The Apple Two The iPad is Steve Jobs' final victory over the company's co-founder Steve Wozniak.
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From: Matthew Russotto on 25 Apr 2010 15:51 In article <19e69b55-9268-4efa-b259-1c747d7db542(a)t36g2000yqt.googlegroups.com>, Mike <yard22192(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/the_apple_two_30264 > >ByTim Wu, >New America Foundation >April 6, 2010 | Slate > >In 2006, professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School predicted >that over the next decade there would be a determined effort to >replace the personal computer with a new generation of "information >appliances." He was, it turned out, exactly right. But the one thing >he couldn't forecast was who would be leading the charge. How, indeed, >could anyone have guessed that Apple Inc., the creator of the personal >computer, would lead the effort to exterminate it? Well, ignoring the fact that the "creator of the personal computer" title is quite contestable... anyone who has been listening to Steve Jobs since, oh, around 1984. The computer as appliance has been a goal of his for a long time. -- The problem with socialism is there's always someone with less ability and more need.
From: Mr X on 25 Apr 2010 16:38 On Apr 25, 12:51 pm, russo...(a)grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto) wrote: > In article <19e69b55-9268-4efa-b259-1c747d7db...(a)t36g2000yqt.googlegroups..com>, > > >could anyone have guessed that Apple Inc., the creator of the personal > >computer, would lead the effort to exterminate it? > > Well, ignoring the fact that the "creator of the personal computer" > title is quite contestable... anyone who has been listening to Steve > Jobs since, oh, around 1984. The computer as appliance has been a > goal of his for a long time. Yes, the Apple II was just an extension of the S-100 bus idea. What the article is missing about the DNA of Apple Computer is Jobs' attention to the aesthetics of computing. I got into PCs in 19981 and Apple was head and shoulders above the rest of the field, at least until Big Blue joined the party with the 5150 and its marketing. In 1983 I got a day's detention in high school for leaving class 1 minute before the period ended (hey it was lunch and I wanted to beat the rush). Our school had just gotten a single Apple II from the Kids Can't Wait deal and I took the manuals to read for that day. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. . . the graphic design of the spiral-bound manuals was nice & tight, the smell of the soy bean ink was addictively sweet, and the Apple II was still pretty much state-of- the-art, for what that was, in 1983. Apple's aesthetics extended through the organic plastic case of the Apple II, compared to the clunky predecessors and the cheap and sterile techno-industrial cases of the Tandies and PC clones that followed. >Oddly enough, >this all means that the iPad is not a machine that Apple's founders, >in the 1970s, would have ever considered buying. This is really dumb. Wozniak famously sold his TI-35 calculator to fund Apple. The TI-35 was not open. It was a tool. On the software side, the iPad is very open and anti-corporate at its very lowest levels -- the full BSD API (except fork()) is available to application programmers, as is OpenGL and OpenAL -- more than what Apple's nearest competitor can say with its coming offering full of proprietary API (Silverlight & XNA). >The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists. That hobbyist hacker Apple died with the Apple IIc of 1984. No slots, just most every card installed in hardware. Jobs took the hacker spirit and put that energy in NeXT, where it was structured into a layered offering that leveraged the utility of BSD and the advancements of the following 20 years of industry experience, largely from Xerox. NeXT got a lot right, its adoption of Objective-C was the predecessor to Java and C#, the on-board networking facilitated the development of the www (no other platform on the market offered the robustness of Unix with the ease of use of AppKit and Objective-C). NeXT's main weakness was color, the lack of which made me totally uninterested in the box in 1989-90 (I got a IIcx instead). Slots were a developmental dead end. They're good for users in that they allow them to customize their machines and keep them running as new technologies occur. I'm glad I got the last generation of ExpressCard MBPs and hope to see the slot supported throughout however long I keep the machine. But slots are bad for platforms in that they fragment its functionality, making it harder for app developers to target a known set of attributes. Platforms work best with mass conformity. Like the xbox 360 -- no slots, only Microsoft-blessed hardware expansion. After the NeXT takeover, Apple has been the most open tech company around. Microsoft is full of proprietary APIs and locked-in and fully monopolized software markets. You get Excel and you like it, or else. Apple has ditched its proprietary approaches and layered their stuff over BSD, and provide OpenGL as the API for advanced uses.
From: Tim McNamara on 25 Apr 2010 16:58 In article <hr22ts$9fq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Phillip Jones <pjones1(a)kimbanet.com> wrote: > John McWilliams wrote: > > Mike wrote: > >> http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/the_apple_two_ > >> 30264 > >> > >> ByTim Wu, New America Foundation April 6, 2010 | Slate > >> > >> In 2006, professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School > >> predicted that over the next decade there would be a determined > >> effort to replace the personal computer with a new generation of > >> "information appliances." He was, it turned out, exactly right. > >> But the one thing he couldn't forecast was who would be leading > >> the charge. How, indeed, could anyone have guessed that Apple > >> Inc., the creator of the personal computer, would lead the effort > >> to exterminate it? > > > > None of these innovations are 'exterminating' personal > > computers....... > > > Yes rather than exterminating Computers the iPod and I pad are > adjuncts to computers, extension if you will. They all have there > place. Just because I might want an iPad. I Still would mostly use a > Computer. Depends on the use you need, of course. The iPad is just a little too small for what I want. If the screen was the size of my 12" iBook, it'd be perfect and I'd have bought one already.
From: Steve Hix on 25 Apr 2010 17:40 In article <timmcn-89F0F1.15583825042010(a)news-2.mpls.iphouse.net>, Tim McNamara <timmcn(a)bitstream.net> wrote: > In article <hr22ts$9fq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Phillip Jones <pjones1(a)kimbanet.com> wrote: > > Depends on the use you need, of course. > > The iPad is just a little too small for what I want. If the screen was > the size of my 12" iBook, it'd be perfect and I'd have bought one > already. I initially thought the same thing, but having used one (as long as I can keep it away from my wife), it turns out to not be a problem. Screen real estate just seems more available in use than a similar-size screen running a typical laptop OS.
From: Fa-groon on 25 Apr 2010 18:21
On Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:53:44 -0700, Lloyd Parsons wrote (in article <lloydparsons-C92607.13534425042010(a)news.eternal-september.org>): > In article <hr22ts$9fq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > Phillip Jones <pjones1(a)kimbanet.com> wrote: > >> John McWilliams wrote: >>> Mike wrote: >>>> http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/the_apple_two_30264 >>>> >>>> ByTim Wu, >>>> New America Foundation >>>> April 6, 2010 | Slate >>>> >>>> In 2006, professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School predicted >>>> that over the next decade there would be a determined effort to >>>> replace the personal computer with a new generation of "information >>>> appliances." He was, it turned out, exactly right. But the one thing >>>> he couldn't forecast was who would be leading the charge. How, indeed, >>>> could anyone have guessed that Apple Inc., the creator of the personal >>>> computer, would lead the effort to exterminate it? >>> >>> None of these innovations are 'exterminating' personal computers....... >>> >> Yes rather than exterminating Computers the iPod and I pad are adjuncts >> to computers, extension if you will. They all have there place. Just >> because I might want an iPad. I Still would mostly use a Computer. > > Think of it as the handy computer. You know, while watching TV or > reading a book (either on the iPad or paper) and there's the iPad > waiting for an email check, or usenet, or web... > > Agreed, One of the things that I use my iPod Touch for is to have it sitting by my chair while watching an old Hollywood movie on TV. I pick it up to play "Who's that actor?" with IMDB. Problem is, the web page is so small with the iPod Touch that I can see the iPad as a big improvement for that. |