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People made the same arguments when Jobs killed the floppy. And serial ports. And OS 9. And built-in modems. Surprisingly, nobody misses them. Yawn. More hi

People made the same arguments when Jobs killed the floppy. And serial ports. And OS 9. And built-in modems. Surprisingly, nobody misses them. Yawn. More histrionic nerd-posturing. It will be forgotten soon enough.

euroclydon 17y ago
That's funny. When you said: "built-in modems", I turned my Macbook up to the side, and sure enough... no modem.
- blogimus 17y ago
  And funny enough, I don't miss not having a modem on my macbook, not in the least. I also have a thinkpad which I never use the modem either, and my now long in the tooth Palm TX which doesn't have one (yeah, its a PDA, so we normally don't expect it to have one, but then why do we expect a notepbook to have a modem, because they have? That is the same argument as "It was good enough for my daddy so it is good enough for me." And as another poster wrote, we can always vote with our dollars.
CamperBob 17y ago
Killing Turing equivalence is a bigger deal than killing RS-232 ports and floppy drives.
- pohl 17y ago
  Are there really 9 readers of HN (you and 8 positive mods) who think that neither C, nor Objective C, nor C++, nor JavaScript are as Turing equivalent as any programming language can be said to be whilst constrained in a finite amount of memory? How else could one be said to have "killed" Turing equivalence unless it didn't remain after other source languages were excluded? Melodrama trumps computer science today?
  - jules 17y ago
    Well, yeah, but you're not allowed to exploit this turing equivalence.
  - prodigal_erik 17y ago
    Turing equivalence guarantees there's a way to write a program in some other language that produces exactly the same results as a program in ObjC. This deep compatibility made it feasible for the industry to adopt better and better languages. But now Apple wants to put a stop to it and enshrine a few decrepit languages with flaws most of us escaped a decade ago. (As I understand it, JavaScript doesn't belong on the list. It's permitted, but some of the Cocoa Touch API isn't accessible, so it's not really a substitute for the others.)
    - GHFigs 17y ago
      But now Apple wants to put a stop to it and enshrine a few decrepit languages with flaws most of us escaped a decade ago. Your opinion of the languages does not trump the reality that the overwhelming majority of iPhone OS applications were written in them, as was the OS itself, even when it was not a requirement. Trying to make it sound like recent changes to the App Store agreement are the only reason people use Objective-C is a big stretch.
      - prodigal_erik 17y ago
        I know that ObjC has always been heavily used in NEXTSTEP and OS X apps (if not a lot else) even before this. My concern is that mainstream vendors will conclude that we tolerate this sort of abuse, and the problem will spread. I care that the industry permits good languages to exist, not whether the majority are interested in using them.
    - defen 17y ago
      To be fair, that program in some other language only produces the "same results" - there's no guarantee it won't be significantly slower or use significantly more memory. Which is exactly Steve's point.
- sambeau 17y ago
  You are allowed to program in C++ and C, too. There is also a good chance that Ruby will join that list as soon as the LLVM version (that Apple is working on) is finished. (see http://www.macruby.org/ http://www.macruby.org/)
sendos 17y ago
Weren't there adapters/peripherals so people who had floppy disks and monitors with serial ports could still use them? (e.g. this one for floppy disks: http://www.jr.com/lacie/pe/LAC_706018 http://www.jr.com/lacie/pe/LAC_706018) That is, if you had a floppy disk that you had to read, there was a workaround, even if Macs stopped supporting them natively. There is no adapter/peripheral/workaround to view some website with Flash that you want to view. (Unless you consider it a workaround to carry, alongside your iPad, a laptop so that you can view websites that haven't yet transitioned to HTML5)
- derefr 17y ago
  Just to be snide: there are plenty of VNC clients for the iPhone OS, which let you view the screen of a full-powered computer, and click and type into it. This would be the same workaround you'd use if you had to run, say, an industrial control system on your iPad. It's also a pretty good idea, UI-wise: since it overlays the mouse metaphor onto your touchpad, the resulting Flash doesn't require adaptation to be used.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
He got rid of the floppy in the first gen NeXT machines too early. You were supposed to just transfer everything via the network. He was wrong and everyone missed them and he brought them back for the second gen.
dalore 17y ago
I would say usb killed floppies and serial ports. Built-in modems aren't dead, they are still on a surprisingly number of laptops. He killed OS 9 so he could sell OS X. That's like saying Microsoft killed Win95. That's planned obsolescence.
rit 17y ago
By way of disclaimer... I recently switched off of iPhone in favor of Android - primarily because AT&T's network sucked and not really as any statement against Apple (I refused to continue paying monthly for a phone which had no reception through much of my workday). Overall, as a developer I'm highly in favor of open platforms, language choice, etc. However, I can't help but thinking that a tightly controlled application space the way that Apple has maintained so far is what has helped make the iPhone and iPad successful. One thing I notice on android is the lack of consistency in UIs. Sometimes the back button takes me back a screen in an App - sometimes it dumps me back to the Home screen. Sometimes it dumps me back to the last App I was using. The iPhone apps tend to look relatively uniform UI wise and behave as expected. Encouraging the idea of cross platform apps means you start to get less and less "platform integration". It means we end up with 4 or 5 smartphone platforms none of which have any advantage because they're all running inconsistent crap. I want my hardware + software platforms to be able to be unique and tailored towards themselves. I have seen very few truly cross platform apps which actually work well. iTunes itself is a great example - it acts weirdly and looks woefully out of place on Windows. It's the ugly duckling, and it behaves like someone chopped one of it's legs off. The benefits of tailoring software to a particular platform should be obvious, and I much prefer them.

euroclydon 17y ago

That's funny. When you said: "built-in modems", I turned my Macbook up to the side, and sure enough... no modem.

blogimus 17y ago
And funny enough, I don't miss not having a modem on my macbook, not in the least. I also have a thinkpad which I never use the modem either, and my now long in the tooth Palm TX which doesn't have one (yeah, its a PDA, so we normally don't expect it to have one, but then why do we expect a notepbook to have a modem, because they have? That is the same argument as "It was good enough for my daddy so it is good enough for me." And as another poster wrote, we can always vote with our dollars.

CamperBob 17y ago

Killing Turing equivalence is a bigger deal than killing RS-232 ports and floppy drives.

pohl 17y ago
Are there really 9 readers of HN (you and 8 positive mods) who think that neither C, nor Objective C, nor C++, nor JavaScript are as Turing equivalent as any programming language can be said to be whilst constrained in a finite amount of memory? How else could one be said to have "killed" Turing equivalence unless it didn't remain after other source languages were excluded? Melodrama trumps computer science today?
- jules 17y ago
  Well, yeah, but you're not allowed to exploit this turing equivalence.
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  Turing equivalence guarantees there's a way to write a program in some other language that produces exactly the same results as a program in ObjC. This deep compatibility made it feasible for the industry to adopt better and better languages. But now Apple wants to put a stop to it and enshrine a few decrepit languages with flaws most of us escaped a decade ago. (As I understand it, JavaScript doesn't belong on the list. It's permitted, but some of the Cocoa Touch API isn't accessible, so it's not really a substitute for the others.)
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    But now Apple wants to put a stop to it and enshrine a few decrepit languages with flaws most of us escaped a decade ago. Your opinion of the languages does not trump the reality that the overwhelming majority of iPhone OS applications were written in them, as was the OS itself, even when it was not a requirement. Trying to make it sound like recent changes to the App Store agreement are the only reason people use Objective-C is a big stretch.
    - prodigal_erik 17y ago
      I know that ObjC has always been heavily used in NEXTSTEP and OS X apps (if not a lot else) even before this. My concern is that mainstream vendors will conclude that we tolerate this sort of abuse, and the problem will spread. I care that the industry permits good languages to exist, not whether the majority are interested in using them.
  - defen 17y ago
    To be fair, that program in some other language only produces the "same results" - there's no guarantee it won't be significantly slower or use significantly more memory. Which is exactly Steve's point.
sambeau 17y ago
You are allowed to program in C++ and C, too. There is also a good chance that Ruby will join that list as soon as the LLVM version (that Apple is working on) is finished. (see http://www.macruby.org/ http://www.macruby.org/)

sendos 17y ago

Weren't there adapters/peripherals so people who had floppy disks and monitors with serial ports could still use them? (e.g. this one for floppy disks: http://www.jr.com/lacie/pe/LAC_706018 http://www.jr.com/lacie/pe/LAC_706018) That is, if you had a floppy disk that you had to read, there was a workaround, even if Macs stopped supporting them natively. There is no adapter/peripheral/workaround to view some website with Flash that you want to view. (Unless you consider it a workaround to carry, alongside your iPad, a laptop so that you can view websites that haven't yet transitioned to HTML5)

derefr 17y ago
Just to be snide: there are plenty of VNC clients for the iPhone OS, which let you view the screen of a full-powered computer, and click and type into it. This would be the same workaround you'd use if you had to run, say, an industrial control system on your iPad. It's also a pretty good idea, UI-wise: since it overlays the mouse metaphor onto your touchpad, the resulting Flash doesn't require adaptation to be used.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

He got rid of the floppy in the first gen NeXT machines too early. You were supposed to just transfer everything via the network. He was wrong and everyone missed them and he brought them back for the second gen.

dalore 17y ago

I would say usb killed floppies and serial ports. Built-in modems aren't dead, they are still on a surprisingly number of laptops. He killed OS 9 so he could sell OS X. That's like saying Microsoft killed Win95. That's planned obsolescence.

rit 17y ago

By way of disclaimer... I recently switched off of iPhone in favor of Android - primarily because AT&T's network sucked and not really as any statement against Apple (I refused to continue paying monthly for a phone which had no reception through much of my workday). Overall, as a developer I'm highly in favor of open platforms, language choice, etc. However, I can't help but thinking that a tightly controlled application space the way that Apple has maintained so far is what has helped make the iPhone and iPad successful. One thing I notice on android is the lack of consistency in UIs. Sometimes the back button takes me back a screen in an App - sometimes it dumps me back to the Home screen. Sometimes it dumps me back to the last App I was using. The iPhone apps tend to look relatively uniform UI wise and behave as expected. Encouraging the idea of cross platform apps means you start to get less and less "platform integration". It means we end up with 4 or 5 smartphone platforms none of which have any advantage because they're all running inconsistent crap. I want my hardware + software platforms to be able to be unique and tailored towards themselves. I have seen very few truly cross platform apps which actually work well. iTunes itself is a great example - it acts weirdly and looks woefully out of place on Windows. It's the ugly duckling, and it behaves like someone chopped one of it's legs off. The benefits of tailoring software to a particular platform should be obvious, and I much prefer them.