brownleej

"Off site" just means in physically different locations, so that some kind of local calamity wouldn't take out both, right? It seems like having it backed up on the PC satisfies that requirement to some extent, since the iPad and the PC are likely to be in different locations a lot of the time. It's not as good as a proper off-site backup, but it's better than nothing.

While reading this, I kept thinking that search results are ads too, at least as the author defines them. Google still managed to create a valuable proposition for advertisers, so why couldn't Twitter?

I'd say that efficient data servers are one of google's core competencies. Google does not benefit from having that commoditized.

Maybe the problem is that Nitro requires that an app have special permission to mark pages as executable. Apple may be comfortable giving this permission to Safari (or any if their apps, for that matter) but not comfortable giving it to third party apps. Along the same lines, it could be that apps saved to the home screen don't get Nitro because there is a special exemption low in the system for Safari, and they haven't yet worked out how to roll it out to the thin apps that are created when you save something to the home screen.

Along the same lines, how would this affect an email client that connects to a paid email service? Would be accessing content purchased outside the device?

My favorite quote like this is from Ed Colligan, who was at the time the CEO of Palm. When asked in late 2006 about the prospect of Apple entering the mobile phone market: "We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in."

As the site made clear, these are useful for developers that want a quick way to test that their site works in multiple older versions of IE.

He said "I'm not as stoked about it for myself", so I would wager that he does not like to be told what he can do and what he can like.

The same argument could be made about the iMac. It's possible that Apple would say roughly the same thing they would about the iMac: That their goal is to create one device that does everything, without having discrete components that people have to manage, or cables that they have to deal with. It's Apple's style.

His comment didn't say they have Macs, he said they have Apple products. The dominance of the iPod makes it more probable that everyone he knows has at least one Apple product. Also, you assume that market share is evenly distributed in all demographics. I think the preceding discussion was about Apple's market share among tech enthusiasts, which I have never seen solid numbers on, but which seems, anecdotally, to be higher.

You seem to be confusing "fair" with "equal". Treating everybody the same is not necessarily fair. It seems fair to me to have the most common characters be shortest. I don't have any evidence, but I would guess that Latin characters[1] are used most commonly.

[1] "Latin characters" is the proper term, not "American characters"

I think the article was at least trying to _imply_ that the ads indicate that we are in the midst of a bubble. Otherwise, why would they repeatedly bring up the Super Bowl ads from the last bubble?

I've been using this script all day, and it's been great. Thank you so much.

The entire point of trying to copy Groupon is that they want to diversify their revenue stream, rather than relying on a single cash cow. Defending the cash cow at the expense of future growth would be a short-sighted strategy.

I agree that they should devote more resources to fixing this problem, but I would rather those resources come from more established underperforming products, rather than new opportunities.

That sounds like Objective-C. One of the reasons I first liked working with Objective-C (before the iPhone made it trendy) was that it seemed like a much better-executed version of what C++ was aiming to be. It has optional garbage collection now, but only on the Mac. Its type system is even close to what Steve described in this article.

What I really want is something that can cause the icon to change when I get new chat messages. I frequently find myself unable to hear the soft incoming message sound, because I'm listening to something louder, and it would be nice to have a visual indicator.

Do most laptops come with middle click buttons? I can't remember ever seeing one that does, and I've used plenty of non-Apple laptops.

I notice that, once you get through the video, it shows a bunch of bars that you can hover over to see previews. I wonder how their tablet is going to handle that, since the concept of hovering doesn't exist without a mouse.

That bit of snark aside, this looks like a really impressive device. The cameras are a great addition, and if they put together some demos of video chatting, it could help them explain how they're better than an iPad in a way that really resonates with people, more than Flash and ports.

I thought that was the point of Orkut and Buzz.

I don't think that will be possible. From the video, it looks to me like the three-finger gesture is only for switching between apps, and having an app intercept it would be jarring. For instance, if you were swiping through your recent apps, and got to the browser, you wouldn't be able to move on using the same gesture, and it would be like hitting a brick wall. In fact, I imagine that individual apps won't even be able to capture these gestures, because the system will catch them first, and interpret them as app-switching.

There's one aspect of the iOS situation that doesn't apply on the Mac: Apple can't get away with it on the Mac, and they know it. It's much easier to open platforms that are closed than to close platforms that are open. If they locked down the Mac as much as iOS, you wouldn't even be able to install another operating system, which I think is fairly common among Mac users. Even if it's not common, they've used the ability to do it as a big part of their push for people switching.

Even if there are a lot of users that wouldn't object to the Mac being a closed platform, developers would. Developers want root access to their development machine. Apple doesn't want to lose developer support, because they know that it is the lifeblood of the platform.

I'd make the exact opposite prediction. I think it's more likely that iOS will allow sideloading than that Mac OS will forbid installation of software other than through the App Store. On the other hand, I can see both platforms moving toward a system where it is locked down by default, but it is trivial, and officially supported, for the user to allow installing software through unapproved sources.

I think some compilers give a warning on while(foo = read()) but not on while((foo = read())).

I think Apple considers the inability to close apps a feature, rather than a bug. The idea is that you should only be concerned with what app you want to be using at any particular moment, and let the system take care of which ones are still in the background.

I have been using multitasking heavily since I got iOS 4.0, and I don't understand the complaints you have. Could you be more specific about what causes you to need to close 10-20 apps at once, or the workflows that cause you to be troubled by the inability to explicitly terminate apps?

You can only claim that Facebook hurts our ability to connect freely if that ability is less in the presence of Facebook than in its absence. I don't see how this is the case. Facebook provides new, less free ways to communicate, but these do not destroy the old ways. You're right that you wouldn't tell the same things to your loved one if you were in public, but that is why those conversations will remain in private.

I'm honestly curious what they mean when they say "Google's customers". Are they referring to Google's _users_, or the much smaller group of people who pay for Google services?

This isn't just snark. I think that a corporation's responsibilities to its customers are different than the ones it has to its users, and its relationship to its customers should naturally be different than its relationship to its users. I wonder to what extent this distinction exists in Google's culture.

[Edited to fix an error in diction]

The article is advocating more government intervention in the economy, which is generally associated with left-wing political thought. I think that accusing this article of being left-wing is intellectually sound, though the GP's comment, and particularly the tone, did little to advance the conversation.

In fact, my central problem with this article was that ignored the fact that markets in the United States are generally less well-regulated than those in other industrialized nations. Many of the differences the author brings up can be traced back to that. The author clearly would like that changed, but it's a much bigger argument than the one the author is making. It can't be taken for granted that just because these regulations are desirable, and would make things better, then they should be enacted. The Overton window on government intervention in the economy in the US is different than in other industrialized nations, and that needed to be addressed in the author's argument.

I can think of at least one thing. When you are developing a web app, you don't have to worry about people using out-of-date versions of your app. On the flip side, when you use a web app, upgrades tend to be mandatory.

No, it is most certainly not. In most, if not all, democracies, you have the right to restrict the freedoms of others through contract. For instance, if you want to buy a piece of furniture from me, I can impose conditions on how you use it. This is not common practice, because it isn't feasible to enforce and most people selling furniture don't care. However, it wouldn't be a violation of your human rights. Democracies allow us to limit the freedom of others as a condition of them engaging in commerce with us. No human rights are violated.

You put the word "stolen" in quotes. Whom are you quoting? The post to which you replied did not say that Google had stolen the ideas, it said that Google had copied the ideas.

I see void being passed as a parameter list to main in a lot of examples. All of the things I've read suggest that the only difference between having a void parameter list and an empty parameter list is in function declarations, and that the two are equivalent in function definitions. Why is it used so frequently in the main function definition, if it serves no purpose?