Most so called comparisons are by people who are able to build their own PC from scratch & can achieve a significant saving this way.
Naturally these people ignore the fact that the average person cannot/has no wish to go this route & also refuse to recognise the quality of Apples design and casing materials.
They also ignore the fact that those home grown PCs use sub-standard parts from fly-by-night outfits who don't need to practice quality control because it's not like they're going to be responsible when the thing stops working in 6-10 months. And when something does stop working the "build it yourselfers" just upgrade to a new, cheap, part.
Those of us who use our machines professionally demand they keep working for years, not months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
At a user-facing UI level, it makes no sense to merge OS X and iOS. However, it would be great if the APIs shared a lot more commonality. Do we really need both NSColor and UIColor? NSFont and UIFont? If Apple dedicated some time to merge the foundations of OS X and iOS, there's no reason why porting apps from iOS to OS X shouldn't be trivial. Imagine the Mac App Store being as vibrant as the iOS App Store. Worth Apple's investment in my opinion.
Well, iOS and OS X are based on the same operating system. iOS was split from OS X so I think it's kinda funny for people to talk about "merging" them, they're already merged. The differences are primarily ones of UI where iOS needs to work with a touch UI while OS X works with a mouse driven UI.
But, inevitably, some things get more work on one platform than the other. And thus you might have UIWhatever that is more advanced than the NSWhatever it was based on in the past.
I don't think porting will ever be trivial or that it should be, but I think this is the right approach-- things are fundamentally the same so that making Mac and iOS versions is not too much work, without going down the path of compromise that is "write once run on both platforms"-- something that would result in lower quality for both platforms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppeX
A Mac Pro mini would be awesome:
I think the new Mac Pro will come in a "mini" flavor. That is to say, I think it's a reasonably economical platform. So they can make the high end that they showed off, but by simply replacing the GPUs & CPU, they can make a cheaper version. I wouldn't be surprised to see models as cheap as $1,299 (with more pedestrian CPUs and maybe a single GPU)
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshMcCullough
I thought this article was annoying and biased so I stopped reading. Then I realized it was from AppleInsider and now it all makes sense!
I think it's hilarious when people accuse writers of being "biased". Obviously, anything that agrees with your ideology is "objective' and anything that doesn't is "biased" so you can just reject it out of hand.
Accusation of "bias" is like saying "I reject all of reality that disagrees with me!"
Frankly, the people who pretend to be "unbiased" are usually making worse arguments than those who aren't hiding behind faux objectivity.
Loved the perspective this article provides. Analyzing this year's WWDC really shows that Apple does have a vision for where they want to take the company in the years to come. It's really a positive sign that Apple still has a lot of innovation left in them.
I always thought innovation was the result of a way of looking at and doing things, not some reservoir of ideas that could run dry.
"Apple's revised app icons%u2026are readily apparent at smaller sizes due to their simplicity and strong use of color." If that were all, many might be either hard to differentiate from the background or look horribly garish. I think you have left out an important aspect: apps in iOS7 are PART of an entire system, not mere add-ons. Looking at the icons individually could give the impression of garishness or oversimplification. However, IMO they need to be seen in the context of the entire OS. The layered, 3D dimensionality lets you easily detect elegantly simple icons floating above the background. Skeuomorphism for icons wasn't merely removed and replaced with a "flat" look, it was made irrelevant and unnecessary due to the ease of detection of icons the 3D aspects have in iOS7. To sum up, it's important to look at the appearance of icons in the context of the entire system and its layered dimensionality, not just their simplicity and use of color.
A well-researched, well-written, well-presented article. What the hell's it doing here?
I was pointing out to someone that the IOS app switcher was lifted from WebOS. They disagreed, saying that the IOS task switcher was simply the IOS Safari page switcher repurposed. His argument was that Palm simply used the Safari page switcher for something else. Not sure if I agree, but I can see his point.
Here's Apple's cover flow for album art.
Here's a video of WebOS app switching.
Anything look familiar? The current item is more prominent while the other Apps (WebOS) or albums (cover flow) are off to the side and smaller. Albums (Apps) zoom in when they're in the middle ready for selection or actions. And cover flow was around long before anyone heard of WebOS.
Now take a look at iOS 7 task switching.
It's different from cover flow and WebOS. All the "cards" representing each App are the same size and simply scroll side-to-side with none of the zooming effects of cover flow or WebOS. The big difference is Apple has added icons below the cards. I'm not sure why Apple removed the "zooming" effect where the current App is more prominent.
Regardless, it's pretty clear WebOS got their idea from cover flow. Now take cover flow and rotate it 90 degrees. What do you get? Gee, I don't know, kinda looks like Safari tabs maybe?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dasanman69
All the examples used were from a Nexus, so it's how Google intended Android to look like.
Irrelevant. All the Android losers who post here don't have a clue and whenever they say "Android had this first" they're really pulling ideas from stock Android, Touchwiz, Sense or any other App they happened to see run on an Android device and attributing that feature to Android as a whole.
Actually, Solaris is also BSD based and SUN was co-founded in 1982 by the main programmer behind Berkley Software Distribution, <span style="font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">Bill Joy. NeXTSTEP didn't come into the picture till 1987, with a commercial ready product in 1989, NeXT Computer, i.e. The Cube.</span>
Actually, Solaris is based on System V, not BSD. SunOS was BSD based. Sun made the switch to System V (SVR4) in the early '90s.
I thought this article was annoying and biased so I stopped reading. Then I realized it was from AppleInsider and now it all makes sense!
I would sure hope so, it is a Apple Rumors site you know? And for the biased part, lets say that some company took all your posts to decide something. Don't you think it would seem biased and also very troll-y if you will.
EDIT: I see that this is your first post, I'm glad you took the time to sign up and even use good grammar skills. But I think it's important to be nice and without niceness we all walk around talking like Josh McCollugh. Oh wait....
I wholly disagree with the author on this one point at least. OS X and iOS will merge. I'd bet my life on it.
Devices like the iPad will continue to become more powerful and the technologies embedded will continue to require additional capabilities in iOS. iDevices functionality will continue to make its way to MBA and vice versa, in particular. This means OS X will gain some of the functionalities in iDevices. The core of both OSes are Unix. Additional improvements in Unix will need to be made, like moving OS X core Unix closer to a real-time OS.
In short, nothing is more certain than the merging of iOS and OSX.
Seems WWDC and the videos Apple showed have touched a nerve with the collective tech press. Here's a good example from the Verge complaining about Apple using the word "no's" instead of "noes" or "nos".
That's what the new Mac Pro is. Much more limited external expandability, smaller form factor. Amazing - even when Apple gives people what they've been asking for, they're not happy.
I believe you meant the opposite of "limited external expandability," but whatever, the new MacPro will be an awesome machine, but it is NOT what the forever-hopeful believers in a modestly priced MMRM (Mythical Mid-Range [user-expandable] Mac) have been asking for, even as the "truck computing" market is shrinking, have been asking for. See below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jessi
I think the new Mac Pro will come in a "mini" flavor. That is to say, I think it's a reasonably economical platform. So they can make the high end that they showed off, but by simply replacing the GPUs & CPU, they can make a cheaper version. I wouldn't be surprised to see models as cheap as $1,299 (with more pedestrian CPUs and maybe a single GPU)
I'll be muy surprised if the entry level price isn't closer to double the price you suggested.... ...Apple's (intelligently and thankfully) recognized that its creatives and true power user loyalists, at least the ones with big budgets, need a path to a machine that will let their advanced skills shine and create the output and productivity to match them, but the MacPro has been and will remain a machine for a niche market. And nearly everything about the design (except notably the soldered-in AMD graphics chips - unless truly latency free alternatives can replace them in an expansion chassis over time) screams "PREMIUM."
And this is the only such niche market that it makes sense for Apple to enter that I can see based on their business model. But not so much for the near-term bottom line as for their "high-end" corporate identity.
Their whole approach to the rest of their HW offerings is strongly in the "computing appliances" direction. You can make a plausible argument that offering such a machine would be a seed bed from which other future pros could/would emerge, but I see no indication that Apple wants to support this segment with a relatively low volume machine.
And I'll speculate that this "market" is a possible reason why Apple hasn't made it harder to build Hackintoshes (as long as they aren't offered for retail sale by another company). So there's one space for gear heads to play in....
But suppose for argument's sake that you were right about your $1299 entry point. Based on what we've seen after two years of Thunderbolt peripherals and on the new Pro's other interconnects, the expansion peripherals and interconnects are not going to be priced anywhere near the range of what the average user with a $1300 CPU budget can afford.
I fully expect a reasonable portion of the pros and well-heeled hobbyist target market to be using expanded setups in the $8-10K range (even with only one 4K display). And ultimate rigs costing considerably more. Otherwise there won't be enough incentives for 3rd party manufacturers to produce the various gear that's gonna be required to fully realize the machine's potential.
BTW, waiting for all the anti-Dilger people to post again. Oh, and the inevitable new accounts fuming at the thought Apple didn't really copy Android as much as they think.
Heh. I usually poke at DED for his writing style, but I mostly agree with his observations about Apple here, and his jabs at "tech journalists" for what amounts to anti-Apple punditry (spinning anything Apple says or does with a "failure narrative").
I never understood people who said that Apple was going to merge iOS and Mac OS X. These people were just projecting their own beliefs. Apple had said, since around 2010, that it didn't plan to merge the Mac and iPad, and reemphasized this when Microsoft released Windows 8. Apple said they didn't think a single OS for tablet and desktop was the right thing to do, and the slow adoption of Windows 8 (and weak sales of Surface) would indicate that.
It seems that iOS and Mac OS X are moving on different paths, and that's fine by me. I want my iPhone to work best piloted by one hand--or even just a thumb--while my Mac allows me to be most productive on multiple large screens and a mouse and keyboard. A design company understands those different needs. Jony Ive understands. It's not just homogeneity for the sake of itself. Microsoft is running TV ads emphasizing how Windows 8 UI is now consistent across PC, tablets, and phones, forgetting that once upon a time, PDAs and smartphones running Windows Mobile had Start menus (a lack of imagination), and this has been largely replaced by something better, but that people want and are clamoring for the return of the Start menu on the desktop. Microsoft is not a company that understands design, not in the way Eames or Rams or Ive does. On desktop PCs, Windows 8 "Metro" UI ham-fistedly applied modernist aesthetics without appreciating the functional needs it serves.
"Flat" is how tech journalists without an eye for design are going to interpret the changes. I'm sure Jony Ive winces a bit when he hears that, but I think Apple's video communicates their underlying design intent very well. While some fret over "increased CPU/GPU" demands of the new UI, no one has based those concerns on any real world measurements (yet), so it is still mostly FUD.
You didn't know it was Apple Insider from the beginning? Of course it's biased. That's why "Editorial" is in the title. Editorials are supposed to be biased. I don't always agree with him, and his grammar skills really annoy me sometimes, but DED has a lot of great insight into Apple. He seems to understand that computer and software industries much better than the tech journalists who are constantly attacking Apple.
We're all grammar-deficient in one way or another, but I got the point of the article.
Seems WWDC and the videos Apple showed have touched a nerve with the collective tech press. Here's a good example from the Verge complaining about Apple using the word "no's" instead of "noes" or "nos".
You didn't know it was Apple Insider from the beginning? Of course it's biased. That's why "Editorial" is in the title. Editorials are supposed to be biased. I don't always agree with him, and his grammar skills really annoy me sometimes, but DED has a lot of great insight into Apple. He seems to understand that computer and software industries much better than the tech journalists who are constantly attacking Apple.
I agree totally with all of your points. Very well stated.
Here's great article on iOS and how it's human nature for people to reject the unfamiliar.
I dislike parts of iOS 7 for good reason. The icons are objectively ill conceived by an Apple marketing team. The new back button is a step backwards: as explained by that article Gruber linked to. The fonts are harder on the eyes than those in iOS 6. And the home screen parallaxing, panoramic wallpaper and moving wallpapers are distracting, inelegant and un-Apple. The lock screen unintuitivly indicates how you unlock, those top and bottom arrows are completely unnecessary, and the lock screen camera icon is ugly, and unintuitive compared to the camera icon on the iOS 6 lock screen.
To put it in perspective, when Apple added the camera icon to the lock screen in iOS 5 I actually like the design, and when I used jail break I found the best theme was the default: which is why I never used theme my iPhone.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by saarek
Most so called comparisons are by people who are able to build their own PC from scratch & can achieve a significant saving this way.
Naturally these people ignore the fact that the average person cannot/has no wish to go this route & also refuse to recognise the quality of Apples design and casing materials.
They also ignore the fact that those home grown PCs use sub-standard parts from fly-by-night outfits who don't need to practice quality control because it's not like they're going to be responsible when the thing stops working in 6-10 months. And when something does stop working the "build it yourselfers" just upgrade to a new, cheap, part.
Those of us who use our machines professionally demand they keep working for years, not months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL
At a user-facing UI level, it makes no sense to merge OS X and iOS. However, it would be great if the APIs shared a lot more commonality. Do we really need both NSColor and UIColor? NSFont and UIFont? If Apple dedicated some time to merge the foundations of OS X and iOS, there's no reason why porting apps from iOS to OS X shouldn't be trivial. Imagine the Mac App Store being as vibrant as the iOS App Store. Worth Apple's investment in my opinion.
Well, iOS and OS X are based on the same operating system. iOS was split from OS X so I think it's kinda funny for people to talk about "merging" them, they're already merged. The differences are primarily ones of UI where iOS needs to work with a touch UI while OS X works with a mouse driven UI.
But, inevitably, some things get more work on one platform than the other. And thus you might have UIWhatever that is more advanced than the NSWhatever it was based on in the past.
I don't think porting will ever be trivial or that it should be, but I think this is the right approach-- things are fundamentally the same so that making Mac and iOS versions is not too much work, without going down the path of compromise that is "write once run on both platforms"-- something that would result in lower quality for both platforms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppeX
A Mac Pro mini would be awesome:
I think the new Mac Pro will come in a "mini" flavor. That is to say, I think it's a reasonably economical platform. So they can make the high end that they showed off, but by simply replacing the GPUs & CPU, they can make a cheaper version. I wouldn't be surprised to see models as cheap as $1,299 (with more pedestrian CPUs and maybe a single GPU)
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshMcCullough
I thought this article was annoying and biased so I stopped reading. Then I realized it was from AppleInsider and now it all makes sense!
I think it's hilarious when people accuse writers of being "biased". Obviously, anything that agrees with your ideology is "objective' and anything that doesn't is "biased" so you can just reject it out of hand.
Accusation of "bias" is like saying "I reject all of reality that disagrees with me!"
Frankly, the people who pretend to be "unbiased" are usually making worse arguments than those who aren't hiding behind faux objectivity.
Using "Vista" and "Honeycomb" as examples might not be a good idea, considering those OSs were flat-out failures lol.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sully54
Loved the perspective this article provides. Analyzing this year's WWDC really shows that Apple does have a vision for where they want to take the company in the years to come. It's really a positive sign that Apple still has a lot of innovation left in them.
I always thought innovation was the result of a way of looking at and doing things, not some reservoir of ideas that could run dry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayz
A well-researched, well-written, well-presented article. What the hell's it doing here?
I was pointing out to someone that the IOS app switcher was lifted from WebOS. They disagreed, saying that the IOS task switcher was simply the IOS Safari page switcher repurposed. His argument was that Palm simply used the Safari page switcher for something else. Not sure if I agree, but I can see his point.
Here's Apple's cover flow for album art.
Here's a video of WebOS app switching.
Anything look familiar? The current item is more prominent while the other Apps (WebOS) or albums (cover flow) are off to the side and smaller. Albums (Apps) zoom in when they're in the middle ready for selection or actions. And cover flow was around long before anyone heard of WebOS.
Now take a look at iOS 7 task switching.
It's different from cover flow and WebOS. All the "cards" representing each App are the same size and simply scroll side-to-side with none of the zooming effects of cover flow or WebOS. The big difference is Apple has added icons below the cards. I'm not sure why Apple removed the "zooming" effect where the current App is more prominent.
Regardless, it's pretty clear WebOS got their idea from cover flow. Now take cover flow and rotate it 90 degrees. What do you get? Gee, I don't know, kinda looks like Safari tabs maybe?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dasanman69
All the examples used were from a Nexus, so it's how Google intended Android to look like.
Irrelevant. All the Android losers who post here don't have a clue and whenever they say "Android had this first" they're really pulling ideas from stock Android, Touchwiz, Sense or any other App they happened to see run on an Android device and attributing that feature to Android as a whole.
Actually, Solaris is based on System V, not BSD. SunOS was BSD based. Sun made the switch to System V (SVR4) in the early '90s.
EDIT: I see that this is your first post, I'm glad you took the time to sign up and even use good grammar skills. But I think it's important to be nice and without niceness we all walk around talking like Josh McCollugh. Oh wait....
Devices like the iPad will continue to become more powerful and the technologies embedded will continue to require additional capabilities in iOS. iDevices functionality will continue to make its way to MBA and vice versa, in particular. This means OS X will gain some of the functionalities in iDevices. The core of both OSes are Unix. Additional improvements in Unix will need to be made, like moving OS X core Unix closer to a real-time OS.
In short, nothing is more certain than the merging of iOS and OSX.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/11/4418242/apple-imperfect-video-about-perfection/in/4166483
Apple basically gave Wall Street and the media a big middle finger on Monday and I love it.
Whether it may or may not happen, is up in speculation. But I can assure their is stuff that is more certain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppeX
A Mac Pro mini would be awesome:
The time is (finally) right for a Mac minitower
http://www.macworld.com/article/2029740/the-time-is-finally-right-for-a-mac-minitower.html
And it will happen. On some parallel Earth.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
That's what the new Mac Pro is. Much more limited external expandability, smaller form factor. Amazing - even when Apple gives people what they've been asking for, they're not happy.
I believe you meant the opposite of "limited external expandability," but whatever, the new MacPro will be an awesome machine, but it is NOT what the forever-hopeful believers in a modestly priced MMRM (Mythical Mid-Range [user-expandable] Mac) have been asking for, even as the "truck computing" market is shrinking, have been asking for. See below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jessi
I think the new Mac Pro will come in a "mini" flavor. That is to say, I think it's a reasonably economical platform. So they can make the high end that they showed off, but by simply replacing the GPUs & CPU, they can make a cheaper version. I wouldn't be surprised to see models as cheap as $1,299 (with more pedestrian CPUs and maybe a single GPU)I'll be muy surprised if the entry level price isn't closer to double the price you suggested.... ...Apple's (intelligently and thankfully) recognized that its creatives and true power user loyalists, at least the ones with big budgets, need a path to a machine that will let their advanced skills shine and create the output and productivity to match them, but the MacPro has been and will remain a machine for a niche market. And nearly everything about the design (except notably the soldered-in AMD graphics chips - unless truly latency free alternatives can replace them in an expansion chassis over time) screams "PREMIUM."
And this is the only such niche market that it makes sense for Apple to enter that I can see based on their business model. But not so much for the near-term bottom line as for their "high-end" corporate identity.
Their whole approach to the rest of their HW offerings is strongly in the "computing appliances" direction. You can make a plausible argument that offering such a machine would be a seed bed from which other future pros could/would emerge, but I see no indication that Apple wants to support this segment with a relatively low volume machine.
And I'll speculate that this "market" is a possible reason why Apple hasn't made it harder to build Hackintoshes (as long as they aren't offered for retail sale by another company). So there's one space for gear heads to play in....
But suppose for argument's sake that you were right about your $1299 entry point. Based on what we've seen after two years of Thunderbolt peripherals and on the new Pro's other interconnects, the expansion peripherals and interconnects are not going to be priced anywhere near the range of what the average user with a $1300 CPU budget can afford.
I fully expect a reasonable portion of the pros and well-heeled hobbyist target market to be using expanded setups in the $8-10K range (even with only one 4K display). And ultimate rigs costing considerably more. Otherwise there won't be enough incentives for 3rd party manufacturers to produce the various gear that's gonna be required to fully realize the machine's potential.
Wouldn't they both have to run on the same chip?
Quote:
Originally Posted by EricTheHalfBee
BTW, waiting for all the anti-Dilger people to post again. Oh, and the inevitable new accounts fuming at the thought Apple didn't really copy Android as much as they think.
Heh. I usually poke at DED for his writing style, but I mostly agree with his observations about Apple here, and his jabs at "tech journalists" for what amounts to anti-Apple punditry (spinning anything Apple says or does with a "failure narrative").
I never understood people who said that Apple was going to merge iOS and Mac OS X. These people were just projecting their own beliefs. Apple had said, since around 2010, that it didn't plan to merge the Mac and iPad, and reemphasized this when Microsoft released Windows 8. Apple said they didn't think a single OS for tablet and desktop was the right thing to do, and the slow adoption of Windows 8 (and weak sales of Surface) would indicate that.
It seems that iOS and Mac OS X are moving on different paths, and that's fine by me. I want my iPhone to work best piloted by one hand--or even just a thumb--while my Mac allows me to be most productive on multiple large screens and a mouse and keyboard. A design company understands those different needs. Jony Ive understands. It's not just homogeneity for the sake of itself. Microsoft is running TV ads emphasizing how Windows 8 UI is now consistent across PC, tablets, and phones, forgetting that once upon a time, PDAs and smartphones running Windows Mobile had Start menus (a lack of imagination), and this has been largely replaced by something better, but that people want and are clamoring for the return of the Start menu on the desktop. Microsoft is not a company that understands design, not in the way Eames or Rams or Ive does. On desktop PCs, Windows 8 "Metro" UI ham-fistedly applied modernist aesthetics without appreciating the functional needs it serves.
"Flat" is how tech journalists without an eye for design are going to interpret the changes. I'm sure Jony Ive winces a bit when he hears that, but I think Apple's video communicates their underlying design intent very well. While some fret over "increased CPU/GPU" demands of the new UI, no one has based those concerns on any real world measurements (yet), so it is still mostly FUD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Howie Isaacks
You didn't know it was Apple Insider from the beginning? Of course it's biased. That's why "Editorial" is in the title. Editorials are supposed to be biased. I don't always agree with him, and his grammar skills really annoy me sometimes, but DED has a lot of great insight into Apple. He seems to understand that computer and software industries much better than the tech journalists who are constantly attacking Apple.
We're all grammar-deficient in one way or another, but I got the point of the article.
That sexy blue dialler is from iOS 5. The iOS 6 dialler is one of the ugliest screens Apple has ever created:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
Seems WWDC and the videos Apple showed have touched a nerve with the collective tech press. Here's a good example from the Verge complaining about Apple using the word "no's" instead of "noes" or "nos".
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/11/4418242/apple-imperfect-video-about-perfection/in/4166483
Apple basically gave Wall Street and the media a big middle finger on Monday and I love it.
The Verge is just mad Apple doesn't cater to them.
I highly, highly doubt that, because this is part of a whole new naming scheme with releases to follow like OS X Redwood, and OS X Yosemite.
Sick, haha. I used constantly called my iPad my iScreen, just for giggles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Howie Isaacks
You didn't know it was Apple Insider from the beginning? Of course it's biased. That's why "Editorial" is in the title. Editorials are supposed to be biased. I don't always agree with him, and his grammar skills really annoy me sometimes, but DED has a lot of great insight into Apple. He seems to understand that computer and software industries much better than the tech journalists who are constantly attacking Apple.
I agree totally with all of your points. Very well stated.
I dislike parts of iOS 7 for good reason. The icons are objectively ill conceived by an Apple marketing team. The new back button is a step backwards: as explained by that article Gruber linked to. The fonts are harder on the eyes than those in iOS 6. And the home screen parallaxing, panoramic wallpaper and moving wallpapers are distracting, inelegant and un-Apple. The lock screen unintuitivly indicates how you unlock, those top and bottom arrows are completely unnecessary, and the lock screen camera icon is ugly, and unintuitive compared to the camera icon on the iOS 6 lock screen.
To put it in perspective, when Apple added the camera icon to the lock screen in iOS 5 I actually like the design, and when I used jail break I found the best theme was the default: which is why I never used theme my iPhone.