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A prescient footnote

blog.oddhead.com

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Re: A prescient footnote

#31

Post by rbanffy »

moxiemk1 wrote: post #29
alain94040 wrote: post #15

Very impressive. In 1994 (I think, I can't be sure of the date anymore), I wrote an article in MacWorld France where I said the combination of Apple's GUI with the Unix kernel had a promising future. I didn't know it would take another 10 years...

Something to that effect had been around for a while by then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX Apple has a wealth of fascinating abandoned projects.

When they fail, they fail with style.

I'd love to have an A/UX box.

Edit: didn't think of it this way when writing the above, but a unix kernel with an actual, Apple designed, Mac GUI on top was actually a failure... Go figure.

Re: A prescient footnote

#32

Post by rbanffy »

mcantor wrote: post #11
CUViper wrote: post #6

Perhaps Apple reads pg, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Does Apple read Hacker News? If Apple gives me a free iPhone 4, Microsoft will be in big trouble...

Just remember: Hold different.

http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/hold-different

Re: A prescient footnote

#35

Post by ry0ohki »

lenni wrote: post #22
patrickryan wrote: post #20

PG also made this statement in May 2009 (iPad released April 2010): What would be your dream setup? I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone... Source: http://paul.graham.usesthis.com

That's what he looks like? I don't know why I imagined PG to look a lot more like a bearded Unix-type ...?

yes, he is in fact Sir Paul McCartney's evil programming twin.

Re: A prescient footnote

#36

Post by jimbokun »

zackattack wrote: post #26
vlad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you knew a technology was going to take off, learning their programming language/API and becoming a well-known expert on it could pay great dividends. Additionally, you could work there to make contacts and learn even more. Finally, you could try to join their developer programs while they are still in beta. Note that unlike suggestions to purchase stock in the company, this advice applies to technology at private…

are humanized forms of indentured servitude legal anymore? for example, could you pay to send someone to the bignerdranch bootcamp to learn iphone dev, but then have some way of mitigating the risk that they don't then go ahead and auction their new skills, acquired at your expense, on the market?

Aren't these called non-competes?

Re: A prescient footnote

#37

Post by bdr »

patrickryan wrote: post #20

PG also made this statement in May 2009 (iPad released April 2010): What would be your dream setup? I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone... Source: http://paul.graham.usesthis.com

That's after pmarca let the cat out of the bag on Charlie Rose.

Re: A prescient footnote

#38

Post by seldo »

clemesha wrote: post #33

What about the 2nd comment on the post, by "Sean O"? Javascript/Ajax has been fundamental to "new-age" tech giants. See Google's Gmail.

A lot of JS on the web does still break all the time, to be fair. It's not like he predicted it would never improve.

Re: A prescient footnote

#39

Post by lambda »

Those footnotes have a mix of prescience and just plain wrong. For instance, there's one about how a good open source browser can fundamentally change the industry; and Firefox has in that time gained much ground and helped spur innovation in IE and across the web (as have WebKit and Chrome). However, Firefox was already underway by the time he wrote this, so that prediction isn't necessarily so forward looking.

His opposition to client-side software, though, is less prescient. He says that JavaScript may not be available when you can browse the web on your phone; but JavaScript support is now one of the distinguishing features of new smartphones. He says that writing client-side apps is a bad idea, but the popularity of client-side JavaScript is proving that wrong. Mostly, Java applets themselves were a bad technology, but client side code that integrates with the Web is a popular idea, in the form of Flash and JavaScript.

So yeah, there's one prescient quote in there, but some more that are wrong. And many people were hoping for an Apple iPod/phone for quite a while; see, for example, http://technologizer.com/2009/12/28/iphone-rumors/ (the first list of collected iPhone rumors I found in a google search).

Re: A prescient footnote

#40

Post by moxiemk1 »

rbanffy wrote: post #31
moxiemk1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something to that effect had been around for a while by then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX Apple has a wealth of fascinating abandoned projects.

When they fail, they fail with style. I'd love to have an A/UX box. Edit: didn't think of it this way when writing the above, but a unix kernel with an actual, Apple designed, Mac GUI on top was actually a failure... Go figure.

One of the old 68k Apple Workgroup Servers 95s would be awesome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Workgroup_Server
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