niklas_a00

Reason (music making software). Released in 2000 and still an actively developed code base. Still some code from 23 years ago running in production :)

"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Said the man who makes a magazine that only works on iPads and loves developing for a platform controlled by one single company in California that is prone to suppressing political content or apps that might compete with its own. Nice.

Don't know why they discuss this when the answer is already known. Three reasons:

1) iOS dominates the tablet market where people surf longer, shop and consume more data. It was just two months ago the first mass market Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 was released. There's also data that shows when it comes to cellular data the split is 50/50 between iOS and Android. But over wifi (where tablets are used more) iOS dominates.

2) iOS has a massive installed base. Samsung Galaxy S2 which was the first phone to challenge the iPhone on its own turf did not come until last year.

3) There are Android phones on the market that literally cost $50. Those are more or less useless for surfing. Even if they are a small share of the overall number of Android devices they drag the overall statistics down. (If you think that they represent a large share of Android devices just look at who dominates the Android sales: Samsung and HTC who both are premium device makers).

John Gruber's argument of "better customers" is classic Gruber rhetoric, because that's what he wants to believe. There is no difference between a Samsung Galaxy S3 customer and an iPhone 5 customer.

Edit: there's also a popular statistic that shows how much more shopping is done on iOS than on Android. This shouldn't be so surprising given the statistics above and that iPads are premium devices and more or less require a credit card to function.

Again, I really recommend that you read The Singularity is Near before arguing against it (actually not sure if you are arguing against it anymore). But one of the topics there is a long argument on how the pace of change is increasing.

(Eg compare the difference in life between someone born in the 13th century to someone born in the 14th century - not much of a difference. But compare how life have changed in just the last 50 years).

Imagine having a computer that would have the same level of cognition as a human. I think most people would disagree with you on that not being valuable.

As Kurzweil writes in the article, this is exactly one of the arguments against the singularity that Kurzweil brings up and discusses in his book.

Lots of people argued that if space exploration or car engineering continues growing at an exponential pace we'll have flying cars and space colonies. They didn't explain why the growth should continue to be exponential and not end up as an S-curve.

In "The Singularity is Near" Kurzweil argues and shows why computation and reverse engineering of the human brain are subject to exponential growth. Short answer: there are lots of competing technologies and researchers that have different ways of ensuring that current computational advances continue well into the future - we are far from reaching any physical laws that will stop us.

I think it's a huge loss for Apple. They tried to break free from Google and failed. Apple users are now more reliant than ever on Google services to use their phones.

I would imagine that Gmail, Calendar, Search and Maps are used on almost every single device that they sell and they have no control over those services.

If Google would introduce a new feature in Maps, let's say indoor navigation, then Apple would be completely in the hands of Google for when that feature would be available to their users.

You could easily see a future where more and more Google services become popular on Apple devices. If that's the case Apple essentially becomes just another OEM like Samsung or HTC.