Is there still room for another OS to hit it big?

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Where is your argument here? You've made no connection between "looking sleek and actually succeeding" and "failing in the future".

You have to remember that Apple is big on design, which means they get to the essence of what they want to make without installing distracting features. They said that's what people wanted, and they were right for the most part. It succeeded because the demand was there.

When you install an OS, a computer essentially becomes a bureaucracy in a box: you have forms to fill out to give programs input, protocols to follow when communicating between devices and policies to execute when certain events occur. iOS succeeded in part because Apple recognized that is tiring for users, so it made an effort to hide BS that slowed "the average user" down. Any time you DID have to do any of the above, the iOS interface made it a more managable, tactile experience.

If Apple were to fail its target audience, I would imagine it would be because someone else did things better and got the attention of the same market Apple was appealing to. As Future mentioned, those of us who do not prefer draconian EULAs, more development freedom and devices we can actually open constitute a smaller number of buyers. I imagine we would influence Apple over time, but I do not think it will lose sleep over our preferences.

I'm not big on the iDevices myself, but suggesting that iOS will "fail because it succeeded" is a weak argument, and that should be obvious.



Are you saying you can not make a good user experience with middle-end hardware?

you must admit that today with win 7 and 8 that line has been significantly blurred.

some things are far more cumbersome on iOS, including how it handles java applications or advanced network configurations, even archives can be a particular trouble depending on what you use them for.

that is not to say that everything is cumbersome, they still manage to outperform in a multitude of other ways and in truth i think they realize that their mobile devices are where they truly shine and set themselves apart.

again to a lesser degree today than before.

As I implied, iOS is not as compliant with user demands that go beyond the standards of the people Apple sought to please.

Now, arguments in the form "tool A does X better than tool B" is only effective in discrediting tool B if X is the fundamental to market performance. In the market Apple chose, things like advanced network configurations were not a priority. If X is NOT fundamental, your argument does not strongly point to any major failings... All technologies have pros and cons anyway.



Maybe so, but if Apple is outperformed, that did not change the fact that they set an example for developing for non-power users. They aren't too good to others though, IMAO.

As far as I care, now all handheld devices are black rectangles I can't open sold by demonic mobile providers who charge me for breathing.

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i agree with your sentiment but many of the examples i give you here is from users that arent power users but had a need they couldnt fill without seeking paid help suggesting that the role of the standard user is changing and that iOS havent quite taken that into account, i agree the advanced network configuration wasnt a part of that but java apps and archives have given many normal users quite a headache.

as for handhelds, you should take a look at the open source mobile phones, been a couple on hackaday, that said the size is of course quite a lot larger than mass produced phones and that is what prevents me from getting one.

in general miniturization makes hand work less plausible and that is the road of electronics, smaller means faster means better means almost impossible to do by hand,
again i agree with your sentiment but i dont see how we can change that fact without producing yet another optimized and impossible to access phone.

That is a puzzle, but here is a thing I think a lot of people miss: This is not about technology. Toss java, configuration, hardware and all that crap out for a moment.

Although the question of features and performance do enter the discussion, Apple wanted an emotional and social impact. To hit people on that level, you need provocative products with integrity. That means having a solid design and flipping the bird to any outside feedback that is not highly trusted by the company. In other words, Apple decided not to budge unless they really have to.

Needless to say, that decision is much riskier due to its inherit inflexibility, but it brings benefits such as a vastly simplified product line and constraints for creativity to flourish. Having a lot on the line is a great motivator, and Apple is no stranger to staring company-wide collapse in the face.

The obvious risk is being wrong about what customers want and not adapting. Most companies sidestep this risk by being either two-faced or Hamlet: They hack at their products until sales pick up, or they don't move forward at all due to perceived risks. The interesting thing about Apple is that it does not seem afraid to suck.

Even 37signals argues having technology that "stands for something". Their products are also gaining serious ground.

Those of us who want options are not geared for products like these because having options means being responsible for them. We don't want an ideology embedded in our property... We want to decide what our devices do no matter what. This is why committed companies aren't friendly to us. They agree that options are important, but they decided what those options should be based on their own market analysis and that we should go f**k ourselves. They'll change when they are disproven, and not before.

You mentioned that Apple is appealing to the "emotions" of the average user - I would argue that what they're doing makes sense on a logical level as well. They're effectively just making people more productive with their phones by reducing the number of "fuckups". I consider a fuckup to be any moment in time where, for example, I want to find the nearest liquor store so I can drown my sorrows about Mac OS X, and that liquor store is not clearly marked on my screen because I am looking at a notification that the maps app has been updated, etc. With iOS Apple seems to have followed a seek and destroy attitude about these moments, and I only wish someone had been as thorough with a desktop OS. I like my iPhone better than I like my Droid, and the 4S has some serious power. Additionally, rooting my Droid was actually a bigger pain in the ass than rooting my iPhone.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I remember Jobs carrying on about intuition. The nice thing about intuition is that it leads to assumptions that, if right, address both UX and the hard specifications behind them.

I'm guessing that the weakness of desktop OSes has been to never leave that bureaucratic mindset. I suppose that if you build a system that let's "people" do "something", you can only develop a platform for policies and protocols.

The challenge seems to be allowing for a seamless, intuitive experience while still keeping a system totally agnostic and configurable.

That is the challenge, you can see that in Win8 where they tried to use the Metro UI as a one stop for phones, tablets and PCs but it just doesn't provide enough features to come close to replacing Explorer so Explorer is still the primary UI in Win8, and it doesn't look like Metro ever could be.

On the subject of navigation, a lot of things could be cleaned up if you never had to tell a computer where files were. The FHS was a step in this direction, but there was still a need for applications to have some manually defined link to the things it depends on. Windows addressed this with COM and the Registry, but killed modularity in the process.

Setting up static directory trees and telling computers where things are has got to be one of the most repetitive tasks we do that we have not fully automated. I can see massive potential for never having to write an #include or a require() because a system was in place to identify dependencies under the context the user is working under.

This does not have to be from a developer's standpoint, either. As file count increases, navigation becomes such a pain in the butt that I wish I didn't have to care where my files were.

i wish

I personally would like to see Ubuntu / Linux become more of an easy "out-of-the-box" experience. I've been running 10.04 on my main PC for years and it has always been incredibly stable, but I've never had to use wifi with it; just a USB serial comms device and a webcam. Under 12.04LTS (Long Term Stable) I am having problems with the OS not recognising my webcam witch is a bog-standard Logitech Quickcam. The audio level metering often doesn't funtcion. These are things I need to address and fix.

I've also installed it onto my laptop to dual boot between Win7 and 12.04. I've had massive problems with getting Wifi to work and Bluetooth PAN is highly erratic. I've managed to fix the Wifi issues using rfkill, but the hardware is a bog-standard Centrino 1000N.


This is supposed to be Long Term Stable! - Stupid things like standard Wifi devices should be fully supported and bombproof out of the box - Most users aren't going to want to touch the terminal and faff about with support forums to get hardware to work so this makes the current release of Ubuntu not suitable for general public use which is a real shame. 12.04 just seems to be more sloppy than 10.04 and also seems longer to boot. More effort and it could be a Windows killer.

Ubuntu was doing pretty well for a couple years, but the last few versions have basically had a thermonuclear meltdown.

It's a shame - it has a lot to offer as an OS - I'm not a fan of Unity but can see its attractions, but I was brought up on DOS and then Windows 3.1 running Trumpet Winsock and Mosaic 1.0 for my first taste of the web, so I'm happy to tinker with things to get them to work.

OS's have become so bloated now - I'm tempted to look at Mint or one of the other variants of Linux and see if they are any better.

If manufacturers are only willing to cooperate with Microsoft, or are just plain unfriendly and refuse to give sufficient details to allow drivers to be written for their devices under Linux - no-one wins.

I had good success using ndiswrapper, which allowed me to use the provided Windows WiFi drivers under Linux on some anonymous cheapo laptop I was using.
No guarantees, but it may be enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDISwrapper

NDISWrapper is the kind of thing Linux needs to remain competitive. You can't be the third most popular OS and expect proprietary drivers to be as good as Windows, and I agree that hardware manufacturers have an archaic point of view regarding releasing their specs.

In a similar vein, if Wine were fully assed, I'd be a lot more inclined to use Ubuntu.

Just not 11.x or 12.x.

I've been critical of Ubuntu recently, but 12.04 is a pretty solid release, imho. And it's very easy to install KDE, Gnome, Mate, or whatever DE you like to use instead of Unity. As far as wireless... My laptop has a Broadcom chip which is problematic on most distros. No problems in Ubuntu 12.04.