How can you define what is a "good experience" for other users?
What is a "good experience" for you might not be for someone else, e.g., someone who knows how to program, someone who knows how to make their computer do lots of things Apple's devices either cannot do or will no do unless Apple can extert control and extract income from the user in the process (after the user has purchased and owns the device!).
You cannot infer too much about what other users want simply from Apple's earnings. Users are bomabarded with marketing. They are told what to want. But most importantly they do not know what is possible.
Apple actively tries to prevent purchasers from tinkering with their own purchases to learn about them. If you keep users naive about what's possible from a computer, then it's easy to define the experience they will have (and claim they want the experience you provide). Because you are preventing users from exploring any other experience!
Apple computers are locked down. They do everything possible to try to stop you from even opening the case. As a user, I can't change much of anything about the "experience". I have to accept what Apple gives me, their definition of "user experience" and be happy with it. End of story. Is that choice? No. Fail.
No one define what is a "good experience" for anyone else. That is their decision to make. But you can control their access to information, manipulate their choices and pass their "decision" off as being independent and based on merit.
You can believe your own hype. You can even initiate lawsuits and claim they are not about patents and money, but about "values". Of course, outside of the industry, this looks quite silly. When I want to demonstrate my "values", I file lawsuits in order to do it? WTF? This is the culture at Apple. The legacy of Steve Jobs' emotional immaturity and hissy fits: "I'm gonna sue Google into oblivion for Android even if it brings down this company." (paraphrasing his whining on a cell phone call to Eric Schmidt from Burning Man when Android was released)
Apple's "values" are crystal clear. They've been pulling this crap since the 80's. It's just risen to unprecedented levels now with their post-iPod success. They have more influence on the industry as a whole than ever before.
They may turn out to be even more toxic to personal computing than Microsoft.
Be happy with what Apple gives you. Because if they have their way that is _all_ you're going to get.
Maybe they are just trying to draw traffic. Use whatever sort of headlines traditionally work best for that. This particular one: "blah, blah, blah Under 30" has been around for a long time. It's editor-friendly.
What's fun about the web is anyone can gather these sorts of stories, archive them and then check back on the names mentioned 5, 10, 15 years later. In many cases, these people and their companies are all but forgotten. They got mentioned in an article and nothing more. In many cases, they paid a PR firm to get them the mention.
One thing is true in all cases: The goal of the article is to draw traffic.
pg wrote a nice essay about the role of PR in startups.
Name dropping in the right publications is a business expense for startups. Entrepreneurs routinely pay for placement in articles like these (but maybe not this one).
Unbelievable. I've seen people struggling with Macs based on this sort of thing. The only Mac I own is pre-OSX, from the the good ole days. I'm aware the hoop jumping has worsened, but this is ridiculous.
I like freedom. I never used my old Mac for internet and I would not want to use a newer Mac (or iPad or iPhone) for that either.
For internet related usage I can get the same performance, and in fact much better performance, as anyone would from an Apple computer using BSD/Linux/Plan9.
If I want to do something that is heavily graphics intensive and requires a Mac (e.g. audio/video production), then I just switch to the Mac. I consider that "special purpose" computing.
But these days Apple is really aiming for the "general purpose" computer users, not just creative professionals.
No way would I agree to jump through hoops to do general purpose computing (email, web, multimedia playback, etc.). The old Macs were terribly slow and clumsy for agile internet usage and the new ones are no different. And now you have all these ridiculous anticompetitive hoops to jump through... just to run software!
Nothing beats freedom and flexibility. It's funny because those sound like Steve Jobs/aging hippie-type "ideals" (or "values", right Mr Cook?). But that old Apple, the one that told us to "Think different" and made interesting computers for creative professionals, seems long gone.
And it all started with a silly little MP3 player.
They ditched Motorola for Intel and now they sue their Asian suppliers in fear of competition. Competition for the general purpose computer user who just wants a computer that works. The one who shops on price. Sad.
Apple is the antithesis of creativity. They try to commoditise and control programmers, they try to prevent people from learning about programming and tinkering and they keep trying to pwn your music collection. Why the f- can't someone just have a drive full of sound files without Apple trying to assert control over it?
Apple will soon be shifting everything over to ARM. This is the future. But I think the creative people will already be building their own ARM computers by then. Screw Apple. They've lost the plot.
Starbucks has forced other coffee shops (assuming there were any- in many cities they wasn't anything comparable to Starbucks in recent times) out of the picture. Are Starbucks customers faced with an abundance of choice of which coffee shop to visit? Or is Starbucks front and center, the "default choice"?
Maybe things have changed but in the past there were no unsubsidised cellphones available to US customers. Are US consumers wanting a cellphone now having to decide whether to buy a subsidised (locked) or unsubsidised cellphone? Maybe things are changing.
In many other countries the phones are not locked.
Choice.
When someone in the US goes to buy a touchscreen tablet, how much choice of other alternatives will they have?
Manipulating spacial environments (acoustics, not knobs) is, to me, the true "art" and the most interesting skill. It predates all this gear. And it seems to be something that some people have "mastered" without necessarily being experts in, say, the the science of acoustics at the same time. (Picture all the pseudo-scientific literature the "audiofile" industry churns out as part of their marketing. I confess in my younger days I totally fell for it. Sadly I know many older folks who still do.)
Right. But Amazon was wise. They could have seized major portions of the software patent landscape early on, they thought about going down the path Apple is on and they decided against it. In contrast to Cook's statements here, Bezos basically said software patents are not our future and other companies should follow our lead.
If you truly understod the patent system you'd realise it's a lot less "cut and dry" than you perceive it to be. Patent law with all its wonderful intricacies that many spend careers learning can get you to an issued patent. But an issued patent can't guarantee you anything, except the right to sue alleged infringers. It gives you no "right to a monopoly" only a right to sue. It gives you no right to manufacture or sell anything. Someone else might sue you you, regardless of your patent. That's not the patent office's problem.
Your issued patent is only as good as it holds up in litigation. And patent litigation is more or less a crap shoot. With high stakes.
The only way to determine the "validity" of a patent claim is to litigate it. And Federal Circuit decisions are not exactly "consistent" so as to be "predictable", to say the least. The end result is patent litigation is extraordinarily expensive and is to be to be feared, even when the patent claims being asserted are garbage.
The issue is not with the patent system in general. The issue is with how Apple is using the system.
There is nothing inherently wrong with patents or intellectal property.
The problem is with companies like Apple who think it is all some kind of game.
Again, the problem is not IP. IP is just rules.
The problem is Apple, specifically the people who run the company. The problem is the actions they take.
When nerds on the web discuss IP, unfortunately it ends up being employed as the proverbial "straw man". Nerds ignore the actions of Apple and instead debate IP. But IP is not a person, real or imaginary. IP makes no decisions. IP is just a concept. The decisions and the evil being done here are by _people_. Patent law (or any law) does not mandate that anyone has to behave like an a-hole. That is a decision Apple makes, not the drafters of patent laws.
But Apple thinks that just because they can afford to dump millions into legal fees, month after month, year after year, it gives them the justification to make life miserable for everyone else (forcing them to spend the same amounts or be forced out of the game).
Apple behaves like an a-hole. And everyone has to mimic them.
IP is not going to disappear. It's only going to grow. The reforms will have to change how it can be used.
Yes, I know that. Samsung is one company among many. For example, in the first iPods (which kicked off this insane run Apple is having), they relied on Toshiba for the drives.
I also know that thinking Apple would be able to stay afloat if they did not use manufacturers in Asia, such as Samsung, is "utter delusion". Is that what you're suggesting?
You're right about one thing: evaluation of audio qualities is incredibly subjective. In a word, it comes down to "preferences".
If I really want to "hear things I've never heard before" in recordings I've heard countless times in countless environments, I choose loudspeakers and headphones with a flat frequency response. I've come to prefer a set of near-field studio monitors over "audiophile" brands, without hesitation. This shifts the subjectiity to the sound engineers who produced the recording, instead of the "hifi" manufacturer targeting "audiophiles".
If these recordings need to be "fixed" to adjust to my preferred perception of the audio - and needless to say, there's a lot that needs to be fixed these days - then that needs to be done at the recording and mastering stages ("the input"), by recording and mastering engineers, not at the reproduction stage ("the output"), by those who design and manufacture "audiophile" stereo components. This is the conclusion I reached many years ago.
Of course, it is subjective conclusion. Audio qualities will alwys be a matter of preference.
For Apple, it's all about controlling the minds of consumers. And controlling their access to information about the devices.
For Samsung, it's less about that and more about plain old lack of interoperability: proprietary plugs, crappy Windows proprietary "install" software that was written hastily, and other little annoyances, stuff that will only work with Samsung. Like every other Asian manufacturer for as long as I can remember. (But at least companies like Samsung make SSD's and other components that can be used in any device. They keep companies like Apple afloat. Can Apple make its own components? Not as cost-effectively as Samsung.)
The result is always the same: the consumer overpays for these cheap electronics and gets next to zero customer service. It's "take it or leave it".
Showing a random Starbucks customer OSX in a virtual machine? Priceless.
If they only knew what their iPhones, iPads, "iOS" and "OSX" were really made of. They might never care. But they do care about overpaying.
11.) Governments who sell IPR won because more and more everyone thinks the path to success in IT must go through IP registration (of junk software patents in bulk) and (kangaroo court) IP litigation; moreover they can periodically raise fees without much pushback. Their main customers have loads of cash.
That's funny. For me it had the opposite effect. Obviously he has a conscience, for anyone with an intellect who is not the least bit offended by Zynga-ism is, arguably, lacking in that capacity, i.e., in need of a real conscience.
Well, you must admit the average age of persons using Facebook in the span of a few years went from university age to something like mid-30's or 40's. It's just not "cool" anymore.
This is a consumer. Do the opinions of consumers matter?
All that matters to Apple is sales. Do they care what consumers say about them on the web? Silence the nonbelievers!
Consumers do not need to understand patent law to make purchase decisions. But most consumers know what lawsuits are, especially ones that make a mockery of the justice system.
It's possible many consumers really don't care if they're buying Apple or Samsung. If they did care, if they only wanted Apple products, then Apple wouldn't need to sue other manufacturers, would they?
In the 1990's it was copyright. Now its patent. What next?
All Apple does is whine. Even when they are winning.
Their internal memo/public statement goes so far as to say "it's not about patents and money". Yes, I do believe you Mr. Cook. It's about a bunch of morally inept emotionally underdeveloped overgrown children.
Apple is above "copying". Went they want to cut corners (pun intended) and get to market quickly, they _steal_.
Specs/price is one thing. Dell was a clear winner in that department. But when something like a hinge breaks, or a fan starts wailing, or some other structural part of the system fails, the "specs/price" ratio suddenly does not mean much. Because it's non-trivial to salvage the parts that still work, the ones for which you got a good deal.
With Dell or Lenovo, one might say we're not paying for the hinges and such. But that stuff has to work too or what's the point? You can't take those parts you were paying for out and move them around easily.
Someday maybe we'll be able to build our own laptops or "ultrabooks" like one can build a mini-ITX.
Look at this way. Apple is not the first and last company to make a device that will function as a "phone". Or as an MP3 player.
How are they going to stop people from 3D printing their own cool casings? And from using free open source code that is the same or better as what Apple uses? With lawyers? It's not going to work.
For now Apple is riding high. But it won't last forever. Apple needs developers, as in the ones who do not work for Apple and can speak freely. Just like Microsoft needed developers in the 90's. They hired as many as they could and flooded the developer ecosystem with a gazillion closed API's and an easy peasy IDE. Strange as it may seem, these companies need you in order to stay competitive.
I can "sandbox" code using the shell far easier than I can control what a "modern browser" can do.
Because I know the shell and my OS better than I know a "modern browser".
"People are working on it..."
C'mon, man. This sounds pathetic. You can learn to use the shell safely. How do you think sysadmins do their jobs?
Or you can pretend the shell is too difficult and something to be feared. The simple fact is _you_ control the shell. You don't expose it to the world (unless you're playing games with CGI or doing like the OP said: feeding it random bytes from the internet). You can read the code for a basic shell (e.g. rc, sh, dash). You can modify and compile it yourself. You can write your own. CS students routinely write their own shells as part of the curriculum. A "shell" is something relatively simple.
You really think you're ridiculously complex "modern browser" is "safe"? Safer than your shell?
When your use the shell, you trust the people who provide your OS's kernel, the compiler, libraries and userland and those 3d party applications, if any, you choose to run. That's already a lot of people and a lot of code. When you use a "modern browser" who do you trust? I can't even begin to quantify it.
As a very well respected cryptographer once wrote, security may be less a matter of reducing privilege than of reducing the amount of trusted code. The only reason you even have a concet of "privilege" is because it's a relic of shared computing. Everyone has their own computer now. There's no such thing as "root" in Plan 9.
Compare the LOC in a basic shell with the LOC in your web browser.
So distribute it some other way. If it's a great app and lots of people have a use for it, they will find a way to get it. You have the greatest distribution channel known to man at your disposal which NO ONE, not even the mighty Apple, truly controls: the internet.
Apple is just one company... which happens to spend an inordinate amount of money on marketing and an incredible amount of effort trying to control people through the lure of nice form factor and a graphical interface.
But there's more to computing than form factor and GUI. Lots more.
What is a "good experience" for you might not be for someone else, e.g., someone who knows how to program, someone who knows how to make their computer do lots of things Apple's devices either cannot do or will no do unless Apple can extert control and extract income from the user in the process (after the user has purchased and owns the device!).
You cannot infer too much about what other users want simply from Apple's earnings. Users are bomabarded with marketing. They are told what to want. But most importantly they do not know what is possible.
Apple actively tries to prevent purchasers from tinkering with their own purchases to learn about them. If you keep users naive about what's possible from a computer, then it's easy to define the experience they will have (and claim they want the experience you provide). Because you are preventing users from exploring any other experience!
Apple computers are locked down. They do everything possible to try to stop you from even opening the case. As a user, I can't change much of anything about the "experience". I have to accept what Apple gives me, their definition of "user experience" and be happy with it. End of story. Is that choice? No. Fail.
No one define what is a "good experience" for anyone else. That is their decision to make. But you can control their access to information, manipulate their choices and pass their "decision" off as being independent and based on merit.
You can believe your own hype. You can even initiate lawsuits and claim they are not about patents and money, but about "values". Of course, outside of the industry, this looks quite silly. When I want to demonstrate my "values", I file lawsuits in order to do it? WTF? This is the culture at Apple. The legacy of Steve Jobs' emotional immaturity and hissy fits: "I'm gonna sue Google into oblivion for Android even if it brings down this company." (paraphrasing his whining on a cell phone call to Eric Schmidt from Burning Man when Android was released)
Apple's "values" are crystal clear. They've been pulling this crap since the 80's. It's just risen to unprecedented levels now with their post-iPod success. They have more influence on the industry as a whole than ever before.
They may turn out to be even more toxic to personal computing than Microsoft.
Be happy with what Apple gives you. Because if they have their way that is _all_ you're going to get.