNED THEM might prove problematic at this particular point in time...
Exactly. Apple is like Wal-Mart - they practically own the suppliers. They buy up all capacity and tell them at what price they are allowed to sell their products to Apple.
Apple isn't selling hardware at a loss. I would guess that they spend more money on things that matter visually, like displays and the cases for the devices, but the internals are probably similar in cost to what Lenovo or anyone else is using.
The stuff they buy in large quantities is the stuff that can't be easily "second sourced", like display, Flash and RAM. The CPU and case-parts are all custom, so, other than supplier capacity, there is no competition for those parts.
The components that are "commodity", like all the passives, and commonplace semiconductors (diodes, transistors, etc.) ARE probably purchased in normal quantities directly by their Contract Manufacturer (Foxconn, et al.)
That's why Atari lost the console war and were forever banned to a reputation of poor graphics and slow actions.
I don't know shit about Steve Jobs, but from what you told me Steve Jobs outsourced a lot of things like the high suicide rates of Foxconn. Let the fucker die, and watch the NASDAQ AAPL drop like a dead garden fly.
Wanna place a bet on that?
Exactly what I thought. The busted dealer only had 2 oz of marijuana; but, he had 10,000 zip lock baggies. Hey! That's over 156 lbs of marijuana he's attempting to deliver! Score!
You jest; but in marijuana cultivation arrests, they count every single 2 inch tall seedling/clone as a kilo of processed marijuana, even though many won't make it to adulthood, and even in indoor growing operations, where the per-plant yield is likely to be closer to an ounce than a kilogram, due to the radically smaller size of indoor plants.
No. Microsoft development doesn't pay attention to Research very much. Too much management fubar.
But Kinect (an actually impressive innovation, if useless) did come from Research.
Um, Kinect came from an outside company.
The "Kinect" technology was actually offered to Apple first; but the third party company (can't remember the name) turned it down, saying that Apple had too many "conditions" in their offer.
The trend in computing is pretty clear: outside of some small niches here and there, it goes: mainframe -> workstation -> PC -> mobile (tablets/smartphones). Ribbonization makes products more suitable for the up and coming mobile world, and it seems like about the only time I can remember that Microsoft was actually on the leading side of the curve rather than the trailing side.
Ubutu has tried this too with Unity, but their attempt at mobile friendliness is a bit of a disaster.
Having had to deal with RE-LEARNING MSOffice pretty much from the ground-up due to "ribbonization", I have to ask: What is the difference between a "Ribbon" and a "Toolbar"? They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
Like so, so many of MS' "innovations", the Ribbon seems like change for change's sake. Now, instead of pawing through menus to find the command I am looking for, I now have to paw through Ribbons (plural) to figure out the icon I am looking for (not that the old toolbar icons were any better...)
So, tell me how MS was "ahead of the curve", since Toolbars have been used for at least a couple of decades now.