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Your essay is great. It makes me feel less alone in this world. I didn't find it full of vehemence. ` It is okay to speak with force. At times force is need

by csmeder 17y ago

Your essay is great. It makes me feel less alone in this world. I didn't find it full of vehemence. ` It is okay to speak with force. At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand. The points you are trying to make are over the head of most people. 99.9999999% don't get "it". If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple. ` What do I mean by copy Apple? One example is the iPhone. If Apple never made the iPhone. What would phones look like right now? We would have the the Razor3 and it would allow us to download ring tones, not apps. Heres some food for thought from Einstein: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein And the most important to this discussion: "The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein The iPad is not a solution to the question of: whats a better computer or whats a better phone. Just as the iPhone wasn't a better Razor.

rinich 17y ago
I'm glad you like it! It's corny, but when people let me know they've enjoyed something of mine it makes it all worth the gritted teeth and the hurling laptops out windows.
- asciitaxi 17y ago
  Really brilliant article
pyre 17y ago
> The iPad is not a solution to the question of: whats a better computer or whats a better phone. Just as the iPhone wasn't a better Razor. The iPad is a consumer device in the truest sense of the word. It's a device that was built to make it as easy as possible for the user to consume media whether it's the Web, movies, music, photos, etc. Plain and simple. Oh, and comparing the iPhone to the Razr is a bit of a strawman. There have been plenty of PDA-phones in the past: WindowsMobile phones, Palm PDA-phones, etc. They just never did provided a good enough interface to the user to really take off. So yes. The iPhone was an evolutionary leap instead of a revolutionary leap. > At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand. At the end of the day, the iPad is a consumer electronic device not a solution to world hunger. Please get some perspective. Writing a blog post praising the iPad when everyone else is disappointed with it is not some sort of 'shining moment' for journalism that will be recognized by generations to come as a turning point when the tide of Apple-haters was stemmed, ushering in the new Golden Era of Apple. > 99.9999999% don't get "it" I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today. > If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple. Most other companies are not in Apple's business. They are making hardware with some software thrown on to push the hardware, or they are selling some software for some hardware. Most companies don't have the attention to detail that Apple does. Yea, sometimes they screw things up (sometimes badly), but OS X doesn't have parts of OS7 hanging around in it the way that Windows Vista still had some little-used apps with icons from the Windows 3.1 days. Most other companies are just pushing their product out the door to turn a profit, but Apple prides itself on projecting an image of quality they way that a high-end car-maker does. I also really don't like it when people get all uppity about 'copying.' "Who copied who" is a tired game in the software/hardware industry. The real issue is when someone copies something and claims it as their own, not when someone copies something. People adopting the techniques and methods of others is how progress is made. If you want to play that game, then Apple copied the entire idea for the gui/mouse interface from Xerox. Apple also copied the functionality of Time Machine from countless other utilities that were mostly relegated to the realm of system admins (or 'power users' in the case of Linux/BSD + rsync/rdiff). You might say 'but they copied it better.' But if you want to start talking like that then you better suffix 'everyone copies Apple' with 'poorly' lest you imply that 'copying' at all is a bad thing (and there should be a stigma attached to it).
- niels_olson 17y ago
  > The iPhone was an evolutionary leap instead of a revolutionary leap. The evolutionary theory term of art is "punctuated equilibrium": stable stable stable WOW stable stable
- tel 17y ago
  Oh, and comparing the iPhone to the Razr is a bit of a strawman. The Razr, first time around, captured people's imaginations because it suddenly offered the deep, unheard of cultural need to have the world in your pocket and have it be so small and sleek that you forget what that means. The iPhone is very comparable, except when Apple did it they redefined world. I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today. But when the commercials come out, 75% of people will drool. If you look at it from a cultural perspective, Apple is once again selling us the future. It was already here, sure, but now it'll be at your doorstep, charged, as soon as you like.
  - pyre 17y ago
    > it suddenly offered the deep, unheard of cultural need to have the world in your pocket and have it be so small and sleek that you forget what that means Maybe I missed those adverts, but the Razr was just a sleek design. Its claim to fame was how small it was. It was still just a phone though. It didn't offer 'the world in your pocket' unless you define 'the world' to mean 'a phone line and my contacts book.'
    - swernli 17y ago
      For what it's worth, check out the wikipedia page on the RAZR, specifically the section on Cultural Impact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razr. Key quote: "The RAZR has been said to the 'iPod' of mobile phones. Being the slimmest phone during its release in 2004, it easily stood out amongst other phone models. IT has also been one of the most popular mobile phone models since its first release, until being surpassed by the iPhone 3G in November 2008..." However, it notes this popularity was never matched outside the USA.
    - 17y ago

by csmeder 17y ago

rinich 17y ago

I'm glad you like it! It's corny, but when people let me know they've enjoyed something of mine it makes it all worth the gritted teeth and the hurling laptops out windows.

asciitaxi 17y ago
Really brilliant article

pyre 17y ago

> The iPad is not a solution to the question of: whats a better computer or whats a better phone. Just as the iPhone wasn't a better Razor. The iPad is a consumer device in the truest sense of the word. It's a device that was built to make it as easy as possible for the user to consume media whether it's the Web, movies, music, photos, etc. Plain and simple. Oh, and comparing the iPhone to the Razr is a bit of a strawman. There have been plenty of PDA-phones in the past: WindowsMobile phones, Palm PDA-phones, etc. They just never did provided a good enough interface to the user to really take off. So yes. The iPhone was an evolutionary leap instead of a revolutionary leap. > At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand. At the end of the day, the iPad is a consumer electronic device not a solution to world hunger. Please get some perspective. Writing a blog post praising the iPad when everyone else is disappointed with it is not some sort of 'shining moment' for journalism that will be recognized by generations to come as a turning point when the tide of Apple-haters was stemmed, ushering in the new Golden Era of Apple. > 99.9999999% don't get "it" I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today. > If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple. Most other companies are not in Apple's business. They are making hardware with some software thrown on to push the hardware, or they are selling some software for some hardware. Most companies don't have the attention to detail that Apple does. Yea, sometimes they screw things up (sometimes badly), but OS X doesn't have parts of OS7 hanging around in it the way that Windows Vista still had some little-used apps with icons from the Windows 3.1 days. Most other companies are just pushing their product out the door to turn a profit, but Apple prides itself on projecting an image of quality they way that a high-end car-maker does. I also really don't like it when people get all uppity about 'copying.' "Who copied who" is a tired game in the software/hardware industry. The real issue is when someone copies something and claims it as their own, not when someone copies something. People adopting the techniques and methods of others is how progress is made. If you want to play that game, then Apple copied the entire idea for the gui/mouse interface from Xerox. Apple also copied the functionality of Time Machine from countless other utilities that were mostly relegated to the realm of system admins (or 'power users' in the case of Linux/BSD + rsync/rdiff). You might say 'but they copied it better.' But if you want to start talking like that then you better suffix 'everyone copies Apple' with 'poorly' lest you imply that 'copying' at all is a bad thing (and there should be a stigma attached to it).

niels_olson 17y ago
> The iPhone was an evolutionary leap instead of a revolutionary leap. The evolutionary theory term of art is "punctuated equilibrium": stable stable stable WOW stable stable
tel 17y ago
Oh, and comparing the iPhone to the Razr is a bit of a strawman. The Razr, first time around, captured people's imaginations because it suddenly offered the deep, unheard of cultural need to have the world in your pocket and have it be so small and sleek that you forget what that means. The iPhone is very comparable, except when Apple did it they redefined world. I'd say that 98% of people don't even know that Apple had a keynote today. But when the commercials come out, 75% of people will drool. If you look at it from a cultural perspective, Apple is once again selling us the future. It was already here, sure, but now it'll be at your doorstep, charged, as soon as you like.
- pyre 17y ago
  > it suddenly offered the deep, unheard of cultural need to have the world in your pocket and have it be so small and sleek that you forget what that means Maybe I missed those adverts, but the Razr was just a sleek design. Its claim to fame was how small it was. It was still just a phone though. It didn't offer 'the world in your pocket' unless you define 'the world' to mean 'a phone line and my contacts book.'
  - swernli 17y ago
    For what it's worth, check out the wikipedia page on the RAZR, specifically the section on Cultural Impact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razr. Key quote: "The RAZR has been said to the 'iPod' of mobile phones. Being the slimmest phone during its release in 2004, it easily stood out amongst other phone models. IT has also been one of the most popular mobile phone models since its first release, until being surpassed by the iPhone 3G in November 2008..." However, it notes this popularity was never matched outside the USA.
  - 17y ago