albee

As a professional developer (someone actually pays me to write shit), I’d agree with Atwood and say “leave it alone” if your not 100% on it.
The difference with software vs other disciplines like mechanics or photography etc.. is that software changes too much. Your not learning anything concrete, your really just learning an interface (API) to a computer that some dudes dreamt up. There is nothing in software development like “gravity” or “light” that is set in stone, its all just abstractions created by other people. There is no mathematical or logical reason why objective C uses the NSDate class and .NET’s object it Datetime, yet you must learn the different naming conventions and syntax to do the more or less the same thing. Thats whats so infuriating about it all really. I’m getting really bored re-leasing how to do the same shit all the time in a different “flavour of the month” language..

Over the last 15yrs of developing I can quite honestly say that whatever I learnt at university is completely irrelevant to what I do day to day (apart from SQL which seems to have stood the test of time). It never seems to bother developers that we are always practically re-writing the same applications (grids and text boxes with buttons etc..) but every time in a “new” framework or slightly different API. Its madness really. There must be a 1000 different solutions to displaying “Hello World” out there!

Software development is the equivalent of a builder building new houses, each time with a new version of a hammer or chisel. Same shit, new tools. The main reason devs get paid so much is that they know how to use the “new hammer” even though they building the same houses!

If you don’t know how to use the “new hammer” but know how a house is built your still useless in the software development. So you can’t take a break and come back 5yrs later like a lawyer, doctor, photographer etc.. can.Once you stop coding for a long period its over, its like learning how read and write again after being in a coma, you’ll never be “back to normal speed”. Sad industry, really.. pays well when your hot though.

I think the problem with having a device that can do far “more” than you need is that it becomes overly complicated to use. Flexiblity generally means complexity and there is an opportunity cost involved. If you can save an hour messing about with a sound driver or an install, you can spend that hour actually making music or writing a document.

The reason PC’s are complex is because no one has had the resources to strip out some of the more esoteric uses of the OS and give users what they need. Apple is the only company doing it at the moment (Google has tried to do the same thing from a different direction with Chrome OS.. with mixed results however).

The phillosophy is simply this: If a phd engineer is using the same machine and software as a 15yrd old is to update their facebook page, we have a misuse of resource.
The resource for the 15yr old could be put in to make it more simpler for them to achivee their tasks easier (and vice versa). This is what the trucks/post-pc thing is all about.

Microsoft and the OEM’s are pretending that the above theory is incorrect and are running round with this “no compromise” bullshit message. There is ALWAYS compromise, its just that MS never had a viable competitor to show the world that that was the case.

p.s. for the record, if they are a serious student, Just get a laptop and pay a bit more. Most syllabuses will require you to use some kind of software that only runs on a pc/mac. So its probably a wiser choice given the circumstances.

Why are people stuck on the form factor of the device rather than the task the device performs? That’s a classic mistake, and exactly why RIM/Nokia and a whole host of other companies are failing.

The concept of computing, file systems, saving, loading etc… are all like 40yrs old now! They have been due a rethink for a long time and Apple are the first to do it. It makes about as much sense as me thinking that I still need a manual choke to start my car!

There are so many things we do today (i.e driving, taking photos etc..) that are in actual fact far more complex internally yet we live with the “dumbed down” abstraction of there inner-workings. Why cant computers be the same?

To answer the post, their isnt much an ipad cant get done in some form or fashion. And for the price, it will outperform alot of “PC’s” (i.e playing films, not overheating, longer battery life, SSD drive etc..).
Its hard to say the average person NEEDS a full OS nowadays. I just dont see that that is the case.

To me it’s all about price. No ones talking numbers here but this is going to be a life or death game for MS and the OEMs. The obvious value for money proposition will be ultra book style x86 tablets that double up as real computers as well. To me they are the only thing that would stop joe public from buying an iPad.

But the only decent ultra books on x86 are at least £800 and up. I just don’t see how OEMs can produce a machine of iPad quality, battery life, retina display that is an x86 based tablet/hybrid for much cheaper then £800. You could say that that’s better value for money than an iPad being that it’s a full computer etc.. But you still have to fork out another 300 plus to get it. The iPad 2 is coming in at £329 or lower. The price just looks easier and more people can afford it as a gift or impulse purchase than a £600 plus laptop.

So winRT with ARM is the only real iPad competition. Yet it has no real consumer based software yet that could match what the iPad has. It won’t be much if at all cheaper (can OEMs really make iPad quality hardware much cheaper than Apple, Sammy or ASus haven’t been able to for the last 2yrs). So I really can’t see why WindowsRT will be a big hit at least in the short term.

Metro needs wow factor software in the same way that kinetic had for Xbox and just made everyone get interested right away. My guess is that winRT NEEDS x86 and not the the way around. I think MS are hoping that traditional x86 users demand metro apps over the next year or two and that will feed into demand for winRT.

The only problem is that unlike Apple, MS has given devs way too much choice in developing software in whatever framework they want rather than push them into Metro. As a developer, I could write a touch based app on x86 in wpf, c++, silverlight etc.. That will run in classic mode on x86 win 8 and every other version of windows, that’s a market of billions. Yet if I make a metro app only win8 early adopters will be able to run it. Why would I make a metro app then?

If MS were smart they should have released a metro app runner for win7. That would have meant mass adoption straight away. Sometimes I just MS have the brains and the ideas but they lack the execution of it all. They fall down on just simple straight forward marketing and some basic understanding of how the public see things.

The blatantl “KIRFINESS” of Samsung is stunning.. I am in awe. Never has one company “bitten” another company in such a blatant fashion, without a hint of embarrassment, without any shame whatsoever. Not even Microsoft in its J# hey day is as brazen as Samsung!

Its incredible to watch, almost, dare I say.. beautiful …

Apple have a similar outlook to how Nintendo operated in the late 80’s -90’s. Nintendo had third party apps but it wasnt a “free for all” like Microsofts Windows platform.
The idea is that consumers sees the company (i.e. Apple or Nintendo) as responsible for the whole service from top to bottom. When something goes wrong the first thing most people say is the brand is crap. Apple dont want that. MS is seen as crap by lots of people not because MS has done wrong things but that companies in the eco-system have made crap software against the best practise of MS. Yet Windows gets the bad reputation.

Apple are just seeking to protect their brand at all costs, and that means a loss of freedom. The reason people are up in arms is that a)Apple are bigger than NIntendo was. b) People were used to the idea of consoles as closed systems. However the principals are the same and no one complained then (or still complains that xbox + ps3 are not “open”). Funny that!

If they could guarantee some way of upgrading existing Blackberry Models to BB 10(Say at least a 2 year old machine), then RIM could have instant market share which would entice developers.
I’m not sure how people on the fence deciding on a new phone in October are going to choose RIM over iOS or Android. But people stuck in contracts would love to upgrade. Maybe if its a flash your ROM thing they could do it in store for people… There 10s of millions of BB phones sitting out there, it would be a wasted opportunity to not try and upgrade them.

But surely the accelerated drop in sales in low end phones came about BECAUSE Elop said the firm were basically ending Symbian support but didnt have anything (low end or smart phone) to go into the sales channel. So they caused it themselves by not keeping their mouths shut. Ultra bad management imho.

How as a consumer can you not care that the people involved in making the devices you use are profitable (i.e. the developers and the device makers themselves). Surely that means that you as consumer get better products and services/apps than you would if they were not doing well?

How on earth do you encourage devs (or any serious creative endevour) if the “creatives” cannot “eat” from it?