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Serving at the Pleasure of the King

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Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#71

Post by slowpoke »

frou_dh wrote: post #29
AndrewDucker wrote: post #5

This is one of the reasons that I hope Metro apps crash and burn - if the only way to get hold of them is through the MS store, with all the same issues that the Apple store has, then I just don't want anything to do with them. I know that the Android equivalent has problems (piracy, for instance), but I'd rather have that than something completely locked down.

I can't imagine how MS would save face if Metro crashed and burned. Seems like it would be tantamount to checking out of the consumer market.

Seeing as Metro/Win8 is MS last desperate push to enter the market for tablets that in the near future will replace the market where they currently hold almost all their monopolies (the desktop), that's a very accurate description of what will most likely happen.

And seeing as Windows is not and never was an OS for power users, they will lose the remaining desktop niche - which will be populated by exactly those power users - as well once the tablet will be our primary multimedia communication device.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#72

Post by mcantelon »

programminggeek wrote: post #7

He's right and certainly more levelheaded about these kinds of issues than most, but what most don't realize is that many of the software platforms we love have had worse policies for years. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega all have/had extremely rigorous review process that was even worse than Apple's if you want to be on their game platform. Phone companies had all these build processes if you wanted to write Ja…

>We are like children who grew up with a silver spoon in our mouth and we've been asked to endure plastic. Sure, it's still a spoon, but it's not silver and that pisses us off.

No, we're like adults used to being able to do what we want with our own hardware. Being able to do what you want with hardware is the historical computing norm (gaming consoles being the exception). Android-based devices carry on this tradition so I use them, rather than paying Apple $99/year for the privilege of putting applications I've written on my own hardware.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#73

Post by redthrowaway »

0x12 wrote: post #68
redthrowaway wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Microsoft really is far less evil under Ballmer than Gates. It's also less effective, less farsighted, and slower, but it is less evil.

I think it is just as evil, just less successful at implementing the evil because Ballmer isn't half as smart as Gates was. Even evil suffers from poor execution.

I dunno. They've (more or less) embraced web standards, made overtures to the OSS community with a bunch of commits to the linux kernel, and have generally been a whole lot less monopolistic. Granted, Ballmer may want to be Gates and lack the ability, but the end result is a far less scary beast.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#75

Post by frou_dh »

slowpoke wrote: post #71
frou_dh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine how MS would save face if Metro crashed and burned. Seems like it would be tantamount to checking out of the consumer market.

Seeing as Metro/Win8 is MS last desperate push to enter the market for tablets that in the near future will replace the market where they currently hold almost all their monopolies (the desktop), that's a very accurate description of what will most likely happen. And seeing as Windows is not and never was an OS for power users, they will lose the remaining desktop niche - which will be populated by exactly those powe…

A lot of Windows users do consider themselves power users even if they have minimal knowledge of other platforms. For example, it's quite frustrating to participate in PC building or gaming communities where every schmo thinks they're an authority on computing.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#76

Post by blauwbilgorgel »

nirvana wrote: post #64

It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with google. Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable) rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.) Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leag…

>> Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index.

As a web developer on SEO forums, I hear of these cases all the time, but when you analyze these sites, usually 1 of 3 things is happening:

- Web developer(s) made a mistake, causing a (search engine) accessibility problem.

- The site is in violation of the Google webmaster guidelines.

- The site lacks (unique) content, or otherwise doesn't contribute at all to a healthy search engine index.

I never read of a case of Google arbitrarily or capriciously excluding sites from their index, offering them no way to appeal. In general, I also think the advice Google gives is far from inconsistent.

This could be a popular position for a web developer who got a site de-indexed, but maybe apply Occam's razor first. A mistake? A trend? An algo change? Worthless content? Blackhat SEO? Bad architecture? Got hacked?

Or do you want to jump immediately to Google arbitrarily removing well-intentioned sites from their index? I guess then you can blame bad luck of the draw.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#77

Post by Androsynth »

jpxxx wrote: post #61
Androsynth wrote: post #34

So Apple pushed out it's browser sync feature at the same time it pushed out the cleanup feature which effectively broke the competition? How Microsoftesque.

That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased applications. Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100% managed computing experience.

Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are different but the strategy of getting there is the same.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#78

Post by BoppreH »

nirvana wrote: post #64

It strikes me that this is exactly the position every web developer has with google. Google can arbitrarily and capriciously exclude them from their index. When google excludes you from the index, there is no appeal, there is no explanation, and, unlike Apple, google will not publish a set of (reliable) rules. (It gives a lot of advice but is inconsistent.) Also, like Apple, if you are not able to get in the big leag…

Aren't those index exclusions done by algorithms? If that's the case, just telling you why they removed you from their index would be a huge disclosure on Google's technologies.

Example: "Your website has been removed from our indexes because it displays too many X's.", when no other search engine has thought of filtering websites based on X.

And because the decision is probably based on many, many parameters and weighted, it would have to tell you the values (and descriptions!) of each one of them, making the message even more sensitive.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#79

Post by rhizome »

gbog wrote: post #28
raganwald wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment would read better without the argumentative side-excursion in the second-last paragraph. You make this great point, then instead of resting on it, you distract me from thinking about what you're trying to say and ask me to start thinking about whether everyone who down votes you is an Apple lover. Wy make me work to re-read your comment to remind myself what you actually came here to say?

You are right, I should have split it in two probably.

Drawing attention to downvoting never results in much of anything. It's always pointless to waste keystrokes on it.

Re: Serving at the Pleasure of the King

#80

Post by cageface »

derleth wrote: post #55
ashishgandhi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they did not do that. But that's not the only way to be responsible (consciously or not) for killing smaller developers. > authority on taste and acceptable content I don't know about that. If I want something that Apple doesn't approve for their store - say Grooveshark, for plausible legal complications in the future - I get the Grooveshark app anyway, from some other store that's legal (hint: jailbreak). Pers…

> I would rather have someone make sure (for free) that the app that I download isn't buggy, or crash-y, or other stuff. Hello, apt-get and yum. Curated software doesn't have to lead to locked-down systems you can only use at the sufferance of the curators. For example, look at the processes behind Linux distros. The people who put Linux distros together have been doing this for nigh on twenty years now, with the big…

To be fair though, the quality of almost all of the end-user software available via apt-get is far below that of the iOS or Mac app store. Developers and users have voted with their wallets for Apple's model. Ideologically I'd prefer that this were not the case but it's hard to argue with the numbers.
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