Apple's iPad

[Alzado]

i also know a couple of people who like macs for the wrong reasons. they are the people who react in the way you describe above, and it's a worldwide thing. there's a fella at work i take endless joy in winding up about apple. i think he's going to report me to HR for harassment soon lol.

the only way to fight a holier than thou attitude is to develop your own

[kaini]

jesus, modestburns has been typing for fucking ages.

[Guest JW Modestburns]

google's 'do no evil' philosophy, microsoft's 'embrace and extend' evil empire shit, apple's rep as the box of choice for 'arty' people... it's all really bullshit

the purpose of any massive company is to make a profit for the board of directors and shareholders and everything else is secondary.

and if that involves locking down a device to death or implementing huge amounts of horrible DRM or whatever, well then that's what will happen.

 

on an unrelated note i think i've been spending waaaay too much time on /. lately.

 

Corporations have been selling lifestyles for years, it's nothing new. Anyone who buys a mac because it makes them fit in with a creative crowd is easily influenced and weak-minded. In my experience, most people with an IQ above a 9th grader intuitively reject the PR that your talking about.

 

That being said, my macbook pro is the best computer I've ever owned for doing audio/video production. Perhaps there is a little truth entangled in this web of deceit.

 

jesus, modestburns has been typing for fucking ages.

 

I must apologize, had to take a dump midway threw.

[kaini]

jesus, the timing there was perfect lol!

 

i dunno, head over to slashdot and you'll see people who run fucking data centers who are absolutely rabid, foaming at the mouth linux/microsoft/apple/google evangelists. look at richard stallman, he is basically the developer analogue to a crazy religious extremist.

 

i do grant you that these are all people within the IT industry so maybe not the best sample data, but i know a couple of rabid apple fanboys irl, like i mentioned. most of them are assholes, mind you.

[perunamuusi]

I am gonna punch the first iPad user i see get one of these pieces of wank out in a pub or on a bus

[Dan C]

I'd buy one, if only to annoy people.

[kaini]

I'd buy one, if only to annoy people.

 

i eagerly anticipate your 'LUDD punched me' thread.

[Alcofribas]

17 stitches, an iPad and LUDD

[data]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRQ0Aq1XzdE

 

00:34

 

[kaini]

i hope they release a new version of bloom for this

[awepittance]

an interesting article at Create Digital Music talking about the potential bad in the iPad - http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/01/27/how-a-great-product-can-be-bad-news-apple-ipad-and-the-closed-mac/

[Redruth]

 

 

 

jesus, modestburns has been typing for fucking ages.

 

I must apologize, had to take a dump midway threw.

 

 

LOL

[Redruth]

i wish i'd bought apple stock when it was at $78 now i'm alittle hesitant + fucking broke.

 

+ i just don't believe in apple the way i used to ..bunch of slimy shitty shysters if you ask me.

[jules]

another stupid thing, if you already own an iphone and you get the unlimited 3g, you have to pay at&t $30 a month for each device? wtf. thats a bit excessive no? $60/month only for 3g plus $30 for text plus $60 for phone cals...this device is for people that dont on an ipod or iphone i think.

 

pplus there's no gps. its such a stripped down phone. i really dont get it. are people going to carry this, a phone and a laptop at the same time?

[kaini]

this should be required reading to work in the IT industry.

it's freely available on stephenson's site in a .txt file, but i have rendered it unto a 12-point helvetica pdf for you:

http://humphreyplugg.kaen.org/In_the_Beginning_was_the_Command_Line.pdf

it's an excellent read - because stephenson usually writes fiction, it fair rattles along even at 55 pages.

 

In the Beginning... was the Command Line is an essay by Neal Stephenson which was originally published online in 1999 and later made available in book form (November 1999, ISBN 0380815931). The essay is a commentary on why the proprietary operating systems business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software. It also analyzes the corporate/collective culture of the Microsoft, Macintosh, and free software communities.

Stephenson explores the GUI as a metaphor in terms of the increasing interposition of abstractions between humans and the actual workings of devices (in a similar manner to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and explains the beauty hackers feel in good-quality tools. He does this with a car analogy*. He compares four operating systems, Mac OS by Apple Computer to a luxury European car, Windows by Microsoft to a station wagon, Linux to a free tank, and BeOS to a batmobile. Stephenson argues that people continue to buy the station wagon despite free tanks being given away, because people do not want to learn how to operate a tank; they know that the station wagon dealership has a machine shop that they can take their car to when it breaks down. Because of this attitude, Stephenson argues that Microsoft is not really a monopoly, as evidenced by the free availability of other choice OS's, but rather has simply accrued enough mindshare among the people to have them coming back. He compares Microsoft to Disney, in that both are selling a vision to their customers, who in turn "want to believe" in that vision.

 

*everything in IT can be explained with a car analogy

[Guest A/D]

i was pretty floored but also pretty amused that she did not know that Microsoft owned significant shares in the apple company.

 

this sounds really interesting, can you link me? the stuff I've found says Microsoft owns 0.4% of Apple through a hedge fund (which Apple also uses).

 

oh i see, you used the past tense! so microsoft DID own $150M worth of Apple stock, but now owns less than half a percentage point. which would explain why they're not on this list: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL

[awepittance]

i wonder why they did pull out so much stock. Yeah this was back when Microsoft had that 150M. I only knew this because of, lol the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. which is a very enjoyable movie by the way if you guys havent seen it

[kaini]

because of the big-fish-eats-the-little-fish market in IT, and the fact that - i dunno, but a very small percentage - of startups actually manage to survive to maturity without getting bought out, and propreitary codecs that the end user desires, and a million other factors, everybody kinda has shares in everybody else, usually a small enough stake. it's fucked up.

[Ego]

an interesting article at Create Digital Music talking about the potential bad in the iPad - http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/01/27/how-a-great-product-can-be-bad-news-apple-ipad-and-the-closed-mac/

 

This is exactly why the iPhone and this iPad crap makes the blood of so many computer enthousiasts boil. These devices are the complete opposite of free software/choice/market.

 

And it amazes me that very few non-geek people are actually offended by their dominance. Microsoft is getting lawsuits for including Internet Explorer as a default browser. Yet Apple is not just including the default, it's keeping competitors out by controlling distribution.

[kaini]

And it amazes me that very few non-geek people are actually offended by their dominance. Microsoft is getting lawsuits for including Internet Explorer as a default browser. Yet Apple is not just including the default, it's keeping competitors out by controlling distribution.

 

microsoft are convicted monopolists. apple are not. that's why.

microsoft can't fart without letting the government know in advance now.

[Alcofribas]

no dudes. you can't possibly be saying that thoughtful, intelligent computer users think apple has a "better" capitalist presence than micropenis. yeah, there are plenty of trendy, intellectual-chav, dumbasses but my god if you're suggesting that it's like some wide-spread epidemic that apple is fooling all kindza otherwise good judges, wise consumers, etc. i think this whole "apple lovers are stupid hipster fags who don't know the real story they're just blinded by the hype" thing is pathetic. most people use pcs. who gives a shit.

 

in the end, apple has cooler shit. end of story.

 

go suck zelah's dick if you don't believe me.

[sidewinder]

an interesting article at Create Digital Music talking about the potential bad in the iPad - http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/01/27/how-a-great-product-can-be-bad-news-apple-ipad-and-the-closed-mac/

Good read, thanks.

[jules]

if people don't like "a closed mac" cant they use a pc? lets not forget that macs make up such a small amount of computer users. all their innovations have brought more people to their platform. its really smart. ipods, phones, pads, etc will work better with a mac. and when people get a new cpu, they will get a mac if they want their periphs to work better. good business strategy, good execution. you cant fault them for that.

[jules]

one other thing worth noting is that att was supposed to allow tethering for the iphone ages ago, do you think it isnt happening because of this? if i could tether to this, why pay double the data charges for a single signal...

[kaini]

no dudes. you can't possibly be saying that thoughtful, intelligent computer users think apple has a "better" capitalist presence than micropenis. yeah, there are plenty of trendy, intellectual-chav, dumbasses but my god if you're suggesting that it's like some wide-spread epidemic that apple is fooling all kindza otherwise good judges, wise consumers, etc. i think this whole "apple lovers are stupid hipster fags who don't know the real story they're just blinded by the hype" thing is pathetic. most people use pcs. who gives a shit.

 

that's not even really the point that i'm trying to make, at least. maybe apple are better suited to arty stuff like music or dtp or photoshop or whatever. i'm saying that if the market changed drastically tomorrow to the extend that microsoft-like tactics were the only way to succeed, apple would drop the bullshit in a heartbeat and adopt those tactics.

most people do use PCs, apple''s market share crashed in the late 80s/early 90s and they've never regained it. they will, but it's a very slow process.