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I really shouldn't have said "UNIX way". It really is more a "LISP way" I guess. LISP predates UNIX. My point was just that it's an "interface" that's more in line with how computers actually work.

The other thing to consider is that audio processing is resource intensive. Many times you need to run many things at once and performance suffers.

Guess what else is resource intensive? Graphics. So everytime you have gratuitous graphics (e.g. a guitar plug-in that has one or two controls but goes to ridiculous lengths to reproduce a graphical image of, say, a guitar pedal), it takes away some of your resources.

I think you're right though. The interface is aimed at people who are used to looking at gear. That is the intended audience. They wanted to sell to the same people who were buying physical gear. Unfortunately it alienates anyone who understands how to actually use a computer beyond pointing and clicking or keyboard shortcuts.

I mentioned it in another comment in this thread, but if you want to see how things could be done in a "UNIX way", check out snd from the guys at Stanford CCRMA. It has a long history, longer than Ableton, probably as old as Sound Designer, the precursor to Pro Tools, though I'd have to check the dates. These guys clearly "get it". This is how computers and audio should intersect.

But, functionally, it's not a substitute for MOTU, Ableton or Digidesign, unfortunately.

It's not just Reason and Rebirth. Everyone has been following this type of design for over a decade. Eventually I just gave up. Even the best software in the recording industry is hopelessly designed to resemble a physical piece of gear and to be clicked with a mouse. It is mind-numbingly stupid.

At one point Digidesign had this lower end product called a 001. ProTools is of course an image of a recording console on the screen. On their second iteration of this product, the 002 I think it was, they released an actual pseudo-console with some tactile knobs. For a moment I thought maybe they were getting a clue. But I don't think things have changed much. Recording engineers are still pointing and clicking. It is close to impossible to automate. (Of course they think they are automating, but they haven't got any idea what true automation really is.)

Either no one at these companies understands how to use a command line and parsed configuration files or, less likely, they do know but they do not believe their customers could ever learn.

I concluded I am better off using snd(1) than waiting for the recording industry to figure out how computers work (i.e. to become proficient in the ways of UNIX). At least the guys in the lab at Stanford have got it right. You can even use Scheme.

(I've ended up with +2 karma despite being sandbagged! =)

I would have to do some research to be of any use to you with respect to lappies over $2K. My focus is on ARM development boards and embedded systems. I am looking at the opposite end of the spectrum: low-power, highly portable, cheap computing. For the common man and woman. Alas, the forbidden fruit keeps popping up at this end of the stick too. Cupertino is no longer content to just sell high powered high-priced development machines. It's not the same company as when I bought my first Mac.

I can't wait to see the first low-power Apple ARM devices where they will attempt to sell a $20 computer, locked down like Fort Knox, for several hundred bucks. What new gimmicks will they use to maintain the reality distortion field? It should be most entertaining.

Clearly you are not of the Apple cult, just a guy looking for a high-end laptop. My apologies for mistaking you for a fanboy.

(I know it's not you. You seem like a cool guy. But looks I've gotten under someone's skin, lol. Sorry, whoever you are!)

It really depends on what you want to do with the computer. There's no shortage of forum debates on the merits of one computer over another without any mention of the intended use. That's pretty silly when you think about it.

Can't you cover up that logo with a sticker? (Taking a tip from the movie studios in the businessweek article.)

I don't think you are buying the MBP just for the specs though, are you? I mean, the enclosure, Cocoa graphics layer, all that ease-of-use must factors, right?

If you are saying MBP specs really are the best for a laptop in that price range, then you have made me curious.

My solution to the hoop-jumping for development would be to boot another OS, that already has a compiler installed, from USB. But I'm not even sure that would work. I'm not writing stuff in Java or ObjectiveC. I just want a working clang/gcc.

Some internet VC, I can't remember who, was answering some interview questions from a journalist recently and made a comment to the effect that, with respect to financing startups, capital is too concentrated. (Sort of like the returns from startups are so concentrated in only a few.) 100 million in one project instead of 10 million in 10 projects, something like that. If it were somehow possible to achieve, maybe the process of spreading out venture capital that he alluded to would involve some of it going to "unlikely recipients". Black swans. Non-technical founders with weak personalities. Or something even more unusual.

It might not yield any "big winners" (then again it might) but it would in either case produce evidence that we could use to try to disprove certain theories.

"highly profitable or highly entertaning to watch..."

or highly informative

No. Apple has always been popular with intelligent people (whether they are technical or not) and it has always been the best choice for certain uses.

But things are changing. First they started selling mp3 players. Then phones. Now Etch-A-Sketches. And now we have CS PhD's getting defensive about their choice to use Apple computers. New types of users. New focus.

Xcode makes for "the best coding machines"?

You mean that's better than a machine that comes with a compiler already installed and ready to go?

With no certificates? And No hoop-jumping?

How is it better?

And how has that worked out for you?

Have you ever experimented with an opposing strategy? (Funding "non-technical" founders with "weak" personalities.)

Probably not, lest you would risk your reputation. Hence, you might not have evidence to show that this approach would not yield suffcient numbers of "big winners" to justify the investments. For example, if someone sugested the hypothesis that from a set of a given size of non-technical founders with weak personalities, some "big winners" will emerge, could you disprove that? If you wanted to be scientific, you would have to test it, repeatedly.

From my intepretation, I think one of the points in the pg essay is that human "intuition" will only take you so far toward the "big rewards". By its very nature it steers us away from the counterintuitive and protects us from taking what others would perceive as unreasonable risks. It will stop you from adopting a strategy that no one else is using that might get you labelled as foolish (but, as history shows us time and again, might actually yield an enormous reward).

In hindsight we'll continue to see that some of the biggest winners would have been viewed as unreasonable risks by many VC. Foresight won't allow us that vision. So-called intuition will stop you from investing in a "big winner". Hard to accept, but true.

"Turns out, just having the best product..."

This is why Apple gets a bad rap in the forums. Who would say that that about their computer (except a Linux weenie)? The reality is these are cheap electronics in a hermetically sealed but stylish enclosure that use publicly available OS configured for dummies. So simple is the design they can be used by lower primates.

I like Apple hardware, it continues to look good after all these years, but comments "Turns out, having the best product..." make me like it a lot less. Apple is attracting some brainless users and will be catering to them more and more. This is not good.

Maybe this userbase explains the product placements. Hollywood wants to convey a sense that a character is not the type of person that would know anything about computers, hence she uses Apple products.

Touche.

And thanks for the links.

"their marketing budget is extremely low compared to others in the same industry"

Any pointers to the figures?

Apple's marketing seems unlike any other hardware manufacturer I can think of. But maybe that's just my perception. When you're watching a film and the camera makes a special pan around a laptop to show the Apple logo, it's hard not to think "This hardware company really puts a lot of effort into marketing. This is not your ordinary hardware company." I have seen Dell do this sort of product placement on occasion, but nobody seems to do it to the extent Apple does.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. To discount the amount of Apple marketing and its effects as "standard for the industry" or even below standard seems a little like willful blindness.

Cringely is at his most prophetic in the comments when he says: If Facebook drops much lower Microsoft might make a play.

Try to list all the reasons Microsoft should not buy Facebook.

Try to list all the reasons Facebook would resist acquisition by Microsoft.

But you have to convey the sense that annual profits of one million is not your idea of "success". Because if that is your idea of success, you will not likely be the "big winner" that YC is looking for.

Put an evil twinkle in your eye and make internet VC think you want to rule the world and will lie, cheat and steal to achieve this, when truly you're just an honest kid with good morals who'd be happy living a modest but financially secure lifestyle.

Founder 1 Internet VC 0

This is exactly how many VC work. They will only fund projects that involve people they know. Those people are almost always ones who have a history of past success. It's simply a way to manage risk with minimised effort.

Deal with people you already know.

If the project turns out to be a dud, the past history of success of the people involved negates any arguments that it was not the right decision to fund it. No one is going to question that the people involved were not "winners". They had proven that already; that's why the project received funding: because those particular people were involved with it.

To use an oft regurgitated title: "No one ever got fired for funding a project that involved [insert so-called born winner name here]"

Just for fun: How about Andrew Mason, the guy behind Groupon. How far do you think he would have gotten by taking the YC route? Is he a "born winner"? Groupon made some investors very happy.

One might wonder why no one can tell us who the "born winners" are until after they've had some "victories".