Anyone else here in the post-PC era?

The only thing I ever tried XP Search for was the only thing anybody would ever try to use it for; that is, I needed to find a file when I remember what I called it, but didn't remember where I saved it.This is apparently something that no version of Windows search has ever been able to do. It's great that XP search could return you a list of every .txt file on your hard drive, but who on Earth gives a fuck about that?Like I said, if what I needed to do on Windows was find the location of a file by name, it has always been utterly useless.

No, I'l readily admit that Android runs on a whole lot more devices than iOS. The problem is that almost all of those devices aren't ones you'd ever want to buy. They exist mainly to trick people who are looking to buy a "smartphone" but don't know anything about them. They're like the hundred different varieties of yellow mustard at the grocery store, they're just looking to capture some portion of the mustard market that doesn't know to buy this:(Seriously if you aren't buying this mustard, you're doing it wrong. Your life is not worth living.) Right, but you're talking about only being able to buy 6 different fart apps instead of 30. Some "limitations" are actually things you want. Are things developers want, because who is going to find their app in the App Store if it's in the middle of a hundred thousand shovelware applications nobody has time to look through? It's not limitation, it's curation, the way (for instance) Facebook only shows you the statuses of your friends, not all 800 million of Facebook's users. And "major headlines" constitute an representative search of current patent litigation?And, look, Apple has these patents. If Samsung really is violating them, doesn't Apple have a claim about that? What's the point of a patent if not to prevent your competitors from exploiting your expensive research investment and just ripping you the fuck off? It's certainly the case that patent trolling is out of control in the tech sector. But it's specifically your competitors that patents are meant to protect you against!

Speak for yourself. My elderly dad skipped the pc completely and went strait for the tablet. He only uses the tablet nowadays. Hardly ever touch the pc. Incredible enough, he finds the touchscreen way easier to use than the mouse.

Yeah, and my hope is that this trend continues - that tablet technologies are going to get elderly people caught up on the tech. My wife's grandma is like "how come you never call anymore?" and she's like "Grandma, nobody calls anybody anymore, we're using email and texts and Facebook."Increasingly, the elderly are finding themselves sequestered from everybody else because they won't use computers, and the reason they won't use them is that they won't play around with them, because as soon as it does something they didn't expect or immediately recognize, they're convinced it's "broken" and stop using it. I once had to "fix" her computer because a pop-up window came up. That's what was broken about it - there was a pop-up window.

The difference is: Apple has numerous times been accused of stealing apps that devs submit. Google? Not so much. Being able to easily submit an app to the market has it's downfalls, but not having to worry about a multi-billion dollar corporation steal them and say "just try and sue us about it" pretty much outweighs any concerns about people not finding your app. Any good app worth it's salt gets rep throughout the android dev community anyways. That's just it: they aren't. Apple claims the Galxy S looks similar....based off of a sketch. How many ways can you make a tablet look?Here is an article about it: Apple won its Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 European ban based on a design sketch filed in 2004Here is the sketch: Now tell me that's not generic as hell. Oh...exactly how Apple rips off devs who submit apps to be approved only to be denied, then seeing an app that is EXACTLY THE SAME a little while later??

I've never used an iOS device, so I can't speak to the validity of this statement. However, if it IS true, then how lame is that? Just a couple days ago I heard ONE song that I wanted to put on my phone (my phone doubles as my MP3 player). Was it a problem? Nope. Plug and transfer. Why should I wait until I have an entire playlist? It was a blackberry....

Speaking of Google, you'll wish you had Googled before you made that claim:

quote:

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Google Retracts After Caught Stealing Ideas

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Monday this week Google launched its App Engine, which was very well received by developers and users alike. Unfortunately, attention turned elsewhere on Tuesday as Google was caught with its pants down by the online community. To demonstrate App Engine, Google created an app it called "HuddleChat." Quick-eyed users quickly noted however, that HuddleChat was a definite copy of 37signals’ Campfire app.

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http://www.tomsguide.com/...uddlechat-campfire,news-977.htmlThat took me about 20 seconds. If patent offices are going to allow generic patents then it's a free for all, and any company that doesn't take full legal advantage is going to be sued by its stockholders. Apple isn't in any way unique in this regard; how many online retailers has Amazon sued because it was granted a patent on being able to buy things by clicking a button? How many simply don't offer one-click buying because of Amazon's patents?I agree with you 100% - tech patents, especially software patents, are out of control. There was a great This American Life show about this exact subject. You should take a listen, I think you'd really like it. That's a little generic, don't you think? I mean how many names for an app that lets you sync over wifi are there going to be besides "Wifi Sync"? How many icons are there going to be for such an app that don't combine Apple's wifi symbol with Apple's sync symbol? The kid's icon used symbology that Apple already developed. He didn't create the circular arrows or the , Apple did. How is Apple using their own symbols ripping somebody off? He was ripping them off, seems more like. If Apple really did just copy his code then there's a legitimate claim of copyright infringement, but he doesn't allege that. He simply alleges that Apple made an app with the same obvious, untrademarkable name (you can't trademark a generic) that had an icon similar to his, except that they're similar only because the kid used symbols that Apple designed.Also - where is the app? I just checked and there's no "Wifi Sync" app that you can get, from Apple or anybody else. There's no icon like that on my iPhone.AbE: Oh, wait, I see - it's iOS 5. I'm not running that on my phone.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I did. I googled "apple ripped off my app" and "google ripped off my app". I didn't find the article you mentioned when searching for google, but I found many for apple. I also searched "apple/google stole my app/idea" and came up with zilch for google and a number for apple. Thanks for finding that one though. But it is some obscure Euro shit: which is why they aren't pulling this crap in the states. I blame Europe for allowing this shit, but I doubt they saw this coming. But I also call bullshit on apple. Had you read the article, you would have seen that he was rejected not for the symbol, but for an alleged "security flaw".Tell me, how does this read to you?

Will have to finally give my mum a call to try it out.

Right, but his claim is that they ripped him off, even though Wifi Sync was a feature they had already announced would be in iOS 5, and his evidence is that the icons are similar, in that they both use symbols Apple had already developed and associated with things like "wifi" and "sync" on the iPhone.I don't see any evidence that Apple actually ripped off his code, which a fair number of people seem to think doesn't work, anyway. And how do you know there's not a security flaw? Like the same kind of legal boilerplate that has always been used to indemnify corporations with active R&D against spurious legal claims from someone who claims to have had the same idea years ago. I mean, how do you think it's supposed to work, like this?That'd be nice, but anybody can have an idea. Actually doing the work to make it work is where the challenge lies, and it's what should be rewarded. Sounds like this kid made a half-assed app, couldn't be arsed to come up with a creative icon for it, and still made a ton of money on the Cydia store. Who exactly is being ripped off, here? This kid is basically Apple's version of the Winklevoss twins.

One time I built my wife's mom a pc. The following day, she called me with a panic voice and told me the computer was broken and she needed to do some things right away. I had to drive an hour to her place. You know what was wrong? She tried to open her browser in the morning and it failed to load because her internet probably was slow that morning. Rather than pressing the refresh button or wait a minute or two, she made me drive all the way out there for that.Now, I am not putting down old people. But it seems to me like they don't even try. The moment something unexpected comes up they assume it's "broken".

I think many people don't realize how the operating notion of learning among people our age - try it, if it doesn't work, try something else, use what you learned to try a third thing, and so on - is very much an artifact of the times and in all likelihood, something most of us have learned from video games. (This is from a video game comic.)My wife's parents joke about their toolbox. "This is my plumbing tool, this is my electrical tool, this is my tech support tool" and each time they hold up an index finger. It's the finger they use to dial numbers on the phone, in other words. A few Christmases ago, the garbage disposal broke. Since it was Christmas Eve, it was going to cost about 300 dollars to have a plumber come out and fix it, but Sears was open and a new disposal was like $75 bucks.So I convinced them to let me take a look at it, and with a screwdriver I was able to remove the old unit and attach the new one.What do I know about garbage disposals? Nothing. Jack shit. But I know that plumbers install them* and, therefore, it can't require a bunch of fabrication, there's probably a standardized connection to mount a disposal to a sink, the electrical wire either terminates in a standard harness or simple screw terminals, etc. And I knew that as long as nobody turned it on while I was under there (I taped the switch so they wouldn't) I probably couldn't hurt myself or the unit by fucking around with it.I don't know what it is but people of a certain age are just completely stymied by the first time something isn't what they expect. And these are perfectly intelligent people with advanced degrees! My father-in-law was dean of a college until he retired last year. I hope to god that in my dotage I don't lose mental flexibility to that degree. Maybe it was common for malfunctioning household goods to just blow up in your face when they were growing up? Also I notice you don't see a lot of those tinker shops where old guys fix toasters and stuff. People say that's because we throw things away instead of having them fixed, but maybe it's because we fix things ourselves instead of needing "handymen" to do it?*None of that is to say that plumbers are dumb and can't do those things, it's just that if they had to do it every time they'd complain to the manufacturers until they standardized the mounts and connections.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Reduce image width.

Hi Taz,Not sure what you thought I was saying, because what you say makes perfect sense to me, my mother taking to the tablet much more easily than to a PC.What I was talking about was the tendency of older people to get stuck in a rut with what they're already used to. My mother was never that used to a PC, and it sounds like it was the same with your father.I think "old guy" syndrome has a lot more to do with DWise1's feelings about tablets than about any technical details. The details of the differences between tablets and PC's or between Macs and Windows don't matter. They're not what he's used to, that's all that matters.I remember my first day with the iPad. I was trying to use it like a PC and was having a lot of difficulty. It was very frustrating. But now after just a few months it seems perfectly natural. Of course, I'm not programming on it, but that's not why I got it.--Percy

We've had a computer in the house for almost as long as I can remember, our first one was an Apple 2+. My dad used to teach computer basics in adult education classes, but bring him one of those wireless credit card terminals and he's clueless. One time he took to long to type in his pin and the terminal turned off its display (power saving feature I would assume) and he thought he had broken it.

Not "old guy" syndrome at all. The proposition was that the iPad replaces the PC. That simply does not fly, as I have already demonstrated. Of course, if all you're using your PC for is as a paperweight, then anything hefty enough will replace it. If all you're doing with your PC is checking you email and surfing the web, then the iPad could replace it. If you are doing a lot of writing and especially if you are a touch-typist, then the iPad would be marginal. If you are doing development work on your PC, then the iPad cannot replace it.No demand to make an iPad act exactly like a PC, only that, if it is to replace the PC, that it do every job that you can do on the PC. I cannot understand why that is so difficult for everybody to understand.The other problem with the iPad is that it's Apple software, which I have had too many bad experiences with.