Steve Jobs touched people lives in a way no other can, sometimes at a very personal level
Can we please stop the Steve Jobs and Apple suck-up here on HN please? This is getting as embarrassing to read as it is getting sickening.
I realize the Sanfran wannebe hipster-crowd here like their shiny iGadgets and want to reaffirm their own worth by appraising the company which they have attached their identity to, but this is getting a little bit out of hand and quite frankly, rather silly.
I love computers. I am a Computer Nerd. I think computers are an important technology, not just a fun one.
You, and others here, who dislike the sentiment that something like the iPad could profoundly change someone's life, seem like you want to keep the magic of computation to yourselves. You denigrate design for humans as "marketing" and you demand to categorize the iPad as just another in a long line of Von Neumann machines.
It's not. And the Mission hipsters taking photos of their MacBooks with digital SLRs make me want to vomit. This is not about them.
It's about an old man who was cut off from computation--something I think is immensely valuable--and now has access to it.
Computation is important. Access to computation is important. You're right that talking about some new bullshit gadget as a religious miracle is embarrassing. I get that.
But you know what? Turing completeness is a miracle. Interactive computing is a religious miracle. The mouse is a religious miracle.
And this guy's dad being able to use a computer for the first time, after decades of being unable? Kind of a miracle in my book.
"It's about an old man who was cut off from computation [snip] and now has access to it... And this guy's dad being able to use a computer for the first time, after decades of being unable"
You have to read a lot into the post to come up with that interpretation.
We don't know why the father refused to interact with a computer before. There's no evidence in the blog post that he was "unable". That he decided to use an iPad doesn't mean that Steve Jobs gave him the miracle of computation.
If the father had been nearsighted but refused to wear glasses for many years, then saw his brother wearing a new style of frames and decided to finally get some himself, would we idolize the frame designer in this way?
Agreed. I would expect that a community like HN would be a little bit more impervious to marketing, but I guess that is just further testament to the legend of Steve Jobs.
After posting this comment, I got a stern email from mister Paul Graham. You read that right. The cult of Apple is so strong here, that the site owner emails you when you talk against the brain-washed mantra: Apple is God.
Granted, I had a bit of tone as well, but still.
I'll take your advice and just leave it at that. That and refrain from commenting on any Apple-related threads in the future. There's obviously no point trying to bring the real world into HN Apple threads.
I see you are trying to draw attention away from the fact that Apple has on repeated occations shown to be dishonest, disengenious and outright misrepresenting competitors by presenting information in ways they knew to be wrong.
I see you do that and I wonder why on earth anyone would be so loyal to a corporation that they would be willing to drag their own credibility down to defend the credibility of a corporation which in they have no vested interest. It baffles me and makes no sense.
That aside, let's get back to what you said:
I don't think he meant truth in terms of marketing ...snip... but truth as design fundamental.
Can you elaborate on what you think this is supposed to mean, apart from being a divertion away from the fact that Apple, more than any other company currently out there, manipulates and lies to their audience and to sustain their image as "different"?
I'm not loyal to Apple. I do like Gruber's writing though, so I was defending his use of the word 'truth'. I said what I thought it meant, including a related link to the concept on Wikipedia.
What are some examples in which Apple misrepresents customers?
Rsync in cygwin also (severely) messes up your files' and folders' NTFS-permissions when synching against a linux-host, which can lead to things like the meltdown of a complete IIS website/webserver setup since the IIS worker process can no longer access the files it needs.
I've learnt the hard way that you dont use rsync in cygwin for anything remotely crucial ;)
Unfortunately TeraCopy appears to be abandonware, as it hasn't seen a new version for nearly a year, and no real attempt has been made to deal with its terrible network copy performance under Windows 7.
Which was a nice experiment which proved that it didn't work. You know what you can't do on iOS which most users want to be able to do?
Yeah. Work with the same document from multiple viewpoints, or applications. You can't work with documents across applications on iOS because you supposedly don't have files.
Like I said: A nice experiment, but it proves that "no files" only works for the simplest of use-cases and limits the ability to work with data beyond the limits that people reasonably expect to find.
Nokia is going Windows-only in America because that's the only way they can get the carriers to go along
So basically Nokia is only playing by the rules of the market, and the real problem is US carriers abusing their position. The real problem is US carriers, again.
So much bullshit stems from the way US carriers completely obliterates and perverts the free market, that you would think some government regulation would be heading their way sooner or later. Interesting how that haven't happened yet.
If you are going to predict any major actor right now of aggressively and offensively suing people into oblivion, Apple would be the obvious target of that accusation and not Microsoft.
Microsoft has enough business vested all over the place. They don't need mobile to profit. Apple's only real source of income however, is now reduced to iOS-devices only. They need mobile, desperately.
The fact that Apple is already suing left and right, right now, when their platform is going well and they technically shouldn't need to be in any state of despair, that should tell you who to fear the most.
Oh. Apple will litigate aggressively, of course. But Nokia is clearly moving towards becoming either a target for acquisition as a whole or, after dismemberment, its patent portfolio is. Microsoft won't do it openly, however. It's more likely they'll employ proxies for that, not unlike the way they funded SCO's campaign. Besides, we are talking about Nokia's current relationship with Microsoft, not Apple.
Don't you think it's a bit suspicious a recently hired CEO who was until recently a high profile Microsoft employee discontinues a major platform investment on the eve of launching a competitive product (I have played with the N9 and it's a very good phone) and bets the company on a yet-unproven (and I am being more than generous on this assessment) Microsoft product?
Don't you think it's a bit suspicious a recently hired CEO who was until recently a high profile Microsoft employee discontinues a major platform investment on the eve of launching a competitive product (I have played with the N9 and it's a very good phone) and bets the company on a yet-unproven (and I am being more than generous on this assessment) Microsoft product?
I haven't tried the N9 so I cannot comment on it nor the platform which powered it, only that historically, Nokia's only edge has been good hardware. They have been (and still are, as far as I have seen) absolutely horrible at software.
I would trust a platform made by Microsoft infinitely more than anything coming out of Nokia HQ, and that is despite all the failings of Microsoft in the mobile and tablet space.
Now... With that said: There is no doubt that by going the Microsoft route Nokia is losing something. They are now a generic phone-vendor delivering someone else's OS. They no longer fully own their own platform and stack.
This is quite a significant loss and definitely a big risk. However: Given Nokia's history with delivering software and software-platforms, I think it's a smaller risk than trying (once again) to deliver something made in-house.
And I really don't find it "suspicious" that a recently hired CEO choose to turn to technology and people he already know. I find it a very obvious move, even though it's not very obvious if it is the best choice or not.
Even if you discounted MeeGo as a no-go (no pun intended) as I did before playing with the N9, Android would make more sense - they already had Linux kernels running well on their hardware and had them for ages. Building Android on top of that would be trivial. And quick.
Nokia could also be the only Android phone maker that would be completely imune to lawsuits by any other phone maker. And from Microsoft ("It's a shame you are suing us, you know. It would be horrible if we decided to sue all your WinMo 6 and 7 OEMs").
Even if you discounted MeeGo as a no-go (no pun intended) as I did before playing with the N9, Android would make more sense
Just to clarify: I never claimed that doing Windows Phone 7 was the better option over than doing Android. I claimed that delivering someone else's OS is probably the wiser bet for Nokia, as historically they've been just awful with software.
And with a CEO coming straight from Microsoft, going the WP7-route instead of doing Android, seems like a pretty obvious and "safe" decision.
I think both MS and Apple have a vested interest in seeing Android destroyed. Mobile products are already selling more than PCs and no one expects the trend to slow down in favor of mobile. Tablets, in a short time, have already affected PC shipment numbers. If Jobs, Gates and Kay are right that tablets are the future, then this is a very serious threat to MS. These users are adjusting to life without MS software.
MS may not necessarily need mobile for profit but they need it for growth. These patent royalties are not going to last forever.
When you buy an Apple-product, no matter how shiny and polished it seems right there and then, you support this shit. Your newly acquired, polished Apple-product just made your hands dirty.
Can we please stop the Steve Jobs and Apple suck-up here on HN please? This is getting as embarrassing to read as it is getting sickening.
I realize the Sanfran wannebe hipster-crowd here like their shiny iGadgets and want to reaffirm their own worth by appraising the company which they have attached their identity to, but this is getting a little bit out of hand and quite frankly, rather silly.