Apples actual response to the Flash issue

[Randall Lee Reetz]

Wow.  You have a knack for pre-shaping a question to extract the exact result you are seeking, and then way way way over reading the complete lack of participation in your stacked "survey" to mean that the list agrees with your pre-spun conclusion.  Your "survey" was set up as a trap and everyone who read it knew it, thus your zero response participation.  Too bad the soviet union doesn't exist any more, they could use a pollster like you.

Even had you asked the dangerous question, Can "god" make mistakes? I think you would have had some data submitted.

The frustration most of us are feeling in our guts has only been inflamed by this latest apple announcement.  The frustration is the obvious and steady slipping away from general purpose computing as it is replaced by a media consumption and gaming platform in the form of a slick appliance.  For all of its "touchy" input fluidity, we know it isn't designed for creativity of engineering.  Nobody is using an ipad or iphone to develop ipad or iphone apps or operating systems.

I worry, as I am sure others do, that apple's market supported emphasis on consumption centered devices means a general drifting away from the go it your own freedom and power a good general purpose computer allows.

No one could have designed the ipad on an ipad.  Would never have happened.

The trend seems to point to a future for apple that looks more like General Electric.  A place to buy pre-built stuff more than a place to buy tools with which to invent the future.

Am I missing something, will tools be written for multi-touch environments such that we all willingly and happily walk away from our keyboards and pixel perfect pointing devices?

Or is the growing dread a worthy indicator that something big is shifting and that it will be harder and harder to find open ended "creativity machinery"?

  I think of the user-programmer revolution that smalltalk and hypercard made possible and how much more powerful the macintosh felt as a result.

And despite the gold rush motivations we might feel when we read of a kid in iowa who made a million dollars in a month selling a little app, we wonder if apple is making so much money on this consumption machine model that they will completely abandon those of us who think computing is about creativity and open ended creativity at that.

I want to see teens on the train building stuff not slaying fake dragons or scheming an encounter with a facebook friend's facebook friend.  I want that the open-ended creative option available to every teen, not just the hyper smart hyper nerdy.  Is it slipping away?

As for jobs.  He is great at finding the greed in consumers.  But unchecked, that greed seeking is only made more insidious by the amazingly designed products they release to us.  Is the ipad so slick to use that we forget our need to create?  Are those of us on the development end so motivated by many that we forget our obligation to the future of society?

Microsoft released a video demo of a hinged two screened touch slate.  For all of its clumsy interface (they are trying) it excites me none the less simply because I can imagine actually getting something done on the thing, building stuff.  Not FOR it, but ON it...

-----Original Message-----
From: Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 1:34 AM
To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Subject: Re: Apples actual response to the Flash issue

Ah, been gone for a couple of hours and come back to exactly what I
expected. Not a single List member nominated another List member as being
more capable of running Apple than Steve Jobs.

And not for want of campaigning. Some very spirited and some rather long
posts clearly trying to persuade the masses to vote their way, but in the
end not a single mind was changed, not a single prejudice altered - although
I much enjoyed the Electrical Engineers manifesto ;-)

So what it all boils down to is, some of us think Steve is wrong, and some
of us think that Steve is right, but regardless of whether he's right or
wrong, ALL of us know, deep down inside, no matter how much it pains us,
that Steve + Apple - Flash will make a whole heap more money than [your name
here] + Apple + Flash. And everyone on the List agrees ;-)

And the sediment left in the bottom is actually the pile of all our own
prejudices,  failings, misgivings, inadequacies, lack of vision and lack of
confidence.

I, and I know others on this List, don't see the point of an iPad. If I were
running Apple it would be an unmitigated failure because I have no
confidence in the product, no vision on what it could do, no talent on how
to market it, and no drive to see it through. It wouldn't matter if I
listened to everyone on this List and added all the bells and whistles it's
critics are complaining about. It would be a failure.




[The entire original message is not included]