janardanyri

Just wondering, do you expect non-scammers to have the $10m?

The whole point of "network effect" strategy is to render this analysis untrue.

This is not a counterargument; it is, in fact, the definition of the problem.

The article is about moving beyond car ownership, not the absence of cars themselves.

Your note about the brand is so true that even their self-awareness lacks self-awareness, such as this note from the SF Symphony first-timer's guide:

6. What should I wear to a San Francisco Symphony concert?

Contrary to what many people think, formal attire—such as tuxedos and evening gowns—is not required at Symphony concerts. In fact, most people only wear formal clothing to our Opening Gala. At our other concerts, most concertgoers wear business or cocktail attire.

With the original iPhone's marketing, the question implicitly being asked and answered was "how is the iPhone better than my feature phone / BlackBerry?"

With the iPhone 6's marketing, the question implicitly being asked and answered is "how is the iPhone 6 better than my current iPhone?"

At this point, there aren't that many potential iPhone 6 customers in the US who still don't know what iOS feels like.

Barriers to entry such as wiki markup are rarely about whether a group of people are theoretically capable of doing something. The larger problem is that an article about [x] will now only be started/improved by the cross-section of people who both care about [x] and are willing to spend time on the unrelated concept of wiki markup.

In a public general-interest Internet conversation, when you reach the limit of your willingness to productively engage, it may be prudent to cease engaging.

Most already have. Looking backward, the primary competition has been web, not OS X. Looking forward, the ascent of mobile is only making it easier to deprioritise Windows.

Well, the Bug Reporter is now online; that's one system restored, 13 to go. At least they're making progress.

https://bugreport.apple.com/

> if Microsoft ever tries to go with a Mac-style 'Gatekeeper' solution that requires you to buy applications only from the Windows Store.

This bit of misinformation has now apparently calcified into conventional wisdom; however, 'Gatekeeper' explicitly permits code-signing without publishing through the App Store, with no attendant restrictions, and signed software is accepted by the default security settings.

All other fears boil down to merely the possibility that Apple will change their mind and disallow 'sideloaded' software in the future.

> I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. If you're dead set on being an ass [...]

The purpose is to influence people who exist on the spectrum somewhere between angelic and dead set on being an ass.

> It is equally plausible that the diagnostic center told the patient that results were negative, and the call to the mother was to reassure her and to the surgeon to cancel a preemptive appointment made by the doctor.

The metadata would not end with that phone call - the pattern of continuing activities would make fairly evident what the prognosis had been. (Of course this doesn't meet the "beyond all reasonable doubt" standard of criminal court, but it meets the standard for justifying digging deeper into their affairs, or setting insurance rates for that matter.)

These are obviously not actual denials given how carefully they're worded.

Because those few lines of boilerplate you would have to add exist in order to make explicit your stance on issues you probably don't even know exist, and their inclusion would come at basically zero cost.

Programmers of all people should appreciate that the "plain English" explanation of something is often sorely lacking in comparison to a full and complete implementation.

You seem to be implicitly thinking of 'marketing' as pejorative.

I'd suggest instead that identifying an audience for a potential product is actually part of making an awesome product.

There's a pretty wide stretch of territory between not caring whether something is business viable and only caring about building a successful business.

We're all ignorant of the vast majority of facts relevant to almost anything. Comprehension is expensive and scarce. That being the case, simple extensions of good faith count for a lot.

This comment is a great example of problem #3 from the article: nitpicking at wording instead of engaging with ideas.

> The mobile vendors have all gone with GC.

It's a minor point, but Apple created ARC specifically as a streamlined reference counting alternative to GC, which was never used in iOS and is now deprecated in Mountain Lion.

These comments are revealing in themselves.

Every system has bad actors. Open identification and criticism of those bad actors marks a robustly free society, not a weak one. Talk of positioning, imprudence, insult, and hushing up... that trips alarm bells.

Tying it to one platform only "doesn't make sense" in a generic and irrelevant pseudo-strategic sense. The reality is that "The Magazine" is one dude making something neat in the time he's not spending on his multiple other business endeavors, applying the skills he's got and probing for market potential.

Plus the idea that you can do something this seamless and elegant on the web is horseshit. You can't subscribe to any web magazines in under ten seconds. (and if you could, odds are that they'd fill your inbox with spam.)

All of the costs cited are rounding errors in comparison to the scarcity of good developers' time, especially developers capable of delivering product across iPhone / Android / web.

Developing on "an old clunky win laptop" in particular is far from zero cost.

As one data point: a resume has never been relevant to my career. I've never gotten a job or a contract through a resume.

Completed live projects instantly visible on any browser or smartphone with a quick technical explanation have always been far more valuable for me.

You don't need to ask anyone's permission to build amazing software.

(Unfortunately, you continue to need permission to build many other things.)

From a random observer: thanks for the tactful response. I think that HN is best represented by this kind of thoughtful, deliberate post on a subject that could instead generate inflammatory or derisive remarks.

Though HN may be even better represented when the iPhone reax subside and real content dominates the front page again :)

Hmm, I don't think the app store is "for" app makers at all. It's for end users exclusively - the paying customers. That app makers are required to keep a fully stocked app store is an implementation detail.

Cool hack, but I can't help but feel like this completely misses the point.

The iPhone's battery takes up a gargantuan amount of its internal space already. Multiplying the battery size by 7 would end up doubling or tripling the device size easily. See the iFixit teardown of the 4: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4-Teardown/3130/1

It's truly just an incredibly hard problem to solve.

Who out there has the tools, time, and expertise to build browser add-ons of general merit but finds $5 and some screenshots to be an insurmountable hurdle?

edit: On perusal, I see it's not even $5 per add-on or publish, it's a one-time fee to register as a developer.

Sidenote on marketing: this is probably an amazing screen, but the gadgetmarketspeak designation of "Pure Motion HD+" makes me tune out instantly.

The cleverness of "retina display" was that a single explanatory sentence told you everything you need to know - this phone has better resolution than your eyes can fully perceive.

"Pure Motion HD+" means nothing to me - is that better or worse than 'true HD'? (For that matter, was the original just plain 'HD' actually fake HD?)

I had the unfortunate experience of trying to gauge displays at Best Buy yesterday, where machines in the same category would variously have resolution designations from "1280x800" to "SXGA" to "True HD" to nothing whatsoever, depending on what they thought sounded best, and the cumulative effect was that I felt less aware of my purchase options looking at the actual machines than simply checking opinions on Newegg.

I can't imagine trying to navigate that process as a consumer with other priorities in life. And they wonder why Apple has such healthy profit margins in comparison...

Eh. Nintendo's purpose is to get people playing fun games. Withholding games to get users accustomed to jumping through the hoops of their unlikable download process sounds like two wrongs not making a right.