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Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

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Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#21

Post by ttflee »

Nerdfest wrote: post #20
navs wrote: post #17

Is $100 really that expensive? I'm quite broke, being a freelancer with irregular income, but even I could save $100. It's $100/yr not $100/app or per month. Also, it's one ecosystem out of many. Don't like it...can't afford it...don't build for it. You can still code without having to build a product or create a startup.

... and seeing as you're defending Apple, I'm assuming you already had a Mac, which is also required.

Practically, you can still install(, or STEAL from Apple's perspective,) a Hackintosh if you have plenty of time and energy to do the homework. If you have already secured a job and have a salary higher than the price of a Mac Mini divided by the time you need to invest for Hackintosh, just buy a Mac Mini. It's simple and straightforward economics.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#22

Post by x0054 »

This is idiotic! Apple is not THE obstacle, it's just another platform. People who love apple get accused of being fanboys. What is the opposite of that? Some one who drags in Apple into any an all argument, and figures out a way to blame them for anything and everything. Teenagers who can't afford to pay $99 have a clear option, Android.

It's like arguing that Ferrari is preventing kinds from chasing their dreams of becoming race car drivers because they charge too damn much for their cars.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#23

Post by canweriotnow »

OP here... I think my tongue-in-cheek intent might have been lost in dry prose.

That being said... I meant what I said about apple's mindshare. Take, for instance, LA County's iPad boondoggle[1]. EdTech is a particularly gnarly sector, and the fact that districts are going after iOS to this degree is a damn shame.

[1] http://pando.com/2013/11/29/ihave-a-dream-the-unanswered-que...

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#24

Post by gwu78 »

Why do you need to pay $25 in order to share code with your friends?

Why can't someone wipe the phone's storage clean and install their own version of Android, or some other OS?

Think back to the days before "smartphones", when your smallest computer was your laptop. Imagine if you had to pay Microsoft to be able to share a program you wrote with anyone else. Or if MS made it infeasible to remove Windows without making the laptop unusable.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#25

Post by canweriotnow »

x0054 wrote: post #22

This is idiotic! Apple is not THE obstacle, it's just another platform. People who love apple get accused of being fanboys. What is the opposite of that? Some one who drags in Apple into any an all argument, and figures out a way to blame them for anything and everything. Teenagers who can't afford to pay $99 have a clear option, Android. It's like arguing that Ferrari is preventing kinds from chasing their dreams of…

When you're talking about K-12 edtech education, in many cases the kids have the patforms their schools/districts endorse. And in many, if not most cases, that's iOS.

plus, we're not talking about $99 to publish, we're talking about $99 just to run your own code on your own device. I don't know about you, but when I was a 10yr hacker, that would have been a deal breaker.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#26

Post by gbog »

Many seem to dismiss the issue too quickly. You can't tell kids to learn to hack their devices if you do not do it yourself. I'd say 80% of education is just giving the example.

If father and mother both have locked devices or computers and have no interest in fiddling with them because "it just work" and "no time (to lose) with configuring/tweaking", then the kids will often follow the same tracks.

I have a 4yo boy and when I play with my adult toys (grinder, drill) he will very quickly find a toy with enough ressemblance with a grinder or a drill and just mimic me.

I would say it is the same for any kind of activities you wish kids would do (reading books, eating fruits, finishing whatever they started, play lego, hacking things), the best way is to just do it yourself first. (I'm giving no lessons here, I never eat fruit and now my boy decided he do not like them too, shame on me)

So I will agree with the article, the tendency to require all devices to just work, to be sexy design (but closed), to require no config, no fixing, to be replaced with a new one when broken, etc, all these which are kind of the signature of recent Apple devices, are bad for the future (i.e. bad for kids education).

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#27

Post by drill_sarge »

bilbo0s wrote: post #16

So have the kids learn to code on Android. Problem solved. There is no "Obstacle to America's Future" here. The point is for every kid to learn to code... not for every kid to build a business publishing iPhone Apps. Why does it matter WHAT they code on??? I learned on an Apple II e, why? Because that's the computer that was donated to my school. It was old and haggared and no... my programs were not compatible with…

I am gonna pull a Stallmann here and say it does matter how you are introduced to coding or even computers in general. I know a few younger people which are "educated" through this whole company driven, web-service addicted and golden cage world. For them it is completely normal not to have any content on there devices - just have it on some web service, they don't know anything else than closed ecosystems and so on. They have no incentive to even think about criticizing things like closed app stores, fees for publishing, licensing issues, censorship and so on because it's all the know.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#28

Post by canweriotnow »

bilbo0s wrote: post #16

So have the kids learn to code on Android. Problem solved. There is no "Obstacle to America's Future" here. The point is for every kid to learn to code... not for every kid to build a business publishing iPhone Apps. Why does it matter WHAT they code on??? I learned on an Apple II e, why? Because that's the computer that was donated to my school. It was old and haggared and no... my programs were not compatible with…

Problem solved, if kids have access to Android. Apple is aggressively pursuing the edu market, and seems to be winning there. This is antithetical to the "kids learning to code" ideal.

I don't care what kids code on, I care about access. And forcing people to pay $99 to run their own code on their own devices is beyond unconscionable.

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#29

Post by canweriotnow »

stbullard wrote: post #12
insaneirish wrote: post #6

Why is "learning to code" equated with "writing an app for iOS"? Walk before you run. There is more opportunity than ever for someone to get access to free software (BSD, illumos, Linux) and cheap hardware (Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard) and do whatever the heck they want. "Coding" needn't be synonymous with an iPhone or iPad.

For that matter, write some HTML and JavaScript and make a thing that works on just about anything. Distribute it to your friends for free. "Coding" needn't be synonymous with native app development.

Yeah, but if you want to run that code on a device you own, why should you have to pay Apple a $99 ransom?

Re: Apple: The Obstacle to America's Future?

#30

Post by canweriotnow »

BadassFractal wrote: post #5

The App store is a big step back for developers as far as healthy rapid iteration practices go. Week-long byzantine review cycles, expensive closed-source tools segregated to one platform, a single source for all downloads, inability to beta your product etc. This all set us back considerably with regards to where we are now on the web. For now Apple can get away with this, their lead is massive and the customers are…

This. This right here. This is why I detest Apple as a professional developer.

The "hacker kids" issue is almost orthogonal, but I can't stand the idea of someone telling me what I can run on a device I purchased.

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