"I've experienced my own set of issues (oh god the kernel panics), but really, you haven't experienced anything he mentions?"
I'm in basically the same boat. I have experienced some issues, but none of the ones he mentions. Further, in my experience anyway, this has been the smoothest major OS version upgrade I've experienced. Obviously that won't be true for everyone, but it is for myself.
"You don't feel like Mission control is a pretty big step backwards from even the old spaces UI (on a single monitor, it is)?"
I don't personally, but to each his own. I think it is refreshing that they cleaned things up and consolidated what was once multiple disparate UIs (dashboard, expose, and spaces) into a single UI. Formerly, I didn't even try to explain to my wife how to use Spaces because it was just too confusing for her. Now that it's all basically one UI, it is easier to explain and requires no manual configuration. I am a bit annoyed at some minor quirks, like the inability to manually rearrange desktops, but I don't consider it a step back.
"You think Launchpad is not pointless?"
I just simply don't get this complaint. They added a new feature. If you think it's pointless, ignore it, but what is the point of complaining about a new thing which you are not forced to use which does not deprecate any old feature?
Anyway, everyone is certainly welcome to have their complaints, especially someone who has experienced some poor issues, but I agree with the grandparent comment that often someone's configs can get mangled and they can lash out at, in this case, Apple, as though it is entirely their fault. I would be extremely surprised if all of these complaints were entirely valid and the writer of the article were not tinkering with their system intensely to have all these issues pop up.
Having owned an iPhone before owning a Mac, I appreciate Launchpad. I know there's quicker ways to launch, but it feels familiar to me and I like having it available.
"If you divide 480 by 44 you get a remainder of 20. Divide by 11 and you get a remainder of 9. 460 cannot be divided into equal parts of 11 nor 44. The vertical rhythm is corrupt."
I would actually argue that the remainders are a good thing.
When viewing a list, they act as a nice visual indicator that there is more content below. If the last item directly lined up with the bottom of the screen, it would not be as easy to differentiate at a glance. By showing half the last item, it encourages the user to pan down to see the remaining content.
Certainly some would suggest I'm claiming "it's a feature, not a bug" and maybe that's true, maybe the remainder it is unintended, but I think it does make more sense to have the bottom element in a list half showing to alert the user that there is more content below.
I think this gets at a key misunderstanding in the post. The purpose of a grid is not to align everything to pixel perfection, but to assist in generating an interface that communicates well and is attractive. Departures from the grid sizing can have a variety of benefits:
1) Visually distinguish navigational elements from content
2) Account for visual weight of different elements to create a stronger perception of rythm
3) Give some warmth and life to the design so it doesn't feel sterile and robotic
4) Indicating continuation of content (as you very nicely explain)
As the Dalai Lama said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
I used to have my data structures & algorithms class (back when I taught DS&A) read "On following rules" by Kirit Saelensminde [http://www.kirit.com/On%20following%20rules]. This little saying goes along with it nicely.
Showing a peak of extra content to indicate that there's something you're not seeing may not be deliberate, but it's definitely desirable when you've got no other permanent indicators. That said, given Apple's usual attention to detail, I wouldn't be surprised to find that this is a deliberate design choice.
I’m pretty sure it’s deliberate. I have heard more than one Apple engineer say in their WWDC talks that you should always make sure to indicate when there’s more content and the way you do that is to cut off the last entry in a list.
Content height is unpredictable so even with a baseline grid, you will still get half-visible content most of the time. I was just lucky in my example :D
People can resize their browser windows to whatever dimensions they want; does that mean using any kind of grid or rhythm on the web is hopeless? Of course not.
Potentially, but if so, it should be something which you'd have to opt into or open only for fellow developers.
The last thing I want is to get spammed with "bug reports" from lay users with trivial or non-existent issues.
If they implemented this but made it take even one extra step like flipping some switch in the settings, it would filter out most lay users and garner some more useful feedback.
The Kidd Mine is in northern Ontario, 500 miles northwest of Toronto. The mine began operation in 1966, producing copper, zinc, indium, cadmium, silver and sulphuric acid. The deposit is one of the largest and richest volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits in the world.
There is an underground mine, and metallurgical facilities consisting of a copper concentrator, smelter and refinery, and zinc, cadmium, indium plant, liquid sulphur dioxide and sulfuric acid plant. Kidd's concentrating, smelting and refining processes are among the most advanced in the world.
The mine currently employs 1400 people and operates 7 days a week with two 12-hour shifts. The properties comprise 14 patented half lots covering 896 hectares of freehold mining land.
Kidd Creek has three shafts known as the No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 mines. Mine D is currently being developed to access reserves below the 6,800 foot to the 9,500 foot level. Commissioning for Mine D expansion began in 2004, and is scheduled to increase the operation's ultimate capacity, in stages, to 2.7Mt/yr of ore to 2012 and deepen Kidd Creek Mine to a final depth of 9,500 ft and extending the life of mine to 2017. Kidd is the deepest base metal mine in the world.
I'd be interested to see some analytics, such as how many users are there with 100+ karma because that's likely a better measure of the number of active users than the number of registered users (many of which are likely inactive). However, that doesn't account for lurkers.
Or, the number of users that have logged in within the past week though this is probably something pg would have to give us because I can't think of any way to determine that without the backend data.
100+ karma won't exactly be a good parameter. I am a regular at Hacker News for around 3 months now , mostly just to read the content & up-vote the ones I really like. But my karma has been at 1 forever now, maybe because I don't comment much, not sure. Still karma does not say much.
Yeah, I agree. Karma shouldn't be an indicator of how often one visits HN, it's merely an indicator of how much one participates in the HN community.
For me, getting karma is not desirable at all. What's the point of it? I only comment, when I think I have something useful to say, which is not often the case. I never felt the urge to post just so that my karma increases. I think, this really reflects the good design of this whole system by pg.
It's certainly not a direct correlation, but it does help to sort the spam bots and people who created an account but never use it from the rest.
However, I did mention that the karma approach would not account for lurkers which was why I proposed the logged in method. There are many other interesting data points I'd love, but without pg releasing a lot of the info, it's tough (or in some cases impossible) to gather from public data.
I have to say that I did not know about the inurl google search parameter.
However, this is indeed a very rough estimate because the parameter 100...100000 also captures the number that indicates how long ago a user account was created, so it would also count accounts that were created a while ago (over 100 days) but were inactive.
for a numerical range find, which is VERY useful for date searches. A couple years ago, I gave a lesson to a class of mostly senior citizens for how to use Google to do genealogy work. We covered the range find, the inurl: and a couple other obscure but useful search enhancers. Pretty interesting stuff (here's the ODP, if interested) http://www.zentu.net/fmt/searchpresentation.odp
Apparently there are a bunch of pages in the index that just go to "No such user" pages (looks like killed spam accounts).
Unfortunately this search also includes people with accounts created between 100 and 100000 days ago, regardless of karma level. Not sure how to filter that out; you can't use the range syntax in between double quotes, it seems.
I'm going to have to agree with him. It is a bit ridiculous that someone using the iOS 5 beta has their reviews go in along with the rest of them.
Apple should make it so reviews are only shown for the OS of the user's phone, so if I am on iOS 5 I can see the beta reviews, but most average joes still on iOS 4 would only see those relevant to iOS 4.
This also solves an issue of users still on iOS 3 with an app that may no longer be compatible for iOS 3 clogging up the reviews for they aren't relevant for most current iOS users.
No that doesn't make sense. As a developer you don't want to start at 0 reviews every time there is a OS update. Reviews are pretty important, and if it periodically looks like you don't have them it would be very bad.
Currently they roll over the reviews ever version of the App the developer releases. That makes sense because bugs get fixed and features are introduced.
You should not see any difference in the different versions of iOS. Though it might perform differently on different hardware.
I feel as if Apple hasn't really done very much to help the developer note what platforms they are targeting in an easy way. If you don't want iPhone 3g users to use the app, they shouldn't be able to download it that that device in the first place etc.
> You should not see any difference in the different versions of iOS.
Wrong. Any OS feature available only in version N and above may be used conditionally while the application still works on versions N-1 and under.
Case in point: Apple's Game Center is only available from iOS 4.2 (which excludes 1st generation iPod Touch and original iPhones), and is not available on iPhone 3G.
What if a game developer is OK with a 4.0 baseline, or even a 3.1 baseline so iPhone and Touch 1 users can still play, but he still wants users with compatible devices to have access to Game Center achievements and voice chat?
He conditionally enables the feature.
> If you don't want iPhone 3g users to use the app, they shouldn't be able to download it that that device in the first place etc.
Set UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities correctly and that's done for you. For instance, the 3G iPhone uses ARM v6 and only provides OpenGL ES 1.1. Require armv7 and opengles-2 and you've ensured your application will not be installable on 3G iPhones.
For an example of that, see Infinity Blade [0] which clearly states it is not compatible with the 3G (more precisely, it specifies that it's for 3GS and 4 in the "required configuration" section) and which will not install on a 3G.
> As a developer you don't want to start at 0 reviews every time there is a OS update. Reviews are pretty important, and if it periodically looks like you don't have them it would be very bad.
This is not true. Sure, if you were the ONLY developer with 0 reviews on a new OS version and everyone else had a bunch, it would look bad, but if every app had 0 reviews, you would be no different. And if you had a large user base on one version of the OS you'd likely have many reviews quickly.
> You should not see any difference in the different versions of iOS. Though it might perform differently on different hardware.
Certainly things are often mostly backwards compatible, but there are often changes at the API layer which break some things or add features that are available on the new version that weren't on the old one. For example, Apple added the backgrounding/multitasking mojo with iOS 4 but until an app was updated from iOS 3 and could make use of those APIs, the functionality wasn't enabled. Does it make sense for users of iOS 3 to see reviews of an app, not yet updated for iOS 4, of iOS 4 users bitching about how the app doesn't multitask right when multitasking wasn't enabled in iOS 3?
> I feel as if Apple hasn't really done very much to help the developer note what platforms they are targeting in an easy way. If you don't want iPhone 3g users to use the app, they shouldn't be able to download it that that device in the first place etc.
This is a decent idea, however most things DO work from one OS version to another, so barring people from using an app on their new device seems like it would often be an artificial limitation. Further, it is tough to beta test an OS if there are no apps to run on it. I think this concept of splitting the reviews would solve the problem of clutter in the current review system without barring people from doing the testing that ought to be done.
Further, some kind of hybrid could be done, such as maintaining the star rating across OS versions (so people could have an accurate representation of the general reliability, etc. of a given app) without clogging the review systems of different OS versions with irrelevant data and unwanted complaining about incompatibility with the new beta.
The Pentagon also has more height, with 4 stories above ground and at least 2 below. Don't know if Apple plans on having stories below ground, there was no mention during the presentation, but not doing so would account for more of the difference.
I cannot even begin to describe how many times I've heard commenters here spout advice like they are experts in patent law when they simply don't have the most basic grasp about them. It's terribly frustrating and scary to see people taking this often horribly wrong advice.
Sure, some people here are right, you probably don't have much to fear, they're probably just bullying you, but please, please, please don't take legal advice from a random forum. That's like taking advice on rails development from a forum full of lawyers. They just won't know what they're talking about much of the time and it can be very dangerous.
You have a valid point but is it worth your time? Experts don't exactly rule the world. The asker just needs to know if this threat will destroy what he does and the simple answer is NO.
He has a plethora of options at his disposal, being the real deal in this situation. If this was a letter from a lawyer, then it would take a lawyer. Does it need to be more complicated?
If it really is a bluff, the best way to call that bluff is by having a lawyer respond to them.
Advertising that you have no legal representation is a very bad idea. They can find ways to get you to say things they can use against you, for example, by making things sound bad and thus convincing you to deny things you shouldn't.
And yes, I have had this explained to me by actual lawyers.
You are right in that the date of invention in the U.S. is a useful date, but it only means that in the event of a conflict either during patent prosecution or on a challenge to validity later, he who can show they had an earlier date of invention will "win". In the rest of the world, it is the date of application that determines who ends up with the patent rights in the event of such a dispute. But it is not a priority date.
This is like calling a router a switch and claiming they are the same thing. Quite different in fact.
The date of invention is not determinative for things like infringement (again, short of patent invalidity), and the date of invention is never written down anywhere. It only comes out in the case of a conflict.
The date of filing IS a determining date for the term of the patent - it last for 20 years from the date of filing.
Further, the date of invention is not a "priority date", that is the earliest date for which an application can claim priority. An application cannot claim priority from an arbitrary date of invention, it can only claim priority from an earlier filed application here or abroad. Basically, you can never say, "Patent office, I invented this widget on this day" and have them say, "Ah yes, your patent term starts then." Your earliest priority date is your earliest filing date either here or abroad.
The question, as I understood it, was "how can he apply for a patent on something that I'm shipping". The answer, in the US, is that he can claim to have invented it first.
No, none of this goes to patent term, but he's not concerned about now, he's concerned about the future, if his product is successful, after the patent issues (if it issues).
It seems reasonable to assume a conflict given that a conflict is why he posted.
I'm in basically the same boat. I have experienced some issues, but none of the ones he mentions. Further, in my experience anyway, this has been the smoothest major OS version upgrade I've experienced. Obviously that won't be true for everyone, but it is for myself.
"You don't feel like Mission control is a pretty big step backwards from even the old spaces UI (on a single monitor, it is)?"
I don't personally, but to each his own. I think it is refreshing that they cleaned things up and consolidated what was once multiple disparate UIs (dashboard, expose, and spaces) into a single UI. Formerly, I didn't even try to explain to my wife how to use Spaces because it was just too confusing for her. Now that it's all basically one UI, it is easier to explain and requires no manual configuration. I am a bit annoyed at some minor quirks, like the inability to manually rearrange desktops, but I don't consider it a step back.
"You think Launchpad is not pointless?"
I just simply don't get this complaint. They added a new feature. If you think it's pointless, ignore it, but what is the point of complaining about a new thing which you are not forced to use which does not deprecate any old feature?
Anyway, everyone is certainly welcome to have their complaints, especially someone who has experienced some poor issues, but I agree with the grandparent comment that often someone's configs can get mangled and they can lash out at, in this case, Apple, as though it is entirely their fault. I would be extremely surprised if all of these complaints were entirely valid and the writer of the article were not tinkering with their system intensely to have all these issues pop up.