Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#191

Post by krschultz » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:14 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #157

krschultz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General Motors did some cool research projects with fuel cell cars, their core products are still gas guzzling trucks. When you say Apple which comes up in people's mind first, the iPhone, or Clang? Seriously.

I don't know about GM, but I have clang on my OS X right now and I can tell Xcode to use it. When you say "compiler" which comes up in people's mind first? I'd bet it's "WTF?".

What come's up in developers mind first?

If you say Apple, even developers are going to talk about the iPhone, iPad or Macbook Pro before they get to any of that stuff.

If you say compilers and they somehow get to LLVM, how is it an Apple project? Because they hired some devs? That started years before Apple got involved. Is RoR an EngineYard project because some guys at EY worked on it? Is linux a google project because they hired some guys to work on it? And I highly doubt people are going to get all the way down to clang.

If people mention Webkit, few forget it is a fork of KHTML first.

If developers talk about the Mac OS X kernel they're going to at some point bring up BSD.

Apple is for open development only when it benefits them. And they are bad partners in it. They write bad software in general for other platforms.

We're not losing the forest because of the tree. It is a forest of trees that piss people off, and this just lit a match to the whole thing. If you found a couple flowers in there you like, it doesn't exonerate the forest. And frankly most of your examples are reasons to DISLIKE apple. Did you read Webkit's last release?

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#192

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:16 PM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #150

cousin_it wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's proportional to market share. I think we both agree that such a move would be immoral for a monopolist (making developers stupid... stifling progress... blah blah). Assume it causes X amount of moral harm. Then someone with 50% market share would cause X/2 moral harm by the exact same mechanisms. 1% market share, X/100 moral harm. Think of it as voting for Hitler: less evil than being Hitler, but still evil.

Sorry, but I still don't see it. The owner of a store has a moral obligation to sell all possible goods in that store? If I have a grocery store, I need to sell every possible foodstuff? I'm not allowed to decide that I want to sell only Organic produce?

Think of the company store in a little West Virginia mining town in the pre Union days.

But the analogy actually supports your position: it's clear that there are other app stores out there.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#193

Post by krschultz » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:17 PM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #158

krschultz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a good analogy. Those selling non-organic produce have plenty of other places to take their goods. They are commodities. Anyone who has invested in a language layer technology can't do that. You can't take your Flash -> Objective-C compiler and sell it anywhere else. Apple just forced you to lose all of your investment for no good reason. It's like offering communal grazing areas. A bunch of ranchers decid…

But Apple never offered a "communal grazing area". The iPhone has been a closed platform from day one, and everybody developing for the iPhone already had a metric buttload of restrictions on them. If the ranchers decided to move their cattle to an area in the hopes that they might find communal grazing available, well, they took a risk, and lost. That's business. Sellers of non-organic produce have plenty of other p…

You still haven't grasped that you are comparing commodities to non-commodities. If you just invested a bunch of time into a source to source translator for the iPhone, you can't just take that somewhere else. It is entirely useless elsewhere. Of course Apple doesn't HAVE to accommodate these people, but it is an egregious move for both developers and the users. I don't actually see what the gain is for Apple from this other than slighting Adobe.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#194

Post by Zak » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:21 PM UTC

theli0nheart wrote: post #161

Zak wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$ ghc --make helloworld.hs $ strings helloworld|grep ghc|wc -l 19 $ csc helloworld.scm $ strings helloworld|grep chicken|wc -l 1 There are more telltales that might be harder to mask. Other tools have similar giveaways. It wouldn't be hard to set up an automated test for the most common ones.

Right but I'm assuming that these 3rd party tools are actually converting code to Objective-C / C / C++ and then compiling...is that right?

I think that's true for some tools and not others. csc converts Scheme in to C and then compiles it with the local C compiler. There are specific markers that will exist in every binary compiled with Chicken. Some of them are ASCII and easy to spot by hand by running strings on the binary, but I suspect there are also binary sequences that appear in every program compiled this way.

It would also be possible to look at data structures in memory and detect patterns of access common to specific cross-compilation tools or abstraction libraries.

These techniques don't produce proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but no such proof is required; Apple can and will reject applications that don't meet its standards.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#195

Post by krschultz » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #151

krschultz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they just prevented them from shipping software by default. No OEM was going to say, you know what, Netscape is more important to me than being in business. That's just a business deal. But as a user you could always just install it yourself. It was all about market share, there was no actual limitations on the device. This is about materially impacting WHAT YOU CAN DO ON THE DEVICE, as both a user (certain apps…

What Microsoft did was in fact so much worse than what Apple is doing that the DOJ sued them for it and won. I think the reason for the vitriol on this particular issue is that Apple is doing something that computer geeks don't think is correct, and computer geeks can't handle it when people do things "wrong".

Your first statement can't be judged yet. If all Microsoft had ever done was the IE thing, they wouldn't have sued. They had a pattern of anti-competitive behavior and that was the most egregious and well documented example so the DOJ went with it. Apple over the last few years has been fairly anti-competitive, this won't push it over the edge but it is another straw on the camel's back. So lets look back in 10 years and see what happened.

And the 2nd statement could be applied to the whole Opera sueing MS over browsers in the EU recently, or even the IE/Netscape thing back in the day.

Honestly I think it is more people don't like being told they have to waste time and money giving up projects/products they started and learning the tools Apple is arbitrarily forcing them to use. That is money out of people's pocket and you will find that pisses people off a lot more than anything else.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#196

Post by warfangle » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:24 PM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #159

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are largely right, but don't forget that this pragmatic business view of the world does not dominate every phase in every hacker's life. Apple would be well advised to take note of the emotional sea change that helped sweep IBM and later Microsoft from their all powerful positions. Being hated is not a good position to be in for anyone, regardless of how powerful they may be at one point in time.

Was it Microsofts business practices that brought it down a few notches? or was it their lack of quality products? Currently, business decision makers are likely looking at the market penetration/mindshare of iPhone vs Android. However, in the coming months, I suspect we'll see a few points which steer businesses away from the iPhone. 1)you'll be able to develop apps to run on Android, WinMo 7, RIM and Palm, all like…

"Was it Microsofts business practices that brought it down a few notches? or was it their lack of quality products?"

Their business practices gave us a reason to hate them; their low quality products gave us a reason to not buy them (many people hated them before that as a company; the lowering of quality and the rise of competitors gave them the impetus to switch away losing MS market share).

I'm not sure if the former was causative of the latter, but the likelihood of that being true is high.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#197

Post by rimantas » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

vegashacker wrote: post #33

tptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled, since Apple has been shutting off fundamental techniques in computer science since day one. Today it's Flash compilers. Yesterday it was access to the filesystem, things that run in the background, etc.

Yes, denying filesystem access (well, raw filesystem access--Apple gives you access to the "Documents" directory, etc), may be offensive to some, but for me this falls under the category of "sure, it'd be nice if it did more, but I'm not gonna be mad about it." The TI-82 programmable calculator didn't allow me to reprogram my keys or to redefine the built-in math operations, but that didn't make me love that device a…

  It's kind of like saying, "Don't program in a
  functional style", or "Use a model view controller
  architecture." Uhm, excuse me? I'll decide that for
  myself, thank you very much!

I have some more examples, it is also like saying:

  The easiest thing to do, is to simply refuse to
  open any documents created with Microsoft Office
  and Apple iWork, and then to send a short, friendly
  email to whoever sent you the document, asking them
  to send it again in OpenDocument format

Source: http://www.fsf.org/news/campaigns/opendocument/reject

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#198

Post by jcnnghm » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:36 PM UTC

fab13n wrote: post #64

warfangle wrote: post #17

While this sucks for iPhone developers who want to branch out / use other languages (clojure, etc), it might persuade these developers to move over to the Android platform. Especially given the several Android tablets forthcoming...

Apple is of course conscious of this trade-off (attractiveness of the platform+customer base vs. unattractiveness of being treated like shit by Apple). The thing is, they can easily back off when they will have to : today, most app developers won't snob the iPhone even if they're treated miserably. If they can't afford Android+iPhone portability, most of them will choose iPhone-only over Android-only. If/when a compe…

If they can't afford Android+iPhone portability, most of them will choose iPhone-only over Android-only.

I'd agree with you, except for one thing. I developed an enhanced version of my app for Titanium with many new features. The idea was that I would be able to quickly upgrade my iPhone app, and as a bonus might build an Android app. Now that this has happened, I've already invested all the time and money to make the conversion, and I'm not back-porting to Objective-C. I'll release the new, significantly better version of my app on the droid. If Apple comes to their senses, I'll release it there too.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#199

Post by wvenable » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:38 PM UTC

thenduks wrote: post #188

wvenable wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is only that I don't see what there is to complain about. I wouldn't complain about this any more than I would about not being able to write apps for my current crappy cellphone. Really? When I had a crappy cellphone, I complained that the WAP browser was constrained to my provider's walled garden. I managed to crack it enough get out and even write my own WAP applications. So not only did I complain, I di…

I think you've touched on our disconnect. I'm not complaining about your complaining - I don't think you should stop or anything like that. I'm simply voicing my opinion just like you are. It's all good. On to your points. If I was upset at my phone's browser (and believe me, my phone's browser shouldn't even be called a browser) I would just look for a better phone, one with a browser I liked. Same with the DVD play…

> It is true that I'd prefer to write an iPhone app in Ruby than in Objective-C. I just don't think that my preference is Apple's problem.

I think we've touched on another disconnect. I don't think it's Apple's problem either -- it's our problem. We're still working out just how big of a problem this is for us. For you, the problem is no Ruby.

> This could come back to bite them, but then again it might not.

I don't really care if it bites them or not. I'm not trying to give them a friendly suggestion. I don't think they care. I just think it's a crappy thing to do.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#200

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #193

michael_dorfman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Apple never offered a "communal grazing area". The iPhone has been a closed platform from day one, and everybody developing for the iPhone already had a metric buttload of restrictions on them. If the ranchers decided to move their cattle to an area in the hopes that they might find communal grazing available, well, they took a risk, and lost. That's business. Sellers of non-organic produce have plenty of other p…

You still haven't grasped that you are comparing commodities to non-commodities. If you just invested a bunch of time into a source to source translator for the iPhone, you can't just take that somewhere else. It is entirely useless elsewhere. Of course Apple doesn't HAVE to accommodate these people, but it is an egregious move for both developers and the users. I don't actually see what the gain is for Apple from th…

[deleted]