But we are pretty set in our ways about these things though, which is worrisome. Anyone remember the Dvorak Keyboard? The tale is the QWERTY keyboard was developed to _slow down_ typists who were faster than the mechanics of a typewriter could handle. The Dvorak was supposed to be a much more efficient layout of the keys. But when it was brought out as the next best thing, it was firmly swatted back to the sidelines as a niche tool. People were used to QWERTY and didn’t want an improvement. So much for innovation – or even just an upgrade…

Then there’s the ‘how does your brain work’ viewpoint. I totally suck at video games that use handheld controllers – input devices that were specifically designed to provide maximum flexibility and control of a virtual experience. Any 8 year old can kick my butt without even looking at the screen – unless I have a keyboard interface. Then it’s ON. For whatever reason, I simply do much better with a keyboard interface. That’s not to say the 8 year old can’t still school me, but he’d at least have to pay attention :-) Often we try to make standardize devices when we as an organism are far from standard in how we operate. Why not have options?

I don’t know that a touch screen is the next best step since it really doesn’t change much in how information is gathered, but it _is_ a step and I find it very important to explore. Hell, without exploring technology, Albert Turing wouldn’t have created his machine and started this whole mess in the first place. The market will tell you pretty quickly what does and does not work. In the case of the touch screen interfaces, we obviously have something that works even if it’s just for novelty’s sake. Maybe that’s a good avenue to explore? Might open up something else creative and interesting.

I do agree that computers (as in desktops) don’t necessarily suck, though. I think they’re simply a part in a path of evolution which is always an exciting time.

Keyboard + mouse is the best interface for a stationary device. A lot of people tried to reinvent the interface but nothing beats this combination of highly precise pointing device + ability to easily type.

Mobile device creators come up with really ingenious replacements, but no one managed to bring any mobile device to the level of usability of a desktop. You can do EVERYTHING with a desktop. With mobile devices, you are always limited in some ways and it creates that irritating feeling of being in a cage and trying to break through.

Desktop computers becoming a niche tool? Well… if seen that way, computers were always a niche product compared to phones, TVs, toasters and other home appliances. iPad may make a revolution in that area, but aside from being mobile, it doesn’t offer anything to replace a desktop computer.

With iPad etc, people are just going to have more intelligent “radios” and that kind of devices. Pads may kill newspapers and lure away people who have no real use for their computers. But most people do not just “consume information” and I don’t think parents are going to stop buying real computers for their children.

And at some point the network really will be technologically capable of stepping in where the dedicated hardware once lived. There will be a point when even applications like QLab, that require extremely tight integration with the hardware, will no longer require that integration in the same way. 20 years down the line? When network access is as fast as access to the local SSD drive? Seems like just about any application on my machine today could transform into a hosted application at that point. Which would be fabulous.

He’s not saying “PC’s are being commoditized, therefore the play is to make money on the software and not the hardware.” He is actually saying, “PC’s are being commoditized, therefore we need to quickly differentiate ourselves into a company that makes money on the computing experience and the ecosystem that empowers it.” Done right, that means making premium margins on both the hardware *and* the software.

Regarding your assessment that computers suck? You’re spot on. They absolutely do. Everything we take for granted about the computing experience is provisional and a hack. There are definitely better ways to do things.

Photoshop? Logic Pro? Get serious. Those are niche tools used by a small priesthood of practitioners. How about painting with iPad on a virtual 60′ x 60′ canvas? How about letting creative but tool-challenged commuters unlock their potential to compose original music using an iPad-based sequencer? That is a glimpse of the future. And the folks talking about Photoshop and the like are gonna seem as crazy as people defending the printing press do right now.

Apple’s not dumb. They’re not gonna kill off the Mac, the same way they’ve not killed off the iPod Classic. And you’ll need Macs to make iPad apps for a long time to come. But I wouldn’t expect many new Mac-specific innovations in Mac OS. They can add new frameworks that can be leveraged on iPad/iPhone OS *and* Mac OS, and I’d expect to see a LOT of that activity.

But make no mistake, the Mac is going to be relegated to becoming an “authoring tool” for the much wider, much broader iPhone OS-powered ecosystem which is where Apple is betting its future and will make its real money.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100504/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_apple_antitrust_inquiry;_ylt=AvluXpzBfg_v74BqZs.nAfKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoczVwOG84BHBvcwMxMzEEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl90ZWNobm9sb2d5BHNsawNmZWRzdG9sb29rYXQ-

While I used to be a serious programmer (I could trace Chris’ electron to the boarding pass quite handily about 20 years ago) the software development paradigm has completely changed. I saw it coming with the birth of the Internet (yes… I’m that old…) and ran screaming from the industry back to my real passion – live Theatre. However, I’m a very capable end used and it always amuses me when I run into an A+ Certified individual who doesn’t know what a linked list is :-)

But I digress…

The user interface has long been a primary consideration in program development. Mess that up and you might as well try to sell a car with the steering wheel mounted on the trunk. There might be incredibly good reasons for putting it there, but who wants to drive sitting on the rear bumper? The interesting thing is interface design (interaction design these days I guess) is what changed the software paradigm. As Chris points out, miles of tedious code are now solved by a single call to a library – very handy. And rather treacherous. While I joke about the A+ not getting basic data structures, I also worry about their ability to really remain viable in computers. It’s all becoming very specialized and the more specialized a lifeform becomes , the less time it has left to exist. What happens when we altogether forget the underpinnings of the libraries we use to make our lives easier? Or better yet, and this happens often, what have we lost by programmers who don’t understand the basis of the abstraction? Efficiency tends to die when we get lazy – we rely on the easiest way to do something more than the most efficient and the code starts to suck. Hell – I ran a Mac SE with 4MB of ram and 40MB of hard drive for years quite happily. Now code is bloating and I couldn’t even think about running such a machine. Code Bloat rather than feature enhancement is really what’s driving the need for Bigger! Faster! More! More! More!

Having overstated that… One of the reasons I prefer Macs over Windows is the op system just feels cleaner. It feels like, despite the slick interface and whizmos they stuff in, the code is streamlined and efficient. Well, except for Leopard, but they seem to have fixed that in Snow Leopard. That’s also why I always appreciate people like Chris and other folks. They take the time to keep the code moving smoothly and efficiently. Therefore, I’ve set up just ridiculously complicated designs on Mac Minis which had no business even playing back one of my monolithic sound files, but they work. The efficiency of Qlab makes it so. Kudos all around there and thank you, thank you, thank you!

OK – the iPad. It’s fascinating, though I’m less interested in it than some. My fascination is in the way Apple has re-defined user interaction again beginning with the iPhone (and iPod Touch). They did it before when they stole Team Xerox’s ideas for the Macintosh. Oh they may have stolen this idea somewhere as well, but they make it sexy and desirable. And most importantly they make it work! The very idea you could have a touch screen with a fluid user interface back in my programming days would have been a airgot induced iconoclastic hallucination. Yeah, right! And the world is round too… (guffaw) It’s just scary how impressive that achievement is, whoever you want to credit. And it’s scary in what it means to the progress of computing. Apps are legion for these products, I have many on my Touch myself. But quality of the apps? A crapshoot. Some developers are relying on the easy solutions and you can just _feel_ the dirty bloated code in them. That’s the trend I fear. I don’t fear the iPad’s change in the operational paradigm, I fear what it could do to the developer pool. Otherwise, we’ll be back in the same cycle of Bigger! Faster! More! More! More! and haven’t really learned anything.

1/2 diatribe, 1/2 philosophy, 1/2 rant. My usual.

I scored in the low 60s for mathematics on the GRE :-)

As far as Apple ending the Mac to focus on touch devices, I don’t know the answer either. I will say that Mac sales are still a lot Apple’s revenue, and it’s a lot easier to market to a current customer than a new one. Macs sell well to lots of groups (e.g. designers, photographers, filmmakers, students, developers, etc.). I don’t think the Mac will go away until Apple has a story to tell those groups about how a touch device will work just as well for them. I think the Mac is safe for a couple years, but I’ll certainly pay attention to Apple marketing for the first signs a change.

That said, my advice to fellow indie devs is to not worry too much about it. Remember, we’re nimble. Platform changes can really benefit us, as we can move much more quickly than the big guys. One of my biggest competitors on the Mac is actually Microsoft Word in notebook mode. I’m not at all worried about having Microsoft as a competitor on the iPad, as they move way too slowly.