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

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

#81

Post by jwhitlark »

swannodette wrote: post #67
jwhitlark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I recommend you read this if you want a reminder about what the personal computer revolution is all about: http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-26-kay.pdf . The point is to get to the point where people actually give a damn about computers. As much as I love esoteric computer languages and UNIX, I don't consider those to be the paragons of the promise of computers.

That's not the point I get from the article. It talks about people being literate and able to create tools. It talks about power, not locked down narrow use tools.

EDIT: "We would like the Dynabook to have the flexibility and generality of this second kind of item[paper or clay], combined with tools which have the power of the first kind[cars, television sets]." I'd say they were aiming for inspiration AND power. I'd also argue that inspiration without power is worthless...

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

#82

Post by mattmanser »

jwhitlark wrote: post #71
scott_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand what you're saying, but the key is enabling . This device enables some things at the cost to many others. Mind you, I'm not saying it won't be cool, and I'm not saying it won't sell many units, (although I have my doubts). I'm just saying this isn't the logical conclusion to the personal computer revolution. A personal computer is, by definition, a general purpose computing device, which this most assure…

Only if you accept your very limited definition of enabling. You mean so that you can program it. I'm guessing most other people think it means so it can do loads of cool stuff without me having to speak in 1s and 0s.

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

#83

Post by Perceval »

GHFigs wrote: post #52
rodyancy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is monopoly In what market and by what definition?

Grandparent is probably thinking along the lines of a local monopoly, analogous to an old company town: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

The analogy is not perfect, since you can buy mp3s and movies and ebooks from other services. But on iPhones and iPads the barriers to getting content from non-iTunes sources is certainly higher than it otherwise would be on a regular Mac (or any other PC for that matter).

full disclosure: lifelong Apple user

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

#84

Post by enneff »

lambda wrote: post #57
telemachos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But, this isn't about giving the users freedom from choice; with 140,000 options in the App Store, that's a lot of choices. This is explicitly about locking developers down, and not allowing them to do things that Apple does not approve of. Want to write a competing web browser? Sorry, you can't. Want to write an awesome JIT that optimizes itself for their shiny new chip? No can do. Imagine if this policy had been in…

You could see it another way:

Want to write a competing web browser that will confuse people (why do I need another web browser?), no can do. It's a quality control issue.

The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad do specific things and do them well. They are not personal computers. They are web browsers, music players, calendars, etc. The customer is paying for a device that does these things. They don't want (or arguably need) a personal computer.

Why would you want to develop LLVM on an iPad? Do you honestly think that Apple would junk their desktop OS in favour of an App Store-driven laptop/desktop experience? Developers write code on personal computers. Apple is not a closed ecosystem because of this fact alone. There is room in Apple's world for 3rd party innovation - it's just not on their consumer products.

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

#85

Post by scott_s »

Scriptor wrote: post #78
scott_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netbooks, which are basically the same price or cheaper, can do the same as the above and are much less locked in. More immediately, they also have Flash support, multitasking, and USB ports. People still need more heavy-duty computers to do those other things as well as for non-leisure stuff. The advantage of an iPhone was that it was extremely portable and you could just pull it out on the bus to pass the time. The…

The iPad is a living room computer, a couch computer, a coffee-table computer. It won't live on a desk, it will live in the places in a house that people live in. The goal is not to replace desktop computers, but to supplement them.

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

#86

Post by NathanKP »

mcantelon wrote: post #79
coffeemug wrote: post #12

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…

Mac OS X is quite user friendly, yet isn't locked down. No need to lock a system down to make it usable.

The problem is that the iPad doesn't run Mac OS X, it runs the locked down iPhone OS. You can't run just anything on the iPad.

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

#87

Post by fnid2 »

chaostheory wrote: post #27
MrSartorial wrote: post #14

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…

"It works in the short term, but I believe it will bite them in the ass over the long-term." I disagree. Both Apple and Nintendo have shown proof that their closed 'circle of one' system works. Yes both of them have had a lot of big missed opportunities in the past because of this, but what matters more for these companies is profitability and not marketshare. Both Apple's and Nintendo's closed systems have led to la…

Apple has also shown that their closed 'circle of one' system does NOT work. That's why they lost to IBM/MS so long ago. Everything apple was proprietary and people went to PCs.

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

#88

Post by NathanKP »

david927 wrote: post #45
coffeemug wrote: post #12

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…

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.

There is an app for watching YouTube videos. In my opinion the app is even better than the YouTube website itself with its ads and trashy comments.

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

#89

Post by pbhjpbhj »

scott_s wrote: post #46
jwhitlark wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netbooks, to respond to the sibling comment, don't have large touchscreens.

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

#90

Post by andreyf »

mattmanser wrote: post #74
lambda wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, without an open platform, the new, innovative ways of working with this machine will never be invented. This is about far more than running your own Ruby scripts. It's about the fact that true innovation cannot exist in such an environment. And the problem is, you will not see what you're missing; people won't bother developing new technologies that have no platform they can legally run on. Would the We…

This is alarmist nonsense. The App store and the iPhone have fostered a colossal amount of innovation, and made a lot of normal non-techy people very, very happy. And a bunch of techies too. And in the end I hope it doesn't come down to open source advocates getting their way so they can install vim, but it being about my Mum being able to use it without having to phone me saying that it's all gone wrong again and ca…

I hope it doesn't come down to open source advocates getting their way so they can install vim

Installing vim isn't mutually exclusive from having a usable system.

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