> I'm not so excited about this... this might be the first step in locking down the platform.
Of course you're not excited about this. You're a brilliant nerd who founded a startup that invented a new programming language. This isn't for you. Or for me.
Getting to be Nerd Jesus every time a computer runs into trouble is gratifying. We get to be important. We get to trick out our gear to do all kinds of goofy, custom stuff. We get to build things that are neat.
Serving our needs is certainly important. It's important, also, to understand that we are the minority. Everyone else just wants a tool that works. The majority of human beings on earth find computers to be mystifying, frustrating, even scary things. Absent Nerd Jesus, the computer just seems to have a mind of its own. It has its own agenda and interacting with it is an exercise in guesswork and black magic.
What the iPad, and the iPhone before it, has taught us is simple: people want a computer they understand. They want technology, but optimizing for Nerd Jesus has given them shit technology that doesn't respect them, so they're used to being defensive around it.
This is all a long way of saying that I agree with you – this could be a first step in "locking down the platform" for you and me. And streamlining it so it's actually useful for everyone else who doesn't fetishize the Terminal, kernel extensions or compilers.
I think there will always be a place for Nerd Jesus to do his thing. But instead of being the focus of the market, we're finally going to focus on the vast majority of what most people actually care about doing.
We'll see what it costs us from a nerd perspective. I suspect it's less than we think – aside from the high of our indispensability as troubleshooters, of course.
I don't understand the geek self-flagellation that iOS has caused. It seems to have instigated the meme that if a platform appeals to geeks then it must necessarily be unfriendly to normal users, and I would think Mac OS X itself shows that to be false...
What the iPad, and the iPhone before it, has taught us is simple: people want a computer they understand. They want technology, but optimizing for Nerd Jesus has given them shit technology that doesn't respect them, so they're used to being defensive around it.
...except that so many Apple fans have also retroactively determined that OS X is actually completely unusable unless you're an uber-nerd.
And streamlining it so it's actually useful for everyone else who doesn't fetishize the Terminal, kernel extensions or compilers.
How does getting rid of the terminal improve the experience for the average user who has no idea it even exists?
> I don't understand the geek self-flagellation that iOS has caused.
A product like the iPad, which didn't exist a year ago, provides an interesting reference for what computing could be outside the existing rules. My mom has a much, much easier time using the iPad than her Mac, and can do many of the same tasks with it.
Oh, orangecat. Look at these strawmen.
> OS X is actually completely unusable unless you're an uber-nerd.
Not really. It's just a lot more usable for nerds. And less so the less you know about technology. Again, compare this to the iPad, whose usability remains about the same regardless of where you exist in the tech savviness distribution. Once you learn how to use it, which is easy, you're fine.
> How does getting rid of the terminal improve the experience
It... doesn't. Liking the terminal, like caring about compilers or kernel extensions, signals being a technical user. Getting rid of kexts or gcc would be similarly irrelevant to the user experience.
Absolutely, I understand I'm in the minority. I just hope if it does happen there will be a suitable replacement to switch to by then (and no, Linux is not there yet). That means both hardware and software, since by then all Apple hardware will likely only run Apple software.
I'm not so gloomy, though – I suspect that Apple will continue to serve us and mainstream users through some middle ground. There's money in both.
Apple dedicated a huge chunk of today's talk, and consequently a huge chunk of development resources, to their creative tools. The whole bicycle for the mind stuff – this is very important to Apple's overall mission, history and perception.
And in the end, being technically creative is something I think they'll always want to support. I don't know what form it will take but I do not think Apple is going to turn its backs on the sort of people who can help them make the very best stuff for their platforms.
It reminds me of At Ease, actually. When I was a kid, I was tired of the rest of the family breaking the computer in one way or another. So I set up At Ease for a couple of years and everything was great. When I needed the Mac, I'd log into the desktop proper.
I doubt the final mainstream outcome will be as draconian in its limitations as was At Ease. But I think it will be just as simple. And hopefully, just as opt-out for everyone who needs more.
As long as Apple wants people not employed by Apple to make software for their platforms, the Mac will probably remain a system developers find friendly.
It's one strategy. The other is opening it up so much that no one breakout distribution, application, or interface could possibly emerge "victorious" (meaning, the vast majority uses it), which is what Linux does. There is so much room for experimentation, so many flavors and choices and configurations and ways to do it, that no one but the most hardcore and devoted users can seriously figure out how to do things with any respectable degree of confidence.
I've run Linux on the desktop in one form or another (laptop, desktop, or server) since Red Hat Linux 6.2. That was over a decade ago. And, guess what? We're still fighting over GNOME vs. KDE (or fluxbox), and apt-get vs yum (or port), .rpm vs .deb (or .tar.gz). You still can't grab a package from Ubuntu and install it on your Fedora box (well, not without a tremendous amount of headache), and if you go strictly upstream, you have to be at the terminal every time a new version comes out (./configure + remember the build options you want, make, make install).
Windows, unfortunately, is in the middle, and it's still, 15 years later, a virus-prone rooted-zombie mess, albeit with a supposedly pretty good modern browser coming real soon now.
Dude, you're one of my favorite commentors as of late Danilo. You've got a way of taking abstract and dry concepts and making them lively and interesting. Great stuff.
> Of course you're not excited about this. You're a brilliant nerd who
> founded a startup that invented a new programming language. This isn't for
> you. Or for me.
The AppStore is not for "you or for me," but his fear is not that Apple is
creating an AppStore for OS X. His fear is what this says about Apple's future
strategy for the Mac OS X platform.
> Getting to be Nerd Jesus every time a computer runs into trouble is
> gratifying. We get to be important. We get to trick out our gear to do all
> kinds of goofy, custom stuff. We get to build things that are neat.
You're conflating a lot of things here. You're claiming that all 'nerds' like
the feeling of superiority they get when they solve computer problems for other
'non-nerds.' Are you really attempting to apply this generalization to all
technical people?
Secondly, what does 'tricking out your gear to do all kinds of goofy, custom
stuff' have to do with being 'Nerd Jesus?' Would you call car-modders 'Auto
Jesus' if they were to complain that an car company made it harder to perform
3rd party modifications to their products?
How does building neat things and 'tricking out your gear' make you 'Nerd
Jesus' or make it so that you 'get to be important?'
> Serving our needs is certainly important. It's important, also, to
> understand that we are the minority. Everyone else just wants a tool that
> works. The majority of human beings on earth find computers to be
> mystifying, frustrating, even scary things. Absent Nerd Jesus, the computer
> just seems to have a mind of its own. It has its own agenda and interacting
> with it is an exercise in guesswork and black magic.
You're setting up a false dichotomy here. There isn't some 'line' that divides
all people between extreme technical competance and 'caveman-level' technical
competance. Also remember that 51% is a majority, and that a 51/49 split is a
hell of a lot different than a 95/5 split (i.e. tossing out 'majority' and
'minority' is meaningless).
> What the iPad, and the iPhone before it, has taught us is simple: people
> want a computer they understand. They want technology, but optimizing for
> Nerd Jesus has given them shit technology that doesn't respect them, so
> they're used to being defensive around it.
Do you really believe that the majority of systems out there are 'optimized'
for your 'Nerd Jesus' rather than 'Nerd Jesus' just happening to understand the
system that already exist?
> This is all a long way of saying that I agree with you – this could be a
> first step in "locking down the platform" for you and me. And streamlining
> it so it's actually useful for everyone else who doesn't fetishize the
> Terminal, kernel extensions or compilers.
"locking down the system" != "steamlining the system"
To frame this discussion a little differently, do you believe that instituting
a police state would result in a more stream-lined society?
Things like kernel extensions and compilers aren't "going away." Apple is just
trying their best to obfuscate them, and the fears in technical groups is that
Apple wants to make it impossible to access them. Are you really of the mind
that it is impossible to have a stream-lined experience on a technical device
if the possibility of gaining access to a compiler exists?
Most of people's annoyance with iOS is not that it's streamlined. It's that
Apple wants to be the gatekeeper, who gets to tell you what kind of software
you can run on your device. There are plenty of types of software that are
outside of the realm of uber technical people that Apple will not allow on
the device that would enhance the lives of many.
> I think there will always be a place for Nerd Jesus to do his thing. But
> instead of being the focus of the market, we're finally going to focus on
> the vast majority of what most people actually care about doing.
Focusing on the 'majority' of people is different than actively trying to
thwart 'Nerd Jesus.'
> We'll see what it costs us from a nerd perspective. I suspect it's less
> than we think – aside from the high of our indispensability as
> troubleshooters, of course.
Now that you're down off our high-hor^w^wsoapbox, the question that I pose to
you is this: Do you seriously believe that the issue that people take with the
possible changes that Apple might make to the Mac OS X platform is 100% to do
with technical people losing their ability to assert superiority over the
'mendecants' through troubleshooting their computer problems?
To all that upvoted this: Really HN? Really? Anyone that doesn't want a locked-down system is just some 'stupid nerd' that thinks he's going to lose his 'in' with pretty girls because they won't need their computers fixed? That seems to be the crux of this argument.
Of course you're not excited about this. You're a brilliant nerd who founded a startup that invented a new programming language. This isn't for you. Or for me.
Getting to be Nerd Jesus every time a computer runs into trouble is gratifying. We get to be important. We get to trick out our gear to do all kinds of goofy, custom stuff. We get to build things that are neat.
Serving our needs is certainly important. It's important, also, to understand that we are the minority. Everyone else just wants a tool that works. The majority of human beings on earth find computers to be mystifying, frustrating, even scary things. Absent Nerd Jesus, the computer just seems to have a mind of its own. It has its own agenda and interacting with it is an exercise in guesswork and black magic.
What the iPad, and the iPhone before it, has taught us is simple: people want a computer they understand. They want technology, but optimizing for Nerd Jesus has given them shit technology that doesn't respect them, so they're used to being defensive around it.
This is all a long way of saying that I agree with you – this could be a first step in "locking down the platform" for you and me. And streamlining it so it's actually useful for everyone else who doesn't fetishize the Terminal, kernel extensions or compilers.
I think there will always be a place for Nerd Jesus to do his thing. But instead of being the focus of the market, we're finally going to focus on the vast majority of what most people actually care about doing.
We'll see what it costs us from a nerd perspective. I suspect it's less than we think – aside from the high of our indispensability as troubleshooters, of course.