I HATE APPLE

"we dont touch my junk"

I don't think it's meant to be some horrible thing to feel that way about something

this is true

it means more when ned says it tho cause he's not a dumbass

whereas you can't tell when jobs sounds like a visionary and when he sounds like any other salesman

tbf to microsoft's junk it has traditionally been a bit better at gaming than apple's objets d'art, so yeah i suppose the ipad is the perfect X if you never wanted to play anything more complex than angry birds

so yeah i suppose the ipad is the perfect X if you never wanted to play anything more complex than angry birds

this is stupid

no it isn't

if you spend ten seconds watching one of the keynotes where ppl are demoing games, it's obvious that an ipad can run games way more complex than angry birds

like bejeweled, for instance

apologies for saying "stupid" but seriously, that's just wrong

http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/games.html

ya i overlooked fruit ninja hd, my bad

if you're gonna troll, try a little harder to be good at it

not trolling, if you go back to stet's timeframe there's many a reason why the pc became dominant, and the failure of apple to aggressively compete in the gaming world is one of them

right, so what is the end result of this culture of taste? what is the measure of a man? his amazon want list? the selection of fine links and exclusive goods he curates on his blog? the tweets he retweets?

Yeah, I used to think abt this a bit -- if they do the same thing, what's the difference? (I think the it-works-for-me is totally valid, and leads to powerful but ugly stuff like emacs). But then I figured, if you're going to spend this much time with stuff, better it be tasteful stuff.

(And the alternative stuff was barely equivalent, aesthetics aside. It was crashy and painful.)

http://common1.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/26/0,1425,i=266507&sz=1,00.jpg

he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

This is kind of the root of most of the criticism he gets. I think it's valid, however, I think the number of people tinkering with home computer systems 70s-80s as a ratio of the total population is probably actually smaller than the number of people today programming flash games, designing apps, experimenting with electronics in general. I think by exposing more and more people to the couch consumption model, you also end up with plenty in there that look at these things and have ideas on how to do them better, or how to hack around, etc.

the quick answer for me about why taste matters (& why I've been a Mac user since 2001): because working on a computer that's beautiful makes me want to work more. I'm totally serious: every day I get on my machine to do what I do, which is mostly writing in LaTeX, the experience is beautiful. & that was never true in Windows or Linux.

I gotta say ever since I installed OSX on my dual-boot system a year and a half ago, my use of Windows 7 as an OS has dropped to about 10%.

it means more when ned says it tho cause he's not a dumbass

― mr peabody (moonship journey to baja), Thursday, August 25, 2011 8:16 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

why are you being a dick?

like, that's not an excuse to call you a dick, i'm curious why you're so weirdly venomous here.

I don't understand anybody's reactions to this! Hands! In the air!

rip markers

at the same time, i find myself loving/hating what jobs did to the computer industry, in that he took what was one generation's ham radio (active tinkering hobby) and turned it into the next generation's boob tube (couch consumption hobby).

I've heard this many times but really, Apple in no way has diminished tinkering with hardware and actually provides an ability to tinker with software that other commercial vendors really didn't. Since OS X has been a thing, Apple's provided the same development tools that they use internally for everyone's use, gratis. The barrier to entry has never been lower. Microsoft has scripting languages that are in there, and I mean.. they had qbasic back in the day, but that's about it.

I've heard this argument even up to the last few months -- I was sitting in an auditorium and these two guys behind me were trotting out the same old "who wants a computer that is like a toaster, etc etc" thing which is bullshit -- they were talking about Linux as an alternative, and that's all well and good but the majority of people out there simply don't want to futz with their computer, never really replace hardware, and just want the damn thing to work.

There are so many people in the last decade I know who used to be that type who just don't care now. It used to be that all computers were crashy and you had to fuck around with shit in order to get things working optimally. That's not the case anymore, and the ability to have something that just works and doesn't need this tweaking leads people to realize that maybe there are things to do that are more interesting than tweaking with fiddly OS settings and hardware shit.

Apple didn't lose in the gaming world by not being interested in gaming, they lost it by being interested in hardware lock-in. PC gaming originally was about all this bullshit that involved tweaking memory management, deciding if your sound card was compatible with sound blaster standards or adlib or whatever else, having to select which joystick brand you have, and whatever else. Most of this, even up to the early DirectX days, was a complete mess. Not to mention having to support every bizarre combination of hardware.

Apple's approach is a lot closer to that of game consoles, with the caveat that the consumer machines seldom have the hot video cards that gamers want or the ability to easily swap components.

To be fair, Microsoft's never really made any significant amount of money from supporting gaming!

"what is the end result of this culture of taste?"

the way to understand taste is in terms of restraint, and not chasing after short-term rewards.
for example, at microsoft it is totally conceivable that if some marketing manager was convinced that hiring Insane Clown Posse instead of Brian Eno to create the windows startup sound would result in a 0.5% uptick in sales, millions of computers around the world today would now be waking to WOOP WOOP!

I mean, sometimes you do want to put furry dice and truck nutz on a computer, but that should never be factory default.

stet's massive post otm, particularly in that, for more than a decade, Microsoft's take on ease-of-use was hassling and condescending the user about EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME. It's now safe to turn off your computer! It looks like you're trying to write a letter! It looks like you've got quite a few icons on your desktop! Would you like to clean them up now? Click here if you would like to clean them up now. It looks like you're scratching your arse! Would you like a helpful scratching stick? You just plugged in a USB stick! WAIT!! Don't use it yet, I'm off to find a driver. See? This is me, looking for a driver, and I'm telling you all about it. I can't find a driver! Wait there while I search the internet for a driver. Is it all right if I use your internet to search for a driver? It is?? OH BOY!! Okay I can't find a driver. Sorry, you can't use this USB stick. Would you like to view troubleshooting options? You would? Okay. Have you tried plugging in your USB stick? Oh, you did that? Okay. Was this helpful?

loling

there's an app for that

New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'

PC gaming originally was about all this bullshit that involved tweaking memory management, deciding if your sound card was compatible with sound blaster standards or adlib or whatever else, having to select which joystick brand you have, and whatever else.

tbf rather this than basically nothing at all

Well yeah, and the point is that we were already there and we lived that, right? :)

i also lived having to attempt to fix the office mac (G3, OS8) which crashed every time we tried to do anything with it, and it wasn't a very old computer when it became demented

hardware lock-in, console style approach etc should be a games developer's dream eh

Look, if you wanted to play a game you could buy a console and have it just work, buy a PC and pissfart around with settings and hardware until it worked, or buy a Mac and never play anything ever. That's all changing atm but it took a bloody long time.

Also. being all rockist about ipad games is missing the point that the ipad doesn't do everything a PC/console does and vice versa.

console games and pc games historically haven't been interchangeable, which was a good thing

lol 'rockist'

i have this old pc that was running windows vista for a while. i had to scrub it a week or two ago and reinstall windows xp. that shit feels like the stone age. you know that for a full decade or longer, microsoft just. didn't. care. about its relationship with whoever was at the end of the keyboard. i don't think it ever knew who that was! beyond someone stupid. i swear, the same aspie nerds who programmed were the ones who wrote all the prompts. remember the searching dog? what a cheap attempt to make something "cuter" and what a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that endears an actual thinking human being to your technology. i think there must have been a "lowest common denominator" approach at apple that imagined some strawperson's grandma who can't drive beyond the keyboard -- just imagined it -- and called that good.

apple won by being the first tech/computing firm to evolve beyond the stone age. which is not just impressive but admirable and awesome and inspiring and beautiful and all that! but it's also a big part of how the marketing of function and design has become a spectacle. it's also become heavily invested in the relationship between seamlessness/integration/*invisibility* and success/consumption/streamlined processes in the larger world of the market. yes, more people may be programming but what are they creating and how is it transforming their worldview, etc. are there more possibilities now or is there a greater sense of market forces, consolidation, media consumption habits, it infrastructure reinforcing the status quo? in other words, what is transformative, what is revolutionary, what is a shiny new bauble, what is an easier time of passive consumption, or worse, the spectacle/mirage/hypocrisy of *changing the world* cf. hoos' social media friend.

that was very badly written, but in a nutshell: 1) microsoft really was awful by every standard you can think of, 2) apple was great by all those standards, 3) good work, but is it really doing us any good.

^terrific post.

windows xp. that shit feels like the stone age. you know that for a full decade or longer, microsoft just. didn't. care. about its relationship with whoever was at the end of the keyboard. i don't think it ever knew who that was! beyond someone stupid.

This is utterly utterly otm. Microsoft's specific demographic was ~everyone in the entire world~ and it chose a flood of useless information over intuitive design to address that. If you feel the need to constantly hold the the user's hand throughout a search function, you probably need to redesign the search function.

I have to use XP at work and I've trained it to mostly stay out of my way (tweakui has saved lives), but it still runs like an absolute dog, and it still actively hassles me on a four-hourly basis every time it downloads system updates (cmd -> "net stop wuauserv" has also saved lives).

xp is the stone age! well the iron age at least. it's so old it's been relegated to a virtual machine for stuff that doesn't like 64-bit

MS will support it forever though. Jobs has no qualms about killing anything, which is a plus when it comes to making products. Not having to play to corporate environments with high requirements and low margins? Excellent.

yes, more people may be programming but what are they creating and how is it transforming their worldview, etc. are there more possibilities now or is there a greater sense of market forces, consolidation, media consumption habits, it infrastructure reinforcing the status quo? in other words, what is transformative, what is revolutionary, what is a shiny new bauble, what is an easier time of passive consumption, or worse, the spectacle/mirage/hypocrisy of *changing the world*

^^ OTM

at least xp works! like doesn't crash all the time. that was a big step for microsoft.

Oh yeah, XP was solid for its time (and it's probably unfair of me to criticise it in 2011) but in UX terms it was on the brink of being my mother. Vista was my mother.

If you feel the need to constantly hold the the user's hand throughout a search function, you probably need to redesign the search function.

― ceci n'est pas une witty dn (Schlafsack), Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^ boom

yes, more people may be programming but what are they creating and how is it transforming their worldview, etc. are there more possibilities now or is there a greater sense of market forces, consolidation, media consumption habits, it infrastructure reinforcing the status quo? in other words, what is transformative, what is revolutionary, what is a shiny new bauble, what is an easier time of passive consumption, or worse, the spectacle/mirage/hypocrisy of *changing the world*

You're getting at something here that I think is interesting, and I'd like to prod at it, but I'm not sure I follow you completely. Could you put it another way?

Because it strikes me that "are there more possibilities now or do we just have the illusion of same" is something worth posing, but you've got a lot of other larger ideas and commas thrown in there and I'm struggling to connect them with this particular insight.

PS Are there any Apple keynote speeches/presentations on youtube that are especially historic/amazing to watch? I don't mind sitting through that stuff but some of it is really long and I'd like to be pointed to the 'greatest hit' maybe. Is there a top ten list somewhere?

Of all of them (and I've seen a lot, even spoke w/Jobs very briefly) I love the iPhone introduction. The "are you getting it?" line kills...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASkis57blsc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec76iwztQok

This is also great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

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