Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

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The first Mac came out 1984 and it was just a sketch of what it could be.

In the following years the Mac and its software was shaped by the people using it and developing as much, if not more, as by Apple itself.

Desktop Publishing was one of the areas where the Mac first showed in a practically useful form (1985) that its base was useful. But it was not new. ALL the basic ideas existed in the Xerox Star ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star ): laser printers, document publishing, layout, networked workgroups, user interface metaphor (the office), page description language, object embedding, ...). Apple designed the Mac to be much more affordable - but a useful system with disk, large screen, network, memory, laser printer added up to a substantial amount of money.

I'm not sure that I can name ANYTHING in early Mac-based desktop publishing that was not already presented in some form in the Xerox Star - the implementation of Desktop Publishing on the Mac then was joint work of Adobe (Postscript), Aldus (PageMaker), Canon (the laser printer) and others.

I don't believe in a company that thinks it can define the 'progress of a platform'. In my view progress it is a joint process by many people and companies, a process of ideas, implementations, failures, retrying, improving, feedback, ...

For the iPhone OS developers are degraded to do what Apple pleases. Innovation is no longer happening between people on the same level - Apple thinks it can control the process and the results. I think that leads to a shallow form of progress and innovation.

I would agree with you if the platform we were talking about was something like the web, but it's not. It's a proprietary platform owned by Apple. It's not the 'progress of a platform,' it's the 'progress of their platform.' The progress of a platform created and owned by Apple. I may wish that I could develop and release applications for the iPhone using some other methods or languages, but I do believe that it is Apple's prerogative to control their platform.

Fortunately, it's just their platform and there are a myriad of other platforms out there not controlled by Apple that do allow me to develop for them however I see fit. I don't believe that developers are 'degraded to do what Apple pleases.' Even with the new SDK restrictions, there is still an infinite number of ways to express yourself developing applications for the iPhone.

I also think that as much as restriction may stifle innovation in some ways, placing limits on how something is done can also force you to be more creative and innovative in other ways.

This definition of a 'platform' is bogus. There is nothing like a platform. I want to buy a device that I own and not a 'platform'.

When I buy a house, I don't buy a platform where for the rest of my life, every newspaper that I read in that house will be delivered by Apple? Because that's the platform restriction. I get a lot of newspapers, but not all. The newspapers all look great, but some pages are missing, because Apple does not like them. Some images are blurred because Apple does not like them. I bought a platform, instead of a house?

I don't buy a car, but a platform? The BMW 5 series is a platform? I can only travel with it on BMW licensed roads and the petrol comes from a BMW petrol station where BMW gets 30% for every gallon? I can get only a BMW media player in the car and the distribution channel for music and news is also owned by BMW? BMW knows which music you have in your entertainment system? I could have bought another platform, from Mercedes, but then the petrol station would be a Mercedes-licensed?

Definitely not. If I buy some piece of hardware&software it does not mean that I want to buy a whole exclusive media distribution channel.

The whole idea that somebody owns a 'platform' that runs this deep and wide and this is just natural is just WRONG. Remember we let a single company influence what media we consume, what information we consume, what applications we can use and also what NOT - just by buying a computer from them and because they call it a 'platform'?

The infinite number of ways thought is also wrong. There are multiple infinities and Apple now controls the infinities. Some dimensions are not available at all. On some other dimensions there are still infinitive amounts of things, but they are all EVEN. The ODD ones are not supported by Apple.

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