Am I the only one on the planet who finds using mobile devices kind of boring? I mean, I own a smart phone and an ipad, and use them occasionally, but I vastly prefer my desktop for writing, programming, watching videos, playing games, etc. Mobile devices are useful, but so are laptops and desktops. Why canāt we have both?
Edit: Naturally, Iām speaking as a rich westerner with privileged access to technology and resources. I know āhaving bothā is a pretty entitled sentiment, and that most people are lucky to even have access to the internet, let alone their choice of technology for doing so.
I feel like this story answered its own question pretty handily.
No, they definitely shouldnāt can the Mac. Itās the hub of all of their mobile success. Itās the bedrock everythingās built on.
Definitely not the only one. I like my phone when Iām out and about and my tablet next to my bed to catch up in bed in the morning, but for real work/intense web surfing ā¦ I canāt understand why anyone would want a touchscreen device. Give me a decent keyboard and my 26" monitor every time
I read somewhere itās the difference between consumers and creators. If all you do is post a Facebook update/tweet, or some light surfing and YouTube (i.e. you are a āconsumerā of the web), touchscreens will serve your needs just fine. If you actually do anything creative (whether itās art, video production, or even just writing comments on web forums!) then traditional hardware is what you need. Most people fall into the consumer category.
One thing that may not be apparent to non-programmers is just how close iOS and OSX are to each other. While the Mac and iDevices may seem very different to non-programmers, they are clearly related to each other underneath in regard to APIs and the like. OSX definitely has a future so long as iOS does. And that implies a future for the Mac. Yes, I know there are people who say āApple should just sell OSX for installation on PCsā, as modern Macs are basically standard PCs as anyone who has heard of a āHackintoshā knows ā the thing is, that never seems to work as a business model. NeXT tried it. Be tried it. These were arguably the most advanced OSes of their day, just as OSX is today, but they couldnāt get a foothold.
The Wall Street Journal believes that everyone is, or should be a consumer. And of course, being a consumer means always being willing to throw away the thing you have for the new thing, even if the marginal benefit is small. And, of course, devices optimized for āconsumptionā are primarily very passive things. They receive. A device that allows you to more easily be an active creator makes you a threat to the corporate order.
On the other hand, if I could get Creative Suite to run under Linux, then I wouldnāt really need the Mac any more.
I love my nook tablet. Just the right size for easy portability, reading, the odd sudoku or crossword and it takes up way less space than the pile of books it replaces, videos look good while it is just a few feet away. It does not take the place of my beast of a laptop but I canāt just open that up on the bus, in the car, etc.
I think as cpus and gpu shrink and get more efficient we will probably see a true merging of laptop/tablet/desktop where you have some basic unit and the function is based on what shell you plug it into. We are already close to that with things like the Surface and the like tablets that come with a keyboard dock.
There will still be uses for dedicated workstations just they wonāt be the bog standard home pc anymore.
I have arm injuries and need to be able to use an e-reader, and it is impossible to find new e-readers without the gorram touchscreens. I tried an iPad. I couldnāt turn off pinch-to-zoom, which is a nightmare because Iām clumsy, because touchscreens are flaky, and because Iām sensitive to painful flashes such as zooms. I tried a Windows 8 tablet. I found a setting to turn off pinch-to-zoom, but I canāt actually turn off pinch-to-zoom.
Also, the OS X isnāt as flexible as Linux, but the Mac is built to better standards than some other machines, and doesnāt have as many divers and certified-but-not-compatible and inaccessible equipment problems as Linux.
Unless Iām much mistaken, our fearless WSJ technology bloviator is making one of two mistakes:
At best, heās misunderstanding the ādanger of being doomed by your own success in technologyā problem: You donāt become stagnant merely by sitting on successful products(nor do you become creative and revolutionary merely by taking them out and shooting them). You become stagnant when you start shooting your creative products because you fear that they threaten your successful ones; and how you become creative is still more an art than a science.
Success, in itself, is just fine(and it provides the cash that can be rather useful to indulge your creative children with time, prototyping space, and the freedom to not ship unpolished products). If Apple is sandbagging some as-yet-unknown hot new thing in order to preserve mac sales, then they have a problem. If they are just selling macs, they may or may not have a problem with their creative pipeline; but itās not specifically related to macs.
At worst, heās just making petulant noise: āIām a tech pundit, so my business is companies doing stuff worth commenting on; and therefore I want Apple to do something seeminglky counterintuitive so that my pundit powers will be called on and validated! Also, as a hardcore changeophile, remotely static product lines fill me with unquenchable ennui; and only the most radical and disruptive changes can soothe meā¦ā
Also, quite simply, Apple is a business, not a collective of bohemian artists. As long as Mac is profitable, they will probably continue to make Macs, unless that gets in the way of something even more profitable.
Apple has tried making disastrous business decisions, but it didnāt work out too well, so theyāre probably leaning more toward shrewd business decisions now.
Microsoft should stop selling operating systems. Every company should focus on their strengths.
Shouldnāt the headline read āWhy the Wall Street Journal should kill off the Pay wallā
WSJ how about take a note from apple, and try some innovation, it just might boost your reader base.
Glenn Fleishmanās response is odd.
Apple will never again cede its future to other firmsā control.
Yes, that makes total sense, and is the strongest argument for why Apple is not going to give up its model of producing all its own hardware.
And itās why it has its own computer platform: 100 percent of software development for the iPhone, iPad, and Watch (and Mac apps) occurs on Macs. Thereās no other way to assemble software for those devices.
The Mac, at some level, is a highly profitable developer-platform division that happens to also serve consumers and businesses.
This doesnāt make any sense. He seems to be implying that the most important reason Mac makes its own devices is so that developers have to produce software and apps on those platforms. As if the developer world is the largest consumer of Macs.
First of all, heās just wrong: ā100 percent of software development for the [x,y,z] occurs on Macs. Thereās no other way to assemble software for those devices.ā Wrong. You can run OS X inside Virtual Box on your PC and do just fine. Hereās how to run XCode on a Windows machine.
Second, that just seems to be a very narrow view of their market: just software developers? Apple clearly doesnāt think so ā when was the last time you saw a Mac ad targeted at a developer (instead of a graphic designer, photographer, whatever)?
Whatās that rule about headlines that end in a question mark?
Yeah, that.
[quote=āSamSam, post:14, topic:59737ā]This doesnāt make any sense. He seems to be implying that the most important reason Mac makes its own devices is so that developers have to produce software and apps on those platforms. As if the developer world is the largest consumer of Macs.
First of all, heās just wrong: ā100 percent of software development for the [x,y,z] occurs on Macs. Thereās no other way to assemble software for those devices.ā Wrong. You can run OS X inside Virtual Box on your PC and do just fine. Hereās how to run XCode on a Windows machine.[/quote]
What Iād like to see is proper licensing/open-sourcing of the old Classic Mac OS and associated BIOS ROMs that professionals surely have not given any thought to in the last decade or more, as efforts to reverse-engineer emulation solutions seem to have stagnated. It seems to me that considering it was all designed for an outdated architecture that thereās little to be lost.
Sure it technically works, but itās against licensing agreements with Apple. This may not matter to some, but if youāre a large shop you kind of want to cover your bases (Sarbanes Oxly and all).
Personally Iād like to see Apple start producing a rack mount server again. Being able to spin up a bunch of VMs in the data center without having the odd shelf of black cans would be a plus in my book.
I think thatās exactly it- I love my iPhone and Chromebook, but as an artist and musician, theyāre of no use as anything but scratch pads. I need a real computer to do any actual work.
Me, too.
One way around this is to open source OS Xā¦ particularly as a development platform for the watch, ipad, etc. But that is not so much in Appleās DNA.
