grantheaslip

If that happens (and it almost definitely won't, at least for a long time), then switch. Making a decision based on pure speculation is a terrible idea. There are plenty of good reasons to switch to Ubuntu, but "I have a feeling Apple has a secret plan to turn OS X into iOS" isn't one of them.

I convinced my dad to get an iPad when our old family PC (which, last I heard, took about 15 minutes to start up) finally died.

He's downloaded one app: Google Earth. He was a Google Earth fanatic on the PC (he's an urban planner), so it was a no-brainier. Besides Google Earth, he uses the YouTube app, and occasionally uses Maps, but he spends the vast majority of his time in Safari. He reads the New York Times and Toronto Star, checks his Gmail, loads up recipes, and generally does the same things he did in Chrome on the old PC.

I've tried to convince him to check out some other apps, but he has almost no interest in doing so, and for what he does, why should he? Safari is a consistent interface, sites work the same as they do everywhere else, and he doesn't need to learn a bunch of different interfaces.

This is why I don't get why people seem to have this impression that Apple is somehow anti-web. The iPad is, for the average person who doesn't need to do very much data entry, the best browsing experience around. Hell, Apple has pioneered WebKit, which has near-single-handedly brought mobile browsing into the 21st century. They know how important the web (as in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) is, they just aren't putting all of their eggs in one basket.

I recently went from a 2007 MacBook to a Lenovo X201 with 9-cell battery, and it's worth pointing out that the much-improved battery life (3-5 hours -> maybe 6-9), lower weight (5.5 pounds to 3.5) and heat (uncomfortably warm -> barely noticeable) have made a huge difference in how I use it. Even the size difference, though not quite as dramatic, is very noticeable.

I used to really debate whether or not I needed my computer when I left the house, but now I tend to not think about it (3.5 pounds is pretty negligible, where 5.5 was verging on uncomfortable to shoulder), and I need to worry a lot less about preserving battery power than I used to. In that respect, I definitely see the argument for the iPad in his situation (though it's still apples to oranges), but if what he really wants is a long battery life and portability, there are pretty viable options out there that are still full-fledged computers.

I just can't see myself seriously considering buying an Android phone sold by, and supported by, a carrier (or, really, even a third-party manufacturer). I don't want to buy a phone with an awful, slow, gaudy interface tacked on, I don't want a phone that ships with a bunch of sponsored crap, and I don't want to discover that my carrier has no intention of providing timely software updates (if they plan on providing software updates at all).

All of this "openness" is worthless when the carriers are the bottleneck. The only serious choice for someone who knows better (at least in my opinion) is the Nexus One, which Google only sells to developers and only ships from the US. Google talks the talk about how great a job their partners are doing, but I can't imagine the Android team is happy with the current situation.

Say what you will about Apple, but my iPhone 3G is still officially supported and will be until next June. Good luck getting 3 years of updates from a carrier.

The complete lack of responsiveness in the Android UI, regardless of how difficult it is to fix, needs to be remedied, and needs to be top priority.

The UI is the connection between the user and the device. When it's laggy and unresponsive, the experience of using the device is always going to be sub-par, no matter how many new features and optimizations the developers have added.

Whenever I've had a chance to test out the latest and greatest Android phone, I've always been blown away by how awful the scrolling performance and animations are, to the point where I really don't understand how people put up with it on a day-to-day basis. My iPhone 3G, at least when it's not randomly hanging due to 4.0, feels more responsive than any Android phone I've tried, and it's running on 3+ year-old hardware (it's got the same processor and memory as the iPhone 2G, IIRC).

Smooth animations, not benchmark results, are equivalent to speed to the average person, and who can blame them?

Sorry if this sounds a bit mean, but what's to stop someone from taking the concept (which is interesting) and just running with it on their own without buying it from you? If all you've got to offer is some almost-definitely-terrible code for an outsourcing firm, some documents, and a few mock-ups, why do you expect someone to pay you for it?

And honestly, the fact that your first instinct was to outsource to India rather that learn to code yourself or finding someone local that you could work closely with, to me, means that you really weren't that passionate about the project in the first place or lack some basic judgement.

You call this project "accelerated" but I really don't see anything of any actual value in your description. If you were offering quality code in an useable-but-unpolished state, that might be a different story.

Again, sorry if that sounded mean-spirited, but I'm calling this like I see it.

By Winer's logic, shouldn't the iPad also support Java, Silverlight, Realplayer, Shockwave, Windows Media Player and Quicktime? There's definitely useful information locked into each of those formats as well.

Arguing that browsers should support plugins because they might be necessary to display useful information is a really slippery slope, and would be a wonderful way for Apple to get stuck in business relationships with notoriously incompetent companies like Adobe for little to no actual benefit. I'm not convinced that there are a significant number of people who would let the lack of Flash influence their decision to buy an iPad--certainly not a significant enough number of people for Apple to cede a portion of control over their platform to a company that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete inability to make Flash work on mobile (or really, any) platforms.

Why should they be? They have an official support channel--they aren't obligated to have some poor "evangelist" follow up on every reference to their product on the internet.

Some companies might do this, and you might be used to getting a semi-canned response on Twitter every time you mention a company's name, but that doesn't translate into any kind of obligation on their part.

I'm assuming Scoble is doing his usual act--that is, construing what he personally likes, what he sees in the Bay area, and what he hears from the "new media" sycophants that comment on his posts for how normal people operate.

Among normal people I know, Twitter has just recently actually become a thing that they're at least aware of and use a bit. They might have seen Google Buzz when it got unceremoniously foisted upon them (which I still think was a sleazy move on Google's part), but they ignored it and are probably more or less confused as to what value it offers them or even what it is. And frankly, so am I--I find using Twitter hard enough to rationalise, and left Facebook months ago. Why do I need yet another social network?

Scoble's life may revolve around churning up page views for his bullshit, and he may have the time and incentive to sign up for every new social media site that pops up and actually think that they matter, but the other 99.9% of us are too busy actually doing something productive with our lives.

Whenever I've had to bring my computer in, they've always told me to create a new account called something like "Apple" or "Apple Store", and they probably should have asked for the same thing from her.

I suppose there are times where the computer won't boot and they really don't have any other choice besides asking you for your password--the employee might have just mixed up their protocol, though that's not to say that it excuses that mistake.

As annoying as it must be for the developers of some of these apps, I have to wonder what they were thinking when they decided to make an app that so clearly straddles the line into duplicating app store functionality. I can't imagine taking that kind of risk with a business given Apple's history of rejecting and removing apps like this.

Another example that comes to mind is that Dashboard clone iPad app that was rejected a few weeks back (http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/dashboard-ipad-app-reject...). While it was cool, it was clearly the kind of app that would be very likely to be rejected even if it wasn't so flagrantly copying Apple's designs.

I'm not saying it isn't a shame that there are some categories of apps that I would love to have (say, a great podcast aggregator) that are simply too risky to make, and Apple should definitely have more transparent policies and a way to pre-vet an app idea, but if I were looking to spend 3-4 months working on an iPhone app, I might spend 2 minutes thinking about its chance of getting rejected first.

It more of a meta-comment about the genre of articles that yours loosely fit under :).

I missed the fact that you were actually referencing a claim made by Apple--sorry for jumping to conclusions!

Smartphones yes (though many smartphone users don't have much choice as to browser, or at least rendering engine), but netbooks are an arguable case.

I was referring more to people making their desktop browser choices based on benchmarks which have minimal, if any, effect on their day-to-day browsing. It seems like after every new browser release we get bombarded with "X desktop browser runs the SunSpider test faster than Y!" headlines, as if it's something that actually impacts people's browser choices.

I'm getting kind of sick about hearing about how browser X outperforms browser Y in Z JavaScript performance test. It's good to know that the browser developers are continuing to push JS performance--it's important that it gets better and better--but essentially every browser except maybe IE (haven't used it in years, can't speak to it) has comparable real-world JS performance.

I choose to use Safari because it's the browser that feels the most Mac-like, has ClickToFlash and 1Password, has great H.264 video performance, has a great interface, continues to support the newest web standards, never crashes, and is already familiar to me. As long as it isn't horrendously slower than other browsers, JS performance just isn't a concern to me--it has little real effect on my day to day browsing compared to everything I just listed.

Sure, but at that point Apple could be held liable for knowingly selling the app (and why you assume Jobs is personally handling this, I have no idea). This is the way almost every content company works: when they receive a takedown notice, they comply. Whatever money Apple is making from the sales of the app pales in comparison to the amount of money the Times' lawyers could wring out of them. If this kind of thing became a problem that was significantly affecting the platform, they may need to step in, but for one-off cases they're not going to.

They're a publicly-traded business; they don't run on fairy dust and unicorn tears.

This is probably a stupid policy on the part of the Times, but they're entitled to enforce the use of their content however they want. "We disagree with their policy because they web should be open and free!" is not a valid legal defence.

If the developers of Pulse and the Times settle this (in or out of court), I'm sure Apple would be happy to start selling it again, but they run a store and can be sued for selling something that knowingly breaks the terms of use of a content provider.

Good to see nobody is blaming Apple for this; there are legitimate problems with Apple's handling of the App Store (though perhaps taken too far sometimes), but this is clearly not their fault.

I also wonder how adversely the titled text affects readability. On Safari 5, the text looks a tad blurry, though it could just be me looking for problems; I imagine it probably looks worse on Windows and Linux, where the text rendering engines don't anti-alias as aggressively and jagginess could ensue.

Little tidbit I picked out of the development guide: Safari will automatically update extensions by checking a publicly-accessible plist file:

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tool...

I think Chrome does this as well (I don't use it). Could this be related to their choice to require extensions to be signed? I'd think that anytime code is being automatically downloaded and installed, security would be a concern.

Nice catch! In terms of day-to-day usage, that's probably one of the biggest new features for me.