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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

#101

Post by chaostheory »

fnid2 wrote: post #87
chaostheory wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's what I refer to when I mentioned lost opportunity, the same goes for Nintendo with the advent of Genesis and PS one.

Apple and Nintendo aren't young start ups; they've been around for decades with closed systems. A closed system like iTunes is a big reason Apple has even gotten so successful in recent times; it works I.e they have made tons of money with a closed sys and they probably will continue to do so. Marketshare is another story.

Whether it makes geeks happy is also another story

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

#102

Post by netcan »

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 get what you are saying & I agree. There are huge advantages in doing things this Apple way. Your Mum gets to have something that works for her first, the 4% of people that have a preference for Thunderbird over Mail (just an example) because they like the way that it handles their profiles (again, just an example), well they are not the no. 1 concern. That makes sense. A product for the majority.

But, it is not just alarmist. The iphone has catalysed lots of innovation. Great innovation. This will too. It is all sanctioned innovation though. Unsanctioned innovation is important too. As things mature, it will become increasingly important.

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

#103

Post by GHFigs »

mcantelon wrote: post #93
NathanKP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define "power users".

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

#105

Post by DannoHung »

jpwagner wrote: post #96
DannoHung wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about you, but I am not a designer, I don't have years of experience creating usable interfaces. I do not have the ability to make a graphical user interface that is useful and intuitive.

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

#106

Post by ekanes »

lambda wrote: post #65
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…

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…

They'll still be invented, just somewhere else.

The iPhone is a good example of how this might play out. It's a locked-down system full of problems for developers, but that doesn't mean innovation in the phone industry stopped.

You had a dead/slow industry, Apple woke it up, and now everyone is moving forward quickly. The customer wins.

Open phone platforms like Android will enjoy growth because of that open platform, even if Apple remains closed.

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

#107

Post by jacquesm »

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.

It's a bit like cars.

Cars used to be 'user servicable', you could take them apart and put them back together again, or repair them with simple tools.

The further you integrate something the further away you get from 'user servicable'.

Due to emissions controls cars were equipped with injection systems and motor management, and then car manufacturers discovered 'lock-in', how to make money on obfuscation in stead of openness.

Computing is doing the exact same thing.

Gone are the simple serial and parallel interfaces, and in their place you get undocumented docking connectors and other 'magic'.

The only thing that keeps things open to some extent is the fact that the internet arrived just in time to save us from complete lock in hell. The protocols are standardized enough to let devices talk to each other.

So that's where you're going to find your new 'openness', at the protocol level.

Serverside it will take a long time to go 'closed', but on the client side I would expect to see more and more devices that are closed as much as possible.

Gaming hardware has already gone that way, mobile phones started out closed ('to protect the networks', as if client side security would be good enough for a carrier).

It's not a good development, but it will happen.

Tech savvy people can only push back by releasing their own open devices, the open source variety of hardware.

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

#109

Post by izendejas »

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…

Your third paragraph sums up the link very well. Yes, many customers win in the short-term, but they will lose in the long run. I'm one that thinks web apps are the future, anyway, so Apple's focus on specialized apps that can't be ported to other platforms very easily and without having to invest a whole lot up front is going to bite them hard.

When html5 matures and is more widely adopted, developers will sidestep the ridiculous shackles of the app store approval process... effortlessly. At that point, it'll be a competition between the best developed browsers and the most inexpensive mobile devices that will still deliver a very good experience. Google, I think, will come out on top then w/ Google Chrome OS.

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

#110

Post by tel »

I think the biggest obvious point people are missing is that Jobs intends many, many people to own a MacBook and an iPad. Probably an iPhone, too. They serve different niches in the ecology of your technological life.

(Oh, and if you've got some other laptop and pick up an iPad just how long do you think the average user will last before drooling a little more over the MacBook lineup?)

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