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.'"
iPad? Seriously? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's junk. I'm sorry to say it, I had high hopes but the thing is an overpriced etch-a-sketch. My netbook does everything the iPad does but 100 times better and at less than half the cost, plus it include a keyboard and much larger hard drive and all the inputs and outputs I require.
All this hype over the iPad is mind boggling. I just don't get it.
Like BEOS, Amiga and so many others (Score:1, Interesting)
This is business.
Nobody in the IT industry can honestly think that quality actually gets you anywhere. It's marketing, lawyers and sales, advertisers that are the cockroaches that ruined innovation for good.
The Iphone, googol and whatever techcompany will do what it can to survive...
I hope Windows never goes obsolete and nor does my dumb phone.
The people that does not get it ... (Score:1, Interesting)
How is that supposedly smart people does not understand the basic of math?
A 3.5 inch display is not the same size as a 19 inch display.
You can not use flash UI (or any other UI) in such a tiny display, its not Apple/Adobe's fault.
You just can not replace 1 square pixel pointer (mouse) with a 9 square pixel pointer(finger) and expect everything to work the same.
My argument in favor of "devolution" (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the time, I argue in opposition of intentionally limited functionality. In most respects, I still do. For example, I don't want my ability to sync or transfer data hampered by any given interest. I don't want what is presently "basic functionality" (like copy and paste or saving attachments) to be held back either.
But devices that do too much of everything will find itself less capable of the single or few tasks that users really want. In previous comments, I mentioned that I finally dropped my blackberry in favor of a Samsung T959. It is all the stuff that iPhone is but without the restrictions that I perceive as show-stoppers. (Presently, my only real complaint is the lack of accessible removable SD card without having to remove the battery.) After rooting this phone (which was exceedingly easy) I can do whatever it is I want to do with it so far. But it is still a phone and I would prefer that its functions not exceed the currently accepted range of functions of hand-held devices. These functions are many and varied but are not quite as robust as a desktop/laptop experience. (I certainly don't want Inkscape or GiMP running on my phone... I don't need an Office quite either though the ability to view and work with various documents would be handy.)
Yet, with all that said, when it comes to devices the size of iPad, there is no excuse for limiting functionality or capability. It's bigger and inherently lacks physical limitations visually and in capability. Once again, I probably don't want to do any sort of intensive work on an iPad like device, but I would like a complete web experience by desktop standards and I would like to edit and work with office documents.
Also, one thing I have learned from Windows PCs is that when too many apps, applets, drivers and the like are installed, we end up with a whole machine that loses power and usability. Why the HELL does HP want to load stupid monitor apps for every device installed? DVD burning software is commonly guilty of this as well. When your systray is even 1/4th the width of your display filled with applets, there is a huge problem with system speed and usability. You just can't do too much with a single Windows PC without a lot of tweaking and careful uninstallation and disabling of various things. But going the opposite direction isn't for the best either.
A sane limitation on what a device will do is certainly called for.
Not Junk... Really (Score:3, Interesting)
I got one and its pretty darn good. Many reviewers agree with me. I use macs quite a bit but don't have an iphone. Its great, but far from improvement. Its has totally replaced my notebook for surfing, and checking emails at home. I take it with me and use it like a giant iphone for location based stuff (I'm a city dweller). The only thing against is that its not feasable to pull out and use while walking, but I guess thats what smart phones are for.
The ipad is really more of a consumer electronic device than a computer. Once you get over that mental hurdle its fine. Its a 1.0 product as well so some of the limits on its functionality should hopefully go away with competetion (thank goodness for it). Its not a netbook and shouldn't really be compared to one.
Everything not working everywhere is a small price to pay for breaking the MS monopoly on OSs.
Price (Score:2, Interesting)
I finally dropped my blackberry in favor of a Samsung T959. It is all the stuff that iPhone is but without the restrictions that I perceive as show-stoppers.
I'm glad you're happy with it. But I have a different show-stopper for Samsung Galaxy S: its $600 price tag (source: Google Product Search), compared to $200 for an iPod touch. True, each U.S. cell phone carrier sells a subsidized version of Galaxy S, but I don't make nearly enough voice calls on my current dumbphone to warrant paying for the 450 minutes per month minimum voice plan that all carriers insist on, and I can wait until I'm at Wi-Fi (home or work or a restaurant) to connect to the Internet.
Re:This is new? (Score:3, Interesting)
We have a machine at work that cuts letters and designs and stuff out of rolls of adhesive vinyl for making signs, etc.
It is connected to a Win95 machine via serial cable.
It works terrific and has done so for ten years.
Re:Wait for Google then... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even the geek perspective, it;s the apple geek perspective.
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!
The ubergeek wouldn't have bought an iPad and then bitched about things he knew would happen, or would be reverse engineering it to run linux.
I Bought an iPad Two Weeks Ago (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I'm going to Vegas. "Easy Vegas" app is good.
2. I'm going to Vegas and I'm going to watch movies on the flight.
3. Amplitube iPad Edition came out - and it's great.
4. Instant on. No need to boot to check weatheror news, or to look up something I'm curious about.
5. The Reuters app is awesome.
6. Camera connection kit deals properly with Nikon raw format.
7. The tools for photo management are really coming along beautifully. Photogene is a good tool for travel.
Since then I've discovered some new things.
1. The 10 hour battery life is both real, and awesome.
2. I have gone to a site that required flash exactly twice, and I found the same content elswehere in a format I could view.
3. I really like reading magazines on it (Maxim with Kaley Cuoco!)
4. On the most difficult setting, the Scrabble app kicks my ass.
5. I haven't turned my netbook on since I got it.
6. The screen gets dirty when I eat cheezies and surf porn.
7. There's a LOT of compatible porn.
8. I've been expecting to have to buy a wireless keyboard, but so far I haven't "needed" to.
Anybody want to buy a used netbook? It has crappy battery life and a screen that semi-sucks, but it has a keyboard.
Do I give a crap that a bunch of nerds online think that it's underpowered compared to stuff that's 18 months away? Not even slightly.
I'm as technical a guy as they come. My workdays are spent writing industrial scheduling and simulation software on Unix. But I'm past the age where I want to screw around with stuff when I get home. Give me something that works well and doesn't give me any grief.
"deliberate devolution" (Score:4, Interesting)
"That's what I don't like -- deliberate devolution."
That is what is going on with VOIP, wireless phones and texting replacing conversation over land lines.
Instead of a human voice in real time, you have a typed message. A step backwards.
With VOIP if your power or your computer goes out, you don't have phone service. Not so with a land line.
With VOIP and wireless calling, call quality has gone way, way down. Problem free phone conversations used to be taken for granted.
On the other hand
It is easier to send written information.
It is also easier to avoid "facing someone" by sending them a text or an email
You have the ability to communicate by phone in a number of places, not just at home, work or wherever there is a pay phone ( remember those? )
Making long distance calls in the US is now dirt cheap. Such calls used to be the subject of heated arguments after the bill came.
If the iPads get flash, or if the flash enabled clones make it, someone will be typing "remember when you couldn't watch a hulu.com laying down on your couch?", while pointing out some things that were lost with the vanishing of laptops.
Re:iPad? Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are tens (hundreds?) of millions of people out there that are interested in "content" in small chunks (call them the iPod People, which might be a clever analogy, or not). They want music, notes, books, letters to read, maps, phone calls, and a bunch of other little pieces of content. In a digital world, one device can do large subsets of those. Lots of people have recognized that potential; I have memos I wrote over a decade ago, describing the functions that would be attractively served by "Mike's brick-of-plastic portable computer". Jobs not only recognized the potential, but also had the means and the courage to risk a large company's future on that potential.
There are another (smaller) group of people, which includes myself, who need something that lets them create content as well. I need something that lets me write hundreds of pages of text per year, program, generate complex graphs, etc. A device that meets my needs can also do all the things the iPod People want, but not vice versa. Like many in this group, I'm somewhat ticked off that the iPod people got their devices first, but I'm trying to be patient and believe that I'll eventually get something suitable. What I'm not doing is whining that the iPod People would be better off if forced to use the kind of gadget I need.
Re:iPad? Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hilariously I was exactly the opposite of this. I never even considered getting and iPad, as I saw no possible use i would have for it, and i had absolutely no desire to own one. I'm not even in the market for a computer, and I hate laptops.
2 weeks ago i was in a store and had an opportunity to use an iPad for a little while. I was blown away. It was so intuitive, so easy to use and so *pleasant* to use. I didnt have to fiddle with a little trackpad or mouse nubby thingy. I didnt have to find some annoying way to position it on my lap without burning my balls or sitting in some strange uncomfortable position to give a flat surface for it. It just sat in my hands, and i pointed at what i wanted.
The next day I bought one, and now i sit in the living room with the family to check my email and browse website, even play games. I stopped playing wow because of the iPad. I'm more social, play with my daughter more (she presses the button to turn it off and then starts playing her own games while I'm reading slashdot lol), and am generally extremely satisfied with it. Not only do I like it better than netbooks, but i like it better than desktops for casual usage.
At work of course i still use a 30" monitor and 8 core machine, with a real keyboard :)
Good devolution (Score:3, Interesting)
To go to an example more radical than the ipad, almost don't need to use my netbook since i have my N900. Have far smaller screen and keyboard, not as fast, and have less software available. But still, is not something to worry about carrying, is always just there, is good enough, and a desktop computer or a proper notebook fill most of the remaining needs. Is something wrong with the netbook? No, just appeared another option that gave some advantages, and could adjust the pattern of use that i was giving to it.
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Too scared to say that the iPad sux, I guess .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Like I posted elsewhere, I have an iPad (through work) because I do accessibility work.
We are going to iPads because they are lighter to take out into the field than a laptop, and come with a good warranty, they are a laptop replacement in some areas.
I don't have an iPad for a web server/ftp server/irc server or USENET leech because I don't need those things running for when I do work.
Its the go to device for accessibly right now, can your Linux install claim that?
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/01/the-ipad-could-be-the-best-mobile-accessibility-device-on-the-ma/ [tuaw.com]
Re:iPad? Seriously? (Score:1, Interesting)
I find it interesting that one of TFAs claims that the iPad is "a degradation of the user experience."
People buy the iPad because of the user experience. It's not forced on people. It just happens to be very good at a subset of things, like regular web browsing. It doesn't have the capabilities of a full PC, but it's designed to do certain things very well. This is not a degradation of the user experience; it's an enhancement of the user experience.
Actually. I suspect it's Nokia is #1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe Android in the US.
The rest of the world on the other hand makes up 95% of the population.
What the world really needs... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is the iPad. Too bad it came a long so late.
The problem is that 99% of the world doesn't need and doesn't want something that requires administration. A computer needs an administrator - I don't care whether it is Linux, Windows or OS X. An administrator is required to install software (correctly and only that which should be there) and to fix problems that crop up.
What the world really wants is an appliance that lets them use the Internet. Email, buying stuff, banking, searching for porn, whatever. Things that can easily be corrupted and taken over by malicious software should the user (uninformed, unknowing, etc.) can install thinking they are getting something nice. Like Weather Bug.
What the iPad presents is an appliance that you cannot install Weather Bug on which then reports back on every web site you connect to. And you cannot install some trojan that will help someone steal your money. You also can't install some botnet rootkit which then uses your computer to send spam and make money for some Russian mob folks. Now Apple may be letting some stuff through that they should not be - but it is all fixable.
It is not fixable with Linux, Windows or OS X. An administrator is required. With proper administration there is no virus problem with Windows and no problems with dependencies on Linux.
obsolete? Only to an Apple fanboy (Score:4, Interesting)
For multimedia, I prefer a netbook (I have an S101) for around the house or a motel room. The keyboard keeps it in one place in an angle suitable for viewing without having to add a stand or a docking device, and netbooks have far better performance than this generation of tablets. If I'm on foot, I'd rather get my content off a small smartphone, hanging a 7" or larger tablet off my belt is a stupid thing to do.
However, the real reason why "the netbook is not going away" is that not all of us are full-time passive consumers of content. Do you write papers for school? Do you create documents for an employer?
Would you rather type a bunch of pages on a real keyboard that does not take up screen real estate or on a virtual keyboard that takes up a third of the screen better used for document? I'm working on a patent application, and I frequently edit it via remote control from my netbook to the desktop where the file is. Speaking as an Android Tablet owner, I regard the idea of editing a 40+ page document on that tablet as a non-starter and creating one on a tablet makes a typewriter sound good.
The tablet will cut into netbook sales because the people who only want to websurf and run a few apps will buy it. But IMO, the "content-only" user is a lot less common than commonly believed.
The fanboys only want to believe that the netbook is going away because Apple doesn't make one. They're irrelevant, Steve Jobs' vision of a userbase solely composed of consumers of content created by major corporations doesn't fit the real world.
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
Short answer: It depends on what unit you're in.
Long answer: In medical-surgical units (your basic, low-acuity "floor nursing" kind of places), nobody much cares because none of those patients have any kind of fancy monitoring going on, and most of them are stable enough to go home within a day or so anyway. Hence, everybody and their brother has mobile phones, netbooks and the like, and some hospitals even go so far as to provide free WiFi on those floors. That isn't the case in critical care. In ICU and its sub-variants (medical, surgical, neonatal and so forth), since every patient has a pile of invasive care systems (ventilators, arterial lines, Swan-Ganz catheters, Vigileos, CRRT, IABP, ECMO, etc) and half a dozen pumped drips, you will see signage EVERYWHERE warning you not to bring in any active electronics, and the staff will hunt you down if they suspect you might be "carrying." I very nearly got kicked out of a PICU a year and a half ago for having a Palm m515 (!) with my copies of Lexi-Comp, Harriet Lane and Mosby's Critical Care Nursing, and we wrote up a doctor who brought an iPhone to the CV-SICU in my preceptorship.
Emergency is kind of a mixed bag. Some places ban electronics entirely in the fear of compromising critical patients' monitoring and treatment systems, others realize it's a losing endeavor and just try to separate the critical from the walkie-talkies as much as physically possible. (I dare you to walk into a room full of combative drunks and tell them you're confiscating their mobile phones because they're interfering with the Vigileo on the sepsis patient two doors down. Let me know how many stitches you require afterward.)
Does all that rigmarole actually save lives? Probably not. I think a lot of it is throwback to the days of bag phones, when doctors and other big shots routinely walked around with what amounted to unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their shoulders, and the electronics really WERE that sensitive to interference. On the other hand, I've seen monitoring equipment go haywire when patients' family members attempted to make cellular calls, and return to normal function once the offenders were escorted off the unit. In any case, we'll always err on the side of caution - better safe than sued.
Re:Yeah nothing works anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
The intentions are likely different from what you're thinking. I don't believe anyone really sets out to become a monopolist and Jobs is no exception. He appears to be removing the things which have treated his platform badly and is replacing them with two things - standards based technologies and platform specific technologies. You can use either. Calling Flash a healthy development environment is a laugh since it has become one of the most resource hungry attack vectors of recent memory. If Apple made huge profits off their App Store, I could see why they'd want to protect it from end runs. It appears the revenue from the App Store Is healthy but is a drop in the bucket compared to the profit from selling products that don't confound the end user... Or kill their batteries in an hour... or don't work well with touch devices anyway. If Flash didn't have the long list of failings, I think it would be on the iDevices. The fact that it isn't in its current state is a favor to the end user.
Everything people complain about and point at for being monopolistic from Apple has an escape hatch for the end user. Apple has every right to monopolize their own offerings and is under no obligation to support things which harm their offerings. That said, Apple is far from a monopoly.
The iPod is first and foremost an MP3 player. Purchases from iTunes with DRM may be recorded to CD and used anywhere else. The Mac has some proprietary pieces but I can compile and run damn near anything on it.
The Walled Garden complaints are understandable but interesting in that none of my exploit laden PC viruses will run on my Macs or iDevices but cause the IT department at work to lock down my network and computers nearly to the point of being non-functional. Ironically, I feel like I have more freedom inside that walled garden because of that.
That's kind of the point. Some people like to work on things all the time and some people just like things that work. Getting back to agreeable standards can only help things work better.
iPad is a companion to your main computer (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people have realized that they really don't need to haul around a desktop replacement laptop and that they really don't actually use all of the powerful apps on a laptop the majority of the time.
If you really need to use a desktop app, you can connect back to your home desktop using either VNC (OS X) or Remote desktop (windows) or to a corporate citrix farm. There are VNC viewers, and a citrix receiver for the iPad and I understand that other services like Logmein Ignition also have iPad apps.
Even with these remote connection apps readily available, most people will not use them often and are satisfied with native iPad apps and web apps like those from Google.
Many people have compared the iPad with the PADD from Star Trek and there is a great deal of similarity between them. Both represent a way to access information from a central computer and be able to view and edit some of that information while on the go. Neither the fictional device or the iPad was meant to replace the larger computer terminals that you have at your disposal.
Creative category shakeup is essential (Score:2, Interesting)
I was initially excited when I learned that Flash was going to incorporate video, because of the state of internet video at the time. RealPlayer, Quicktime or WM just seemed like nightmares of fragmentation, (especially what real turned into.) Flash seemed like a good place to de-facto standardize on if that was going to be our only collective choice. Adobe has consistently dropped the ball on performance and security ever since they acquired Macromedia for Flash.
How is it that a company the size of Adobe can't seem to find enough programming resources or vision to finally fix Flash and/or roll out updates that don't take years? I just don't understand how they can't even seem to accidentally make it better even once, (ex. Microsoft getting an acceptable OS out after many missteps.)
As far as staying on topic, I personally don't mind a walled garden product like the Ipad shaking things up creatively for awhile if the product category has completely stagnated. We've _almost_ had an intriguing tablet for too long and it was getting aggravating watching the potential be wasted. At least there is now a roaring fire in a great category that up til now only saw smoldering kludges.
I may not completely like what the Ipad and Iphone are, but I'm quite excited to see what and how they will be competed against. (Like hopefully getting rid of Ballmer the seat warmer...)