Steve Jobs has passed

[tazelbain]

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/215143/android-40-developers-will-get-their-source-code-dessert
keep up old man

[naum]

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/215143/android-40-developers-will-get-their-source-code-dessert
keep up old man

Release AFTER is not "open".

Contrast to Linux / Mozilla / Ruby / $OtherFOSSProject.

[tazelbain]

Not by RMS' standard, but who listens to him anymore.  The fact is the code gets out there and people can do stuff with it.  I know my company is.

[Engels]

Really, that's what you're going for? Comparing it to Linux isn't quite fair, since that's not really a single entity, and the other items on your list are programs/languages, etc. Its not a whole OS that has to be actively marketed. I think its amazing and good that Google opens it up once it hits the shelf. Asking for more is just utopian delusion.

Also, Job's, 'fit of pique' doesn't jive with what else we know of Jobs. He seemed quasi religious in his fervors, which is both what made him a pretentious douchebag and successful. I think its a more interesting story to not have him be either St. Jobs or Evil Corporatist.

He did, however, have that libertarian whiff to him that makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

[Ingmar]

Here is what high-end smartphones looked like in 2007:



Then this happened:



Soon after, other smartphones started looking like this:



Yeah, Apple just takes existing ideas and technology and polishes them. So does everyone else, including Google. They just, at least over the past decade, did it with much more panache.

Mmmmmhmmmm. Here's what my phone looked like in 2005.



Let's not cherry pick images just to make our point look better than it actually is shall we?

[Trippy]

You left the stylus out of the picture.

[Ingmar]

You know, I forgot all about the stylus until you mentioned that. I also left out the slide-out keyboard (which is the one feature that if iPhones had it, I would really consider getting one.)

[Bungee]

Oh yes. Shiny design "patents"...

[naum]

Oh yes. Shiny design "patents"...

And name me a big tech company that does NOT engage in similar shenanigans?  Please don't retort with Google, as they play the patent game too.

[Quinton]

Google actually has never offensively sued anyone over patent issues (do note that suing somebody over a patent issue as a reaction to them suing you is a defensive action, really -- it's how you get back to the table to negotiate -- though I can't think of a case offhand where Google's done that either).

Balancing open source releases and a highly competitive world where patent lawsuits flying and you also want to encourage quality and compatibility is certainly fun -- but the facts remain that a large number of devices (even high profile things like Kindle Fire) ship without Google's assistance, permission, or even any interaction with Google at all (like Nook -- total surprise to us!) which is possible because the source is released under a highly permissive license.

Anyway, I really really, was not meaning to turn the "Steve has left us" thread into some absurd slap fight about mobile OS ideologies, so sorry about that.  The whole "vow to spend every last penny to kill Android" thing may have struck a nerve on my side.

Maybe the most important thing to keep in mind is that it's a small industry and a small valley.  The same people work with each other over and over again, at new companies and old companies, people learn from what others have done and built on what has gone before, and the end result is the state of the art keeps advancing and everyone benefits.  It's unfortunate when it gets personal and more time is spent on squabbling and legal silliness than just trying to out-awesome each other product-wise.

[Sir Fodder]

Standard treatment would be to immediately get the cancerous tumor out of you via surgery. It's pretty clear he waited 9 months.

Ugh, how awful, I was hoping it was otherwise, still get wistful for the Apple ][ days... Denial and magical thinking: Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery

[MahrinSkel]

Android's still open in the sense that the PC was "open" in pre-linux days.  Anybody can write an app for Android and distribute it without permission from Google, they can take their Android phones and put a different version of Android on it, theoretically they could put an entirely different OS on it (the fact that even the linux community hasn't bothered to port for it is a sign of how little it is considered *neccessary*).  If the carriers could have gotten iPhones,  if Blackberry hadn't been so damned slow to create something really competitive to the Jesus Phone, or if Google hadn't been literally giving away the OS, we might still be in an environment of "Walled Gardens", where your phone did what you carrier allowed it to, and wasn't a general purpose computer that made phone calls and anything else you wanted it to.

Google got burned a bit by people churning out crappy tablets running versions of Android that just didn't work very well on tablets, rushed out Honeycomb to fill the void but didn't want that version of the OS becoming some kind of legacy benchmark they were stuck with forever.  Yeah, it's a bad sign they seemed to fall into the temptation to keep the OS source locked down, but hopefully they'll get over it.  Even if they don't, to the extent that Android isn't more open than other phone OS's, it's because Google has changed the landscape to one where you can't charge $10 for an "app" that just reformats a Google search.

--Dave

[Quinton]

To get back a bit more on-topic, the stylus thing is a fantastic example of why Steve was brilliant.  Like the mouse, he didn't *invent* the capacitive touch panel, nor did he invent gesture interfaces (which the faster, more accurate, more responsive capacitive panels made more natural and fluid).  But he did recognize the value and aesthetics of it, and decided to spend the money and engineering resources to put it in a product and decide to make it *the* user interface, not some experiment or add-on.  Very much like adopting the mouse and the still young direct manipulation graphical user interface for Lisa and Mac.

I firmly believe that it would be unreasonable to disallow all future products from other vendors to adopt capacitive touch just as it would be unreasonable to disallow the rest of the industry to adopt mouse based computing.  But by doing it first, taking the risk, getting out in front, Apple stole a march on the rest of the industry, sold a lot of devices at margins their competitors envy, and maintained their value as a creator premium and not commodity products.  Which is completely reasonable and more power to them!  

Dave: the pity of it is you just can't win.  On one hand we are constantly getting shouted at to take more control, prevent OEMs from customizing the platform in ugly ways, etc.  On the other hand, any action to try to do so (say holding off on wide-open access to the HC source until coherent support for both phone and tablet form-factors is ironed out) brings shouts of evil and closed! 

[Ingmar]

Also the "but Android isn't open either!" counter argument frankly falls flat given it is still light years more open overall.

[TripleDES]

The more quotes from his biography crop up, the more I'm glad that this insufferable fuckhead is off the stage.

[Margalis]

You might be disappointed to learn that many if not most of the movers and shakers throughout history had a touch of crazy to them.

[Paelos]

You might be disappointed to learn that many if not most of the movers and shakers throughout history had a touch of crazy to them.

Absolutely. Most of them are cut-throat dickheads. Most of the greats are great because they never get satisfied, and they are never really happy with anything. They are detail-oriented, and drive everyone around them batshit crazy because they try to get into every little thing they can.

HOWEVER, what can separate the greats and the tyrants is how much crazy they let out, and which personal vendettas they follow with the power they amass.

[Sir Fodder]

Nah, the real movers and shakers are decent humble people who are mostly absent from the pages of history, the arrogant and ignorant ones mostly get the attention. I liked that Pericles quote from Civ V about the story of peoples lives not being only represented in a tombstone but woven into the stuff of the whole world, unnoticed.

[UnSub]

The more quotes from his biography crop up, the more I'm glad that this insufferable fuckhead is off the stage.

If you paid attention to the stories to Jobs it's easy to see that he was a charming visionary who had no problems gutting anyone / anything that stood in his way.

[Paelos]

Nah, the real movers and shakers are decent humble people who are mostly absent from the pages of history, the arrogant and ignorant ones mostly get the attention. I liked that Pericles quote from Civ V about the story of peoples lives not being only represented in a tombstone but woven into the stuff of the whole world, unnoticed.

I disagree, but ok. To me a mover and shaker actually moves and shakes the world. They are a force. Not a silent change. The majority of the worlds changes have been made by humble silent people, but movers and shakers are loud, boisterous, and arrogant.

[Mrbloodworth]

EDIT: Lets me put this somewhere better.

[Vaiti]

When I saw Bloodworth had posted on this I thought he might have rushed in to tell everyone Steve Jobs had died.

[Mrbloodworth]

 

[Samwise]

[Evildrider]

So looks like it's between George Clooney and Noah Wyle to play Steve Jobs in the upcoming movie.  I think it would be great for Wyle to get it, I liked his take on Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley.