Wonderful Leopard

Computers themselves are not really "necessary." But they are useful, and dashboard contains very useful functionality.

You are speaking of a very specialized use, in an environment where the users are not sufficiently disciplined to stay on task and would be distracted by a few interesting widgets.

 

Security by obscurity as some would say. The hackers tend to go after the ~90% portion of the OS market.

 

I would think that the random memory addressing scheme of Leopard would incentivize a hacker to try territory that is not as challenging - as you point out, they can get much greater return on their efforts by targeting the Windows community.

 

Maybe, but the same mechanism (ASLR) is also present in Vista for almost a year now. The technique itself is more than 5 years old.

The ideal target for hackers are the large amount of PC's that are running outdated bad OS'es, such as Windows Me.

Apple software is not more bullet proof than anything else if hackers are really after it. Apple's iPhone software was cracked in a few months, because there was a big incentive. Ironically, this happened by exploiting a buffer overrun (in the TIFF image reading library).
Whether you like it or not, iMacs are hardly relevant on a large scale these days, and hence an uninteresting target for attacks. iPhones are much more relevant, and the result was a hack in a few months.

 

I do spend all day as a software engineer. Granted, that's a lot different than an IT person, but I know enough about PCs that when I get home, I just want a computer that does what I need it to, without worry.

What I need is something to browse the internet; check e-mail; play some Flash and other games (my son's Nintendo is better suited for the fancy action games); read PDFs and Excel spreadsheets; work on my websites; track my genealogy information; import pictures on USB, manage them (iPhotos) and edit them; import video, edit them and burn DVDs. You pay a little more upfront for the priviledge of having everything working smoothly for tasks like these.

But Windows-based PCs have caught up significantly in several areas. Oddly, back when there was a bigger difference is when Mac sales were faltering. It does seem the consumer design element ("looks cool") does play a big part, as does exposure due to iTunes. Still, I like to be part of the forefront of UI technology, not lagging.

If this is because of their market share, you could say the Prius is also hardly relevant. Both are small but growing, and both influence ideas and discussion well beyond their actual sales.

To your point that some of the technology is not new, I would say very little technology is new. iChat, or AIM, or whatever, is basically the same as Unix 'talk', which I used quite a bit back in the mid-80's. Newsgroups were popular then, basically the same as chat rooms today. Amiga popularized video editing with video toast in the late 80's. I used the equivalent of Spaces, again in Unix back in '96, and I'm sure it wasn't new then. But it's all about how the technology is packaged that's important.

 

+1. I have a team of software engineers at the office. The last thing I want to do when I come home is to bring the office home with me.

 

In fact, the influence Apple has on the evolution of computers is fading. Their (indirect) innovative influence was much bigger say 10 years ago, in the days of MacOS. From a hardware aspect, Apple has already totally lost their ground, and are now almost entirely dependent on PC technology. From a software perspective, the fact that they abandoned MaxOS and now just sell a polished version of unix is simply a sign of defeat. Sales are soaring indeed, but Apple has lost its edge as a innovative, quirky computer manufacturer that brought us so many bright novelties. Today, they make excellent, user friendly consumer computers with superior design. But they don't built on the road anymore like they used to do.

In the mean time, they lost a few professional markets that were traditionally Apple strongholds. The fact that Adobe doesn't even bother making an OSX version of FrameMaker is a clear example.

Knowing how many people on this forum think about Apple, I will probably be flamed for this statement. But it's true nevertheless. Fortunately, the open source movement has taken over the role as challenger #1 of Microsoft.

 

There is a story about Steve Jobs when he was at NeXT. He had a sign framed and mounted on one of the walls of his office. The sign had words to the effect of Its the Software Stupid. Continuing to try to develop hardware when Apple's market is clearly about consumer-focused products that use software as the primary value addition would have been a plan to fail. Moving to the Intel architecture was inevitable given the production volumes involved. In the mean time, by focusing on the software, Jobs has built a very valuable brand (iTunes has something like 80% of the digital media market).

Most of the real innovation in the computer market has already occurred. Jobs was wise to move on. MS has tacitly admitted the same thing - most of their new investment is not in the computer market, but in other areas (game consoles, search engines and the like). MS will continue to put $ into evolving the computer market, but it won't be the kind of investment as a percentage of revenues that occurred during the software wars. (And, MS will be investing primarily in software as well.) Afterall, MS is a monopolist.

 

Ironically, NeXT failed big time because of the hardware (that was too expensive). But everybody has the right to make a mistake...

Apple is doing well indeed. They made good business decisions. But that was not my point. My point was that the influence and importance of Apple computers is fading. If you re-read my post, you can convince yourself that this is what I'm saying. Apple itself has admitted this implicitely by removing that word from their brand.

Whew, that's a dangerous statement to make. It reminds me a bit of a similar statement a physicist made at the end of the 19th century: that most of the physics was known, and that the remaining work was correcting some digits past the decimal sign. A few years later came relativity theory and quantum mechanics...
In fact, the whole computer model is strongly evolving these days. The web-based revolution is still ongoing, and nobody knows where this will lead us to. And it's illustrative that Apple has had a very limited contribution to that revolution. It has contributed even less than MS.

I have to admit that I am not following you here. First, unlike Apple, MS is a software company, so why wouldn't they invest in software? Also, to me, search engines are part of the "computer market" (the software side). And Google has proven that there is still a huge amount of money to be made here. In a few years, they have totally eclipsed Apple. Apple or MS could both have done what Google did. But they didn't.

 

Thats actually pretty funny... Having gotten my Computer Engineering degree several years ago (not to mention programming since elementary school), i've found that most "computer professionals" want something that just works. Yes, i have the ability to poke around in Window's innards to fix and tweak things every month or so, but do i want to waste my time doing that? or would i rather have a platform that just works, and spend my time doing what i enjoy, like developing something new?

I used to have only PC's, and maintenance of those machines did take up a non-trivial amount of time. I got a MacBook a year ago, and since then i've spent more time thinking about how i don't have to do any maintenance than actually doing maintenance.

 

I can second that. And that's the main reason why I have respect for the MS platfrom: delevoping software for that platform just works. I can take code (containing GUI and API calls) that I wrote 12 years ago, and it still just works under NT4, 2000, XP and Vista, running native. I can refactor that code and recompile it using the latest compiler. No porting, no compatibility issues. It just works.

 

I think where this discussion may be getting tripped up is over the term 'computer'. To me, computer is more of the hardware end. I really don't see much order of magnitude innovation in the hardware side. Is there going to be some completely new paradigm for moving the pointer around the screen (or, completely replace the pointer with thoughts (e.g. just think what you want the computer to do))? I tend to doubt that. You will continue to see processing improvement (Moore's law is alive and well), but the out-of-the box innovation that drove the market in the early years has probably already happened. All you can do is cite an example from the evolution of physics to argue your point. I might be wrong. But I tend to doubt it.

All of the examples you have cited to make your point about innovation in the industry are for software. Remember the sign on Steve Jobs' office wall - Its the Software, Stupid.

 

While the code might run on the range of platforms from NT to Vista, the overhead to keep the latest and greatest edition of MS O/S running amid all of the malware is non-trivial. Leopard (and I guess all of the editions of OSX (I have experience with 10.4 forward, so I am something of a newcomer) before Leopard) just works. It is almost like an appliance - you plug it in and it just works. I am reminded of that circumstance every time I start up my XP Pro notebook - it takes a minimum of 5 minutes to finish checking for updates to the virus and spam signature files; if there are program updates to the AV and AS software, even more time gets chewed up.

 

My only question would be, why haven't you updated that code in the past 12 years? Why do you need your OS to be backward compatible for that long? I don't know about you, but code i wrote even 5 years ago has either been updated since then, or obsoleted (usually with sourceforge projects that end up doing exactly what i was doing, and are maintained by someone else, freeing up my time to work on new projects).

Yes, OS's should be backwards compatible, to an extent. Code written for XP should work on Vista, code written for Tiger should work on Leopard. And for the most part they do - there are always a few exceptions to the rule. But consider this: the exceptions for Leopard are big, cutting edge applications. The exceptions for Vista are device drivers, practically all of them. I know which of those two options i prefer...


But please tell me, what code that you wrote 12 years ago do you still use today?

 

OK, my mistake, perhaps. I have never seen computer hardware and software independent from each other. Hardware by itself is pretty meaningless to me. But, if this your perspective, then the innovativeness of Apple as a "computer" company is certainly over and dead. Also, I don't understand then why you then even mentioned MS in your earlier post. They always have been a software company.

I honestly don't know what the future will bring. But there is plenty of movement here as well if you know where to look. Even a "small" recent hardware innovation as an USB memory key has had a tremendous impact. Another, similar example is Wifi, WiMax and rapid UMTS data transfers such as HSDPA. This even has the potential the change our entire way of being online and looking at the web as a source of information, if blanket coverage starts to take off seriously. Constant wireless connectivity of all kinds of (hybrid) computer devices is something that even might reshape lots of aspects of our society (e.g. traffic)

Also, the form factor is changing. Pocket computers (smartphone-like devices) will certainly take over more and more of the roles of traditional desktops and laptops. Despite the iPhone hype, Apple is following here and not leading right now. Input devices will certainly change. Large (foldable?) touch screens may trigger a new way of interacting with computers.

Personally, I also believe that (stereoscopic) 3D will also find it's way to consumer computers big time, first for games and entertainment, and later as new eye candy for the OS.

These are just a few examples that come to my mind right now. Believe me, there is a lot of exciting things going on on the hardware front, and nobody knows where this will bring us to. I could also talk about quantum computers, but thats a bit more remote...

Yes. As I said, I have never seen hardware and software independent from each other. Both are two necessary components that are necessary to make what I call a "computer". Something that can do tasks. A bit like how an engine, transmission etc... all make up a car that can get you somewhere.

 

What is the XBOX?

But without software, it would all be a neat little innovation in technology. Software creates the compelling value proposition.... Not to sound like a broken record but... Its the Software, Stupid....

But what makes it all come together is an intangible expression of human intellect. Every bit that is in the Prius existed separately. It was a flash of human intellect that connected the dots and added software that enabled a hybrid car to become a reality. That is the kind of out-of-the-box innovation that I was referring to in my earlier post.

 

The only reason I can imagine why you even ask that question, is that you have never been involved in a really big, long term software project. I have a product that consists of millions of lines of code, and that is commercially available for >10 years. I keep on making new features, adding new code. But 95% of the code that was written initialy (houndreds of thousands of lines of code) remain simply untouched. Why would they even need to be changed? That is good code that does useful things perfectly well.
And this is how it goes with the majority of the big software applications in the industry. Mine is of course tiny if you compare it to what is out there. Perhaps you have no idea what amount of very old code is supporting our economy...

I'm not following you here. What are you trying to say? I don't care about device drivers. That's the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers to stay on top of things. But I do care about useful applications on my computer. All I know is that the API changes that Apple has enforced to the developers community have had it's negative impact. One example: Adobe doesn't even bother anymore porting it's excellent FrameMaker application to OSX. And that's a shame, because it's a unique piece of software.
From a software developer's point of view, the PC/Windows platform is very attractive because of it's long-term API stability (and other reasons).

 

Actually, from everything i've read Apple really is leading with the iPhone. The user interface is something truly cutting edge that was developed before anyone else. But whats more telling is possibly what Apple is doing to the cellular industry. They're breaking it open. For the first time (at least in the US market) the carriers aren't god. Apple put the carriers in a position where they actually have to give the people what they want. When i was with Verizon, i could get the same phones as on some other carriers - the only difference was the software feature set on the phones - generally Verizon cut that way back.

While Apple did initially come out with a locked phone, they did provide a route for people to write applications (even if they were just web apps). And in February, they're coming out with a true SDK for the iPhone. They've listened to their customers, and rolled out improvements designed to meet their desires. No cellular company has really done this in the past.


Innovation isn't always about developing a new gadget that changes the world. It's about breaking down barriers to change. Apple did that with the computer, launching the industry into people's homes. Apple did that with the MP3 player, launching an integrated system that forced the record companies to take a backseat. Now they're doing that with the phone, delivering what the customers want, not what the cell carrier wants. Other handset makers have many of the specs defined by the carrier for them. Not Apple. The iPhone may only be evolutionary, and not revolutionary. But the business model behind it will help to spawn a whole new generation of innovation in the cellular market.

 

A piece of hardware. Where is it written that a software company isn't allowed to have a hardware branch? I am sure that you are intelligent enough to understand that, when I say that MicroSOFT is a software company, I mean that creating and selling software is their central business model.

Now you got me completely confused. You were the one that was making the separation between computer hardware and computer software, remember? If I give you some examples of recent and coming software innovations, you say "that are not computer innovations because computers are hardware". If I then give you some examples of recent and coming hardware innovations, you say "but they are nothing without software". What are you trying to say? All I can say is that there is plenty going on with computers, both hardware and software (which are completely interwoven anyway).

 

In fact, I thought the same way before the product was launched. But then I realised that there isn't a single thing the iPhone can do that my 3 years old Qtek S100 can't do. Yes, it has the coolest interface, but that's just all.

Like you said: in the US market. Every single phone I can buy in my country is lock-free. The reason is simple: it is forbidden by law. You can hardly say that that's an computer "innovation", right? It's just a business tactic.

Oops I need to check quickly if I can still write C# applications for my S100, using my Visual Studio compiler. Maybe Symbian has also discontinued their SDK after 7 years?

Ironically, that's exactly the kind of "innovativeness" like we have seen from MS for years. Let others invent new applications and markets, we will wait a little and take them over by lowering the barriers.

What kind of innovation are you referring to that wasn't available before the iPhone?