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

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

#181

Post by umut » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:09 AM UTC

This could be the big step for the developers' dream of using the actual target device as the host for developing(end-to-end toolchain and the debugging host of course). Success of open systems(both HW and SW) comes from this marginal-looking(huge in fact) idea. So, the hardware is there, but unfortunately they lack the determination. It is sad to see Apple performing even worse than MS on this very department.

I personally will insist on "not" buying any Apple product unless they develop a strategy to innovate(as they did in the past) instead of trying to monopolize the scene...

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

#182

Post by pyre » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:11 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #112

Scriptor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "can do the same as the above" I heartily disagree. There's a big difference, huge difference between "can barely" and "does it really fucking well". The iPad shoots for the latter (we'll see if it hits), the netbook's mere existence is predicated on the former. If your definition of "can do the same" means "someone willing to bang their head hard enough and willing to live with a substandard user experience can do…

> After the iPod, the Mac, and the iPhone, I don't think geeks still get why Apple is successful: they build devices that normal people actually want. I think there is some collective head-in-the-sand in the geek community because what people apparently want is not at all like what geeks want. The average user doesn't want freedom, doesn't want an open kernel, doesn't give a shit about standards, they want to have a slick, usable, and intuitive user experience, and so far netbooks are failing hard at it.

Just saying, but having an open kernel doesn't prevent Apple's user experience. If Apple were to post their source code to apple.com right now the iPad's user experience would not take an immediate nose-dive due to the universal law that "open source != good user experience." Please don't act like freedom and good user experience are mutually exclusive.

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

#183

Post by pyre » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:17 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #82

jwhitlark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You mean so that you can program it.

Oh, so programming it is the only thing that Apple limits? Wow it's more open than the iPhone! I can wait to install the iPad version of Opera!

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

#184

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:19 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #113

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.

Agreed. Few people went on about how miserable and useless and limiting the pocket calculator was.

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:24 AM UTC

swernli wrote: post #56

Goronmon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mistakingly comparing a closed system like the iPad to things like automatic transmissions. Of course not everyone wants to do lots of personal maintenance on their stuff or have lots of customizable features. But that's not how software development works. Everyone doesn't have to make their own software. A small subset of people create software that the rest use.

That's a good point that goes a long way to proving Apple right. Yes, a small subset of people create software that the rest use. And every day, that small subset desides what that software can and can't do. Apple decided what their software AND hardware can and can't do, because they make both. Apple never promised the world that all their hardware would be able to run arbitrary software. At the end of the day, for…

Apples hardware can already do more than they allow you to, apparently you can not make voicecalls with this 'high resolution iphone'.

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

#186

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:31 AM UTC

hristov wrote: post #111

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.

Good point. And to add to that in order to back in the computer business and come back from irrelevance, Apple had to progressively give up on everything that differentiated them from PCs except for the two things they are actually good at -- the gui and the nice shiny cases. And they had to make sure they could run most PC software. If apple think their iPhone success shows that people like closed systems, they are…

Yes! That is exactly what is wrong with this picture.

The Newton, just like any other tablet computer had a niche, vertical applications.

And it failed in that niche because of choices set in stone by the Apple team that developed it.

It wasn't open enough.

So, forward 21 years and we're in 2010, where we see a sequel to the Newton, running a proprietary OS on hardware that has been closed to the point where you can't even attach a USB stick.

I'm sure that lots more of these will be sold than there ever were sold of the Newton, but I doubt it will tap the potential of this form factor. For that it needs to be much more open and hackable.

This is just another remote terminal attached to the web, and more importantly for Apple, to itunes.

There is nothing wrong with remote web terminals, but as long as they are computers you should allow access to all that power, locking it and making it hard to put software on it is limiting, not enabling.

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

#187

Post by Maktab » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:31 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #152

mannkind wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, it's unfortunate that the system they want comes with apair of handcuffs. I guess there is nothing wrong with it if you don't notice it.

Restrictions only matter when they limit you from doing things you want to do. For the vast majority of consumers, the closed nature of the iPad isn't a restriction, it's a convenience.

We need to understand that the average HN reader is not the target market here. We're generally more technical and are willing to tolerate more complexity and maintenance in return for a greater level of freedom over our software and devices. The things we regard as important are not seen the same way by most people. They just want an appliance that makes the things they do every day as easy and hassle-free as possible.

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

#188

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:34 AM UTC

ptomato wrote: post #154

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.

If it weren't for Apple, Adobe wouldn't EXIST. Considering what Photoshop was first developed for and solely for Macs for several years. And the only reason Adobe even still bothers to develop for Mac is because of the very high percentage of the design community who are married to their Macs and won't use anything else. If I recall correctly, something like 40% of Photoshop installs are on Macs, which considering th…

No, it would mean that Photoshop would have been developed for PCs, or possibly for the workstation class machines of that era.

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

#189

Post by statictype » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 9:59 AM UTC

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…

>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 can I talk through 3 hours of trying to fix the damn thing.

Isn't this part of the reason why people went out and bought the desktop Macs? Because everything 'just works'?

Locked Down Platform seems to me to be completely uncorrelated to Easy To Use.

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

#190

Post by statictype » Thu, Jan 28, 2010, 10:03 AM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #12

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.

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…

>but this product was designed for the 99% of the people in this country instead. You're not the target audience.

Fair enough. But a not-insignificant chunk of that 99% is the friend or relative who asks you to write a small piece of software to do some calculation for them or some quick script or tool to automate some repetitive task. And then you have to sit and explain to them that this thing they bought isn't a real computer in the same way that their desktop was.