Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Another Day Has Come

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 192 posts

Re: Another Day Has Come

#141

Post by throw0101d »

bombcar wrote: post #137
throw0101d wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today It should also be noted that technological advances tend to be de flationary in general: regardless of real or nominal dollars, the chips/storage/etc you can buy today were sometimes not even available in the past at any price. Edit: e.g., see 1991 Radio Shack add: * https://www.trendingbuffalo.com/li…

True, a high-end 386 would have cost upwards of $10k when it first came out, but a MacBook Neo probably beats the pants off a supercomputer from the same era.

An old Radio Shack ad from 1991 that often makes the rounds is illustrative:

* https://www.trendingbuffalo.com/life/uncle-steves-buffalo/ev...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161816

Re: Another Day Has Come

#142

Post by Lendal »

rdiddly wrote: post #121

As an outsider I still can't believe anybody gets this emotional about Apple.

I get emotional whenever I see anyone with enough good sense to pass the baton at the proper time rather than die in office, letting it drop and clatter to the ground.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#143

Post by brk »

bombcar wrote: post #103
brk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more to it than just accounting for inflation. Apple has done a number of other things in the meantime, including designing and manufacturing their own chips, that have changed the economies of this. Until the very recent RAM price explosion, a sub $500 computer in 2008 was probably more like a sub $350 computer today.

Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today (cite: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com ) But today, if you can finagle the EDU discount, you can get a MacBook Neo for $499 ($600 without) which apparently isn't really compromised in any major way.

Yes, I'm aware how inflation works, you missed my point. Many technology things have effectively gotten cheaper over time, when you account for overall performance/specs/capabilities/etc. The "we don't know how to make a $500 computer that doesn't suck" statement of today would be more like "we don't know how to make a $350 computer that doesn't suck".

Re: Another Day Has Come

#144

Post by tiltowait »

zug_zug wrote: post #118
INTPenis wrote: post #59

[flagged]

I agree that I have no idea why people read this guy... Like in a "I must be genuinely out of the loop" type way. I feel like it's really romanticizing or fanboying. Like I enjoy my apple products, and I'm sure glad Apple wasn't run by a psycho like Musk, and didn't put Ads in the OS like Microsoft. But I don't think any of this is heroic or anything. Like if anybody's a hero it's probably the open-source guys who do…

Prior to 2016, he was better. Since then, he regularly posts about Trump, and whatever you think of Trump, those posts are seldom more than random ranting: devoid of substance or insight. Other times, they're just links to someone else's random, substanceless Trump rant.

It's a real shame, because he can be genuinely insightful when it comes to computing topics (and Apple in particular, obviously). That said, I do find his podcast much more bearable. Not zero-Trump, but less Trump.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#145

Post by theshackleford »

ubercore wrote: post #128
bombcar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience that lighting was by far the best - when everything lightning I had was made by Apple. As things became available in the after-market quality began to vary. My biggest issue with USB-C right now is I have some devices that need a really long "tongue" and I can't find a cable with such.

Yeah it seems to be really up to individual experience. I had two apple-made lightning cables that shorted and burned out the leads on the male end of the connector.

> Yeah it seems to be really up to individual experience.

Sure does. Never had a single issue with a lightning cable. Don’t know literally anyone who ever has.

Some individuals I guess just get unlucky.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#146

Post by cm11 »

jshaqaw wrote: post #72

Cook was an able steward of Apple. Under his leadership the hardware side continued to iteratively improve nicely. Apple Silicon is good stuff. I am firmly embedded in the entire Apple ecosystem and have no reason to leave. I do wish Apple used some of its massive cash hoard and market power to do better in software. The iPad remains my favorite form factor to use in lots of my day but Apple never invested in killer…

I know they spent time catering to companies to build iPad apps. I worked on some stuff where Apple had reached out to build our existing desktop apps to be optimized for iPad's specific use cases. To be honest, I don't think our team did a very good job of focusing on iPad's unique features and the contexts in which it was/could be used, but I was also fairly confident that iPad was very limited for work (especially then).

Some of the user research was around the mental models behind switching to do deep work on a desktop/laptop—though they're still blurry with younger phone-first (or phone-only) users. It's not unlike why the UI for work software should be different than consumer stuff. If you're there everyday, you don't need stuff hidden and progressively disclosed. You'll learn it, adding extra clicks is worse. The cockpit is better this way. It's not clutter. Obviously, with a laptop you get a full keyboard too whereas the iPad's addition is the touch screen, which has it's merits, but is a much blunter fat-fingery input. And people would talk about how you can add a keyboard, but you know, if the user is doing that, should they not just bring their laptop?

I remember at the time trying to pitch a mindset that a laptop is a portable device. Sure it doesn't fit in a pocket, but neither does an iPad. So even the use cases you'd have away from your desk aren't exactly carve outs for an iPad experience.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#147

Post by ClawsOnPaws »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #39
ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind person using Apple products here, and at least for phones, I agree. I wouldn't say it's exclusively because of iPhone, but a large part of my independence is definitely it. There have been problems, bugs that go unfixed for years, MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster even though I do still use and enjoy the platform overall, and anything worth using can be criticized I think. But iOS has so many features built i…

> MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster I am curious as to why (definitely not arguing, but I’m not blind, and only use it for testing). I write (Apple) apps to be accessible. I would be grateful for guidance in making them as useful as possible.

It is just random bugs. Switching punctuation schemes. The terminal doesn't read very well, VoiceOver loves to say "not responding" in Safari and locks up, live regions don't always read correctly, quick nav (basically automatically holding down the voiceover modifier so you can more quickly use navigate through the screen) adds random delay to each key press, it's just lots and lots and lots of small issues like this that compound. This is just a small list of them. None of them are a huge problem by itself, but combined they do make things frustrating sometimes. And then of course the ability to script badly behaving, or completely inaccessible, apps is just missing, so you can't fix apps even if you knew how to. And of course VoiceOver on the Mac is all you get. So if you don't like it, tough luck. You won't ever get a real alternative that can access what VoiceOver can.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#148

Post by ClawsOnPaws »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #135
ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind person using Apple products here, and at least for phones, I agree. I wouldn't say it's exclusively because of iPhone, but a large part of my independence is definitely it. There have been problems, bugs that go unfixed for years, MacOS VoiceOver is quite a disaster even though I do still use and enjoy the platform overall, and anything worth using can be criticized I think. But iOS has so many features built i…

Will drop this here in case you’re not aware of it (but I’m guessing you probably are), sorry if a bit off-topic. I’m low-vision and made great use of Microsoft Soundscape until it got discontinued. I’d been waiting for an alternative for ages and didn’t realise one actually got released and is on the app store! VoiceVista: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/voicevista/id6450388413

I absolutely LOVE! Voice Vista. It is an amazing bit of software. I wasn't able to use SoundScape when it first came out because it was never made available in my region, but VV is, and I would never want to miss it anymore when traveling. I love it. A lot.

Re: Another Day Has Come

#149

Post by jjtheblunt »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #136
jjtheblunt wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is text selection badly broken on iOS for at least a decade? I seem to have it working just fine, though am not sure how I may have configured it to do such, without dedicating such to memory.

It’s really really inconsistent. Sometimes select all is available, sometimes not. Sometimes the handles don’t work. Selecting text in a scrollable region is fiddly, etc. I’ve seen an insane drop in the quality of swipe typing recently as well. To the point where I’ll often go back to regular typing. I’ve made maybe six or more corrections just to this paragraph alone.

I think swipe typing suggests words inconsistent with any higher level language model, like word tuples, when proposing words which are possible matches for letter sequences swiped.

and it drives me crazy too.

I've just had good luck it seems with text select.

Have you found any way to do a Find within a span of text on iOS? That would be very useful, but I haven't seen it.

Post reply on HN