What? Angry Birds doesn't have esoteric, non-intuitive gestures. You drag the bird in a slingshot and let go. Tiny Wings only tells you to touch the screen, which is the kind of non-intrusive hint described in the article, as opposed to a separate interface walkthrough.
It's quite surprising how many people here are voicing their opposition to this article and defending interfaces that are so baffling that they require a walkthrough screen. I can only guess that the author is right in that these kinds of apps appeal to a certain type of user that values novelty interfaces.
You're portraying an alternate reality in which Android tablets were a smashing success, and everyone is using a stylus. This is clearly not the case, and the iPad mini is going to be a huge seller.
You have a comment history of being a so-called "Android apologist". Please don't be a platform warrior. It's an insular way of viewing the world.
Android tablets haven't been very successful. Android fans may not like it, but the public loves the iPad, so the iPad mini becomes a disruptive product. It's the smaller tablet that people have been waiting for.
There's more to the success of a product than being first to market. Apple has been proving that for the duration of its existence.
Not at all. He thinks his personal barometer of what makes a post "useful" is an absolute that everyone else must adhere to. Nothing in the post he's reacting to was agenda-driven beyond being a personal opinion--which is what comments sections are for.
It's a bizarre, embarrassing reaction to criticism of Android, which he has a history of defending here.
Some things are impossible to have domain knowledge for, because they aren't actually saying anything. They only exist to sound smart. Case in point, this gem from post-modernist Judith Butler:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
The law says corporations are people; it's called corporate personhood. It doesn't apply in all cases, but it does confer to them many rights that an individual is considered to have.
Good for him. Notch has earned a well-deserved break.
If you've followed Minecraft development for any period of time, you'd know he takes breaks quite often, much to the amusing frustration of fans. His disinterest in the game in the last year has been a little obvious.
Jeb's takeover is the best Minecraft news in a long time. He has already fixed outstanding bugs, like sheep wool not regrowing. 1.0 is rife with major issues, and Notch's inability to finish a feature has damaged the game's appeal since its shift to an RPG-lite in the various Adventure Updates. Jeb is the best person to grab the steering wheel and put things back on course.
That's a pretty amusing statement because Notch is infamous for taking vacations often and quickly losing interest in a feature before moving onto the next one, leaving things incomplete.
Fans have been cheering Jeb's takeover because he is considered more technically competent and devoted to fixing bugs. Minecraft's code is generally considered a big mess.
I hope entrepreneurs don't start confusing accountability with narcissism because of Steve Jobs. You don't have to be a rude, difficult, bully to get things right. Not only would Steve tell people that their work sucked, but when they finally produced something he approved of, he would often act as if it was his idea. His romanticized view of the world was also impractical, from the meaningless paint job of the NeXT factory to his refusal to have his body "invaded" by surgery. What point does it serve to go through 64 nurses or worry about the design of your oxygen mask? It's absurd and accomplishes nothing.
Steve Jobs wasn't the designer of the iPhone. Other people made it while he cracked the whip. For some reason, a lot of the press is giving him credit for everything at Apple in spite of his infamous reputation for taking credit for other people's work.
Jef Raskin said these things in regards to the Macintosh project:
"What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down."
"After he took over, Jobs came up with the story about the Mac project being a 'pirate operation.' We weren't trying to keep the project away from Apple, as he later said; we had very good ties with the rest of Apple. We were trying to keep the project away from Jobs' meddling. For the first two years, Jobs wanted to kill the project because he didn't understand what it was really all about."
"I was very much amused by the recent Newsweek article where he [Jobs] said, 'I have a few good designs in me still.' He never had any designs. He has not designed a single product. Woz designed the Apple II. Ken Rothmuller and others designed Lisa. My team and I designed the Macintosh. Wendell Sanders designed the Apple III. What did Jobs design? Nothing."
You may dislike the verbosity, but it's hardly "completely unnecessary." A typical Objective-C program is inherently self-documenting. It's nice knowing what a group of arguments is used for without having to look up the method prototype.
Well, the beard, and other quirks, sort of symbolize how socially off and out-of-touch with normal people Stallman and others like him actually are. It doesn't automatically refute arguments he makes, but it does paint a picture.
Equating the iPhone to a "jail" is goofy political hyperbole. Normal people don't even view software in that context. It's just a piece of hardware and software they choose to use or not use.
Stallman represents the strain of computer nerds who want to view their hobby as the bold movement of a freedom fighter. They are out-of-touch and don't understand what normal people think and feel. They want their nerd playground to remain in place because it's a world they have control in.
The mobile world is still in its infancy, regardless of how many years ago Microsoft was working on it. No offense, but you come off as far too emotional to take seriously in a discussion. You start with some valid points about management, but then you act like they personally spit on your car.
There's a very valid point you didn't address, which is that Google is relying on its search monopoly profits to pump a free product into a new market in order to destroy existing competitors there. Regardless of how you feel about Google or Android, that is a behavior Microsoft was once criticized for when it made Internet Explorer free in order to destroy Netscape. Just something to think about.
It's important to maintain an objective perspective on all mega-corporations with monopoly power to make sure that your emotions aren't preventing you from recognizing a villain. Is Google a villain? In my opinion, they're on their way based on their behavior of the last couple of years.
You're being down voted because you missed the point. Google's lawyer was claiming that Microsoft was banding together with rivals to damage them, but Microsoft has revealed that they actually offered to team up with Google, and Google refused because they wanted the patents for themselves.
A lot of people are giving Google the benefit of the doubt for their motivations in bidding on the patents (hey, it's pro-Google territory around here, I get that), but the point of this article is that Google's blog post was a lie. They were trying to portray a pattern of behavior on Microsoft's part by which they team up with competitors against Google, yet it turns out Microsoft actually offered to bid with Google.
Complaining about huge bids that are more than what these bogus patents are worth is pretty hypocritical if you yourself bid over $3 billion for them.
I think Google is whining because they didn't win, and they know communities like this are anti-patent and will automatically side with them if they portray it a certain way. It's hypocritical to complain about the patent system and that competitors won patents you also wanted and were bidding on.
God, I can't wait for this era of wannabe yuppies to end, yuppies reading about launching startups and talking about startups and thinking about everything in terms of startups. It's got to be the most boring tech news of all time, and I have no idea how anyone could be interested in it.
It's quite surprising how many people here are voicing their opposition to this article and defending interfaces that are so baffling that they require a walkthrough screen. I can only guess that the author is right in that these kinds of apps appeal to a certain type of user that values novelty interfaces.