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I mortgaged my future with a Mac

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#121

Post by DanBC »

coldtea wrote: post #84
crististm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Storing data in any application results in some restrictions [...]" - I think you understand her point pretty well.

No, he doesn't, and I don't too. How would that be different with any Open Source application? There is NO common interchange format for music information besides the embedded mp3 metadata. Of course iTunes (and ANY other player, OSS or not) has to store non-standard stuff outside those. And even if it stored them inside, there is no consensus about the naming and interoperability for metadata not in the standard lis…

> How would that be different with any Open Source application?

In theory the Unix way is to have plain text as input and output. This has meant that many open source softwares use nice plain text files for their data storage stuff.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#122

Post by w1ntermute »

eropple wrote: post #33
w1ntermute wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android: sell your soul to Google. Nobody is forcing you to use Google apps on an Android device. If the market decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be replaced. This has already sort of happened with the Kindle Fire. It forced Google to respond with a better device (the Nexus 7).

> If the market decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be replaced. "The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're pretty much screwed. There are no good, Google-free options for Android. I don't find that to be a problem but I can understand why others would.

> "The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're pretty much screwed.

Because the market has decided that it likes the Google experience.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#123

Post by webwielder »

javajosh wrote: post #108

Hi Rachel. What timing. Just yesterday I realized what I call the "primordial criticism": Good products get used. Usage creates dependency. Dependency is bad. Therefore, good products are bad. Since bad products are bad, and good products are bad, all products are bad! You have just plugged in OSX into the syllogism. But the syllogism results in a contradiction. So one of our assertions is wrong. I'll leave it as an…

>And iTunes does indeed suck and I don't understand why someone hasn't written a replacement for it that fits the Sparrow:Mail==X:iPhoto equation. Perhaps I'll take a crack at it.

I don't think iTunes sucks, but someone has solved the equation you mentioned. It's called Enqueue: http://www.enqueueapp.com

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#124

Post by __david__ »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #113

While you all are debating developing software using a Linux or Mac OS desktop, I am writing some killer software using Heroku, S3, Redshift, MongoHQ, RedisToGo, New Relic, Github, SendGrid, DocRaptor, Trello, Google Docs, ...

Ouch, the smug, it hurts! Are you writing embedded code in your cloud utopia? There is more to life than just web apps, even today. Some of us still need computers with physical ports.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#125

Post by __david__ »

ishansharma wrote: post #18

Now that makes me think twice before getting a Mac. Though I own an iPhone and an iPad and am happy with both devices. iTunes 11 is good and actually much better than iTunes 10. And I have no idea why someone would stay on iOS 5. iOS 6 has quite a lot of new features. Only reason to stay on an older version would be to make sure that your phone stays speedy(I have noticed that iPhones tend to get a bit slower with ea…

I agree with you about iTunes 11. I was scared since I knew they were changing the look up dramatically, but I have to say after giving it a fair shake, I like it much better than the old one. The "up next" list is absolutely 100% better than the old way.

Now when I'm coding I put it on random, go through the list pruning away all the crap I'm not in the mood for (which takes about 1 or 2 minutes) and then I've got an hour or 2 of solid music that's random but vetted. It's great for setting up a nice zone.

I used to get yanked out of my zone every time something came on that I didn't want to hear (it's a small yank, but a yank nonetheless).

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#126

Post by __david__ »

nirvana wrote: post #101
revelation wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an OSX user, but many of the complaints seem to stem from Apples crusade on filesystems. For many (even not power users) this can lead to data loss; you open a file and sketch out some changes, and everything was magically written to the disk without you ever noticing so now you can't get the old data back.

This perspective is inaccurate. The auto-save feature is versioned, so if you want to go back to an eariler version, you can, and in fact, it's much easier. In the past if you made changes and saved the file, only the latest save was on the filesystme, now you can go back in history even past the last save. You're able to get old data back now in a way that you couldn't before... and can't on other systems. Whoever r…

> You're able to get old data back now in a way that you couldn't before... and can't on other systems.

VMS would like a word with you. :-)

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#127

Post by natermer »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #109
curiousdannii wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because of the last three words?

Natermer, that comment should not be dead. Indeed, it makes little sense that any of your comments are dead, save that you took unpopular opinions (I practice I support in general). So, please allow me to register my sadness on this matter. It is poor form for anyone to be ignored, and certainly not OK for them to be ignored based on their opinions on a board called Hacker News. Its not surprising (we're much better…

I don't think it was done on purpose.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#128

Post by Nerdfest »

happycube wrote: post #27
w1ntermute wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android: sell your soul to Google. Nobody is forcing you to use Google apps on an Android device. If the market decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be replaced. This has already sort of happened with the Kindle Fire. It forced Google to respond with a better device (the Nexus 7).

In fact, you could unlock the bootloader on any Nexus device, load Cyanogenmod, and not deal with anything Google aside from the core OS, using fdroid to get free software apps.

You actually don't even need any connection to Google even on their own Nexus devices.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#129

Post by coldtea »

DanBC wrote: post #121
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he doesn't, and I don't too. How would that be different with any Open Source application? There is NO common interchange format for music information besides the embedded mp3 metadata. Of course iTunes (and ANY other player, OSS or not) has to store non-standard stuff outside those. And even if it stored them inside, there is no consensus about the naming and interoperability for metadata not in the standard lis…

> How would that be different with any Open Source application? In theory the Unix way is to have plain text as input and output. This has meant that many open source softwares use nice plain text files for their data storage stuff.

There is no Unix way after circa 1997.

In the olden days, the Unices had some coherence and core principle. After the OSS explosion at the end of the nineties that doesn't hold true anymore.

For example all the Gnome/KDE apps are not combinable command line utils with GUI front ends, but backend+GUI apps in one. And the architecture, UX and ways they use are far from what the UNIX of old used. For example Gnome/KDE were directly inspired from MS Windows (first) and from OS X (in subsequent versions), to the point that traditional UNIX users complained.

>In theory the Unix way is to have plain text as input and output. This has meant that many open source softwares use nice plain text files for their data storage stuff.

iTunes also used a plain XML file for its database. IIRC, it has moved it to binary plist files for performance reasons several versions ago.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#130

Post by eropple »

w1ntermute wrote: post #122
eropple wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the market decides that the Google experience is subpar, they will be replaced. "The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're pretty much screwed. There are no good, Google-free options for Android. I don't find that to be a problem but I can understand why others would.

> "The market" has done no such thing (the atrocious Kindle Fires excepted) so if you have a beef with the "Google experience" (I personally don't) you're pretty much screwed. Because the market has decided that it likes the Google experience.

"The market" being willing to purchase something is not a referendum on quality or on individual desirability. It is a measure of acceptance, not like; by that sort of assumption, "the market" also "likes" having their bowel movements tracked by Facebook. Maybe people don't know of alternatives to the Google experience. Maybe the alternatives are too different, as with the Fires. Maybe the alternatives are badly executed. None of this means that the holy market likes the Google experience, only that they are willing to buy it.

And let's get one thing really very straight: the rhetorical appeal to "the market" is a bald-faced attempt to discredit differing opinions. It's argumentum ad populum fanboy crap. Stop it.

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