All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future... • Hacker News Board

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#31

Post by frou_dh » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

sedev wrote: post #25

barista wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only an apple fanboy can side with an opinion based on the color scheme and visual appearance of the site. :)

That's a mischaracterization of the statement you're responding to. Gruber and Thurott's sites are actually a neat microcosm of some trends that they also come down on opposite sides of. Gruber delivers content as a product to an audience. Thurott is delivering an audience, as a product, to advertisers.

My comment was only on the matter of taste that the parent brought up. Take a look at Gruber's rates, he's raking in the advertising money, yet in a neatly packaged way.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#32

Post by technoslut » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 11:55 PM UTC

mycroftiv wrote: post #10

>What strikes me about Thurrott’s tweet is that the two companies have attracted the writers they deserve. Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets. I enjoy writing about what’s real. I can't believe that Gruber can write such self-satisfied tripe without more self-awareness. His quote is more true than he realizes - the incredible smugness o…

I don't know what smugness you see in Apple regarding this because they haven't said anything about it.

Regarding both Thurrott and Gruber, they both acted like fanboys today. There's nothing wrong with preferring a platform but it was more than a little thick. Thurrott was going back and forth with Apple fans in his tweets and Gruber made a post earlier calling the Samsung tablet an iPad 3 prototype while ragging on the fact it had a fan. Other Apple bloggers picked up on it and ran with it the whole day as a talking point.

I prefer to wait and see what happens. There isn't any need for hasty judgements either way. No one knows what the final product will be like when it's actually released. The touch-centric part was amazing but there are questions of price (at least with Intel models with SSD's), weight, battery life and how well it performs under ARM processors. There are also questions of whether consumers will be interested in it.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#33

Post by ethank » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 11:56 PM UTC

varunsrin wrote: post #22

> "I simply wish to direct your attention at how utterly different the two companies are." >"Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets. I enjoy writing about what’s real" What Gruber claims to understand, but actually doesn't, is that the Microsoft ecosystem is a very different beast than the Apple ecosystem. Microsoft, unlike Apple, does not…

Not to defend Gruber here (since for some reason he is unpopular on HN), but I think that he does understand what you claim he doesn't.

The point of his polemic is not that Microsoft is fundamentally different than Apple in approach and execution. Anyone can see that plain as day. It's not obfuscated in the least.

The question is: which approach is right? Removing for a minute the preconceptions of "that's just how they are," which produces better products?

I don't think its cut and dry really. Apple currently has some MS type approaches with iOS because of their third party dependencies on software, and Microsoft has Apple approaches (i.e., XBox) because of their lack of such.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#34

Post by ethank » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

CJCorona wrote: post #29

Game_Ender wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to sites like Arstechnica who have got to use the build for a while it has plenty of lock ups and hard crashes. Many features you saw demoed in the keynote are also not ready for release so they are not in the preview build either. The point is, it's far being shippable, and if you can't ship it, it's not "real".

that's not any different from when Apple released developer previews of Lion and iOS5. Are we seriously arguing over the 'finished' state of a developer build? Really?

No, what is being discussed is using a developer build of a very alpha-state software as a comparison point against something released that has tens of millions of devices in the market.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#35

Post by technoslut » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

Steko wrote: post #20

Lewisham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could reasonably argue that Lion is a half-finished state itself. It's neither here nor there; an incoherent mess of UI ideas and functions. I'm not especially happy I upgraded. I find myself working against Lion's new features more often than with.

One could reasonably point out that this is a minority view and most reviews of Lion are pretty positive.

Not to intentionally play the middle but I can see both sides of this. Lion can be considered a finished product but it feels like the OS is in the beginning of a metamorphosis and it may be vastly different 5-10 years from now.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#36

Post by georgemcbay » Wed, Sep 14, 2011, 12:02 AM UTC

panicslowly wrote: post #7

The Metro UI is great, but the hardware on the market isn't exactly stellar (compared to iOS/Android offerings). If I were Microsoft, I'd be worried about something similar happening in the tablet market. How are they going to stand out in non-traditional PC markets?

Hopefully they are working with ASUS to build something like the Transformer, but running Windows 8 and with an x86 chip. Because that is absolutely 100% what I want.

I love my current Asus Transformer -- the convertible notebook/tablet form factor is the perfect system for doing the stuff tablets are good at while also being usable for doing actual writing and content-creation type tasks. The missing piece in the current Transformer is productivity software, like real IDEs. Windows 8 + x86 fixes that. I've been an Android fanboy for the past couple of years, but the promise of really melding mobile with desktop has me super jazzed for Windows 8 and I really hope Microsoft pulls it off.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#37

Post by sedev » Wed, Sep 14, 2011, 12:03 AM UTC

josephcooney wrote: post #12

mycroftiv wrote: post #10

>What strikes me about Thurrott’s tweet is that the two companies have attracted the writers they deserve. Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets. I enjoy writing about what’s real. I can't believe that Gruber can write such self-satisfied tripe without more self-awareness. His quote is more true than he realizes - the incredible smugness o…

Yes. I guess I missed the part where all of the attendees at build received a real working windows 8 tablet, running the real windows 8 preview/alpha/beta/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days bits. Somehow that isn't _real_ in the way apple would do real, and thus not REALLY real.

Gruber gives the example of how the iPads that were available to the press at the Apple event were indistinguishable from the iPads later sold at retail. Microsoft says up front, very clearly, that the hardware they're giving away is a "reference implemenation," which means that it's unlikely to ever show up at retail in its current form, and that the software is a "developer preview," likewise.

So - no, that's not the way Apple would do it, and while it's certainly a Good Thing for developers, it's not unreasonable to argue that compared to the pre-release iPads, the developer-preview Win8 tablets and software are not 'real.' Many, many things about both the hardware and the software can be expected to change. They're still being formed, and it'd be very premature to make predictions about the final user-facing experience at this point.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#38

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Sep 14, 2011, 12:08 AM UTC

varunsrin wrote: post #22

> "I simply wish to direct your attention at how utterly different the two companies are." >"Me? I’d be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets. I enjoy writing about what’s real" What Gruber claims to understand, but actually doesn't, is that the Microsoft ecosystem is a very different beast than the Apple ecosystem. Microsoft, unlike Apple, does not…

> Microsoft, unlike Apple, does not control the entire vertical stack. They don't really have direct control over hardware or retail distribution (some notable exceptions - Xbox, Microsoft stores etc., but you know what I mean - it's nothing like Apple's top-down approach)

I think most people in our field, including Gruber, are well aware that MS doesn't have full control of the stack. It's good to note, but at the end of the day if you're just judging product A from product B; no one, especially the customer, gives a crap about excuses no matter how good they are. Unless you're my family or friend, you either deliver or you don't. I don't care if you have to let the dog eat your homework or not.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#39

Post by sedev » Wed, Sep 14, 2011, 12:12 AM UTC

frou_dh wrote: post #31

sedev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a mischaracterization of the statement you're responding to. Gruber and Thurott's sites are actually a neat microcosm of some trends that they also come down on opposite sides of. Gruber delivers content as a product to an audience. Thurott is delivering an audience, as a product, to advertisers.

My comment was only on the matter of taste that the parent brought up. Take a look at Gruber's rates, he's raking in the advertising money, yet in a neatly packaged way.

I agree with that, and with the proposition that that shows that he has better taste in web design than Thurott.

Re: All His Life Has He Looked Away, to the Future...

#40

Post by barista » Wed, Sep 14, 2011, 12:15 AM UTC

Funny how he turned the conversation to whose approach is better. Both Apple and Microsoft have followed their respective approaches for years and I doubt they are going to change it.

What is important to me is to realize how quickly microsoft has reacted and how convincing the reply sounds. Compare what they showed today to the vaporware of Vista. Microsoft has come a long way since then and its impressive turnaround for a company that size and that has such legacy baggage.