Untitled topic • Hacker News Board

Re: undefined

#151

Post by hota_mazi » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

actusual wrote: post #81

killion wrote: post #23

I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…

Steve quotes in the video "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" which is of course a Wayne Gretsky quote, and I think it captures this sentiment very well. Moving from leader to follower is such a classic move for an incumbent like Apple, and with Steve they never seemed to lose that insurgent mindset, even when they were absolutely enormous. They've steadily stagnated and truly lost that…

The stagnation started well into Jobs' era, right after the iPad.

Re: undefined

#152

Post by GDC7 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

bigbillheck wrote: post #149

GDC7 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're talking about the idea of some one who hurts and abuses other people no longer being allowed to be a part of polite society, and the people that want that to be the case, like its a bad thing. No , the bad thing is that when somebody is dragged out in the court of public opinion all the positive contributions of that particular individual are not taken into consideration. I am now a wide eyed utopian, I am a…

You're going to have to explain what the Manhattan Project had to do with victory in Europe. And after that, please explain why Feynman's contributions to it were so critical. Finally, I'd like to ask for an explanation as to how Feynman's actions starting in 1949 could have had a causal effect on a war that ended in 1945.

> Finally, I'd like to ask for an explanation as to how Feynman's actions starting in 1949 could have had a causal effect on a war that ended in 1945.

That's exactly what I mean, thank you! You have stressed the whole point!

Society feels comfortable in canceling people because these people already gave their contribution and for sure the person being canceled can't retroactively destroy all their contributions. If they could that'd be a powerful weapon of self defense, some sort of dead man switch against the mob.

But they don't, hence society is emboldened to destroy that person because it's the path of least resistence towards getting what it really wants: Separating the contributions from the person who made them, thus making sure that they cannot benefit from them, socially or financially.

Society would think long and hard before canceling people if it also meant automatically removing all their contributions.

I bet you society would have not canceled Harvey Weinstein if it also meant the complete disappearence of:

- Reservoir dogs

- Pulp Fiction

- Kill Bill

- The Aviator

- Gangs of New York

- Wolf of Wall Street

.

Hypocrisy

Re: undefined

#153

Post by soperj » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

float4 wrote: post #150

soperj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems really weird to me. We even did a machine language course even though we will never do any machine language programming. It's good to understand what the hell is going on. C is amazing in explaining how memory management works, since you have to do it all yourself.

For an undergrad course on compilers that I took, I had to build a parser, implement a state machine and a few other things. All in Haskell. For my master's I took a course on static analysis, for which we had to perform usage analysis, type error diagnosis, implement a type checker etc. All in... Haskell.

We did something similar, not in Haskell unfortunately. We did have a programming languages class that introduced us to haskell. It seems so damn intuitive. As a web developer though there just isn't the support for that language unfortunately.

Re: undefined

#154

Post by approxim8ion » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #112

diego_moita wrote: post #110

What I remember the most about Jobs' death are 2 things: 1) Most of the media did an heavy coverage of his death and legacy. 2) Exactly 1 week after his death one of my personal heroes died too: Dennis MacLister Ritchie. Almost no one paid attention. From computers to micro-controllers, from satellites to abs breaks, Ritchie's legacy goes far deeper and wider than Jobs'. Almost every programmer today touches some of…

Dennis Ritchie's book on C is pretty well required reading for anyone going through a computer science program no?

It wasn't in my program. There was a lousy textbook that is only popular among engineering programs in my country, and only a few offhanded mentions of K&R.

Re: undefined

#155

Post by Lammy » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

dkarp wrote: post #52

killion wrote: post #23

I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…

I didn't know about the Cube[1], so thanks for sharing. Only sold for 1 year and then discontinued. Laptops are now dominant and have outsold desktops for a long time, but in year 2000 that wasn't the case. So the Cube seems like a false start down that path. Kind of like Jobs knew the future, but was a little too ahead of his time on that one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube

Stebe seemed to have a thing for cubes. The G4 Cube is a throwback to the much more famous NeXT case design, though the original black cube running "Next Step" was perhaps a little too on the nose:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube

http://www.magicgatebg.com/Books/Aleister%20Crowley/Heart_of...

There's also the 30ft glass cube Apple Store that opened in Manhattan in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Fifth_Avenue

Re: undefined

#156

Post by mulmen » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #71

microtonal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. Mostly on the Mac. The butterfly keyboard and how Apple handled it, were terrible. And macOS quality had gone down release after release. But I have never had any serious software or hardware quality issues with the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods or any other products. It seems that they had just lost focus on the Mac…

I generally agree, although there are all kinds of issues on iPhone as well. The one that bothers me most often is autocorrect sporadically changing correct English words to nonsense, or the complete inability to select certain bits of text properly (even in Apple apps).

I turned off autocorrect a year ago. It’s easier to correct typos by tapping them than have to proof read for whatever properly typed word Apple changed for no reason.

The original iPhone had a much nicer cursor behavior and placement was easier with a tap or a hold-and-drag than it is to this day. I forget when this changed, I think it was about a decade ago.

Re: undefined

#157

Post by Lammy » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

killion wrote: post #23

I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…

> I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”.

It's probably just a coincidence but I can't help but notice how Apple didn't become a PRISM "Provider" until a year after he was dead, many years after the Googles/Facebooks of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...

Re: undefined

#158

Post by mulmen » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #77

microtonal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. Mostly on the Mac. The butterfly keyboard and how Apple handled it, were terrible. And macOS quality had gone down release after release. But I have never had any serious software or hardware quality issues with the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods or any other products. It seems that they had just lost focus on the Mac…

Apple Maps directions now mispronounces the word "South" (who knew it had three syllables?). This word is so common in street names I'm shocked it made it out of testing.

Apple Maps is horrible for driving navigation. Relevant information like route number of the next turn is much smaller than it needs to be.

The directions are floating in space over the map which looks nice but wastes space on the margins. The directions themselves are in a box that also wastes tons of space.

If you reach a destination navigation is cancelled but you cant re-start navigation from there. So if you arrive but Apple Maps wants you to make a left turn across a median it cancels nav and you are in the dark for finding a route around.

I wish usability was a priority but modern UX doesn’t seem to consider it at all.

Re: undefined

#159

Post by reayn » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

dilap wrote: post #123

tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a OS X user since the Titanium Powerbook and wouldn't trade Mojave for any cat version --- and, in particular, wouldn't swap the aesthetics of Mojave for any of them either. This is a thread about Steve Jobs, and, again, when I think of Jobs, I think of rich Corinthian leather. What a nightmare.

Haha, yeah I'm not going to argue for rich Corinthian leather, or the aesthetics of the old iTunes UI or brushed metal or whatever. The visual style now is great. But the usability and quality of the animations and general fit-and-finish is much lower now, I think. Some examples of pretty glaring failures that exist now: Tabs in mac Safari: Very unobvious, sometimes even anti-obvious, which tab is currently selected.…

>but surprisingly there doesn't seem to be an easy, imgur-esqe site to share videos??

I thought you could upload videos to imgur? Anyhow:

Quick and easy:

https://filebin.net

https://litterbox.catbox.moe

Signing up (free tier) is worth it imo:

https://blackhole.run

My personal favorite[0]:

https://0x0.st

0. try out this little script i use to make uploading files from a CLI dead easy: https://gitlab.com/co1ncidence/dotless/-/blob/master/usr/bin...

Re: undefined

#160

Post by ramesh31 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

killion wrote: post #23

I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…

>I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”.

I have this recurring fantasy, where an engineer walks into Jobs's office with the new iPhone 7 prototype for the first time. The engineer holds it up, and says "Look! We've added the most advanced camera ever to be put into a phone! People will love this!"

Steve then graciously takes it from his hands, flips it over, runs his fingers across the lens bump, looks up at the engineer, and calmly says "Youre fired. Get rid of the damn bump."