And one of the reasons he gives for the iPad being poor is that people can't download an Etoy?
At first I thought to myself, what the hell is an Etoy, so I quickly found out what it was.
This is one of the most amateurish sites that I've ever seen, and it looks like it hasn't been updated in many years. Seriously, who gives a shit about Etoys? Screw Etoys.
His criticisms might carry more weight if they were more specific than, "<span style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18px;">a myriad of ways."</span>
Agreed. Without saying why, it's empty rhetoric. I have respect for what pioneers have started, but you have to update your thinking to remain relevant.
Wasn't it Marx (Groucho, not Karl) who said "irrelevant never forgets"... I couldn't resist
I forgive you for the first sentence because you're ignorant, and I mean that with all the affection I can muster.
As for the second one, it is Steve Jobs who is dead, not Alan Kay. Please take English lessons.
Funny, it was said with perfect English. In what part of my quote did I imply Alan Kay is dead? That I said Steve Jobs posthumously insulted him? A posthumous act is one performed after you've died.
Originally Posted by <strong id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012711459_820" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18px;">NelsonX</strong>
<p id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012676285_696" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18px;">You are a bunch of Apple fanatics! You don't even know who Alan Kay is:</p>
<p id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012676285_682" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18px;">"In 1970, Kay joined <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Xerox">Xerox</a>
Corporation's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Palo Alto, California">Palo Alto</a>
Research Center, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="PARC (company)">PARC</a>
. In the 1970s he was one of the key members there to develop prototypes of networked workstations using the programming language <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Smalltalk">Smalltalk</a>
. These inventions were later commercialized by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc." style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Apple Inc.">Apple Computer</a>
in their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Apple Lisa">Lisa</a>
and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Macintosh">Macintosh</a>
computers.</p>
<p id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012676285_684" style="color:rgb(24,24,24);font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:18px;">Kay is one of the fathers of the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Object-oriented programming">object-oriented programming</a>
, which he named, along with some colleagues at PARC and predecessors at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Computing_Center" id="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012676285_692" style="border:0px;" target="_blank" title="Norwegian Computing Center" name="user_yui_3_7_3_1_1365012676285_692">Norwegian Computing Center</a>
."</p>
I know very well who Kay is. I have great respect for his previous work. It is easy, however, to say the UI falls short without offering any specifics. It is easy to say there were flaws in the original PARC GUI designs that are still present but not say what they are. The existing designs don't match what he envisioned 40 years ago that does not surprise me but he got if right in many ways and that is the mark of a true visionary. You don't have to get it 100% right.
Is his only complaint that most people consume and don't create content? That is true on PC's with a keyboard as well as the iPad and has little to do with the actual UI but the mindset of people.
His criticisms might carry more weight if they were more specific than, "a myriad of ways."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
That's not the best counter-argument.
I'm all for him criticising the iPad, but I'd like to see what he'd change, specifically.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
This is the same Alan Kay that wrote…
Apple did that and they idealized the UI for the display. Clearly there is a lot more that can be done but it's considerably more than anyone else has done in this space. I think his "myriad of ways" and "disappointment in the progression of the human-computer interface" comments are less than helpful and don't see why he couldn't have detailed some ideas if he has them.
That isn't a good argument because Windows and netbooks are or were, respectively, selling so many.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
The guy does not have a single constructive thing to offer.
Nor do you (in your berating of other posters). Why don't you tell us why you're "... all for him criticising the iPad"? What specifically would you criticize?
While I understand the interest in "hearing" more, it befuddles me why you would expect thorough details to be provided in a edited interview. This is not 5-part 60 Minutes series. Not a biography. Not a paper written by Kay to dissect the pros and cons. This is a tech-ignorant reporter asking pseudorandom questions, which Kay answered off the top of his head (and heart). Under the circumstances, the criticism that he didn't offer better ideas just doesn't stand on firm ground.
For a group of people so defensive about their own highly unqualified opinions, you lot seem rather restrictive on how a wondrously qualified person can offer his.
The criticism of Kay is absurd. He has done enough really cool things to give him the street cred to criticize other people's work. Building a machine requires a huge organization and a lot of work, and at this point Kay is done building things, but he is not done thinking about them, and telling people his opinion. Should he provide more detail? Well, maybe he has elsewhere, have you looked?
Yeah, but the thing is his criticism sucks. He calls the iPad interface "poor", citing only the fact that the iPad is not a decent authoring tool as evidence.
While this is partially true, as I stated before, the iPad was never intended to be an authoring tool, and nobody has ever claimed it to be. What Kay is doing is like me complaining that my toaster can't also boil water, so it sucks as a kitchen tool! I mean, it's ridiculous.
As I stated before, as a consumption and communication device the iPad and iOS are really, really good--to the point of making such technology more economical, more mobile, and much more simple to learn and use. And I mean, much, much more simple, so that the devices can be used by millions more people.
It's not that he hasn't had cool or interesting ideas. It's that he's just flat out wrong on this point. It's like he thinks the iPad is meant to replace all computers, and therefore it sucks because it's not super good using it to write or compile code, or edit feature length movies on, or whatever. It was never meant for that stuff.
Hard to argue that with the screen real estate of an iPad it could be used a little more wisely than currently. I wouldn't want iOS to fork into separate iPhone and iPad versions but it would be nice for Apple to come up with an innovative way to unleash the potential of the iPad while not breaking app compatibility. Far too much blank space. Scrolling long websites to the very bottom could also be smoother and quicker with less movement. OS X has received a lot of iOS influence the last few years I think it is time for iOS to get some OS X love in terms of some added functionality. Perhaps a modified finder for example optimized for touch where we could create folders for games, utilities, etc.. with quicker access and a sort function based on app size, when downloaded, last opened, list view alphabetically for example. When you know the name of an app it is easy to find, but if you don't know the name it can be a PITA to locate one if you have over 300 apps like me.
If they added a Finder to iOS it would be an app for viewing documents. Frankly I'd love to see that.
Big whoop. What's he worked on lately? He sounds like another Woz. They love to criticize, but have they done anything lately themselves.
And he's not just criticizing Apple, he's criticizing all computing in general (Android, Win8, Blackberry). So it's not about being Apple fanatics.
Why didn't his Dynabook thingy become "the" big thing if it's so great?
Kay is not another Woz. His legacy is far, far, far more significant. As for what he has done lately, he has been trying to stimulate education reform.
Why didn't the Dynabook become "the big thing"? Effectively, it did. The Dynabook was a concept developed in the late 60s, early 70s. Try and imagine processing power available then! Those were the days before Intel, before Motorola's 68000 or even the 6502. Yet, without knowing how much computing power could grow, Alan Kay could imagine something like the Dynabook. And some of the ignorant people here deign to mock Alan Kay for not shipping?
As a concept, the Dynabook was the precursor to the Alto, which engendered the Mac, which in turn evolved into the iPad. Smalltalk, which he developed for the Dynabook, was the precursor to Objective C. You can draw a straight line from the Dynabook to every single significant Apple product after Apple II.
He is one of the pioneers of the industry, a computer scientist, inventor, mathematician, innovator. He invented the object oriented programming and is the architect of the modern overlapping windowing graphical user interface (GUI). He even worked at Apple in the early days.
If people here achieved 1% of what he did, world would be a better place.
This is AI. The last thing people want around here is perspective ;-)
If there was no Alan Kay, there would be no Mac, no Objective C, no iPad or iPhone. Apple would be a footnote today.
So you know for a fact that there was no other person anywhere in the world other than Alan Kay that was working on the notion of a GUI. That there was no other person other than Alan Kay or even born after him, with the brains and imagination to think up the idea of a GUI. And thus there is no way that any of those things could have been created without him, which is why we should all bow down and praise him like a God and you his High Priest blah blah
Doubt those 'facts' to be true. Sorry that that means we don't worship your hero. But we are entitled to our opinions and while you certainly have the right to disagree with us, you do seem to be taking it to a pathological extreme with your insults etc. perhaps you could tone that down, a lot
iOS is certainly lacking when you compare it to a Mac (although in some regards is better e.g no beachball). No ability to see the UI of two applications at once for example and restricted access to files, which limits its potential as a productive or authoring platform. It is categorized as post-pc and yet unless it can replace a PC in its entirety, PCs will still be required.
The issue of security is entirely valid to justify some restrictions though. It's easy to think of it in terms of an individual buying one iPad or iPhone but the reality is that 100 million people per year buy them. When that happens on the PC, they become a huge target for malware and that's why they have restrictive app stores and sandboxed operating systems. It's very difficult to make an OS flexible enough and secure enough for hundreds of millions of people and given that Apple has driven the choices of companies that have no reason to follow them, chances are they are the right decisions.
There are instances of symmetric authoring and consuming in spite of this. Someone can record and compose audio, video, images and author to the web on iOS and allow other iOS users to consume that. It can't run dynamic code but it can run a remote session on a server and do it there.
The fact that children can use the iOS UI without training is testament to how powerful it is as a human-computer interface.
Jobs dismissed that assertion in one of his interviews - he said 'ideas always have to win not hierarchy, if they don't then people leave'. That doesn't mean the ideas of the higher ups wouldn't be given a higher level of importance but they wouldn't have the products they have now if the ideas were dictated by only a handful of people at the top.
I don't think that's true. Film editing, music composition, animation, photography and so on are taught using computers. It's not restricted to programming and typing. It could be argued that a keyboard and mouse controls all of this for the most part and is unsuitable for it in a lot of cases. That's where the multi-touch UI can evolve and it is evolving on iOS as well as other platforms.
There has to be a recognition that there are inherent problems with making a productive machine with an entirely flexible human-computer interface though. Dealing with windows is one of the biggest problems and as mentioned the balance of power and security.
Despite the credentials, I'd agree with a lot of the criticism of his assertions. It's the easiest job in the world to find faults with the work of other people, the hard part is fixing them. Alan Kay should design a multi-touch UI that improves on the problems. It sounds like he'd put a desktop OS into a multi-touch computer with no sandboxing.
Amazing comment. One of the best I've read on here in a year.
Funny, it was said with perfect English. In what part of my quote did I imply Alan Kay is dead? That I said Steve Jobs posthumously insulted him? A posthumous act is one performed after you've died.
So you know for a fact that there was no other person anywhere in the world other than Alan Kay that was working on the notion of a GUI. That there was no other person other than Alan Kay or even born after him, with the brains and imagination to think up the idea of a GUI. And thus there is no way that any of those things could have been created without him, which is why we should all bow down and praise him like a God and you his High Priest blah blah
Doubt those 'facts' to be true. Sorry that that means we don't worship your hero. But we are entitled to our opinions and while you certainly have the right to disagree with us, you do seem to be taking it to a pathological extreme with your insults etc. perhaps you could tone that down, a lot
He is knocking Apple's restrictions for interpreted languages since he believed children should be writing code to learn on the Dynabooks. Sorry Alan, the iPad blows away the Dynabook you butt hurt moron.
I don't think that's true. Film editing, music composition, animation, photography and so on are taught using computers. It's not restricted to programming and typing. It could be argued that a keyboard and mouse controls all of this for the most part and is unsuitable for it in a lot of cases. That's where the multi-touch UI can evolve and it is evolving on iOS as well as other platforms.
Many schools still don't have staff trained to do anything more than teach typing etc. but that is changing, even more with the iPad and similar in the classroom. That piano is not in the classroom but in front of every student. As are many other instruments, paintings etc. Lets see Kay create his 'better' DynaBook and show us how my nephew can practice French via FaceTime with a third grader in Toulouse, how my niece can view works of art in museums around the world, how my baby brother can do his frog dissection lab without vomiting from an allergic reaction to the preservatives etc.
these are cases of creating knowledge and experience and isn't that just as important as writing code, typing papers etc. especially for the young minds Kay claims he's forced on
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by iObserve
More successful Computing pioneer Steve Jobs calls Apple's iPad user interface 'excellent'.
posthumously calls Alan Kay a 'coward'
I forgive you for the first sentence because you're ignorant, and I mean that with all the affection I can muster.
As for the second one, it is Steve Jobs who is dead, not Alan Kay. Please take English lessons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
No we know who he is. A guy what did something really cool end awesome in the 70s. What has he done lately. Other than gripe
Clearly you don't know who he is. Try hard not to contradict yourself next time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][
And one of the reasons he gives for the iPad being poor is that people can't download an Etoy?
At first I thought to myself, what the hell is an Etoy, so I quickly found out what it was.
This is one of the most amateurish sites that I've ever seen, and it looks like it hasn't been updated in many years. Seriously, who gives a shit about Etoys? Screw Etoys.
http://www.squeakland.org/
I thought that project was all about motivating an teaching kids, giving them a way to be creative etc.
all of which can be done, better than their way, with the current apps
so is he really about the children or about his ego in wanting folks to agree with him etc
Wasn't it Marx (Groucho, not Karl) who said "irrelevant never forgets"... I couldn't resist
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
I thought that project was all about motivating an teaching kids, giving them a way to be creative etc.
all of which can be done, better than their way, with the current apps
so is he really about the children or about his ego in wanting folks to agree with him etc
Would you care to back up your second line?
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelligent
I forgive you for the first sentence because you're ignorant, and I mean that with all the affection I can muster.
As for the second one, it is Steve Jobs who is dead, not Alan Kay. Please take English lessons.
Funny, it was said with perfect English. In what part of my quote did I imply Alan Kay is dead? That I said Steve Jobs posthumously insulted him? A posthumous act is one performed after you've died.
Stop the trolling and think before you post.
Well said!
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
His criticisms might carry more weight if they were more specific than, "a myriad of ways."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
That's not the best counter-argument.
I'm all for him criticising the iPad, but I'd like to see what he'd change, specifically.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
This is the same Alan Kay that wrote…
Apple did that and they idealized the UI for the display. Clearly there is a lot more that can be done but it's considerably more than anyone else has done in this space. I think his "myriad of ways" and "disappointment in the progression of the human-computer interface" comments are less than helpful and don't see why he couldn't have detailed some ideas if he has them.
That isn't a good argument because Windows and netbooks are or were, respectively, selling so many.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
The guy does not have a single constructive thing to offer.
Nor do you (in your berating of other posters). Why don't you tell us why you're "... all for him criticising the iPad"? What specifically would you criticize?
While I understand the interest in "hearing" more, it befuddles me why you would expect thorough details to be provided in a edited interview. This is not 5-part 60 Minutes series. Not a biography. Not a paper written by Kay to dissect the pros and cons. This is a tech-ignorant reporter asking pseudorandom questions, which Kay answered off the top of his head (and heart). Under the circumstances, the criticism that he didn't offer better ideas just doesn't stand on firm ground.
For a group of people so defensive about their own highly unqualified opinions, you lot seem rather restrictive on how a wondrously qualified person can offer his.
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
The criticism of Kay is absurd. He has done enough really cool things to give him the street cred to criticize other people's work. Building a machine requires a huge organization and a lot of work, and at this point Kay is done building things, but he is not done thinking about them, and telling people his opinion. Should he provide more detail? Well, maybe he has elsewhere, have you looked?
Yeah, but the thing is his criticism sucks. He calls the iPad interface "poor", citing only the fact that the iPad is not a decent authoring tool as evidence.
While this is partially true, as I stated before, the iPad was never intended to be an authoring tool, and nobody has ever claimed it to be. What Kay is doing is like me complaining that my toaster can't also boil water, so it sucks as a kitchen tool! I mean, it's ridiculous.
As I stated before, as a consumption and communication device the iPad and iOS are really, really good--to the point of making such technology more economical, more mobile, and much more simple to learn and use. And I mean, much, much more simple, so that the devices can be used by millions more people.
It's not that he hasn't had cool or interesting ideas. It's that he's just flat out wrong on this point. It's like he thinks the iPad is meant to replace all computers, and therefore it sucks because it's not super good using it to write or compile code, or edit feature length movies on, or whatever. It was never meant for that stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
I'll give you one...
I would like to be able to easily write simple apps for the iPad -- on the iPad.
I agree with this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwmac
Hard to argue that with the screen real estate of an iPad it could be used a little more wisely than currently. I wouldn't want iOS to fork into separate iPhone and iPad versions but it would be nice for Apple to come up with an innovative way to unleash the potential of the iPad while not breaking app compatibility. Far too much blank space. Scrolling long websites to the very bottom could also be smoother and quicker with less movement. OS X has received a lot of iOS influence the last few years I think it is time for iOS to get some OS X love in terms of some added functionality. Perhaps a modified finder for example optimized for touch where we could create folders for games, utilities, etc.. with quicker access and a sort function based on app size, when downloaded, last opened, list view alphabetically for example. When you know the name of an app it is easy to find, but if you don't know the name it can be a PITA to locate one if you have over 300 apps like me.
If they added a Finder to iOS it would be an app for viewing documents. Frankly I'd love to see that.
Hear, Hear!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario
The ignorance in these comments is astounding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
He is one of the pioneers of the industry, a computer scientist, inventor, mathematician, innovator. He invented the object oriented programming and is the architect of the modern overlapping windowing graphical user interface (GUI). He even worked at Apple in the early days.
If people here achieved 1% of what he did, world would be a better place.
This is AI. The last thing people want around here is perspective ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
Here is his current project:
http://www.squeakland.org/
One word: UGH.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stelligent
If there was no Alan Kay, there would be no Mac, no Objective C, no iPad or iPhone. Apple would be a footnote today.
So you know for a fact that there was no other person anywhere in the world other than Alan Kay that was working on the notion of a GUI. That there was no other person other than Alan Kay or even born after him, with the brains and imagination to think up the idea of a GUI. And thus there is no way that any of those things could have been created without him, which is why we should all bow down and praise him like a God and you his High Priest blah blah
Doubt those 'facts' to be true. Sorry that that means we don't worship your hero. But we are entitled to our opinions and while you certainly have the right to disagree with us, you do seem to be taking it to a pathological extreme with your insults etc. perhaps you could tone that down, a lot
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
iOS is certainly lacking when you compare it to a Mac (although in some regards is better e.g no beachball). No ability to see the UI of two applications at once for example and restricted access to files, which limits its potential as a productive or authoring platform. It is categorized as post-pc and yet unless it can replace a PC in its entirety, PCs will still be required.
The issue of security is entirely valid to justify some restrictions though. It's easy to think of it in terms of an individual buying one iPad or iPhone but the reality is that 100 million people per year buy them. When that happens on the PC, they become a huge target for malware and that's why they have restrictive app stores and sandboxed operating systems. It's very difficult to make an OS flexible enough and secure enough for hundreds of millions of people and given that Apple has driven the choices of companies that have no reason to follow them, chances are they are the right decisions.
There are instances of symmetric authoring and consuming in spite of this. Someone can record and compose audio, video, images and author to the web on iOS and allow other iOS users to consume that. It can't run dynamic code but it can run a remote session on a server and do it there.
The fact that children can use the iOS UI without training is testament to how powerful it is as a human-computer interface.
Jobs dismissed that assertion in one of his interviews - he said 'ideas always have to win not hierarchy, if they don't then people leave'. That doesn't mean the ideas of the higher ups wouldn't be given a higher level of importance but they wouldn't have the products they have now if the ideas were dictated by only a handful of people at the top.
I don't think that's true. Film editing, music composition, animation, photography and so on are taught using computers. It's not restricted to programming and typing. It could be argued that a keyboard and mouse controls all of this for the most part and is unsuitable for it in a lot of cases. That's where the multi-touch UI can evolve and it is evolving on iOS as well as other platforms.
There has to be a recognition that there are inherent problems with making a productive machine with an entirely flexible human-computer interface though. Dealing with windows is one of the biggest problems and as mentioned the balance of power and security.
Despite the credentials, I'd agree with a lot of the criticism of his assertions. It's the easiest job in the world to find faults with the work of other people, the hard part is fixing them. Alan Kay should design a multi-touch UI that improves on the problems. It sounds like he'd put a desktop OS into a multi-touch computer with no sandboxing.
Amazing comment. One of the best I've read on here in a year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iObserve
Funny, it was said with perfect English. In what part of my quote did I imply Alan Kay is dead? That I said Steve Jobs posthumously insulted him? A posthumous act is one performed after you've died.
Stop the trolling and think before you post.
Good God, no! LOL!
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
So you know for a fact that there was no other person anywhere in the world other than Alan Kay that was working on the notion of a GUI. That there was no other person other than Alan Kay or even born after him, with the brains and imagination to think up the idea of a GUI. And thus there is no way that any of those things could have been created without him, which is why we should all bow down and praise him like a God and you his High Priest blah blah
Doubt those 'facts' to be true. Sorry that that means we don't worship your hero. But we are entitled to our opinions and while you certainly have the right to disagree with us, you do seem to be taking it to a pathological extreme with your insults etc. perhaps you could tone that down, a lot
Shut up.
http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I don't think that's true. Film editing, music composition, animation, photography and so on are taught using computers. It's not restricted to programming and typing. It could be argued that a keyboard and mouse controls all of this for the most part and is unsuitable for it in a lot of cases. That's where the multi-touch UI can evolve and it is evolving on iOS as well as other platforms.
Many schools still don't have staff trained to do anything more than teach typing etc. but that is changing, even more with the iPad and similar in the classroom. That piano is not in the classroom but in front of every student. As are many other instruments, paintings etc. Lets see Kay create his 'better' DynaBook and show us how my nephew can practice French via FaceTime with a third grader in Toulouse, how my niece can view works of art in museums around the world, how my baby brother can do his frog dissection lab without vomiting from an allergic reaction to the preservatives etc.
these are cases of creating knowledge and experience and isn't that just as important as writing code, typing papers etc. especially for the young minds Kay claims he's forced on