snom370

Sorry, but this is a very common misconception. Just like many people not familiar with programming think that anyone can make a great software product just by pointing and clicking in some GUI tool. The tools certainly help a lot and makes the job easier, but pilot-less passenger airplanes are still many years away.

And, knowing just how much can go wrong both with software and with flying, I know I'm not going to fly with such an airplane. Auto-pilot and auto-land systems today work well because they do a very narrowly defined thing with great precision, with the amount of software needed kept to a minimum. A software system that would be able to account for all that can go wrong when flying would have to be very complex and difficult to get defect free (and don't get me started on the idea of remote controlling passenger planes).

You wrote:

"You could directly attribute the fact that Apple isn't responsible for most of that hardware R&D for their high profit margins. They know to buy the cutting edge from the rest of the industry, put some software on it, and they've got a product."

I read this to mean that Apples high margins were primarily due to their offloading their hardware business to others. And I only pointed out that this is only _partly_ responsible for Apples high margins. But I see that I've read you incorrectly.

I never heard anyone say that the 3GS was shoddy when the iPhone 4 came out. Even before the iPhone 4 was released, everyone agreed that the screen resolution, camera etc. was a generation or two behind, and most reviewers had started recommending other phones with more features.

Like I said, some people "get" or appreciate Apples product design, and some don't. The fact that you're say that there's nothing special about their products shows that you don't. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there's nothing wrong with me not wearing designer clothing and being unable to tell the difference betewen a generic and a designer suit.

But as you say, it makes it impossible to discuss their products. Which is why this discussion is pointless :)

If Apples advantage was something very measurable, for instance if all their laptops had 20GHz processors and 256GB RAM, it would be obvious to everyone, including their competitors, why they were able to make so much money with such a small market share.

But it's difficult to quantify what "good product design" is. I can give countless examples of small details that Apples designers have thought about that other laptop makers haven't, but this is simply irrelevant to people who don't appreciate that. Similarly, a BMW owner could point to lots of small features and details that they like about their car, but others simply see an overpriced car with high maintenance costs.

Still, unlike Monster cables, you can point to many features or details that you simply don't get with other cars that still do the job of transporting people. The question is simply whether someone is willing (and able) to pay for the added design, features, and comfort.

I think that Apples success shows that there are enough people who _do_ care about it, and I think that's a big reason for their high profit margins.

Finally, I think you'll see that Motorola has won a lot of praise and attention for some of their better designed products, even though Apple is the current media darling.

Agreed. Yet, to a lot of the readers here, it's impossible to understand why the "little things" make a big difference. They simply cannot understand why this attention to detail in a product is worth paying for.

And I think this is key to Apples success, because I suspect that a lot of CEOs and product managers in other companies simply don't see this either.

You see this with a lot of laptops where the only attention to detail is in the obviously visible parts. Compare this to Steve Jobs / Jony Ive that obsess over how their products look on the _inside_ (http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...)

Sure, they buy a lot of components off the shelf. But they are extremely involved in the design and manufacturing process of their products, and often work with the manufacturers to push the manufacturing technology forward to meet their design goals (machine milling is nothing new, but machine milling a $999 laptop requires quite a bit of innovation).

Unlike many other companies, Apple _doesn't_ just take various technologies and piece them together to make a product. And they do a lot of core technologies in-house, which is why they've bought companies like FingerWorks and PA Sami.

The interview with Jony Ive in the Objectified movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU) shows some of the thought process that is involved in Apples hardware design process.

By your logic, other PC/mobile manufacturers should have similar profit margins to Apple, but they don't. Now, the usual answer is that Apple has a "cult-like following" that will pay a higher price for "more or less the same hardware in a different box".

A better explanation, given that the "cult following" has only increased the last few years, is that Apple manages to make more appealing products by being extremely involved in _both_ hardware and software, leaving other companies to compete by sticking together commodity components. Apple did not say that they expected decreased profit margins because they would have to slash their prices, what they did warn was that their forthcoming products would have higher hardware costs. But of course, time will show.

Yep. And this is the reason that all the sockets have built-in current protection. Additionally, there are circuit breakers per seat row, which is what I discovered when I tried plugging in my 110W laptop power adapter into one of them. The other passengers on the seat row were not happy when the flight attendant said that they were not allowed to reset the breakers. Another lesson learnt - bring a lower power adapter. :(

The acceleration curve came directly from NeXT (traditional Mac OS had a more similar curve to Win/Linux). So my best guess is that Steve Jobs also likes this acceleration curve ;)

The problem is that I don't want to disable the acceleration entirely, I just want a _different_ acceleration curve: http://db.tidbits.com/article/8893

I'm not sure if this command will help with that.

But in any case, I'm sold on the trackpad now, and I'm not going back. :)

I can't use a mouse on a Mac for extended periods of time due to the mouse acceleration curve problem. I've never experienced them as unreliable or garbage, but I just don't like using them.

Using synergy and an external Linux PC to drive the mouse solves the problem. But I like the Mac touchpads so much that the mouse problem sort of disappears, especially now with the new external touchpad. Now, I find even using a mouse (or touchpad) on other Windows / Linux computers is slightly annoying.

I also thought so, but maybe not with mobile devices with limited memory? I always thought thought it was strange to disallow GC in ObjC on iOS, but they might have tried it with less than stellar results.

..or just don't care. Also, if the UI is not built with animation / OpenGL support built in from the ground up, it might be a substantial job to add good support for it later on. OSX did all of this from day one, so that making an iPhone without OpenGL support was probably out of the question. I personally feel that the 3D effects in Windows and Linux feel grafted on "just for the fun of it", and I usually turn most of them off. But I never used the iPhone and felt that I'd do without the 3D effects - it will even sometimes drop the 3D effects in favor of responsiveness when it needs to, which i think says a lot about how much work they put into it.

Still, if OpenVPN drops packets lacking the HMAC packet authentication without processing them further, then either

1) the guy would also need the HMAC key, or 2) the zero-day is in the code that looks at the HMAC signature.

It's not that I only count on this for security, but it's a matter of reducing the attack surface. Likewise, I don't have passwordless guest accounts on all my servers, since that would make the attack surface even greater.

I guess I just never met anybody who didn't understand the quote. To me it says: Think very hard about what to add, and think very hard about what to remove. Of course, I realize that those who take the quote literally are not going to think very hard about which features to remove, and I'll agree that you're more likely to succeed with a product that has lots of thoughtlessly added features, than one that has none. :)

Absolutely true, execution is what matters. You can make a good business from a pretty standard idea. And the history is littered with examples of great technology that never succeeded, or only saw limited success.

On the other hand, you can have brilliant business operations and virtually no innovation for decades, until a better technology comes along and tanks your business. Although investing in technology is risky, failing to invest in new technology can be far riskier.

I'm pretty sure Nokia has great business operations, but considering how they're scrambling to release a new (wait, two new) mobile operating systems in response to the iPhone, they apparently failed to invest (or invest in the right) technology.

Most people realize exactly what the quote is talking about, since the alternative (removing stuff until you're left with nothing, or with something barely working) makes no sense if the goal is perfection. Part of the appeal of the quote is that you have to make this realization. Just like a joke would lose its appeal if it was preceded by a list of assumptions that would explain the joke.

Be gleeful all you want, but this is mostly a _patent_ suit. In fact, if you're running a fully compliant Java stack, Sun has given you a patent grant for that and you should be in the clear.

But Perl6 running on Parrot? Oracles JVM-related patents may very well apply, so your best bet is to hope that your favourite language never gets used by a high profile company in one of the next leading mobile platforms.

Google went out of its way not to use any code created by Sun, and didn't even use the JVM as a foundation in order to (hopefully) be in the clear.

So be careful what you wish for. My first reaction was also that of "good riddance!", but in the end the whole situation is just sad. I never liked programming Java, so I decided to keep it out of my programming life. Maybe that's why I don't hate it so much. :)

They didn't invent the form factor, but they were the first to make it good enough to become successful. There's been tablets around for two decades, but the iPad is the first to achieve widespread success outside of niche markets. Even Apple had the Newton which they killed off (imagine how the world would look if Apple was the one with an old, stylus-optimized mobile device OS in 2007).

Since you can fit several full-length movies on an iPad (16-64GB storage space), adding 5.1 channel audio won't be much of a problem.

I've never used Microsoft Flight Simulator, but I've been very happy with X-Plane (http://www.x-plane.com/). It's cheap, available for Mac, Linux and Windows and has a very active community. And it lets you use your iPhone/iPad as a controller w/flight instruments.

Sure seems optional to me, he should have used must. :)

PHP might create a mess that is expenesive to maintain for _you_. It might even create a mess for a lot of people, especially newbies. Likewise with Perl.

That doesn't mean that creating maintainable PHP software can't be done - it's actually been done many times. While I agree that languages can make a big difference in maintainability, please stop blaming a programming language for your own mistakes.

A lot of big companies are learning the hard way that doing business in Russia is riskier than they thought, when the other party has the legal system on their side. One example that made it to national politics, and AFAIK ended up being settled by basically giving in to the demands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_Group#Dispute_with_Telenor

You're far more likely to kill yourself due to inexperience, than due to engine failure or any other technical malfunction. You might also consider getting a glider license to fly motor gliders, as they give you more time and options to land if you're worried about that.

From http://www.schiratti.com/humour.html:

  Control: You're unreadable, say again.
  Motor-glider: I've turned off the engine, is that better?
  Control: (looong pause)

:)

The problem is, no amount of good stories can repair the damage done to those who trusted PayPal because "it works OK for most people". They may even have great customer support most of the time, but if they still do stuff like this, it reason enough to be very careful:

1) Never solely rely on PayPal for your income. 2) Never keep large amounts in your PayPal account - they can be come PayPals for 6m+ at a moments notice.

So you're assuming that PHP will create a mess that is expensive to maintain? Fallacy detected. :)

I think he said that in 1997, not 2007. But if he had not done this deal, Steve Jobs would have been able to send his "well look at that, we're bigger than Dell" mail sooner.

You break patents not by writing or hosting software, but by using it. So a safe-harbour patent free cloud in New Zealand could help.

I agree, the point I was trying to make was that deciding to _not_ buy a phone because it's fashionable is a fashion statement in itself. If the iPhone 4 is good, why not buy it regardless of how (over)hyped it is? Then again, I do see ideological/technical reasons not to buy the iPhone, for instance due to its closed nature.

I think Nokia could have challenged Apple if they had fully focused on Maemo when they first released the 770, and developed a culture of making better, more bug-free software. Now, I'm not so sure. Android has taken the place that Maemo could have had. Steve Jobs was actually right when he said that smartphones had "baby software" during the iPhone introduction - and the mobile industry didn't realize it at that point because _everyone_ were making baby software for their phones until Apple came along.

The people complaining that Apple didn't use the Newton OS for the iPhone doesn't realize that Apple would have been in the same position if they had (regardless of all the innovative features of the Newton).

You do realize that being anti-hype and anti-fashion is fashionable nowadays? ;)

As I said, it remains to be seen how open it will actually be. But at least all of these standards are either completely open or available for licensing, so unless they have added some "secret sauce" on top (for instance that iPhones will only ever talk to other iPhones through Apples discovery service) then it's a good starting point.

AFAIK, H.264 is an open standard. That it's patented and not royalty free doesn't make it closed, it simply makes it non-free. Another example is the G.729 voice codec, which has lots of open source implementations, but to use it you will have to buy a license. Open source PBX vendors like Digium provide licenses to those that need them. It's not an ideal situation, which is why G.729 is not as popular in the open source world, but it's still better than Skypes proprietary protocol.

And they _have_ enabled Skype, and even demoed it running in the background when introducing iPhone OS 4. So I'm guessing that they will allow video camera support for Skype as well, although you can never know with Apple.