Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 11th Aug 2012 17:22 UTC
Nobody needs a tablet, but many people still want a tablet. This is still the core differentiator between a 'real' computer and a tablet. At least in The Netherlands, you can't function in society without a desktop or laptop connected to the internet, so people need a computer. A tablet, though? Hence, the most common thing people have told me when they played with my iPad 2 is this: I'd love to have a tablet, but not for hundreds of euros. Enter Google's Nexus 7, the first 'cheap' tablet that doesn't just validate Android as a tablet platform, but also gives the iPad a run for its money.
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Member since:2006-12-05
Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning. The "walled garden" you mention is actually something I *want* on my portable devices.
Well, have at it. Enjoy. In some cases a bit of sandboxing is alright, but IMO Apple just goes too far, and their reasons for doing it are not something I agree with or would support.
And whether you like it or not, Apple has more often been at the forefront of advancements than any other portable device makers. You make fun of getting rid of the floppy disk, but it IS an important detail. Sometimes having the guts of getting rid of legacy tech is almost as important getting new tech.
The floppy disk has traditionally also been *the* universally-working way of doing such things as upgrading the BIOS, flashing device firmware, and use hard drive maintenance utilities. Alright, the big two hard drive manufacturers now have tiny CD images (in case your computer boots from CD without problems), but I'm not sure about the others. As for the removal of the floppy drive, it would have eventually happened anyway, so the fact that Apple was the one to cut the cord isn't exactly something to praise the dead Apple god for.
Member since:2006-02-05
"As for the removal of the floppy drive, it would have eventually happened anyway, so the fact that Apple was the one to cut the cord isn't exactly something to praise the dead Apple god for."
Don't you think that is flawed reasoning? You could say that to anything. Newton has no merit in discovering trigonometry, because someone would have figured out eventually 
Being the first at doing something IS major, no matter how "trivial" you think it is many years after the fact. Apple have been trailblazing a lot of the modern tech world, and that's absolutely admirable even if one hates their politics.
Member since:2005-07-06
Apple has more often been at the forefront of advancements than any other portable device makers. You make fun of getting rid of the floppy disk, but it IS an important detail. Sometimes having the guts of getting rid of legacy tech is almost as important getting new tech.
Don't you think that is flawed reasoning? You could say that to anything. Newton has no merit in discovering trigonometry, because someone would have figured out eventually
Being the first at doing something IS major, no matter how "trivial" you think it is many years after the fact. Apple have been trailblazing a lot of the modern tech world, and that's absolutely admirable even if one hates their politics.
Being the first at doing something IS major, no matter how "trivial" you think it is many years after the fact. Apple have been trailblazing a lot of the modern tech world, and that's absolutely admirable even if one hates their politics.
Apple packages, piggybacks on the advancements of the industry at large (which just doesn't rush its tech before it can be really useful, for some pointless PR). Before doing so, Macs had major problems competing...
As the messiah puts it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LEXae1j6EY&feature=player_detailpag... ):
Apple had its head in the sand for the last many years [...] missed out [...] attitude of arrogance [...] the rest of the world passed us by [...] we need to bring the Mac up into the modern world [...] because we weren't first, because we didn't set the standards [...] this whole notion of being so proprietary in every facet what we do has really hurt us [...] reinvent the wheel our own way; and yeah it might be 10% better but usually it ended up being about 50% worse
Generally, what floppy-less iMac really did, was spawning a whole new popular category of USB floppy drives (waste of resources, money, and so on) - most people with iMacs needed one. FDD wasn't yet legacy, the move was premature, erroneous - Apple removed floppy drive, but there was still no real alternative: pendrives non-existent yet, web access fledgling.
(NVM delusions of comparing those to the accomplishments of Newton...)
If Apple, say, threw into the box a few-MiB pendrive, that would be trailblazing (or at least shipping CD-RW drive as standard)
And, as is usual, you rewrite history in Apple's favour - Amiga CDTV was probably the first consumer computer without a floppy drive, almost a decade earlier.
(and, in this case, most CDTVs naturally also had an external floppy drive...)
Overall, iMac was partly a re-purposing of the earlier (and not Apple exclusive) idea of "network computer" (and indeed, iMac G3 even reused elements of one such hw project, MacNC - that might be a major reason for its omissions, minimising R&D costs, while dressing them in nice PR). Additionally, exclusively using a new industry standard bus (USB...) was more about abandoning Mac-legacy, Mac-specific ports (ADB and such), inadequate for the realities of the market.
And WRT market forces & your...
Oh I would agree it doesn't have the same level of importance as many other things they have pushed forward. But I still think that any company being the first at throwing themselves at criticism for dropping an ubiquitous yet legacy technology is noteworthy.
...oh look, one of the earliest stories here http://www.osnews.com/story/18/The_iMac_and_the_Floppy_Drive_A_Cons... - in short, it was more likely a PR stunt and whoring for support of accessory manufacturers, nothing to do with the benefit of the end-users. And you fell for it.
But, let's not forget what glorious things accompanied that move to USB: 1) the dreadful "hockey puck" mouse 2) building into the keyboard a full USB hub ...only to give it just one port, occupied by a mouse (with the remaining hard-to-access port occupied by FDD)
PS. And about "Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning" - do you ever keep in mind how enjoyment works with... human minds? (for example with positional, veblen goods, http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-wine-011608.html - or go through a list of cognitive biases in general)
Edited 2012-08-19 00:15 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/15/13 23:03 UTC
"During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.More News »
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Member since:
2006-02-05
Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning. The "walled garden" you mention is actually something I *want* on my portable devices. To the point that if I had to get an Android device, I'd probably stick to Kindle Fire because it has a somewhat more walled garden than the rest of the Android devices.
And whether you like it or not, Apple has more often been at the forefront of advancements than any other portable device makers. You make fun of getting rid of the floppy disk, but it IS an important detail. Sometimes having the guts of getting rid of legacy tech is almost as important getting new tech.
I agree with you on one thing tho: "suing every Android cell phone manufacturer". That little legal game is getting quite tiring and I just hope they'd stop already.