[OT] really?

[Eric Dunbar]

On 6/14/05, Derick Centeno <aguilarojo at verizon.net> wrote:
> It's been fascinating to observe the tennis match here.
> I don't know if anything I say will matter to the participants, but I
> can try...again.

Fore! (wrong game ;-).

> On Jun 14, 2005, at 9:54 AM, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> >> That was in Apple's interests before, but the success of the iPod
> >> seems to
> >> be saying to Apple that such reliability may no longer be in their
> >> interests. That is changing the landscape of the market forever, and
> >> in
> >> ways that will not be fully understood for quite some time.
> >
> > The iPod is a disposable consumer product that does one task, and one
> > task only! It's not like a computer.
> 
> It is not like a computer; it IS a computer!
> 
> And NO it doesn't do just one task.  Perhaps you haven't noticed, but
> it just about has almost as many
> peripherals as the Mac itself, and perhaps a few more interesting
> ones...
<snip>
> Then there are those Podcasts....
> 
> No, mon ami, the iPod is it's own phenomenon whose last comparable
> comparison was the "pet rock" of the 70's.
> Now the pet rock as a consumer product did only one thing, was
> disposable and sold like crazy.
>
> The iPod is THE thing which is much more than what it is; it can be
> made to be the consumer utility almost as useful (and to some already
> as necessary) as the Swiss Army Knife.
> 
> The pet rock nor the Swiss Army Knife never reached the "affection"
> level people have for their iPods.
> And one more surprise, one can run Linux on the iPod and one can run
> YDL from it!
> OK, that was two.
> 
> A consumer product can become disposable, like the aforenamed pet rock,
> just by falling out of fashion or use or whatever originally gave it
> meaning... this is unlikely to happen to the iPod for the same reason
> one keeps around a compass to discover magnetic north.  In short, the
> usefulness of the iPod may be something that may pass on to the next
> generation of family members, as a pleasant and useful utility.  As
> long as there are podcasts, iTunes, and those other accessories which
> exist for no other consumer product.
> 
> The iPod may be for consumers, but it has become much more than another
> "consumer product".   It may achieve the status of the American hot
> dog.  If it achieves that then it is eternal!

My perception of the iPod is that it's in the same league as a cell
phone for "disposability". Only a tiny fraction of cell phones will be
in use five years after they were first sold -- this kind of gadget
makes those nasty things called cars look eternal by comparsion (and,
they're the worst disposable consumer product in our flush toilet
societies).

That's not to say that the iPod isn't a very well thought out piece of
equipment, that it is! It just won't have a long life because (a)
people will want bigger/more fancy versions and (b) older iPods will
stop working! The iShuffle (iPod Shuffle ;-) IS a disposable consumer
product quite similar to the disposable cell phones you can buy. These
iPods will start breaking down in a year or so and people's ONLY
choice will be to throw them away -- I can already see the effects of
dirt and grime on my iShuffle after only three months!

> >>> If you are the first adopter of a new technology you know you won't
> >>> get software support for long (e.g. Macintosh (128), PPC x1x0/x2x0,
> >>> Beige G3/PB3400). That's a principle that's well known and understood
> >>> in the tech universe and not special to Apple (and, if you don't
> >>> understand that then you probably shouldn't be an early adopter and
> >>> shut up if you ever try to whinge (I love knocking those people down
> >>> a
> >>> peg or two ;-)).
> >>
> >> It seems that Mac users truly tend not to understand that. What else
> >> can
> >> explain the mind-boggling percentage of OSX machines that have already
> >> been upgraded to Tiger?
> >
> > Tiger is "proven" technology. 10.4 is little different from 10.3.
> > Moving to 10.0 WAS a major shift, however!
> 
> You are just plain wrong.
> Tiger is not merely an incremental change as a patch or something of
> that sort.
> Tiger for those who really use their computers (and that is always the
> place where the fallout occurs) is at least an order of difference to
> be measured not by linear, but rather exponential, scales.

As I stated elsewhere in this thread, fundamentally OS X wasn't
changed. Breakage for "old" apps was/is minimal compared to previous
upgrades and the technology hasn't fundamentally changed. Apple has
added the desktop widgets and its spotlight searching technology but
those are incremental changes, not fundamental changes to the OS. They
may fundamentally change how some people manage files, for e.g., but
that change isn't earth shattering and won't be used by a sizeable %
of users. Few of Apple's changes ever are earth shattering!

> AND there is NO discussion going on regarding what to expect when
> Longhorn is finally released.  Apple has a whole new fresh OS ready for
> that too!  Meanwhile one must attempt to limit one's ooohs and ahhhs in
> an effort to at least appear civil, mustn't one?
> 
> As all good gentlemen know, one discusses not such things....

Apple is fighting for its life beside Windows for OS mind share which
is why it's pre-emptively adding fresh new ideas to an old, tired OS
(*nix is tired and old in that the basics were laid down in the 1970s
;-). Longhorn will be an impressive piece of work when it comes out
and will almost certainly give Apple a run for its money. Microsoft
*finally* moved its consumer user base from DOS to its Windows NT core
with the switch to XP (which is presumably why it took them so long to
get the OS out of the door), so, now that they have that part of their
evolution out of the way, their developers are free to work on other
projects, presumably similar in ooh, ahh pizzaz and functionality to
OS X's Spotlight and Exposé.

I wasn't blown away by Windows XP. On the surface it looks like a
significant upgrade from 98 (I don't think ME gained much traction...
it seems like a poor, long forgotten cousin), but after using it for a
while I realised that most of the changes were just bug and user
interface fixes. The real changes were unseen, under the hood (and,
thus unappreciated by users). MS will have to make the upgrade to
Longhorn worth their users' while so they better come up with
something good (I'm guessing a pay-per-use/subscription business
model).

Anyway, this has little to do with Linux, even if it's marked OT so
perhaps it's time to put the thread to bed?

Eric.