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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

#141

Post by hyperbovine »

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.

"I do not want to see computing head this direction."

I don't understand the tendency towards these Patrick Henry-esque statements (of which this is but one example.) The Apple ecosystem functions harmoniously, making my life simpler and more productive. To pull that off, that they necessarily have to erect barriers preventing everyone from coming in and screwing it up. Why is this viewed as such a terrible thing?

The assumption that all forms of freedom are equally important deserves a second look. The freedoms to speak my mind, criticize the government, (not) practice any religion I choose, and pursue happiness, are essential me as a human being. The freedom to install Firefox plugins, not so much. I mean really, who gives a hoot? If it works for you, use it; if not, don't. Either way, spare us the ominous, brooding prognostications...

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

#142

Post by hyperbovine »

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!

If it meant getting a car that was better than anything else on the market, many people would make that tradeoff. I value simplicity, design and functionality way more than the ability to run Flash, and I'm willing to pay slightly extra for it.

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

#144

Post by houseabsolute »

dannyr wrote: post #41
houseabsolute wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> UI is a matter of personal taste.

Like drug effectiveness, UI preference varies among individuals. But in the same way, it is no mere matter of personal taste.

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

#145

Post by fnid2 »

whyenot wrote: post #115
fnid2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it's at all clear that people "went to PCs" because the Mac was proprietary. Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example. The elephant in the room is the iPhone, where "circle of one" seems to be working extremely well. Maybe the model just needed some fine tuning.

Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example.

All of those issues are precisely because the Macs were proprietary. If they hadn't been proprietary, none of the issues that made them lose to PCs would have been issues and they may have won the war. In the 80's, every school bought Apple IIe's, so they had the foot in the door.

Then, under the leadership of Mr. Jobs, apple slammed the door shut on their foot and here they are doing it again -- also under Steve Jobs.

Steve is the problem. Eventually, they'll realize this and fire him again when people get tired of his antics.

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

#146

Post by mannkind »

chaostheory wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, this is what people like my mom and my sister want: something dead simple and easy to use like iPhone. Both OSX and Windows still give them a lot of trouble. It's hard to pair both freedom and flexibility with ease of use and simplicity.

Unfortunately? Yeah, how dare they want something different than you!

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

#147

Post by ecq »

It's really easy.

You use the iPad to:

- read a book - surf the web - organize/look at/show off photos - watch videos/movies/tv shows - listen to music - send/receive emails - play games - use maps/calendar and the 140k+ apps available in the app store

Anything else, use a Mac (or Windows/Linux).

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

#148

Post by blasdel »

GHFigs wrote: post #103
mcantelon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Power User:

1) An account that is a member of a default privileged group present in Windows 2000 through Windows 2003. Has the ability to install random crap and break everything, but not the ability to fix anything (unless they exploit their breakage ability to escalate privileges).

2) Someone who reads "top ten ways to..." articles on sites like Digg, Reddit, or Lifehacker and then blindly copy-pastes shit from 

 boxes into their terminal. They have no clue how anything works nor the facility to learn, but they sure are earnest and they love to evangelize! They'll seize any opportunity to apply their cargo-cult knowledge to help you with the problems they think you have. They love to defrag and "Repair Permissions", but don't have backups. They're the audience/creators of 'themes' and 'skins'.
Historically these people (largely adolescents) have been know-nothing partisan tweakers of Windows, Classic Mac OS, BeOS, Amiga, or any number of 8-bit home computer platforms. Recently Linux has become the cool thing to wank over -- compiz and Ubuntu helped a lot with that. The Hackintosh phenomenon has led to a lot of them defecting to Mac OS X.

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

#150

Post by brehaut »

adharmad wrote: post #31
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.

Apple has always treated developers in a step-motherly fashion. A few years ago, java was not supported on OSX (early versions).

Your claim regarding java on OS X does match my memory. I recall java beign one of the 3 core platform choices for developments on OS X since 10.0 (Cocoa, Java, Carbon).

Java still ships with Mac OS X (though you need to switch to 64bit java to enable the Java 6 version that ships).

The only thing apple have done regarding java is deprecate the Java-Cocoa bridge.

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