Your momma sucks iPad
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From: John McWilliams on 7 Jul 2010 11:53 Michelle Steiner wrote: > Mark Morford certainly has a way with words, doesn't he? He's a columnist > for the San Francisco Chronicle. > > <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/07/notes070710.DTL Yes, indeed he does. Was reminded of times with my own Mom, sometimes getting frustrated that she just couldn't learn that Cmd-Q quit any app, and that any deviation from the alias on the DT to open her mail (T-bird) was confusing as hell. I wish she were still around so I could give her an iPad. Put a few hundred murder mysteries on it and she's good for 30 days. -- john mcwilliams
From: Fred Moore on 7 Jul 2010 12:57 In article <michelle-BF49DC.08330907072010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > Mark Morford certainly has a way with words, doesn't he? He's a columnist > for the San Francisco Chronicle. > > <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/07/notes070710.DTL Great article! > Every time I give such a refresher lesson, I'm hit by the stark realization > that, despite how far we've come, despite Apple's legendary user interfaces > and elegant operating systems, computers remain simply awful hellbeasts of > needlessly confusing geekdom, ridiculous, jargon-filled chunks of chipsets > and wires that, for the general population, remain endlessly loathsome and > confusing, akin to forcing everyone to understand compression ratios, fuel > grades and rubber degradation rates in their cars just so they can drive to > the Thai restaurant. > > This is, of course, all about to change. Or rather, revolutionize. Like > millions of others, I have now purchased, for my mother, for her birthday, > an iPad, AKA the computer that's finally not actually a computer, the gizmo > that removes all the annoying gizmology from the experience, the singular > thing that will make it all better, smoother, easier, even more intuitive, > the way it should've been when PCs were first designed 40 years ago, and > the way it will be, into the future, from now on. > > And I'm here to tell you, it's about damn time. > > Sweet Jesus in minimalist design heaven, the iPad. No mouse, no extra > cables, no mandatory hookups, no startup times, installation DVDs, RAM > guides, accelerators, system folders, font drivers, extensions, launch > daemons, Kerberos plug-ins, jpg helpers or compression schemes, no > diphthong upslingers pongo hurling goober kerfuffling flipblasters. What I have quoted above has to be the best justification of why Apple's tight control of the iOS is A Good Thing™. If Flash or any other third party software crashes Mom's iPad, she's not gunna blame Adobe or some other developer. She'll blame Apple. She and most everyone else will hold Apple TOTALLY responsible for the user experience, as well she/they should. I think it's fine if a techy wants to jailbreak his/her own iPad/iPhone to customize it and grok its geekly splendor. More power to 'em! However, Mom and most other users couldn't care less. They want their fancy, expensive gizmo to 'just work'. To Apple's unending credit, it does most of the time. Thanks for the post, Michelle.
From: AES on 7 Jul 2010 17:28 In article <fmoore-73AD88.12574507072010(a)news.eternal-september.org>, Fred Moore <fmoore(a)gcfn.org> wrote: > In article > <michelle-BF49DC.08330907072010(a)62-183-169-81.bb.dnainternet.fi>, > Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > > > Mark Morford certainly has a way with words, doesn't he? He's a columnist > > for the San Francisco Chronicle. > > > > <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/07/07/notes070710.DTL > What I have quoted above has to be the best justification of why Apple's > tight control of the iOS is A Good Thing™. If Flash or any other third > party software crashes Mom's iPad, she's not gunna blame Adobe or some > other developer. She'll blame Apple. She and most everyone else will > hold Apple TOTALLY responsible for the user experience, as well she/they > should. > > I think it's fine if a techy wants to jailbreak his/her own iPad/iPhone > to customize it and grok its geekly splendor. More power to 'em! > However, Mom and most other users couldn't care less. They want their > fancy, expensive gizmo to 'just work'. To Apple's unending credit, it > does most of the time. > > Thanks for the post, Michelle. I'm someone who's recently posted multiple and fairly vehement criticisms of the iPad and the whole iGadget or iOS-based family, primarily for their closed or "app-centric" character and their basically total incompatibility with the entire prior Mac computer world. Having read the above article and the above comments, I'm ready to partially and sort-of recant -- but not totally. I can accept the truth in the assertion that "Apple's tight control of the iOS is A Good Thing" -- at least for Mark Morford's momma, and in fact for an enormous number of other customers. This of course also makes it enormously profitable for Apple. Hard to gripe about either of these results. One major problem, however, is that there are also a smaller but quite substantial number of us who are more than just "media consumers", but still a long way from "geekly jailbreaking techies". That is, we're people who genuinely need, and will continue to need, for our personal, professional, academic, creative, and even just avocational needs, the sort of fully and totally open, file-centric not app-centric information processing and IT capabilities that have been made available to us for a quarter of a century now by the Mac OS and by other personal computers. A closed and Apple-controlled iOS environment is not going to be an adequate replacement for this. A second problem may arise if all the best talents and creativity at Apple, along with all the best talents and creativity in the broader IT world, begin to be redirected away from the open OS X and Mac universe and into the iOS and iGadget universe. This will not be a Good Thing (in the same way as it was not a Good Thing when commercial forces and the influence of the enterprise world a decade or two back diverted much of the broader IT talent away from the Mac OS and toward the Windows world). A third potential problem is that it's an inherently Bad Thing whenever most any large-scale aspect of our basic environment or our basic infrastructure is controlled {"tightly controlled", in fact) by a single company, however insanely great that company or that infrastructure may seem at first: it's called monopoly. So, we'll have to see what comes of all this, over time . . .
From: nospam on 7 Jul 2010 17:42 In article <siegman-4AAD77.14285007072010(a)sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>, AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > That is, we're people who genuinely need, and will continue to need, for > our personal, professional, academic, creative, and even just > avocational needs, the sort of fully and totally open, file-centric not > app-centric information processing and IT capabilities that have been > made available to us for a quarter of a century now by the Mac OS and by > other personal computers. A closed and Apple-controlled iOS environment > is not going to be an adequate replacement for this. ios devices are not intended to replace personal computers. > A second problem may arise if all the best talents and creativity at > Apple, along with all the best talents and creativity in the broader IT > world, begin to be redirected away from the open OS X and Mac universe > and into the iOS and iGadget universe. that's where the industry is moving. > A third potential problem is that it's an inherently Bad Thing whenever > most any large-scale aspect of our basic environment or our basic > infrastructure is controlled {"tightly controlled", in fact) by a single > company, however insanely great that company or that infrastructure may > seem at first: it's called monopoly. like microsoft? or google? > So, we'll have to see what comes of all this, over time . . . yes we will.
From: Jochem Huhmann on 7 Jul 2010 18:07
nospam <nospam(a)nospam.invalid> writes: > In article <siegman-4AAD77.14285007072010(a)sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>, > AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > >> That is, we're people who genuinely need, and will continue to need, for >> our personal, professional, academic, creative, and even just >> avocational needs, the sort of fully and totally open, file-centric not >> app-centric information processing and IT capabilities that have been >> made available to us for a quarter of a century now by the Mac OS and by >> other personal computers. A closed and Apple-controlled iOS environment >> is not going to be an adequate replacement for this. > > ios devices are not intended to replace personal computers. And Personal Computers were never intended to be used for what most people use them for today ;-) Jochem -- "A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery |