Dear Mr. Jobs

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I held off jailbreaking my iPod Touch because I'd heard that in early 2008 you'd be opening it up to third party apps.

When I first bought the Touch, I was disappointed because I thought I'd get Wifi versions of some of the iPhone apps. Sadly, its list of applets paled in comparison to the iPhone. Jailbreaking was one way around that, but I held off because I didn't want to miss out on the cornucopia of third-party apps that would be released in early 2008, once you opened it up.

So today I learned there's a new update to the Touch, it's a spectacular update adding things like Mail and Google Maps, things I'd wanted all along (and honestly, thought I was getting all along).

Sadly, I also learned the following two things about this update:

1. It's still not opened up.

2. The update costs 20.00.

What the fuck, Steve?

Do you know what this software release did for me? I'll tell you what it didn't do: It didn't prompt me to spend 20 more dollars on the thing.

Guess what today's announcement *did* prompt me to do? And I'll bet lots of others, too...

Tony, I hear you - kinda lame for them to grab a quick $20 for people that bought an iPod Touch. The SDK that you are looking forward to is only about a month away, from what I gather...

The new update IS pretty cool, btw.

- Jon

There's something I learned a looooong time ago -- never, ever, buy the first version of anything electronic, or mechanical, unless you can fix it yourself.

Following that rule has saved me a ton of aggravation, and often money -- 95% of the time, between the release of the first, and new, bug-fixed, second version, I discover that I didn't really need the product in the first place.

Just wait until people find out the 10.5.2 update for Mac OS 10.5 is going to cost $50.

Leopard is the most broken OS I've ever used.

Hey, I was perfectly happy with my Mk1... :-)

They said February from day one of the SDK announcement.



Thank Sarbanes Oxley. This already happened with the 802.11n upgrade on certain systems not advertised with the feature.



Your tax dollars at work.

Odds are, Apple never really intended to put these features in to the Touch, trying to sell it as an iPod more then anything. The market snapped them up for web terminals like you did, and so Apple is responding to that now. But, they never said you would get such features ahead of time, so bam, you need income to write in the books to push it out.

How so? Beyond NVidia having their head up, well, something and releasing crap drivers for the 8600, I really haven't heard much in the way of actual serious problems in the OS to make me see it as any worse then previous 10.x.0 releases. I didn't have some third party kernel hack installed to hose up my upgrade, I have Time Machine running fine off the NAS, and in general have been pretty happy. Am I just lucky in the 3 installs of Leopard I interact with on a daily basis? Nothing I have seen has me running back to 10.4.11.

Don't you see, Drakino? Apple is starting to make serious gains in the market, so that means they're evil, and as penance, they should just give everything away. Because $20 is too much to pay for a software update.

Especially since when people bought the iPod Touch, they didn't feel the price they paid was worth what they got. So anything that ever gets added should be theirs for free.

Oh, and the iPhone too. Since, you know, they didn't really think they should have paid the price they did at launch, so they deserve a rebate.

Maybe I should go to the Benz dealership and complain that people who got a 2008 E-Series got stuff I didn't get.

Does the entire world have this unbearable sense of entitlement? Or is it just America?

I guess the value of a software update is what the market will bear. But personally, I hope the market doesn't bear the thought of charging for software updates for consumer electronics. Rio did think about it at one stage, but fortunately it was abandoned on technical grounds (there was no way of tying a purchased upgrade file to a specific device) without us having to persuade them what a PR disaster it would be.

Are there any other consumer-electronics companies who charge for software upgrades? Or at least, for ones which the end-user can apply themselves?

Peter

HP wanted to charge me for XP drivers for my scanner which I bought the week before XP came out. If I remember rightly it was nearly £50 they wanted as well.

The end result was that my scanner sat unused for 18 months until someone at HP came to their senses

Its not $20 for the 1.1.3 update. Its $20 to get the iPhone apps on your iPod touch e.g. Google Maps, Notes, Stocks, Weather and Mail.

I'd just be interested in an iPod Touch that had more than 16G of memory.

Well, there are broken things that are bugs and then things that are broken by design.

By design you have things like the atrocious menu bar, dock, stacks' overlapped icons in the dock, dock's inability to show folder contents as a list, super-fugly folder icons, no way to set file ownership from GUI anymore, the nice rounded corners on the menu bar are gone, the blue apple top left is now black, help viewer is now some bastard always-on-top non-standard window that can't be closed from the keyboard, throbbers in Mail spin way too fast, Time Machine asks if it can use every single external volume you connect and there's no way to disable this pain in the ass prompting from the GUI even if Time Machine is OFF, etc...

Things that are broken with bugs include, lots of crashes in Mail even when it's just sitting there doing nothing, lots of crashes in Safari without hitting bad pages, crashes when hitting bad pages, safari gets frozen/bogged often while working on one page that it affects all windows and/or tabs, ownership issues when updating from Tiger due to missing user group causes an "unknown" group to appear in file perms, adjusting ACL/perms can crash because of this, finder unable to eject DVD from drive quite often with keyboard shortcut (drag to trash usually works), unable to eject some external volumes every now and then, shared computers sometimes don't show their folders and are unable to be ejected/refreshed, spotlight completely trashes and permanently damages Tiger's Spotlight on another drive, renaming a file inside an expanded subfolder while in list view will escape out of rename if you hold the left cursor key to try and move the insertion point, connecting and/or disconnecting an external display to my PowerBook will often leave the graphics rendering in some weird state that looks like 16bit without dithering, doing the same can often leave font smoothing in some weird state where some fonts on some web pages now look much thinner than they're supposed to, these last two issues can affect the external display, internal or both (ATI graphics on this machine), on my Intel Mac PubSubAgent crashes every 10 minutes and all text/string objects in iTunes windows appear inside a light grey box instead of properly showing through to the window background, etc...

On the plus side, WiFi reception seems to be much better. I tested this by switching between Tiger and Leopard without changing anything else nor moving the machine. It was a huge surprise to say the least.

The folder icons are fugly and not on an angle for only one reason - so they show up properly in Cover Flow. They should have included an alternate icon resource that could be used for CoverFlow views. This would solve a lot of problems with a lot of file types. Strangely I've never seen anyone else mention this as the reason for the new icons.

Apple knew Leopard wasn't ready for prime time when they released it. But there's no way they were going to pull a Vista again.

The examples I mentioned above are strictly issues that I have right now or have had with my two Leopard installations. I'm not including the enormous list of problems other people have had with things like Time Machine, Spaces and other features, nor am I including the issues caused to third-party programs (and many not because those programs were at all deficient or bending the rules).

The 10.5.2 update is going to be enormous in size and is the version that I've always heard one should wait for before updating to Leopard (I first heard this back in early October from friends that work closely with Apple).

I'm surprised there's no commentary here today about the MacBook Air. I've always said that I'd buy a Mac laptop once they had something in the sub-3 pound category. This is close enough.

Stuff I like:
- light weight
- decent sized screen / keyboard

Stuff I'm not sure about:
- lack of Firewire or most any other useful ports
- lack of ExpressCard or any other expansion slots (I'd have to carry around a CompactFlash/USB adapter for my camera.)
- Fixed (iPod-esque) battery
- $1000 premium to get the SSD disk, otherwise you get the dog-slow 4200RPM hard disk
- I really like the fingerprint scanner on my ThinkPad. Nice to not worry about shoulder-surfing.

Stuff that's almost a deal breaker:
- Shiny LCD screens. What is Apple thinking?

Still, it's an awfully sweet machine...

Is the whole non-replaceable battery thing such a big deal? I've never taken the battery out of any of my laptops, and the Air has a huge 5hr runtime to make the need to swap between two batteries much less of a necessity. Anyway, the replacement battery is pretty cheap, and free install on that too.

Whats with the 300 GBP difference between UK and US pricing anyway? I thought the difference on the other Macbooks was less.

I would have posted something about the keynote, but I think this thread was more for griping about the firmware update cost.

I know I'm not an Apple fan, but I'd have to say that I was more positive about yesterday's announcements than any previous years'. The only thing that still bothers me is the iTunes pricing. I know that's not up to Apple, but for me, every single thing on that store is too expensive by double. It annoyed the hell out of me that, while watching the keynote, when Jobs gave the price for movie rentals everyone clapped. Seriously? $5 to rent an HD movie? You clap for that?

It still bugs me that TV episodes cost $2. I can't believe there are people out there, and on this board, who will actually pay $2 for a single episode of a TV show.

I wouldn't really trust that claim. Battery life claims are always greater than real-world results, and I'll be interested in hearing hands-on test results for playing videos (since you can't play DVDs). Most planes these days still don't have power outlets.

I'm sure that people are concerned about the replacement. My last laptop I bought two or three new batteries for as the old ones wore out. Good to know that battery replacement labor is free, but I'd argue that $129 is a little pricey. Not a lot, but some. Then take into account that you have to take it somewhere rather than just swap it out.

Seems an odd design choice. I'm sure it was intended to reduce size, but still.

The battery seems to take up more than half the footprint (perhaps even volume) of the bottom portion of the machine.

Since I had no desire for this type of machine, I'll agree it's cool to see something so thin, but it doesn't do anything for me even after seeing it. I used to know a number of people that wanted a smaller Mac, but that extended to all dimensions, not just thickness. I am sure this machine will be a hit, but I think something with a 12" or even 10" screen would also have been.

Taking just 2" off the width and about 1" off the depth would have been a huge (positive) deal on this design.

I'm most eager to see what changes come with the next MacBook Pro revisions since I'd like to pick up a new notebook later in the summer.

If it were anyone else I wouldn't really trust it, but Apple have this nice policy of making sure quoted battery life is realistic. A lot of the time reviews say that iPod battery life is more than quoted. Plus, my Macbook battery is still really good.

I'm pretty interested in the $99 USB Superdrive. It'd be sweet if it could be tacked onto an Apple TV to watch DVDs (and become a 'Remote Disc' too). It would also be nice if it would be able to plug into an Airport Extreme (that has USB, right?) and become a Remote Disc.

Talking about Remote Discs, can you write to them?

The "broken by design" stuff usually comes down to personal opinion. Yes, a lot in the GUI look changed and lots of it I do wonder why. I however also remember GUI elements changing in every previous 10.x release, so it wasn't really unexpected. I do appreciate the more unified approach to the actual windows now, since I stare at those more then I stare at the rounded corners of the menu bar. The dock, mine is on the side and it reverts to 2d there anyhow, so it hasn't annoyed me much. As for setting ownership on a file in the GUI, I had no problem doing it via the get info window as in previous releases. I don't have a Tiger install to compare exactly how it used to work, but I have a plus to add a user or group, and can set permissions for them, along with removing users or groups. It's exposing more of the ACL style and less of the pure user-group-world permission set.



I'm running Mail on 2 of the 3 machines use, both connected to IMAP servers with tons of thousands of e-mails, and at work tons of smart folders too. I'm even using some plugins at work, and I haven't had a single Mail crash. I can remember one hang at home, but nothing like crashes just from sitting there. I have seen Safari act up a little, but it's not been enough to get me over to Camino or another OS X browser (Firefox 2 is out due to the fonts). Your other comments I can't comment on based on personal experience as I haven't seen issues like those. Definitely not having a process crash every 10 minutes and such.

I know people are having issues with 10.5, but people also had issues with 10.4, and 10.3, and 10.2, and 10.1, and most definitely 10.0. But I have to question the "most broken OS" part. I definitely haven't had the feeling of wanting to run back to Tiger like Vista did for me in regards to upgrading to XP.

Interestingly, Leopard did make the transition to a full Universal OS. I restored a Time Machine backup from an Intel Mac Mini to a PowerPC Mac Mini with no problem. Everything was just the way it was, except for a few Intel only 3rd party apps showing up as not runnable in the Applications folder. That impressed me quite a bit, especially when Microsoft is still struggling even with a simple 32 to 64 bit transition for years now.

All i could see was Macbook performance for nigh on Macbook Pro money. No thanks.....

Thin and small laptops have always commanded a price premium, so not much different here. I'm curious to see how much of a market there is for them, because right now I see the MacBook Air in a similar way as I did the G4 Cube. Cool, but probably not something that sells well enough to justify keeping it around.

Gizmodo did a comparison between 4 other small laptops:


Though most of these models are competition more for a Macbook.

Strange that there's not much out there in the same league as my 2.5lb Dell X1 (aka. Samsung(?) Q30).

Time to get an EeePC, I think. After the next CPU upgrade this spring.

Cheers

That's what I've been thinking for a while now! Any idea why Dell abandoned the X1 line? I thought those laptops were really neat.


I've been thinking that lately. Those look like really cool little devices. I think I might wait, though, and either get it at a lower price or see what they do with the next revision. The battery life is a little low for me at 2.8 hours. Other than that I think it's really cool.

They're very cool, but they do run quite hot. The shop around the corner from us has a demo out on the counter. I *like* it!

The best rumour is that they'll release a spring update with a lower-wattage CPU, which should eliminate the fan and significantly improve battery life. I hope to pick one up before the summer Empeg Meet, for use as a tourist PC.

EDIT: Speaking of which, these are so tiny that we could bring along some extras for anyone in the UK/EU that might want one at Canada/USA pricing.

Cheers

I got an OLPC XO just to see what kind of a job they did with it (good, IMO) but I am going to get an EeePC, I think.

Had lunch today with a friend who is a long-time Apple afficionado and the Air launch has him thinking that Apple has Jumped the Steve -- was amazed that this was all they had to show. "Only one USB port?" he said, "and still it's 3 pounds?"

You could view this as a problem of raised expectations. Or not.

Wow, it sounds like I was much more positive about this keynote than Apple fans. That's a little weird. Like I said before, I was very positive about everything they had to present, aside from the pricing for movie rentals.

I ended up deciding to go with the MacBook Air. Yeah, the lack of ports is really annoying, but it's going to drop the weight of my travel bag by a full pound, double my battery life, and give me a larger screen (versus my ThinkPad X41 Tablet with the extended battery).

A friend of mine has an EeePC. Very cute. I could see using one for occasional web surfing or email reading, but I wouldn't want to do any serious typing on one. The keyboard is really cramped, but not as bad as the OLPC. You need kid fingers to properly operate that thing. I found typing on one to be incredibly difficult.

As to Apple's "Remote Disc", I'll be interested to learn more about that. I've been using Windows file sharing for the last ten years to share CDROMs and whatnot from my desktop to each of my laptops, none of which have had CDROM drives on their own. If Apple enables remote CD burning, that would be a good thing. If they enable remote CD ripping, then that's even better.

I'd say that the lack of a built-in optical drive is a bigger problem than a dearth of ports or a non-removable battery.

I so rarely use the optical drive in my notebook that it wouldn't be my primary complaint with the Air. Of course the first time i'd really need to use it (badly) I'd probably be swearing up and down.

But that's what the external drive is for. When I do need to use a disc, 90+% of the time it's when I'm at home with the machine on a desk.

Just some perspective since I'm not the slightest bit interested in the Air.

I'm in the same boat of not really caring about the optical drive in the laptop. For the past few times I've traveled by air, I've ripped movies to my PSP to watch, so the concept of doing this for a laptop isn't really foreign to me. I'm also not too terribly bothered by the battery, as the only time I have swapped them in my 7 years of laptop owning is when I'm replacing one with a newer one due to age. Since the battery costs the same as a removable one, and includes labor, they seem to have that base covered.

I do wonder how you reload the OS on it if you don't buy the $99 external drive. Did they implement remote disc all the way in the EFI firmware as well, akin to the remote CD rom functions in most decent servers? And while Parallels or VMWare on the machine would more then likely satisfy peoples Windows needs, can it run Boot Camp?

I'll admit I'm a bit tempted by it if I go down the path of getting a Mac desktop in the near future. My MacBook Pro will lose most of it's daily use of being my main system, and going to a lighter package would then be tempting. I'd still keep the ambient light sensor and backlit keyboard, and aluminum casing that I've now had on my laptops for 5 years.

The downside is that the speed is a step down from even my 2 year old MacBook Pro. So I'd be side stepping instead of upgrading, though with a desktop this would be less of a concern. If the Air doesn't suffer the fate of the Cube, it's probably in my future, but at least a year or two out.

Not only that, but ripping the movies ahead of time saves battery life when you're traveling (as opposed to playing them directly off the DVD drive).

By the way...

Follow up regarding the initial post in this thread...

This thing is major orders of awesome and is made entirely of win after it's been hacked. Shell prompt? Check. SSH/SFTP? Check. NES Emulator? Check. ScummVM? Check. E-book reader? Check. IM client? Check.

I also didn't realize how easy it is to completely reverse the hacks and return the thing back to out-of-box state. I can roll this thing back to Factory 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 whenever I feel like it. So when the time comes that apple does release the SDK, I haven't locked myself out of that route.

On the lack of an optical disk drive: I do a lot of business travel and I've never had an optical disk drive. Ever. It's very rarely an issue. Example: if somebody wants to hand you files without emailing them, they use a USB thumbdrive. I think I once had a case where we had a CD that we needed to read and share; one guy with a CDROM read it and then we passed the contents around on a thumbdrive.

On catastrophic failure and the need to reinstall: I figure, if all else fails and I'm in a foreign city, I can always find a nearby Apple store. They'll have everything. (Hopefully.) I am quite curious how you can boot or do disaster recovery over the net. I'm also curious what you're supposed to do if the hard drive fails, since it doesn't appear to be user accessible. Sounds like another reason that you should only buy an Air with the SSD disk.

Following up from a thread last June, it's topical to discuss ZFS again. For those of you who've missed it, ZFS is now semi-officially supported on OS X. A variety of useful features don't yet work, such as booting from ZFS, direct access to snapshots, and there are still bugs (iTunes isn't happy, and neither is Spotlight). Nonetheless, this is a big step ahead. I wouldn't bet the integrity of my data on it. Yet.

Which leads to an intriguing question. My old Infrant file server is too slow and is full. Time for something new. I need to get this running in the next few weeks. I'm currently thinking I'll go the clone route. Based on our discussion in October, I'm leaning toward going barebones and getting the Norco DS-520. However, it's going into a sizable closet where noise is less of an issue than in my previous house. This leads me to wonder whether I should just go for a generic beige-box PC. Ultimately, I'll install OpenSolaris, thus maximizing the chances of ZFS "just working." I figure that one benefit of the Norco box over other "server" boxes is that it's sufficiently generic that just about anything should run on it, and that it has a VGA jack, so I can at least see what's going on when I'm trying to install it. Or, should I just go with a beige-box PC?

It's Here!

Now I'm starting to get interested...