Jeff Gordon is a loser! Kyle Busch is a better driver, but you even adopt a driver's name for your own...
now that's a fanbot supreme!
Apple rocks. Obama sucks, as does Jeff Gordon!
Posted on 04/11/2010 2:38:33 AM PDT by Swordmaker
What does Apple get that Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, and LG don’t?…. Usability in software. All these other geeks out there making hardware love packing on “specs”, stuffing big numbers like RAM, gigahertz, and hard drive space into small or cool looking gadgets. It all looks good on paper, but after you use one of their gadgets for more than a few weeks, you just want to throw it out a window. Thousands of new gadgets released every year all using the same-old crappy unfriendly, unintuitive, unattractive software. It’s no wonder so many are flocking to Apple when we can just pickup one of their simplistic products, start taping and swiping our fingers, and lo and behold… it just does what we want it to do. Of course, it isn’t easy, or cheap, to make software this user friendly, which is why everyone is having such a hard time keeping up.
As a software developer, I hear the phrase “I just want it to…”. Which, as any experienced software developer knows, is the most expensive phrase we ever hear. People have software needs all the time, which may require vast complicated effort to achieve, but they want it to hide all that complication behind a simple and user-friendly interface. What most people don’t know is that making software do just about anything doesn’t cost nearly as much as making it easy and intuitive for them to use. This lack of cost awareness is what ruins so many “brilliant” product ideas.
Sony is, in my opinion, the worst offender. In the past decade, I have seen Sony release cutting-edge gadgets to the market before anyone else. The PSP was an amazing gadget when it came out, in theory. It played music, videos, viewed photos, surfed the web, and of course, played games. The problem was that, excluding the last feature, it didn’t do any of them well. In fact, all the claimed features were so hard to use that almost no one could figure it out. Then, even more idiotically, Sony received reports that users were not using the extra features and stopped improving them! Sony could have been the what the iPod Touch is today, but lost the chance with bad software.
But I don’t just write this to rant, I write this as a warning to other business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Developing software and technology is one thing, but making it user friendly is another. In fact, usability can consume up to 80% of a project’s time and resources. That is, if your actually going to make something people will want to use. You have to build it, review it, fix it, test it, fix it, beta release, fix it, get feedback, fix it, get more feedback, fix it… and maybe… just maybe… people will be able to actually use it.
This is why the only mobile platform even close to keeping up with Apple is Google’s Android. Google is the only one in the fight with the know-how and resources to keep up. Even RIM, makers if the Blackberry, can’t keep their mobile software up to par, they have to invest in starting from scratch or spending huge resources in fixing what they have.
If you or your company has a “great idea” for an application or gadget, just remember, once you price the development… multiply it a couple times for usability.
Jeff Gordon is a loser! Kyle Busch is a better driver, but you even adopt a driver's name for your own...
now that's a fanbot supreme!
Apple rocks. Obama sucks, as does Jeff Gordon!
Apple makes its profit on hype and glossy products. Under the cover they are nothing special.
Actually I have used a mac, even owned a couple. Bought my kids ipods and itunes.
They are overpriced and over hyped.
Don’t believe that for the ipad. I’d love a functional tablet PC, even have a business application for it to use.
The ipad doesn’t have enough power to do much except be an expensive kindle.
Eat one...
Apple buyers usually buy the trade carpenter. He's like the PC guy that has to buy more computers as the old ones fill up with trojans and viruses!!@!
Have you driven a Ford lately? They sync with iPod, not zuneeeeeeee...
“Actually, I was. My daughter was driving and I was surfing the internet on my iPhone.”
Well I live in Tampa and have traveled extensively with an AT&T phone. Their network stinks.
Ahh so for a mac to be usable it has to pretend to be a microsoft PC. My point is made.
Adoption by state
| State | % of iPads | Pop. per iPad |
| California | 19.40% | 745 |
| New York | 8.19% | 933 |
| Texas | 7.95% | 1,219 |
| Florida | 6.07% | 1,195 |
| Illinois | 3.79% | 1,331 |
| New Jersey | 3.31% | 1,027 |
| Washington | 2.94% | 888 |
| Massachusetts | 2.93% | 879 |
Umm, because they are a monopoly?
Excellent analogy!
Apple is making a lot of business enemies. Their fanatical users like swordmaker are making lots of enemies in the user community.
Hype only last so long. Sooner or later it begins to tarnish. The iPad is the beginning of that. They put out a barely functional overpriced product that is essentially a big smart phone minus the communication.
Numerous other vendors will soon enter the market with functional tablet PCs. All of which will have to compete with lower end laptops.
I know many iPhone users who cuss AT&T every single day. Their entry into other cell providers might help but why buy old technology when something like the droid is out there.
Your point is not made, nor is it "pretending" to be a Microsoft capable machine, it is, if need be. But for most purposes, equal or better software us natively available in the Mac environment. For those very rare occasions where there is not, then one can hold one's nose and run the MS stuff in a safe sandbox.
Thank you for saving me the time of writing that.
Getting irritated at the number of FReepers he11-bent on flinging their favorite insults with no consideration of accuracy.
“But for most purposes, equal or better software us natively available in the Mac environment. “
Dreams are wonderful things. Keep saying it long enough and maybe it will become true.
“For those very rare occasions where there is not, then one can hold one’s nose and run the MS stuff in a safe sandbox.”
Security is more than a wall. Users are the weakest link in any system. Apples are not secure.
It’s kind of true. I go to grown men’s houses and they watch me work, wish that they could wear bleached out, ripped Carharts, have a truck and a dog at work, go to lunch for burgers and beers, have friends who build boat, planes and do marble bathrooms in their houses as a return favor, and be able to take off work when they want too.
If sandal wearing, come-look-at-the-color-saturation Apple guys ever figure out how to swap out window, I’m screwed.
my understanding is that the new iphoneOS4 is 64 bit and the iPad is 64 bit already. Safari runs Flash in a 32bit App sandbox to keep it from breaking Safari. I may be wrong on this, but this is what I was told by a friend who is an Apple engineer.
add VGA:
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/09/real-life-ipad-presenting-with-an-ipad-keynote-and-vga-connec/
Add OSX:
iPhone uses a subset of OSX.
I’m still wondered about the whole pc thing. I think it is a great industry. But, I talk to my young kids and they are like...blah.... They’ve always had them.
Seriously now, how many people care about their toaster, or dishwasher? We are not too far away, if not there already, were they are just commodities.
Another Apple(ish) cultural connection. They remind me of the people that drive the Volvo 240’s for thirty years telling me how Sweden is better. In short, there’s something about the stereotypical Apple fetish owners. It’s like their circuit boards were washed in the tears of blond, blue eyed Nordic babies collected when they were laughing with joy.
I do remodeling for fun too. You should see my marble master bathroom or the on I just did for my daughter and son-in- law. Gonna gut their kitchen next month and redo that.
“Macs can run more software than PCs can,”
Simply not true
Really?
If I partition a modern mac and install Win 7 in one partition, and a brand of Linux in another, plus the partition that runs OSX — I can run any and all software made for each of those OSs in native modes with no hacks to make them work as they are designed.
You cannot install OSX on a cheap pc without major hacks — plus, if you do it will not run as designed - things will break like printing,
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