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hokua

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Touch Laptops 14 years ago

I do get the feeling that Atwood has become a MS marketing tool. I wonder how much free stuff he is getting for these posts.

App Stores are monopolistic on the platform they serve. If I want to build Mac Apps, I have to go through the App Store. Yes, I could make it a web app, but that would limit the types of apps I can create.

Before he listed the threats, I immediately thought "App stores" due to my recent debacle with Apple. Bam, there it was listed. Great article.

Similar to what Swivel was trying to do. Great idea, nice execution, but really how will you monetize this? There is no real market for consumer grade "intuitive" statistical software. While this will appeal to casual data analyzers, these users arnt ready to spend much money on tools. And those doing data analysis for a living prefer their power tools: R, SAS, Matlab, NumPy, etc.

What is definitely dead are Java Swing apps. I believe desktop BCC was a Swing app. Swing app installation and updates are a major pain.

Native apps on an App Store dont suffer from these issues, and their ability to integrate with special OS features make them more compelling vs a web app. Not so with Swing.

> I love the desktop, but that's really not where users are anymore.

Depends on the application and the targeted user. There will always be a demand for apps for the "truck" users. But you are right, the desktop is overkill for the vast majority of people only using computers for email and social media. If they are your target, good luck. For the majority of developers, prices for apps that target these users is a race to the bottom.

Totally. In fact, colleges should publish outcome stats -- what percent graduating in degree X got a job in their field within 9 months? And at what median starting salary? Dismal numbers would cause many students to reconsider that Psych degree, or at least realize they are really undertaking a 4 year vacation.

Elsevier = Evil 15 years ago

Im not sure why scientists are still publishing in Elsevier journals nowadays. Pre-internet, OK, but now I think journals should be following the model used by the Journal of Machine Learning Research, open on the internet.

I think Khan should be a teacher at least for a year. He would realize his stuff is a great for those students who already have access to good mentors (parents, teachers). But for those students with parents who don't value education and are stuck in bad schools, these students need a good teacher not video lectures. My point is that let's not pretend KA addresses the fundamental problem in Ed.