251–260 of 535 posts
I do. Isn't that what their extortionate cut is supposed to cover?
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> Jobs never lost his vision that Apple should sell appliances, and people who wanted to "wrench their own devices" should buy PCs. And honestly, I don't think information appliances are a bad thing to have in the world. It's not the kind of device I would choose for myself, but there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous. Android is fine for my use case,…
But it's worse than appliance. Appliance doesn't actively block you from using it for something not listed in instruction manual
PCs are hackable by design. It's a perfectly mainstream thing to build your own PC from parts. Hacking toasters, on the other hand, is not mainstream. Best Buy sells toasters, but not parts for toasters.
I personally wouldnt draw the line between information appliances and computers at whether the manufacturer actively blocks you (as Apple and John Deere do), but rather at some combination of what the intended purpose is, and whether hacking and customization is considered mainstream or fringe.
Hacking toasters and dishwashers and microwaves and refrigerators is possible, but fringe. Hacking cars and houses is mainstream.
I’m not defending this, but after 15 years, I don’t see the point in complaining. We complain (rightfully) about the amount of crap in the App Store and Apple's capricious review policies that don’t stop the scammers, but for better or worse, the $99 fee IS a barrier to entry that I would argue has made the iOS ecosystem better than Android. I’ve been paying $99 a year for early access to iOS betas and for my own tes…
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In your opinion, it's akin to BMW's heated seats subscription.
On the face of it, whether I agree or disagree, the first opinion at least makes more sense.
Since both are opinions, "citation needed" is a non sequitur. Or do you have citations for your opinion?
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let not be naive in saying that its still not possible. It is but a lot less. Companies have been getting better at bug bounties, education, and in general people working more with the technology
A huge part of the improvement has been sandboxing, code signing, and trusted distribution channels. In the Windows XP era, a freeware game or utility you downloaded turning out to be a virus was 100% your fault. It wasn’t a defect in Windows that your whole computer got owned, that was just how computers worked. Crazy to me that people want to go back there.
It's not so crazy if you understand that there are people who want to be able to have complete control over their own machines. These modern security measures trade that control for security.
But there are many circumstances where that tradeoff is undesirable. Perhaps the machine will never be connected to a network. Perhaps the owner of that machine is willing and able to take responsibility for the security. Etc.
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If BMW started the heated seat subscription over 15 years ago, would people still be complaining today?
If there would be a significant competition without a subscription: yes, people would keep on complaining.
If everybody would jump on the train: probably no, because people would have forgotten what "normal" was.
I find option 2 quite unlikely so the answer to your question is: yes.
I feel this developer's pain, I remember writing a vituperative blog post about Apple's habit of buying or building their own clone of some independent app and muscling developers out of their market. With time I've mellowed. Running a business means that you have to say "no" to a bunch of things for which there is a perfectly plausible and rational reason to say "yes." The reasons for saying "no" to good ideas are s…
> I remember writing a vituperative blog post about Apple's habit of buying or building their own clone of some independent app and muscling developers out of their market. Microsoft has done this many, many times as well.
As OP said, going back decades Apple has never been a hobbyist platform because of its closed nature to software and hardware.
The love affair of developers for MacBooks after Apple went BSD was a rather surprising turn in their fortunes and experience (and a highly valuable wake up call to Microsoft). I understand how a kid coming of age in that environment might see Apple as a developer’s company through this association. But it’s anathema to Apple’s longer term track record, IME, demonstrated by the difference from the traditional relationship apple has had with independent developers and to which they seem to be bending back towards.
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Jobs called it "bicycles for the mind".* Back in the beginning there was lots of talk of "toasters" as an appliance every household has and even a child can use (to the point there was a famous screensaver of flying toasters). The Mac 512, Plus, and SE were embodiments of this. (The Apple //c with LCD attachment and carry handle was an earlier attempt.) Note that all of those included portability as a feature, while…
I remember "Bicycles for the mind" well: http://raganwald.com/assets/images/bicycle-jobs.jpeg But as a metaphor, I don't think of a bicycle as an appliance. Mainstream bicycles are brutalist: The chain and gears are usually on display and user-serviceable. Parts like wheels, saddles, and handlebars are standardized in a way that allows users to mix and match components freely. In the days of steel frames you could ma…
That's a matter of perspective. If I create a simple bike drawing in crayon, it has none of those things, but everyone knows what the drawing represents if they had it. Maintenance and extensibility concerns are incidental. Framing things to be attractive, was one of SJ's talents.
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Maybe that's because you were an asshole about it. For example calling them fanboys
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The problem is the computer has changed, it’s not a computer, it’s a node in a ubiquitous global network. 2003 and 2023 are very different and we’re feeling the negative impacts of global connectivity. Look at the trackers like AirTag. A gadget to find your keys is incredibly useful, but can also turn into a device to aid criminal activity pretty readily.
any tool can be used for good or evil. To stop people from doing bad things we need to focus on correcting people's behaviors not on crippling our tools.
What you're offering here is not an argument but a mental block to actually thinking about the issue described. You don't offer any ideas for 'correcting people's behaviors': how do you propose to address the phenomena of greed, dishonesty and so on, given that people with those qualities are just as well able to make use of technology for their selfish ends?
The relationship some developers have with Apple should be a case-study with multiple PhD thesis in psychology. Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent. Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.…
It’s not just Apple. The same dynamic plays out with most other hyped technologies. Apple’s fans may demonstrate this behavior most clearly, but cults of sycophants exist for many different companies: Microsoft, Tesla, Google, … this list never ends.
I still remember when Satya Nadella went "all-in" with Linux and Open Source, the whole "running Linux on Windows", etc. Many people went nuts and in a matter of months Microsoft was the hot new "hip" company. Which anyone looking into Microsoft's business for 5min would laugh at all that non-sense. Just an example: MS makes around 2 billion dollars every year in software patents/royalties, and the list of Microsoft being Microsoft goes on.
My point is: This behavior is something more to do with the people than the companies themselves, they mostly cater and exploit it.