Hey it's not the companies that push this supposed innovation, it's the new crop of engineers wanting to create a hurdle for others to jump over. Some knowledge that they have exclusivity on. Engineers have been doing this since the dawn of time, but since you guys are so green you don't know that.
Most engineers (like every other profession and occupation) are mediocre. They look for job security in incompatibily. I once had a programming partner who refused to document his work. I asked why after pleading with him repeatedly to leave a trail behind him. "Job security." At another place, the programmers had a slogan "comments are for sissies." Same idea.
So if you take something like C and permute it slightly so that a C programmer doesn't have the skill, you now have something that makes you marketable over that person. You can snow the non-technical manager into believing that your older colleague can't cut it because he knows C and you know Javascript.
In this world of mediocrity there are a very small number of gems, people who work for the user, who strive to make their tech work better for people. That's a skill that develops over the years, you get better at it every decade, because you know more about people. When you're in your 20s you don't even have a clue about yourself.
And most of you commenting here are the mediocre kind of programmer (if you're programmers at all). The ones who are questioning the broad conclusions are the ones I'd want to work with, and I don't care how young or old they are. What I care about is if their minds are at work and if they can relate to other people as equals despite superficial differences like gender, race, age.
Apple had a personal computer OS before Microsoft did. Did they try to lock Microsoft out of the personal computer OS business? No.
Apple had a graphic operating system before Microsoft. That time they did try to lock them out, but it was half-hearted and didn't even begin to work (and that wasn't Jobs anyway).
Not sure what to call the iPhone, what category it is, but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it? When Google entered did they do anything to try to take the market Google was going after? (They would have had to license their OS to do that.) No. They didn't care. As long as they control their own platform they're happy.
You guys ought to think a little. When you hear something that strikes you as totally wrong, consider the possibility that you're not looking at it from the right angler, as you did in this case.
Not to mention the whole subtle warning to Google not to implement multi-touch. Google finally opened up that can of worms after the organizations had a falling out.
You purport that I didn't understand it, yet then you go on to state exactly what my interpretation of the statement was. I suggest that you choose your approach more consistently.
>Did they try to lock Microsoft out of the personal computer OS business? No.
Of course they tried, at least to the degree that is legally allowed, just as pretty much every company does.
>but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it? When Google entered did they do anything to try to take the market Google was going after?
At this point I have to think that you're writing satire or something.
Of course Apple tried very hard to keep competitors out. One by creating a compelling product and cross-marketing the symbiosis between it and their existing successful products in other markets (namely the iPod and iTunes). Two, and this is a very big one, by the app platform. Apple came very, very close to achieving the universal lock-in in the fact that an iPhone app almost became a pre-determined conclusion for most businesses, such that you were either with them, or you were living in a second tier world.
If you think Jobs et al weren't dreaming of a world where everyone had an iDevice, you are absolutely delusional. Of course that is what they want, and whenever anyone argues otherwise it just stinks of rhetoric.
I've never had any issue using my iPhone in sunlight. Granted, I live in London, where bright sunlight is like a rare delicacy, even in the summer (glances out the window... yeah..), but still, the point remains - I have never had any trouble reading my iPhone even with direct sunlight on it.
People love to keep saying that, but it's horseshit. The iPhone screen is perfectly usable in the brightest sunlight if you crank up the brightness to the max.
Most engineers (like every other profession and occupation) are mediocre. They look for job security in incompatibily. I once had a programming partner who refused to document his work. I asked why after pleading with him repeatedly to leave a trail behind him. "Job security." At another place, the programmers had a slogan "comments are for sissies." Same idea.
So if you take something like C and permute it slightly so that a C programmer doesn't have the skill, you now have something that makes you marketable over that person. You can snow the non-technical manager into believing that your older colleague can't cut it because he knows C and you know Javascript.
In this world of mediocrity there are a very small number of gems, people who work for the user, who strive to make their tech work better for people. That's a skill that develops over the years, you get better at it every decade, because you know more about people. When you're in your 20s you don't even have a clue about yourself.
And most of you commenting here are the mediocre kind of programmer (if you're programmers at all). The ones who are questioning the broad conclusions are the ones I'd want to work with, and I don't care how young or old they are. What I care about is if their minds are at work and if they can relate to other people as equals despite superficial differences like gender, race, age.