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Thread: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

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    Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    I often hear people touting features that make device A or device B the best. Whether it is the screen size, processor speed or any other metric that is easily comparable in a spread sheet. The problem is that actually the hardware isn’t what is important to me. I don’t care that it might be slower, the screen resolution might be smaller, it doesn’t have a front facing camera. What does matter to me is how the software platform makes my life easier.

    10 years ago I was exceptionally happy to hack away at code, configurations, themes and installed software to find out what it could do. 10 years ago I was at university with plenty of time on my hands. 10 years ago I was still trying to work out what was important to me.

    Now I work. That is 8 hours every day for five days that I sell to the company I work for. Given that I am only awake for 16 hours – that leaves me with 8 hours for myself. I have, at maximum efficiency, half the time I used to have (given that I rarely went to lectures and spent most of the time doing what I wanted to do). The result? My time is more valuable. If I am going to tinker with something then it has to be something I want to tinker with, something that has value. I take my mountain bike to the bike shop to get it fixed, serviced and issues resolved. Not because I’m incompetent but because I want to ride my bike and it works out more efficient to pay someone to do the job whilst I work.

    This thought process is what has led me to being a Mac OSX user: it worries about all the parts I don’t care about (95% of the system) but is UNIX enough for me to worry about the bits I want to worry about as a developer. It makes my life easier. I don’t have to worry about unstable software. I don’t have to worry about messing about with configuration files. Life is easier for me.

    So where does iPhone OS fit into this?

    I own two desktop macs, a laptop and an iPhone. Soon an iPad will be joining the ranks.

    The features that I covet more than any others with the iPhone is synchronisation (and by proxy backup). I have a MobileMe family subscription with my wife. I use it to synchronise. I don’t use any of the other features, just synchronisation. I have my contacts and calendars syncing over the air almost instantly as changes are made. Yet these are the obvious places for syncing ones that are features Apple push. There are three other uses that are invaluable:

    1: I use OmniFocus on my desktop to manage tasks that I need to be doing. Using the iDisk on MobileMe, I have the software syncing across two iMacs (27″ i7 and 20″ G5), a macbook and my iPhone. This means that what ever device I am using I have access to my tasks and can keep track what and when I am supposed to be doing things.

    2: Bookmarks. This is the best kept secret. Bookmarks are synchronised over the machines I have and my iPhone. This means I can use my 27″ iMac to search, find and manage interesting sites and get access to them on the phone. The most common use of this is to work out routes in Google Maps, bookmark the route and then opening the bookmark on my phone and it popping open within the Maps application.

    3: Music but specifically podcasts. I love that I can listen to a podcast at my desk. Pause it, synchronise my phone and then continue to listen where I paused it whilst I walk to the shops or take on a vehicle based adventure.

    All this synchronisation makes iPhone OS not just another device but an extension on how I operate. The ease at which data flows between my devices means that I don’t need to worry about where the data is – I know it is at all my computer terminals. I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to tinker with it. It just works. Purchasing an iPad is an easy decision, I plug it in and it is setup to operate within moments within my own personal computer ecosystem.

    So where does this leave me? I will continue to buy into iPhone OS mobile devices until someone can provide this level of integration in a way that just works. This means data flow without corruption, between multiple devices without me having to even think about it.

    Unfortunately this is a hard problem – so I wont be holding my breath.
    http://www.darkrock.co.uk/site/?p=1291

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Sounds like an advert, but I guess that's what fans do for apple

    I do pretty much a similar level of synchronisation, but using google apps, so it works on my PC, iDevice, non-iDevice and whatever, not just apple flavoured things.

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    ALT0153™ Rob_B's Avatar
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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    I agree with the 'it's simple & works' part & have said that myself many times as well as not caring to much about the specs as the most powerful device can be crippled by poor software (and many have).
    I'm pretty sure similar things are available with minimum 'tinkering' on other platforms though?
    Reads a bit like an advertisement for Apple to me, it's not exactly the Holy Grail of OS's he seems to be suggesting?

    FYI - I own no other Apple products apart from my iPhone 3G and am very much a PC person.

    EDIT: I didn't see kalniel's post before I posted 'Looks like an advert' guess it's not just me then!

    EDIT2: Who is this bloke BTW? Someone I should have heard of?
    Last edited by Rob_B; 29-04-2010 at 11:32 AM.

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    I agree. Google is all about 'the cloud'. This guy has to pay for synchronization, right? Oh dear...

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    Senior Member Scott B's Avatar
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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Leaving aside the inevitable accusations of fan-boyism, this highlights the challenge the PC industry has faced for a very long time. For people who chose Apple, it just works.

    The news that HP has bought Palm brings yet another major player into an already fragmented mobile device market. They all need to prove to end-users that they can provide the same kind of seamless experience Chris Ross gets from Apple.

    Of course the reason the vast majority of HEXUS readers aren't Apple fans is because they want to be able to muck about with their computing equipment and install what they want on it - something Apple, by definition, makes difficult to do.

    So we have the same idealogical divide as ever: expensive, closed and complete , vs cheaper, open and modular. You pays your money, etc...

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Fair points, but I don't feel as if I'm missing out on much.

    My windows mobile syncs with my email and tasks on my Windows desktops/laptops whatever.

    At home, my computers run off the Windows Home Server so my documents and files remain updated wherever I go. And when WHS v2 is released, and I'm running my own personal network, homegroups will cover all of that, and Active Directory later on will contribute as well.

    On the internet, Foxmarks keeps firefox synced across all of my machines.

    And it doesn't feel like it's taken much work to be honest. My Windows Mobile syncs flawlessly, my Creative Zen does too, Foxmarks works flawlessly, and my Home Server doesn't miss a beat. Apple does all of what he's said - yes, but so can Windows. And it doesn't take hours of tinkering either.

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Quote Originally Posted by Scott B View Post
    Of course the reason the vast majority of HEXUS readers aren't Apple fans is because they want to be able to muck about with their computing equipment and install what they want on it - something Apple, by definition, makes difficult to do.

    So we have the same idealogical divide as ever: expensive, closed and complete , vs cheaper, open and modular. You pays your money, etc...
    ^^This.
    Plus - Gaming
    Society's to blame,
    Or possibly Atari.

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    This is what annoys me about many mac users - it's all easily done on either OS - but they all too often make out these things are an apple exclusive.

    There's still a major flaw (or feature) of OS X that loses data:

    Copy over a folder with the same name as another.
    e.g. "pictures" on a usb drive to "pictures" on the internal drive.

    OS X won't merge the contents - it'll delete the original folder and all contents including subfolders, and you'll be left with only the usb content.

    I was caught by that one a few times !


    Disclaimer: I'm actually a mac user myself:
    iPhone, Mac Mini, Macbook Pro 13" as well as numerous PCs...
    Chrome & Firefox addons for BBC News
    Follow me @twitter

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    It makes my life easier. I don’t have to worry about unstable software.
    This is the thing that really annoys me. Because obviously only Apple can write stable software.

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Quote Originally Posted by Fraz View Post
    This is the thing that really annoys me. Because obviously only Apple can write stable software.
    And this is from someone who apparently is a developer! Maybe he works for Apple...
    I don't mean to sound cold, or cruel, or vicious, but I am so that's the way it comes out.

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Thing is some of the pre-states are determining the outcome.

    Such as MobileMe synchronisation. A completely closed off environment, you have ONLY one choice given that.

    You have an iPhone, good luck getting that to play with anything else.

    Mac's still are the short bus of software options, so again limited, but it does have options in terms of cloud providers.

    If this was a proposal (these are the kind of things I was donig 6 months ago) then I'd have been laughed out of the building. Then again there is a small difference in outlays.

    I've been using different cloud backups for about 3 years personally and 2 years professionally, I've never had corruption or sync issue. Source control... well thats another matter
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnimus View Post
    Source control... well thats another matter
    Git <3
    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    ...every time Creative bring out a new card range their advertising makes it sound like they have discovered a way to insert a thousand Chuck Norris super dwarfs in your ears...

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    would love the chance. This place has the most questionable system I've EVER seen, we are talking worse than VS6 here.

    4 days, and I still can't get this simple 20,000 lines to integrate into the build.....
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    Re: Interesting Apple User Piece - By Chris Ross

    In the time it took me to read the article (much less the time it took him to write it) I could have built a PC, synchronised any number of non apple devices with it and probably fixed his mountain bike too.

    So i'm a slow reader....


    Poorly disguised advert imo, I don't dislike Apple products, i just think they are overpriced and i'm not a fan of the mac OS. I did love my Ipod before it got nicked, but having used, sold and configured macs and pc's for the last 15 years or so now, i definitely prefer the PC side of things, and constant use and experience made me decide that, not misguided fanboi-ism or an apathy towards fanboi's in general.
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