The problem with Apple is that if you use an iPhone, you are a smarmy cunt; if you don't use one, your a hater and a conformist.
The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
41–50 of 107 posts
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#42The hatred of linux on the desktop is terribly cliche, especially on a site targeted towards hackers. Linux on my desktop is the greatest development environment I've ever used, having played extensively with OSX and Windows as well. I can easily install new libraries and "apt-get source" allows me to tinker with existing software easily and immediately build and execute the results. All of the development environmen…
You completely missed the point of this article, which I find odd because the author clearly explained why he compared Android with desktop Linux. By "Linux on the desktop", he means Linux on regular Joe's desktop, not the hacker's desktop. The author agrees with you that Linux is made for people like you that want/need the extra control, etc, whatever. This is not what the majority are looking for in a desktop distr…
The only reason I don't recommend desktop Linux to people is that explaining ubuntu-restricted-extras to them is too much work. Other than that it 'just works' out of the box and anyone who is currently using Windows XP should upgrade.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#43While the article is correct that the iPhone was good on day one (not sure I'd say great) and Android was seriously lacking. I think it's fair to say now that Android and iPhone are running neck and neck. iPhone 4 leapfrogged Android, but note, they actually had to leapfrog Android.
The new Android devices (EVO and Samsung Galaxy in particular) are just as good, if not better in some respects than the iPhone. Froyo as an OS is better and worse than iOS4. And from what I've heard about Gingerbread,I think Android will again take a lead against the iPhone.
I think the real difference between Android and Apple is that Apple is good at finding a market and coming out with a compelling product. That's in their DNA. But what is also in their DNA is their ability to lose that market due to slow innovation after day one. The only real exception here is the iPod. And they won that battle on fashion as much as technology and UX.
If I were Apple I'd be really worried about Android. I think it's conceivable that iPhone sales could plummet in a given year. I plan on getting a Galaxy phone as my next one.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#44Just because iPhone doesn't have a physical keyboard - doesn't make physical keyboards evil. Similar logic for trackball. I have tried using physical keyboard on Blackberry and I felt pretty comfortable. I bet other manufacturers would come out with better physical keyboards. My flatmate has a Thinkpad with a trackball. Initially it was pretty tough to control it. Trackball and physical keyboard isn't bad just becaus…
The red thing on Thinkpads is called trackpoint (or clit, for simplicity). Trackballs are entirely different animals, it is a ball that you move (if you remember old ball mouses, it is basically ball mouse turned on its back, with bigger ball).
This post was brought to you by Thinkpad, with trackpoint as a sole pointing device ;).
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't just copy photos off it unless you go through the right software. Plug it in to a windows pc, it appears as a read only drive with your pictures / videos on it for 'just' copying off.
* I don't have windows * Read only? lame Having a microSD card, and being able to mount it r/w mass storage from anything, is pretty nice. It's irritating that Apple don't recognize things like that.
It actually uses PTP protocol for transferring photos.
Once upon time I was trying to get data out of iPhone, that was paired to iTunes on a harddrive that went into the big bucket in the sky. To my surprise, connecting it to the Ubuntu box allowed me to copy out all the data I cared for, without any wonky iTunes.
But I agree with you, having microSD or at least USB mass storage is much better.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#46The hatred of linux on the desktop is terribly cliche, especially on a site targeted towards hackers. Linux on my desktop is the greatest development environment I've ever used, having played extensively with OSX and Windows as well. I can easily install new libraries and "apt-get source" allows me to tinker with existing software easily and immediately build and execute the results. All of the development environmen…
You completely missed the point of this article, which I find odd because the author clearly explained why he compared Android with desktop Linux. By "Linux on the desktop", he means Linux on regular Joe's desktop, not the hacker's desktop. The author agrees with you that Linux is made for people like you that want/need the extra control, etc, whatever. This is not what the majority are looking for in a desktop distr…
I run the web site for a friend who has an antique book store here in Padova. He is not a power user kind of guy. And his friend put Ubuntu on his laptop after he got sick of getting viruses and random problems. So far, he's quite happy with it - which honestly surprised me, because I don't really push people to convert to Linux (I don't like doing desktop support). It's surprisingly good these days, though, and continues to improve.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#47I disagree with his assertion that 'great since day one' is unequivocally better than the other - if I can get something earlier, but it's a little rougher around the edges, that's often better - particularly since having something out in the wild where people use it early means you can get good feedback to help you improve the product and avoid horrible untested issues slipping through (a certain antennae issue springs to mind).
Other than that though, his use of 'copy and paste' as an example is something that really depends on perspective. He argues that 'copy and paste' is a single isolated feature, and that Apple waited until they could make it great since day one. However, if you looked at 'copy and paste' as merely an element of a larger system, then launching that system without one of it's key features makes it not so 'great since day one'.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#48I've always admired some of the things marco writes about, this is not one of them. While article is a depressingly one-sided article (marco's prerogative, totally fine with me), he misses a very big point, that for the sake of full disclosure should at least be expounded upon beyond a dry-wit analogy to Desktop Linux. Android and iOS are moving in two different directions, and have benefits for two different crowds.…
Speaking of having benefits for different crowds: when he mentioned the "why-is-this-here moments" his inability to understand that different people like different things became pretty clear. Why is it so hard to believe that some people may actually want a physical keyboard? Yes, it typically makes the phone bulkier and/or uglier, but for some people the extra utility it provides is worth it. Apple's approach has of…
Yeah, when he listed the physical keyboard as a "why is this here" example, I knew the guy had nothing to say that was of any value to me.
I certainly have no problem with people liking the Apple Way (typing this on a 13" MBP, charging my iPad in the other room), but I find it endlessly annoying when someone feels incredulous that someone else might want something outside the strictly-defined Apple bounds.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#49The hatred of linux on the desktop is terribly cliche, especially on a site targeted towards hackers. Linux on my desktop is the greatest development environment I've ever used, having played extensively with OSX and Windows as well. I can easily install new libraries and "apt-get source" allows me to tinker with existing software easily and immediately build and execute the results. All of the development environmen…
You completely missed the point of this article, which I find odd because the author clearly explained why he compared Android with desktop Linux. By "Linux on the desktop", he means Linux on regular Joe's desktop, not the hacker's desktop. The author agrees with you that Linux is made for people like you that want/need the extra control, etc, whatever. This is not what the majority are looking for in a desktop distr…
I think it's a little harsh to say that I "completely missed the point" of this article. I get it -- Apple products are very polished and carefully designed and the Android lacks that polish but is feature rich. Is that an accurate description, or did I completely miss something else?
Marco is a developer with some very successful products, and I really respect his work. I feel that makes him influential in the hacker community and this post did make it rather high on HN. However, respecting Apple's products has gone too far when I can barely tell it from a PR piece. I don't know what it is, but it's not news.
I really don't want to begin discussing regular Joe's desktop experience -- summarizing people into 2 camps trivializes the actual wants and needs of a computer user. What I can tell you is that on a site devoted to hacker news, this post seems like 'dog bites man' with an easy shot at a strawman.
I don't mean this to be a biting criticism. As a developer, I just wish that I had started using linux earlier because I would have learned a lot more and it would be more second nature. Out there, someone 10 years younger than me is being turned off from using linux on the desktop because of posts like this, and that's a shame.
Re: The difference between iPhone + Android: Great since day one
#50I strongly believe that desktop Linux is just waiting for a paid, commercially supported variant that comes with limited, supported hardware options. That is, like Apple. Vertical integration.
OS X is different ... it is based on Darwin, which is a kernel inheriting parts from BSD ... but Apple fully controls its development and Darwin maintains binary compatibility. Also when they released OS X, they also distributed it with a compatibility layer for older OS 9 apps, and they also shipped the Carbon APIs for legacy code. Unfortunately the Linux kernel itself breaks binary compatibility quite often, so you…
Mac OS breaks compatibility too, so there is nothing that could be better than on Linux side.
Actually, if you really care, you can still run a.out and glibc5 ELF userland binaries on Linux. On the other side, any m68k or ppc for classic apps are no-go on OSX, as well as some ppc-for-osx. Also for third party drivers, you need version for specific OSX point release, they are not generally very compatible.
There are also entire classes of hardware that are unusable on OSX, period. (I remember wasting particularly lot of time on trying to get IrDA run on OSX with a little bit more than just IRCOMM. On Linux, it worked out of the box.)