lurch_mojoff

Come on. Big Brother? Really?

And do you honestly believe that it is a bad thing that ordinary, unsavvy with computers users will not immediately be able to install applications from unverified sources?

Yes, I have. And I can confidently say that Mac OS X, even today after a decade of evolution and sweeping changes, is clearly a direct descendant of NeXTStep and has little in common with System 7. I'll also reiterate what others said -- there is everything wrong with Gates' statement.

I disagree that Apple's goal was lock-in. If it was, they'd probably make the interactive textbooks iOS applications, similar to what PushPopPress did, instead of this bastardized version of epub.

Quotes from the linked post like this: "The ability to control the size of each column and column gap was recently discussed in the CSS WG. The Group decided that allowing setting of individual column width and column gap width is not a feature considered for the first REC of this document.", suggest, to me at least, that Apple created their proprietary format because standards didn't and still don't cover the fictionality they have in mind for these interactive books. I'd rather Apple do that than hastily muscle their implementation into the standards.

Which is compltely idiotic business model for Netflix. They can sell their original content directly to me. Unlike traditional TV content producers, they don't have to rely on (and split profits with) third party distributors.

I suspect you are right, but I sure as hell hope you are not.

Lack of empathy is the definition of psychopathy. A psychopath will look at someone ran over on the street and think "too bad it ruined that nice jacket" or something similarly disjointed form the fact that a human being is dead. Stallman's comment is similarly unempathetic.

And tablets… and portable music players… and small and light laptops… and…

The sentence you quote does look outright ridiculous when said about Apple.

Three years? Make that five.

And every additional year makes your point even more relevant — I can understand, even if it is just subconsciously, that one cannot fit all the things I expect in a 6 or 12 month release cycle. I cannot accept the same for a 60 month cycle, even though I do know that that’s not how software development works (cf. mythical man month, etc.)

"Let's be clear: Apple changed its delivery pattern for iPhone. It's a delay, and a big one.” Followed by absolutely no evidence supporting the statement.

Yep, this is not link-bait, no siree.

The question is how many people will buy a PlayBook now on the off chance they’ll get a rebate at some future point. Not that many I reckon.

It is way too early to proclaim that history is repeating itself. 20 years ago Apple were a rudderless ship. Today they are on of the most efficiently operating computer companies out there. They have a vision, they have a solid foundation on which to build, and they have the resources to execute rapidly on that vision.

The important thing is not whether Apple should or shouldn't have won, but that they did. A court of law, as biased as it may be, has concluded that Apple’s complaint has merit. And now that may serve as precedent for Apple to use in other jurisdictions. Samsung are getting deeper into the crapper.

I still don't understand how a bunch of stored-to-file object graphs "dirty the code base" but I guess you are right -- it is a preference thing. Believe me, I have weirder quirks than that when it comes to coding.

Your example, however, is probably amongst the worst to support the argument you are making. Here are the steps to create a tab bar view with four tabs, each containing a navigation view, and those containing alternating table views and plain views:

- drag out a UITabBarController

- remove the two default UIViewControllers instantiated with it

- drag out to the tab bar four UINavigationControllers

- select each tab and drag out to the center area of the view a UITableViewController or UIViewController

- customize to your heart's content

- there is no step six…

In my guestimate this will take at least 20 lines of boilerplate code, even with the minimal amount of customization. And you’d be missing out on all the rest of the benefits of NIBs, like the ability to see (and to some degree test) your UI without having to build and run your application or the ability to send it off for localization to a collaborator.

Would you care to qualify that. In my experience it has been the exact opposite -- setting up your UI in Interface Builder has always reduced the amount of code necessary and has allowed quite complex view hierarchies to appear pretty much flat in code. And I'm taking about iOS UIs, for which a bunch of the code saving goodies of AppKit Interface Builder are not available -- things like Cocoa bindings and the new auto layout machinery in Lion.