What I don’t get is the “use-case” for the new MacBook. It’s the new “Air” or will replace the MacBook Air in time but its connectivity is reduced to an absolute minimum and it’s 9/10 battery time is a step down from the other MacBooks. What do you get from the new MacBook that an Ipad won’t deliver? Probably the keyboard … but what I gather from the reports the keyboard is quite “so-and-so”…
Perhaps a transitional device like the first Air? The following generations got more reasonable specs and price.
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I hear ya there. I know that widgets in Win7 were totally half-baked, and a security nightmare, but dammit, why can’t I have nice things like a desktop clock, an RSS ticker, a calendar that stays visible, performance monitoring widgets, a task list widget, built in? Most of these things are implemented in windows, but none of them are amenable to having splayed down the right side of my screen giving me at-a-glance reporting. I shouldn’t need to open up the task manager to see that a suspicious svchost.exe is suddenly eating all my RAM and CPU, and I certainly shouldn’t have to open the task manager just to kill it off.
That’s one thing I really loved about Compiz and Compiz-fusion when they were still being actively developed. But now they languish.
I still have yet to find anything like Launchbar for windows. I’d actually kinda like one.
Also, a tabbed filesystem browser built in needs to be a thing. Don’t need to have it turned on by default, but hey, if MS really wants to lag behind GNOME 2.2 and Nautilus, or even XFCE, I guess that’s what they’ll do.
Interesting to hear that there’s things going on in the Mac world like that. I honestly don’t know any advanced mac users in person. I do have a few Mac users at work, but they’re handled by another guy on the Helldesk, who used to work at the Apple store.
In the end, computers are just tools of course, as is software. I just never was in a position to become very familiar with Apple stuff, and grew up on Windows, and taught myself some linux chops (getting rusty, but I use it when I feel like compiling something with GCC rather than downloading the binary.)
Pressure sensitive touchpads are a bad idea. We’ve already tried this before - in the last generation of games consoles, with the analogue button inputs. The problem is that once you introduce pressure sensitivity, every ‘normal’ click becomes ‘click - but not too hard’, a move that breaks down the natural intuitiveness of the interface. I predict a lot of very annoyed people who excitedly click on some new thing and find the interface not reacting the way they expected.
Not a gold one, surely. Or maybe you mean a “Rolex”, in which case you’re super right.
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I predict Apple will have figured out a way to implement this previously-crappy idea in a decent enough way that people get used to it, find out it’s actually not too bad, and eventually feel really weird if they have to get back to the ‘old’ way. They seem to have a knack for that. And we’re good at adapting.
Or I could be wrong.
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[quote=“LDoBe, post:39, topic:53305”]They’re going to wipe out polio and guinea worm and maybe even malaria. If that isn’t a great work in as biblical a sense as this salty atheist can admit, I don’t know what is.
[/quote]I’m supportive of the good they’re attempting to do and I wish you luck with them especially if you can assist them to improve their tactics. Hopefully someone can convince the foundation to finally implement (less glamorous, but more effective) diversification of funding within developing nations. Their current, short-term, monolithic approach towards common diseases is great for public relations slogans (We’re wiping out malaria!), but it’s also having harmful side effects in the overall grand scheme of things.
By pouring most of their contributions against high-profile killers like malaria in a non-diversified manner, the foundation has been diverting vital medical professionals from critical parts of developing nations. The overwhelming focus on a few diseases has been found to shortchange basic needs such as nutrition, basic health care and transportation in areas that are drained of these professionals (but we usually don’t hear about this). On the other hand, within the areas the foundation funds, those areas (and the foundation) are championed with public relations media. This shortsighted public relations approach is doing more overall harm than good because of this situation. This has been backed up by several prominent investigations, unfortunately.
What should we learn from this?
It’s better to have decentralized sources of charity coming from many sources instead of one, powerful, collective source with a lot of self-serving motivations. Unfortunately, Gates (through his business practices) helped to hinder and in many cases completely detroy entities that would have not only given vastly more to charity, but would have also done so in a far more diversified and effective manner.
To make matters worse, The Gates Foundation is also undermining public education and exerts too much influence over public education policy without being accountable to voters or tax payers. The reforms include closing neighborhood schools in favor of privately run charter schools and forcing standardized tests which have been proven to harm education (just ask teachers, educational professionals, etc.).
A lot of this info is being actively whitewashed by their public relations lackeys across the media and Internet. The truth of the matter is corporations and entities like The Gates Foundation only give a small percentage of the lion’s share to charity, but they spend the most money telling everyone else about it by proxy or otherwise. I wouldn’t mind that so much, but the foundation really needs to stop focusing so much on feel-good tactics that garners lots of public relations advantages and instead begin utilizing a strategy that’s doing more overall good for the world (even if it’s a longer-term, diversified approach that’s perhaps less easy to sensationalize).
Most people have no idea that corporate charity is only a very small percentage of overall charity that’s given mostly by small businesses and less wealthy individuals collectively. Actually, the rich tend to give much less to charity than the rest of the population who have less wealth. We just don’t usually hear about that too much through a complicit, corporate media that keeps trying to prop up the rich (again, public relations).
It’d also be great if The Gates Foundation didn’t include investments in companies that worsen poverty in developing countries, pollute heavily and supports pharmaceutical companies that don’t sell into the developing world.
All that said, I do see the foundation beginning to respond to criticisms (when it resonates enough publicly) and change some things when the squeaky wheels squeak loud enough. So hopefully we’ll see more changes like this over time as well:
Then again, I don’t think we’ll see too much other positive change from the foundation until more of the public at least actually knows about the problems instead of embracing popular slogans.
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[quote=“LDoBe, post:43, topic:53305”]
I still have yet to find anything like Launchbar for windows. I’d actually kinda like one.
[/quote]What I’ve been testing:
Neither quite as good as Alfred or Launchbar just yet, but I’m hoping with time they’ll catch up or even surpass them. I also recommend using multiple launchers so when they leap-frog each other in features and perhaps compatibility issues, etc. you’re adept at them and can switch between them as needed.
Being able to run software that isn’t cryptographically blessed by the mothership is pretty cool. Even some of the historically-mac-focused indie devs and small dev shops have found that the Apple Store imposes a few too many restrictions for their purposes, and they are culturally friendly to Apple on the whole.
If you find the dystopian future a little creepy, not running iOS is quite a virtue.
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Lack of QC combined with an attempt to drive usability down to nil in the name of a minimalist ideal have driven this nearly 30-year Apple evangelist away. Their hardware is still generally better-engineered than competitors, but if I wanted an iPad instead of a laptop, I’d buy an iPad.
I dropped iOS when the 7 redesign (and maps fiasco) cost me a job interview. I refuse to move to Yosemite after just barely getting Marvericks stable, and when security patching stops for my current OS on my Retinabook, I’ll be moving over to Linux on a Surface.
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All valid points I must investigate myself further. I want to do good. But I can see the Gates foundation has issues, I didn’t know they were as bad as having a stake in G4S. That’s completely baffling.
Anyway, the whole philosophy as I understand it is to figure out infrastructure and financial autonomy for the nations it operates in. Trying to build infrastructure with the impoverished nations in order for entrepreneurs to connect with each other and develop better systems for getting capital moving in addition to increasing the availability of goods and services to everyone.
Bill Gates has stated the whole infrastructure building idea numerous times, and it makes sense to me. Unfortunately, building infrastructure for the impoverished is an incredibly arduous task, and many have failed at it. The growth needs to be organic and driven by the abilities and demands of those who would use it. That’s the biggest issue with aide that I’ve seen. Highly industrialized global powers coming in, building what they think is best without consulting the community, and without any foresight, and leaving. Then the community is left with a huge burden to either run upkeep on extensive infrastructure they can’t handle on their own, or they know that it simply wouldn’t work in their circumstances and they abandon it. That’s always sad. But not unexpected.
As far as I can tell, the most successful work done in aid is to set up social networking (in the boots on the ground sense). Connect people together and get them to feel like part of a bigger community with more resources. From that point those who are living there have the ability to both help each other better, as well as ask for help when they need it. It becomes more of a loan, that proves sustainability rather than impractical white-elephant gifts.
I’m left leaning, but industrialization does necessitate giving individuals the chance do become entrepreneurs. History demands it.
I’ve seen several projects where the Gates Foundation’s investment branch pretty much made cellphone banking happen in a few countries, and that has an amazing effect on the goods and services available to individuals. Cellphones are cheap, even in sub-saharan Africa, and using cellphone banking allows for very very small transaction fees that never would have been possible through traditional methods.
Now, whether this type of infrastructure is good or bad is up in the air. I’d say it’s probably good. But you can certainly contradict my opinion with evidence. I’m absolutely open to that. What remains is the fact that these types of infrastructure are useful.
Then add in the recently completed project with the sewage to potable water + net positive energy plant. That’s pretty awesome. I’d totally get behind a project building those with whoever wanted one. Sanitary water and waste management is a huge problem in the developing world.
So there’s just a couple of examples of things that are sustainable and good for developing countries that are unlikely to have a net-negative effect. But that’s definitely not evidence that the B&MGF is any better than, say, MSF, or the Well Builders Fund or whoever.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter (honestly, I’m interested, do you have a blog or something?)
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It’s entertaining to revisit comments on the launch of the iPod in light of peoples’ reaction to the Apple Watch.
I’d settle for an 18-hour laptop and 12-inch smart watch.
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Not much if you’re a ‘email, text editor and internet browsing’ type of user. Some professionals do require more powerful software for on-the-go use than the simpler iOS equivalents (Final Cut instead of iMovie, for instance).
Apple still drives the industry. No one else pushes things forward like they do. The so-called walled garden is a choice. The security and reliability afforded are a fair trade.
If you want me to express some skepticism I will say that the yearly system upgrades are too much. I don’t think the engineers can keep up. Free or not, it is an unnecessary tax on users and developers.
The watch is impressive, though I can’t imagine using it. The little notebook is amazing. They also announced Research Kit for iOS that looks like some kind of progress. Not a single mention of the iPad and the Mac Pro was conspicuously absent from the line of products shown on screen.
Apple also does marketing like no one else. That is almost one of their best products. I watch their presentations in awe of the control and consistent tone.
They have pushed every one of their competitors to work harder. No matter what you use you should be grateful for that.
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Many people would rather have a Radeon than a firegl, and that’s a large portion of the cost.
That’s why Apple has stores. See for yourself what the keyboards action is.
As the next Applestore is a 3 hour drive away -> No. As an alternative I just read other peoples opinion from the comfy setting of my home, delivered instantly to my *iMac via intertubes.
*shameless plug because of the passive-aggressive response. Showing I’m in possession of an apple product will hopefully demonstrate my previous post not as veiled criticism and shield me from further “Apple-White-Knights”.
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Americans in general are brand name cultists; we start with a sound principle (save resources by identifying a marker that signifies something known to meet your needs) and progress on to insanity (this brand just seems inherently better to me, even after I’ve chosen it last in an actual blind test).
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I really shouldn’t extrapolate from my own situation-- living within a 20 minute walk of an Apple Store (depending on how many steel monsters are attacking the sidewalks) to the rest of the world.
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Anything that requires a computer for work?
I guess if you’re writing a novel you could do it all on an iPad. And if you’re a blogger, you could probably do most of it, but switching back and forth between all the apps that help you out would be a pain (assuming you’re clipping web articles, saving things, writing in one app, posting in another…).
I guess I’m biased because I’m a software developer who uses a Mac just fine for work, but can’t imagine the idea of anyone using iOS for anything more work-related than simple browsing, basic writing, and basic photo retouching.
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