If iPads are “post-pc devices” why must I sync with iTunes before I can use one?
thestartupfoundry.com
thestartupfoundry.com
From this, I get that there are two kinds of problems with a product or service: A weakness, which is something bad that is orthogonal to a product's value proposition, and a drawback, which is an integral part of the value proposition. An example of an Apple drawback would have been its one button mouse for many years: During the period when many Mac buyers were first-time computer users, the single button was part of the simplicity of the interface, but it also was annoying to those who had more experience and wanted more power at their fingertips.
I remember this when thinking about tethering my iPad. This is a weakness, not a drawback. It can certainly be fixed without undermining the iPad's value proposition. If somebody starts selling a lot of tablets that sync to the cloud, Apple can release a firmware or iOS update that syncs to the cloud and boom, no more weakness.
It's annoying but it isn't deeply tied to the iPad's value proposition. So I predict that if and when Apple thinks it is more of a hinderance than a help, it will be changed, and the change will be fairly painless.
Companies serve their customers. They improve their product along a dimension that their customers want. Equivalent to your "weakness" - as soon as their customers care about this, they work hard to fix it.
If you create an alternative product for those very same customers (and for the very same use) that's not as good in that dimension, they won't buy it. If it's better on that dimension (a sustaining innovation), the incumbents will work hard to beat it - and historically, they usually will, as they have all kinds of advantages over you.
But if you build for different customers, who currently have nothing, they will be delighted, and the incumbent won't care because you don't threaten their customers. Now, usually such a product will have other benefits that the competitor's product lacks - at the very least, a cheaper price, but maybe also convenience, flexibility, customizability, simplicity etc. This benefit is usually a result of a tradeoff against the above dimension - a "drawback".
Over time, you naturally will improve your product, and (perhaps) it will approach being good enough to threaten that competitor. But even as they see you approach, they really can't fight you, because it would require they let down their customers. And, what's even worse, at this new way of doing things, you are now the incumbent, with all the experience with engineering, customer acquisition and business model etc, and they are the entrant.
But I think you add a new idea to disruption, that the "drawback" is incompatible with the value proposition, as opposed to being orthogonal. Different business models are often like that; also many engineering tradeoffs. It's exacerbated by when you improve at something, you often specialize in it; and specialization in one thing implies de-specialization in something else.
Note that such incompatibilities are not restricted to engineering issues: if Apple somehow became dependent on tethering, or on iPad users requiring an Apple desktop, as part of their business model, it would then become a "drawback", that you could attack on.
Going back to The Innovator's Dilemma, this explains why companies become trapped by their customers: Their existing customers hate anything that addresses the drawback because it is incompatible with the value proposition that appeals to them.
Although Microsoft won the battle by burying Netscape, they seem to have lost the Internet war, in large part because the Internet is incompatible with the value proposition of operating systems and desktop office productivity software. For example, the Internet does away with installing software binaries. Which is a drawback of desktop software and operating systems. But that is incompatible with the value proposition that an IT department gets to control what runs on an office computer.
Microsoft lost the Internet war, not necessarily because the Internet is incompatible with desktop but because they never actually competed. Instead they tried to smother it. Honestly though, before the app store, I'm not sure anyone knew how one could compete with the web.
[1] Assuming that wasn't the strategy all along.
In that, the devices are perfectly capable of syncing and tethering wirelessly, but Apple hasn't enabled that functionality yet. They are going to add that at some point for an extra 9.99$ and going to call it AirTether. Brand new feature of iPad3. You pay a premium for getting rid of cables.
Compare the price of Mac desktop or laptop to a Dell/HP/Newegg PC with the same hardware and Windows. Or just check the profits Apple is reporting. They definitely have way higher margins than the other mega-corps, selling hardware/gadjets.
even after I secured a windows computer to run itunes
The counter point, however, would be my experience with iTunes and the iPad. Before I had a PC I borrowed an iPad which had just been reset. When I hooked it up to my Mac to connect it with iTunes, I discovered that it was incompatible with OS X 10.4. My mind was blown; how could the iPad not work with their computer when I only bought it 4 and a half years ago?! It works with XP!
So I don't know, maybe iTunes sucks everywhere, just in different ways.
But, I find a lot of Apple software really hard to use and frustrating, including the OS itself, so I tend to refer to myself as Appletarded. I may be an outlier; just not wired up to understand Apple user interfaces.
- have global menus (who really wants that with todays screen resolutions and two monitors?)
- needs the worlds best trackpads because their laptop keyboards have misplaced ctrl and their default keybindings are so inconsistent that users would be lost without a good pointing device.
- forces developers to use the fn key to reach the function keys, but even then, maps some of the F-keys to operating system functions.
- doesn't get multiple desktops? Don't ask me why they ship them, because their window management is so broken that multiple desktops just doesn't work, at least not for me.
This becomes increasingly frustrating as
- none of the other manufacturers "gets" tablets even less ships them,
- none of them was capable of coming up with mag safe,
- Microsoft doesn't have the balls to stop OEMs from crippling a perfectly good enough (for less advanced users at least) operating system
- and Canonical have crippled Gnome to the point where you can't shut down your computer without either using a pointing device or resorting to a shell.
Edit: Forgot iTunes. Try have someone who doesn't know iTunes burn a cd. (Hint: You have to make a playlist out of it, then burn that playlist to a cd.) Also tried to tidy up this rant.
- can only resize a window from one corner, and that corner may be off the screen in certain cases so that you can't move the window to a position where the corner is even visible (this just bit me this week)
- still doesn't understand how to fullscreen programs (windows maximize function is the single best OS function I've seen that allows a user to focus on just ONE thing). I think this is fixed in the upcoming OS X but I don't have it.
- liters the screen, the doc, the global menu with all kinds of state icons to show running programs and background services, but doesn't have a built-in notification system so that the users have to install http://growl.info/
and more and more.
That said, it still manages to be a great OS. It was miles ahead of XP. About par with Vista.
But sadly, it's lagging behind Windows 7. And the new OS X versions just don't make me terribly excited. I'm ready for something new.
- No cut-paste.
- No tabs in Finder.
- The missing delete key. (Backspace is renamed as delete)
- The not-so-modern Terminal. (hence the wide usage of iTerm)
Hope that helps a bit...
As mdaniel (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2294066) mentions, it bizarrely does not work in one very specific, and presumably intentional, place—the Finder.
It is especially weird given that CMD-c/CMD-v does work in Finder, just not CMD-x. That leads me to believe that it was intentionally omitted for some bizarre reason.
Thank you.
I'm not arguing with you here, just adding a data point about how unintuitive it is.
I certainly agree that you can do this—but, to my mind, you're then re-sizing the window in its maximised state; and, if you click again to ‘un-maximise’ it, then it'll be right back to the inaccessible position that it had before. I don't know if this is any sort of serious objection, in the sense that it can actually cause trouble, but it nags at my mind when I use it: “You don't really want that window maximised! Go back to its rest state!” I therefore usually wind up with the solution of “Find a big enough monitor and re-size there.”
(By the way, I love Mac OS, but definitely hate this behaviour.)
> still doesn't understand how to fullscreen programs
On the positive side, OSX is still unix. MacVim rules. OSX fixes some of the Linux issues that drove me mad (like power mgmt & plugging in an external monitor). And I've gotten around the screen resize issue mentioned here w/ a little 3rd party app called sizeup... Not ideal, but a workable solution that keeps me productive on the platform.
One of the nice things about OS X for sure is that many of the major pain points in the raw OS can be resolved with 3rd party applications. The community, tired of dealing with these minor unaddressed annoyances, has usually resolved most of these issues on their own -- there are 2 or 3 apps of some kind for most of the major OS rough spots.
One of the bad things about OS X for sure is that many of the major pain points in the raw OS have to be resolved with 3rd party applications. The community, tired of dealing with these minor unaddressed annoyances, usually has to resolve most of these issues on their own -- there are 2 or 3 apps of some kind for most of the major OS rough spots.
All of this can be adjusted to your liking in the Keyboard preference pane.
Please prove me wrong.
> "have global menus (who really wants that with todays screen resolutions and two monitors?)"
Because there are a lot of operations you can do that are not specific to a particular document/window, or in some cases don't apply to any windows at all. And, even more importantly, sometimes you want to close all the windows for an application without closing the whole application!
I've run into this problem in a variety of applications, including DrRacket and Logisim as well as more widespread ones like Word: I want to go through several documents sequentially. Naturally I want to close one before I open the next, so that I don't have a whole pile of old windows open. But if I close the only open window I quit the whole application, so I have to leave one of the docs open as I sequence through the rest. The behaviour of several "close" operations (e.g. clicking the window's close button) varies according to whether there are other windows (close window) or not (quit app). Some apps get around this by opening a dummy "new document" window if you close the last open window, but that's still a little jarring and counts more as a workaround hack than anything else. I don't have these problems when I'm working on a Mac.
Oh, and I almost forgot: Fitts's Law. The global menu bar is a mile high, and it's way way WAY easier to acquire than a menu bar inside a window.
I never had a problem with that. With a 13" device it's possible to have 2 to 4 windows open at the same time, since the windows themselves use space efficiently. So at best this argument is subjective to the user.
needs the worlds best trackpads because their laptop keyboards have misplaced ctrl and their default keybindings are so inconsistent that users would be lost without a good pointing device
Not being accustomed to the keyboard layout is rather an excuse than an argument. Also my impression of the key bindings is that they are well done and consistent. Do you have examples to prove your case?
forces developers to use the fn key to reach the function keys, but even then, maps some of the F-keys to operating system functions.
As an developer you should be able to tackle more difficult tasks than finding out that the custom fn keys can be disabled in the system preferences->keyboard pane(if it is important enough for you to write about publicly).
doesn't get multiple desktops? Don't ask me why they ship them, because their window management is so broken that multiple desktops just doesn't work, at least not for me
Window management is a problem for me too. Tools like Shiftit make it easier, but it does't feel like THE solution. I'm curious though if that problem is considered solved on any other platform. The last times I used Windows (XP to 7) it did not do any better.
Try have someone who doesn't know iTunes burn a cd
At some point it was easier to do that(e.g. dedicated button), but given that disc-drives are on the leave in PCs, burning is of less importance to users (at least I can't remember someone burning cd's recently). As one of the most used peaces of software iTunes has a pretty good help documentation, which describes how to burn a cd nicely. The procedure is also quite reasonable, introducing few concepts apart from standard procedures(creating a playlist).
I think the problem is solved, but only for people who don't use OSX or Windows and take a month or two learn how to use a scriptable tiling WM =/
The newest iOS update has modified the way OS updates work by not erasing/re-syncing the device. I suspect this is one of the first steps towards moving to a more OTA existence for the iPad. They still need to trim down these updates so they're not killing people's caps. Everything on the content side is going to require a lot more work. If you look at Android for example that does just about everything OTA you realize that a) Google doesn't really sell content so they don't care how or if you get anything on your device. Figure it out yourself. b) Android doesn't backup automatically. Some of your data is synced to Google Services but if you flush your Android phone down the toilet by mistake you're going to lose all your application data and content you synced, or created, on the device. Again -- figure it out yourself if you want a good backup c) Google doesn't update all their devices at the same time. There will never be 100 million+ Android devices trying to download android3.0.tar.gz at the same time. It's a bigger challenge for Apple to do OTA updates given their strategy to update all compatible iOS devices at the same time. I'm not trying to bash Google, their system is fine, but people make it sound like this super trivial thing to divorce post-PC devices from the PC. It's not. Google has been able to do this through minimalism. They don't take any responsibility for updates/backups/syncing so it's a bit easier for them to pull this off right now. If you use Google Exchange with an iOS device you get most of the same benefits in-fact.
Apple could easily divorce the activation-via-PC step but it would set the expectation that you don't need to connect it to a PC ever for normal operation/update/syncing. When they do remove the activation-via-PC step you can be sure everything else won't require a PC connection. It will be all or nothing. That's how Apple tends to operate.
I would attribute Apple's decision not to divorce the iPad from a PC to their desire to assert some presence onto the PC ecosystem. They don't want to be be JUST your tablet OS, they want to be on the desktop, by forcing installation of iTunes onto Windows machines as well.
This way, both products reenforce each other, and they can get increased market share on devices and onto Windows machines (with an activated credit card so you can purchase music directly on the PC).
Apple is ultra-competitive and they do not want to cede any niche of the market that they have managed to gain. Even though the experience of using iTunes, especially on Windows, is horrendous (for all of the reasons already stated in this thread). That's that only logical explanation for maintaining this extra complexity by a company that is otherwise brilliant at simplifying the user experience.
BTW, I do think Google has approached this with a much better vision - treating an Android device as a first-class network citizen. Google does sell content (app market as well as enable 3rd party music stores), most Android apps integrate some form of cloud storage for your data (which don't have to be managed by Google) - if you switch your device, you'll not likely loose anything important to you.
Updates also work very well over the WiFi network - no need to use your low-bandwidth data plan.
Overall, I don't see this as a technical hurdle for Apple - they just have a conflict of interest in locking up users vs. giving them the best user experience.
If you don't have a computer, you're unlikely to have a wifi router.
Heck, when I have jailbroken my iPhone with jailbreakme a couple of months ago; I was drinking coffee in a coffee shop that had wifi; and I had no laptop and no wifi router with me ;)
Suggesting that Apple requires iOS to sync with the PC for any reason other than keeping customers locked in iTunes is silly.
That's a very limited mindset.
In another few years, if there aren't already, there will be households with smartphones, tablets, and broadband + wifi at home but no traditional PCs of any sort. If you refuse to acknowledge such a scenario then you will lose sales for those folks.
Gruber and others have claimed that Apple is unusual in being willing to develop new products at the expense of old products. I think this might be true.
That's that only logical explanation for maintaining this extra complexity by a company that is otherwise brilliant at simplifying the user experience.
In fact, Apple have a track record of poor UX with complex network services. I'll guess that they have always intended for the Ipad to be a stand-alone device, but haven't ironed out the problems with their cloud storage.
As far as syncing goes, I think a good first step would be to do it all over WiFi on the local network in the background (TimeMachine style). I have my iPad/iPhone running on the same local wireless network as my laptop all day/night, it's nuts that I have to physically connect the two. The step up from there is to sync to the cloud, but still over WiFi.
Android has. WebOS has.
I get OTA updates to my WebOS device, and it backs itself up over the air nightly. I just updated to 2.1 and all my apps just magically came back, and it had all my email/im/linkedin/facebook account settings too - I just had to re-enter my passwords to confirm. If Palm/HP can manage it, Apple can.
And the syncing of data over 3G argument is pretty lame. Most people find themselves with wifi at home/work for the large updates.
Having to cable my iOS device to my PC each morning to get my daily podcasts from iTunes is nuts. These are wireless devices, they should wake up, download the content and have it just magically "be there" when I decide to listen to one in the subway the next morning. Having to cable it up, or even open the application to force the sync is crazy.
This way I wake up in the morning, take the subway to work and my data is already "just there". I dont have to even launch the app before going into the subway (with enough time to sync up).
This is not possible on iOS but a feature I use it daily on webOS.
So not only post-PC, but proactive in keeping my data updated.
However, I wouldn't be too surprised to see a completely closed Mac/PC ecosystem in the future. Not now, but in the the next 5-10 years. As things move more and more "to the cloud" and the desktop becomes a dumb terminal, the easier it is for Apple to just tell everyone that they must go through the App Store.
They did introduce that dialog which warns you when software is not signed, but of course MS didn't take this to the degree that Apple has. While it's a great way to take care of malware, I really don't think Apple's vision of the future is one I want to compute in.
You can set Windows to only allow signed applications to run, too: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd723683(WS.10).a...
That 90% of the population you're talking about really is using "personal computers". The iPad is just a "rented" piece of hardware, which you can use only in ways that pass Apple's approval. That's pretty far from "personal" to me.
The market is saying the iPad is "post-pc", so Apple will (eventually) get there. And we'll likely be charged for the privilege (most likely through MobileMe).
Personally, it is a huge complaint I have. I would love to switch my mother to an iPad, but the requirement to continue having a PC doesn't make things easier.
It is? How?
Dell might as well announce liquidation right now.
($75 on craigslist gets you a computer 3x as powerful with 3x as much ram and 10x+ as much disk space as an iPad, which only costs $500)
;) Maybe the message is taking so much time to be written because it's being composed on a iPad(yes I know h/w keyboards can be used).
That $75 computer on Craigslist simply can't do things in the same way.
It's like comparing a mountain bike with a 15 year old pickup truck. You can spend $1000 on either, and the truck will go further, faster and carrying a greater load. But the mountain bike will go places the truck can't go, and the experience will be totally different.
But I guess I've fallen for a troll.
My point is, iPad ownership and PC ownership are not mutually exclusive. Having an iPad does not mean you are done with PCs.
The reality is that for most users (non-gamers) the power of computers long ago exceeded what they need. Does is really matter if a computer is 3X or 10X faster than you need?
This is a classic market transition where once performance hits some level, other product attributes become important to consumers because they no longer see any material benefit from marginal performance increases.
If you're mostly using your computer to check email and facebook, you don't need a quad core.
(This applies to even fairly tech-heavy folks - I used to replace my desktop like clockwork every two years for almost 15 years, but I'm typing on this on a 4+-year-old MacBook black that's still plenty fast for coding, image processing and web browsing. I expect I'll use it at least another year and I only paid $1500 for it to start with. I'll prob replace it with a 13" MacBook Air, which won't be much of a performance bump - it will be a form factor bump.)
I remember the days when it was all about having the 386/33 or whatever the latest top-of-the-line Mhz was. Now I doubt if you asked most folks, they could even tell you how fast the processor is in their system. It just doesn't matter much any more, same as only car folks really care what BHP their engine delivers these days.
Marketing folks would love to have consumer focus on a metrics like performance that constantly keeps growing and outdating old products. Other metrics, like price and customer experience, are often just as important to buyers.
To give a parallel example, I don't think most HDTV owners are going to replace their set at this point for higher resolution. If you have 720 you probably don't care all that much about 1080 unless you're an AV geek. So that market is now competing on two other axes: cost (how cheap can you get it for a given size) and they're also pushing 3D.
I think there's a lot of unfulfilled potential here, and I'm really glad the emerging tablet space is exploring GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors, touch sensors, light sensors, Apple is pushing FaceTime, Android and iOS are getting augmented reality apps, etc.
(Yes, I know running Ubuntu makes me an outlier, but still.)
It seems more likely to me that Apple is very much aware of the contradiction but has plans to change this, but no intention of telling us about it yet.
Gotta wonder what that huge data centre they are building is for, eh?
And your problem with this is? Just that they are saying it now? Don't understand the concern, honestly.
If and when they fix that then you can start calling a post-pc device.
Meanwhile an Android pad really is a post-pc device right now no waiting.
I'm not sure that was the list that you were looking for, but there it is. How post-PC is it really if every time you have to do something Steve Jobs might not approve of you need to borrow someone's laptop?
(http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/10/27/54-of-web-video-is-now...)
The closed platform argument is perfectly valid, but has nothing to do with whether we're moving into the world of Post PC devices or not.
It's pretty obvious that we're never going to get away from the PC era if we have to drag along all of the legacy.
Why not list things like "run windows apps" and "run gnome" for good measure?
But as far as the "at least 54% of streaming video is html5" I had to laugh. Yes, I realize you linked to someone who said it was true so it must be. I take it, though, that you don't actually try to watch web video with nothing but an html5 client - or you'd never have felt comfortable repeating that. Statistics of course can be bent, and I'm sure what they're doing is weighting for volume - and since youtube has 18 zillion videos and supports html5 that's probably at least 40% of their number right there.
However, in the real world...
MeFeedia’s index includes over 33,000 publishers including Hulu, CBS, ABC, YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion and others.
Hulu: Hulu requires Flash Player 10.0.32 or higher. Please download and install the latest version of Flash Player before continuing. (Indeed, yes, you can pay $8/mo for a dedicated ipad client)
CBS: Should work on the iPad - sadly, it only gave me: This content requires Adobe Flash Player 9. Please click here to install it.
ABC: This content requires Adobe Flash Player - Ver 10.1. Click here to get the latest version of Flash (iPad? Download an app!)
Youtube: It works!
Vimeo: It works!
Dailymotion: claims html5 support but no video plays (FAQ: Why is the video not playing? You might need to update you browser's Flash plug-in)
It almost makes you wonder, who paid for that survey?
Check a few more...
FOX: We're Sorry! You need to update your flash player
NBC: The NBC video experience requires flash
Al Jazeera: We're Sorry! You need to update your flash player
Comedy Central: To view this movie you need the Adobe Flash Player plugin.
Amazon Instant Video: You do not have a supported version of Adobe Flash, a requirement for watching Amazon Instant Video
PBS: To view the full experience of this website, please download and install Adobe Flash Player 9.
Metacafe: Needs flash
IMDB: In order to play this video, you must have Flash 8 or higher installed on your computer
Yahoo Video: Yahoo! Video requires a more recent version of the Adobe Flash Player.
etc etc etc
All tests done with Chrome + VP8 & Opera w/ gstreamer h.264. I couldn't find my iPhone charging cable.
You're trying to claim that your handpicked list of sites which deliberately avoids sites that have publicly stated support for the iPad is a better methodology? Who's looking to score one for the home team now?
I'd take this seriously if you found any 3rd party support for your 90% claim.
And yes, I do actually use an iPad for almost all my web video watching. I don't use anything else at home. It works fine for almost all of the video I come across while browsing - in fact it seems more like 80% the other way.
I get it though. You really, really like your iPad. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you really, really like your MacBook Pro as well. It's cool, they are both nice gadgets. I am sure Apple appreciates your efforts as far as discounting any criticisms of the platform as invalid.
The lesson here is probably "don't ask questions you don't want the answers to".
Some of your criticisms are valid - they're just minor and missing the point.
We're never going to move past the PC if we have to drag along all the legacy. Most of that legacy exists to solve incidental issues and complexity than offering end users with real capabilities. Far from not being what I wanted to hear, the things you list are all in that category.
You'll always be able to score points by saying 'but my PC does XYZ'. But the world in which we endlesskly drag along everything from the PC-era however crummy or hard to use isn't one I'd want to advocate for however much of an Apple hater I was.
I'm not sure if that's true on any of those sites, as I'm not American, so haven't visited any apart from Youtube and Vimeo.
That's the best you can do? How I initially transfer over my big photo/music libraries when I buy a new toy is of vanishingly little significance to me. (BTW, Apple has a few well-known applications for this, like iTunes and iPhoto and Aperture. Perhaps you have heard of them?)
Talk to me about a superior user experience. Talk to me about a superior applications base. Talk to me about a more responsive, reliable device with better battery life. Then I'll be interested.
If it had no intention of telling us about it, why call it a Post-PC device?
They wanted to create media hype among the crowd and the media and bloggers. Just like Motorola likes to bill the Xoom as an iPad killer because of the spec difference, Jobs want to posture the iPad as a PC killer because of the high sales. Truth doesn't enter into the conversation in either case and is kind of afterthought to the objectives behind such posturing. Only geeks like us would be arguing over such things.
/joke
Can you imagine if Windows PCs needed to be taken to the Microsoft Store for Windows Update? Patch Tuesday would need to be made a national holiday and just imagine the queues, rush, the traffic and the parking.
Thanks for pointing this out, I meant to include it in my article.
I want a tablet that I can slide next to a keyboard, mouse and monitor and that becomes my desktop, as needed.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/nov00/11-13...
I guess we don't really have it until it gains wide adoption.
The 'Post-PC' statement is just posturing and hype to be lapped up by the media, the general public and Apple friendly bloggers like Gruber. Not meant to be subject to interpretation by real geeks/hackers.
How many people totally have just a tablet and no other 'PC' at home? Maybe a few grandmas but that's it. Have iPad owners sold off their PCs? Is that even desirable? Tablets are just another segment of computers that cover use cases like browsing on the bed, couch, plane seat, car seat, using touch apps, for kids etc.
They're bad for other use cases that need screen estate, heavy typing, serious spreadsheet work, coding etc. etc.
joke:
Maybe it was just an attempt to use the RDF influence to counteract the furor over the 30% forced cut of revenue for online services. I wish Post-PC devices wouldn't come with a 30% consumption tax ;)
/joke
Why?
I ask seriously. Your interpretation of the phrase post-PC as "you don't need to see a PC ever again" is just one interpretation, and perhaps not the one that Steve Jobs meant. [1] It's a deliberately ambiguous term, like most statements about trends and fashion.
He's talking about the PC era. Just because an era ends doesn't mean that all its legacy goes away. Indeed, it can mean quite the opposite. The mainframe era is over, and yet there may be more mainframes in existence now than ever. The era of recorded music sales is, arguably, in decline, yet that doesn't mean that we don't have recorded music anymore. In that particular case, it means that recorded music has become so cheap and ubiquitous that it's like air, so it's devalued and its profit margins have dwindled. Kind of like PCs.
I've always felt that the iOS ecosystem was post-PC not because it is trying to replace the PC, but because its design is predicated on the assumption that everyone who actually wants a PC has one by now. So of course iOS doesn't have to support, say, emacs: If you want to run emacs you do so on your PC. If by some miracle you want a PC but don't have one already, there's probably a disused one sitting at a nearby garage sale marked "$25" that would do in a pinch. And, more controversially, of course iOS has a closed and curated ecosystem: If you want an open ecosystem, pick up a PC for a few bucks. They're all over the place. I had to throw away two of them last year.
---
[1] I mean, not this year. Apple still makes PCs. Surely they won't declare the PC dead until they stop making them.
For tablets to be successful “post-PC devices” it’s not necessary that people stop buying and using PCs.
Still, it should be possible to get by without a cable. I don’t want to transfer my 40GB media collection wirelessly just yet but the iPad is useful without my media (and can wirelessly sync contacts, calendars, notes, e-mails), there is no reason why I should be forced to connect to iTunes.
I was viewing it from an overly western perspective. Countries like India or China are especially interesting, they might be able to leapfrog certain developments in Europe and North America, i.e. take a different path altogether.
Most of the Android device manufacturers don't have a horse in the laptop/desktop race - Samsung, HTC, Motorola all only stand to gain by replacing traditional desktop OSs. Apple probably still wants to sell you a MacBook. That's why I think Android will beat Apple to the true post-PC era.
They've already had 30-pin to VGA output for quite a while now, and now HDMI out with the latest dongle accessory.
"Watch slideshows and movies on the big screen by connecting your iPad, iPhone 4, or iPod touch (4th generation) to a TV, monitor, projector, or LCD display that uses a VGA connector."
I haven't really looked into it much, so I don't know if apps are limited to mirroring content, or if they can display another screen worth of UI/etc through the cable.
There are games (e.g. The incident) that use this to let you play on a TV, and things like Keynote can display the presentation on the output and presenter notes on the device itself.
Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-04/apple-said-to-negot...)
I started Parallels on my macBook, plugged in the iPad and let it connect to the virtual XP that was running: "Not Charging". Shut down Parallels without even unplugging the iPad, well, boy howdy, its charging now. No OSX/iTunes? Purposely broken.
OS X obviously is aware of iDevices so it charges without you knowing any wiser. Windows needs the driver.
My MacBook pro gladly puts out more than 1100ma @5v no matter whats connected and no matter what "handshaking" occurred (or didn't). Its a little scary really.
My iPad does charge albeit very slowly even when it says "not charging". When it does so, it consumes about 750ma (thus, breaking the spec anyway in a strict sense). It stops charging if you turn it on and just runs from usb power. So its kind of telling the truth, when it says "not charging" on the screen, it actually isn't.
The ipad increases charge to around 950ma when it gets the OK from an Apple Approved device. (my MacBook, only when in OSX mode)
When connected to my palm pre's "dumb charger" the ipad does the "not charging" thing @750, even though the pre's charger can deliver 1500ma.
The official Apple wall charger seems to deliver about 5.5v and nearly 1000ma to the pad.
It seems the choice is actually left to the iPad itself whether to sip or slurp and it does this by detecting what its connected to. (or rather, what it isn't connected to)
In conclusion, this operational profile is frustrating. "Purposely broken" may have been too strong but they didn't go through any extra effort to make my user experience stellar if I elected not to go the full monty on apple gear.
But what does it really mean to me? I can't charge my 'pad on the damn plane on that freakishly long SF to Sydney and watch all the back episodes of "Mad Men", using that nifty USB jack on Qantas' new A380. Bummer.
If you'd installed Apple's drivers in your XP instance, things would have worked fine.
If you want to argue that Apple should have made their changes public so anyone could re-implement, well, that's a different discussion.
The fact is that 'some motherboards cannot supply the voltage' or is it 'it needs its own driver to charge' ?
>To charge over USB, Apple had break the USB spec without compromising compatibility or destroying existing USB peripherals
>If you'd installed Apple's drivers in your XP instance, things would have worked fine.
So they purposefully broke the spec (looks like compatibility WAS compromised, wasn't it) by having a USB connector but not allowing all USB ports to charge it.
What about the USB ports at airports, in car adaptors, heck, even the otherwise useless one on my Comcast DVR?
So they couldn't make the iPad detect insufficient voltage and show 'Insufficient voltage detected. You need to install iTunes to charge me!'
Or maybe charge at a slower pace and show a message to that effect?
It's not as if it's an edge case seen by few, probably ~50% of iPad users might be connecting it to Windows PCs.
I'm fairly sure there is no requirement that your device is able to charge from every USB port. It is still 'in spec' because the cable is used to sync data. It only breaks spec when it knows that the hardware can take it (via apple drivers).
That's just lovely. At work someone ordered 2 western digital passports harddrives. They wouldn't work with any Apple laptops that we had (2 15in MBP, a 13in MBP, a Air) and would only work with desktops (2 iMacs). The box, WD's website, Apple's website all said these were compatible with any MacBook ... I suspected the problem was with underpowered USB ports. I even phoned WD's support (who were unprofessional) and couldn't get straight answer out of them, nor any useful info from Apple website.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions!
I never used a Mac until 1.5 years ago and I've been impressed with the quality and finish of the hardware, the overall smoothness of the UI, suspend & hibernate that work, AND a bash shell. And the ease in which non-Computer literate can use one is impressive (unless they've used other OS's for a long time).
But, the way Apple obfuscate information, and Bill Gates ... er I mean Steve Jobs apparent desire to lock users into Apple is disturbing.
I assume the no-delete is to reduce the risk of people accidentally deleting things they've just paid for, given that that's the only way to get things on to the device.
Interestingly, you can delete videos.
1. Allow selection of Mac or Win file-system type during iDevice ordering, default to FAT32 otherwise (3rd party sales, etc.) 2. Configure iDevice w/ ordering account before shipping, or as on-site set-up @ brick & mortar 3. Customers purchase content without syncing their iDevice on PC 4. Profit $$$
Jobs talked about Cars and Trucks. The desktop, and many laptop computers, are trucks. They can do the heavy lifting, converting, number crunching, graphics processing etc. Tablets and smartphones are cars. Calling them "automatic transmission" cars is probably even better. The learning curve is low, the uses are "limited" compared to the trucks but most people don't need a truck for their everyday lives.
The MacBook Air is on the threshold. It's a device that looks like a truck and has the inners of a "sportscar" with a truck-style processor, but the interface of the truck. It's manual transmission but not useful for all truck jobs.
If Apple could ensure that everyone had a data plan maybe they would cut out iTunes. Of course, they still make a nice profit on all those Macs...
It's not like 30-inch monitors and ergonomic keyboards are going to magically become portable tomorrow. Desktop/laptop computers are sticking around for a while.
Funny I think it's only people without any iTunes purchase complaining about this. The ones enjoying the media capabilities of the iPad, capabilities completely missing from Android, have no complains.
But that's besides the point - the neat thing about wireless sync is that you don't have to wait with the device physically tied up to your PC. In my case I was using it while the sync happened in the background. More over with wireless sync - I buy my MP3s at Amazon on my laptop and they automatically go out to my Android devices without needing any special action on my part.
Link to 32GB card that will work in just about all Android devices: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139...
I don't know what the technical issues are, but I can't wait until you can match the storage of an iPod. I love doubleTwist, and if I could have it just sync everything automatically it would be so ideal, but my collection is way too big, but it fits on the biggest iPod so I end up still carrying both.
There are Android devices that go up to 48Gb (16+32) IIRC.
1) What are these magical capabilities you're talking about that are so egregiously missing from Android? At least with my Droid, I can download software to let me sync wirelessly.
2) When I get new music, why do I have to a) go through the steps of adding it to iTunes b) connect my iPad to sync c) connect my iPod touch to sync d) connect my iPod nano to sync? When Apple's pushing us to buy all these devices, it would definitely be convenient to have it sync wirelessly (or even just sync the stupid folder in iTunes). I don't care if it takes long if I never have to invest any of my time to do it.
3) I don't see how iTunes purchases changes any of this?
Sure wire synching with a computer should be possible for people that have huge music collections and are too eager to let their ipad sit on their desk one night to synch everything. But why is it required?
This is about the fourth post on HN I've seen whining (yes, I think it's whining) about this issue. Apple is going all-cloud soon enough, if the rumors are true. In the meantime, if I'm going to sync 20-25gig of stuff to a new device, I really don't mind plugging it in.
I also don't mind plugging it in occasionally for an OS upgrade. It's just not a big deal, at all. The device is wire-dependent on a daily basis, anyway, folks: it needs a fresh new supply of electrons to keep running. Get over it.
"Post" means "after". It usually connotes some sense of replacement, but does not necessarily imply wholesale obsoleting of the thing that came before it.
I think "post-PC" is a calculated marketing term, but to criticize it based on the most absurd possible interpretation is, well, absurd.
It makes good sense for Apple - an iPad owner is a customer for maybe 3 years, but get the same user locked into iTunes, and that's a multi-decade revenue stream. Media distribution is the real game for Apple.
Dropbox says they encrypt the files, but they hold the key so the encryption doesn't guarantee privacy. You can encrypt the file before putting it in the dropbox folder which will guarantee privacy (to the extent that your encryption is strong), but you have to decrypt it on the other computers.
Keepass is an example of an encrypted file that should be safe when copied via dropbox.
I can copy files off of the ipod via the USB, but not on.
- Steve
Should people ditch photoshop now?
Just because there a few examples doesn't make it a suitable tool for most people.