Google cannot hope to stay relevant if all it allows from the majority of devs are free apps on its market, and since most users don't care to load other markets, devs aren't going to bother with a platform that doesn't let them sell.
Wow! Are you kidding me?
Google doesn't ALLOW devs. to get paid for their work?!?
If Apple did this, Slashdotters would be in the streets with pitchforks and torches.
I never see people sitting outdoors using them. I never see people using them while eating lunch or drinking coffee. I never see people using them at my workplace. I never see people using them at the offices of the other companies I visit.
Just guessing, but is braille a significant part of your life?
Using kludges to incorporate needed functionality for an enterprise product? Or you could use windows where you don't have to do asinine shit like that and you have an environment that already has plenty of tools for enterprise that works with what you already use.
Spoken like a card-carrying member of the Computer Priesthood.
Yep, my company has worked on Ipad projects, all three of them lost money because the sales drones (Apple Fanboys) promised the clients that the Ipad could do what it cant. Jailbreaking them was out of the question and creating persistent services was not supported.
Sounds like your company has a more systemic problem than a schism in platform preference.
In other words, since your "sales drones" obviously don't communicate with the all-high-and-mighty engineering department (probably because they are sick to death of your attitude of superiority), they end up overpromising, and since your attitude clearly shows that you aren't really interested in finding other ways around iOS's restrictions against private APIs, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy that iOS is incapable of addressing your clients' needs.
So, with that in mind, what's to stop the "sales drones" from overpromising what ANY OS can do? Every single platform has some restrictions, or at the very least, things that are so hard to do that, for all practical purposes, they are "impossible"; so, from my POV, it simply looks like the engineering department is allowing THEIR platform bias to leak into their willingness to find ways around iOS' restriction against private APIs, rather than just whining about them.
Really? So who are things like iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, Sketchbook Pro, Create Apps Without Programming, iCreate, Creative Book Builder, Touch App Creator, Adobe Ideas, Learn To Draw, Video Editor, Auryn Ink, Scratch Card, QR Code Generator, Story Buddy, App Craft HD, DoInk, Caster, Sketchpad Pro HD, Heavy Metal Music Creator, Crayola, Build-a-Story, AutoCAD WS, Dollhouse Creator, RPG Cartographer, PHYZIOS Sculptor Pro, Forms Central, App Designer HD, Christmas Card Maker, Fractal Maker, Robot Maker HD, Make It So, Create Interactive Documents, Tab Builder, CADTouch, Visual Poetry, Doodle Pad HD, Hand Painting HD, Tapp Beat, Arte Plus, Realizer, Creative Me, Visualxscript Universal, StereoStudio, UDesigner, igiHTML Editor, et FRICKIN' CETERA, the list goes on and on and on and...
Sorry, but from the very young to the not-so-young, from the serious to the downright silly, there are literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of iOS apps (and I was just looking at the somewhat smaller set of iPad (vs. iPhone) apps) specifically designed for content CREATION.
So, quit perpetuating a completely specious myth, willya?
On the contrary, change (can) be good. So computers you can change and experiment with are better than walled gardens.
Do you have ANY idea how impossible it is for 99.5% of the planet's population to actually REALIZE that potential?
But for the rest of the planet, that just wants to get shit DONE, the closer a computing device gets to the simplicity of a piece of paper and a pencil, the better.
Guess which class of computing devices more closely resembles that familiar paradigm?
Unless they make a tablet device with a mouse and keyboard *cough laptop cough*, I will continue to find it easier to select/drag/edit/delete/whatever a single cell in whatever spreadsheet program I am using with a PC. Familiarity and locking devices down aside, some things are ALWAYS going to be easier with a mouse and keyboard.
Conversely, some things are ALWAYS going to be easier with finger and a touchscreen.
So, what's your point again? Or did you have one?
BTW, I submit that, with the proper UI, that clicking and dragging with a mouse is EXACTLY an example where a touchscreen and finger stomps all over a mouse. One degree of separation between thought and action (mouse is in a different axis and a different location than the UI element), vs. zero degrees of separation between thought and action with a touchscreen and a finger.
Face it, since infancy, we have all be reaching out with our fingers to TOUCH things. A mouse is definitely NOT "intuitive" to that degree, and simply cannot be. There is just too much physical and mental translation to be done. Want a real-world example? Try signing your name with a mouse. No matter what you change the mouse "speed" to, the best you can manage, even with a mouse that has over a thousand points per inch of resolution, is a barely-legible childish scrawl. And that will be on the tenth attempt. Why is that? Simple. The human brain did not evolve around such a profound separation between thought and action. A tablet instantly and intuitively removes that barrier.
As for a keyboard, I don't think anyone will disagree that, for now, for the limited set of people who can touch-type, a physical keyboard is better for entering LOTS of text; but for the types of things that the vast majority of people need/want to do, especially those who are NOT touch-typists (enter a URL or a search term, compose a short email, etc) the convenience of a combined keyboard and display, in a form-factor that is closer to a tablet of paper than it is to a typewriter more than makes up for the lack of key-travel feedback. And now that several tablet "cases" exist with BT keyboards built right in...
Cups was already opensource when they bought it. The didn't have much choice.
Boy, NOTHING says IANAL more clearly than THAT bit of drivel!
If they BOUGHT it, they could have done ANYTHING with it. Now, I agree that it probably could have been forked; but that would have been ALL that the F/OSS community could do. They could no more tell Apple what to do with CUPS than I could tell Apache what to do with their webserver.
Printer drivers only exist because each printer manufacturer wanted control over their own device and the lucrative ink replacement business.
You are an unmitigated moron.
While that might be true for inkjets, you do realize that "printer drivers" have existed for quite a bit longer than inkjets, right?
Does this smell like Apple is trying to patent more universal print drivers as they exist in Linux and hence Android.
Um, since they BOUGHT CUPS a couple of years ago and yet LEFT IT OPEN, I'd say "No".
More like they have already gotten tired of maintaining the clusterfuck that is CUPS, and, just like they did with launchd, have decided that they truly have a better idea.
Sounds like we just need to get CUPS into the iCrap, Windows (think it can do IPP but it isn't installed normally) and most important a direct implementation hosted on the cheap WiFi capable printers.
First off: "iCrap?" Was that really necessary? This was starting out to be an actual intelligent discourse (for once). Until that comment.
Second: You do realize that Apple bought CUPS, right? And that OS X has used CUPS since day one. If I point my browser at localhost:631, guesss what I see? CUPS, that's what!
Or are you talking about iOS? Your stupid "iCrap" comment makes it impossible to tell.
I would submit that you either have a hardware problem with your MBP, or maybe you are doing something like forcing it to mount a bunch of network shares that are not always available on bootup.
Even my old G5 tower running 10.4 boots to the desktop in under 30 seconds.
EFI? Apple doesn't even use BIOS and hasn't since they switched to Intel. Now is EFI BIOS? That's for the lawyers.
Apple never used "BIOS", per se. Prior to OS X, they had most of the Macintosh Toolbox in ROM. The "New World" Macs (starting with, IIRC, the original iMac) used something called "Open Firmware", which was a FORTH-like (or FORTH-based?) "BIOS" originally developed primarily by Sun.
Then, as you said, they went straight to EFI for the Intel-based Macs.
amen to that.. vic20/c64/apple2/coco/etc... turn them on, boots right to OS, not sure how this bullshit can be patented? Arcade games? Turn them on, they fast boot..
And you forgot the king of the fast-boot/state-restore hill: The Tandy Model 100. I had one of those in 1980, and not only did it power on instantly; but right back into the application and document you were in when you turned it off! Essentially it was a FULL "state restore"-type of configuration.
I suddenly find myself wanting to know EXACTLY how the NeXTSTEP boot process worked. Hopefully this feeling will pass soon.
Is everyone here frickin' RETARDED?!?
NeXTSTEP booted like any conventional *NIX. Same as OS X did until 10.4. That is, using init and rc.d stuff.
Then, Apple created (and Open-Sourced) "launchd", which RADICALLY changed the way the bootup process worked.
That is where the vast majority of their short boot times come from: For those who don't know (and I only know a little bit about it, too), launchd differs from the standard "rc" script-based *NIX boot, by being able to launch several processes at once, and have them start up in parallel, rather than one process waiting to start, then the next, and the next. Launchd also serves as a cron replacement, and handles the launching of services such as the ftp server only on an as-needed basis, by monitoring activity on those TCP/IP ports. Pretty cool stuff, which Apple then turned around and gave away (but which I don't think the Linux community has heavily embraced, since they hate change almost as much as they hate Apple).
I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't infringe on this idiotic patent troll's domain.
I think you can guess by the "Contact us via Compuserv" splash at the beginning that it probably is a couple of years before the iPad was even a twinkle in Steve's eye.
Don't bet on that. You'd lose. Big time!
The original concept of the Mac was to be basically an realization of Alan Kay's DynaBook, which Steve Jobs was fascinated with. Yes, it had a keyboard, but that just reflects the time-period (1968!!!). You can see that it was definitely a "tablet" configuration. It was only the fact that decent LCDs simply weren't cost-effective that the original Mac turned into a "toaster" configuration instead. For those who are too young to remember, Alan Kay was on the original Mac project as well.
Then, we have this "speculative" video that Apple produced in 1987 for the "Knowledge Navigator". Tablet again. In fact, it actually looks more like that fake Microsoft device, the Courier. Again, way before the 1993 AT&T device. And before you cry foul that the Knowledge Navigator never existed either, there's a difference: Apple was simply speculating. MS was alluding to the fact that the Courier was likely actually in development. Which of course it never was...
The point is, no one can really point the finger at who was first with a "tablet" configuration; but Apple was definitely fascinated with the concept almost from day one. It just took nearly 40 years for the hardware to catch up...
It is quite conceivable (and I would expect them to do so) for Apple to have at least one model of every computer they sell that their operating system needs to run on, and they can test their product on each of those machines.
That was somewhat true in the 80s and 90s; and they did have a roomful of every single Mac in existence. In fact, developers could even schedule time in the room, to make sure their stuff ran, too.
But it's not so much true now. Especially when you start considering revisions of motherboards and video boards and GPUs across a dozen products times several years of changes to those products that you'd like to support. And all that isn't even taking into account native and third-party applications, kernel extensions, drivers, memory size differences, et cetera. I would wager that the combinations really run into the thousands, if not millions. And of course, you can forget that kind of testing happening for things like printer drivers; where Apple is pretty much in the same boat as everyone else, as far as "testing possible combinations" goes. That is to say, they really can't.
So, you may THINK that Apple's testing is trivial; but if you stop to really think about it, you'll soon realize that it is most assuredly not.
Slashdot Mirror
IOW, Google shouldn't be putting up hurdles for no good reason.
Might the cost of complying with 200 different countries' censorship and tax codes be a good reason?
Oh, cry me a river! Either Google wants to play in the street with the big dogs, or they need to stay on the porch.
Google cannot hope to stay relevant if all it allows from the majority of devs are free apps on its market, and since most users don't care to load other markets, devs aren't going to bother with a platform that doesn't let them sell.
Wow! Are you kidding me?
Google doesn't ALLOW devs. to get paid for their work?!?
If Apple did this, Slashdotters would be in the streets with pitchforks and torches.
I never see people sitting outdoors using them. I never see people using them while eating lunch or drinking coffee. I never see people using them at my workplace. I never see people using them at the offices of the other companies I visit.
Just guessing, but is braille a significant part of your life?
Using kludges to incorporate needed functionality for an enterprise product? Or you could use windows where you don't have to do asinine shit like that and you have an environment that already has plenty of tools for enterprise that works with what you already use.
Spoken like a card-carrying member of the Computer Priesthood.
Yep, my company has worked on Ipad projects, all three of them lost money because the sales drones (Apple Fanboys) promised the clients that the Ipad could do what it cant. Jailbreaking them was out of the question and creating persistent services was not supported.
Sounds like your company has a more systemic problem than a schism in platform preference.
In other words, since your "sales drones" obviously don't communicate with the all-high-and-mighty engineering department (probably because they are sick to death of your attitude of superiority), they end up overpromising, and since your attitude clearly shows that you aren't really interested in finding other ways around iOS's restrictions against private APIs, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy that iOS is incapable of addressing your clients' needs.
So, with that in mind, what's to stop the "sales drones" from overpromising what ANY OS can do? Every single platform has some restrictions, or at the very least, things that are so hard to do that, for all practical purposes, they are "impossible"; so, from my POV, it simply looks like the engineering department is allowing THEIR platform bias to leak into their willingness to find ways around iOS' restriction against private APIs, rather than just whining about them.
More like a toolchest that only has one tool, the eyelash curler.
The iPad hardware could be used for a lot more things, if only Apple allowed it.
So the 100k things it already does (plus the 500k things that the iPhone does that it can do, too) is stopping people from what, exactly?
They are both tools, however one is a full toolchest, and the other is an eyelash curler.
Have you ever tried to curl eyelashes with a boxed-end wrench? It ain't pretty.
More likely against Android tablets.
iPads are for content consumers, not creators.
Really? So who are things like iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, Sketchbook Pro, Create Apps Without Programming, iCreate, Creative Book Builder, Touch App Creator, Adobe Ideas, Learn To Draw, Video Editor, Auryn Ink, Scratch Card, QR Code Generator, Story Buddy, App Craft HD, DoInk, Caster, Sketchpad Pro HD, Heavy Metal Music Creator, Crayola, Build-a-Story, AutoCAD WS, Dollhouse Creator, RPG Cartographer, PHYZIOS Sculptor Pro, Forms Central, App Designer HD, Christmas Card Maker, Fractal Maker, Robot Maker HD, Make It So, Create Interactive Documents, Tab Builder, CADTouch, Visual Poetry, Doodle Pad HD, Hand Painting HD, Tapp Beat, Arte Plus, Realizer, Creative Me, Visualxscript Universal, StereoStudio, UDesigner, igiHTML Editor, et FRICKIN' CETERA, the list goes on and on and on and...
Sorry, but from the very young to the not-so-young, from the serious to the downright silly, there are literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of iOS apps (and I was just looking at the somewhat smaller set of iPad (vs. iPhone) apps) specifically designed for content CREATION.
So, quit perpetuating a completely specious myth, willya?
On the contrary, change (can) be good. So computers you can change and experiment with are better than walled gardens.
Do you have ANY idea how impossible it is for 99.5% of the planet's population to actually REALIZE that potential?
But for the rest of the planet, that just wants to get shit DONE, the closer a computing device gets to the simplicity of a piece of paper and a pencil, the better.
Guess which class of computing devices more closely resembles that familiar paradigm?
Unless they make a tablet device with a mouse and keyboard *cough laptop cough*
My favourite new gadget: http://www.asus.com.au/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/
Also has USB host mode, so you can plug in mice, keyboards, nice big external drives, etc.
And do you know what you call a tablet with a mouse, keyboard and "nice big external drive" attached?
A desktop computer.
Boy have you missed the point entirely, or what? For a so-called "nerd" site, so many slashdotters have got to be the most technical luddites around.
Unless they make a tablet device with a mouse and keyboard *cough laptop cough*, I will continue to find it easier to select/drag/edit/delete/whatever a single cell in whatever spreadsheet program I am using with a PC. Familiarity and locking devices down aside, some things are ALWAYS going to be easier with a mouse and keyboard.
Conversely, some things are ALWAYS going to be easier with finger and a touchscreen.
So, what's your point again? Or did you have one?
BTW, I submit that, with the proper UI, that clicking and dragging with a mouse is EXACTLY an example where a touchscreen and finger stomps all over a mouse. One degree of separation between thought and action (mouse is in a different axis and a different location than the UI element), vs. zero degrees of separation between thought and action with a touchscreen and a finger.
Face it, since infancy, we have all be reaching out with our fingers to TOUCH things. A mouse is definitely NOT "intuitive" to that degree, and simply cannot be. There is just too much physical and mental translation to be done. Want a real-world example? Try signing your name with a mouse. No matter what you change the mouse "speed" to, the best you can manage, even with a mouse that has over a thousand points per inch of resolution, is a barely-legible childish scrawl. And that will be on the tenth attempt. Why is that? Simple. The human brain did not evolve around such a profound separation between thought and action. A tablet instantly and intuitively removes that barrier.
As for a keyboard, I don't think anyone will disagree that, for now, for the limited set of people who can touch-type, a physical keyboard is better for entering LOTS of text; but for the types of things that the vast majority of people need/want to do, especially those who are NOT touch-typists (enter a URL or a search term, compose a short email, etc) the convenience of a combined keyboard and display, in a form-factor that is closer to a tablet of paper than it is to a typewriter more than makes up for the lack of key-travel feedback. And now that several tablet "cases" exist with BT keyboards built right in...
Well, it's official: Slashdot has become the National Enquirer for Nerds.
Next up: Amazing video of El Chupacabra spotted at DEFCON!!!
Good catch. I tend to save my best spelling for those that pay me. ;-)
Apparently, you have the same rule for your "best arguments", too.
So, if Webkit is so unusable, then why does it form the basis of nearly every browser and nearly everything else that wants to renter HTML these days?
Cups was already opensource when they bought it. The didn't have much choice.
Boy, NOTHING says IANAL more clearly than THAT bit of drivel!
If they BOUGHT it, they could have done ANYTHING with it. Now, I agree that it probably could have been forked; but that would have been ALL that the F/OSS community could do. They could no more tell Apple what to do with CUPS than I could tell Apache what to do with their webserver.
This is Slashdot - if it's not released under the GPL, it doesn't count as open source and should be ridiculed.
ALMOST right.
What you REALLY meant to say is "This is Slashdot - If it's Apple, it should be ridiculed."
C'mon Linux Fanbois, prove me wrong. (Not referring to you, 93 Escort).
Printer drivers only exist because each printer manufacturer wanted control over their own device and the lucrative ink replacement business.
You are an unmitigated moron.
While that might be true for inkjets, you do realize that "printer drivers" have existed for quite a bit longer than inkjets, right?
Does this smell like Apple is trying to patent more universal print drivers as they exist in Linux and hence Android.
Um, since they BOUGHT CUPS a couple of years ago and yet LEFT IT OPEN, I'd say "No".
More like they have already gotten tired of maintaining the clusterfuck that is CUPS, and, just like they did with launchd, have decided that they truly have a better idea.
Hint: They do.
Now go guard your bridge, you ignorant troll.
Sounds like we just need to get CUPS into the iCrap, Windows (think it can do IPP but it isn't installed normally) and most important a direct implementation hosted on the cheap WiFi capable printers.
First off: "iCrap?" Was that really necessary? This was starting out to be an actual intelligent discourse (for once). Until that comment.
Second: You do realize that Apple bought CUPS, right? And that OS X has used CUPS since day one. If I point my browser at localhost:631, guesss what I see? CUPS, that's what!
Or are you talking about iOS? Your stupid "iCrap" comment makes it impossible to tell.
It can't possibly be valid. OS X Lion does not boot up quickly on my computer.
It's fascinating that every single person that has claimed this has posted as AC.
Quit lying.
My MacBook Pro mid-2010, take AGES to boot.
I would submit that you either have a hardware problem with your MBP, or maybe you are doing something like forcing it to mount a bunch of network shares that are not always available on bootup.
Even my old G5 tower running 10.4 boots to the desktop in under 30 seconds.
EFI? Apple doesn't even use BIOS and hasn't since they switched to Intel. Now is EFI BIOS? That's for the lawyers.
Apple never used "BIOS", per se. Prior to OS X, they had most of the Macintosh Toolbox in ROM. The "New World" Macs (starting with, IIRC, the original iMac) used something called "Open Firmware", which was a FORTH-like (or FORTH-based?) "BIOS" originally developed primarily by Sun.
Then, as you said, they went straight to EFI for the Intel-based Macs.
amen to that.. vic20/c64/apple2/coco/etc... turn them on, boots right to OS, not sure how this bullshit can be patented? Arcade games? Turn them on, they fast boot..
And you forgot the king of the fast-boot/state-restore hill: The Tandy Model 100. I had one of those in 1980, and not only did it power on instantly; but right back into the application and document you were in when you turned it off! Essentially it was a FULL "state restore"-type of configuration.
I suddenly find myself wanting to know EXACTLY how the NeXTSTEP boot process worked. Hopefully this feeling will pass soon.
Is everyone here frickin' RETARDED?!?
NeXTSTEP booted like any conventional *NIX. Same as OS X did until 10.4. That is, using init and rc.d stuff.
Then, Apple created (and Open-Sourced) "launchd", which RADICALLY changed the way the bootup process worked.
That is where the vast majority of their short boot times come from: For those who don't know (and I only know a little bit about it, too), launchd differs from the standard "rc" script-based *NIX boot, by being able to launch several processes at once, and have them start up in parallel, rather than one process waiting to start, then the next, and the next. Launchd also serves as a cron replacement, and handles the launching of services such as the ftp server only on an as-needed basis, by monitoring activity on those TCP/IP ports. Pretty cool stuff, which Apple then turned around and gave away (but which I don't think the Linux community has heavily embraced, since they hate change almost as much as they hate Apple).
I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't infringe on this idiotic patent troll's domain.
I think you can guess by the "Contact us via Compuserv" splash at the beginning that it probably is a couple of years before the iPad was even a twinkle in Steve's eye.
Don't bet on that. You'd lose. Big time!
The original concept of the Mac was to be basically an realization of Alan Kay's DynaBook, which Steve Jobs was fascinated with. Yes, it had a keyboard, but that just reflects the time-period (1968!!!). You can see that it was definitely a "tablet" configuration. It was only the fact that decent LCDs simply weren't cost-effective that the original Mac turned into a "toaster" configuration instead. For those who are too young to remember, Alan Kay was on the original Mac project as well.
Then, we have this "speculative" video that Apple produced in 1987 for the "Knowledge Navigator". Tablet again. In fact, it actually looks more like that fake Microsoft device, the Courier. Again, way before the 1993 AT&T device. And before you cry foul that the Knowledge Navigator never existed either, there's a difference: Apple was simply speculating. MS was alluding to the fact that the Courier was likely actually in development. Which of course it never was...
The point is, no one can really point the finger at who was first with a "tablet" configuration; but Apple was definitely fascinated with the concept almost from day one. It just took nearly 40 years for the hardware to catch up...
Have you never watched scifi? Its well documented fact these gestures existed before Apple stole them as their own. Period.
Damn! There goes my warp drive patent!
Moron.
It is quite conceivable (and I would expect them to do so) for Apple to have at least one model of every computer they sell that their operating system needs to run on, and they can test their product on each of those machines.
That was somewhat true in the 80s and 90s; and they did have a roomful of every single Mac in existence. In fact, developers could even schedule time in the room, to make sure their stuff ran, too.
But it's not so much true now. Especially when you start considering revisions of motherboards and video boards and GPUs across a dozen products times several years of changes to those products that you'd like to support. And all that isn't even taking into account native and third-party applications, kernel extensions, drivers, memory size differences, et cetera. I would wager that the combinations really run into the thousands, if not millions. And of course, you can forget that kind of testing happening for things like printer drivers; where Apple is pretty much in the same boat as everyone else, as far as "testing possible combinations" goes. That is to say, they really can't.
So, you may THINK that Apple's testing is trivial; but if you stop to really think about it, you'll soon realize that it is most assuredly not.