Live data from Hacker News

How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

createdigitalmusic.com

41–50 of 202 posts

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#41
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"design will be shit"? I think that the Nexus One has eliminated that argument.

Only if the appearance of the physical hardware is all you care about.

Are you referring to the UI?

UI is a matter of personal taste.

I have an Android phone (G1) and just recently bought an IPod Touch.

I don't like the Touch's navigation. Sure, UI is beautiful but having an extra button would have definitely enhanced the navigation.

Android may have overdone it with 5+ buttons but I'll take that over just 1.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#42
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos, look at photos of their kids/grandkids, send e-mails to their relatives oversees, and read their favorite books on it, all without the need for a "computer-savvy guy" who has to teach them how it works, and fix it when it's broken. In other words, it's a logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution. I understand you need to run your Ruby scripts, but this…

And how do you get that stuff on it without being able to plug in a USB drive?

The iTunes stores! It is monopoly at its finest. Apple could eventually half the price if the masses by their books and software and rent or buy their movies all from Apple.

Eventually, there will be an iPad to Apple TV interface, and they can cut out the cable companies too.

Scary now that I think about it.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#43

That Apple is creating a closed system is of little surprise. Steve Jobs is all about control. It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term. Making use of a closed-system and trying to be the best in a category assumes that you have access to the most brilliant minds in that field, and the most brilliant marketing campaign. What makes Apple great? Well, they can control ev…

> People hate being held down, forced into one category, etc. Here's an alternative take on this (with a story). I recently saw Thomas Keller (chef and owner of Per Se here in NYC and French Laundry in CA, among others) talking about a new-ish restaurant of his in CA, Ad Hoc. Ad Hoc has no menus. They make meals and serve them family style. You take what you want from the dishes provided. You have choice only within…

I actually agree with you 100% that people love something that's easy to play with. That's what I meant when I said that Apple's simplicity is their strength. What I'm talking about is a difference between "open" turnkey and "closed" turnkey.

I love turnkey, and so do a lot of people. Who wants to fuss with installing new software, etc.? That's my perspective.

Closed-systems are much easier to make turnkey, but they aren't the only alternative.

Just because something is open, doesn't mean that it can't be simple. It CAN be tinkered with, but it doesn't have to be to make it work.

That response is shorter than I'd like, but I have to run unfortunately.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, how many people were sad when gearbox in their car went from stick to auto, when choke control disappeared, when you could no longer tinker with carburetor, because it was gone. There will always be two groups of people, one group of those wanting to hack things, and another, much much larger group of those who want just use them. For every one John who wants to chip his car engine there will be five millio…

Wrong analogy, I think. There is an important difference between desire to tinker and desire to control. I don't tinker with my car, but I'm not going to allow the manufacturer to dictate who must repair it, where I must buy gas, which roads I can use... Apple reminds me of homeland security, but prettier!

I'm not sure you've killed the metaphor yet.

Because, in fact, the sale of gas is subject to a great deal of regulation. That's to prevent someone from selling you adulterated gas that destroys your car's emission system. Or from selling you leaded gas that pollutes the air that our kids have to breathe.

And the reason the manufacturer doesn't need to enforce your use of the roads is that it's already being enforced by a higher authority. We have cops for that. And they very much do dictate that you keep your car on public roads, and not go driving off across someone else's lawn, or the National Mall.

If you think these extensions to the metaphor make no sense, you're missing the elephant in the room: Personal computers are insecure, and the average web surfer is more likely (probably, alas, by an order of magnitude) to have their computer steal their credit card numbers or grind to a halt under a flood of malware than they are to crack open the box or write a single line of code. An enormous number of people don't want the freedom I want, any more than they want to own an acetylene torch.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#45

This post adequately sums up my concerns. Here we have a device that doesn't support USB thumbdrives, doesn't support dropbox (at least system-wide, I assume the dropbox iphone app would work), is unable to run ruby or any of my other dev scripts/tools, cannot install firefox or firefox plugins, etc. I do not want to see computing head this direction.

My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos, look at photos of their kids/grandkids, send e-mails to their relatives oversees, and read their favorite books on it, all without the need for a "computer-savvy guy" who has to teach them how it works, and fix it when it's broken. In other words, it's a logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution. I understand you need to run your Ruby scripts, but this…

My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos

Oh, but they can't because those are on YouTube and it doesn't do Flash. Simple doesn't have to mean purposely disabled to make more money.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos, look at photos of their kids/grandkids, send e-mails to their relatives oversees, and read their favorite books on it, all without the need for a "computer-savvy guy" who has to teach them how it works, and fix it when it's broken. In other words, it's a logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution. I understand you need to run your Ruby scripts, but this…

The logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution is the person doesn't control their device?! That's not revolutionary; that's a return to the bad old days...

Yes, because most people don't want a device. They want to be able to watch videos, read books and listen to music. The enabling device is incidental.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#47
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad, mom, grandma, and grandpa can watch videos, look at photos of their kids/grandkids, send e-mails to their relatives oversees, and read their favorite books on it, all without the need for a "computer-savvy guy" who has to teach them how it works, and fix it when it's broken. In other words, it's a logical conclusion of the personal computer revolution. I understand you need to run your Ruby scripts, but this…

And how do you get that stuff on it without being able to plug in a USB drive?

How do you get the text you're reading right now on your computer without being able to plug in a USB drive?

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#48
I know of no other company that can charge $100 for 16GB of flash memory. Differentiating on real features like 3G is good and expected. Differentiating on commodity hardware like memory is unfair.

With the ubiquity of SD and micro SD and need for more and more storage due to the explosion of digital media, they don't even provide a port. Obviously, they don't provide a port because it would destroy their product line. When you have the cheapest digital electronics providing these ports and high-end hardware like the iPod/Phone/Pad not providing it, that says a lot. It says "we don't care about anything except our product the money in your wallet."

It's ironic that MS gets so much flack from developers in the OSS purist and Apple fanbois camps about their closed products. They've always been the most open from the hardware perspective and they've always been great to developers. Apple is just the opposite.

If we care about an open future in computing, we need to think clearly about which platforms to develop for.

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#49

This post adequately sums up my concerns. Here we have a device that doesn't support USB thumbdrives, doesn't support dropbox (at least system-wide, I assume the dropbox iphone app would work), is unable to run ruby or any of my other dev scripts/tools, cannot install firefox or firefox plugins, etc. I do not want to see computing head this direction.

I wonder, how many people were sad when gearbox in their car went from stick to auto, when choke control disappeared, when you could no longer tinker with carburetor, because it was gone. There will always be two groups of people, one group of those wanting to hack things, and another, much much larger group of those who want just use them. For every one John who wants to chip his car engine there will be five millio…

What's wierd about what you've just said is that you obviously don't have a web tablet -- a Nokia N810, a Samsung Q1, a Viliv S5, a UMID mbook... ?

What really makes the iPad any more special, especially considering the price?

Please don't say the UI, as it's not so well loved by everyone...

Re: How A Great Product Can Be Bad News: Apple, iPad, and the Closed Mac

#50
post #29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"design will be shit"? I think that the Nexus One has eliminated that argument.

Really? Everyone I know who has used one says that bottom touch bar is a PITA. It keeps getting hit by accidental touches. Speaking of which, if you have a touch screen, why do you need that many hardware controls?

I'd much rather have a device with lots of hardware controls and a touchscreen, so that I can control the device without looking at it, or even taking it out of my pocket.

That said, the bottom touch bar was an absolutely terrible idea; I don't know how that made it through dogfood testing. Closed vs. open aside, what makes Apple unique is that they would have scrapped such a design and started over. We can only guess how many design iterations it took to result in the iPad.

Post reply on HN