Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone 249
snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"
Slashdot readership to Dice (Score:2, Informative)
Consider scrapping beta.
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Well, I could make the case that "X to Y" is more like a mail header. "Consider Z" does stand as a sentence on its own...
Um Y (Score:2)
es
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agree...i hate that we have to hijack threads to say this but they need to stop
plz Dice...stop...just stop
slashdot's 'look and feel' is fine how it is...ok, some could say its dated...but the is **not** to hack the content down to a big 'feed' that buries content under graphics
leave the main layout the same! tinker with logos/colors/menu types etc. but **don't remove whole sidebars** and put giant squares of color where informative text used to be
this is the worst trend in "U/X" righ
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Exactly.
I would be happy with [FUCK] BETA if it weren't for the superfluous sidebar that continues down the page to infinity and beyond, limiting space for comments and the various other layout issues. The font size is too big for another thing. Now I know I can hit ctrl+- a few times, but I mean, come on! I want comments to be the full width of my window, and I want to choose whether I want to see all comments when I'm moderating and whether I just want to browse at +1 or +2 depending on my attention sp
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FUCK BETA is like everything I hate about the mobile site brought to a desktop site.
You think the current mobile site is bad? Try the beta on your phone. Sweet raptor jesus, after the third nesting level or so the text is squeezed in a narrow little space and ends up being one or two words per line.
And there's no way to get it to show the "normal" layout on a mobile device, it seems to be based on window width somehow. For instance, if you take the beta site and shrink the window you can see it changing the layout to "suit" the smaller space, eventually ending up with this weird single
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Did you ever think that maybe that's why it is a beta?
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Too bad you posted as an AC, I would have modded you up. I have a policy, though, to only mod up people who are not ACs.
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Sig (Score:2)
I like you sig, however, I would be remiss to say that PL/1 helped put my kids through school, so I question whether it was a total loss.
Alleged Apple patents on Android (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.
Of course there is. Apple isn't allowed to distribute copies of Android to the public except under license from Linus Torvalds, Google, and other contributors to Android. If Apple accepts the license of Android (mostly Apache v2 and GPLv2), it has to give the public an implicit or explicit license to patents that Apple holds that Android allegedly infringes. So unless Apple wants to end up dropping lawsuits against Samsung, it has to refrain from making an iDroid.
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I base this on section "3. Grant of Patent License" in the license of Android [apache.org].
So what you're saying is that if Nokia release their Normandy Android phone next month, it'll indemnify Android from both Nokia and Microsoft's patent extortion?
Does that include the FAT patents that they've been getting so much cash from?
If so, you've uncovered a far bigger story than Woz's opinion piece...
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Re:Alleged Apple patents on Android (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason why you can't just strip out FAT support, a reason those patents are so obscene. It's a de-facto standard, and you need it for compatibility with lots and lots of stuff.
The actual technical worth of the FAT filesystems is zero. They are dumb, slow, they fragment, and lacks essential features. You can have strictly superior systems for free. But due to network effects, it's very hard to get rid of as the lowest-common-denominator filesystem, that can be read on every Windows and OSX and dumb little flashcard-reading gadget.
Re:Alleged Apple patents on Android (Score:5, Funny)
This is funny, of course they'll use Android. They don't make anything themselves. Haven't you noticed how Mac OSX is a blatant rip off of Red Star OS? Glorious Leader spent several hours creating an operating system from scratch only to have it stolen by these capitalist lapdogs.
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There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.
Of course there is. Apple isn't allowed to distribute copies of Android to the public except under license from Linus Torvalds, Google, and other contributors to Android. If Apple accepts the license of Android (mostly Apache v2 and GPLv2), it has to give the public an implicit or explicit license to patents that Apple holds that Android allegedly infringes. So unless Apple wants to end up dropping lawsuits against Samsung, it has to refrain from making an iDroid.
That would only be true if Apple incorporate those patents into their version of Android. If Apple left Apple stuff out of the Android operating system, they wouldn't have to give up anything.
Wouldn't pass testing (Score:2)
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If Apple left Apple stuff out of the iDroid, then it more than likely wouldn't pass the Android compatibility tests. This would block applications that rely on things in the CDD over which Apple claims a patent. It would also block a lot of applications that rely on Google Play Services, which are available only on devices whose manufacturer demonstrates conformance to the CDD.
What are you talking about. There is nothing stopping Apple creating an Android phone. It could be 100% pure android, just like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others. Are you thinking that an Apple Android phone would need to be able to run iOS apps? That would be sweet, but that's not a requirement for Apple to sell an Android phone.
Look at it this way, say Apple licenses the Samsung Galaxy 4 to use as it's phone and they slap an Apple logo on it. There is now an Apple Android phone and it hasn't cost Apple o
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It could be 100% pure android, just like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others. Are you thinking that an Apple Android phone would need to be able to run iOS apps?
No. But Android without the claimed features probably wouldn't be able to run Android apps either. A device must pass the Compatibility Test Suite, which tests conformance to the Android
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I don't even think licensing is the main issue. Content (and making money off of it) is the big issue. iTunes could probably be modified to support additional phone types so music and movies aren't that big an issue but the real issue is the app store. Apple makes money on all apps sold (and in-app purchases) and none of those apps would work on an android device (without a WINE type API compatibility) so your talking about Apple creating a second Apple app store with zero existing apps. They'd have to enco
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I'm having trouble parsing your comment. Could you please rephrase why it is that you dislike the beta so that we can understand you better?
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Of course there is. Apple isn't allowed to distribute copies of Android to the public except under license from Linus Torvalds, Google, and other contributors to Android. If Apple accepts the license of Android (mostly Apache v2 and GPLv2), it has to give the public an implicit or explicit license to patents that Apple holds that Android allegedly infringes. So unless Apple wants to end up dropping lawsuits against Samsung, it has to refrain from making an iDroid.
Is what you said true, though? Does the APL and GPL require granting the public a license to all of Apple's patents, or does it only require granting a license to users of the software when they use the software (i.e. you can't distribute some GPL software and then sue the people that got it from you)?
I haven't read the licenses lately, and I don't care enough to go read them right now, so that is a genuine question.
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Does the APL and GPL require granting the public a license to all of Apple's patents, or does it only require granting a license to users of the software when they use the software
The Apache license (read it now [apache.org]) requires each "Contributor" to a covered program (those who modify it, as Apple would when porting Android to its device) to grant a license to its "patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed" by the program.
Re: Alleged Apple patents on Android (Score:4, Interesting)
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If this were true, then the source for TouchWiz would also have to be released. You are allowed to make proprietary hardware and software without making it part of Android. If they don't alter the OS to include their patents, then it wouldn't release their patents. The point and definition of that clause is so that you can't patent encumber an open source project by contributing code that uses something you have a patent to without promising you won't go after anyone for using your contribution.
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And Mercedes has Smart, and even had Smart in North America for a time.
And the analogy falls apart when one considers that Apple isn't really a premium brand anyway. Unfortunately the premium brands are essentially gone now. SGI, Sun, hell, even HP and IBM had their high, high end workstations. Apple doesn't make high-end, they make commodity. They make some things that are better than others, but for every Cadillac they have p
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They (BMW) already have a lower-end model, it's called the Mini Cooper.
At the low end, BMW have the 1 series, which I don't think are available in the US.
Mini is a completely different badge altogether. Same with Smart (the cheap Merc's are the A class).
And the analogy falls apart when one considers that Apple isn't really a premium brand anyway.
This.
Apple is a luxury brand in the same way that VW is a luxury brand, it isn't. However this does not stop lot of people who buy a Golf GTI from pretending they have a European luxury car.
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Except that Apple is a premium brand. They don't make things for the low end. They put a heck of a lot of finish on what they do. Their user and support satisfaction numbers are generally the best.
Thing is, /. caters to a crowd that generally doesn't care that much about the little things Apple puts into their systems, but tends to rate systems on raw power, which Apple doesn't usually compete on. There's nothing wrong with that, but the /. crowd also seems to come up short on empathy, so people here
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Indeed. Apple would be foolish to make an Android phone, just as Blackberry would have been foolish to do so. In BB's case, you don't drop a superior OS in favor of a dramatically inferior one. That's not a recipe for success! Whatever Blackberry's problems were, it wasn't the technology.
If Woz wants Apple to produce Android phone, that can mean only one thing: He wants to see Apple die.
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In what way was BlackBerryOS superior to Android? Perhaps it is superior in many technical ways, but we all know that isn't what makes or breaks a platform. BBOS is, however, woefully deficient in the one thing that truly matters: DEVELOPER MINDSHARE. We all remember Steve Ballmer famously dancing around like a monkey shouting "Developers, Developers, Developers" but for all how ridiculous he looked, he was absolutely right. Without developers making applications for a platform, a platform has no users, and
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It would have made a lot of sense for BB to switch to Android. Their big thing was the services they provided to business and end users (mainly BBM, which is now on Android too) and the fact that their hardware had a real keyboard. They could have saved a lot of money spent on OS development and focused on those services, while bringing their hardware to a wider audience of people who want an Android device.
For Apple I'm not so sure... It really depends how long they can keep iOS a viable platform.
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Good analogy: BMW's are actually pretty unreliable and overpriced. There are much better deals out there if you want a good car, sports car or otherwise. The "quality" you pay for with BMW is all in the brand name and the styling.
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It would do more than just dilute the brand. It would be an entirely incompatible ecosystem that they'd have to somehow graft in support for, which would mean huge engineering overhead. It isn't like BMW building a copy of a Ford. It's more like living in a world in which there's a network of overhead tracks that run above all the roads, and BMW deciding to build a second v
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Maybe that was the case a few years ago. Now it is just the phone that only comes in size 6. Don't have size 6? Too bad.
Apple is "special" alright, just not in the way you think.
Re:Alleged Apple patents on Android (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wouldn't be that surprised if he was. I know its a cliche but I still suspect that the most anti-gay are really grappling with their own hidden feelings and (unjustified) self loathing. Otherwise why would they care so much?
Writing on the wall..... (Score:2, Informative)
Check out some of the predictions that came out when /. went to Dice. It is amazing how well some people can predict the future.
http://news.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Wacky Wozzy (Score:2)
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Woz had a plane crash in 1981, and suffered head injuries. He hasn't said much rational since then. Nor created anything of note.
Beta Sucks (Score:2, Informative)
Beta Sucks
Join the boycott Feb 10-17.
If Beta is still here on the 18th I will not return.
Do not fix what is not broken.
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Beta Sucks
Join the boycott Feb 10-17.
If Beta is still here on the 18th I will not return.
Do not fix what is not broken.
Please stop with this boycott nonsense. It accomplishes nothing except letting you "think" that you are doing something when you are powerless to do anything.
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Please stop with this boycott nonsense. It accomplishes nothing except letting you "think" that you are doing something when you are powerless to do anything.
Actually, it will just be a test to myself more likely. I won't go on Slashdot for a week in boycott. At the end of the week I'll come back to see if beta is 'live'. If it is the boycott will still end, and Slashdot will be a website that I used to go to.
Side note to all you longtime users/posters: I just want to thank you for all of the great commentary over the years, some comments have changed me and some had tears streaming down my cheeks with laughter.
The nerds are dead. Long live the nerds!
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It accomplishes nothing except letting you "think" that you are doing something when you are powerless to do anything.
That bit of reality really made my day... Sigh...
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Strange. I'd say you're trolling, but you have a low count six-digit user ID. I'll choose to treat you as misinformed.
You say that we are powerless. I disagree. I intend to boycott. Should that fail, I'll leave for another site... which is already in the making. (I might frequent both if both can survive. There are other IT sites after all.) That is the power of my choice.
As for power the of Slashdot, it comes from the community -- people like you and me. If enough people boycott, the quality of Sl
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Any chance you could start that boycott a little earlier? KTHXBYE.
So that we won't forget the Woz... (Score:2)
It's that time of year again! Wozniak needs to remain visible and he delivers his usual controversial quotes to internet to feed the link baits.
Beta sucks btw.
would make Android into Apple's slave (Score:2)
maybe Woz does this...idk...but on the merits this is an awesome idea. this is what actual "innovation" in business looks like
the iphone running Android would make Google into Apple's bitch...
strategically, you get them on your hardware with the option of using Android software...fine...if Google gets testy, **users can switch to iOS easily**
Android users on iPhone would always be *one click* away from iOS...that would let Apple d
Re: would make Android into Apple's slave (Score:2)
maybe Woz does this...idk...but on the merits this is an awesome idea. this is what actual "innovation" in business looks like the iphone running Android would make Google into Apple's bitch...
strategically, you get them on your hardware with the option of using Android software...fine...if Google gets testy, **users can switch to iOS easily**
Android users on iPhone would always be *one click* away from iOS...that would let Apple dictate development terms to Android
fanboi disclaimer: I use devices with both Android and iOS so im not pimping one over the other..
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Today users can switch to an IOS device. Does that make Google Apple's bitch? No. Why would make you think that Apple using Android for their iDevices would take away any power from Google? It wouldn't.
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Woz is being silly anyway. Apple isn't going to give up their walled garden app store, they make too much money off of it.
Slashdot sucks, why make it suck more? (Score:2)
Yes, quite the cautionary tale indeed. (Score:2)
The moral of BlackBerry's demise is, "Don't make be a show-moving turd and make crappy decisions when you're not the the world's most valuable and profitable company at the same time." I think Apple has a bit of a cushion before Mr. Cook is commiserating with Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie.
Seeing as how Apple managed to survive without ever shipping a Mac running Windows, I doubt we'll ever see Apple-made hardware leaving the factory with Android installed. That said, it's a neat idea, but it's about as po
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While your statement about Windows never shipping on a Mac is technically true, the "PC Compatibility Cards for Power Macintosh" cards came really close. They were basically most of a PC on a PCI card using a Pentium processor, so you could have a Windows machine running inside your PowerMac:
http://www.mug.jhmi.edu/mirrors/infoalley/0496/25/pc.html
They came with DOS installed, so you had to instal your own copy of Windows.
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Apple managed to survive without ever shipping a Mac running Windows...
Yet they did switch to shipping Macs that could run Windows (boot camp, parallels).
In fact it wasn't just that Macs could run windows, the Apple folks that speced the HW for the Macs were always interested in how well the windows benchmarks performed on all the Mac HW they shipped because inevitably someone would use this as a basis to compare the value proposition of the machines and they knew many folks bought Macs because they could still get PC compatibility if necessary for their job/work.
Right now the
The Woz..... (Score:2)
Wozniak has ruffled feathers before (Score:4, Interesting)
Wozniak has ruffled feathers before, in fact many times. This post concerns merely one issue though.
That is why, even as a longtime apple 2 -> Mac - OS X -> iOS pro developer I admire him for his candor when he slams Apple.
Usually he is right, even if he attacks his own investments, both financial or intellectual.
The best time he attacked apple was back around 1991 or 1992, when in a little publicized shaming of Apple, he complained about Apple's near retarded renaming of names and macros in the header files so that everything you compiled year to year would continually break. Including... THE ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE interface headers!
I had 500 kilobytes of hand crafted assembler and I got so sick of apple ruining my life with capricious and continual spelling changes (they foolishly use way too many abbreviations, and then gradually add more letters over time, like microsoft)... that I made my own headers for assembly language based off frozen header forks.
That way my stuff can always assemble and compile for many many years. This was for a variety of products with over 500,000 paid for licensed copies.
When wozniak bitched about the header utter disrespect at apple, I was so happy to have him in my corner.
Truthfully, Apple source code headers have always been 4 times more logical and better than microsofts, but in OS X they at least have various mechanisms to allow older code to compile with newer headers, with over 5 year overlap, if not 7. Also in OS X there are tools that can extract headers from apps or from the entombed headers in ".framework" files. So the header horror years are long over, except when bridging legacy mac, legacy windows, and Cocoa all into one huge namespace. ... i am digressing...
Breaking it year to year was foolish and wozniak called apple on it, for apple hiring morons.
Wozniak was always semi approachable, and I also like the fact that one of two of wozniaks non personal phone lines was always listed and publicly accessible in his den his whole career, for the polish joke on the tape he left. Many I know called it up in the late 70s early 80s. I was thrilled to see the thing in the recent movie "Jobs". Truthfully, Steve Jobs too, except in person on the sidewalk, was also very very openly approachable, primarily via beth or his other secretaries as intermediaries. And steve was far more humble than biographers give credit. In mid 2000s he drove his own kid to school every day on the way to work, not too many fathers did that.
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"In mid 2000s he drove his own kid to school every day on the way to work, not too many fathers did that."
They did if they've not long found out they possibly have terminal cancer and wanted to optimise the amount of time they spend with their kid as a result.
Damn, this could have been an interesting topic (Score:5, Insightful)
I was very interesting in reading what the slashdot crowd would have to say on this topic and on the opinion of Woz. However:
1. The slashdot crowd is too pissed of with Beta, so all they do is keep complaining about it, and,
2. If they didn't complain and Beta was rolled out in silence then I would still not be able to read what the slashdot crowd had to say on the comment of Woz, because the discussion section of Beta sucks.
So, pretty please, with sugar on top, take back the fucking Beta.
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Normally a topic on Apple and Android would be filled with snide remarks and anti-Apple/Android comments, but most people are complaining about the slashdot beta instead, which kinda shows how much people hate it.
What a perfect example of why beta is bad... (Score:2, Offtopic)
...and instead we have focused our efforts on drawing attention to the horrid design that is threatening our digital homestead.
If that doesn't drive home the point that beta = bad, well
Just Unlock the iPhone (Score:3, Funny)
They don't need to port Android to the iPhone. They simply need to unlock the iPhone. It has essentially the same hardware as an Android phone, and I bet cynaogenmod would be running on the iPhone in short order if Apple simply unlocked the bootloader.
One can currently buy a Mac laptop and entirely wipe the MacOS on it and install Windows. This would be the same thing for the iPhone. Let people decide what OS they want to run on their iDevices.
Don't waste time on Android. (Score:2)
mystifying... why? (Score:4, Insightful)
android provides two things:
- free, ready to go OS
- app ecosystem
apple already has both. using their existing OS incurs no additional cost. and it is a framework that they already know how to work around.
even if they wanted to make a dirt cheap phone based off of an iphone 3gs, it would be a matter of making hardware that would fit the bill as secondary market product. they ALREADY HAVE the os and ecosystem.
so WHY... in the WORLD... would apple do that? why in the world would woz say that?
and i come at this as a pc user with an android phone... this is truly mystifying.
Me to Apple: (Score:3)
License iOS to the competitors, and let them do their own app markets. Other hardware and iOS with a less-cencored market than the app store could brinf mroe money to apple (with less risk and investment) than trying to compete in the Hardware business.
1995: "Unbundle The OS, 2014: "Unbundle The H/w" (Score:4, Interesting)
The margins on Android phones are razor thin. Apple has complete control over the iPhone, giving them a plausible rationale for marketing a premium phone. If they release an Android phone, that rationale evaporates.
How well has Nokia made out since dumping Symbion and MeeGo for someone else's OS? Yeah, that bad.
That's why it's good that Woz isn't CEO of Apple. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why it's good (for Apple) that Woz isn't and never was CEO of Apple. He obviously has absolutely not the faintest idea what he is talking about marketing and business-wise. I use Android for my phone and tablet, just recently backed off of buying an iPad Mini for development because it was to expensive ... and even *I* get the value-add that the sophisticated iOS devices bring along.
Apple should stick right where they are, perhaps move in closer with the opinion leaders a little again. Like XCode for free and without registration, direct access to iOS devices and filesystem, direct deployment of apps to iOS devices and some other stuff that's pissing of the top 0.2 % expertlayer of computer users, i.e. us, with Apple. That would be about all the changes I would make if I were in charge.
The rest is going absolutely perfect for Apple, a fashion mindshare Google, Samsung, MS and others would kill for and bizar gros margins of 30%+ on post-PC devices included. Thinking of bringing Android into that picture makes me cringe - and I'm not even an Apple Fanboy.
My 2 cents.
Best of both worlds (Score:2)
Superior Software combined with superior hardware.
BlackBerry 10 Android (Score:2, Interesting)
And BB 10 > iOS.
Seriously. Give BB 10 a try. It's clean, responsive and secure. Plus with the latest 10.2.1 OS you can load Android APK files directly on the device. It really is a solid platform.
Re:first (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of snarky comments in the “fuck beta” threads right now, and reading what little has been posted by soulskill, the admins actually think that they are being unfairly targeted by a mob mentality. This is a problem because the issues here will likely get managerial attention at Dice soon and if the executives see what looks like a bunch of juvenile shite in the comments, they are likely to buy into that false world view. If that happens, then Beta will be pushed through and Dice will think of themselves as victims of Anonymous or whatever.
For this reason, I wish to lead a call for all users to spend the time from now until the boycott on the 10th to repost this as soon as a new story is posted.
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Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
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Commenters are doing such things, but it is foolish to think that management is going to throw good money after bad to redesign the site again when they've had a bad year with Slashdot Media financially.
Their best bet is to simply turn it into another buzzfeed-like linkfarm and hope it generates revenue somehow (maybe sell it). So ... yeah. Let's just take her out back and put her out of her misery.
Maybe some angel investor will come in and buy up the property and allow us to like support the site's maintenance via paypal.
Maybe I'll grow another dick. :3
It's even more foolish to think that Dice is going to respond to a bunch of "Fuck Beta" comments.
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Slashdot media has 35 employees. Can you believe the insanity of that? 35 fucking employees to run this site and a bunch of shit spin-offs. There is plenty of fat to trim there that will make Slashdot profitable for _years_, all they have to do is scrap this shitty beta and fire these incompetent assholes.
I don't work for Slashdot media, but I'm sure they appreciate an anonymous coward saying to fire them. After all, usually it is not the decision maker that gets fired, but the rank and file employee. Since slashdot lost money this year, it would be cheaper for Dice to fire all 35 employees and just shut down the site. That would also end the beta.
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I think that was his point... That they should fire some of those 35 employees to save money.
It would seem to be prudent to first figure out what those employees bring to the bottom line. Slashing the workforce only saves money if the the same output can be achieved with fewer people. Maybe 34 of those 35 employees market slashdot to various entities for advertising. If they are covering their cost then cutting them cuts revenues, unless there is enough slack to be picked up by others. Of course, if the others do pick up the slack for those cut, then they don't have the time to go after new clients
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Well, I guess it will be time to move on when beta becomes standard and/or the only option.
Sad that I will lose my "Karma: Excellent", but beta is really bad - actually, horrible.
Dice: Please go back to the drawing board and just make the classic/current design slightly nicer/better - that's all we need. No new fancy UI which I can't really use.
It will be a sad day when I ask for deletion of my account - all those times I spent trying to write really informative comments - lost in time like tears in rain...
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I don't really care if they go back to classic or keep beta, I would like the numerous bugs in classic fixed, however, regardless of which interface is used.
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Barrapunto.com if you speak Spanish.
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Has anyone seen this [slashdotmedia.com]?
Took the tour, laughed at gems like "A redesign 16 years in the making ... you know it's going to be good." LOL.
"Intuitive menus" that feature prominently the desolate ghettos that are the new "Channels," SlashBI, SlashCloud, etc. The rest is just a randomly sorted list of "popular topics."
"Social media integration" Oh, they've got Facebook spy bugs now! Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominati
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad those dumb little buttons are probably blocked by a fairly large contingent of the userbase has those sad little abominations blocked (bonus points for IPTables or HOSTS based solutions!)
HUSH! You'll get apk the HOSTS guy going. Bad enough that we have Beta Slashcott going on!
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
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That site has to be a parody.
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The sad truth is that it probably isn't.
Re:first (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:first (Score:4, Informative)
Let me endorse this. It's a very well thought out opening post for a discussion, and both Slashdot staff and users could benefit from reading it.
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Just voted it up.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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Try http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 [slashdot.org] at least until they switch completely over. I don't know I what I did but currently I never see the Beta.
Evidently it remembers your last use. If you are in beta and click the classic mode link, then the next time you come back you will still be in classic mode. At least for now.
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Any way to disable beta?
go to the bottom of the page and hit classic mode.
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A boycott is not necessary... if the experience that slashdot presents is unusable, people who are bothered by it won't use it.
Simple.
Some will continue to use slashdot even after beta goes live and becomes the standard slashdot site.
I probably won't be one of them, once it becomes mandatory, unless some rather significant changes are made between now and then.
But that won't be because I'll be doing anything as formal as "boycotting", it will simply be because using slashdot won't be enjoyable anym
Re: WRONG (Score:3)
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Except doing so also lowers the bar leaving the Apple ecosystem behind... Given that Apple has a significantly smaller market share than Android does in most countries these days, it seems like it would be a losing strategy for them.
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Mod parent up.
Why would you ever mod up somebody hiding behind an anonymous coward? If they aren't willing to sign their name, why should they be listened to?
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All these people upset with digg v4 are just a vocal minority trying to ruin the experience for everyone else.
Re:Fuck Android (Score:5, Funny)
>> Android works, but iOS is superior
Not at all. My girlfriend has always been a hardcore apple fan/iPhone user. I've tried using her iphone 5 just to do some relatively simple stuff several times now and always ended up giving up and giving it back to her to get done whatever I needed to do. I think the iPhone user interface is highly unintuitive and a fundamentally terrible design. The screen is also tiny and poky. Since she has seen and tried using my (now relatively old) Samsung S3 even she, the diehard apple fan, can't wait to buy an android phone next.
I've been a mostly C/C++ embedded software dev. for 30 years and recently wrote my first Android phone app. Most of my career has been doing embedded programming on many different platforms and I have to say that eclipse + ADT is probably the slickest/best embedded development environment I've ever seen/used. Java is pretty easy too.
The reason I wrote the phone app was for a startup I'm helping with. We also need to do an iPhone app. To get our iPhone app on iTunes' App Store will be an absolute frickin nightmare compared to the ease of getting our Android version on the Play Store and all the early signs are that the Objective-C/iOS API will be much more of a pain in the ass than the Android API.
Re:Fuck Android (Score:5, Insightful)
To get our iPhone app on iTunes' App Store will be an absolute frickin nightmare compared to the ease of getting our Android version on the Play Store and all the early signs are that the Objective-C/iOS API will be much more of a pain in the ass than the Android API.
I know both the Android and iOS APIs.
There are some things each API does better than the other. And one is written in Obj-C and one is written in Java. HOWEVER...
The iOS API is much more consistent than the Android API. Sure, it's Obj-C. And you have to learn Obj-C. And you might complain that Obj-C is new and different and not Java (which does NOT make it a bad language. Different != bad.) But if you know Obj-C, and if you know Java, the iOS API is just generally more sensible and easy to use. I would not define the iOS API as a pain in the ass. You'd call it a pain in the ass, but then again, I know it, and you don't.
The Android API has several advantages. The Activities concept is a nice thing the iOS 6 and later APIs are just starting to play with. But they also make several boneheaded decisions. Rotating the device creates a new activity? WTF? Fragments? Fragments are nice but they're window dressing on a broken concept that iOS at least got right the first time. And native code support on Android is... lacking. Yes, you can technically do it, but not without jumping through a lot of development hoops you don't have to with the iOS tools. It would be nice if Android at least shipped with some Neon optimization code paths. And low latency audio on Android? Nope, still not there. Great if you're playing back or recording an audio file. Not great for much else. And don't get me started on all the bizarre OpenGL issues that iOS doesn't have.
I don't mean to trash on Android too much. What I'm basically saying is I'm having trouble taking this seriously as a level headed comparison when it's basically "I spend a lot of time with Android, I know it, and I like it. I don't know iOS, and it seems totally crazy to me!" The iOS APIs are basically child APIs of what shipped in OS X, and from there what shipped in NeXTStep. A lot of developers have spent a lot of time with the APIs over the last 20 years. It's not like these are bizzaro APIs that came out of nowhere that have never been peer reviewed, iterated on and improved, or worked with for long periods of time. Which is more than I can say for the Android APIs.