corporalagumbo

I think national governments are not going to feel like rushing to the aid of virtual currencies - from my understanding they have the potential to eradicate tax bases.

This looks like that Firefox Junior prototype that popped up a while ago. Nice to see thumb-centered controls spreading on tablets.

Awesome novel idea.

I'm not talking about UI in general, I'm talking about taste in UI - style and general good looks. I don't know how everyone else feels on this, but for me Apple has stuck far too long to simply ugly styling on both iOS and OS X to convince me that attractive UI is a part of company culture. Some of Google's efforts (Now, Maps) and where Microsoft is heading (e.g. it's new websites, Outlook, Windows 8.1) have all impressed me much more. I think Apple is clearly trying to retrofit company culture here.

But I wouldn't say Apple "reeks" of insecurity... We don't really have any knowledge about how much they have up their sleeves, and they've had a long time over the last half-decade to lay foundations for future maneuvers. Besides, if they can convince the everyman that they thought up modern design all by themselves, they could gain a massive advantage here.

I think it's interesting, but for me one of Apple's weakest points as a company is its taste in software UI. iOS 7 strikes me as catch-up - Apple is late to a party started by Google and Microsoft, and is trying hard to pretend its been there all along - hard to recognise the hint of insecurity behind their ever-slick advertising, but it's there I think. It's a new area for the company, and a good reminder that Apple has its vulnerabilities. It will be interesting to see how things play out as the design language of the big three (A, G, & M) equalises, norms emerge, and the competition begins to really heat up.

Okay, I'd say you're both off here. I think you're right that Bsullivan should take Google more seriously - I think he's going to have to eat his hat with the way Google is heading. But you shouldn't dismiss Mercedes - the German car companies are very smart, and have the potential to be top players over the coming decades.

Wow... what are you even doing on this site? What's it like hating everything?

Siri hasn't gone anywhere and it's still being improved. There's no mention of it anywhere? So what, there's many other previous headline features they're not highlighting.

I'm not implying that Apple can't make mistakes - it's clear they can with Maps and Siri - but a) it would be extremely uncharitable to judge them on version 1.0 of Maps and Siri, both ridiculously complex features, and most importantly b) their overall product strategy is still the best in the business. Doesn't matter how much people kick and scream about the newest Apple mistake - does anyone even remember Antennagate? Tech people cling to these memories, but normal people forgive and forget.

I think this is slightly apologetic thinking. Apple didn't start off with a complete ecosystem of obeisant suppliers, in-house hardware, software, and retail stores - they built up their empire piece by piece, starting I suppose from the late-90s. And we still don't know their master-plan. The space has been open for any other company to decide to compete on that level. Lenovo could have decided to do that. Any other company could have decided to rise up and play the long road too. It was not impossible to think like this in 2005.

Instead Apple's competition has fallen over themselves to try and chase every short-term opportunity, leading to constant reinvention, total lack of focus, and squandered potential. Frankly, it's embarrassing - you would think that enough people outside of Apple recognise the scale of the challenge Apple poses and decide to respond. Instead these companies come off looking like cheap idiots.

Apple marketing sounds so hi-tech, so unique

That's exactly the point. It doesn't matter whether it's really hi-tech or unique or not. It's Apple's ability to present these things in a way which just makes you salivate that matters. This is a point which seems so hard for tech people to understand... it doesn't matter if you think people should see through Apple's claims, the spoils go to Apple because they know, as seemingly no other company on earth does, how to entrance people. A few key features, lavish, presentation, a feeling of luxury... that's what builds anticipation and excitement. Apple's closest equivalent are food companies, who have mastered the dramatic, salivatory description of products.

It's all about execution. When Android manufacturers make these "innovations," by and large they're sloppily implemented and poorly communicated. They're generally part of dozens of features that companies like Samsung try to boast about - so the net result is that consumers don't know what to pay attention to, they aren't inspired to feel lust for the product or any of its particular features, and so the product becomes just one more indistinct phone on the scrapheap.

Whereas Apple focuses on a few core features to improve on and communicate with each phone, and they're overwhelmingly cautious - like only integrating Touch ID with a few spots of the phone at first. But they nail the initial execution, and the communication. So their phones are still the absolute centre of the market. And no other company can inspire product lust to the degree they can.

Yes, discipline is a great word for it. Against a sea of nay-sayers and critics they keep their composure and stay focused on the long-term. The result is that their competitors blow their opportunities by rushing, and squander any stature. Apple remains in total control of the industry.

I find Apple so incredibly impressive. They target a few key features with every release, absolutely nail those features, and sell the new products perfectly. Their product line-ups and messages are constantly evolving, but slowly, determinedly. And so they achieve things no other company seems capable of - like an unlocking mechanism that is going to be market-defining. Why? Because when the other companies become jealous and try and come up with their own versions, they'll rush and release something half-baked, and out of the confusion only Apple's solution will speak to consumers. Apple is so far ahead of the competition it's ridiculous - maybe Google can compete in the medium-term, I'm not sure. Apple's confidence and poise is awe-inspiring.

The number take-away from this for me is wow, Apple wields an awesome power. They move to change design conventions, and boom! - a worldwide ecosystem of designers and developers scramble to retrofit every aspect of their complex applications to match the changes. Microsoft could only dream of having that power. I've been on Windows Phone for over a year now and at this point in time they seem years away from even having anything resembling this sort of following. The difference of course is that one phone feels exciting and dynamic to own, and the other feels completely and utterly barren.

If it was me, it'd be a toss-up between a combination of: eReader, tablet, and a Nexus 4. Items to increase my learning efficiency (eReader/tablet) and productivity (Nexus 4).

And I would wait til October for the new Paperwhite and probably the new Kobo Arc.

Also I would want to put about 10-20% away into some sort of investment fund unless there were some items that offered a serious short-term productivity increase the money could rather go to. Just a general rule.

Thanks, that clears it up. I suppose we can't really complain about poor proofing, seeing as they are giving away this content for free.

Sitting near the front of the auditorium were the parents of a freshman — an investment manager from Bronxville, N.Y., and his wife. The father went to Dartmouth, and when their son announced that he was applying for early decision at Wake Forest, his father asked, “Are you sure you couldn’t do better?” Under the spell of Chan’s reassuring message on finding a career, he turned to his wife and looked at her intently. “This,” he told her, “is the greatest school.”

Wait, what?

Don't dismiss the power of a generally constructive, optimistic culture.

I see where you're coming from. Most young people around the world don't really engage with creative learning, the fog of social games obscures the power and possibilities of education I guess. Your best shot is if you have an amazing teacher, but most teachers are products of the same system, and working with limited resources to boot. The brilliant are much more likely to wind up as professors, which I suppose could be why most people who have these later epiphanies tend to have them around college.

That said, this article is really a testament to the incredible potential of online education. A link was forged between a global centre of thought and a young boy in a far-flung, isolated and poor country. That's pretty awesome when you think about it, and hopefully something that will happen more and more as things get better!

Anyway, I hope you don't let stuff like this get you down. It's never too late in life to find your path.

Nobody is "selecting." His point is that if it is highly advantageous to "look at and manipulate things on screens," within the population genes that makes individuals better-adapted for this behaviour will be favourable/selected for. It's just Biology 101.

Interesting, I've come across this article before, but now owing to events in my life my perspective on it is completely different.

Up until 2011 I was basically a upper-middle grade computer user. I owned a Macbook and used the trackpad heavily. The responsive gestures and seamless software experience were wonderful compared to Windows Vista. I knew a few keyboard shortcuts, and I'd jigged up a program so I could move between tabs on Firefox with finger swipes (among a few other gesture tricks) which I thought was very clever, but my computer skills didn't go much further - compared to the average user I was skilled though.

Then I injured my hand, and ever since I haven't been able to use a trackpad without my hand stiffening up and getting sore, which basically killed the entire experience. For a while I struggled along with my phone and iPad, until I wound up with some sort of nerve damage in my thumbs from a combination of rapid tapping on hard glass and haptic buzzing on my phone's softkeys. Nasty. Other ergonomic problems have mixed in with that - it amazes me that I could use desktop computers so effortlessly when I was a kid, now I get a stiff neck and my arms hurt from resting on the desk (working on getting a better desk...)

It's been an interesting experience, if at times extremely frustrating (as my appetite to consume information has only grown all throughout despite my deteriorating ability to use the most common computing forms.) Now I look around me and see what looks like a looming ergonomic disaster. I cringe now when I see people tapping away on hard, flat glass surfaces (not to mention all the hunched backs and pitched necks from laptop use - pretty breathtaking once you start looking for it). I wonder how widespread the ergonomic problems from hard/flat surface interactions are - seems like the kind of thing that could be simmering away behind the scenes (given that the worse you have this sort of problem, the harder it gets to remain socially active online, so it effectively silences you.) It seems like a bit of a perfect storm - there's just such a huge gap between the wider public and the media that serves them on the one hand, and people like HN users who actually know and are passionate about computers and usability on the other.

Me, I've been using Vim extensions and trying to make my laptop more keyboard-centric. Until eye-tracking and neural interfaces become available, the keyboard cannot be beaten for direct brain-to-action speed and control. My dream would be a computer environment that combines the beauty of modern touch and web interfaces with a unified universal modal keyboard control system, which reached into the browser. It would be nice if there was some standardisation of keyboard access for websites as well - Vim extensions are nice but limited, hard to fly with something that can't handle a Youtube video...

Anyway. I like to point out the difference between Apple's Magic Mouse and an ergonomic tool like the Handshoemouse. One looks beautiful but is a piece of shit interaction wise. The other looks bizarre but is actually built for a human hand. Unfortunately we're living in a world where the money is in serving the masses, people who for the most part will never understand how fast and powerful computers could be if they are moulded to suit our bodies, and so who think Apple products are perfect. Hopefully though as more people come up on these mass-market products and develop a taste for computing the demand will start to build for a higher grade of computer tools.

Looks like the tide is really turning on legalisation - more and more political rats are turning over and claiming they have always been in favour of legalisation. Tacky, but still a sign of progress.

fondleslabs

Ugh, I HATE this word. Why do people use it? To make themselves feel clever and superior?

It's interesting to see the great lengths the TC writer goes to to justify (primarily to himself, it seems) this idea as socially valid. I would have thought the efficiency benefits of passing off home labour to specialised businesses would have been patently obvious, especially to a technology journalist. Do we really still stigmatise people as being "lazy" just for wanting to focus on their specialisation?

I also notice a similar prejudice among commenters here. Come on people, this is basic economics.

How does this relate to text on the internet? Surely most text fed into big data systems is digital, so representation is a non-issue. If this is only to prevent optical-character recognition, can someone explain to me scenarios where such a typeface would be useful? For protest signs maybe?

Well, you might be right about the prisoner to compromises thing. I'd like to know what a bolder Microsoft would do in your opinion.

Anyway, the key point is, as you say, they are (or seem to be) getting better. That is why I am optimistic.

On the contrary. If I had argued that consumers should like Windows 8, then your critique would be valid. However I never once claimed that consumers should like it. In fact, in multiple posts I've happily agreed that consumers mostly shouldn't, as it simply does not offer compelling benefits over 7 or other competing OSes.

What I am arguing instead (which you seem to have missed) is that consumer distaste for Windows 8 is an incredibly poor measure for the long-term rationality of Microsoft's business and product strategy. Because consumers are short-sighted and only care about whether a product is good today, not whether it is a transitional release laying the foundation to a competitive 201X ecosystem blah blah blah.

It was handled clumsily because the Windows team had to move fast and break things. Windows 8 has a lot of pretty important under the hood changes. And it's no trivial feat to try and develop and implement a future-proof new UI style that can be layered over the old system. Anyway, this comparison is apples to oranges: Microsoft's top level long-term strategic vision compared to the Windows' team's short-term execution.

You might argue that the Windows team dropped the ball and didn't get enough right with this release. I would agree that they didn't get everything right, but long term I see the specific success of Windows 8 being of little consequence to the company - simply because future releases will continue to build on every aspect of Windows 8, as, out of the current Cambrian soup of a halfway OS, confused consumers and eclectic OEM devices, a new consensus about how computers should work is forged.

No, you're completely mistaken sorry.

You're arguing against a strawman, not me. Try reading my other comments in this thread.