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A prescient footnote

blog.oddhead.com

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Re: A prescient footnote

#71

Post by mkramlich »

bitwize wrote: post #58

Alan Kay was heard to have said something along the lines of "Give this a 9-inch screen and you'll take over the world" when he first saw an iPhone. My favorite one of these was from my favorite music band, The KLF, who after the success of "Doctor in the TARDIS" decided to write a book called The Manual, Or How to Have a Number One the Easy Way , which explains, as it says on the tin, how to go about producing a hit…

I can't believe you didn't end that post with a suspiciously innocent-looking link.

Re: A prescient footnote

#72

Post by commandar »

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...

Not to be argumental, but I feel that 1994 era Macintosh and OS X are quite different beasts UI wise. I can't stand Classic; I love OS X.

That said, I do like the things Gnome lifted from Classic, I'm just not sure that your predicition bares out beyond a superficial examination.

Re: A prescient footnote

#73

Post by gxti »

presidentender wrote: post #2

Suppose you've made such a prediction about a tech company. How do you act on it? You can buy stock, of course, but is there a more powerful action available?

Prediction markets. They're like an elaborate, worldwide bet. Shame they're not government-sanctioned; a world with ubiquitous prediction markets would be interesting indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market

Re: A prescient footnote

#74

Post by kragen »

jluxenberg wrote: post #66
bitwize wrote: post #58

Alan Kay was heard to have said something along the lines of "Give this a 9-inch screen and you'll take over the world" when he first saw an iPhone. My favorite one of these was from my favorite music band, The KLF, who after the success of "Doctor in the TARDIS" decided to write a book called The Manual, Or How to Have a Number One the Easy Way , which explains, as it says on the tin, how to go about producing a hit…

Ironically, Scratch (graphical programming tool for kids), which uses Alan Kay's Squeak language was removed from the App Store presumably because it violated 3.3.2. ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1268382 ) Even more ironically, Squeak is a derivative of Smalltalk-80, a Smalltalk implementation that a research group at Apple released.

To clarify: Smalltalk-80 was released by a research group at PARC. Squeak was released by a research group at Apple. And then later a research group at Disney.

Re: A prescient footnote

#75

Post by stcredzero »

A conversation several jobs ago, well before the iPhone:

Engineering Manager: Well, mobile is obviously a next big thing.

Me: You know what would be hot? If you could be listening to your MP3, then you get a call and the music fades out into your call. Then when the call ends, it fades back in. That would sell like hotcakes.

Engineering Manager: [Looks at me like I'm an idiot]

Re: A prescient footnote

#77

Post by Tichy »

bitwize wrote: post #65
gabrielroth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By two decades these guys anticipated mashups and the Rickroll. No. The people who bought the single in 1987 were responding to the song very differently from the people who turned it into an internet meme 20 years later. The passage you quote describes the former; it doesn't predict the latter.

True, but if the song weren't as singularly, brilliantly catchy as it is it probably wouldn't have legs as a meme.

I thought it has become a meme because it is so annoying.

Re: A prescient footnote

#78

Post by lambda »

philh wrote: post #69
lambda wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In 1995, when we started Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be the technology everyone was going to use to develop server-base applications. Applets seemed to us an old-fashioned idea. Download programs to run on the client? Simpler just to go all the way and run the programs on the server. We wasted little time on applets, but countless other startups must have been lured into this tar pit. Few seem to have esca…

>I would not even use Javascript, if I were you; Viaweb didn't. Most of the Javascript I see on the Web isn't necessary, and much of it breaks. And when you start to be able to browse actual web pages on your cell phone or PDA (or toaster), who knows if they'll even support it. I read this as being advice for the then-present, not a prediction. "Javascript isn't necessary, doesn't work well, and it's not guaranteed t…

The part about "when you start to be able to browse actual web pages" sure sounded like a prediction; and by the time mobile web browsers caught up to the point where you could reasonably browse the open web on them, they were perfectly capable of running JavaScript just as well as desktop browsers.

This book was published in 2004, the same year that Gmail was released making heavy use of JavaScript to provide a much better webmail experience than previous competitors. So, it wasn't even that great a description of the present, other than the fact that he probably actually wrote it before the release of Gmail.

My main point is just that if you look at the one quote about an Apple phone with a web browser, out of context, he does look fairly prescient; but if you look at the rest of them, and the history of iPhone rumors, he has about as good a track record as anyone reasonably bright and paying attention to the industry.

Re: A prescient footnote

#79

Post by dockd »

stuff4ben wrote: post #19
isamuel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your blog post reads more like a wish than a prediction. "I want my Apple iPod to make phone calls for me, play video's for me, play J2ME games for me, be WiFi enabled so it can login to my corporate network and check my email on Exchange, take 5MP pictures for me, allow me to IM people and surf the net, and play MP3's all in an iPod-like fit and finish. Why is this so hard?"

Read a little further: "Once Apple figures this out, their record iPod sales from 2005 will pale in comparison." and "I'd rather carry one sleek iPod-ish device that does everything for me." You see wishes do come true!

There had been talk of "convergence" for years, where the digital camera, digital music player, digital phone, PDA, etc. would be combined into one device.

However, that's not exactly an earthshaking prediction. I mean, really, did anyone think that this wouldn't eventually happen? It's more of a question of when. In fact, when I read your quote, you're not predicting something, you're asking for it.

Re: A prescient footnote

#80

Post by borism »

aidenn0 wrote: post #5
tlholaday wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell the stock of its competitors short.

Taking a short position in the competitors is troublesome because you need to time it right. If you think apple can win, you can go long any time the stock is low and end up a winner.

who was apple competitors in 2000s anyway? I don't recall anyone noticeable
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