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Michael Goff

Suspended
Jul 5, 2012
13,329
7,421
Okay. What's the problem?



What's bad about comparing the distribution of a mobile OS to a desktop OS?



Yep. A Mac has more features than a iPad. Is this a surprise?

- Problem is that it's a stupid comparison.
- No, you're comparing the sales of commodity hardware with software.
- No, just wanted to point out that you were wrong.
 

BaldiMac

macrumors G3
Jan 24, 2008
8,763
10,890
- Problem is that it's a stupid comparison.

Why? I think it is interesting that windows will soon be the third most popular OS in the world. Five years ago that would have been hard to imagine.

- No, you're comparing the sales of commodity hardware with software.

You keep repeating that as if it's the only possible interpretation. The only difference in how iOS and OS X are distributed is that new versions of iOS are free.

- No, just wanted to point out that you were wrong.

About what, specifically?
 

pundit

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2007
114
0
Yep. You buy the device which is bundled with software. Doesn't mean you didn't buy the software. Copies of Windows 8 that came bundled with a PC were counted as well. Nothing unfair in the comparison.

Sure you *COULD* compare iOS sales to Windows 8 sales, but iOS has crippled functionally in comparison. From a mobile device to mobile device comparison, Windows has; transparent/network-aware file system, multiple user accounts, full device driver system, multiple industry standard connectors (HDMI, mini-display port, USB3s,) multiple monitor out (mirroring, projection AND extension.) Oh, and billions of applications. Critically much much better applications, like FULL desktop browsers (that have full plugin/addon environments and don't crash for no apparent reason since the iPad 1 to the current day-- this thread has half a million views on Apple support)

And ironically your great solution to PC-free iOS syncing, iCloud, is one of the problems that can cause Safari etc to crash.

Again, you are simply not well informed on how to use an iOS device. There are many services that you can use to sync data to and from the device.

And none of that changes the fact that iTunes and a PC are not required for use of iOS devices.

So, now we're involving third party syncing apps? Seems like iOS is less and less independent, no? Due to the walled-garden per-app file system for iOS, those only work if the file can be opened by another application, and not for private directory files... like say an OpenVPN private key. So, no, third party solutions don't solve all the uses that iTunes has.

Yep. PCs and Macs have different features that iOS devices. Nobody is arguing this point.

You were (A) being dismissive of the number of in-use Windows 8 copies (B) when someone injected something basically irrelevant (I.E. that there were millions of iOS devices, in a thread about there being no 'Modern' iTunes app,) I pointed out that with an equivalent format device (like a windows 8 tablet) could sync and even recharge those iOS devices. You disagreed, however... Can you charge an iphone with another iphone? Can you inject openVPN private keys and edit the configuration using another iphone? Can you backup/restore/add/remove whatever and however much data you wish, document or private app data, without a subscription using another iphone? iTunes on another W8 Tablet can do all of that (its a superior, genre busting device... with or without a metro itunes app.)
 

iGrip

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,626
0
What's incorrect is your post. It's clearly based on outdated knowledge of the subject matter. iOS devices haven't required an actual computer or iTunes for well over a year at this point. Every last thing you've mentioned can be done via iCloud, with no PC, MAC, or iTunes.

Can you hook up an external drive and transfer gigs of music onto your iPad with no PC, Mac or iTunes?
 

SnowLeopard2008

macrumors 604
Jul 4, 2008
6,772
17
Silicon Valley
And steam?

My point was more... you don't have to download two programs to have two UIs. But I guess that doesn't fit with your post so you just decided to be willfully ignorant.

Yes, your point is correct. But that doesn't hold true for ALL scenarios. Adobe Reader, a widely used software for PDFs, is not like that. I wish it was one app with 2 UIs. My point has not disagreed with yours. I'm just pointing out that your point isn't 100% universal and applicable to all software applications running on Windows 8. If explicitly acknowledging and agreeing with your point is ignorant, then by inheritance, your entire post(s) is/also ignorant.

Another thing I want to point is that many Windows 8 tablets have relatively small SSDs. While UI doesn't take up a tremendous amount of space, it can be a waste in some devices. There are many inherent problems that can't be easily and completely solved from Microsoft's end. It takes developers willing to understand the platform and the number/types of devices running on that platform.
 

pundit

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2007
114
0
Yes, your point is correct. But that doesn't hold true for ALL scenarios. Adobe Reader, a widely used software for PDFs, is not like that. I wish it was one app with 2 UIs. My point has not disagreed with yours. I'm just pointing out that your point isn't 100% universal and applicable to all software applications running on Windows 8. If explicitly acknowledging and agreeing with your point is ignorant, then by inheritance, your entire post(s) is/also ignorant.

Another thing I want to point is that many Windows 8 tablets have relatively small SSDs. While UI doesn't take up a tremendous amount of space, it can be a waste in some devices. There are many inherent problems that can't be easily and completely solved from Microsoft's end. It takes developers willing to understand the platform and the number/types of devices running on that platform.

From a technical standpoint, the 2 UI's having two different apps make sense; a 'Modern' app has to conform to a single API framework, and is limited in the code structure it uses. It also has to deal with 1/3 2/3 and full screen snapping, be live tile aware (and conform to update limits so as not to be power hungry,) DPI and touch aware (pans, drags, etc.)

Due to there being a dozen or so different frameworks, all told, a traditional app doesn't conform to any of these things... and programmers frequently disregard stuff like UI-DPI awareness/scaling, which has become increasingly important with high dot-pitch displays.

'Modern' apps foster better, more consistent UI's and more portable code (and we can start to forget that the old 95 application frameworks ever existed and start to phase out some of that legacy bullcrap.)
 

BaldiMac

macrumors G3
Jan 24, 2008
8,763
10,890
Sure you *COULD* compare iOS sales to Windows 8 sales, but iOS has crippled functionally in comparison. From a mobile device to mobile device comparison, Windows has; transparent/network-aware file system, multiple user accounts, full device driver system, multiple industry standard connectors (HDMI, mini-display port, USB3s,) multiple monitor out (mirroring, projection AND extension.) Oh, and billions of applications. Critically much much better applications, like FULL desktop browsers (that have full plugin/addon environments and

Yep.

don't crash for no apparent reason since the iPad 1 to the current day-- this thread has half a million views on Apple support)

Burn!!! I'm glad Windows apps never crash.

And ironically your great solution to PC-free iOS syncing, iCloud, is one of the problems that can cause Safari etc to crash.

Not my solution. Apple's. Good dig though! :D

So, now we're involving third party syncing apps? Seems like iOS is less and less independent, no? Due to the walled-garden per-app file system for iOS, those only work if the file can be opened by another application, and not for private directory files... like say an OpenVPN private key. So, no, third party solutions don't solve all the uses that iTunes has.

The goalposts are just teleporting everywhere at this point.

You were (A) being dismissive of the number of in-use Windows 8 copies

No, I was just looking for real numbers. Do you have them?

(B) when someone injected something basically irrelevant (I.E. that there were millions of iOS devices, in a thread about there being no 'Modern' iTunes app,)

Welcome to MacRumors! Lots of tangents in these threads.

I pointed out that with an equivalent format device (like a windows 8 tablet) could sync and even recharge those iOS devices. You disagreed, however... Can you charge an iphone with another iphone?

I didn't disagree. That's absolutely true. I just pointed that it wasn't really important, since you don't need a PC to sync or another iPhone to charge an iPhone.

Can you inject openVPN private keys and edit the configuration using another iphone?Can you backup/restore/add/remove whatever and however much data you wish, document or private app data, without a subscription using another iphone? iTunes on another W8 Tablet can do all of that (its a superior, genre busting device... with or without a metro itunes app.)

I don't know why you think I'm under the impression that an iOS device can do everything a PC can do. I'm not. I am fully aware of the limitations of iOS and iOS hardware. I completely understand that a Windows 8 tablet has more functionality than than a tablet.

----------

Can you hook up an external drive and transfer gigs of music onto your iPad with no PC, Mac or iTunes?

Yep. Dropbox, for example. Amazon Cloud Player. Google Play Music. Lots of options.
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
From what I hear, the earth is flat, heavier objects fall faster than light objects, and the moon is made of green cheese.

Don't believe everytrhing you hear.

The difference is: "Earth is flat" was known to be false by the greeks, "heavier objects fall faster than light objects" was disproved about 400 years ago, and there is no sane reason to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, while it is quite obvious that customers hate Windows 8 and very much prefer to use Windows 7, while Microsoft forces PC sellers to pay for Windows 8 licenses for each PC with Windows that they sell, so it is very reasonable to believe that there are much fewer copies of Windows 8 in use than the "100 million sold" that Microsoft claims.
 

pundit

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2007
114
0
Burn!!! I'm glad Windows apps never crash.

Well, not withstanding that all of the those old Windows crashes (which by the way, if you looked at them, were almost always ring-0/Device Driver crashes, caused by 3rd party hardware or device driver faults,) were fairly commonplace, they were pretty much wiped out by the time that Vista SP1 came out, with a full WDM library. Now, lately you might see a driver/hardware issue but its very rare these days (and also, again 3rd party,) and rarer still some outer ring crashes (although almost universally games, frequently doing something dumb with the GPU.)

I can't think of an application crash in a basic consumer application actually written by Microsoft, like say, I.E. 10

I'd also like to think if they had tens or hundreds of thousands of people experiencing that issue in that admittedly critical application, they might actually do something to fix it, within 4-5 years.

iOS's author, Apple, (apparently) think different.

Not my solution. Apple's. Good dig though! :D

I didn't say iCloud was your solution to not having Safari crash. That was, indeed Apples solution. It follows however, that if there is this issue common enough for iOS that half a million views are on a single thread, that iCloud isn't a full solution to PC-free syncing on iOS. If Apple says disable iCloud how can you sync/backup/restore etc to an iOS device without iTunes?

The goalposts are just teleporting everywhere at this point.

Its just an example of something I (and I'm sure many people) did last week. I'll repeat, can you do that with iCloud or Dropbox?

No, I was just looking for real numbers. Do you have them?

Net Appliances says 60 million in use. Which is right around the number of macs shipped total in the last 8 years. Its a sure bet that Mac OS X gets utterly eclipsed by the end of the year, and 95% probability by the end of the summer.

I didn't disagree. That's absolutely true. I just pointed that it wasn't really important, since you don't need a PC to sync or another iPhone to charge an iPhone.

But you CAN charge an iphone with a windows 8 pc or tablet. You CAN'T with another iphone (but this was really a piggy backed argument regarding my comment to someone else's fatuous statement) We're arguing different things. You're arguing you don't have to charge an iphone with a PC-- true. I'm arguing that you can both charge and performance syncing/maintenance tasks on a PC that you simply cannot do with iOS devices alone.

However and incidentally, if you had just two iOS devices, and no plug, you couldn't charge one or the other iOS device, but if you had an iOS device and a Windows 8 machine with a usb cable you could charge the iOS device.

I don't know why you think I'm under the impression that an iOS device can do everything a PC can do. I'm not. I am fully aware of the limitations of iOS and iOS hardware. I completely understand that a Windows 8 tablet has more functionality than than a tablet.

Understood. All I'm saying is that I'm very well aware that iOS can't do everything for itself, alone without the support of iTunes. Although 3rd party apps can help in some cases, that certainly doesn't mean all cases.

Yep. Dropbox, for example. Amazon Cloud Player. Google Play Music. Lots of options.

Separate issue... but he was talking about the lack of easy native file access via standard protocols to iOS devices. If you took a random hard drive with gigs of music on it, and wanted it on your iOS device you'd be very likely to need an intermediate pc to transfer said music.
 

TheMTtakeover

macrumors 6502
Aug 3, 2011
470
7
I use it. Best Windows OS I have ever used. People just need to get over the change and actually learn how it works. It is then, you realise it is probably one of the best OSs around.

That doesn't mean it doesn't need improvements though. Some things are questionable but they should be cleaned up in Windows 8.1.

I agree. Windows 8 is a rock solid OS. I don't see where the hate comes from. I think it's mainly from people who haven't used it and just hear and see things online.
 

SnowLeopard2008

macrumors 604
Jul 4, 2008
6,772
17
Silicon Valley
From a technical standpoint, the 2 UI's having two different apps make sense; a 'Modern' app has to conform to a single API framework, and is limited in the code structure it uses. It also has to deal with 1/3 2/3 and full screen snapping, be live tile aware (and conform to update limits so as not to be power hungry,) DPI and touch aware (pans, drags, etc.)

Due to there being a dozen or so different frameworks, all told, a traditional app doesn't conform to any of these things... and programmers frequently disregard stuff like UI-DPI awareness/scaling, which has become increasingly important with high dot-pitch displays.

'Modern' apps foster better, more consistent UI's and more portable code (and we can start to forget that the old 95 application frameworks ever existed and start to phase out some of that legacy bullcrap.)

Good points.
 

Smigit

macrumors 6502
Feb 21, 2011
403
264
Apple should be focused on making their iOS software and services better before they start thinking about porting it to other platforms. Honestly Cook & Co. should be embarrassed that people want to banish (and have banished) the stock Apple apps in favor of Google or other 3rd party apps.

OS X and iOS apps absolutely should be a priority, I wont argue that. That said, I dont think working on Windows versions necessarily has to be at the expense of either platform, they can have staff dedicated to the Windows version. There will be management overhead, but producing a Windows App doesn't prevent other people from working on the Apple systems release.
 

Michael Goff

Suspended
Jul 5, 2012
13,329
7,421
Why? I think it is interesting that windows will soon be the third most popular OS in the world. Five years ago that would have been hard to imagine.



You keep repeating that as if it's the only possible interpretation. The only difference in how iOS and OS X are distributed is that new versions of iOS are free.



About what, specifically?

Apparently I haven't been explaining my position clearly enough. Let me try this again.

How many people are using a smartphone from 2007? Very few people. How many people are using a Windows OS from 2007 or prior? QUITE A LOT.

As for what you were wrong about, you said I couldn't rip music with my MBA. You were wrong.

----------

Yes, your point is correct. But that doesn't hold true for ALL scenarios. Adobe Reader, a widely used software for PDFs, is not like that. I wish it was one app with 2 UIs. My point has not disagreed with yours. I'm just pointing out that your point isn't 100% universal and applicable to all software applications running on Windows 8. If explicitly acknowledging and agreeing with your point is ignorant, then by inheritance, your entire post(s) is/also ignorant.

Another thing I want to point is that many Windows 8 tablets have relatively small SSDs. While UI doesn't take up a tremendous amount of space, it can be a waste in some devices. There are many inherent problems that can't be easily and completely solved from Microsoft's end. It takes developers willing to understand the platform and the number/types of devices running on that platform.

Yes, my post was ignorant.

I got into argument mode, sorry. :eek:

But, yeah, I don't see why Apple doesn't do this. They probably will if/when Windows tablets become big.
 

76ShovelHead

macrumors 6502a
May 30, 2010
527
32
Florida
I've given Windows 8 a legitimate try. So the argument that "People just have to get over the changes and learn to use it" couldn't be further from the truth.

Preferences. It's all about preferences. You can't just tell someone to get over it. If you don't like the looks of something are you still gonna be interested? How about getting over the new Mercedes-Benz 500SL for a Dodge Dart? Yeah.

And no, I'm not comparing Apple to the 500SL or Windows to the new Dodge Dart (if I was, it'd be the Neon)...

So I'll continue using OS X and Ubuntu, and y'all can keep Windows.
 

Hastings101

macrumors 68020
Jun 22, 2010
2,340
1,460
K
Lion was by far the worst version of Mac OS X I've ever used and Apple managed to fix their mistakes with Mountain Lion. I'm sure Microsoft can do the same with Windows 8.1 or whatever they want to call it.
 

thekeyring

macrumors 68040
Jan 5, 2012
3,485
2,147
London
People keep saying that. Any evidence that it's actually true? I don't know either way.

As I posted earlier, NetMarketShare has Windows 8 at 3.82% and Mac at 7.01% for April 2013.

Exactly. Windows 8 passed Linux desktop market share, but not OS X.
 

pundit

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2007
114
0
Paul Thurrott has an article up "No Itunes mobile app for Windows 8/RT? Good!"

He makes a really good point that hasn't been brought up here.

Itunes is unbelievably crappy

Although the latest version is marginally less bloated, resource-inappropriate mess, its still junk. Literally still "Chromed" at the top, in yet another skeuomorphic misadventure. Its still clunky and non-nonsensical. And no plug and play storage access yet... in 2013

Itunes is basically a bad attempt at trolling in software form.

Now, ModernUI apps have a flat design motif, and have a tactile feel that is attractive (like, say, loku and blio.) Metro apps are Windows store apps, and there are design guidelines. Go off-base far enough, and get rejected.

Apple is passive-aggressively controlling when it comes to doing it their way. If iTunes was a great product, then I might have some sympathy... but its not. No one uses iTunes on Windows because they love the product so much, (or if they do, I'd love to know what meds they take.) People use iTunes because of a "have-to".

With Metro, iTunes can't pop up an annoyingly large Apple Update window way too frequently, probably can't use ridiculous skeuomorphic design cues inside the app, would have to include intuitive touch controls and will be forced into cleaner, less power-hungry code.

Should consumers want that? Yeah. Should Apple want that? Yeah. Does Apple want iTunes clean, smart and intuitive on Windows? Apparently not (they've had 7 full versions to try thus far.)

Its not about how many people use Windows 8, including Modern apps. Many, many millions of people do.

It's either a corporate pissing match, like say... iOS Skydrive 30% cut fight, the no iOS Office fight, or a passive-aggressive tantrum over not being able to control HOW broken an app they can make for Metro.
 

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,150
31,206
OS X and iOS apps absolutely should be a priority, I wont argue that. That said, I dont think working on Windows versions necessarily has to be at the expense of either platform, they can have staff dedicated to the Windows version. There will be management overhead, but producing a Windows App doesn't prevent other people from working on the Apple systems release.

Why does Apple need to worry about a "metro" app when the desktop version of iTunes works with Windows 8? What's the point of iTunes on a Windows tablet?
 

Carouser

macrumors 65816
Feb 1, 2010
1,411
1
Consider the following:

"iOS is restricted, you can't use it without a desktop computer" AND
"iOS is restricted, you can't use it with a desktop computer"

In the last two pages, pundit has been moving back and forth between these constantly. Pretty neat.
 

pundit

macrumors regular
Mar 18, 2007
114
0
Consider the following:

"iOS is restricted, you can't use it without a desktop computer" AND
"iOS is restricted, you can't use it with a desktop computer"

In the last two pages, pundit has been moving back and forth between these constantly. Pretty neat.

Where precisely did I say you can't use it WITH a desktop?

I DID say that the desktop app has been a mess and still is, years later... but that's hardly mutually exclusive.
 
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