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Only Apple

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Re: Only Apple

#151

Post by malandrew »

roberthahn wrote: post #131
malandrew wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need forward thinking investors like pmarca to drop some of the VC cash on the W3C standards process. We have the most amount of innovations and investible companies when there are more open APIs. The image tag, the current implementation of which was first coded by pmarca, enabled tons of startups, the biggest of which are companies instagram, facebook, imgur, etc. The one API that is languishing at the W3C that…

I think you're right about using the web as an interop protocol. I want to see that future (or that present, more evenly distributed). But I believe the browser is NOT the ideal gatekeeper. The ideal gatekeeper for your contacts is, surprisingly enough, an app designed to manage contacts. And as long as the inerop protocols are respected, switching from one contacts app to another will never be a problem.

Browsers must be the gatekeeper, otherwise Facebook continues to be the only way to get your contacts into web apps.

What browsers need to do is leave more of the experience to end developers and expose as many low level APIs in a safe way. Browsers would do best if they focused on a sane approach to ACLs.

Browser plugins like SafeScript for example one basic way in which things could be better for users. What SafeScript lacks is reputation information on resources to help non-technical users make decisions about what to trust and what not to trust.

e.g. Alice and Bob are friends. Carol is a tech professional with a stellar reputation. Alice is tech savvy. Bob is a luddite. When Bob is presented with an ACL request for an unrecognized resource (such as an app or script from an unrecognized domain), Bob should be able to check if either Alice or Carol decided to trust that script.

Reputation systems, the web of trust, organizations like Spamhaus, EFF, Mozilla etc. can all go a long way to helping users make sense of what they can and cannot trust on the internet.

The ideal user agent would be like a docker container with an ACL for taking sensitive user information and sharing it with whatever is running in the container in a safe sane way that puts the user's safety and experience first.

I would love to see someone take the following things/features and mash them up:

* docker/lxc * chromeless browser windows controllable via API and any programming language (not just javascript) * QT like windowing system with URI routing and skinnable with the good parts of CSS. * ACL * reputation system for resources with URIs * Incrementally loadable

Linux containers provide the ideal technology to reimagine what the web could have been if Kay [0] and Engalls vision had become the predominant way of internetworked sharing of stuff.

[0] http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit...

Re: Only Apple

#152

Post by vacri »

eridius wrote: post #120
vacri wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of attacking very obvious straw men, you ignored that I was quoting two parts of the OP. I'm not here to rank companies in a line and award one as the winner, because that's a silly thing to do given the complexity of the human experience. I was saying that the term "the most important company in existence" is the kind of thing that comes out of the mouth of someone with "misplaced nerd allegiance". That was…

If you wanted to argue against what the op was saying, then you had no reason whatsoever for putting brand new words in op's mouth and attacking those words. But that's what you did, which is why your entire argument is a meaningless straw man attack. And now you're trying to tell me I'm doing the same thing to you? That's preposterous. Stop trying to be evasive and just admit you committed a rather obvious and stupi…

since you only seem interested in being defensive ; just admit you committed a rather obvious and stupid logical fallacy

The very first thing I did was accommodate your complaint, and change the words to what you wanted (and clearly mark it as an edit). That it didn't change the semantics of what I said at all suggests that it wasn't a logical fallacy.

And given that all you've done here is attack, attack, attack, what do you expect me to do other than be defensive? What have you said to me that I could take somewhere else?

And now you're trying to tell me I'm doing the same thing to you? That's preposterous. ; your entire argument is a meaningless straw man attack. ; Stop trying to be evasive ; stupid logical fallacy

Since you like logic, you'll like this: if you don't understand what I'm saying, then it's not a straw man on my part. It's a straw man in your head, based on your misunderstanding. My 'being evasive' is me trying to better explain what I meant, but you only know attack, attack, attack, and you won't accept anything but complete and utter submission.

and just admit ; don't expect any more responses from me on this thread

Not once have you 'just admitted' that you might have been off-kilter, not even an "I still disagree with you, but yeah, I could have behaved better". The mere thought of such an event is 'preposterous'.

And frankly, a promise not to engage in more blind offense devoid of self-reflection... isn't exactly a negative to me.

Re: Only Apple

#153

Post by georgemcbay »

rayiner wrote: post #133
WoodenChair wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with hacker news (and really all online forums) is how plagued it is by "anecdotal" experiences. I would appreciate if people took the time to Google for some facts instead of writing about random anecdotal experiences that might be exceptional or misinformed. rayiner's response is really what would've helped the original post, even if it was coupled with something anecdotal.

Part of the problem with discussions about phone battery life is that the available websites don't do a very good job of testing it. My anecdotal experience with carrying an iPhone 5 for years, then a Lumia for about a year, then a Nexus 5 for about six months is that the Nexus 5 is by far the worst at dealing with marginal signal conditions, like my train commute from DE to PA. I've never seen this sort of thing for…

I'm a fan of Android, use a Nexus 5 as my personal phone (and used a Nexus 4 prior to that) and make my current living writing Android apps, but you're right about this.

On my list of annoyances with Android, the way it handles marginal signal conditions (on every Android device I've ever used, which is quite a lot of them) is very high up there. Android (relatedly) does not handle wifi/cell radio passing very well, it will hold on to a poor wifi signal long after it should have switched over to the much more usable cell connection. I find myself regularly having to explicitly switch wifi off when there is a poor wifi connection available (which is luckily pretty easy to do but annoying that you have to manage it manually) just to get a reasonably usable network connection for apps.

Re: Only Apple

#154

Post by m_mueller »

zyxley wrote: post #8
hayksaakian wrote: post #6

Apple is doing well to optimize what the company already has, but has shown little regarding what they plan to do next. Seems like they're playing very safe.

I dunno... Continuity, answering phones on a PC, etc, seems to point pretty strongly at "we are going to make switching between all our devices as seamless as possible" for "what they plan to do next". That's not really "optimizing", considering that Apple is aiming at a range of improvements to the cross-device experience that other companies have only barely touched at (Chrome tab sync, etc).

This is especially true because introducing any new 'smart' (=connected) products into your life if you already have computer, smartphone and tablet, is going to be just too much if the issues about being in synch haven't been solved until then. Apple has the right ideas about pushing in this direction - as for me I've essentially given up on trying to keep everything both synched and available for any use case. The main thing Apple's fall updates won't offer that I'd really like is multi-user for iPads. If it weren't for that, iOS 8 / OSX 10.10 are - on paper - pretty close to where I'd want everything to be. That being said, it probably won't solve Apple's software QA issues I've been experiencing lately.

Re: Only Apple

#155

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

vacri wrote: post #50
seiji wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To march out some old tropes: Apple makes money by delighting users so they will continue to buy products. Google makes money by tracking users, forcefully if necessary, and abusing their advertisers. Microsoft makes money out of legacy ties these days—they don't deserve to continue existing.

Some rebuttal tropes: Apple makes money by making toys for the wealthy. You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms. In comparison, Google lets anyone use basically all of their stuff for free. As long as you can get online in some form, Google welcomes you, no matter how poor you are or where in the world you might be or what hardware you use. Google also doesn't f…

>You have to be middle-class or higher in an advanced economy to use their system, in real terms.

True for Apple PCs (except for the Mac Mini, but most people don't buy those.) Especially true for MacBooks.

Not true at all for iPhones which are available on very affordable plans in all developed countries, and are ubiquitous, even for users who are nowhere near middle class.

Microsoft is in transition. The idiocy that was Windows 8 all-but killed the Wintel desktop PC market. The server side is healthy, but desktop Windows is looking very shaky indeed.

For better or worse, Jobs deliberately moved Apple out of Enterprise. We can argue about why, and we can argue whether or not it was a good decision. But Apple decided to focus on consumer computing - which strengthened the consumer brand and freed up development resources, if nothing else.

MS is still trying to slide into all kinds of niches. It's succeeding in a few, but failing and flailing in many.

Nadella will likely be more focused than spaghetti-at-the-wall Ballmer, so we'll have to see how that works out.

Azure isn't solid enough as a cloud service yet - too many outages. Server is looking good. Office is kind of old and boring now, but still does what it does.

So what can MS offer modern startups that they can't get better and/or cheaper elsewhere?

Re: Only Apple

#156

Post by drewcrawford »

malandrew wrote: post #72
coldtea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Amazon both understand the web a whole heck of a lot better than Apple I really doubt this. Google yes. Amazon no. What has Amazon did that shows it "gets" the Cloud? It has its one (and that's it) highly succesful store front (which is like a Google that only offered the search service). That's is, as far as the Cloud goes for Amazon. As for AWS, the do get cloud infrastructure and services to developer…

There are different layers of the cloud: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. The only layer Apple gets is SaaS and really only for its own apps/services. Apple keeps trying to do PaaS, but the anti-decentralization and specifically wall-garden approach of a seemless experience across all your Apple devices, but a sometimes intentionally crippled experience across other devices you own and a certainly deficient experience with devic…

I don't think you understand HomeKit, or Apple's view of it.

What's important to Apple is that you have a good user experience. As this applies to HomeKit, there are a few important requirements: battery life, and security/privacy. Keep in mind we are in the early days of home automation, and all it takes is one bad story about the hacker adjusting your thermostat to sour the market.

The only way to achieve those objectives is to exercise some control over hardware manufacturers. Sure, you may lose some compatibility this way, but that is infinitely preferable to a security risk in a poorly-understood environment without good security hygiene traditions. As a software developer who works with Bluetooth hardware, the Apple MFI certification process is the only hardware cert for home automation I am aware of. So even if I was an Android dev, I would prefer to purchase hardware that went through MFI as it gives me a basic level of confidence that somebody signed off on this.

Secondly HK explicitly includes measures for compatibility, including a type of "bridge device" that can translate between HK and a manufacturer's proprietary (or open, as the case may be) format.

Thirdly you have to consider HK's target audience. One of the headline features inside the HK Apis is the support for multiple homes. The people who are early adopters of HK in the near future are not hackers sharing an apartment. It's the Tim Cooks of the world where throwing out the existing automation hardware is not of any concern.

Sure, at some point it will become ubiquitous, and as the market matures news stories about the dangerous thermostat hackers will be less of a concern. But that's not this release, and it may not be within the next five years. That's more than enough time to create HK bridges and poly lingual lightbulbs that speak multiple APIs and so on.

Re: Only Apple

#157

Post by shurcooL »

Todd wrote: post #70

Sorry to disagree with Gruber, but I don't think a set of devices made by one company is the future. It's always been Apple's play, in part because of the consistency of experience that it affords them, but it also let's them off the hook on the hard problems--device interop, working with varied OEMs, etc. Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forwar…

> I don't know about others, but I don't want to live in a world where my only option to control my house, car, and life is to go to an Apple store. At least Google and Microsoft give us some choices.

But you are okay with your only option being some humans on this planet, you just don't want them to be in the same company?

> I feel like we're living in a constant world of incompatible systems whose (nearly) sole purpose is to "own the market": VHS vs. Beta, GSM vs. CDMA, Canon vs. Nikon lenses, and so on.

Isn't that what you said you wanted?

Re: Only Apple

#158

Post by WoodenChair »

pistle wrote: post #137
WoodenChair wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with hacker news (and really all online forums) is how plagued it is by "anecdotal" experiences. I would appreciate if people took the time to Google for some facts instead of writing about random anecdotal experiences that might be exceptional or misinformed. rayiner's response is really what would've helped the original post, even if it was coupled with something anecdotal.

I've got to say that hasn't been my experience at all with online forums. Many times, I get insightful feedback or review of a post to the point where I needn't read the original. Maybe places like Reddit, etc. really bring out more personal experience since the topics and community are so varied, but there was a poll here not too long ago about how accurate the opinions are here. That's objective data showing you th…

"...but there was a poll here not too long ago about how accurate the opinions are here. That's objective data showing you that the anecdotes are as right as you're going to get. It's a fact."

By definition, an opinion poll is not objective. Are the results of a presidential election objective data on who the best candidate for president is?

Re: Only Apple

#159

Post by vbs_redlof »

rayiner wrote: post #117
kalleboo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the hours of use per watt-hour of their tightly-integrated stack. That's not my (anecdotal) experience at all. My friends with similarly-specced phones like the Xperia Z1 Compact have their battery last way longer than my iPhone 5S. The iPhone may have better standby life, but we're heavy users, and as soon as you're using it…

The z1c has a 60% larger battery and weights 25% more. Ounce for ounce, or per mAh, though, the iPhone has really impressive battery life. Where it really excels is standby and radio power management. 10 hours of LTE browsing on Anand's and GSMArena's tests. My Nexus 5 is often on its last legs by midday with less than two hours of screen-on, because it'll chew through its battery in weaker-signal conditions. The iPh…

10-12 hrs sounds exaggerated, I've never once seen a MPB last even ~5 hrs with light use.

Re: Only Apple

#160

Post by [deleted] »

seabrookmx wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether open (Google) or closed (Microsoft), platforms that run on multiple OEM devices are the right way forward. After a six-month experiment with Android on a Nexus 5, I couldn't disagree more. Separating the folks who make the OS from the folks who make the device just leads to compromises. Apple has the right model. Just look at what they've managed to do, for example, with battery life. Nobody can match the h…

I honestly couldn't find a complaint with the Nexus 5. It's a stunning, fluid device. The only leg up in my eyes for the iPhone is the better app curation, but as someone who uses mostly web apps and Hangouts that's not a big demerit to me.

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