I know this is not related to Naval Aviation, or the military, but holy shit. The man (along with his partners Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne) who brought computers to the masses, is dead. I'm not an Apple/Mac fanboy in the least, but as a computer scientist, I realize what he has accomplished. Rest in peace good sir, and thank you for all you have done. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410753210811910.html
It doesn't matter if you're an Apple fanboy or a Mac Hater, it's hard to deny the genius that was Steve Jobs. He managed to pull off the impossible by polishing a turd, and then making people think that they had the shiniest piece of gold on the block. I don't think Apple will ever be quite the same. I'm interested to see how his passing will impact Apple's product development. Though I am an Apple fanboy myself, I think I appreciate his work with John Lasseter and Pixar more than anything. Truly a sad day.
Some of the things for which we have Apple to thank (Apple did none of them "first", they just did them right, in a way consumers could afford and understand, and mainstreamed them): The personal computer (Apple //) The mouse The graphical user interface (Macintosh) The 3.5" floppy The laser printer (LaserWriter) Desktop publishing Simple home/office networking (AppleTalk) Simple, local TCP stack (MacTCP -- this is what enabled internet networking in the early days) Wireless networking (AirPort -- before this there was NO usable 802.11 consumer networking anywhere) USB (an Intel technology, but the original iMac was the first computer to mainstream USB by eliminating the floppy and legacy ports, thus forcing its adoption and opening the peripheral market) FireWire (use for many years, and still used, as a chief high-speed bus for professional video) The death of the 3.5" floppy Portable music players (iP0d) Online music sales (iTunes -- #1 music store of any type) Online media sales (as much as people hate on Apple and name competitors, it's #1) Eliminating DRM from online music (this would not have happened without pressure from Apple) Touchscreen smartphones (iPhone) Multitouch (seen nowhere in any consumer device outside of online videos before the iPhone) Smartphones that can use data for anything and any app on any carrier (without the iPhone, there would be NO Android as we know it today) Tablets (tablets languished and floundered for many, many years before Apple realized that you can't shoehorn a desktop OS onto a tablet) The list goes on, and on, and on. No, Apple was not first and did not "invent" any of these. But Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular, had a unique insight into these technologies. Anyone in computer science or the general IT realm who doesn't have a vitriolic hatred for Apple openly acknowledges this. Apple isn't the only innovator, but it has been a massive one, largely thanks to Steve's vision. Thanks, Steve, for all you've done.
After watching the tributes to him, you see the original iMac and iPod and it's impressive to see how far we've come in such a short time.
I feel horrible for admitting I know this, but Scoopertino is the Apple version of the Onion. It's all satire. Nice try on the Troll, though.
So the wackos at Westboro Baptist Church plan to picket Steve Jobs funeral. According to them (Margie Phelps, daughter of the church founder), he "Gave God no glory and taught sin." Here's the link to the LA Times article. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nat...hurch-plans-to-picket-steve-jobs-funeral.html
The best part about how Margie Phelps announced it. . .she tweeted it from her iPhone. If that doesn't set off some irony alarms, I don't know what would.
Picked up a new iMac at the Columbia MD store today and there was a collection of post it notes and memorial stuff outside the store. What other CEO in the world can you recall where the employees and the customers mourn their death? This new iMac replaces a 7 year old G5 which will now replace a 13 year old G3 in my workshop which replaced a Mac Quadra 610 which replaced a Mac SE/30 I bought circa 1988 from Ballard Computer in Seattle.
Yeah, people can say what they want about Apple computers. . .but I'm using a MacBook Pro right now that I've had for five years, and it's still running like a champ. I've upgraded the RAM and added a new battery. It still runs as well as the day I bought it. In the mean time, I've gone through one HP laptop, and a couple of netbooks, and I just replaced a 1 year old ASUS motherboard on my windows desktop. I had the same good luck with my iBook G4 which finally decided to call it quits last year after almost 7 years of faithful service, including two long deployments to Iraq. Apple's products just seem to be better made than some other manufacturer's products. Maybe I just treat them better since I paid more for them? I don't know. As long as I have the ability to run Windows/Linux on my mac alongside Apple's OS, I'll keep buying their products.
My girlfirend ended her mourning by purchasing an iPhone 4S. Aside from my old Linux laptop, everything in the house is MAC. Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
6 years on my crackbook. Only thing that pisses me off is the case keeps cracking around it. 1st hard drive (and the screen) died when I dropped it; the replacement one lasted 5 years. I just put a new 750 gb hitachi drive into it and it cost me all of 50 bucks. Yea...this computer is wayyyy better than my dell.
I finally threw out my old "pizza box" Performa 476 (vintage 1994) last year. I just can't seem to part with the iMac G3 we bought my grandparents circa 1998. . . I think I'm gonna turn it into a Macquarium.
I used to balk at Macs...until I bought one. I had a basic Windows based laptop on my first expenses paid trip to Afghanistan that probably cost me twice what I paid for it in both frustration, and beer for the data guys/gals to unfuck it on a constant basis. After that, I decided that I'd had enough, and bought MacBook Pro #1. On my subsequent vacation to OEF, the MBP went with me, and was thrown out the back of a Shitter trying to bug out of an LZ, blown up in the back of an MATV during an IED strike, and was choked with about a pound of dust when I finally got around to cleaning it out. It's dented, scratched, and there's one pixel that seems to be permanently bright pink, but it never hiccuped once. My wife still uses it. And then there's this Richard Stahlman guy: "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing."
He's another old hippie who thinks all software should be free and open and people should be paid what they need not to their value so it's no surprise that he hates people who work hard and want to be recognized financially for that hard work. Bet he's marching on Wall Street this week.
I think that all software should be open source. Not free, but open source. Why? So adpet programmers/owners can add plug-ins, tweak the software for themselves, etc... I know it will never happen, but I can dream. Oh, no - I don't have to. I use all open source on my new convertible tablet...
There is certainly a place for FOSS and if people like it and use it then the proprietary software business will die but don't tell me I can't protect my IP. RedHat and Citrix are doing well at a bifurcated software model with Linux and Xen respectively but they also have secret sauce they had to the purchased products that adds value and they get to keep there work hidden imo.
^Nope. I tried. When I got home last year, I had bought another laptop, and my wife wanted to use the old one. I sent it to Apple to be repaired, and they called me about two days later. The AppleCare program does not, it seems, cover 'accidental impact damage'. I told them that it wasn't exactly accidental, seeing as how someone had been intentionally shooting at/trying to blow us up. That was an...interesting conversation with the customer service types, who clearly could not conceptualize WTF I was talking about. So much for AppleCare. More like, "Fuck you, we DON'T care," if you ask me. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) But I'll still probably buy another one when the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on goes kaput. I'm hooked.
Open source is cool and all, but theres something to be said for the "too may cooks in the kitchen". Tech has reached a point where it needs to become less complicated to become more prevalent. Apple figured this out. Hell, my four year old nephew can FaceTime me from an iPad. Thats the kind of next level shit that you only see in movies.
I'll see your 4yr old, and raise you one 2yr old offspring: My daughter plays angry birds. ETA: Hit post before I finished... Anyway, there's something strikingly intuitive about the iOS interface. I have yet to meet a child who couldn't figure it out in just a few minutes. And maybe that right there is one of Mr. Jobs' legacies.
I know this is a bit late, but just wanted to add this, but another heavy influence on the design of the Apple products was Dieter Rams, the German industrial designer, who was a huge influence on Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Johnathan Ive. If you look at Rams's designs for consumer products from decades ago, they look very similar to Apple products (although really the reverse is what holds).
