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As compared to a computer, which pretty much everyone had by 1998. Also iPhone programming is way harder than HTML. I had a mandatory high school class that taught HTML.
Maybe I'm underestimating how many people are jumping on this, but my intuition is it can't be as many as were jumping on web. Twitter/social media marketing however... :P
That's true, iPhone apps aren't like Debian packages at all. iPhone apps are self-contained, sandboxed, can only access data that I allow them to, and if I delete them, every trace of them is gone. A Debian package on the other hand first of all has to pull 57 other packages in order to even work, each of which splatters hundreds of files of all kinds all over my filesystem, and if I uninstall a package, I can rest a…
What about the barrier to entry: $100 + a Mac + an iPhone. As compared to a computer, which pretty much everyone had by 1998. Also iPhone programming is way harder than HTML. I had a mandatory high school class that taught HTML. Maybe I'm underestimating how many people are jumping on this, but my intuition is it can't be as many as were jumping on web. Twitter/social media marketing however... :P
That's true, iPhone apps aren't like Debian packages at all. iPhone apps are self-contained, sandboxed, can only access data that I allow them to, and if I delete them, every trace of them is gone. A Debian package on the other hand first of all has to pull 57 other packages in order to even work, each of which splatters hundreds of files of all kinds all over my filesystem, and if I uninstall a package, I can rest a…
FUD: # remove package, its dependents _and_ purge config files aptitude purge # purge config files from items that were removed but not purged aptitude purge ~c And, to play Devil's advocate the other way around, because Debian's tools are not sandboxed, they can inter-operate sanely. You can, you know, share things, print them, move them around. It's as if - shocking - you own your own data. Imagine that. I work pre…
I think it's time for desktop OS makers (and that includes Apple, because OS X isn't any different from Linux or Windows in this regard at all) rethink the way software is installed and organized. In my opinion, the way you can install and try applications without consequences on iOS devices has a lot going for it. Users actually install stuff on their iPads, which they don't on their Windows computers because they're scared of unintended consequences.
Ehum.. What? Yeah there were a lot of shit webpages back in the day, but there was also what became came ebay, facebook, google, etc, etc. I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook..
There's no possible scale of values that you could use to evaluate this comparison. It's not even apples to oranges. It's like saying Facebook is doing better than beagles. The things don't fit into the same category at all.
Here's a random example: one of the Debian apps is aptitude. It manages packages on the command-line. If you are a Debian sys-admin, it very likely enormously important to you. Nevertheless, it makes zero sense to say it's "doing better than Facebook." That sentence is just meaningless.
Ehum.. What? Yeah there were a lot of shit webpages back in the day, but there was also what became came ebay, facebook, google, etc, etc. I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FUD: # remove package, its dependents _and_ purge config files aptitude purge # purge config files from items that were removed but not purged aptitude purge ~c And, to play Devil's advocate the other way around, because Debian's tools are not sandboxed, they can inter-operate sanely. You can, you know, share things, print them, move them around. It's as if - shocking - you own your own data. Imagine that. I work pre…
Well, I want to make a few things clear here. First of all, I was being a bit snarky obviously. I didn't know about "aptitude purge", but it's a bit ironic that when googling for that, the first result is a forum post about someone with orphaned config files that aptitude purge wouldn't remove... sounds reliable. I think it's time for desktop OS makers (and that includes Apple, because OS X isn't any different from L…
It sounds like you don't know Debian very well. That's fine. No reason you should. I know Debian reasonably well. I can tell you that in four years of using aptitude, I have found a very small number of edge cases where it does not work sanely, efficiently and helpfully. (To clarify it's really APT + aptitude. aptitude is one possible tool to use APT.) It's not perfect; no software is. But it's quite remarkable. I believe it to be a far better packaging system than anything available for OSX, including Homebrew - which I like a lot and which gets better all the time.
To respond to your follow-up, I deeply disagree about iOS representing a good future for software. The kernel already implements one filesystem - and that's a big job. Why would we want every application to have to reinvent that wheel? Worse yet, how we will we allow and help users to share data between all our little sandboxes if we go that route? I think the iOS sandboxing is a disaster and huge step backwards for software.
A final question: in your original post you say if you remove an iPhone app, no trace of it is left. How would you know? My point being that the system is so locked down, there's really no basis for us to know that. For all we know, iApps leave the drive cluttered with their configuration files and preferences. Maybe you develop for Apple and can show me I'm wrong (or someone else can), but as a user there's no real way for me to know this, is there?
Ehum.. What? Yeah there were a lot of shit webpages back in the day, but there was also what became came ebay, facebook, google, etc, etc. I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook..
You completely missed the point of the article.
The OP claims that 99.99% of all websites back in the day were shit, just like 99.99% of all iphone apps today are shit. He then makes a remark that suggests that Debian is a superior platform because the number of debian apps is small/manageable.
Now, I pointed out that out of the vast majority of shit of the early web came a bunch of valuable companies, and I conjecture that it was in part due to vast number of websites were built that it became _more_ likely that the web as a platform would be successful and that some websites would become hugely valuable.
From that I consider it a risky bet to say that the vast number of iPhone apps in itself makes the platform inferior.
I then finished off by pointing out that no debian _apps_ that I was aware of had in any way become as successful as a bunch of websites I could care to mention. Maybe it was that which confused you - they are separate but related points.
http://brianlane.com/software/nascar-iphone/
and it isn't even pretty.
Whether you believe the market is the next great thing or unsustainable, if it's trending up, that's money to be made.
Whether you think a widget is pretty or pretty ugly, it's money.
Whether you think the CEO is a genius or an idiot, if a company is going up, it's money. (And if you're positioned for and inclined for a put or with a CDS, a market or a business that's headed down can be money, too.)
Sure, the folks might eventually realize they're getting minimum wage, and that those fancy tulip bulks are all worthless. The key is stepping off before the bubble bursts.
Or you might wake up one morning, and realize that the business cycle has shifted, and iOS is everywhere.
Welcome to capitalism. Place your investments.