irrationalfab

Estimation is difficult because we compare apple with oranges. One thing is to perform a task another one is to freeze the intelligence that allows us to perform the task. It involves foreseeing edge cases which might not be present in a particular application of the logic.

On the other hand once its coded, it's way faster (because the logic was abstracted) and it is flawless (it always yields the same result).

What about the voice recognition? How can the glasses understand if you are giving a command or talking to somebody else?

> If I were them I'd rather release information they want to the public instead of a random blogger getting a photo and kicking up a firestorm of interest.

No, you would announce the product 6 months before launching it and you would show it. Otherwise, it means that you don't have a prototype good enough to demo --> waporware. It might exist in the future but today it doesn't exists.

This is why the original iPhone launch was such a great event. They showed the damn working thing, no videos like Nokia used to do at the time (iirc about bendable phones that could produce scents?!?!).

It would be interesting to have a similar poll for iOS, maybe asking the downloads/man-hours ratio.

I love the recursion!

Out of curiosity, does anybody have an estimation about how much money the link (which I assume to be affiliated) may generate?

You have the option to save a Core Graphics generated UIImage to NSCache or even to the temp folder.

Great implementation of an idead that I guess often crossed the mind of many.

One feature request, please make it regional. It would be very nice if every document would have a geographical area and language attribute.

This was the strategy that they with Schmidt. Page changed it and shut down a lot of products to focus on the company core. The shotgun approach seldom works in business. It is better to develop and nurture cash cows.

Personally, I think that they should focus in the search field to stay ahead of the curve and prevent a competitor from introducing an iPhone caliber product that would make them look myopic like Blackberry. They used to claim that search was a 99% solved problem. I don't think that me looking to a list of blue links is 99% solved problem.

Does anyone knows what is the stance of Y combinator with HN scrapping?

"It's not so much that you need to understand every in and out of the field. What you need to understand is effort level required develop something[1], and when you're clearly getting BSed."

Those are not trivial things to do. Is not so rare for me to underestimate the effort required for a change in own code (but this might be because I'm not such a great programmer).

I (try to) use this process to learn efficiently.

When I want to understand a complex topic (e.g. back end development), I simply read every now and then articles and posts beyond my comprehension. And I do it quickly. When I commit to learn the topic, I usually find that 90% of the work is already done. Is really like somebody else was processing all the information.

I think that this is a very powerful process to boost knowledge. But it also has significative drawbacks. It tend to be a far less social person when I saturate my subconscious. I also noticed, that my brain tends to discard little details. For example sometimes I can't remember what I eat at lunch.

AS a side note, I also noticed that I can bump myself out this learning mode if I don't touch a computer for the whole day. I do it on saturdays and sundays and start the next week feeling more productive. On the other hand if I don't do it for a couple of weeks I tend to feel exhausted.

Anybody else has similar experiences? Tips to share?

There is an important side effect of this mentality: you are stuck with a weak foundation. Not only technically but also in front of the eyes of the consumers.

When you ship a product users build expectations about it. They use in different ways that the ones you might have expected. If during further development you understand that a feature is not desirable anymore (e.g for technical problems with some other super awesome feature) pulling support may backfire.

This was evident in each Facebook redesign, or in the new version of Final Cut Pro.

Therefore, I think that there is definitely a sweet spot and that this spot isn't "ship it as soon as it works".

I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.

"But I would say the most important (and impressive) part of his genius was holistic thinking. He wasn't a programmer, a hardware engineer, an industrial designer, an advertising copywriter, or an architect, etc. But he deeply understood the essentials of those fields and was able to harness them to create a hugely successful business and set of products."

I still have no clue about how he managed to do it. For example, I think that Cocoa and Next technologies are very elegant and are at the foundation of Apple current success. Yet how can you lead the developments of those technologies if you don't understand them. Why it didn't go the same way, of let say, Symbian.

I'm not an expert in CS (not even close), but to me it looks like there is very little crust on Apple technologies. And I don't think that this is the case for all the other mayor tech companies, where I observe a significative amount of technical debt. One explanation might be that there was great technical people on board and in charge. But this is the norm for all multinationals. How he managed to design so few products that are "bad apples" (pun intended).

This is a really core issue for me. I'm a business guy by education (two Masters of Management) who always has been oriented to software development (I always liked it and the basis of C always have been intuitive). When the App Store launched I started to work with a CS Engineer to develop an app. While the arrangement was workable, I felt I was missing so much without the proper technical knowledge. How can you lead if you don't understand fully the field. Consequently, having the chance, I took the next two years of my life learning sw development, graphic/UI, design, and a bit of web development. Financially and mentally it was a very costly decision that kept me on the verge of burning out and, yet, I don't understand if it was the right choice.

I would love to hear the opinion of the community.

Have you checked uncrustify? It doesn't do all the work necessary for the tabular alignment illustrated in the article but it does great part of it. I personally use it with a keyboard shortcut to fix the selection of the code I just wrote or edite. In this way I'm faster because I skip most of the white space characters.

http://uncrustify.sourceforge.net/

This is a great proof of the strategic advantages of totally controlling your operations. In the start you are at disadvantage, but if you manage to gain steam you end up with a competitive advantage that is almost unfair.

In Apples case this strong position is not only visible in the supply chain management but it is clearly present in all their stack. Another example is their supremacy in software.

I think that this is one of the great lessons from Steve Jobs, takin your time to control and develop everything internally it is feasible competitive approach.

As an iOS developer I feel that native apps will have a technical edge for a while. WebApps are built with tools that weren't designed for creating GUIs, you can do it but it is much less efficient and effective. This is especially true for complex applications like games (the ones that would benefit the most from webGL).

I feel the same. I would love to understand a bit more of what is going on under the hood. I did a quick research but I could not find something quick enough to work as a primer.

The best resources I found are: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#technotes/tn2239/_i... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25636/what-is-the-best-wa...

It is true, but the learning curve of Vim is (a bit?) step. This tutorial is quick and reduces some of the frustration that you can experience when it takes 1 minute to insert a word.

Official API or mobile interface

On the other hand shadow work is exactly what empowers people: 1. Automation allows to DIY tasks that previously were too expensive to acquire in the market in exchange of a bit of your time. 2. People can spend their financial resources more wisely and achieve MORE. I think that the example of the gas station is striking, because people, given the choice might prefer a smaller and cheaper service.

I believe that those changes are the result of companies competing in a free market. They are the consequences of consumers choice and are beneficial.

Nonetheless, the article highlights a good point about one hidden cost of automation. A cost important to take into account in product/service design. If too high it would hinder market acceptance of a product.

Now I understand better why automation is less used by companies in their business. I would be interesting to understand what other subtleties and hidden cost should be taken into account.