"You do understand that Android under the hood is a different beast all together from the iOS don't you?"
This keeps getting repeated like it means something. WebOS is different under the hood, and they managed to create their own interface. WP7 is different under the hood, and they managed to create a completely new interface concept.
Why then, is Android different under the hood, and yet Google managed to completely copy the entire UI and UX?
I was taking exception to the statement, "...the design is just common sense, it is not innovative or ground breaking by any means..."
Or to throw in an aphorism, "Common sense is hardly common."
And no, most consumer products are designed... by committee checking off all of the features they want. Then they're run past management, and focus groups, and then the guy next to the water cooler has his say. The end result is almost always a homogenized mess.
Steve's genius lay in cutting past all of that. He also pushed his people to do it better, and not take the first, or second, or even the fifteenth easy answer.
"Every car more or less looks like every other car on the road. It's just the way an object which performs THAT function is going to look."
If you were at all familiar with the history of the automobile, you'd no doubt be aware of all of the wheels, levers, tillers, pedals, knobs, cranks, and other devices people thought up to control their vehicles. Or the 4-wheel, 2-wheel, 3-wheel forward, 3-wheel back, 1-wheel designs.
It's been largely standardized NOW (and not always for the better), but back in the day it when all of this stuff was still being developed it wasn't obvious at all.
And then there's the small thing of figuring out how to do it well...
"The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product.[6] Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds. The lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge dismissed most of Xerox's complaints as being inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons.
The asthetics of the device were in tune with the white Apple Iic "look". And it looks like a portable device. I suspect that it never leaves the table because it's just a demo, with a screen and computer hidden in the table making much of it work.
I'm sure every OS has things included in the system that you don't have to use, don't want to use, or don't need to use.
DON'T. USE. THEM.
See how easy that was?
But the hands-free dialing, directions, messaging, reminders, timers, weather reports, and so on look to me like they could be very useful when you're driving, walking, when your phone's in your coat pocket, or when your hands are otherwise occupied (like the kitchen timer demo, perverts).
I rarely use the existing iPhone's Voice Control feature. But when I do, I'm glad it's there. Siri looks to be a lot better.
And that's just the beginning of the services they're going to offer.
How about mentioning the recent trend towards redesigning packaging so that it hides the fact that the packaging now contains less food?
One brand of cookies -- that I no longer buy -- changed the plastic tray from two rows running lengthwise to three rows running across. And went from 16 ozs to 13.5 ozs in the process. (Keebler Pecan Sandies)
Some Triscuit crackers now come in a "snack box" (and only in a snack box) that's kind of shaped like an old-style popcorn box. And it too went from 16 ozs to 13.5 ozs in the process.
Near as I can tell, plenty of ISPs do pretty the same thing: cache frequently requested information in servers close to the user, minimizing traffic on the backbone and reducing lag.
AOL, as I recall, did EXACTLY the same thing so that its users had a better experience.
And many dialup providers link Earthlink had software that would compress responses in order to provide a "faster" service.
In fact, I'd be more worried about patent issues in the later regard that copyright problems...
"... reported the comment to the Marshals Service, believing that it's a fun thing to do to cause trouble for us."
Paranoid much? I mean, it's not like someone from law enforcement might actually read TechDirt. Or that another reader might have actually been concerned and reported it as such. Or that someone might even have done it to cause problems for the person who posted the comment in the first place.
But believing it was done solely and specifically to cause "problems" for TechDirt???
"I have to admit that I have trouble understanding the minds of people who seek to hold back progress and prop up dead business models, but apparently it pays well for the time being."
For some people it's simple. They believe and promote what they're getting paid to believe and promote. Next week it could well be something else.
Re: Re: Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...
"Perhaps these companies should have spent millions more trying to re-introduce their ideas?"
Not unless they were willing to innovate. A full-blown Windows Vista/7 desktop interface in a "tablet" would still fail. Which leads us to...
"Moreso, these tablets aren't OS capable, now are they? In fact, I'm sure some of us are still waiting for the marriage of a portable tablet with OS support""
Why in the hell would you want a desktop OS designed for a pixel-perfect input device in a portable handheld device? The OS interface isn't designed for touch. The applications aren't designed for touch.
I occasisionally use my pad to remote into a Windows server. It -- to use a technical term -- sucks.
"An Apple tablet does have a "desktop OS" on it..."
Reread please. I wrote, "...an OS interface [note] and applications written from the ground up for tablets." Which is true. The underpinnings of iOS lie in OS X, but the desktop interface isn't just hidden, it doesn't exist. Even systems like power management and GC are different, optimized for the device.
Microsoft, on the other hand, insisted on trying to put the friggin' Windows desktop (designed for a pixel-perfect input device) into a tablet, and then wondered why it never took off.
"Old school tablets are still selling. They are selling to the same people they used to sell to."
Doubt that. Too many people are leaning towards iPads.
Funny, I just did a quick Google search looking for systems like Dell's XT2 "flip" screen notebook/tablet, and found this: "This product is unavailable. Below we have suggested a like or better computer to satisfy your immediate needs."
Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...
Just to pick one...
"'The first tablet people want.' Fact: Apple just tried again when others before them tried and gave up because touch screen technology sucked in the 90s."
Touch screen technology? How about processor tech? Battery tech? A friggin' hard drive for storage? 2-3 hours of battery life. A brick that weighed 4-5 lbs? How about the idiots who insisted upon putting a desktop OS and applications into a touch device?
Apple "tried again" with a touch-screen device with a custom-designed mobile processor and flash storage, that weighed 1.5 lbs, got 10 hours of battery life, and an OS interface and applications written from the ground up for tablets.
See my other comment I just made, but it's hard to mistake the following...
"... should do so as an "entry" strategy.' Show me where I did that..."
Sure. You wrote, "You are confusing the market exit of HP with the market entry strategy [sic] of other tablet makers."
"Did you manage to find anything I wrote that claims that?"
Yes, "You gotta wonder why they didn't just decide to price the units at cost [sic], $318, and see if they couldn't seed the market that way."
It's pretty hard to translate that other than selling at BOM costs only, in order to "seed" the market. E.g. Build market share. Which, as I've pointed out before, does nothing for them other than lose money.
One other note: while the $1.2B is a sunk cost, shuttering the division and writing it off gives them one hell of a tax break, which they couldn't take if they continued trying to limp along seeding the market...
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Google was on Apple's board
This keeps getting repeated like it means something. WebOS is different under the hood, and they managed to create their own interface. WP7 is different under the hood, and they managed to create a completely new interface concept.
Why then, is Android different under the hood, and yet Google managed to completely copy the entire UI and UX?
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re:
WP7 is different from Android under the hood too, and yet Microsoft managed to actually innovate and make something different.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: The iPhone is the Real Rip Off
Yeah, and it looked like this Blackberry ripoff...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9901954-37.html
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ugh please
Or to throw in an aphorism, "Common sense is hardly common."
And no, most consumer products are designed... by committee checking off all of the features they want. Then they're run past management, and focus groups, and then the guy next to the water cooler has his say. The end result is almost always a homogenized mess.
Steve's genius lay in cutting past all of that. He also pushed his people to do it better, and not take the first, or second, or even the fifteenth easy answer.
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re:
If you were at all familiar with the history of the automobile, you'd no doubt be aware of all of the wheels, levers, tillers, pedals, knobs, cranks, and other devices people thought up to control their vehicles. Or the 4-wheel, 2-wheel, 3-wheel forward, 3-wheel back, 1-wheel designs.
It's been largely standardized NOW (and not always for the better), but back in the day it when all of this stuff was still being developed it wasn't obvious at all.
And then there's the small thing of figuring out how to do it well...
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: ugh please
First, look up the actual definition of innovation.
Second, it may be "common sense" now, but look at the design language used before iPhone and iPad, and after.
If it was "obvious", why did 99% of the products out there screw it up?
On the post: Steve Jobs Was Willing To 'Rip Off' Everyone Else... But Was Pissed About Android Copying iPhone?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product.[6] Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds. The lawsuit was dismissed because the presiding judge dismissed most of Xerox's complaints as being inappropriate for a variety of legal reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)
More here...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/16/110516fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: Siri vs Knowledge Navigator
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re:
On the post: Did Apple Spill The Beans On Its New Voice Assistant Product 24 Years Ago?
Re: re:...
DON'T. USE. THEM.
See how easy that was?
But the hands-free dialing, directions, messaging, reminders, timers, weather reports, and so on look to me like they could be very useful when you're driving, walking, when your phone's in your coat pocket, or when your hands are otherwise occupied (like the kitchen timer demo, perverts).
I rarely use the existing iPhone's Voice Control feature. But when I do, I'm glad it's there. Siri looks to be a lot better.
And that's just the beginning of the services they're going to offer.
On the post: DailyDirt: Nicer Packaging For The Stuff We Eat
Less Packaging... Less Food
One brand of cookies -- that I no longer buy -- changed the plastic tray from two rows running lengthwise to three rows running across. And went from 16 ozs to 13.5 ozs in the process. (Keebler Pecan Sandies)
Some Triscuit crackers now come in a "snack box" (and only in a snack box) that's kind of shaped like an old-style popcorn box. And it too went from 16 ozs to 13.5 ozs in the process.
But did the prices decrease 15% as well? Nope.
On the post: Is Amazon's New Silk 'Cloud' Browser A Huge Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Waiting To Happen?
AOL, as I recall, did EXACTLY the same thing so that its users had a better experience.
And many dialup providers link Earthlink had software that would compress responses in order to provide a "faster" service.
In fact, I'd be more worried about patent issues in the later regard that copyright problems...
On the post: US Marshals Service Asks Us To Remove A Comment
Paranoid much? I mean, it's not like someone from law enforcement might actually read TechDirt. Or that another reader might have actually been concerned and reported it as such. Or that someone might even have done it to cause problems for the person who posted the comment in the first place.
But believing it was done solely and specifically to cause "problems" for TechDirt???
Again, paranoid much?
On the post: MPAA Shuffles The Deck Chairs
For some people it's simple. They believe and promote what they're getting paid to believe and promote. Next week it could well be something else.
Dodd was, after all, a politician...
On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is
Re: Re: Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...
Not unless they were willing to innovate. A full-blown Windows Vista/7 desktop interface in a "tablet" would still fail. Which leads us to...
"Moreso, these tablets aren't OS capable, now are they? In fact, I'm sure some of us are still waiting for the marriage of a portable tablet with OS support""
Why in the hell would you want a desktop OS designed for a pixel-perfect input device in a portable handheld device? The OS interface isn't designed for touch. The applications aren't designed for touch.
I occasisionally use my pad to remote into a Windows server. It -- to use a technical term -- sucks.
On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is
Re: Marketing versus engineering
Reread please. I wrote, "...an OS interface [note] and applications written from the ground up for tablets." Which is true. The underpinnings of iOS lie in OS X, but the desktop interface isn't just hidden, it doesn't exist. Even systems like power management and GC are different, optimized for the device.
Microsoft, on the other hand, insisted on trying to put the friggin' Windows desktop (designed for a pixel-perfect input device) into a tablet, and then wondered why it never took off.
"Old school tablets are still selling. They are selling to the same people they used to sell to."
Doubt that. Too many people are leaning towards iPads.
Funny, I just did a quick Google search looking for systems like Dell's XT2 "flip" screen notebook/tablet, and found this: "This product is unavailable. Below we have suggested a like or better computer to satisfy your immediate needs."
Followed by nothing.
On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is
Re: Re: Re:
And one might also mention that it was "innovative" enough to spawn both Windows and OS/2.
Sort of like the iPhone and Android...
On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is
Re: A good salesman can sell ice water to anyone...
"'The first tablet people want.' Fact: Apple just tried again when others before them tried and gave up because touch screen technology sucked in the 90s."
Touch screen technology? How about processor tech? Battery tech? A friggin' hard drive for storage? 2-3 hours of battery life. A brick that weighed 4-5 lbs? How about the idiots who insisted upon putting a desktop OS and applications into a touch device?
Apple "tried again" with a touch-screen device with a custom-designed mobile processor and flash storage, that weighed 1.5 lbs, got 10 hours of battery life, and an OS interface and applications written from the ground up for tablets.
Yep. They did nothing special at all...
"My freakin' mp3 player has a touch screen."
Today.
On the post: Being First Isn't The Most Important Thing, Getting It Right Is
Re:
On the post: HP Tablet Fire Sale Lets Us Put A Price On The Value Of A Strong Development Community
"... should do so as an "entry" strategy.' Show me where I did that..."
Sure. You wrote, "You are confusing the market exit of HP with the market entry strategy [sic] of other tablet makers."
"Did you manage to find anything I wrote that claims that?"
Yes, "You gotta wonder why they didn't just decide to price the units at cost [sic], $318, and see if they couldn't seed the market that way."
It's pretty hard to translate that other than selling at BOM costs only, in order to "seed" the market. E.g. Build market share. Which, as I've pointed out before, does nothing for them other than lose money.
One other note: while the $1.2B is a sunk cost, shuttering the division and writing it off gives them one hell of a tax break, which they couldn't take if they continued trying to limp along seeding the market...
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