Posts by da

Smartphones aren't tiny PCs, but that's how we use them in the West

I have a considerable amount of evidence to suggest that in the USA and the EU, a lot of people did not use their PCs, or know how to use them.

The smartphone world has a couple of rules:

#1: follow the pack

#2: know very little

____

Technology adoption seems to be about "critical mass". It doesn't surprise me that different nationalities take to different technologies. This is not because there is any reasonable premise behind it which is related to the particular technology, it's simply down to who achieves a critical mass of users for the majority to follow within that cultural environment.

____

I would even say that with China compared to "the west", China sees itself as a place rushing into a future that will be completely different to today.

In the West, we are largely ruled by "conservatives".

What stops any one of a thousand technologies taking off? Conservative & luddite attitudes. With the huge majority being the users. User adoption is the challenge. Often affluent 'busy' people have no time to even *think* about changing their habits. Hence almost nobody bought handheld PCs, but bought telephones (and complained like stink that they weren't obvious enough to use, and that they didn't like computer stuff).

In fact, in the west the entire computer industry and automation industry has been treated as a form of very threatening and destabilising presence by most of industry, and there is typically very little optimism about "the latest new thing".

We have a problem of "backwards compatibility". Lots of people, when it comes to computers, are basically "backwards". What is interesting about that phenomenon is that the European dogma of the 18th century seems to prevail, that europeans are quite automatically the world leader in technological advancement.

That has not been the case in the past, and it should not be assumed to be the case in the present.

Certainly I would argue that China did not have the dark ages, and that a good portion of the technology and philosophy that powered the industrial revolution originated in China.

Bring on the goats! Apple's cloud failure demands further sacrifice

Re: Shame they stopped building servers...

You're calling System 7 bloated compared to Windows 95?

It had other problems.

Such as no multitask, no protected memory, no networking, no security, You name it, it doesn't do it. no... no... no...

Not bloated. A little disorganised and buggy, perhaps, but there's no way anybody but a 1970s IBM computer scientist would call 3.5Mb operating system RAM consumption excessive.

Problem with olde worlde mac OS was... it was so basic it wasn't even an OS. More like a scientific calculator, a few levels up from feeding lists of instructions onto a sheet of bare metal.

Re: Once again, "Cloud" becomes an ill-defined concept in an article

The cloud is a systems-administration model rather than a specific technology.

Apple haven't announced anything new since the lock-in of iOS, though.

The big problem is that apple were turned from an artisan's studio computer into a consumer company, totally forgot about supplying tools for enterprise.

Apple could have cleaned up on small & medium sized businesses, but that'd have required a lot more software to be written, and a lot of moody customers.

Of course they took the jewellery option, it's easy money.

Re: Shame they stopped building servers...

2. Apple is a consumer electronics company, not a computer company. It's like asking Hermes to build a power station.

^ This would only be a statement that somebody like a stock market trader might suggest, or somebody who doesn't know the history.

Avie Tevanien, or Betrand Serlet, these are proper systems designers. When Jobs died, Serlet walked almost instantly, his quote was something like "I do computer science not product marketing".

As for whether Apple or NeXT knew anything about web services... there's WebObjects! As for whether Apple knew about the web in general... that's where WebKit came from.

As far as heavily multitasked "distributed" computer systems are concerned... well... Tevanian worked on the original Mach.

It should be noted that apple's version of the XNU kernel is *not* a BSD license. Mostly Apple Public Source License.

Unfortunately Apple have been backed into a corner as a maker of shiny toys.

I can tell you what put the dent in apple's professional & enterprise business:

Migrating from PowerPC to Intel when IBM decided they'd make Xbox with the new Power chip, and IBM refused to sell apple any more chips.

Up until that point, there was a lot of stealthy apple stuff to do with making the OSX environment truly distributed & internet-capable. After that... it's chase the iOS sandbox dollar & shiny shiny marketing.

It should never have been forgotten that Apple develop operating systems and that's the core product. That's been forgotten for over a decade now.

Must listen: We've found the real Bastard Operator From Hell

Yes. This is good. Certainly.

But I tell you... I could make a better audio than this. I could make it as nail-curling as natwest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbz95LdqMko

... crossed with squarepusher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-nnHdj8fRg.

Complete with a labyrinth of numbered options yes.

Press 1 for more options, 2 to go back to where you were before, 3 for sales, 4 for... sales, 5 for... sales, 6 for legal.

There are no options, it just beeps at you like the button has been pressed for you.

Also, occasionally, like radio interference, there's a person saying "hello... hello... yes... that sounds great... you're cutting out... is anybody there?... is ANYBODY THERE?... hang on, let me transfer you to the other line"

Google: The Satan Phone cometh

yup, that handset ugly

But that's the nature of the beast. The interesting thing is that since all open source stuff is all about the gradual sprawl, rather than about the SLAM launch, and is about the guts not the gloss, this is what we'd expect, isn't it.

Look, the fact that you can install whatever apps you want is a first. 3rd party, open, extensible, web connected. This is the first proper computer in your pocket.

the G1 iphone sucks

RE: That's an ugly handset, at least the iphone G1 was cute.

Look, I love my apples, really I do. OSX phone? Cool as... bring it ON. Make it shiny.

Were it not for those mammoth buts. Like not being able to use it in any way other than as a phone or a browser, get files on or off it, or do your own maintenance. Sorry, I don't buy a device which forcibly no0bs me out of the runnings, or forces me to break the law by hacking at it. Nay, the iphone is a phone, not a computer, and you do not tamper.

The G1 iphone had a fatal, fatal flaw. No apps, and no internet. GPRS data. The iphone G1 sucked seriously hard, unless you're a style over substance poser.

The iphone is not what the mac pro is, and nor do I believe that it is proper OSX. You're locked out, baby. You've been pwned.

NO NO NO

it does not have a built in barcode scanner. What is has got is an operating system that allows people to make applications, such as those that allow the interpretation of barcode images captured though the onboard camera.

Ugh! Geddit. 3rd party apps. Unrestricted.

you know what

I bet you it's under a year before people are running this OS on their iphone hardware. Yup, it will go.

BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers

Poverty in the UK

the only reason why BT would be trying to worm out of transmitting data is that they do not have the capacity to send all of it. They're trying to be selective in what they transmit.

It's not down to them really caring what you're distributing, it's that they can't handle the traffic, so they're capping bits. This on top of contention ratios makes one say.

21CN... ADSL2+ by 2012!!

Piss off BT. I may have to leave the country to get decent ISP. Latvia for example.