iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#101

Post by SoftwareMaven » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 11:27 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #85

JonnieCache wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're broadly right, but you're missing the key point: apple are adding a lot more than a lowercase i to FOSS innovations: they're adding usable interfaces, polish, and the shiny lowercase i. Time Machine is a lot more than branded rsync. It's usable branded rsync. And the usability is what makes it a "game-changer" in the consumer market where rsync and its algorithmic innovation isn't. In many ways, it's t…

Using the idea is one thing, but taking credit for it is another. I think that's where people get hung up. Especially for non-techies that have never heard of (e.g.) rsync, Apple 'invented' versioned backups. This pisses people off that know about rsync because it's giving Apple more credit than they deserve. Apple didn't draw the idea out of thin air and develop it from scratch. They took an existing thing and made…

Almost nothing in technology is drawn out of thin air and developed from scratch. If you tried to give credit for every single stepping stone you used to develop anything, all you'd do is confuse the end users, and that's the whole point of what Apple is trying to accomplish: simplify for the user.

Honestly, if I developed rsync, the fact that Apple was using it to power Time Machine would be quite an acknowledgement to me.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#102

Post by JonnieCache » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 11:40 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #101

pyre wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the idea is one thing, but taking credit for it is another. I think that's where people get hung up. Especially for non-techies that have never heard of (e.g.) rsync, Apple 'invented' versioned backups. This pisses people off that know about rsync because it's giving Apple more credit than they deserve. Apple didn't draw the idea out of thin air and develop it from scratch. They took an existing thing and made…

Almost nothing in technology is drawn out of thin air and developed from scratch. If you tried to give credit for every single stepping stone you used to develop anything, all you'd do is confuse the end users, and that's the whole point of what Apple is trying to accomplish: simplify for the user. Honestly, if I developed rsync, the fact that Apple was using it to power Time Machine would be quite an acknowledgement…

I don't imagine that the people with "invented rsync" on their resumés are exactly struggling for income either.

Being able to tell people about your achievements is a lot better than having everyone pre-aware of them anyway IMO.

(Also it should be pointed out that time machine doesn't actually use rsync at all, or anything like it. It uses a totally different and much simpler system, seemingly built on their own FSEvents API and a load of hardlinks.)

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#103

Post by cooldeal » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 11:59 PM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #74

rimantas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so now Apple pays salary for Foxconn employees? That's an interesting piece of news. How about HP, Cisco, Intel, Acer, Asus, Dell, Nokia, etc? How is suicide rate among Foxconn employees compared to average?

Yes they did provide a raise. Here's your interesting news. http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?s=&threadi... You can find other references to that raise by using a search engine. You mean you have no control over a factory that you're the primary(or only) customer of? >How about HP, Cisco, Intel, Acer, Asus, Dell, Nokia, etc? I was replying to your GP post that stated that Apple and Jobs weren't after prof…

Sad to see people downvoting valid arguments without replying why.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#104

Post by Gilpo » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 12:48 AM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #10

spenrose wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted b/c I think your rejection of Cringely is right, but the reason is different. Jobs/Apple are not in this for the money. They simply believe that iOS + cloud is a better way to compute.

Your comment feels like it is giving Jobs and Apple a bit more altruism than I think they deserve. They are absolutely in it for the money, but I think you are also right that they see this as a better way of computing: a way that can make computing better and easier for many people (who, in turn will give Apple more money). It is a win-win for Aplle and the consumer, which is a great place for a company to be.

"They are absolutely in it for the money"

Not so sure about that.

This is what I think motivates Steve Jobs: His insane passion for consumer computer electronics. Juicy and illuminating supporting fact: Jobs's first job was at the HP factory in Palo Alto at age 12. http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-steven-job...;

"I remember my first day, expressing my complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard for the summer to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics. I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he looked at me and said, "To fuck!" [Laughs] I learned a lot that summer."

Every day he works, he energizes that little kid inside him. Not a bad life.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#105

Post by jimbobimbo » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 12:59 AM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #93

eropple wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice. And if you need to do something remotely complex, neither works. Pages is decent for the very baseline word processing; OpenOffice is good for very little of anything. The overwhelming majority of people use Office because what you call "cruft" is what other people call "important".

I disagree. The usage of features in Word undoubtably follow the power law, so there is undoubtably somebody somewhere who does use any particular feature, but the vast majority of people don't use them. Pages doesn't have all of the functions and if you can't live without a particular function, it is obviously not a good replacement. However, for the vast majority of users, it has all the functionality that they wil…

Someone said some time ago: all people use only 5% of Word features at a time - the problem is that these are DIFFERENT 5% for everybody.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#106

Post by heyitsnick » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 1:10 AM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #64

eropple wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the link offhand but I recall it being said by someone affiliated with Office that pretty much everyone uses about 20% of Word's features. The difference is in which 20%. You might have a set of feature needs that Pages covers. I know that pretty much everyone in my company (that is, management and project people--engineers could get by with whatever, that's not a big deal) couldn't use Pages, and their…

What you're talking about is the 80-20 rule: 80% of people only need 20% of the featureset. It's an incidence of the Pareto Principle, and dates back to 1906. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

No, that's not what he's talking about.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#107

Post by code_duck » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 2:02 AM UTC

I see the killing of Windows is a natural consequence of the flow of technology. In producing new products that match where the world is going, Apple is part of killing Windows, just like the rest of us. To say 'killing Windows' it's the 'purpose' of a given Apple product is absurd, somewhat like saying the point of driving to work in the morning is to pass a certain traffic light.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#108

Post by wtallis » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 2:06 AM UTC

num1 wrote: post #98

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you expect that any non-Apple device will be able to use iCloud? Given that Apple is supporting Windows for Photo Stream and iTunes Match at least, I would say the answer is closer to yes than you are intimating here.

I hadn't heard of that thank you for pointing it out. This does make things look more optimistic. I would still define it as vendor lock-in though. The iTunes binary might be available for Windows, but Apple still claims control over your experience and your data. While they are in control of your data, you will be faced with a question every time you upgrade your hardware. Do you want to interact with your own docum…

The photos and music are still stored unencrypted on your hard drives, and the metadata is embedded in those files, so no, they aren't controlling your data, any more than Dropbox does.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#109

Post by brisance » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 2:16 AM UTC

There is no need for Apple to "kill" Microsoft. Ballmer himself seems to be doing a good job for the last 10 years since Gates left. And with the recent over-priced acquisition of Skype, seems well on the way to killing his own company.

iCloud is a defensive play. It's to prevent Facebook and Google from getting at Apple users' data. At the same time it's boosting Twitter's star. Apple's MO is to be in control of its own destiny, so I wouldn't be surprised if Dave Winer was right and Apple already has some investment in Twitter, considering how tightly integrated it is with iOS 5.

Re: iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill Windows

#110

Post by Stormbringer » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:16 AM UTC

This title is a classic example of what is wrong with tech reporting.

Every new thing is supposed to be a 'killer' of something else. Whether that be "iPod killer", "iPhone killer", "Windows killer", or, $Deity forbid: "linux killer".

This is not to say that things don't change, just that the sensationalist nature of reporting is unhelpful.

I suggest a new benchmark: the techno-journalism killer. Each time some techno-journalist describes something as a killer they lose a point. If they are right within 1 year, they get 10 points. Within 2 years, 6 points. Within 3 years, 3 points, and within 4 years 1 point.

If the journalist accumulates enough negative points (-10 ??), they themselves get 'killed' (ie deprecated, made obsolescent, removed from the news streams and RSS feeds etc).

After all, if they're wrong that much, they don't deserve our attention.