archgrove

Apple don't have anything even vaguely approaching a monopoly in any area. Their market share in everything from phones to computers is < 30%; Google's is > 90% for search. You can't have a "Monopoly on the contents of the iPhone app store" any more than Coke has a "Monopoly on the contents of Coke cans", and thus should be forced to fill some with Pepsi.

Not that I use even 0.001% of the disks that BackBlaze go through, but my anecdata suggests the same. The only dead hard disks I have on my desk at the moment are Seagate, and they dominate the disks I've sent back in the last few years.

However, they are cheap, and they do honour their warranties. Would just be nice if they didn't have to quite so much.

You might like Apple's Swift:

    class Example {
        let ExtraMul = 5
    }

    let weakly = Example()
    let squareAndABit : Int -> Int = { [weak weakly] in $0 * $0 * weakly!.ExtraMul }
    squareAndABit(2) // 20

Positional lambda arguments, implicit returns for single expression arguments, capture lists if you want to alter the default capture mode. It's got really rather nice first class function support.

Apple did add garbage collection to Objective C, but it only lasted a few years before being pulled. Two less important reasons are that it's hard to integrate with the otherwise trivial C(++) interop, and the frameworks just weren't designed for it.

To me, the more important answers are deterministic destruction, and no GC pauses. All of Objective C is reference counted these days, with retain/releases inserted by the compiler (so all you have to do as a programmer is resolve cyclic references with weakness). Thus, you know exactly when an object will die, and have its dealloc method called. You're also sure you'll never end up in a situation where memory pressure causes system hitching due to GC. Given that a key platform for Objective C is iOS (low memory, "low" CPU), and that Apple's trademark tends to be fluid UI, avoiding these problems is really helpful.

Very interesting, thanks.

I also ran up against another annoying bug/oversight/v0.1ism : You can't inherit from a generic class without becoming generic yourself. So, even if you fully instantiate your parent's type information, you have to be generic as well! For example:

    class Foo<T> { ... }
    class Bar : Foo<String> { ... }

You'd expect Bar to be a non-generic type, but this throws a compiler error. You have to declare:

    class Foo<T> { ... }
    class Bar<String> : Foo<String> { ... }

Which seems just odd. The best workaround I've found thus far is

    class Foo<T> { ... }
    class BarClass<String> : Foo<String> { ... }
    typealias Bar = BarClass<String>

Bleh. I've filed a radar against this one - it seems like an annoying oversight, even for this early version.

Compiler bugs really don't worry me - despite the name, this is is really an alpha release. However, I ran up against the lack of generic protocols myself today (for those with access, there's an interesting debate at https://devforums.apple.com/thread/230611?tstart=0). It seems like a deliberate design choice, but one I'm not really sure about.

The primary vibe I'm getting from Swift is pragmatism. They had various red lines to follow: must be as fast as Objective C; must have a minimal to non-existent runtime (so AOT compilation all the way); mustn't have garbage collection, must interoperate with Objective C/normal C with ease; etc. This had led to a language which, despite being at version 0.1, has a fair few oddities and warts already. For example, the "almost but not quite immutable" arrays seem to be an artefact of absolutely wanting array performance to be equal to standard C. Typealiases vs parametric protocols seem to be a desire to have as much type information fixed as soon as possible.

It seems that rather than design a language where they might not have solutions for their red lines up front, they've designed a language where they can provide them. Rather than make theoretically "better" choices the compiler can't deliver perfectly in V1, but can in V4 or 5, they've gone for "yeah, we can almost certainly ship that". Given that this is essentially Apple's private language, I assume they'll be quite aggressive about deprecating features and moving people onto the "better" solutions (high-kinded types, richer immutability etc) when they can deliver them whilst meeting the core goals. It's an interesting approach - most other languages are happy to take a few years to get going, whereas Swift seems to want to go from 0 to 60 in 4 months. It reminds me most of C# 1.0, but with harder restrictions on what they've been told to deliver. At the moment, it's interesting, and a big leap from Objective C. By V3, it might be "excellent".

Whilst not as slick as the JS version, I did much the same thing with mine: https://vimeo.com/76969179 when bored one day. I couldn't find any tools to create exactly what I wanted, so knocked up https://gist.github.com/archgrove/6766129, https://github.com/archgrove/PDFProofSheet, and a bunch of shell scripts to generate a folder of images. Fed this lot into iMovie, and voila.

The tech seems cool, but I'm not seeing what extra value I get over a scrubbable video. How are you using the spacial information to add value to the images?

As an early 30s programmer with low-level backend experience, I'm relying on the 2038 problem to form the backbone of my retirement income. I've already started writing the business plan for my migration consultancy.

This comment is only marginally tongue in cheek.

I'm guessing you're being deliberately obtuse here. You were completely free to do with your work as you please, and you "pleased" to sell your work to a company in exchange for some consideration. If you don't want IP transfer, or first-refusal fixed price patent transfer, then don't sign that employment contract. I had them negotiated out of my last agreement, and I'm free to spend my personal time creating whatever I want, knowing the rights to it will be owned entirely by me.

Why is it "fundamentally wrong"? I created the work, I'm free to do with it as I please. I can give it away for free. I can charge $10 a copy. I can come to an arrangement that someone else has the right to set the price, in return for something else I want. That many musicians choose to sell their creations to distributors is entirely their choice. It obviously didn't "devalue" it to them at the point of sale, else they wouldn't have sold it. That many patents are owned by companies is because they were created by employees whose creative output was owned by the company in exchange for a salary.

If creative output has a value, then people should be free to exchange their creations for anything they like. To create restrictions that prevent people from writing a book then making an arrangement with a publisher, is just to prevent people from actually being able to do anything with their creations.

There are no natural laws. Just because you (or your forefathers) were first on a piece of land, what natural right grants you it? Surely it's far more natural that, if I can overpower you and take it, it's mine? That's actually how nature typically works. The notion that it's "immoral" is a purely human construction. Why is that immoral, but my spending 5 years writing a book, only to see nothing in return because everyone hands it around for free is moral?

I'm not saying people will stop having ideas, or creating music, etc. What I am saying is that people without private means or patrons will have to stop performing creative acts that require a significant time investment. If I've got a wonderful idea for a book/film/game/whatever, but know it will take 5 years to make, how do I make it when I need to work 8-6 to pay for food/shelter etc?

Eliminating IP is to construct a return to patronage; the very wealthy deciding what creative output it worthwhile. IP is actually a hugely egalitarian concept; the world can decide what has value, and reward the creator post-hoc, because the creator is ensured a return.

"The term imaginary property recognizes such contributions to society as the product of the imagination and is more productive as a starting place for discussion thereof"

No, it's derogatory. Very few phrases of the form "Oh, it's just your imaginary X" are designed to be complimentary. In common parlance, "imaginary" is just synonymous with "not real". The phrase "imaginary property" is designed purely to advance an agenda where people write books, create films, make software, etc all for some "manna" which, when pushed, advocates can't actually specify beyond saying "they'll find new business models". Yes, they will. Involving not writing books, films, etc.

All "property" is imaginary. Having physical things without the backing of the law is just possession. We create a legal notion of property for the benefit of society. Property law adds the force to the state to my possessions, to stop someone beating me on the head and taking them. Intellectual property law adds the force of the state to concepts/ideas/media/etc that originated by the sweat of my brow, to encourage the creation of more, and to enable me to make a living from it.

We can argue to what extent this force is necessary, but to claim that intellectual endeavours are just "imaginary" is to do a huge disservice to millions of people who pour their lives into the creation of new and exciting things.

First language here, as well. AMOS BASIC on an Amiga 500 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS_(programming_language). Despite the naysayers who'd claim I permanently broke my programming ability, the excitement of getting things working right away - of writing actual games with pretty damn good graphical effects despite knowing virtually nothing - was a huge catalyst in getting me over the early humps in learning to program. I doubt writing my 50th Fibonacci generator (this time, use tail-recursion!) would've kept my interest long enough to see the beauty in real engineering.

Back in the iOS 1.0 days, the iPhone development platform was web apps. These were pushed by Apple as the "right way", which negated the need for an App Store. As the browser engine on iOS is basically identical to the desktop WebKit, I always assumed Safari for Windows was a push to enable iOS development on Windows.

With the release and success of the App Store, that became unnecessary. I guess killing it was a function of its relative lack of popularity; Apple in the Jobs 2.0+ era justifiably don't like keeping dead-weight projects around.

People do. They're called "overflight fees". Often they're waived by mutually beneficial consent. For example, the USA often charges them when a flight doesn't originate or end in the US, but passes over US airspace.

Next bizarre justification for benefiting from other peoples' commercial work without paying?

A radical solution, I know, but why not just pay for your content? And, if it's not available at the right price/format/location, find other content?

And, to those saying "This is for non-copyright/author approved stuff", I say "I was not born yesterday".

Amen, and I don't really know why. I was on the fence about ordering one of the new Crystal Cove based devkits. Now I certainly won't. I'll wait to see how it shakes out; to see if low latency panels now take a backseat to an onboard camera for that special "social experience".

I guess it's because I was excited about the gaming and "new experience" potential, and the hope that a young company full of smart people would excel in that space. Unfortunately, the only association I can muster between gaming and Facebook is the spamfest Farmville. The biggest experience I can think of is the data mining.

VR is one of the few upcoming tech changes I can actually see adding "delight" to my computing experience. Alas, I've never experienced any delight with Facebook; at best, I've managed grudging tolerance. I think I'm sad at the loss of what might have been.

Yes, I looked at the diff. A diff like the author probably had been looking through all day. You've never missed a line? They probably thought it was just whitespace changes or, you know, just missed it entirely.

If we're going to claim this is deliberate, then the same accusation can be levelled at every security bug ever introduce in an edit. This is not evidence, it's just trolling.

Or, it was a stupid mistake. The kind that happens every day, in every program, in the known universe.

If we're going to entertain conspiracy theories, I favour "A rogue Google agent snuck in to Apple headquarters and edited the file whilst the user was out for lunch". Or perhaps Zergloids. Come on people, we're getting as bad as Slashdot over here!

So, to me, proofs have two purposes. The first is to just say "This theorem is true". The second is to give some insight into the problem. I have no problem with such a proof satisfying purpose one; I may not be able to check it myself, but I can build a chain of trustworthiness all the way back to a program that I can check myself. In such a chain, the truth of the final result is not, to me, in dispute.

Alas, such a proof throughly fails the second test. I can't see how to gain insight into the problem from such a proof, beyond just it validating previous thought chains of the form "If X were true, then I could deduce Y". It doesn't reveal more about the structure of the problem, or other results in the space.

It's no doubt useful (and all credit to the authors), but in terms of generating new mathematics, I'm dubious. Perhaps people more versed in this specific sub-field can tell me if I'm wrong?

So, he's back again. Whilst I was originally surprised at his removal, I was actually quite excited by the possibility. He's been effectively designing Apple's hardware for 15-20 years now, and the opportunity for some fresh oversight would've been quite refreshing.

Which, for 99.99999% of actual users will mean they are blocked. Digging around in the guts to enable "Developer mode", with all the scary consequences, is not something users will (or should have to) do.

It is if you use your belief to say "Well then, I won't pay them what they've asked". Too many people seem to think a "belief" is justification for breaking the law (AKA "agreement made by society"). A belief is fine - fantastic even. All big change comes from passionate beliefs. However, we have a system in place for affecting this change. It's "discuss in public fora, create political will, and change the law". Or even "download in public, get prosecuted, take punishment and create public will to change the system based on ridiculous nature of punishment to crime". It's emphatically not "Use anonymising proxies to download Hollywood blockbusters whilst claiming I'm standing up for political principles".

I'll have a look at those, thanks. In response to your points, the language used by courts is exceedingly specific, and bears little resemblance to the language used by people in day to day life. For example, in English law, I can "assault" you without ever having touched you. In fact, if I touch you, it's no longer assault. The dictionary definition, and common use, would require that I do more than look menacingly at you, but in the courts, I would have "assaulted" you. I claim the same holds for theft/stealing in an IP situation.

> Well, yes... Supposing that IP rights should exist!

Well, of course. But we could have the same debate about property rights, so I could deny that "theft" exists at all, yet the language used to describe theft wouldn't change.

This trope is getting exceedingly tired, on par with the "taxation is theft", "atheism is a religion" and "Linux should be called GNU/Linux" brigades that often crop up in the appropriate discussions. Theft and "steal" have long been used outside of the OED definitions; I can be a "thief of time", "steal an idea", "steal a base" and so forth. "Theft" and "steal" are appropriate words for the behaviour of people who have decided, in defiance of the laws and remunerative structures society has constructed, that they're entitled to the work of people without giving anything back (apart from some advice like "I'm giving you free advertising", "find a new business model" or "this will actually help you in the long run"). Society has created intellectual property, in the same way it created physical property, and if you can steal the later, you can surely steal the former.

One other angle on this, for the "steal absolutely must deprive someone of something" view, well - something is actually lost, that cannot be replaced. The right of the IP creator to be repaid by the person who grabbed it. Many people say "Well, I'd never have bought it anyway". Whilst true for now, would it still be true in 1 year? 5? 10? Would you have bought it for your kids, or because a sequel came out that you do want to buy? By taking it, you rob the person of the ability to sell it to you in the future.

I think it's incumbent upon anyone who thinks "intellectual property is unjust" and who acts on this belief by just denying its existence, to propose and get support for a viable alternative for supporting the millions of people who depend on it for their livelihood. Otherwise, you're just an anarchist, burning the system down and denying any contribution to the people who have committed to a certain lifestyle on the guarantees currently provided by society.

Chalk me up as a user for whom Messages seems to function as advertised. Most people don't take to the air to shout about how something as mundane as text messaging works fine for them.

Alas, it won't even turn on without its case (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/23/5234574/apple-mac-pro-rev...). It needs it to guide air through the cooling tower style design. Presumably, someone could make a transparent case as an accessory.

40 year olds? My first machine was an A500, and I'm early 30s!