3 ms·

> But, if Apple win the mobile war, we are screwed as far as freedom and ownership is concerned. Sentences like this are why the phrase "mobile war" should be

by unalone 15y ago

> But, if Apple win the mobile war, we are screwed as far as freedom and ownership is concerned. Sentences like this are why the phrase "mobile war" should be taken away from all of us and placed on the high shelf next to the cookie jar. "Mobile war" is an exciting idea – much more exciting than "competitive mobile marketplace" – and so we like to think in these terms despite how misleading they are. There is no mobile war. Apple is not out to extinguish Android. Google's not out to extinguish the iPhone. We're talking about a market of how many people, half a billion?, a billion?, billions?, and that many people means that everybody's going to want something different. Me? I love my iPhone 4. I'm not a code hacker, see. My iPhone is the tool I use to hack the world around me. It gives me a camera (photo/HD video) that I can whip out at any moment. It lets me access my bank on the fly. It's got all the cutting-edge casual games I'm researching as part of my study on games. It lets me write on the fly (poetry, thoughts, essays) and have my writing waiting on my computer when I get back. It's an ambient music generator and a PDF reader that plays public radio and Pandora and, with the new GarageBand, is also my ideal recording device, since I prefer convenience of location to anything else. Now I can put a microphone in a backpack and walk to a park with some friends and record tracks with incredible ease. That, to me, is a hack. I'm pretty much a huge Apple fan, but I understand people who aren't. Which is why I find lines like > If android dominate and crush iphone and apple tomorrow, that is fine with me. Somebody can alway polish their own android version and make it like the magical apple products that I hear so much about. disquieting. You have your Android phone! Why must you wish misfortune on my choice? I know far more Android fans who wish for Apple's demise than I know Apple fans who want Google to go under. Choice is good! And part of that choice is choosing what the focus of your "hacks" are. For me it's not computers, so I can benefit from a closed computer. For you it is computers, and we have open source. The other disquieting thing about your comment, to me, is that you think Apple's "magic" is simply a matter of polish. As if you just wipe it with a rag for a few months and suddenly it gleams. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of UI/UX design. Achieving the level of elegance that Apple products frequently (not always) possess requires tremendous focus and talent. What's more, Apple's product polish doesn't just extend to their own software: they have a great history of encouraging top-notch developers to design for them. My favorite applications aren't Apple's apps; things like Notational Velocity, Coda, Sparrow, and Reeder have all made my life significantly simpler, and it's no coincidence that they were all designed by Mac-users for a Mac environment. Which is why even though Microsoft's new mobile OS is itself elegant and beautiful, I still much prefer the iPhone to Windows. It's where all the apps are. Not because Apple was the first to launch an App Store (though that helps), but because Apple encourages the perfectionism and user focus that makes its top applications great. We can argue the semantics of what counts as hacker within your personal taxonomy all day, but that's useless. Jobs did great things that benefitted a lot of people, myself included.

ahoyhere 15y ago
> You have your Android phone! Why must you wish misfortune on my choice? Because people like this are hypocrites… they want to take your choice away, and scream and fight and claw madly if they don't get their choice. Mentally, these people are still children. They look at everything (e.g. alll of business) as it if it is a zero-sum game. They take everything personally. It's hard not to be offended when you think a phone OS is tied intimately to who you are. Sad, but true.
- gbog 15y ago
  Your are saying grand parent is mentally a children, I don't how this is perceived in your culture, in mine it is not acceptable.
- dman 15y ago
  Its childish to label other people as children unless they happen to be children.
  - Fliko 15y ago
    In that case it's bad to call someone childish because some of the best features of humans are only apparent for most people when they are children and not adults, but that isn't the point of what was said. The point was that it is short-sighted of someone to say it would be evil if (say) Apple won the mobile war, but would be good if Google won the mobile war. Competition is a win-win situation for consumers, and a lack of competition only encourages stagnancy, which is one of the greatest evils of the creative world.
kiba 15y ago
If you believe the history of mobile phone is like the history of the desktop, then of course, it's a war. It does not matter if there's a half a billion, a billion. At some point, it become a zero sum game. The choices we have will at some point stop being choices. They will stop to exists and whatever platform wins, get to dictate what rules are we going to play by. The other disquieting thing about your comment, to me, is that you think Apple's "magic" is simply a matter of polish. As if you just wipe it with a rag for a few months and suddenly it gleams. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of UI/UX design. Achieving the level of elegance that Apple products frequently (not always) possess requires tremendous focus and talent. It doesn't mean that you have to dictate, control, censor what apps are allowed in your store, make developers sell their soul to you, and so on. You do not have to be a control freak.

by unalone 15y ago

ahoyhere 15y ago

> You have your Android phone! Why must you wish misfortune on my choice? Because people like this are hypocrites… they want to take your choice away, and scream and fight and claw madly if they don't get their choice. Mentally, these people are still children. They look at everything (e.g. alll of business) as it if it is a zero-sum game. They take everything personally. It's hard not to be offended when you think a phone OS is tied intimately to who you are. Sad, but true.

gbog 15y ago
Your are saying grand parent is mentally a children, I don't how this is perceived in your culture, in mine it is not acceptable.
dman 15y ago
Its childish to label other people as children unless they happen to be children.
- Fliko 15y ago
  In that case it's bad to call someone childish because some of the best features of humans are only apparent for most people when they are children and not adults, but that isn't the point of what was said. The point was that it is short-sighted of someone to say it would be evil if (say) Apple won the mobile war, but would be good if Google won the mobile war. Competition is a win-win situation for consumers, and a lack of competition only encourages stagnancy, which is one of the greatest evils of the creative world.

kiba 15y ago

If you believe the history of mobile phone is like the history of the desktop, then of course, it's a war. It does not matter if there's a half a billion, a billion. At some point, it become a zero sum game. The choices we have will at some point stop being choices. They will stop to exists and whatever platform wins, get to dictate what rules are we going to play by. The other disquieting thing about your comment, to me, is that you think Apple's "magic" is simply a matter of polish. As if you just wipe it with a rag for a few months and suddenly it gleams. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of UI/UX design. Achieving the level of elegance that Apple products frequently (not always) possess requires tremendous focus and talent. It doesn't mean that you have to dictate, control, censor what apps are allowed in your store, make developers sell their soul to you, and so on. You do not have to be a control freak.