loire280

It depends on what you do, I suppose. If your work doesn't have a large command-line component, using the command line might be disruptive.

A large part of my job involves working with remote Linux servers, so I chose to invest time learning Linux command line tools and vim. Now I'm more productive in a terminal than in a GUI environment. I use common tools that are installed by default on Linux/Unix/OSX, so I can sit down anywhere and do my work, or SSH directly into my machine and have my exact work environment securely and without latency.

In my experience these are the shortcomings of using bittorrent:

1. It can take several minutes to find a decent release for titles that are older (>5 years) or less popular. 2. Older/Less popular items are poorly seeded, meaning I potentially have to wait overnight for the download to finish. (A new episode of a current series, however, usually comes in as fast as my broadband connection can handle). 3. Unless you know all of the release groups by heart, you have to spend a minute or two sifting through search results to find a release in a usable format in good-enough quality. Often I have to settle for something that plays fine in mplayer/vlc instead of something I can stream to my PS3 connected to my TV. 4. Maybe about 1/20 times I finish a download only to realize that it's A) not in the right language or burned-in with foreign subtitles B) terrible quality C) incomplete.

Sure, I get to keep the files, and often I can find stuff that streams on all my devices without hassle, but I watch stuff infrequently enough that the effort and possibility of failure is bothersome. I'd gladly pay to be able to choose a show and watch it immediately, assuming that the library of available content was large enough.

The iMac update was a spec bump (and a particularly minor one at that). There's not a whole lot of marketing message there. They made a much bigger deal when the current enclosure was introduced and when they released the 27" iMac earlier this year.

Chalk me up for anecdotally noticing a huge improvement when switching to the touchpad.

It's worth noting that the Apple trackpad is not only way bigger than a laptop's touchpad, it's also angled so you're not resting your hand on its edge. Also, if you've never used an Apple touchpad on a recent Macbook/Pro (the ones that are glass instead of plastic), you'll probably be surprised at how good the accuracy/tracking. They're much better quality than the Synaptics touchpads that are common in PCs.

The DJs at night clubs, the knob-twiddler guys in indie rock bands, and the film students at the local university are all using Macs to make their art. In fact, I'd say Apple's devices and the tools they create to publish to those devices have done a lot to make these creators' lives easier.

Think about how much more music people listen to thanks to the ubiquity of iPods. Would the indie rock movement have had as much traction if it weren't for all those college kids looking for something to fill their iPods?

Not to mention iMovie, GarageBand, and iPhoto, plus their professional-level counterparts in Final Cut, Logic, and Aperture.

Since we're still in land-grab mode in the ebook business, selling at a loss might make all kinds of sense.

Once users amass a virtual bookshelf, you've got them locked in pretty hard, especially if they use the Kindle to read it. If the iPad becomes the e-reader of choice, lock-in is weaker because you can use all of the major bookstores on it.

I think it's partially about the hardware. iPhone OS is a lightweight, stable embedded OS that runs well on cheap, low-power hardware. The old Apple TV is expensive in part because it's a low-spec Mac desktop with a custom UI (read: expensive Intel + Nvidia hardware). An iPad logic board without a screen or battery is probably pretty darn cheap, and more than powerful enough for video and music.

Touch is just part of the UI layer. A D-pad for navigation and two buttons (Go + Cancel) are enough for a set-top box. I don't buy any of the "touch remote" theories, and I don't think games are going to be a part of the picture. In the casual games world, iTV doesn't have the same advantages over Wii that iPhone has over the Nintendo DS.

If anyone can pull off the consumer education necessary to make 720p seem okay, Apple can. There's plenty of angles: storage constraints (show number of videos that can be stored at each resolution), download speed (esp. considering the sorry state of "broadband" in the US), watch-as-you-download vs. watch it tomorrow, and perceived quality at normal viewing distances.

Good point, I forgot about the gap in Javascript performance.

We're currently in an arms race of Javascript interpreters, though, and there's nothing stopping Apple or Palm from using Android's interpreter in the next release.

But as the parent stated later in his post, not only do college graduates earn more money, but the unemployment rate of college graduates is also far below the average unemployment rate.

In fact, it looks like the unemployment rate for college-educated workers is falling:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/07/28/high-unempl...

I'm glad you like your phone, but of course your brand new Android phone surfs the web better than your old iPhone. It's got a faster CPU, more RAM, and a higher-resolution screen.

Web surfing is very similar among similarly-specced phones across all of the major OSes (it's mostly the same browser, after all).

> I'd consider a library to handle i18n in javascript to be extraneous, thus the comment.

It may be extraneous, but it has nothing to do with the size of jQuery core: it's a plugin, not part of the actual library. jQuery has a plugin system that lets people add features to extend its functionality.

Actually, most of the posts that mention jQuery are really plugins, not features of jQuery itself.

The list of things actually included in the latest release is in the API docs. It's actually not a very long list of functions; I expect most of the code bloat is for dealing with browser quirks.

http://api.jquery.com/

> Which, FWIW, is something that's been available everywhere outside the US for at least 5 years. Not always used much (in Europe anyway), but it's been available for a very long time.

If Apple manages to make video calling mainstream through marketing, solid implementation, and by pushing a standard that is adopted by other vendors, I'd say that's a pretty serious feat. A technical marvel is meaningless if it's rarely used.

Do music stores even matter anymore? Selling DRM-free MP3 downloads is a commodity business if I've ever seen one. The only trick is getting labels to sign on. Besides, syncing is an essential part of buying MP3 music: you don't want your music library only stored on your easily-lost cellphone, do you?

Anyone know if Google's music store lets you re-download songs? If not, I imagine there's going to be more than a few people who have to re-buy a bunch of albums because they lost their never-synced phone.

I've never minded the disorganization: I think of these threads as a good way to see who's busy and learn about a few new companies and products.

Besides, considering the high quality of opportunities that are usually offered here, time spent combing through these threads is more efficient than sifting through the piles of trash on regular job sites.

It's not in the official repositories, but that's probably a good thing considering the frequency of updates during the beta period.

The Chrome beta .deb packages add the Chrome repo to your sources list, so updates are handled through the package manager (no unprompted background updating like in Mac/Windows).

I wonder if there will be any issues including it in the repos because of the integration of the Flash plugin. Then again, for a Linux company, Canonical is pretty willing to use proprietary software where practical.

I agree that it's a red herring in the "future of Flash" argument, but it's still a significant hurdle. The value of any existing Flash content that requires keybaord or mouse hover interactions is diminished almost to the point that you might as well not have it.

That's not to say that future Flash content won't be built with touchscreen interfaces in mind.

The carrier subsidy model provides an incentive to throw away your phone every 2 years, anyway.

Google's interest in how the mobile market develops is at least as strong as Apple.

Google provided the business muscle involved in getting a phone sold by a major carrier (who provide the massive subsidies that make these phones mainstream) and Google's massive popularity among regular internet users helped drive interest.

Google's involvement is the key factor in Android's adoption.

Another thing to worry about is manufacturers abandoning support for old phones prematurely, or causing long delays between updates to new major versions. (I'm not sure if Android phones can update over the air, but if not then you may have a large number of users who never upgrade their OS.)

Yes, technical users can probably acquire third-party firmware if the manufacturers drop the ball, but that's not a mainstream fix.

Android will not be fun to develop for if you're targeting (hardware spec fragmentation) x (Android feature fragmentation) different combinations of phone.

The one site I'm getting reliably is WSJ.com (I'm a subscriber). May be the paywall-deterrent-effect. Some of their data got pretty stale (30min+), but that's probably because things are down across the entire market foodchain.

Assuming that large portions of the Android Flash player are borrowed from the Linux version of Flash, I'm not very hopeful for the final product. Flash Player for Linux is by far the buggiest of the desktop implementations.

On the other hand, Linux users may get lucky and indirectly benefit from a renewed push to improve that code base!

Vimium brings me one step closer to never having to use a mouse. Hints mode and vim-style navigation keys are my favorite features. ? (shift-/) brings up a handy shortcut overlay. A must-have if you live in vim.

If Apple's strategy of toolkit lockdown (to improve app quality, performance, and differentiation) is overly draconian, their platform will fail in the market.

The iPhone 3GS has very fast javascript performance.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/iphone-3gs-javascript-p...

I don't think I'm making a big leap to speculate that this means the iPhone runs javascript comparably to the consumer-level (read: cheap Best Buy) desktop running some version of IE that most people have.

Considering the iPad's processor is significantly faster, I see no reason why web apps wouldn't run perfectly well on it.

I agree that in the short term, not having Flash will wall off large sections of web content.

However, if the iPad takes off we will have to either provide alternate content or abandon flash on our heaviest flash sites. The web design company I work for will probably switch to standards-based Javascript animation and HTML5 video with the usual fallbacks for IE6. We already use JS for many things that used to be flash, like menus, slideshows, galleries, and animations.

When it was just the iPhone/iPod touch, with their relatively small browsing traffic, it was easy to shrug it off when a site didn't work properly. Expectations will be different with this device. My clients will be asking why their site is broken on their iPads.

The big video sites will implement an HTML5-powered player for the iPad because it allows them to go around the iTunes / App store model. Smaller video players will probably make the switch sooner.

Apple may be doing the developer community a favor by giving us a reason to leave flash behind. The runtime is fine on Windows but sluggish on OSX and slow and buggy on Linux; it's frequently using more CPU time than anything else on my system and often has terrible video playback performance.

I'm in Milwaukee as well. Great city.

I thought so too when my dad purchased one for my college commute. However, its ride quality, comfort, and utility quickly won me over. After a few months, I actually began to like how it looked, too.

If they hadn't discontinued it a few years ago, I would happily purchase one for myself.

There's a good demo at their site http://2dboy.com/games.php (you can also get it through Steam). The presentation is very slick (atmospheric, with a dark undertone reminiscent of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the puzzles are interesting and varied.

Ha, you're lucky. My grandpa managed a few programming projects in the accounting industry during the 70's/80's. Every time I tell him about something I'm working on, he tells a long story about how he either invented or pioneered the concepts behind that project.