Throwing Out Software That Works 622
theodp writes "Just as the iPhone rendered circa-2007 smartphones obsolete, points out Marco Arment, the iPad is on the verge of doing the same to circa-2010 netbooks. Should this succeed, cautions Dave Winer, we may be entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons. Already, Winer finds himself having to go to a desktop machine if he wants to view web content that's inaccessible with his iPhone and iPad. 'There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks,' he writes. 'It matters. What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter. It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like — deliberate devolution.'"
Other smartphones obsolete? (Score:4, Informative)
Which planet do you live on?
Other smartphone are not obsolete by a long shot.
I stopped reading after the first sentence.
Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess .. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:iPad? Seriously? (Score:1, Informative)
OK, *I'll* name one: Lenovo S10-3t.
Did you seriously believe such a thing did not exist?
Re:iPad? Seriously? (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait for Google then... (Score:3, Informative)
They already exist. A friend showed me one a couple of weeks ago (I'm sorry, I can't remember the brand, as it was far from prominent on the box) that had been brought back from Singapore.
I liked the fact that it is possible to use the thing as a *nix terminal, with the usual shell commands. Also, I liked the fact that its network interface is via WiFi rather than a paid mobile connection plan. I expect Mr. Jobs might disagree with my priorities, but what the hell.
On the downside, the finish was a bit tacky (but hey, no obvious brand...) and an excessive amount of the screen-space was occupied by a black border. But I fully expect someone will come up with a slicker offering before long.
Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess .. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Right, because Flash is all pink ponies.
Yes, Steve Jobs wants Adobe gone or under his control for a variety of reasons, but if Flash was less bloated, it would've been on the iPhone immediately.
Heh. Even with four cores and 4 gigs of RAM, I still automatically Noscript Flash, for "technical" reasons.
Re:So don't buy a #@^&ing iPad. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Apple isn't a dominant player in any area is it? I think iTMS may be the is dominant player in legal music stores but that's about it.
The iPod and IPhone are dominant in mindshare of their respective arenas, at least in TV and American pop culture.
I don't think it's actually that dominant in actual market share, specially globally.
Almost everybody I know is using either Nokia, LG or Motorola with a few Samsung phones here and there, I only know two iPhone users (both smug bastards) and three Blackberry users (all stuck up bastards).
Re:Wait for Google then... (Score:3, Informative)
This whole argument is ridiculous. Does he think the entire industry will just give up and stop making anything similar to a netbook post-iPad? I have zero doubt there will be android tablet devices, and probably some tablets that run an OS with a more desktop oriented flavor.
These devices don't happen in a vacuum. If there is a need, there is a market.
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is HTML5 is great and all, but:
* it just a draft
* HTML support is fragmented and not fully supported by any browser
* Existing sites that can be viewed TODAY often rely on flash
* cutover to HTML5 will probably take 3-5 years for sites people want to see (car manufacturers, game sites, etc)
* flash performance may be memory hungry but it executes faster than HTML5 + Javascript
I'd rather see flash support for web sites that exist today, rather than idealism continue to cripple devices in anticipation of HTML5 maturity and flash-free sites five years from now. I buy devices today to use them today.
Crackpot conspiracy theory? (Score:3, Informative)
Is that why the iPhone originally intended to have apps that were just "web clips" until people whined that they couldn't write native applications?
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:3, Informative)
When Jobs introduced the original iPhone, he declared, "The browser is the SDK". Or words to that effect. This made a lot of prospective developers unhappy and the lack of a native SDK was a significant issue of consternation right up until it was released with iPhone OS 2.0.
Of course, at that time the browser wasn't in any way ready to be an SDK of any sort. But along with the native SDK, 2.0 introduced a bunch of 'HTML 5' features, notably local storage, that allowed web pages to act much more like apps in their own right. This news was completely buried because nobody cared.
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:4, Informative)
In certain environments, such as hospitals and healthcare facilities, ANY wireless functionality can interfere with patient equipment. Doesn't matter if your smartphone uses 3G, WiFi or sub-etheric holowave - either your hospital's Biomedical Engineering department will have to take it apart and certify it for use (good luck with that), or you can't have it. This is why we still use one-way pagers when 99.44% of the world has moved on to SMS, and why the only mobile phone you can have on a unit is a $600 SpectraLink that looks and acts like a throwback to 1995. There are also lots of workplaces that restrict wireless connectivity for security purposes, in which just disabling the functionality isn't good enough.
Niche market, to be sure, but there still is a market for non-wireless PDAs.
Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess .. (Score:5, Informative)
I think you are confusing market share with new phone sales. Market share is how much of the market is using a particular manufacturer's product. New sales is how many new customers in a certain, recent period bought a manufacturer's product. Last quarter, Android rocketed ahead of iOS in new sales, but it still doesn't even have half the market share, in the US or worldwide.
In the US, market share [macrumors.com] is:
RIM 35%
Apple 28%
Microsoft 15%
Android 13%
And while Apple's percentage of new sales did drop last quarter, they still had worldwide sales growth up 61% [canalys.com] for the quarter. Market share percentage fell because Android sales grew by 886% in the quarter. The point that Android sales are doing really well is true, but they're no where near #1 in market share yet.
`iPad alternatives' (Score:4, Informative)
As a FOSS geek I'm not interested in apple and have identified a bunch of really nice looking alternatives to the iPad. It's just a shame none of them seem to quite make it to market!
Eh, there were several `iPad alternatives' on the market before the iPad even existed.
Archos [archos.com] was selling their Android tablets 7 months before the iPad [pocketables.net], and Archos first published an `actual Linux' firmware [archos.com] (using OpenEmbedded) and started contributing to upstream [mail-archive.com] some 4 months before the iPad hit the market [slashdot.org].
AlwaysInnovating started selling Touchbook [alwaysinnovating.com] beta units a month before Archos introduced their tablets--8 months before the iPad came to market.
And there were/are numerous others, too. I'm not sure whether it makes sense to compare the Nokia N-series tablets, since they're smaller, but they've been on the market for *years*, and they're not the end of the list.
Of course, that's not even counting the `iPad alternatives' that came to market *after* the iPad.
I'm having trouble understanding your "shame none of them seem to quite make it to market" comment--and even more trouble making sense out of others' comments to the effect of `if only there were any other tablet computers other than the iPad'....
Re:Actually. I suspect it's Nokia is #1 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you suppose I was looking up the address on the web page? Perhaps because Google maps didn't have it listed?
There seem to be a lot of people here who think Google is both infallible and all knowing. It isn't.