
ARM Mac Part Deux: Less Confusion - bookofjoe
https://mondaynote.com/arm-mac-part-deux-less-confusion-40ee2c780bc6
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yomritoyj
To me the fundamental difference between a PC and a tablet is the software
ecosystem: can you install any program/OS or must you install only those
approved by the platform owner; can programs access system resources liberally
(including a shared storage namespace) or are they tightly sandboxed; how much
of the underlying infrastructure is visible to and manipulable by the end
user. Compared to this difference the question of whether the device has an
integrated keyboard or not seems minor to me.

Moving from a PC like ecosystem to a tablet like one is a net loss in my
opinion. People are willing to absorb this loss and enter into a walled garden
because right now building iPad-like hardware is not easy. I hope it doesn't
continue to be so in the future.

~~~
jbigelow76
_Moving from a PC like ecosystem to a tablet like one is a net loss in my
opinion. People are willing to absorb this loss and enter into a walled garden
because right now building iPad-like hardware is not easy._

Can you go more into why the difficulty of creating the hardware leads to
willing adoption by users that most likely will never see "how the sausage is
made"? I would think it would be the opposite (commodity hardware and easy app
creation would lead to wider spread adoption by the hobbyist crowd).

I think it will mostly boil down to what you grew up with. I'm 41, I came of
age building my own PCs, getting excited about an OS (Win95), the tools of
creation (the PC) differing from the tools of consumption (the
smartphone/iPad). My son and daughter (3 and <1 yrs) will be exposed to PCs
due to my job, but I bet a lot of their friends in daycare will see a tablet
as "the way computing has been and always will be". (Honestly my kids may
think that too, daddy just hasn't accepted how much of a dinosaur he is yet).

~~~
yomritoyj
Just like in our generation there will be people in our kids' generation who
will want to know how the sausage is made and it will be a tragedy if the only
way to do so would be to grow up, join a big firm and sign a NDA.

Even for the others, an open platform means a greater variety of software for
end users. Creating toll gates on the way to software development or
suppressing software which reduces the platform owners's profit is not good
for end users. Many people who will never touch a command line still benefit
because a Finnish computer science student could decide to start writing a PC
operating system of his own and that OS now powers their phone or allows
others to provide online services on servers that runs that OS.

If building iPad clones with an open hardware specification like the PC's
becomes possible for multiple vendors I'm sure we will see a software
ecosystem that will easily beat the walled gardens. The problem is that
currently the number of firms that can build the hardware is small enough that
they find it in their self interest to use closed specifications.

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AceJohnny2
Offtopic, it's fun to see french idioms creep in to Gassee's writing. "Gas
refinery" is a direct and ill-fitting translation of the french idiom "usine a
gaz", which refers to something over-engineered and inefficient. Like a
factory that's only producing hot air.

Edit: and it's likely Gassee knew exactly what he was doing by using that
term, since that article includes a paragraph about domain-optimizations that
don't translate well to others, specifically calling out certain foreign words
that have no direct translation. Whoosh to me...

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PKop
The "cars" vs "trucks" analogy is interesting, considering that in US, SUV's
(a category that itself includes a sort of hybrid car/truck) outsell cars with
many saying the "sedan" is dying [0]

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-16/why-
the-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-16/why-the-american-
sedan-is-marked-for-death)

~~~
msh
I believe that jobs was referring to a 'real' truck like a semi truck.

~~~
jrs95
More likely a pickup. Still, that's a small % of the overall market, which is
mostly headed in the direction of hatchbacks, crossovers, and SUVs. The reason
Ford is staying in the truck market but greatly de-emphasizing it's sedans is
that their trucks are generally considered to be the best you can get, and
with their sedans its the opposite. It would be a major investment for them to
try and compete with everyone in that segment even if it weren't shrinking.
Although for what it's worth, their newest crossover, the EcoSport, is
basically just a taller Fiesta (arguably their best sedan/hatchback despite it
being the cheapest).

Anyways, in many regards the growing segment of the market is more like
sedans/hatchbacks on stilts than it is like trucks.

~~~
Elv13
Also, pickups most probably wont ever be "designed" to be self driving cars.
They may have that has an option in the distant future. But given they are
(supposed) to be farm/woodland/workhorses vehicles, they will stay mostly as
they are for a very, very long time and give Ford a century to adapt (or milk
the cow, kill the cow, eat the cow and close shop). The US/Canada is full of
thousand of miles of woodland tracks and farmland unpaved tracks self driving
vehicle will never be able to map. So unless they can drive fully on
instruments including snow and very close trees. People really do live at the
end of these tracks (at least in the Appalachians) and owns pickup trucks just
to get home (and the status symbol thing).

As for the pickups as "status symbol", it's irrelevant because the very symbol
is the offroad "real work, real duty, real matcho mens" factor. Given Ford
seems (as an outside observer) not to care about electric and self driving,
focusing on bigger Lincolns and the F-series makes total sense as a business
plan.

1) Let the other spend their billions developing their hipster tech

2) Use reliable incomes that will outlive any trend

3) Get mature technology on the cheap once it's commonplace.

4) Ignore "carmaker has a service" because it's not their core competence and
there will be profitless races to the bottom by the "data warehouse" players
(rather than profit for the carmakers)

5) Profit

~~~
michaelmrose
Almost all trucks are used like cars in the same environments 99.9% of the
time with the added ability to haul things.

The use case you describe is best served by having a manual override button
and retaining a traditional steering wheel as opposed to having a different
more manual product

~~~
Elv13
True, but that's not the marketing they want. And the market segment that buys
these things are very sensitive to this mythical image. "True" trucks is a
selling point, not a liability for that crowd.

When they sell a pickup to someone who doesn't need one (>85% of the sales),
they sell the myth and the social status. So, as my last paragraph pointed
out, they will but "not self driving" as a "status symbol" and they will sell
like hotcakes.

Plus, the advantages of self driving for cars you own, considering the current
price premium, wont be worth it for many, many years. For cars you /rent/
fine, they will "work" 24/7, but spending 15k-25k on LiDAR and sensors and
data and engineers and (carmaker) insurances isn't worth it yet for a car that
spends 98% of it's useful life parked.

~~~
michaelmrose
25k worth of lidar makes it worthless for most market segments I think.
Lacking self driving features will ensure that the insurance costs 3 times as
much ultimately. It will eventually be cheaper to have self driving capability
than pay premiums.

~~~
jstanley
Do you expect accident rates among manually-driven cars to substantially
increase? If not, why do you expect insurance premiums to substantially
increase?

~~~
michaelmrose
I expect accident rates to fall due to safety features but ultimately expect
almost everyone to stop driving their car and pay relative to now much less
for insurance. As the safety of the majority rests largely on getting the
remaining idiots off the road i expect them to pay punitive insurance rates
not dissimilar to sin taxes discouraging behaviors that are disadvantageous to
society.

Im short a small group of people requires a greater cost to profitably insure
plus sin taxes for insisting on endangering your fellow citizens vs falling
rates for everyone else.

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threeseed
I actually really liked Apple's iPad Pro keyboard.

It's a heck of a lot better than the MacBook Pro one which really has to be
Apple's worst technological innovation in the last 20 years.

~~~
dpkonofa
This is so crazy to me because I love the MacBook Pro keyboard (assuming you
mean the one on with the Touch Bar). I know it's personal opinion and there
are tons of people that don't like it but I seriously have no issues with it
and feel like typing on it is just a joy. It's best keyboard (save for my
mechanical Ducky) that I've typed on. It's definitely my favorite laptop
keyboard, even more so than my 2011 MBP and 2013 MBP.

~~~
jnaina
Agreed. Have learned to love the very short travel keyboard of my Touch Bar
MacBook Pro. I note that my typing is more effortless now somehow.

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mehrdada
My bet is they will revive the iBook brand.

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zeckalpha
Interesting to note the author’s role in the Newton:
[https://gizmodo.com/5452193/the-story-behind-apples-
newton](https://gizmodo.com/5452193/the-story-behind-apples-newton)

