Nicole060

>Firstly as for your MacBook Air. OSX runs fine with 2GB and shouldn't be swapping constantly for browsing

What the hell are you smoking. Safari with multiple tabs will eat all the remaining memory. The whole system itself took 1,4 gb, there was only 700 mb left after startup on a CLEAN system, formatted and reinstalled without a single program running in the background (Mountain Lion).

> And not sure why you are complaining that you got 200 euros for a 4 year old machine.

Two years old actually. It's a late 2010 MBA. And I'm not complaining, I'm actually saying that I could have sold it for more but didn't bother and sold it myself for 200 euros to get rid of it faster AND to avoid the feeling of ripping off someone (which I would have felt if I had sold it for more, because I consider it a DEAD machine. A useless machine. You can't add ram and the base system is already overloaded with its 2gb. Selling it for what I could have gotten from it (you should look up what people can actually get from selling Apple devices even when they suck) would have been ripping off someone else.)

>Secondly you seem to be really bitter about not buying the cheaper and arguably nastier laptops. Why not buy them ? Clearly the only thing that concerns you is specs so why not buy an Apple ?

I just did that, right now. Am I not free to speak my mind on Apple just like you did when you called those laptops "nasty" ?

> Thirdly a LOT of people thought the iPad was an incredibly feat of engineering to get all that it did into such a small form factor. Seems to be a lot of revisionist history there.

Putting mobile phone hardware inside an iPad's case is not a great "feat of engineering". I would have agreed with you if you called iOS a great feat of (software) engineering, and its user interface revolutionary for the time. But there is nothing special about the iPad's hardware. We got mobile phones today that are far more powerful than the first iPad and many mobile phone at the time had hardware similar to the iPad, it's not like Apple did anything special there, they just put a big screen and battery inside an aluminum case, where in the flying fuck do you see a great feat of engineering ? the bullshit, it hurts.

Ultimately, what's attractive about apple is what their software engineers do. And what's pushing me off is their business practice, closedness, cheapening out on specs to create planned obscolescence.

iOS was what made the iPad great and possible, as it did for the iPhone. And OS X used to be a great OS, until they added so much bloat it couldn't run on 2gb of ram. No apple fanboy here is going to admit it, but the iPad had 256mb of ram to ensure that people would upgrade to the next iPad, end of the line. Just like the first iPhone didn't have 3g even when top of the line phones from competitors had 3g, to make the early adopters spend even more money the year after.

Apple has been ripping off its customers since forever, it's just the last straw. Do you remember the days of the cd-writer/dvd reader combo you could find on many Macs even when the cheapeast PCs had DVD writers ? I do. Apple is a cheap company, that sells cheap hardware with an expensive case. It's hard not to think so, I can recall so many examples of them behaving that way. Do you know the price difference there was even back in the days of the combo drives in the mac between a combo and a dvd writer ? Nothing, it was practically nothing, a matter of a few euros. But to get a mac with a dvd writer inside you had to buy the one that cost much more in the lineup with a better processor and so on. Ridiculous. I can't believe we, as in the collective of Apple customers around the world, put up with so much shit for so long.

The only thing that saves Apple is the software, and it won't last for long, because the competition is getting much better at this. Windows 7 is stable and really nice to use, Android Jelly Bean runs as smooth on my Nexus 7 as iOS did on my iPad 2. Goodbye Apple, it was fun while it lasted.

> So I can't blame Apple for feeling the same way. When they originally released iPad 1, they probably didn't quite anticipate how graphical and visual the user interfaces would eventually turn out to be.

Oh yeah ? Apple has always skimped out on ram on every single device and made you pay a premium to get more. That wasn't a real problem on macs in the past because it wasn't difficult to add ram yourself, but now with tablets and the new macbook air and macbook pro retina.. that's kind of a problem.

I bought one of the first macbook air that had the ram soldered to the board without thinking. If I had known that Mac OS Lion and Mountain Lion would've become so bloated I wouldn't have bought the 2gb model that I sold for a measly 200 euros recently. This piece of shit couldn't browse the web with multiple tabs open without swapping even though the same task was okay in the past with Windows XP and 512mb of ram. (I probably could have gotten more but I didn't WANT to sell it for more because I would have felt like I'd be robbing someone by selling them a defective device for a premium) By the way, there wasn't a single PC vendor selling laptops with less than 4gb of ram, when I bought my MBA, even el cheapo laptops that sold for $400 had 4gb of ram (what does it says about Apple ?). I was kind of retarded to buy the 2gb MBA, and I should've spent a little more for the 4gb, but I don't really regret it either since I opened my eyes and sold all my Apple devices, and will never buy anything from apple again.

It was obvious to a LOT of people that the first iPad was way too lacking in power and would be prone to something akin to planned obsolescence. Even me, who got fucked by the Macbook air, knew that the first iPad was indecent (I waited for the iPad 2 before I got my first tablet.)

Look at the top of the line in the android world : the (tablet) Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which has a much lower resolution than the iPad Retina (and thus less hefty memory needs for the apps), has 2gb of ram inside, future proofing it a bit against future applications. The (phone) Galaxy Note 2 also has 2gb of ram, as do some of the variants of the Galaxy S3, now that's a real top of the line phone. When I saw the retina iPad for the first time, my first impressions, after the initial "wow" you get for the screen, was, the specs are underwhelming for this kind of device.

Apple is all about the shiny. The 13" Macbook Pro still has 4gb of ram as a standard in the entry level, even though it sells for 1249 euros. I've seen PC laptops under 999 euros sold with 8gb of ram, 1TB hard drives, core i7 and a nvidia chip inside (rather than the shitty intel graphic chip that's included in the entry MBP).

I'm done getting ripped off by Apple.

If you didn't jailbreak beforehand and capture the SHSH blob, no, you can't. So for the vast majority of people who upgraded to iOS 6 there is no going back.

http://blog.iphone-dev.org/

That's the cost of being inside a walled garden. You don't even have the freedom to install previous firmwares on your device.

But since the browser is part of a firmware upgrade it would be a terrible idea anyway, a new security bug has been found on mobile safari recently, you don't want to stay on older fimrwares if you can help it. Google maps, or a secure browser ? Pick one.

I mostly agree with your message (intent) but you're using the wrong word, DRM, when you in fact meant Intellectual Property (IP).

Did they try stock Android, or devices with crap custom interfaces made by HTC and Samsung ? frankly, I wouldn't buy anything unless it has stock android, or let me root it and install stock android. I don't want TouchWiz or Sense. Having a bad experience with Android does not necessarily mean that someone hates android, it just means they hate that particular flavor of Android. Hardware manufacturers (Apple is the exception) tend to suck a LOT when it comes to writing software and it's a real pity that Google didn't chose to do the same thing as Microsoft and enforce their stock UI. Thank god for the Nexus line. Google has a really good OS but the worst strategy.

Android used to be inferior to iOS, but I feel that it has not only reached feature parity now, it has actually gotten much better. I used to feel the wow-factor a lot the first few times I handled my iPad, and none of the iOS update ever made me feel that again, on the other hand, Android Jelly Bean on the Nexus 7 has quite a few things that really surprised me, in a good way.

An example : when browsing places like Slashdot, I often had to zoom in to click comments and show those that are hidden because the links are often close together and too tiny to hit with the finger (which means that without zooming in I often hit the wrong one), and then zoom out to read the page at the correct size. It felt like a chore. But when I got my Nexus 7 and browsed places like Slashdot and Reddit (I don't use custom apps for websites), and tried to hit a link without zooming in, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing a zoom popping up with the cluster of links that were on the place where my finger hit, I tap the link I want in the pop up and it automatically disappear and I don't have to manually adjust the zoom of the page. It was the "Link Preview" feature of Google Chrome. Amazing. I will never be able to use another device again, if only because of that one feature, unless someone else copies it (the irony).

I haven't found a single thing I missed from iOS on the Nexus 7 - Jelly Bean, on the other hand, I discovered things I will miss if I were to leave Android (something that will probably never happen).

Feature wise, Android has left iOS in the dust. You may have a subjective preference to iOS's UI but there is no denying that iOS has less features than Android.

Android is the better OS. I sold my iPad 2 and bought the Nexus 7 on the same day and I regret nothing.

The iPad mini would only kill the nexus for the apple fanboys.

"I think iOS is better than Android."

That might've been true during the first few versions of Android but I don't think that's the case nowadays. I sold my iPad 2 and bought a Nexus 7 and I don't really miss anything. I certainly do NOT miss not being able to sideload software outside of an app store, or the lack of customization.

In fact I feel that the interface in Jelly Bean is an improvement over iOS in many ways. And it has stronger cloud support, I particularly like how it sync with my online, public Picasa galleries and the like.

Which have nothing to do with adjustment layers.

I don't know about the others, because I mainly do photo stuff ( Darktable seems decent though, and it has a been a long time since I've run linux on my desktop computer so I don't know how far it went ), but the GIMP is NOT functional in any way for a professional and a professional who is not willing to spend some dollars to get something that triples his productivity is NOT a professional.

The GIMP doesn't even support something like Adjustment Layers and that's a feature that was added to Photoshop 4.0 in 1996. Get real. Those who make that kind of argument for the GIMP, even pretending it could be used as a professional tool, have no idea what they're talking about.

Even the all-public, cheap edition of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, that you can get for $60, has features like Adjustment Layers.

The GIMP has been working on that stuff for a long time and they're still not done yet. They put off all features related to non-destructive editing until they finally fully switch to the GEGL engine.

Photoshop Elements is a < $100 package (you can get it for $60 on amazon.com) and it's still vastly superior to the GIMP since it supports some of the non destructive editing tools like Adjustment Layers : http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/adjustment-layers-in-p...

When you can get something that good for $60 there is absolutely no reason whatsoever as to why you'd put up with something like The GIMP. None. Photoshop had things like Adjustments Layers since 1996 with Photoshop 4.0, the same version that introduced an easy method to make your own automation (macro recording). 1996. The GIMP can't beat something that was made in 1996. I'd rather put up with a VERY old version of photoshop running under a PC emulator with an old OS than use the GIMP. That's how different the two software package are, and how useless The GIMP is.

And my experience is that people who say the same thing as you do are ignorant who have never used either Photoshop, The GIMP or have no business using either and should stay with something like Picasa.

For the record, The GIMP doesn't even have what we call "Non-Destructive editing" which allows to make a change to some of the filters and transformations you did on the image much later even when the image has been touched by other editions. It has been supported by Photoshop for way more than a decade, already. After all of this time, the Gimp still works like a toy and has zero productivity.

Zero. There is nothing productive about The GIMP. Anything you can do in The GIMP will be done faster with a competitor, Photoshop being the best in the category.

And before anyone comes to tell me that "THE GIMP IS FREE!!!11!ELEVEN!", Photoshop isn't expensive for a Photographer either, so price does not enter the game here. If you're a photographer with one or more DSLR bodies, lots of lenses, travel equipment and so on, spending some money on one measly Photoshop license is not going to kill you. The gain in productivity will more than make up for the money spent anyway, the Gimp truly is an awful tool compared to Photoshop. If you can't afford something like Photoshop it means that you can't afford being in that business in the first place.

Yeah right.

The iPhone is so obvious that your links shows a screen with scrollbars and I presume it worked the same way as it did on my godawful POS of a LG Prada : you probably had to hit the bars to scroll.

Still I admit that Openmoko had the decency to make the scrollbars bigger and give us arrow buttons widgets, which probably made it easier to use than the 2px bar of the LG Prada.

Anyway the openmoko is not a valid comparison point when we're talking about what Samsung did to Apple when they made the Galaxy S, Touchwiz (Android on samsung is not the same as vanilla Android), copied the (look) of the dock connector, AC adapter, packaging.. Openmoko doesn't have anything of the stuff that made the iPhone feel like magic.

Remember that the first Android phone didn't even support multitouch, for god's sake. And it was a year later after the release of the first iPhone. A year later and they still couldn't do anything close to it, and people call the iPhone obvious ? have some decency, please. The iPhone 3g has been released BEFORE the first android phone and it was already the second iteration of the iPhone. And the first Android phone (HTC Dream) was so far from being like the iPhone it isn't even funny. Compared to what the Galaxy S has become.

Because I'm not really criticizing Maddox himself, but the people who really took that page seriously and used it as part of all their anti-iPhone pseudo analysis during the great flamewars in 2007. You didn't really need to delve further into the site because I already knew about the kind of stuff it is.

Point is, most people in 2007 were criticizing the iPhone for not having a keyboard. That funny maddox link had an opportunity to be taken seriously. Make a google search for things posted in 2007 and you'll see by yourself what people who never handled an iPhone at the time thought of the idea of a phone 100% operated with a touchscreen. How many predicted the iPhone would fail way before anyone even had the opportunity to test one ? sounds like the iPhone and what it does wasn't that obvious.

You can't be serious. Samsung has a far better supply chain than Apple. In fact, Samsung IS PART of Apple's supply chain.

But Samsung is not the kind of company that would take risks with a market and they'd rather ride on the coattails of those who are willing to push the innovation into the hands of the consumers, and it's not something specific to their mobile division, it's the same for their digital cameras, home appliances.. I've seen during the history of photography most of the big names doing something that may have impacted the market, while Samsung is just saying "hey, me-too!" months laters.

Funny, I never said they invented the capacitive touchscreen, but that's apple haters for you. What they did that no one else did before is to put the right gestures, the right UI, environment to make it work. I had a LG Prada, it had a capacitive touchscreen so I obviously know Apple didn't invent it.. except the LG Prada was also behaving the same as Windows XP on a tablet. You use widgets like scrollbars instead of gesture everywhere. That's no iPhone.

"The first iPhone was an expensive PoS" ? it was the first phone with a good web browser, that's already quite something in itself. I can't imagine browsing the web on a phone without double tap to fit a paragraph, pinch to zoom and a good engine like Webkit. That made it a feature phone, more than a smartphone, at the time, with the lack of things like installable software, but it was a damn good feature phone, and for those who use lot of webapps, it was probably better than most smartphones too.

For the record, I hate the app store. I hate not being able to install software outside of the curated app store. But I give credit where it's due, even if there are a lot of things I hate about Apple, they did make the one touch phone that was actually usable, as opposed to POS like LG Prada or Samsung Croix (pre-android touchscreens) interface.

It is really obvious looking at some of the ac adapters and dock connectors that Samsung intended to copy the whole appearance of the earlier iPhones to ride on Apple's coattails. Samsung tried to copy everything from the UI to the trade dress to patented technology. They behaved like shady Chinese companies making cheap knock offs.

Are you saying there is nothing to patent about the implementation of gestures on your touchscreen, as opposed to hitting widgets like scrollbars ? You couldn't be more wrong.

And people who cite things like the people who did multitouch with an array of cameras obviously don't understand patents. Patents are not about an idea but an implementation. The earlier multitouch stuff had nothing to do with the multitouch on a capacitive screen.

The LG Prada was so bad you had to use 2px scrollbars with your thumb to scroll down a list, like a contact list. It was like using Windows XP on earlier touch devices. I don't think making something like the Prada in 2008 would have helped Samsung's case in any way, because it had none of the things that made the iPhone great, none of the features people copied from the iPhone.

The LG Prada was a complete failure, because your old, classic feature phones like those in clamshell form were MORE usable with their keyboards than the Prada and its really bad touchscreen and bad software. I wanted to go back to a regular phone real fast when I made the mistake of buying a Prada. Not quite the same experience that people have when they buy an iPhone.

If it was so obvious then why did it take a company that had NO history in making cell phones to make a good one with a usable touchscreen and gestures ?

Nokia couldn't do it. RIM couldn't do it. Samsung couldn't do it. LG couldn't do it. (LG did make a touchscreen, and I owned one before I bought an iPhone, and it sucked hardcore)

And they were on that market way before Apple.

Cry me a river if it hurts your feelings that Apple goes to defend their innovation.

Not only the reviews of the people who had tried the device were glowing, even of those who turned into Apple haters lately (either because of the trial or because of app store policies), but the opinion of those who had NOT tried the device is even more interesting, as 99% of those who had never tried a device that had an actually working touchscreen, with the right software inside, thought that the iPhone could only fail ! Everyone was predicting the failure of the iPhone because they couldn't imagine a device without a keyboard nor a stylus could work.

This is the kind of drivel that was shared around the internet at the time of the iPhone's release : http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone One of the first lines : "First of all, the E70 has a full keyboard, not some shitty stripped down, tap-and-pray smudgy piece of shit."

I wonder what the author and the people who spread that link all over the internet at the time think of most Android handsets, Windows Phone, since they hated so much the idea of a phone without a keyboard.

When you look at the criticism from those who had not tried the device you really have to stop and ask : was the iPhone obvious ? The answer itself is obvious, and it's no, it wasn't. They couldn't imagine a phone that could be usable without a keyboard until they tried it with their own hands. "Tap and pray" ? hahaha.

As someone who has owned a pre-iPhone phone with a touchscreen, and seen another one in the hand of a friend, no, what made the iPhone the iPhone is NOT obvious.

For the love of god, my LG Prada was so shitty I had to hit a 2px scrollbar with my thumb to scroll in the contact list. I can't contain the nervous laugh whenever some ignorant who never touched the device link to wikipedia proud of their attempt at mocking Apple. Web browsing on a touchscreen is a real PITA without something like the double tap making a paragraph fit the whole screen automatically too.

Like it or not but the iPhone, as a whole package, without just singling out a feature here and there, was a real innovation, a breath of fresh air that opened a new market and has been copied to death by some companies like Samsung. I hated my LG Prada but instantly loved my iPhone the day I bought one and I wasn't anything like an Apple fanboy.

Apple didn't invent touchscreens but..

I've seen two of the pre-iPhone touchscreen OSes without a sliding keyboard or anything like that and they both sucked hard. I owned a LG Prada and knew someone who owned a Samsung F490. They were both terrible, I would've rather had a classic phone than a Prada and my friend who owned the Samsung F490 handed it down to his daughter and replaced it with a classic phone. Lots of people thought that smartphones with touchscreen would behave like the iPhone in its ads except that it was far from the case.

I don't think anyone but Apple could've kicked off the touch revolution. RIM and Nokia ? they only switched course after the iPhone. Nokia's stayed in the comfort zone with Symbian for far too long and didn't have any innovative OS for smartphones and RIM was making candybar, fat and ugly phones with basically just one target audience : people who constantly use email. As long as most people use cases of mobile internet came from email software, RIM wouldn't have felt the need to innovate at all.

The iPhone was really the first touchscreen phone I ever felt comfortable to use. People who made the comparison to the Prada when they were saying that Apple didn't innovate obviously never touched a Prada. It's one of the shittiest phones I've ever used, and phones with keyboards were much better than this. The tactile feel of the touchscreen wasn't good, it lacked precision and the whole interface was programmed in mobile flash. It lacked any advanced feature and couldn't install apps outside of J2ME crap, unlike Windows Mobile. It didn't even have a real web browser.

It's been proven with the new Windows Phones, and new BB os, that you don't need to copy Apple to make good touchscreen OSes. I can understand the anger Apple felt with some Android vendors, and it is true that Samsung even changed the stock Android icons on some of their phones to match more closely the look of the iPhone (WHAT exactly is wrong with the stock android UI ? for god's sake, don't mess with something that already works great). Samsung is renowned for being copycats, and not just in the mobile phone market. The trial itself revealed that they were targeting Nokia before they changed course to target Apple. But almost all of their electronic division consists of nothing more than being shitty copycats. Their digital cameras aren't anything to brag and Samsung was so late to the DSLR market (mostly hybrids in their case.. uh) that I can't understand why one would ever consider them seriously. Their whole home appliance division consists of nothing but copying other products, they never made anything worth a look.

Exactly. When it comes to the world of programming and IT, English is the lingua franca. I'm French but spend 99% of my time on the English-speaking web. The French edition of Google is only good at pissing me off.

I use Windows with an English localization and most of the software installers irk me to no end by defaulting to French because they don't rely on the system language but my location.

I also hate the fact that I have to do something as cumbersome as putting the browser in private mode whenever I'm using someone else's computer to make a search on the english side of google since, like for japan, google.com redirects to google.fr instead of letting me use the US database so I have to go in the preferences and do so in private mode so as to not mess with the cookies as they wouldn't be pleased if their google permanently turned English even on google.fr. God damn it.

Hey GOOGLE, domain names are not just for show, FFS. If I want the French edition, I'll go to google.fr. If I want it in English, I'll go to google.com. Don't mess with something that worked rather well since the beginning of the Internet.

I hate programmers who try to write "smart" software. Software that makes attempts at thinking in your stead. Fuck off ! I know what I want, you don't need to make annoying guess works.

I am a mac user too, but I just own a laptop, rather than a whole ecosystem of iMac+macbook+*. My desktop computer is a home built tower.

And yes, the android tablets were absolute shit when the iPad came out, that's why I didn't buy an android tablet even though I was already kinda getting fed up with Apple at the time. I just think I should've waited for a while, wait for something like the newer, Android 4.0 Transformer and now the Nexus 7, rather than immediately buy an iPad 2. I'm torn between the two, the Transformer sounds closer to my ideal, with stuff like a built-in card reader, but the portability of a 7" sounds good to me too.

You're admitting that iTunes isn't really that great even on a Mac. And think about it. It's the only way to put mp3s on an iPhone or iPad (unless you bought everything on the store). I'd rather they just give me a Mass Storage interface to the file system than force me to use some crap proprietary software. iTunes sucks partly because they have to keep it cross platform, meaning it's never going to be a full modern cocoa app on the mac and it's never going to feel right on Windows either and mac libraries are not known for being great for cross platforms apps compared to Qt or Java SWT.

Even if I were to be a full mac user I would oppose this idea of my-way-or-the-highway simply because I find it crucial to be able to QUICKLY move from a platform to the other without any fuss whatsoever if you change your mind or anything like that, and it's something only standard metadata and filesystems hierarchies can give you. I was a long time linux user until I made the mistake of building a desktop that was kinda incompatible, particularly the ATI Radeon that crashes a lot with Gnome 3. It wasn't a pain to come back to windows, and it's never been a pain to switch from Mac OS X on my laptop to windows on my desktop. And I use Rsync to make mirrors on an external usb drive of my data, a tool that works on the three platforms rather well. I have nothing against an heterogeneous environment and I'm not married to a particular OS or software. I'm not a fanboy of any one of them, I use what works best for me at a particular time and particular hardware I bought. Mac laptops are really nice, their trackpad rocks, the suspend works good, they offer good battery use, the unibody case feels solid and not creaky even if you hold it a bit wrong..

I like a lot of things from Apple, I just wish they were actually more open and not just in the open source sense of working on projects like LLVM, but open in the way their devices interact, open in the protocols, open in the way metadata is stocked and shared.. the Mail.app for example used to implement mbox, and one of the things that pushed Mark Pilgrim over the edge was the conversion to a proprietary format. MS loses too on that particular example (mail), but they're getting more open these days with file formats, and while the Open XML process hasn't been without mistakes it's still miles better than the state of iWork. iWork can't even open ODF files, while Microsoft created a plugin for Office that lets it import and export to ODF. I recall Office 2010 supports it natively.

Apple just doesn't give a shit. I don't care as much for "free as in freedom" software as I care for "open protocols", "open file formats", "open metadata". Make closed source software if you want, and sell it for as much as you want, but as long as you support openness, I'll give you the thumbs up. Microsoft made great strides toward this. The way they worked with mono developers was also exemplary and C# truly became crossplatform apart from the GUI libraries themselves (and it's still possible to do so with the old WinForms) and Mono never really lagged that far away when it came to language features and major APIs, and they actually submitted the language to a standard body, and the specifications are free to download, unlike ISO specs. It's hard to think of Microsoft as the great evil the way lots of nerds did, because compared to Apple, they're novices, amateurs, a gentle brand of evil. If Apple had the same stranglehold on PCs the way Microsoft has presently it would literally be a NIGHTMARE.

I refuse the thought of marrying myself to a platform, so I'll never buy into something that locks me in. Hell, even free software could theoretically lock me in if it didn't support stuff like IPTC tags, file system hierarchies and built its own proprietary database for everything to take the photo management example again. Thank god the open source community tends to value a certain form of pragmatism and just follow the path of least resistance rather than "innovate" by building their own crap.

> What do you mean can't import/export? Most editors integrate with Dropbox, iCloud, FTP, webdav, some even have a server you can use over a local network, and you can always use vi(m)/nano/whatever over ssh. (are you thinking of Codea? that is a toy).

Oh you meant those text editors that can't run code ? I'm not thinking of coda, but anything that can actually run code, like the Python interpreters on iOS. You can't import or export code with those. The fact is, Apple restricts what you can do on your tablet. You can't edit code, run it on your tablet and export or import some. Why would I want to use a text editor on the tablet without being able to run code on it ? I might as well take my laptop instead.

> No idea what you're talking about, I manage all content on the iPad/iPhone without touching iTunes, and import photos directly from my dslr using an SD adapter.

If you transfer them through iTunes they get resized and they can't be removed from the tablet until the next syncing. And I don't see why I would want to use the SD adapter, the first place I'm going to put my photos in is the real computer where I'll develop the raw files with Lightroom and the SD cards are immediately erased for the next shoot. I only put my photos on the iPad to show them around but I find it a pain that I can't even manage it from inside the iPad, deleting and creating albums from iTunes imports. That's typical Apple crap you have to deal with here.

Apple always behaved like assholes starting from their first mp3 players. Where the competitors allowed you to just copy your files over the file system, no big deal, with iPods you have to go through iTunes which is a slow piece of crap for windows users. ( I use windows on my desktop )

Jailbreaking could do the trick but then it means a risk if you send your ipad under warranty, and it means lagging behind updates (some of which could be important, like security updates. It can be risky, look at the fact that an exploit allowed jailbreaking through the web browser in the past.. the same exploit could've been used by anyone to pwn your iPad, so you better install all the updates as soon as they're out.)

I can remember Mark Pilgrim making the same kind of point about OS X in the past, and why he switched to linux, and OS X was far less oppressive than iOS. http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges

The whole proprietary database crap is the reason why I will never use iPhoto. I want a photo manager that lets me use the filesystem without much constraints, and a full compatibility with IPTC keywords and all the other metadata standards. I want something I can transfer to a different operating system, or use with a different photo management software without much fuss. I'll have none of that walled garden crap, and that walled crap was already there in OS X with software like iPhoto. For people who want free as in beer software and don't want to pay for something like Lightroom, Picasa is a much better choice [than iPhoto]. Or Darktable for linux users. I actually prefer Picasa's interface over Lightroom, too bad it lacks the advanced features, because Picasa is very friendly for someone who uses the file system. Folder hierarchies are portable and stable over time. IPTC, id3 and XMP metadata are portable and stable. Proprietary databases are not.

I like a lot of things about apple products. I own a MBA in part because it has the best trackpad in the market for example. But there is also too much to hate for me to turn a blind eye to their policies anymore, I just got sick with their software and absolutely can't stand it. The next time I'm in the market for a laptop computer, I'll take the inferior hardware and flimsy software, I'll even bear with stuff like bad suspend, if it means that I'm finally freed from the Apple jackasses. There is nothing compelling me to buy a mac if I can't stand the few mac exclusives and mostly use multiplatform software on it. Guess the Apple brainwashing never worked on me.

It is very obvious that Apple is now nearly exclusively catering to complete consumers and that anyone who uses apple products for advanced stuff are byproducts rather than one of the target audience. They dropped their XServe line, so no more pro servers. Their Mac Pro towers are outdated and they have the audacity to sell them with absolutely shitty graphic cards.. considering the amount you spend for a Mac Pro it's a total rip off. They pissed off a portion of their pro market with Final Cut X, and they pissed off the amateurs who liked the advanced features of the previous iMovie. They dropped their stewardship over OS X java, which is now a good thing because they always took a long time to put out newer versions of the runtime. They are lagging behind a lot on OpenGL support. With Apple, they tell you to jump and you just answer back "How high ?".

The writing was on the wall the day they changed their name from Apple Computer to Apple. They're now making most of their profit off their locked down smartphones. OS X was already kind of my way or the highway, but now with iOS they are reinforced in their belief that they can push the mindset further, which is why we got the appstore on ML, sandboxing issues, gatekeeper, stupid skeuomorphic apps from iOS and full screen apps that behave in a way that make switching between them uncannily like multitasking on the iPad. They're turning my MBA into a gigantic iPad. I can't wait for OS X 10.9 with Gatekeeper always on rather than optional. I wouldn't be surprised if 10.8 was only transitional, to give app developers some time to adjust.

"There are a dozen code editors"

You can't be serious. You can't import or export code. I don't even consider that fit for a toy because even toys are better when you can share them.

" and a few pretty decent photo editors too"

The way the iPad works compared to android makes it a huge PITA. If you use itunes to import photos from your computers they're going to get resized, and for some reason, you can't delete imported photos on your ipad unless you delete them from your computer and sync with itunes. How about that, for a closed device ? You can't delete content on the tablet unless you do a sync on your computer ? Complete madness.

"The iPad is a general computing device, it just has a friendly interface that most people can understand. Is an automatic car 'limited' because you can't change gears manually?"

Yes. If we race the same car, you with automatic and I with manual gears, I'm going to beat you. For that matter you must be an American, because here in Europe most of the cars sold aren't automatic. No one here believes that getting an automatic car is an upgrade. And having a friendly interface is no excuse for restricting what I can do with the device, Android proved you can do both : give a friendly interface and still be friendly toward those who want to do more than browse the web.

Android has the potential to replace computers, with time. The iPad is a shitty walled garden where you can't even erase a photo you transferred from your computer. I regret having bought this device. But since Apple products tend to keep their value well on the aftermarket because of all the fanboys, selling the iPad 2 will actually bring me enough money to buy a Nexus 7 without having to spend a single cent more. I pity the poor sod who's going to buy that crap, though.

I own three Apple products and I am sick with their antics. No more.

I own an iPad and I don't really consider it as a desktop computer replacement. I can't program on it. I can't do serious photo editing on it. It's just a consumption device. I like it but those stories about iPad being general purpose computers are seriously getting on my nerve, because as someone who uses one everyday, it's still far from being anything like it, and I seriously hate Apple restrictions and consider moving to an android tablet, I saw the community there even made an IDE that can make true Android apps in Java, from within Android.

If the future of computing is about being dictated on what I can and cannot do on a device I bought by Apple, I'd rather not see that future. I regret having bought an iPad instead of waiting for something like the Nexus 7. I'm actually going to buy the Nexus once Google decides to sell it in my country but it means I've wasted money on my iPad.

People who are NOT researchers but spreading the same shit everywhere on the internet are nothing but conspirationists. Including you. Because you contest what is officially recognized as OK, and do so without yourself having the medical authority/background to back up your claims. A random hodge podge of various, completely unrelated studies does not a point make. The experts of the FDA and various health authorities around the world have read the same studies as you do, and allowed MSG to be used in our food, and you have no authority to contest that.

I can bring up the same hodge podge about gluten and ask for a ban.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16436335

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18787912

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16423158

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1727768

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19664354

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170845

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15497770

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16436335

Here you have equivalent material on gluten, hell you'll even find an association with schizophrenia. Let's fear-monger and stop eating bread and pasta !

With your really low, actually unscientific standard of using science studies, I can make it so that you'll never eat any food again, because I can find the same stuff about most food sources.

Since everything is so unsafe why don't you just kill yourself and be done with the unsafe misery that is life, cowering in your primal fears. You can't eat msg, but you can't eat gluten either, nor table salt, or sugar, or various carbohydrates, or milk.. oh but you can't eat some meat either because there are correlations to cancer. In fact, studies on meat have shown greater negative effects on the body than studies on MSG.

"A 2011 study of 17,000 individuals found that people consuming the most grilled and well-done meat had a 56 and 59% higher rate of cancer" http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v106/n3/full/bjc2011549a.h...

Are you going to stop eating meat forever because of the relatively small increase of risk of getting cancer ?

This is why I call you a conspirationist. There are "natural" food sources, like red meat, that have been proven as much more dangerous (and it's still a relatively small danger, statistically speaking) than MSG yet people like you focus on MSG and Aspartame because FUCK ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTS right ? Red meat is natural so it's all good right ?

My point wasn't that I trust pagerank more than science. It's that there is a popular FOCUS on something that ISN'T MORE dangerous than stuff like read meat, and it's for a reason : fear mongering about anything that's artificial, man-made, call it whatever you like. The science speaks for itself because none of the study you will link to will prove MSG as a bigger danger than something like red meat. And yet, you don't see anyone trying to bring up a fear-mongering campaign against meat. The only people who campaign against meat are the psychotic vegetarians from PETA who do so in the name of a ridiculous "ethics", being against the killing of animals.

Seeing educated people like you spreading this bullshit against MSG doesn't help to educate most people about the reality of food. Most of your food sources can be toxic to a % of the population. Big fucking deal.

Yeah, losing your present lifestyle and job to go live in one of the most xenophobic country of the earth, and one that doesn't have a lot of skilled English speakers at that, just to make a point, sounds like a good plan, right. You really have to be one of those "wapanese", people from the west who are obsessed with japan, to be insane enough to do such a thing through your own will. You don't have a choice if you're employed at a company that does business in Japan and you have to move there for a year or two. But someone who does it with nothing compelling him to ? Madness. Japan is the last country I'd want to live in, among the developed, industrial countries of the world.

People talk about racism in Europe and America. Well, of course racism is still alive and kickin', but they don't know what racism is until they take a look at Japan. In the west we're at the point where we're taking in lots of immigrants from diverse background, be it educated or uneducated, from various countries and cultures in the world. That isn't the case in Japan. It's already kinda exceptional for an European to live in Japan.

It is ridiculous to expect anyone to go live in Fukushima just to make a point. Hell, it might be technically impossible. For a white foreigner to work in Japan, you have to take an upper class job, that is, something in engineering, education, entertainment.. or else you'll never get any work visa. But the thing is, there probably ain't a lot of those jobs in the evacuated area of Fukushima. So what you are asking him to do might even be impossible. There might be a way if that person is willing to travel long distances from home to the workplace.. who'd do that kind of stupid effort anyway just because some bloke on the internet asked him so ?

This isn't about avoiding a challenge but about the comfort of using a modern language. Objective C still has you writing headers files for heaven's sake.