Because standalone iBeacons to trigger geofences is not what I believe Apple intends to use them for. This is what Estimote is selling.
Sure the geofence triggering is kinda cool, but I've yet to see a practical use of it. Seems like "interactive museum tour" is the thing everyone keeps coming back to. If this is what Apple wanted to do with iBeacons, they would be selling them for a couple bucks in Apple Stores. But iBeacons aren't a consumer device. I think much more likely to see "iBeacon ready" hardware sold by Apple and other 3rd parties.
I think iBeacon protocol will become part of other devices, as a way to add proximity detection for the iPhone/apps that could interact with that device.
How about a DSLR camera that I can pair with by touching my iPhone to it? Creating ad-hoc multi-peer networks between devices by being near them. Play a game on your phone on a nearby TV without connecting to same WiFi. Or wearables knowing which other wearables are nearby. This kind of natural, "magical" interaction is very Apple.
If you're sweating the cost of buying a Mac and the annual $100 developer fee, are you really planning to run a profitable business? Those costs should be the least of your concerns.
The market rate for investment bankers is more attractive than my job. Doesn't mean I can just be an investment banker tomorrow. Or a nurse.
If I live comfortably on my basic income doing whatever, how do I become qualified to work? Remember we have college grads who aren't qualified to work, and they've spent their entire lives being educated.
The big assumption that everyone tends to make when talking about public education is that the politicians, school boards, principals, and teachers are advocates for students.
Sure, some of them are, but the vast majority of them are looking out for themselves. (I don't blame then, the system pushes them to this) They're making decisions on what will be best for their situation, and they are not really held directly accountable to those they serve, the students.
If anyone has tried to fight the system (like the author), they quickly realize this. And the only effective way I've seen to balance the power is school choice vouchers. Otherwise you're condemned by your zipcode unless you're wealthy enough to afford private school tuition.
Having done this stuff for about 15 years now, it is amazing how much of your work is scrapped in 5 years or less.
If you're writing some deep enterprise level back-end stuff that is going to be integrated in a large, expensive system, obviously it really is worthwhile to do it right.
If you're cranking out another piece of shit marketing website, or even better, anything app or mobile related, no matter how much planning and testing and pride you put in to it, it is almost always completely worthless in a couple years.
Everything is changing so fast right now, the platform, device, language, database, etc, may not even exist in 5 years. 5 years! That's a hell of a depreciation schedule for a $200k project.
Why can't we just build new, safer nuclear power like India, China, Japan, and basically everyone else are building right now? Whoops, the left has demonized nuclear power so much in this country that people fear it more than coal!
It always sounds great to be "investing" in infrastructure or energy or whatever. But pols don't invest, they cater to voting blocks. Politics can't solve these problems.
Reality is a sad place right now. People are so scared of it, they're willing to believe anything just to not have to think about what's going to happen when the music stops.
Yeah, none of us are using Microsoft Word any more.
Ever print anything from Google Docs? Look at the typography. Look at the letter spacing and kerning. It's a joke.
And don't even get me started on javascript.
I like to use word processing as an example because it's probably been the #1 client app for 40 years with no web app competitor even close. I would argue 1992 WordPerfect is better than Google Docs in quality, features, and reliability.
The last decade of software development has been focused on web apps, and the promise that it's write-once-run-everywhere. So we've all been suffering by taking a huge step backwards in UI/UX by shoving everything in a browser.
It is just not there. So you can keep struggling with your ugly javascript hacks and unsupported CSS quirks. But the best stuff is being made on the client right now. It's cleaner, easier to maintain code, and the UI/UX is delighting users. User's don't care about cross-platform.
Bold? They're losing money like crazy. Advertisers haven't been paying the rates they need to survive for almost a decade.
It was bold to keep printing and mailing the thing for the last 5 years as it became absolutely clear that printing news on paper has no future at all.
I'm surprised that so many major daily newspapers are still being printed today. That shoe is going to drop any month now.
Actually, I've been considering how to do this for my next app.
Not split testing the sale price though, it will be free. (It's just too hard to get people to buy an app outright) I want to split test in-app purchases. I think this should be fairly straightforward to implement. The only downside is in the app store 2 different items would show as top in-app purchases with different prices. People might be upset about that, but I doubt anyone would notice.
My point was more how as programmers, the emotional toll of everything that we're making will be destroyed, usually in only a few years.
Yes, we're paid. But it's hard to have satisfying work when the result you produce becomes worthless. It would be like spending 12 months carving a beautiful piece of furniture out of wood, get paid $100k for your work, and then handing it to the owner who lights it on fire right in front of you.