DISQUS

Al · 2 years ago

Wouldn't it be nice if Windows was locked down?

Can you imagine life without malware?

Think I will switch.

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

Good point, Al. And wouldn't it be nice if we never had to go outside, where we might trip and stub our toes, or catch a nasty virus, or get wet and cold? I think I'll stay inside in my sterile, white bubble where it's nice and warm, and let Steve give me whatever I need.

Matt · 2 years ago

The Apple faithful will swarm to the iPhone like bees to a honeypot or flies to (well you know what)

The rest of us will probably consider this phone

First International Computing's (FIC's) "Neo1973
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.html

In the article it says the next model will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi ...

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

Looks cool, Matt. I just hope the screen is big enough for when I have to run vi so I can debug my chat application, or manually edit the mode lines in my X86config file :-)

Rick.Calvert · 2 years ago

The answer to your question Matt is Apple is just as corporate and evil (if you you believe corporations are evil) as Microsoft. Despite what the apple cultists may believe they play dirty and try to spin and control news about them as much as the hated Microsoft does.

I never understood the worship of Apple and my one and only trip to Macworld only confirmed my view that Apple fans were practically brainwashed.

Sure they make some great stuff, but they also make some lame stuff just like every other big corporation.

Rob Hyndman · 2 years ago

Careful now - everyone here is starting to sound like just another fanboy.

(And frankly, I'd be quite happy if how well it all works remained just our little secret.)

Not all of us want to spend the best years of our lives fixing everything that goes wrong when you leave the "sterile, white bubble where it’s nice and warm". Jobs wants it locked because that makes the system more reliable. That doesn't suit everyone. And he doesn't care. But this is not new, we've known this since (at least) 1984 - that discussion was over a long time ago.

We don't want to be spoonfed - we just realized a long time ago that the machines ought to work for us, rather than vv, and that the debate over who's the biggest alpha geek is ultimately about who is the biggest neanderthal. The real trick is figuring out how to make the technology work for you.

We Mac users are delighted that you Windows and Linux guys are happy to spend your lives making sure the trains run on time.

:)

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

Well, at the risk of throwing a grenade into the tent here, the old "Macs never break and never get viruses and never do anything bad" mantra is one of the biggest pieces of wool that Steve has pulled over people's eyes (or that people have willingly pulled over their own eyes). I've heard innumerable stories about Macbooks heating up and seizing, or just shutting down randomly, and patches having to be downloaded, disk drives going bad and so on. Not just Macbooks but older Macs too.

And when anything like that happens, you get to take it to one of the two Apple stores in your city (if you're lucky) and wait for weeks or even months for someone to fix it (at great expense). It's like owning a Jaguar -- you need to own two, because one of them is always going to be in the shop :-)

howardlindzon · 2 years ago

The tecmeme always forgets to look at the big picture for the average user outside this meme. design, web, a STORE with people that can actually help


a great experience.

Most people dont deserve or can handle open. they ar eidiots who need to be closed off from screwing around and costing jobs bazillion in customer service

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

So Apple fans are idiots who don't deserve or can't handle openness? Thanks, Howard, you're making my case for me :-)

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

No computer is perfect, but as the owner of of Dell, Toshiba, and Apple computers, I must say that Apple's hardware in general tends to be more reliable, and the stats of Consumer Reports support my personal experience. Matthew's citation of "Macs never break and never get viruses and never do anything bad” is known as a straw man argument, and it does him no credit whatsoever to use this kind of shallow reasoning amongst educated readers. Oh, and people -- I've deployed hundreds of Dell and Toshiba PCs in large corporations, so I might know a little bit about hardware quality, but don't let that stop you from treating my observations as the delusion of an Apple fanboi. You're all so much wiser and experienced than I am, after all.

Joe · 2 years ago

What was that website for bloggers that Winer decided to shutdown without notice because he got tired of maintaining it? And how is it that with Winer at the RSS development helm we ended up with 3 different standards for doing simple newsfeeds?

Winer's a great guy, and a visionary. But I'm going to stick with Steve Jobs who designs things to just work. (No, Jobs isn't perfect either.) I don't want a phone I can hack, I just want one that works like the demo and won't require me to spend a weekend reading a manual. Which is what most people want. And most of us don't care to edit MS Word documents while driving down the highway either.

I do think that Linux phone is a great idea. If Apple wasn't coming out with the iPhone I would probably be buying it. For those of you who do buy it be thankful that Dave Winer was not involved with its development, because unlike Jobs he's wrong more than he's right.

Paul · 2 years ago

What is all this fuss about closed systems/open systems?

Just look at the gaming market. Think anyone can develop on a Playstation? No. You have to go through Sony. Can anyone just create (legally) apps that run on the Xbox? No. Can you play a Zelda game on anything but a Nintendo console?

Yet, no one seems to say how the console market is doomed to failure or lacking in innovation because of its closed nature.

There are pros and cons to work - being one or the other does not predict nor guarantee failure. Because in the end, execution and consumer value is what determines whether a closed or open system will succeed or fail . Nothing more, nothing less.

Matt Hendry · 2 years ago

If you want a phone thats just a phone you dont need a IPhone you need a Tracphone ;)

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

Sorry to disappoint you, Victor -- I only brought up the "Apples never break or get viruses" idea because I continue to hear it from people I know who are enticed into buying Apple computers for that very reason.

I'm willing to take your word for the fact that Apples are generally more reliable than Windows machines (although I have had three Windows machines for more than three years and have had virtually no serious issues, either hardware or virus-related).

But I would argue that it's also true that when something does go wrong with a Mac, it takes a lot longer to fix and is more expensive, which is something many people don't realize when they buy one.

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

“Apples never break or get viruses” is a conflation of two separate ideas, both based on partial misunderstandings. Let's take the first idea -- that Apples never break. Obviously not true. Or how about "Never get viruses" -- malware exists to exploit vulnerabilities in MacOS X, but in practical terms, the risk profile is much lower (I have no antivirus software on any of my MacOS X boxes, which are all connected to the Internet, some 24/7). As for repairs taking much longer to fix, it depends on what breaks and where you live. The hard drive in my primary Apple notebook died in July 2005 and was replaced by a local Apple dealer within a day; the labor cost $85. When I had to replace a dead hard drive under warranty in a Dell tower PC, it took Dell 2 days just to get me the required part. I have a 6+ year old 400MHz Mac G4 that runs OS X perfectly well. XP is unusable on a PC of that vintage.

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

You had me right up until the end there, Victor. Much as I hate to get into a geek pissing match (aw, who am I kidding -- I love geek pissing matches) I have a six-year-old Acer that runs XP just fine, and is connected to the Internet 24/7, and apart from running Spybot now and then I have had no issues with it whatsoever.

Matt Hendry · 2 years ago

Mac users tend to forget that the Mac OS is only installed on about 10% of computers in the world so that means less than 10% of virus and malware coders are even bothered with the platform .

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

"I have a six-year-old Acer that runs XP just fine" -- XP does not draw doule-buffered windows, unlike MacOS X, which is doing much more in its UI layer (think Vista), and although my 6+year old G4 only has a 16MB ATI Rage128, it can display most of the UI effects in OS X. Can your 6 year old Acer run Vista? I didn't think so. In other words, it can't do Expose, Widgets, etc. Listen, if you have extensive cross-platform experience, as I do, we'll have a geek pissing match. Otherwise, don't even try to impress me with your Windows-only experience, okay? I have a Dell PowerEdge server running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition too -- but I control it remotely from a Mac running OS X. And since Macs now run on Intel Core CPU's, they can run just about any x86 operating system natively or in a virtual machine. Got that? Good.

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

Matt Hendry wrote: "Mac users tend to forget that the Mac OS is only installed on about 10% of computers in the world so that means less than 10% of virus and malware coders are even bothered with the platform"

Ah, so following your reasoning, the average user should automatically prefer the platform that is more frequently targeted by cyber criminals? Isn't' that sort of like saying "Eat at Joe's Diner -- a million flies can't be wrong!"? :-)

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

Just thought I'd repeat something I said to my colleagues early last week -- both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are a**holes, but in different ways. Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org site has plenty of background information, here are two great examples from 1981 and 1983:

http://tinyurl.com/y3grlw
http://tinyurl.com/y2oa4r

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

I would agree about the a**hole thing, Victor. And the only reason Steve gets away with it and Bill doesn't is that Steve only has 5 per cent of the market and Bill has 95.

But back to the pissing match: You said that XP was "unusable on a PC of that vintage," but I proved you wrong -- and now you're arguing that it wouldn't run Vista. That's called moving the goalposts :-)

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

I claimed that XP was “unusable on a PC of that vintage,” - let me elaborate a bit since "usable" can mean anything from "boots up" to "runs major applications that tax the processor and graphics subsystems." Can you take a 400MHz PC built in late 1999 or early 2000 with a 16MB VRAM video card, put Windows XP SP2 on it, turn on the UI effects (e.g. fades, shadows under menus, semitransparent windows, etc.), and still use it productively as a Photoshop CS image editing workstation? Sure, you can run XP SP2 with all UI effects turned off, but then you're looking at the Classic Windows UI -- in other words, like Win95. MacOS X running on a 6+ year old G4 looks like Vista. In fact, a mid-2001 500MHz G3 iBook with an even punier 8MB VRAM card can run OS X quite well, and the UI also looks like Vista -- not XP or Win95.

In my original post, I should have said Vista to begin with, since it's more comparable to OS X than XP is anyway.

Speaking of goalposts, Jim Allchin wrote Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates:

"I am not sure how the company last sight of what matters to our customers (both
business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams
lest sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean,
what security means, what performance means, how important current applications
are, and really understanding what the most important problems are customers face
are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t translate tnto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way."

See http://tinyurl.com/y4rhjk

So, here's the head of the Vista team talking about buying a Mac. Now that Macs can run Windows natively, that's not really saying much -- but he wrote it in 2004, when Macs weren't even shipping with Intel processors.

And as for "Steve having 5% of the market" -- that 5% includes Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web on NeXTSTEP -- forerunner of MacOS X -- in 1990. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb

We can keep this pissing match going if you'd like, but since I've been citing sources instead of relying only on my anecdotal experience, perhaps you could do the same?

Mathew Ingram · 2 years ago

You win, Victor. I've already forgotten what the point was anyway :-)

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

I think one point obscured by our zeal, was, "Who's the worse a**hole -- Jobs or Gates?"

:-)

iPhone -- nice-looking gadget, but if the non-tactile onscreen keyboard sucks for SMS text messaging (we shall see), that might be a showstopper. Besides, multitouch really needs more than two fingers. See http://tinyurl.com/fx98d

Wayne Whitfield · 2 years ago

Hell, you're just not smart enough to change the battery in an ipod. Take a hard plastic wedge, a guitar pick works, and pry the case apart. Something as complicated for you as a screwdriver might damage the case.

howardlindzon · 2 years ago

By the way Mathew - most apple fans ae idiots and dont need openess. Thats why they left Microsoft. It was idiot unfriendly and worse, distrustful.

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

Howard Lindzon wrote: "most apple fans ae idiots and dont need openess."

You may be understating what "openness" means in this context. Here's a study of the DRM features in Vista: http://tinyurl.com/tfly2

"Idiots" who've shunned Microsoft include Bruce Schneier, Bill Joy, Joel Spolsky, Paul Graham, Amit Singh, and David Heinemeier Hansson. Take the last name cited:

http://tinyurl.com/y3m6b9
In 2005 he was recognized by Google and O'Reilly with the Hacker of the Year award... David appeared on the cover of the July 2006 issue of Linux Journal which included an interview with him in the feature story "Opinions on Opinionated Software." The same month Business 2.0 ranked him 34th among "50 people who matter now."

In David's Wikipedia profile photo, he's using an Apple laptop. An "idiot," indeed.

Wayne Whitfield · 2 years ago

Victor,
Does that make YOU more intelligent by proxy?

Victor Panlilio · 2 years ago

Not at all Wayne, now why would you come to that conclusion? What my post meant to demonstrate was that a system embraced by "idiots" who shun "openness" (according to Howard Lindzon) is also embraced by alpha geeks in the open source movement. Now why is that, I wonder? If a particular computer system is used by a 5% segment of the computer-using population that includes BOTH ends of the IQ bell curve, do you suppose that might lend support to the hypothesis that said computer system may also be suitable for the other 95% in between? Or did that possibility somehow elude your imagination?

SFGary · 2 years ago

I am a Cingular customer but unless they sell me one that is unlocked (is it quad band? so I can use it overseas) and without a forced extension of my contract I won't buy one. I was stupid enough to buy an unlocked treo 600 at 500 so the price, though high, is not outrageous. I am not so much put out by the battery issue though I would prefer one that can be changed.

The argument about a closed architecture is a red herring in my opinion. Why does there have to be third party developers for a product to be useful? If it does the three things, music, phone and web surfing as advertised, it should be a winner.

Wayne Whitfield · 2 years ago

Cingular is history. How can you people that contract with them and even one person that is employed by them, not know that. Now, start speculating on what AT&T is going to do.
I'm sure they'll really be intrested.

SFGary · 2 years ago

Wayne, AT&T and Bellsouth own Cingular. Now that they have merged, Cingular is now AT&T and I don't believe they will change anything. I would not be surprised if they try to bring back the rotary phone and leases.

Wayne Whitfield · 2 years ago

WTF SFG You said you don't think AT&T will change anything and in the same breath that it wouldn't surprise you if they reverted to rotary. Well, Whitch is it ? Iknow the Cingular
brand will die and being from Georgia I know there will be a lot of empty office space in Atlanta. Not that I give a damn about Atlanta or any other big city for that matter it really
sucks for the whole state. As far as further changes,though they might not be obvious at first, you can bet your ass the consumer is going to take it where the sun don't shine.

To me and people like me a locked device is something we call a work-a round.
If your not up to it. Don't friggin' buy it. If it doesn't do what you want it to do right out of the box and you don't have a friend to convert it, don't buy it.

Is an ipod or iphone a nessesity in your life.

SFGary · 2 years ago

Wayne, I am not sure what the argument is about? I said that the new AT&T will try to become more monolithic and monopolistic if at all possible than when they were three different companies. So while I would have bought an iPhone if I was not forced to buy or extend a contract AND if the phone was unlocked. Whether an iPOD or an iPhone is a necessity is besides the point. The rotary phone comment was a joke: at the peril of trying to explain a joke, I meant that the execs running these companies are probably nostalgic of the old days of leased rotary phones and one phone company...