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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

#91

Post by GHFigs »

jwhitlark wrote: post #28
rimantas wrote: post #16

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!

And yet when you go to a restaurant you order off the menu.

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

#92

Post by greyman »

sscheper wrote: post #36

In my mind: For surfing the web: iPad > netbooks For reading books: Kindle > iPad

Exactly.

So what to buy? I currently own a netbook, and while I like the device, for longer ebook reading and surfing, having the keyboard part is impractical. And I don't want Kindle, since I do a lot of reading in the dark room, and don't like the external lamp solution.

Overall, I am finding iPad to be a kind of product I'd like to have, but will probably buy similar alternative with Win7 or Android/Chrome OS.

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

#93

Post by mcantelon »

NathanKP wrote: post #86
mcantelon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. The locking down is unnecessary. It hinders power users and prevents those who would become power users from having the option to do so.

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

#94

Post by mlinsey »

mildweed wrote: post #70

If I were Adobe, I'd be furious. Exclusion of Flash from this platform is a slap in the face, despite Jobs' perspective of how it would break his App Store model. If it weren't for Adobe focusing their Creative Suite development on Jobs' platforms, Apple wouldn't have had the design community's support that it had for so many years. Apple owes Adobe.

Apple made a major investment in Adobe back in the '80s, if I'm remembering Triumph of the Nerds correctly. That's how Mac really became the platform for artists, etc. I don't think Apple "owes" Adobe anything.

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

#95

Post by jonny_noog »

Scriptor wrote: post #64
GHFigs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That just means a device for people who have very few technical skills will need a near-constant and perfectly working internet connection to be passably useful.

I would classify myself and quite technically skilled, and I still need a near-constant and perfectly working Internet connection to be passably useful. :P

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

#96

Post by jpwagner »

DannoHung wrote: post #40
jpwagner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then make a better one

Such a false dichotomy. "Oh, you're critical of this thing that you don't like? BET YOU CAN'T DO ANY BETTER!" "No thanks, I have more money than time, I think I'll just spend the bux on the thing that does do it better"

i wasn't being sarcastic. we're mostly makers here, not only consumers.

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

#97

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sjs wrote: post #11
zacharypinter wrote: post #2

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.

Nothing that currently exists is going away even if this becomes popular. Devices that run other systems will emerge with time. Mainly because this does 100% of what most people want to do with a computer.

Kindle, Nook, etc.?

If it were open, had a camera, I'd be interested in it as a portable POS.

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

#98

Post by actf »

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…

>it being about my Mum being able to use it without having to phone me saying that it's all gone wrong again

You're confusing correlation with causation. The fact that your Mum has been unable to use devices in the past is not _caused_ by the devices being open platforms. Lots of people can't even operate a dvd player and they are certainly locked down devices. Being easy to operate and being locked down are mutually exclusive.

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

#99

Post by jwhitlark »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #44
jwhitlark wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, like all metaphors, it's only an approximation. However, the laws don't dictate that I keep my car on public roads, they dictate what I do with my car when I'm not on my property. And while those laws are enforced by a higher authority, if you follow the chain up in a democracy, you come to me again, in theory.

To your other point, Windows is insecure, not personal computers. A true personal computer is/would be owned by me, not a corporation, not a hacker.

Hmmm... Seems to me I've seen this freedom vs. security argument elsewhere...

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

#100

Post by swannodette »

jwhitlark wrote: post #81
swannodette wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But you have to be inspired to make great tools- the medium itself must be inspiring. That was the whole point of Dynabook, tools that are inspiring enough to want to change them, figure out how they work. I'm sure there are many young hackers looking at the iPad thinking, "man I want to make some great stuff for that!". I know I'm thinking that.

When I look at a shitty netbook what am I supposed to be inspired about? Tinkering with Linux is no future of computing- it's nigh time to get out of that pipe dream.

Though, I expect and look forward to Linux to be installed on the thing within two weeks of it getting to the stores ;)

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