dporan
Joined 17 years ago
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527
Submissions
73
Member since
Mar 16
@ gmail
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 3 years ago
Glad to help!
Comment · 3 years ago
Great! I'll look for that collection.
Comment · 3 years ago
Thanks! The Internet Archive Software Collection sounds like a great resource. I'm going to check it out.
Comment · 3 years ago
Thanks for the suggestion!
Here it is:
Comment · 3 years ago
An HN post yesterday [1] reminded me of this Q&A that I did last year.
(Thanks to HN user DoingIsLearning for suggesting a separate submission.)
Comment · 3 years ago
I created the Start Menu and Taskbar, and I did intend for them to be at the top of the screen.
http://blogs.harvard.edu/danieloran/2022/11/28/qa-about-the-...
Comment · 15 years ago
Real, shipping stylus-based computers -- not just mockups or concepts like Alan Kay's 1968 Dynabook -- go back to at least the late 1980s, with the GRiDPAD:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/188223/the_long_fail_a_brief_...
Maybe the lack of success has been due to poor implementation, but I wonder whether styluses are just inherently problematic:
1. Truly reliable handwriting recognition always seems to be just over the horizon, and I wonder whether it always will be. Honestly, I often can't read my own handwriting. Sure, you can store handwriting as "ink," aka a bitmap, but that's like choosing a fax as your file format.
2. Switching from stylus to finger to (possibly) keyboard is awkward. You need someplace to put the stylus, and it makes one-handed operation pretty difficult.
That said, I actually think I'd enjoy having a stylus for input sometimes. I hope that someone eventually figures out how to put all the pieces together. (Too bad that Microsoft Courier didn't make it.)
Comment · 15 years ago
Steve Jobs played a minor role in Apple’s early success with the Apple II
If it had not been for Jobs, [Wozniak] might still be handing out schematics of his boards for free at the back of Homebrew meetings. It was Jobs who had turned his ingenious designs into a budding business, just as he had with the Blue Box . . . . To make the Apple II successful required more than just Wozniak's awesome circuit design. It would need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product, and that was Jobs's role.
For all of his foibles, Jobs was the quintessential founder, relentlessly pushing the business forward -- recruiting great team members, signing up investors, and polishing the product for a mass audience.