http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079224
Seth joins the club.
McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
In all seriousness, option (1). There's no upside to leaking this 24 hours in advance of actually announcing it when hype is already at fever pitch. And if you need examples of hilariously incompetent CEOs I refer you to the automotive and banking industries.
Sure there's an upside. Now that the market knows media companies are involved, they all will spike tomorrow morning when the market opens. You also prime the hype pump one more time. Remember that the financial types don't read tuaw, gizmodo, and engadget all day long looking for Apple rumors. I consider it the noisemaker they shoot off before the real firework show starts.
As opposed to spiking a day later?
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#23I'm sure he said 'the tabloid is going to be really terrific' at the end - misspoken, or is that the name of the tablet?
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#24He did say "based on iPhone OS", but I wonder if he mis-spoke especially given that he's not necessarily tech-savvy. In all likelihood, the tablet OS will be based on OS X in the same way that iPhone OS is - many of the same architectural underpinnings, but a completely different presentation layer that's optimized for the hardware. Maybe he meant "based on OS X, like iPhone OS"?
I'm pretty sure he meant "looks a lot like the iPhone OS". Most non-tech people cannot differentiate between the look of a desktop and the underlying OS. If it looks and acts like the iPhone, do you really think he's going to be wondering what kernel and low level libraries are actually running?
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#25iPhone-based OS. I wonder if everything will have to go through an App-store? Annoying if so.
I don't see how it's anything other than a net positive, you gain in security and ease of use for consumers.
If you're more hacker minded like this audience is, it's extremely trivial to jailbreak - the distinction being that it is totally independent and not sanctioned by Apple whatsoever. This is an important point.
After working in user support I can totally empathise with Apple's decision to keep the platform closed via the App Store. A large majority of the people buying these phones (ie, normal users - not geeks) are the ones who voluntarily install spyware on their PC's, click yes to every dialog box they see and execute random email attachments without thinking twice. The iPhone by far has the biggest mindshare, and a very hefty market share of any mobile communications device yet, and probably one skewed toward people with a large disposable income. It's constantly connected to the internet, has a connection to the phone network with an unlimited tab conveniently linked to your credit card, knows where you are and even in which direction you're facing. It knows who you talk to, who your contacts are...etc. I could go on. The point is this device and it's associated popularity is a fucking goldmine for the sort of people who write malware.
The App Store and it's uncompromising restriction is the final solution to keeping this cesspool of a software "ecosystem" off the platform.
Even if Apple provided an "Advanced" setting which gains you root access on your device the malware writers would simply instruct the clueless user to enable it, and I KNOW that 99.9% of people would do it without hesitation, for the promise of nothing more than a cheap thrill. It's based on the same psychology as that study where an alarming majority of people would tell you their password for a chocolate bar.
Oooh, kittens!!! cue screaming and convenient lawsuits targeting high-profile Apple when their phone bill arrives with a $50,000 total
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#26iPhone-based OS. I wonder if everything will have to go through an App-store? Annoying if so.
I don't think there was ever a reasonable chance of anything else. I mean, if you're Apple, why do anything else? For the most part consumers clearly love to use the App Store. It has serious review process and barrier to entry issues, but those can be fixed over time (hopefully) and as long as there is an active audience, vendors will continue to come.
The problem is that there is a hell of a lot of general purpose software out there already that's never going to be worth the effort to port to a single device.
The iPhone has some nice apps, but runs nothing important to me in my professional life. And if the new tablet isn't going to be a useful work tool, why would I want it?
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#272 options: 1) Legally incompetent CEO of a major international corporation 2) Another controlled leak from Apple. Which do you think is more likely?
these are the guys that run the textbook market. ill go with option 1.
I have to disagree: have you seen the money students drop on textbooks lately? The whole market has consolidated and now makes books worthless after only a year or two (hence small secondary market) by releasing new revisions with different exercises in them. Maybe publishing at large doesn't know their business, but the textbook companies are minting money.
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#28Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#29He used the term 'tabloid' a couple of times. I've been doing a bit of trademark searches the past few days, so I just popped over and did one on the 'tabloid' trademark: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...
Look down at the prosecution history entries. There's a new entry for appointing a new attorney, just filed about a week and a half ago. Could be a coincidence, but then again...
Re: McGraw-Hill CEO: "The tablet is going to be just really terrific"
#30Jobs has got to be pissed.
Back in 2000 when ATI leaked information about a product, Apple promptly switched from ATI to nVidia GPUs for iMacs and Power Macs.
Jobs is not one to scorn. I can't imagine the reaction.