I voted the way I did because Altavista->Google seems larger (and more useful) to me than N80->iPhone. But I know that some people will feel entirely the other way around.
The iPhone is a glorified Blackberry with shackles added. The iPad is a Blackberry with a larger screen, and shackles. iTunes is "Napster with a way to pay the artist". The iPod itself is "a walkman with a hard drive".
Apple hasn't done anything original, or unique. They've made incremental improvements, to the point where iTunes was briefly the first-and-only usable service in the paying-for-downloads market, but in every case they've been rapidly eclipsed by other companies not suffering from their ideological blinders and their obsessive need to prevent the user from doing anything *useful*.
In Apple's defence I'd say that they've been excellent at making things polished to the point where they appeal to the mass market.
I used several MP3 players before the iPod came out, and none were as usable as it was. Same with Blackberries and the iPhone - the touch interface is better than anything I've seen from RIM (although personally I prefer various things about Android, arguably you wouldn't have seen those changes to the smarphone market if Apple hadn't dragged it forward).
They make kit that's not shit and embarrassing to explain to non-spoddy types.
So many conversations contain the phrase "I'm sorry. Computers are just rubbish." and yet we put up with it. (And of course computers being rubbish and hateful keeps me in work)
You know, when the Android phone did one or other thing (pulling in another GCalendar or something equally trivial) I actually found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. As if in return for some consumer device working properly I had been so conditioned to cynical disappointment by the general hatefulness of the things that I fully expected the thing to catch fire out of spite.
Yes. They make computer appliances. I find this offensive sometimes (I want something I can tinker with), but I also understand that this makes them better for the general population.
I believe it's still true that the Mac Pro I had until recently was the most capable and reliable Unix workstation I've used. (out of a NeXT, a couple of currant-buns, one or two HPUX boxen and a set of Deadrat and FreeBSD machines)
The Mac Mini is nearly as good, but it's let down by the speed of the HD.
But the same flaws exist with Apple. E.g., my gf and I wanted to play a video that was on her IPod on my computer. So I went to copy the file, and was faced with a folder full of incomprehensible filenames. Maybe I had to install ITunes? But even there, we weren't sure if it would end up syncing with her device, modifying what was on there.
I've seen OS X crash ("it's a driver problem"). I've seen an Apple laptop refuse to wake up from sleep, and refusing to reboot until the battery was left to run out (because you can't even take the battery out). When I first tried to use OS X, I didn't know what the red/yellow/blue traffic lights were meant to do, because I didn't even get any popup text with the mouse.
An IPhone couldn't even do something as simple as copy and paste for years, and I believe still can't run anything like Swype. And you have to explain to people that they've now got to charge their phone every day "I'm sorry, that's how smartphones [apparently] are". If someone's got an IPod Shuffle, you have to explain that their replacement headphones have to be bought from Apple.
Nothing here is anything worse than problems with other companies, but it's also no better - it's all the same kind of embarrassing stuff you have to explain to non-spoddy types.
Useful? Apple has long had strengths in education, with writers, in music production, graphic design, and in publishing. All areas where the quality and attention-to-detail that characterise Apple products are appreciated.
"Always been" is a bit strong. Adobe may have owned the high-end pixel-pushing market with Photoshop, but Illustrator spent a long time playing catchup with Freehand, before Adobe twice bought Freehand, and eventually killed it. The DTP market was ruled for years by PageMaker (later bought by Adobe and killed), Framemaker (later bought by Adobe and turned into a niche product), and Quark, before Adobe introduced InDesign.
For professional video editing, Adobe's Premiere is an also-ran in a world of Avid and Final Cut. And Adobe do nothing in music recording and production.
And most of the above would be running on Apple hardware for serious work.
Not why you bring up "power user" and "custom workflow", since both would apply to high-end use of Apple kit.
Not why you bring up "power user" and "custom workflow
Because Apple actively cripples non-default workflows and removes all ways for a power user to do things by a different, faster, or more efficient way, of course.
working in education and working on the set up of a county wide windows active directory covering three academies and their associated primary schools, we had a request for one lab of mac machines for the art department. They got their machines, but i'm still trying to get them to integrate into our AD setup and actually do something useful. They might be nice to look at, and work as standalone machines, but see if you actually try and get them to play nicely with others, they just suck.
The AD integration tool they supply, you can see 1000 objects. That's it. It doesn't distinguish between users or computers, and it definately doesn't use the directory structure we put in place. I gave up in disgust and left it to a point where i have more time.
well in this case yes, it's usefulness does depend on it's ability to play well with others. We have it so that a student can go to any machine in the building, and they get their home drives and preferences given to them. In the mac lab they always have to go to the same machine, and all the files are stored locally. We've already got the infrastructure in place, so it'd be nice if we didn't have to reinvent the wheel. Given the scope of the what we do, we don't have the time currently to devote to getting it all working together.
after reading your post, I'm going to add to my "google is the best improvement in the past 10 years" to saying that Apple may well be the best improvement for the next 10, simply because it pays the artist.
Except there are other services that pay the artist more, are more user-friendly, and produce a better product.
iTunes was the first product that got record companies to start doing what everyone had said they should be doing for half a decade - but it wasn't an original idea, it still isn't a good implementation of the idea, and other people have done it better, since, in ways that are better for the artists because they involve less Apple Tax.
Honest question - what Apple product first replaced the WIMP interface? (If you mean phones, even mainstream cheap feature phones weren't following WIMP long before Apple; and tablets followed on from phone UIs, not that Apple were first in tablets anyway - or do you mean something else?)
I haven't kept close track of locked-down tech I'm not going to pay extra for anyway, but . . . The "wheel" control on the IWalkman may have been the very first, but the whole "gestural" interface of the iOS is outside the box.
The stunning backwardness of user interface has been a hobby horse of mine for a while. If you went back in your time machine, and took someone from the audience of the famous Douglas Englebart demo in 1968, and sat him (probably was a him) in front of Windows 7 or OSX, he'd know exactly what it was, and what to do with it.
In the longer run, it is incredibly important that Joe user now has the concept that there can be different sorts of interfaces, that WindowsIconsMousePulldownmenus =/= interface. It's one less obstacle for the next Great Idea.
I agree - and there's also the point that Google is still the most used search engine by far. But for phones? Nokia themselves continued to produce improved phones since the N80 (Symbian alone actually continued to outsell Apple's phones, until Nokia themselves said they were phasing it out). And the number one high end phone platform today is, of course, from Google (with Nokia still leading at the low end).
The market that Apple lead in is mp3 players - but being the biggest doesn't mean you did anything revolutionary (as Mac OS fans have always being saying regarding Windows!) I got an 8GB mp3 player from Sandisk for £40 - the similarly priced Apple offering had 2GB, no memory card slot, no user interface at all, unless you count the awkward one on the custom headphones... and I presume would have required the use of ITunes, rather than just presenting itself as a removable drive and just working :)
Also consider how (IIRC) Google got to be number one in search with virtually zero marketing whatsoever, basically through word of mouth, when they were a small company. In the same timeframe, Apple are a massive company, and the media are hyping their products even before they are announced.
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andrewducker) wrote2011-08-28 09:58 pm
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Apple hasn't done anything original, or unique. They've made incremental improvements, to the point where iTunes was briefly the first-and-only usable service in the paying-for-downloads market, but in every case they've been rapidly eclipsed by other companies not suffering from their ideological blinders and their obsessive need to prevent the user from doing anything *useful*.
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I used several MP3 players before the iPod came out, and none were as usable as it was. Same with Blackberries and the iPhone - the touch interface is better than anything I've seen from RIM (although personally I prefer various things about Android, arguably you wouldn't have seen those changes to the smarphone market if Apple hadn't dragged it forward).
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So many conversations contain the phrase "I'm sorry. Computers are just rubbish." and yet we put up with it. (And of course computers being rubbish and hateful keeps me in work)
You know, when the Android phone did one or other thing (pulling in another GCalendar or something equally trivial) I actually found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. As if in return for some consumer device working properly I had been so conditioned to cynical disappointment by the general hatefulness of the things that I fully expected the thing to catch fire out of spite.
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I believe it's still true that the Mac Pro I had until recently was the most capable and reliable Unix workstation I've used. (out of a NeXT, a couple of currant-buns, one or two HPUX boxen and a set of Deadrat and FreeBSD machines)
The Mac Mini is nearly as good, but it's let down by the speed of the HD.
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I've seen OS X crash ("it's a driver problem"). I've seen an Apple laptop refuse to wake up from sleep, and refusing to reboot until the battery was left to run out (because you can't even take the battery out). When I first tried to use OS X, I didn't know what the red/yellow/blue traffic lights were meant to do, because I didn't even get any popup text with the mouse.
An IPhone couldn't even do something as simple as copy and paste for years, and I believe still can't run anything like Swype. And you have to explain to people that they've now got to charge their phone every day "I'm sorry, that's how smartphones [apparently] are". If someone's got an IPod Shuffle, you have to explain that their replacement headphones have to be bought from Apple.
Nothing here is anything worse than problems with other companies, but it's also no better - it's all the same kind of embarrassing stuff you have to explain to non-spoddy types.
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The really useful media products have always been Adobe, not Apple.
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For professional video editing, Adobe's Premiere is an also-ran in a world of Avid and Final Cut. And Adobe do nothing in music recording and production.
And most of the above would be running on Apple hardware for serious work.
Not why you bring up "power user" and "custom workflow", since both would apply to high-end use of Apple kit.
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Because Apple actively cripples non-default workflows and removes all ways for a power user to do things by a different, faster, or more efficient way, of course.
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The AD integration tool they supply, you can see 1000 objects. That's it. It doesn't distinguish between users or computers, and it definately doesn't use the directory structure we put in place. I gave up in disgust and left it to a point where i have more time.
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iTunes was the first product that got record companies to start doing what everyone had said they should be doing for half a decade - but it wasn't an original idea, it still isn't a good implementation of the idea, and other people have done it better, since, in ways that are better for the artists because they involve less Apple Tax.
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With iTunes' market share, I would have thought that artists' earnings from iTunes were higher than elsewhere.
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The "wheel" control on the IWalkman may have been the very first, but the whole "gestural" interface of the iOS is outside the box.
The stunning backwardness of user interface has been a hobby horse of mine for a while. If you went back in your time machine, and took someone from the audience of the famous Douglas Englebart demo in 1968, and sat him (probably was a him) in front of Windows 7 or OSX, he'd know exactly what it was, and what to do with it.
In the longer run, it is incredibly important that Joe user now has the concept that there can be different sorts of interfaces, that WindowsIconsMousePulldownmenus =/= interface. It's one less obstacle for the next Great Idea.
(no subject)
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The market that Apple lead in is mp3 players - but being the biggest doesn't mean you did anything revolutionary (as Mac OS fans have always being saying regarding Windows!) I got an 8GB mp3 player from Sandisk for £40 - the similarly priced Apple offering had 2GB, no memory card slot, no user interface at all, unless you count the awkward one on the custom headphones... and I presume would have required the use of ITunes, rather than just presenting itself as a removable drive and just working :)
Also consider how (IIRC) Google got to be number one in search with virtually zero marketing whatsoever, basically through word of mouth, when they were a small company. In the same timeframe, Apple are a massive company, and the media are hyping their products even before they are announced.