Steve Jobs, the iPad, and cultural sugar water
in [Mac Applications]
|
From: John McWilliams on 6 Jul 2010 11:34 AES wrote: > > Or the audio files one is dealing with are not music at all -- they're > seminars, talks, lectures, sound-tracks, animal sounds, bird calls, > traffic noise recordings, innumerable other kinds of audio research > files -- and the whole pop music vocabulary and organizational structure > built into iTunes is not just irrelevant but totally gets in the way. It is called i*Tunes* ! IAE, my tagging needs are modest, and as far as music genres go, there are far too many categories in iTunes for my needs/tastes. > > Sure, one can tediously modify the names, labels, categories, etc in > iTunes to fit other situations -- but no one who's had experience with > any really good media management and cataloging software (and there are > several examples of such for the Mac) would ever go near iTunes for this > function. I don't doubt that. Curiously, what are the top examples for the Mac? -- john mcwilliams
From: erilar on 6 Jul 2010 11:51 In article <michelle-AF1E2C.08441406072010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > In article <GFGYn.3560$Zp1.1586(a)newsfe15.iad>, > Todd Allcock <elecconnec(a)AnoOspamL.com> wrote: > > > *Sigh" It's not the "iTunes" that's important- it's the computer. iP* > > devices need a computer for normal, intended, operation, and your > > continued denial of that is disingenous at best. > > As I said, my hair stylist has an iPhone 3GS, and doesn't own a computer. > Once her iPhone was set up at the Apple Store where she bought it a year > ago, it has never been connected to a computer. Do people really use phones for all the things you can do with an iPad? They must have good microvision!! -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist http://www.mosaictelecom.com/~erilarlo
From: erilar on 6 Jul 2010 13:06 In article <michelle-672426.09455806072010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > In article <drache-974E7A.10515306072010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>, > erilar <drache(a)chibardun.net.invalid> wrote: > > > > As I said, my hair stylist has an iPhone 3GS, and doesn't own a > > > computer. Once her iPhone was set up at the Apple Store where she > > > bought it a year ago, it has never been connected to a computer. > > > > Do people really use phones for all the things you can do with an iPad? > > I don't know, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. Ah, but that was the image it brought up in my mind 8-) -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist http://www.mosaictelecom.com/~erilarlo
From: Wes Groleau on 6 Jul 2010 13:50 On 07-06-2010 09:48, Todd Allcock wrote: > Not really- the "secret" to File Management for Dummies, the seeming goal > of the iOS' ridiculous half-assed file management, is to lock out users > out of the OS, not their own content. No one is suggesting willy-nilly > complete access to the iOS file system Windows-style. A single > "documents" folder/hierarchy should've been exposed for all user- or Can we trust Apple to also lock them out of preferences files, and to not approve apps that depend on “unlocked” files for modifying their behavior? And to not approve apps that crash when TextWrangler adds a gratuitous EOL at the end of the file, or some other app silently sticks a BOM at the beginning of a file, or Microsoft Word silently decides that you didn't really want that file to start with a form feed, or . . . ? All of those events have been the causes of failures I was asked to fix within the past five years. (Failures in the app _receiving_ the file from the app that actually screwed it up.) Think about it: One app trashes the file, the next app crashes, and the haters spread the word that Apple screwed up. I'm working with an app this year that generates HTML with illegal nesting, i.e., the end tags are not in the reverse order of the start tags. Sharepoint 2007, aka great-grandson of FrontPage. Who will get the blame when a browser can't render it? -- Wes Groleau Curmudgeon's Complaints on Courtesy: http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html
From: Todd Allcock on 6 Jul 2010 13:54
"AES" <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote in message news:siegman-44C640.08194106072010(a)sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu... > In article <EFGYn.3559$Zp1.2535(a)newsfe15.iad>, > Todd Allcock <elecconnec(a)AnoOspamL.com> wrote: > >> Not really- the "secret" to File Management for Dummies, the seeming goal >> of the iOS' ridiculous half-assed file management, is to lock out users >> out of the OS, not their own content. No one is suggesting willy-nilly >> complete access to the iOS file system Windows-style. A single >> "documents" folder/hierarchy should've been exposed for all user- or >> third-party app created- documents, including the saving of email >> attachments. Any app that can access a particular file type should be >> able to. Then you could transfer files via USB (iTunes), WiFi, Dropbox, >> or whatever, and open then in the compatible app of your choice. None of >> this "that file 'belongs' to Netshare so I can't edit it in Docs2Go or >> add it to Dropbox'' nonsense. >> >> Instead, to simulate simple file transfer functionality you have dozens >> of third-party "transfer" apps that also have to act as viewers, editors, >> mail clients, etc., and now even the OS itself is back-peddling by adding >> document transfer and file exporting functions. >> >> Yeah, I know, working with files is soooo 20th-century, and iOS is the >> future. Fine. I'd accept that argument if there was some improved >> futuristic alternative in iOS, but what iOS essentially did was abandon >> file management without offering ANY decent workable alternative, and is >> slowly reintroducing file management in small ways, perhaps to deflect >> embarrassment from omitting it in the first place. >> >> When do figure Finder for iOS shows up? iOS 5? Maybe 6? > > From my previous posts (viewed by some as rants), I'm obviously in full > agreement with the above. > > The only major disagreement, or uncertainty, about the current situation > is whether Apple designed these iGadgets so that they "lock users out of > their own content" (nice turn of phrase, even if a bit exaggerated) in > order to provide a _better, simpler interface_ to that content for all > the cultural sugar water users, or whether they did it in order to > maintain _a major degree of control_ over how these users can access, > use, and re-transmit the content on their gadgets -- in other words, for > primarily content-commercial reasons. > > I continue to believe the latter -- but who really knows? I don't- using iOS devices presumes one will use iTunes, and iTunes doesn't "lock users out of their own content." It works just fine without purchasing anything from the iTunes store. I do think they try to attain a major degree of control, but that, IMO, is more about controlling the quality of end-user experience than forcing purchases. (I'm not saying I agree with that level of control, but I do understand it.) Windows Mobile is a perfect example- it has deloved a terrible reputation for being unstable and buggy. (It IS bloated, but that's another complaint!) In actuality, WM is pretty darn stable, but since apps are given free reign of both the OS and hardware, it's really easy for errant third-party apps to slow down or even crash the OS or the device hardware. Such crashes are blamed on the platform (which, of course, deserves some of the blame, since it doesn't elegantly handle such crashes,) but that's really a side effect of the openness of the platform to developers. Apple's sandboxing, restricitve SDK and app store policies protect the OS from such errent apps, and therefore protects the iOS from the sort of reputation WinMo has earned. Personally, I'll put up with the instability of certain apps to get a more open ecosystem, but I wouldn't suggest my particular wishes or preferences are the "correct" ones. Despite the control, Apple has helped create a robust ecosystem for the iOS. I just think hubris prevents them from admitting a mistake, so baby steps in correcting them are taken instead of wholesale changes. The current iPad document sharing is an example. It seems fairly obvious that Apple has conceded that some type of third-party-accessible file sync at the OS level, as well as the ability for apps to use documents created by other apps, but rather than go to a "real" file manager, these iOS-particular kludges are introduced first. I can't imagine anyone using them will argue "this is so much easier and more intuitive than just using a Finder-type app to open/transfer these documents." Instead we get poetic rhetoric about the "future of computing" the dangers of accidental file deletion/modification, and the admittedly very real shortcomings of file-centric computing. The problem, of course, is while there are shortcomings, no one has come up with anything better, so iOS simply dropped file managment without providing any suitable alternative. |