The 16-Inch MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://marco.org/2019/11/13/mbp16 <comment><USER2> I know this is becoming repetitive, but seriously still no optional touchbar? I mean for gods sake, why?

Doesn't pretty much all professionals from programmers to editors to musicians _still_ use function keys as part of their workflow when touch-typing?

I mean if the touchbar was above the function keys it would be an added bonus, but removing function keys for "professionals" is like telling a pianist that he now has to play on a touch-keyboard with no tangents.

I am more than ready to pay for an upgrade but now i am going to keep my still excellent 2014 pro with no stupid gimmicks and a good keyboard.

EDIT: To all the people downvoting me, why? Why on earth earth downvote a fellow pro addressing an obvious downgrade - am i missing something? Why jump on a bandwagon an "be an optimist" or "stop complaining" if this gimmick makes coding/working slower for us?

It reminds me of when most of the pro market fled the revamped Final Cut X Suite which was so dumbed down it was almost a "kids editing program" while Apple gave no fucks.

EDIT2:

To all the people saying they don't use F keys. I simply don't believe you. You also control brightness, volume and playback with these buttons and i have never seen anyone NOT using these keys without looking. Especially the volume keys all the way to the right tap-tap-tap without looking - i know you have done this ha!

<comment><USER3> Maybe people just disagree that it's an obvious downgrade? There are benefits to the touchbar, and yes people who prefer the touchbar over the function keys do exist - I'm one of them. Have you tried really using it, or did you write it off and ignore it as much as possible?

For example, the fact you're talking about tap-tap-tap to change the volume leads me to believe you're not aware of the swipe-to-change function. You don't have to tap the volume button, you just swipe over it in one go. A single tap-swipe. In my opinion that is a superior experience than indeed having to tap the correct F-key a few times. Is that so hard to believe?

<comment><USER4> I had no idea that existed and I've been using a touchbar Mac for years.

What other neat features does it have, for which the UI designers appear to have given no thought to discoverability?

 _edit:_ Apparently on the 2017 model it _doesn 't_ exist. Neat.

<comment><USER3> You can customise it to a larger degree than you realise, with tools such as BetterTouchTool. You can script it. It takes some work to setup but it allows for extremely cool things to happen. This should be right up every hacker's alley!

Regarding discoverability - it's a touchscreen, why wouldn't you swipe it? No one complains about two-pinch zoom not being discoverable. It requires a single a-ha moment which you could've had from taking a cursory look at the Touchbar documentation.

As a hacker news reader, it's on you for not checking out the powerful possibilities before categorising it as bad.

Edit: I'm finding articles explaining the swipe-to-change from 2017, so it should be on that model (I believe it's on every model since the beginning).

<comment><USER4> Turns out it's a separate control, not enabled by default. Only took me three web searches to find that out, and find out how to find the configuration UI for the control strip so I could replace the default controls with the swipeable ones.

I don't know. Maybe you're right. Maybe I was wrong to assume that Apple knows how to build discoverable user interfaces. I guess I should've spent a lot more time reading manuals and dinking around with the keyboard on this machine, instead of letting myself be distracted with trivialities like building software, solving problems, and getting work done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It really is a testament to how "great" design can handicap great products. It's 2019. Computer makers have been designing electronic keyboards for _close to 50 years_. Typewriter keyboards have been around since the 1870s. For a century and a half we've been designing and building ways of getting alphanumeric characters from brains to machines.

Apple is one of the most valuable companies in history building hardware that a large portion of the professional computer user workforce use on a daily basis. For them to make such an egregious error as shipping fatally-flawed _keyboards_ should teach us two things:

\- Humility. We can all make big mistakes and shouldn't rely on track record to assume that everything we're doing now is the right thing.

\- Focus. Shifting its focus to design at the expense of human factors cause Apple to make a colossal blunder.

This move back to a better keyboard, along with the Mac Pro (for what it's worth), are hopefully signs of Apple listening to some of its most important -- and seemingly neglected -- customers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm very proud of them for coming up with a keyboard that's almost as good as the one on the $700 laptop I had nine years ago

<comment><USER7> That could actually be a hard thing to achieve given the other design constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I bought an MBP 15" back in 2013, and still use it to this day. I might benefit from an upgrade, but haven't seen an immediate need to.

Seeing this new 16", I am so glad I skipped upgrading and waited. I still might not, but at least I won't be dealing with regressions if I do.

<comment><USER9> Same here. I have the most spec'd-out Fall 2013 MBP and it's still perfect to this day.

<comment><USER10> Me three. I'm even seriously considering having Apple replace the battery in mine (it was swelling a few years ago)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK, but let's see in 6 months or a year if the keycaps all start breaking off, and the switches either freeze up or double-type.

trust needs to be regained.

<comment><USER12> Not sure whether to be relieved or concerned that this MBP isn't part of their extended keyboard repair program, but I'm leaning towards the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This... sounds... like... they... _listened to their customers_!

Listening to customers is a fine art. It can be a bad thing if you listen slavishly without thinking. You'll end up with a haphazard ball of features. This looks like they listened and _understood_ what power-user customers wanted: a true _pro_ machine that remains quite portable and aesthetically pleasing.

IMHO the 13-inch Pro should just be the MacBook, and of course the Air is great for people who want a tiny lightweight "ultrabook" type machine. You'd have:

Macbook: the current 13-inch Pro

Macbook Pro: the 16-inch

Macbook Air: the ultralight

I really hope this is the mid-oughts Apple coming back. Bravo!

<comment><USER14> When it comes to MBPs being used daily for 8+ hours by a host of smart people, you absolutely can get really good customer feedback, and the fact it took this long still shows Apple isn't listening much and has a lot of managerial and product development inefficiency and problems.

They still are shoving the touchbar down people's throats, they just aren't using a piledriver at the moment. An option for legacy ports (USB3/HDMI/minithunderbolt) would have been very nice.

But it's apple, for a new-age company with new-age CEO and new-age values, they are very stubborn and closed minded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love that Apple replaced their 15in offerings with this 16in model. The price is perfect and the lack of a 15in makes the selection process so much easier. With this MacBook and the Mac Pro, Apple is really getting a great lineup of products. Well done!

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure that $2400 with 16 GB of RAM is what I would call "perfect".

<comment><USER17> At least it comes with an SSD, unlike their iMacs which they still sell with 8GB of RAM and spinning rust disks.

<comment><USER14> And that SSD costs per GB, what, 10x what you can get from newegg on an NVMe? And that's a consumer retail price rather than what Apple gets to pay an OEM bulk order?

Google/Samsung/etc aren't much better.

SSD prices in phones and laptops are such a fraud.

<comment><USER15> I don't think you get the same performance from a newegg ssd than you get with the soldered ssd on a MacBook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For me, this is the takeaway quote : "The biggest change is that I finally don't feel like it's constantly fighting me. Its design doesn't feel spiteful."

</comment><comment><USER19> <quote> And keystrokes will probably work, 100% of the time, for years!</quote>

How does he know? Sounds overoptimistic to me.

<comment><USER20> He doesn't know, hence the "probably". It's a good guess though, based on the known reliability of the wireless Magic Keyboard.

<comment><USER19> I doubt many people use a wireless Magic Keyboard outdoors. I've used my last 3 apple laptops outside though... first two had no keyboard problems, the 2018 failed in less than 6 months.

<comment><USER21> I dunno where you're at but where I'm from, the Magic keyboards are ubiquitous and generally viewed positively. I'm using one right now and I have always really liked the way they feel, and I'm a mech snob.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's good to see that the physical escape key is back!

<comment><USER11> The lack of it on 2016 mbp made me re-assign the caps-lock key to ESC, and in fact this is the correct place for it anyway - much more natural than as an extra F-key.

<comment><USER23> On every keyboard the escape key is at the top left.

<comment><USER24> Incorrect: [https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow- keys](https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys)

The keyboard vim was designed for had ESC where tab is on modern keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Strange to be getting a "Page Not Found" error on this link: [https://www.apple.com/us/shop/go/macbook_pro/select](https://www.apple.com/us/shop/go/macbook_pro/select)

Usually they put up the splash page prior to new Macs being available.

<comment><USER26> Are you looking for this page? The 13 and 16 inches now have separate pages to select which version you want to buy.

[https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro/16-inch](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/16-inch)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wondering if the choice of a 16" screen was mainly for thermal reasons (bigger screen -> bigger chasis overall).

FWIW 6-core over 15" (2019 model) is working nicely for me, but I suspect 8-core might be a bit too much for 15".

Experience reports welcome.

<comment><USER28> The chassis is barely larger (someone did a calculation in another thread). They basically made the bezel smaller (thank goodness).

<comment><USER29> The chassis is actually _smaller_ than the beloved 2013 MacBook Pro. It's only regressed slightly from the 2017 and 2018 models.

<comment><USER30> I'm starting to believe that 2010 to 2013 were peak Apple, at least from a consumer product perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well now I am really kicking myself.

I just got a new 15" MacBook Pro a couple weeks ago because my video card fried in my 2013. If I had just held out I could have had a glorious escape key and old style arrow layout... GAH

<comment><USER32> If it really was a couple of weeks you may be within the return window.

<comment><USER31> It's my work machine, I don't think I could talk them into that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Finally an upgrade worth of replacing my 2015 rMBP 15.

</comment><comment><USER34> How are Radeon GPUs for ML applications these days? I always found it strange that the dev community was willing to invest in proprietary CUDA.

<comment><USER35> Pointless, just spin up a GPU instance in AWS. I use a MBP for ML but anything that needs GPU is better off running OFF my laptop.

<comment><USER36> This is fair if you're working in an environment where you can do that, but if you're designing stuff for anyone in a highly regulated industry, which is increasingly where ML is making the big bucks, doing mission-critical ML on someone else's servers is a no-no. There is still very much a need for beefy GPUs in laptops.

<comment><USER37> Maybe if a company is making big bucks off ML and were highly regulated, you would have thought they could setup a GPU/ML server....

<comment><USER36> One would think, no? Those pesky lawyers, IT governance people, and institutional inertia have a habit of spoiling everyone's fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There's this duplicate thread with more discussion. It points to Apple's website, though:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780)

</comment><comment><USER39> Still no LTE modem?

<comment><USER13> There are tiny USB ones and WiFi ones that are okay, but it would be a neat option. It better be unlocked of course for a laptop.

<comment><USER39> There's a tiny one in the Apple Watch, the iPhone, the iPad, and in laptops from other manufacturers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Who uses their arrows for gaming?

<comment><USER41> Left-handed people?

Edit: not really. I did some research and it appears they use IJKL because it's easier to reach SPACE bar with the right thumb.

<comment><USER42> When I did it, I always had an external keyboard and used the numpad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if the keyboard works this time.

</comment><comment><USER44> Still no NVIDIA GPU - so not for writing deep learning code. Also no ray tracing in games :(

<comment><USER45> There's tones of open-source frameworks for running on non NVIDIA systems.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: NY to CA. Co-Founder - <AUTHOR>

Im comming from NY to CA & staying in CA until I find a co-founder. (BTW,Product Is built, traction etc) The one key ingredient missing now is getting a c-founder. (Network is tapped out in NY). Where do you recommend in SV scouting for Co-Founders. Camp out @ Stanford? <comment><USER2> If the product is built and has traction, what do you need a co-founder for? What kind of traction do you have?

</comment><comment><USER3> Has the "traction" increased since you posted this 3 months ago?

</comment><comment><USER4> Recognize first you bring absolutely nothing to the table. Join a coding bootcamp, get yourself a front end engineer job, and develop a network organically.</comment>


Ask HN: Offered partnership in a startup, what do I need to look out for? - <AUTHOR> I'm a freelance software engineer that's been working for basically a single client for the past 2 years, with a very flexible contract and great working conditions.
We recently started working on a new, very interesting project, and today I've been offered to start a partnership with him in a new company based on this product. His reasoning was to give me a greater incentive to work 110% and not to leave him tomorrow towards other pastures.
We haven't decided anything yet, but the offer was 25% in the company, plus a minimum salary since I can't (and won't) work for free while we're building the MVP.
The client is great, has always paid on time and been very professional since I've started working for them, and has always respected and given me the freedom of picking the best tech for the problem. My role would be lead engineer/CTO. Their role would business guy/CEO.
Seems to good to be true, but I'm definitely leaning towards doing it. Is this arrangement common, and what do I need to look out for?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> A few points:

1\. At 25% of a two-person venture, the potential to get screwed is large. Basically the majority owner can make rules that lock you out of some or all of the upside.

2\. Because of 1, you want to be able to see the books.

3\. Get everything in writing.

4\. Figure out a way to get it to 50/50 equity. This may mean no salary or IOUs to the other person for a delayed salary/payout at a premium (since they have to wait). This can get tricky very quickly. That said, unequal equity can get tricker.

5\. Note that all of the trust issues mentioned above may not have to do with your partner -- someone providing additional funding can dictate onerous terms for you.

Note that it is possible that you found a dream partner and nothing will go wrong. Also note that getting massively screwed in the stated arrangement is also possible. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats. You worked with the person before and that's a lot better than cofounders who just met. Ideally you know how the other person reacts under stress for example.

First of all make sure as much as possible of the arrangement is in writing. Not being willing to write items down is a red flag. Jokingly point to 'The social network' movie (early days of Facebook) where a paper trail was missing.

Will you have equal access to the company bank account (to see expenses and gauge how good the company is doing)? Will you be a director (able to sign or co-sign contracts)? Do you have the same class of shares as the other founders and proportional share of votes? Things like this matter once another shareholder gets added (and angel investors and VC are shareholders usually). Who will own the created intellectual property (ideally the company) and who transfers what to the company now (e.g. existing domain name).

Are you allowed to work on other projects? If not then the tax office might question your sole trader/freelancer status.

There's no perfect answers, just write down those arrangements.

Go through this scenario: At some point in the future one person might be sick, on a long holiday or simply demotivated (not to say depressed) and maybe can't put in the same hours. How would you handle that? What can you do now (write down) to prepare for that scenario?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, these are really good points I'll have a think about.

> Will you have equal access to the company bank account (to see expenses and > gauge how good the company is doing)? Will you be a director (able to sign > or co-sign contracts)? Do you have the same class of shares as the other > founders and proportional share of votes?

Is it wrong/stupid not to want to care about that? I enjoy the technical side, I enjoy the idea of managing people, but I want to delegate as much business problems as possible and concentrate on the tech.

Basically, I would be interested in this arrangement because I enjoy working with this person, and for my value/wealth to be directly proportional to the effort I'm putting in. And because the problem space is interesting, obviously.

<comment><USER4> The less visible you are, the easier it is to throw you under the bus. For example, suppose you don't give any interviews, never sign anything for the company, never pitch to investors, etc. Then, it is easier for them to pretend you never existed later - even if you make the entire product. So, I suggest you be at least somewhat visible and offer to help your business partner with some of these things in addition to coding.

Also make sure you agree in writing to a percentage of the company rather than a total number of shares, and make sure you're privy to the final cap table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like you have a good relationship, and likely a good starting offer.

A couple thoughts about the equity: 1\. You say you'll be taking a salary. That means, I assume, the other guy is capitalizing the company? 2\. Figure out how much he's investing into the company. If he's paying monthly expenses out of pocket, figure out how deep into the hole he's willing to go. Ask him what happens when you guys hit that number. 3\. It would be much better for him to commit to investing $x amount into the company up front. He should then invest that money at Y agreed upon valuation. You should split the equity 50/50 first, and then he would get whatever equity he invests for.

Lastly, be very clear about the vision of the company, how it will make money, if other investors will be brought in, etc. It's all very new to you now, but in 18 months when you've invested everything in it, you'll want a solid foundation of communicated expectations.

Get everything in writing. And good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggest insisting on 50/50 or client can continue to hire you as a hired gun. Don't be taken advantage of by a business guy with a lot of MBA vocabulary, flashy decks and hocus pocus. As the CTO you ARE just as essential to making the product as your partner. Do you want to be in business with someone who undervalues you in such a way?

At times, choosing not to do something can be just as beneficial to your success as doing something. If you're a badass, just remember this is not the only opportunity that will come your way.

I envisioned an alt-marketplace like Witchsy about 4 years ago; tried to work with someone who had a common interest in doing the same, with someone who had the domain knowledge and access to artists. Very similar to your situation, he had paid me handsomely for custom work and deployments. When it came to the idea of collaborating, he greatly overvalued his contribution and refused an equitable split of ownership. Fast forward to last year, his shop is closed, business bankrupt. All of his so-called "business acumen" didn't amount to shit. I totally dodged a bullet.

And, hire an attorney. Stock issuance, convertible notes, funding, SEC compliance, etc. can burn though a lot of cash.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some good points in the thread already, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned this one: founder equity should vest over time.

If you don't think they need to vest, then imagine a future in which the business begins to work out. It's doing so well that you want to work your ass off to make your 25% worth even more. Imagine furthermore than your partner, despite owning 75%, can no longer spend any effort on the business. What do you want to happen at that point? Keeping putting in 100% of the effort, for 25% of the rewards?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'minimum salary', but it sounds like it would be better for you and for the company (but not for your partner) for that to be structured as an uncapped convertible note. The partner's could be given another convertible note in lieu of salary.

</comment><comment><USER8> Word of advice: Make sure your "business guy" already has a written marketing plan in place showing how money is to be made, and an exit strategy. Then make sure you actually really agree that it is accomplishable, and that you are willing to go for it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are you shooting for a unicorn or just trying to make a sustainable, long term business? I think your answer might affect your considerations. For example, if you're trying for a unicorn, the chances are pretty slim. Perhaps you would want to optimize on salary with some options. If you're aiming for growing a long term business you might want to optimize on stock since (imho) that goal has a higher chance of success.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you trust the person? Do you believe in the product? Do you think the offer is fair? Do you believe the other person can deliver the product to market? That's really all that matters.

If there are doubts about any of those, consider passing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make sure there is already a written marketing plan in place.</comment>


If not for WB Yeats, Ireland might have been an island of saints and scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/if-not-for-wb-yeats-ireland-might-have-been-an-island-of-saints-and-scientists-1.2129626

<comment><AUTHOR> _"There are two boats going to sea. In which shall we sail? There is the little boat of [s /science/technology]. Every [s/century/decade] a new little boat of [s/science/technology] starts and is shipwrecked; and yet again another puts forth, gaily laughing at its predecessors. Then there is the great galleon of tradition, and on board it travel the great poets and dreamers of the past."_

Apologies to Yeats.</comment>


Thanksgiving Travel? Vermont Turkeys Used to Walk to Boston - <AUTHOR> http://digital.vpr.net/post/thanksgiving-travel-vermont-turkeys-used-walk-boston

<comment><USER2> You run a farm in northern Vermont that raises turkeys. You can get a decent price for your birds by selling them locally but a much better price and can sell many more if you take them to the folk in Boston. There are no trucks to speak of, as they haven't been invented yet, so you gotta walk the 200 miles with such a boisterous load. There's no ice block big enough to keep your birds cold for that long of a journey and if there was, you couldn't pull it. The birds gotta get there alive, and they can only do 10 - 12 miles a day. You get a few neighboring farms to come with so you can watch each-other's birds and have some company on the 3 week on the road. Along the way you loose about 10% of your flock to foxes, rivers, robbers, and your own hunger. You arrive in Boston and get a fair price for your troubles, just enough to make the trip worth it. You spend a few days getting back to Vermont and by the time you get back it'll have been about a month on the road. You settle in for a rough winter. You're gonna do it all again next year. At least there's plenty of maple syrup.</comment>


'First to Do It' vs. 'First to Do It Right' - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/first <comment><USER2> This is tangentally related, but I'm going to break my contract with Verizon after buying a Motorola Devour in March. I believe that Motorola and VZW have broken an implied promise to support my Android phone through the update cycle; it shipped with 1.6 and it appears that the powers that be have decided that it's not worthy of the engineering resources to get it up to 2.2, so it'll be at 1.6 forever.

I'm sorry, but a three-month old phone should not be obsolete. If I get a iPhone 4, I have every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that subsequent iOS upgrades work on my phone until there's a legitimate technical reason to exclude it, not some bullshit profit/loss maximization algorithm.

The Android ecosystem will remain fragmented because every single phone+manufacturer+carrier combination requires a decision and engineering resources to upgrade. I could never recommend an Android phone to anyone but the anti-Apple hordes.

<comment><USER3> > If I get a iPhone 4, I have every confidence that Apple will make every > effort to ensure that subsequent iOS upgrades work on my phone until there's > a legitimate technical reason to exclude it,...

Kudos to Apple for doing this, by the way. I have an iPhone 3G and really appreciate Apple's efforts in keeping my device up-to-date.

Apple's decision to own the phone from end-to-end (sans AT&T) has proven to provide a high-quality experience to customers. It's telling that the only part of the experience that Apple doesn't own is arguably the largest pain point of the iPhone.

It's too bad that Android/WinMo answer to the OEMs, and not the other way around. If Compaq or Dell dictated upgrade policies for PCs the world would be a very different place.

<comment><USER4> My 3G became dog slow as a dog when I installed the software that was released alongside the 3GS. It has been ever since, through every following upgrade.

<comment><USER5> I noticed my 3G seemed to start getting slower, have more frequent "world has come to a stop" pauses right around when the 3GS came out. I wondered a bit if it was a conspiracy of sorts, something intentional Apple did to make the non-3GS models seem even slower than they were. Not sure, of course, or whether a coincidence. But it's interesting to hear at least one other person noticed this.

<comment><USER6> It's almost surely your imagination, even if other people have had the same experience. By the way, I have the same experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have an HTC EVO and the device does not come with video-chat out of the box. This is insane. As mentioned in the article, you have to install an app from the appstore, sign-up with an account, and then proceed to figure out that you can't actually talk to the person without holding down on the screen (note there is no indication of this while in video chat mode).

It's been a major pain trying to call my wife and tell her how to set all these things up before we can attempt a video chat.

I'd like to see Dan Hesse and his board of directors watch two HTC EVO noobs attempt to video-chat. It would be downright embarrassing.

Please, before investing millions of dollars with your front-facing camera make it at least work out of the box without having to jump through a dozen hoops.

<comment><USER8> Developer support is lousy too. Sprint has a library ([https://docs.google.com/View?id=dhtsnvs6_57d2hpqtgr#3_Second...](https://docs.google.com/View?id=dhtsnvs6_57d2hpqtgr#3_Secondary_Camera_Support_181)) that lets you access the front-facing camera, but you can't just test at runtime to see if it's there; once you include that library, your app will fail to launch on any non-EVO. So you have to distribute a separate app for the EVO, which is mostly going to be a nonstarter.

<comment><USER9> This issue will be fixed when Froyo comes out for it, Froyo includes front facing camera support in the sdk. HTC released this hardware knowing that the software would have to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Android and iPhone fans will read the preceding paragraph very differently. Android fans will read it and say, "Exactly — give us the hardware and let developers figure out what to do with it." iPhone fans will read it and say, "I can't wait to get an iPhone 4.""

This quote sums up my issue with Gruber. Everything for him revolves around being a fan of a product (in his case Apple products). I just want great products. Might be iPhone today, Android tomorrow, and Windows Phone next year.

<comment><USER11> I don't think being a fan of the iPhone doesn't mean you can't also be a fan of Android; they're not mutually exclusive (I have an Xbox and a Wii). That said, in 2010, there is a strong break between not only the fanbases, but in the guiding philosophy of either platform. I read this last paragraph, laughed, and thought, "This is why I read Gruber."

Edit: Also, don't forget this classic — Apple Needs a Nikon (<http://daringfireball.net/2007/11/apple_needs_a_nikon>)

Salient quote from Stephen Fry: "So you can guess that I certainly do think design is important. But it doesn't have to come from Apple. In fact, I wish to goodness it came from everywhere."

<comment><USER12> _I don't think being a fan of the iPhone doesn't mean you can't also be a fan of Android; they're not mutually exclusive (I have an Xbox and a Wii)._

Well heck, so do I, but I wouldn't call myself a "fan" of either.

Actually I try not to be a "fan" of anything. Describing yourself as a fan of something seems to be a way of making the rather dull act of _liking something_ into part of your identity.

<comment><USER11> I think we're probably making too much of the word "fan", and that Gruber was just using it to indicate preference (as opposed to devotion).

That said, I'm a fan of Apple because I admire their work. I'm enamored with the substance of their products, and I could care less how ownership affects my image [Edit: more honestly, I try not to care]. (I actually think declaring myself a fan of Apple is a detriment to my image, especially in this forum. C'est la vie.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's bullshit because daring fireball - like always - is employing deceitful marketing tactics (yes, I'm implying intent) to make claims that simply are not true (going beyond subjective statements).

Take the front facing camera. HTC Evo? I don't even know what that is! I have ALREADY made video calls with other skype users using my Nokia N900. Not only that, I sometimes do it over 3G, if I'm out of range of a wifi. Oh yeah, and it's all integrated into the normal phone experience - I don't have to launch a separate app just to make calls (how does that integrate with contacts?) Apple was not first. They restrict video calling to wifi and only through the apps they approve. They did it WRONG.

Do I sound harsh? Yes, probably. I think this is the only way for "daring" fireball to stop writing bullshit.

<comment><USER14> I'm not familiar with the Nokia N900.

Does it do HD (720p) video calls? Do both parties need to setup a Skype or GTalk account to have video calls?

<comment><USER13> 720p would be impressive over 3G. No, it is not that awesome. :P

Yes, you can't make video calls to your friends microwave oven - they'll need to use whatever protocol you are using. And yes, the N900 supports gtalk as well (although I haven't tried video chat with it myself).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like how Gruber can take an idea that seems completely obvious to me, but when ever I try to explain the idea and the reasons behind it I come up short. I don't have good examples or details. I end up looking dumb. So I keep my ideas to my self.

Its kind of like he takes what my intuition tells me, and then takes the time to explain why and give examples.

Before you down vote me, this is a personal opinion. I can understand if you think I'm crazy. If you disagree with Gruber's view (and I have a few times), then in your view my intuition is wrong and his articles are contrived -- and this may be true.

<comment><USER16> What is that idea? I read it again and I'm still missing the moral of the story.

<comment><USER17> The moral of the story is the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman>

You act like your the "first" to do something (or at least since the jetsons), then when someone calls you on it you fall back to a subtly different claim to be the "first to do it right" where right is a subjective opinion that can be argued with, but not an objective fact that can be disproved like your first claim.

It helps if you and your audience are both american and have little idea of what has been done and/or done right in telecommunications for years overseas. Then you can focus on the Android phone that introduced front facing cameras to the world last month as your benchmark for better.

Personally, I think video calling will be niche, but having a front facing camera will open the door to all kinds of cool 3rd party software like photo manipulation software similar to Photobooth on Mac OS X or the software built into the Nintendo DSi, or eye-tracking etc. This is where the policy that Apple only ships hardware that it finds a slick 1st party use for falls down. I have a video camera on my Macbook, only ever used for Photobooth and Skype, never video iChat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The existence of a front-facing camera may fairly be considered a "catch up" feature on iPhone 4. But the ability to use the front-facing camera to actually make video calls is first on the iPhone._

I once saw a guy standing in the subway, looking on the floor, gesticulating like crazy. I though the guy was either drunk or mentally ill.

As I left the subway, I realized that the guy was holding a phone in his hand. I could glimpse on the display and saw another person gesticulating.

Apparently the guy was deaf and was talking in sign language in a video chat. On a subway, which probably had no Wifi. That was in 2007.

I was amazed by technology (and felt like an idiot for the snap judgement).

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if I will be able to use the iPhone4 front-facing camera to do video over 3G here in Norway or if the iOS software will require a wifi connection. Anyone know? BTW, the US is really in a telecom-technical backwater. Cellphone users on the other side of the atlantic have enjoyed video conference calls on their handset for many years and over true 3G, not as a wifi hack. So the whole "'First to Do It' vs. 'First to Do It Right'" is kind of amusing as this is rather old outside of the US.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/06/estimate-of-network- ba...](http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/06/estimate-of-network-bandwidth- for-iphone-4-facetime/)

The existing 3G network infrastructure wouldn't be able to take the beating.

<comment><USER17> The first assumption in that article is wrong, the video is sent at the camera resolution (VGA) not the screen resolution. That's not only wrong, it's kinda stupid so maybe we shouldn't listen to him on the rest either.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for responding. This is supposedly a HD video clip taken on the iPhone 4, as you can see it is 1280x720. So the guy's estimate was conservative.

<http://vimeo.com/12671233?hd=1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It depends on what somebody prefers.

A. No 'cut and paste' for 2+ years and then a well-executed solution.

or

B.'cut and paste' that can be used now. Cumbersome but gets the job done.

Personally, I'd go with B.

<comment><USER21> A. Being single for 2+ years and then getting into a relationship with someone you genuinely like being around pretty much all the time.

B. Being with someone _now_ who's a constantly unreliable, annoying reminder of how you could do better.

Personally I'd go with A. (And yes, I think tools::relationships is a valid analogy.)

<comment><USER22> I'd liken it more to

A. Being jobless for 2+ years and then getting the perfect job.

B. Having a job _now_ that kinda sucks, but pays the bills.

B for me. :)

<comment><USER23> And the comparison each of you made showed the difference in mindsets once again:

People who like OSX/iPhones/etc. enjoy their stuff in the same way one enjoys a relationship—it's not a necessity, it's just useful and fun and beneficial. They may come to rely on it, but they won't expect anything of it that it can't do; they'll just figure out their own way of doing it that won't "hurt their relationship."

People who like Linux/Android/etc., on the other hand, _demand_ things of their hardware and software, the same way you are demanded to work if you want to earn money. In the same way one optimizes a business, they will ruthlessly hill-climb toward efficiency, taking any new feature that provides even a 1% profit-benefit, as long as it has a less-than-1% working-time cost.

To put it another way, Apple users anthropomorphize Apple products, and thus have empathy/respect/admiration/etc. for them. Linux users objectify hardware and software, and do things to them (and require things from them) that would be considered sociopathic if done to people. Neither approach is "correct", mind you—software (Operating System software in particular) is a bit like a living thing, with needs and desires and the ability to cooperate with you, but it's also most definitely less "alive" than a real animal.

<comment><USER22> That's one way of looking at it, with which I disagree. I mean, which is more sociopathic: thinking you "can do better" while in a relationship, or valuing someone because she's here for you _now_? I can't speak for other Linux/Android users, but I don't personally think that Linux/Android is perfect or blow their competition out of the water. I've used friends' iPhones and there's loads to like, not least of which is the ability to play Bejeweled on the commute. :p But I use them and support them with my dollars because they were built on a foundation of ideals which I think should be encouraged. Hell, I bought a Freerunner (that OpenMoko phone) even though I knew it wouldn't serve me well in any capacity and that I wouldn't have time to enjoy hacking on it. I bought it as a gesture of support because I thought it was a worthy effort and I wanted it to continue. If they were still in business, I'd probably support them over the Android. To put it into perspective, that cost me about 1/5 of my monthly income at the time.

Going with the relationship analogy, isn't that like dating someone ugly and annoying because she has character?

<comment><USER24> So you are willing to have a worse experience and pay more for it for some ideology that ends up failing in the end anyway? Who are you arguing is more practical here? :)

Personally I think ideology must always bend to practicality or you end up with some really ridiculous results. I personally think Jobs wants to make the experience for the user the best possible. Not because he is benevolent, but rather because he is worried about what people will say about things he made. And in his case that takes priority over any open ideology that will actually result in a worse experience (that people _will_ associate with him/Apple).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The "bullshit" is just the claim that Apple always has the best implementation (sometimes they actually do, sometimes they don't). Nobody assumes that they are incapable of doing it in time.

Ultimately, it is an interesting marketing play, I suppose - the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" of marketing, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER26> It may applies to large corporation, but I don't think that for Startups it applies. We want a mix of those two ways of thinking to

1) Get some features out to gain traction/user

2) Make sure it works and that the user experience will not be negatively impacted.

We have to learn from our mistakes and also learn from what our users want. For that we need to experiment even if it means refactoring / do things differently when we need to.

<comment><USER27> It's not startups vs big corporations. It's about the constraints on your ability to iterate.

You can't iterate on hardware the same way you do on software. If you're used to building the minimum possible thing that will work, shipping that, then gradually improving it day by day you are in for a rude awakening in the hardware business. You can't improve the hardware after it is out of your hands. All you can do is release a _second_ piece of hardware that incorporates improvements. But you must charge all your customers over again, and not all of them will upgrade, and the whole process takes a lot of time and has a lot of friction.

You also can't iterate on a public API the way you do on an app. Once other folks have dependencies pointing to your API the cat is out of the bag. It is several orders of magnitude harder to deprecate an API than to release it. This is why, while iterating on software is good in general, you really don't have the option to reinvent your platform's basic copy-and-paste API too many times. It really pays to iterate _internally_ until you get that right.

<comment><USER28> Excellent point, and one that I think many of us forget.

Also wanted to add that reputation and trust are extremely important in the hardware business (and the retail software business). Many people can buy Apple's next thing without doing much or any research about it, and without having to wait for reviews because they trust that Apple wouldn't subject them to a piece of crap, due to their track record. This is not something that can be said about many other companies, and it's an extremely valuable asset.

It also feeds their ability to create the "Reality Distortion Field".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recently Gruber pointed out that just because you don't like something (in this particular case, the closed nature and strange policies of the App store) doesn't necessarily mean it's a fatal flaw that will doom a platform.

The incredibly illuminating example he used to demonstrate this? The crappiness of the Windows GUI:

 _It occurs to me that the App Store's restrictions and control are to this coming mobile era what Windows's inferior user interface was to the PC era: something that offends some critics to a degree such that they will insist for years, despite the success and popularity of the platform, that it's a fatal flaw that will ultimately doom it._

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/05/19/fitzgerald>

So will "doing it first" doom Android and limit its growing success and popularity, or does he just not like things that aren't done "right"? I also think, like the Windows GUI, that you'd be surprised about how much what you think is "right" has to do with what you're used to.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Japanese did video calls 7 years ago, some nokia phones have also integrated this without third party software and its very easy to use. Apple is not the first to do it right

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant > "I think many people have little understanding of the difference between Wi- > Fi and 3G data — at least insofar as why a feature would work over one but > not the other."

Easy: the difference is that 3G data is not an internet connection.

Sure, you can browse the web, but most 3G data package don't give you a public IP, so your phone can't be a server, and they tend to block many TCP and UDP ports. Your phone is effectively in a private network which has a very limited access to the rest of the Internet.

That, plus the fact that carriers make you sign a contract that forbid you to use their bandwidth in certain ways.

</comment><comment><USER9> Google doesn't control all the stuff that all the different manufacturers and carriers are doing with Android so they cant enforce quality. But, Froyo has the front-facing camera in the SDK and Skype is working on their Android app. So, in a year or two Apple will be left in the dust when all these devices are capable of video-chatting with each other across different manufacturers and carriers, and with PCs and Macs and even with WinMos and Nokias, and who knows what else.

Apple has a pretty good headstart but they have to compete against a whole industry, they don't have a shot.

<comment><USER24> What in Apple's recent behavior makes you think they're just going to sit and wait to die?

>Apple has a pretty good headstart but they have to compete against a whole industry, they don't have a shot.

Odd to see an opinion like this on a site that leans toward Entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apple had to do the copy+paste work because no one else could.

However, the could have put the front facing camera on without the software, since people can write apps to use. As for doing it right, I don't think an app that only works from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 on WiFi is doing it right. Doing it right would to be able to Skype video call to anyone who has the app, be that on the Mac, Windows etc.

Also, if you think Apple themselves have to use all the hardware in the phone, then look at the gyroscope, Apple have no software that uses it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cutting edge is always jenky. I personally figure Apple basically kicks back while other people develop and test, and then they release once it's been tried and sorted a bit so they don't have to release jenky products.

If you really believe Apple spent 2 years developing and perfecting cut&paste you are crazy. They waited until they wanted to implement it. What their cue was, I don't know, but I have my suspicions.

<comment><USER32> I doubt Apple "waits", they prefer to limit them-self to a focussed feature set "done right". Apparently - the entire iPhone 1st gen was designed and developed by a very very small team. This helps consistency, and avoids having some parts of the team not knowing what another part is doing. If they then - like they did for the iPhone - start with a clean API and environment with future expandability in mind, you start out with a solid architecture on which they can build. The downside however is that the initial product has a very small/basic feature-set. Upside is, its core features are (mostly) "done right" and behave consistently. A ton of features, which the competition already has, are missing, but nobody uses them there because of complexity or weird behavior.

Copy-paste is actually a perfect example here. I have had many smartphones and PDAs (iPaq, Nokia communicator, Sony-Ericsson P910, P990 and a few others) - and in none of them I actually ever used the copy-paste (if it was there), or at least certainly not as much as I do now on my iPhone. Worst clipboard implementation I've ever seen was that when I copied text in a one application, apparently it was placed on the clipboard as UTF8 or Ansi text. No problem so far - but apparently, if your target app then only accepted ascii text - too bad, no copy-paste. Try explaining that-one to a normal user, good luck... I then prefer the focussed on core-features, "no clipboard" approach instead of a confusing, non-working or unreliable feature you end up not using at all.

Now I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I do have an iPhone (only Apple product I own). I'll be the last to say that it's perfect and everything is entirely "done right", but from what I've seen - from a user-point of view - it's without a doubt the best thing out-there. Yes there are on paper "better phones" with "more features" which are "more open", but whatever, it just works. On PC I might be considered a power-user, but my phone is a vital part of my life. I don't want to mess around on it too much - it has to simply work. I did consider buying an Android phone for the sole purpose of playing with it, but I simply don't have the time for that at the moment. I might still do this in the future, after having played with 1.5, 1.6, 2.1 and 2.2 on various models of friends - I have to say, I'm impressed by the technical improvements, but still - the user-experience is just horrible. There are some cool ideas, like the notifications - but the execution is mind-blowing irritating after a while. It feels to me as a linux desktop 10 years ago: editing your config file with vi is easy. Designed by an engineer, for an engineer.

<comment><USER33> What do you consider the be the most "horrible" parts of the Android experience?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Give them brand new still-in-the-box iPhone 4's and HTC Evos. Now ask them to make a video call to one another. With the iPhone 4, they're going to be able to do it. "

How can the person with the iPhone make a video call to the person with the Evo, yet only one succeeds? Isn't it the case that for a call to be successfull, both parties need to be able to communicate?

<comment><USER34> The idea is they'd be making iPhone -> iPhone and Evo -> Evo calls, not calls to each other.

<comment><USER10> Thank you. I guess I'm one of those people that needs an iPhone. :-)

<comment><USER34> Granted, with FaceTime being an upcoming "open standard", I suspect someone will make an Android app...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apple has a legal responsibility to their shareholders.

First to do it 'right for me', or first to do it 'right for Apple's shareholders'?

<comment><USER24> Every company has this problem (including Google). What point are you making?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have to confess my bias upfront and say that I'm not a fan of John Gruber. He eloquently spins bullshit, constructing superficially supported arguments that don't bear any scrutiny at all. He is so far down the Apple rabbit hole that he seldom convinces anyone other than the already convinced (which, for historic reasons, includes much of HN).

In this case he's talking about video calling. Ignoring the fact that nobody is actually going to use video calling (it has come so many times on many devices. The Evo was _far_ from the first device to implement it), let's humor his point.

So let's compare-

Apple iPhone 4 - video calling between iPhone 4 devices, only over wifi, using Apple's completely new, completely non-standard protocol. Apparently it "works great", at least for people using demo units at an Apple conference under controlled circumstances.

Evo 4G - Android device with a front-facing camera. Apps support it to talk on any network you want. Fring, for instance, allowing you to call Skype video users on pretty much anything including PCs. This is over wifi, or a 3G/4G connection that can support it.

Gruber has close to no experience with the iPhone 4G, and his entire experience with the Evo 4G is one reviewer's take. Nonetheless, that has made him an expert.

Is iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 calling considered done? Seriously? To me that barely qualifies as beta. It barely qualifies as alpha. There are a legacy of long existing, open video calling protocols, and many existing implementations. Only the truly faithful could call Apple's take done.

 __EDIT __To draw from a comment I left elsewhere, here's an exercise for Daring Fireball supporters: Imagine, if you will, that Motorola just introduced their latest Android device, front-facing camera and all, called the iDroid. The iDroid comes with an easy to use, ultra-simple video conferencing solution, but it only works on wifi, and it only works between iDroid devices.

How, I ask, would John Gruber respond to that? Imagine that it's been tightly polished and all.

Would he post a praise-filled entry lauding their innovation, heralding this great new functionality? Maybe I'm just being a jerk, but I think he would viciously attack it.

<comment><USER37> How can you start off saying Gruber is awful for spinning superficially supported arguments, then go on to claim "nobody is going to use video calling" as a _fact_.

Especially when the whole point of Gruber's article is that nobody uses video calling because it's a confusing and complex mess, and when it isn't so (e.g. skype) it gets used, and when iPhone 4 comes out it will get used a lot more.

So let's compare-

Apple iPhone 4 - instantly popular with millions of people using the exact same make and model with the same software within a few months. Video calling baked in as a single button visible on every phonecall, advertised as a primary feature, designed for easy use.

Evo 4G - Phone with camera on the front. Not such a one-off instantly popular hit. Video calling not possible until specific apps heard of, downloaded and installed, configured, then still different and more hassle to use than a normal phonecall. Other features vary by app.

And only the truly antiApple could suggest that people are calling Apple's take "done" in any final sense as if nobody believes it will ever change ever.

<comment><USER36> >then go on to claim "nobody is going to use video calling" as a fact.

It was obviously a personal opinion. See, I'm not making a grand blog entry waxing poetically on why no one will ever make video calls, carefully creating a curated (word of the month) list of support blog and tweet entries to bolster my supposition.

I offered zero supports to my opinionn. I think you're missing a big difference there. I don't pretend that I have supports for personal opinion.

>So let's compare-

Apple is big and successful (biggest tech company...yet people still pretend that they're counter-culture supporting them. Funny, that). Therefore their "we're big and successful" gives them leave to build things only for their, to use the trite descriptive, walled garden?

"You can made all the video calls you want...as long as anyone you want to call has an iPhone 4 and is currently on wifi...and so are you. Easie-peasie!"

Seriously, this pushes to the point of being comical.

>And only the truly antiApple could suggest that people are calling Apple's take "done" in any final sense as if nobody believes it will ever change ever.

Obviously it will change. Gruber considers it "done right". I think it is done absolutely horrifically, and it is done in a way that is exactly the problem many people have had with Apple's actions.

<comment><USER38> Hmm, from the hours of 9am until about 6pm I can list off about 2 dozen people who I might actually call (girlfriend, dad, best friend, etc) who I know will be on a wifi network and are planning on buying iPhone 4's. You know why? Because between those hours they are at work. Guess what? I can also bet that around 8pm until midnight I can also call them, because they are at home, where they have wifi networks. And guess what? The other times, when they are on the go (walking around out in the world, or driving) are times I wouldn't want to video call anyway. People video calling in public is going to be the new nextel walkie-talkie feature; fucking annoying. Driving while video calling, well, hopefully I don't have to comment on that one.

This is NOT a perfect solution. Of course being able to do it over 3G or 4G would be awesome. As Steve Jobs said.. that will come. They are working with the carriers to make it happen. Why does the solution have to be perfect day one? Baby steps my friend. Do you not think Steve Jobs wants it to work this way as well?

You saying it's done absolutely horrifically is comical, not the other way around. To you, what makes it horrific, is the fact that it only works sometimes, not 24/7. That's pretty ridiculous.

Also, I must point out that when Apple releases something it usually IS done right. It usually is very, very close to finished. Apple polishes before they release, it's in their DNA. Steve Jobs is insane about sweating the details.

<comment><USER36> Two dozen, eh?

>This is NOT a perfect solution.

Indeed. It's not done right. Which is pretty much the point.

Here's a exercise: Imagine that the Droid XIX came with video conferencing that was super easy -- a single button -- but it only worked on WiFi and it only worked between Droid XIX devices. How do you think Gruber would respond to that?

Do you think he would say "Yeah. That's video conferencing _done right_ "

<comment><USER38> Yes, two dozen. At least a dozen friends, girlfriend, parents, co-workers, etc. It adds up fast.

It's done right from an experience perspective, which is the point Gruber was trying to make. Using the feature is dead easy, meaning it's done right. The example of the other phone he gave was not dead easy to use, it took the user hours to figure it out and when he did the experience was still awful.

If the feature worked over Wifi AND 3G/4G it would be EXACTLY THE SAME. No different. It's the feature itself we're talking about here, not when and where you can use it.

If you want to blame someone for the feature being held back point your fingers at AT&T. Or at least blame Apple for taking so damn long to jump ship and offer it to more carriers, but not for shipping a broken solution, as their solution is what looks to be pretty flawless.

Your exercise: I don't know what Gruber would say, but I can take a stab at it. I'd bet it would be along the lines of, "Good to see another feature in Android giving the iPhone a run for its money, competition is good." or "It's great Android can make video calls but it would have been better if they adopted the FaceTime standard so they could call iPhones as well".

<comment><USER36> >If the feature worked over Wifi AND 3G/4G it would be EXACTLY THE SAME

No it wouldn't. Having a protocol work over wifi is remarkably easier than having it work over 3G. The latter introduces clustering and latencies that you just don't have on any normal wifi. It's just as easy to assume that it is a bandwidth pig and is heavily susceptible to latency issues, which is why it is thus far limited to wifi.

Of course everyone else immediately _started_ by making a solution work on 3G (and even edge), with wifi being a "nice to have extras" platform.

>I don't know what Gruber would say, but I can take a stab at it. I'd bet it would be along the lines of

When has Gruber ever said that? When the Android phones had dramatically better resolutions than the now almost intolerable iPhone 3GS and before, did Gruber ever commend that? In fact I believe the only time it even started to come up was when the iPhone 4 was an open secret and he knew it offered the new benchmark resolution, so suddenly competitive resolutions became a conversation point, but only from a "they're behind what is coming" angle.

How about Android notifications -- Gruber has defensively pushed back against the reality that Android has a dramatically better notification system. Yet, good for a laugh, he recently gushed that a notification expert from Palm (he was doing the "See Android was just a copy cat anyways" thing) was moving to Apple, clearly implying "So soon it'll get a better notification system than the notification system that was a non-issue just yesterday".

Gruber, to me, is like Republican talking heads of the worst kind. He filters information to see the world exactly the way he wants to see it to serve his agenda, which is to pimp Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Oh it's funny because he thinks iOS multitasking is better.

Or real.

<comment><USER39> No really. It's not actually multitasking. Downvote away, it's your ignorance.

<comment><USER24> Do you like functional programming? One of the nice things about functional programming is that I can see right away what is being done with a collection. Map is applying or "mapping" some translation to the list to create a new one, filter is taking a subset of the collection that meets some criteria. In e.g. C you just have that big dumb for loop. You want to know what is being done to the the collection? Well, you're just going to have to read the whole thing. Every time.

The problem is that there are several different kinds of things you want to do to a collection, but in C you just have the for loop and have to keep writing e.g. filter every time you need one. Over and over.

Apple gives you the functional approach to multitasking: there are a handful of things you actually want to use multitasking for and they're all supported with the api. You're complaining that they didn't give you that dumb for loop so you could just do it all yourself by hand. Over and over.

<comment><USER40> To make your comparison more precise:

Apple gives you a fixed set of functions that you can pass to map(). Other OSes give you chance to write your own functions that you will be able to pass to built-in map.

<comment><USER24> That's simply not the case. My analogy is exactly how I wanted it. What things do you want to do with a service? Run a background thread to completion? You can do that. You want to play music when your app is in the foreground? Covered. Want to receive notifications from the network? Check. What to do certain tasks at scheduled times? Affirmative.

Further, if I'm reading your code I don't have to go "Oh God, they started a thread. What do they think they need it for...", I can just look at what API you used and I know exactly what the goal was. Exactly the same advantage that map/filter/reduce/etc. have over a for loop.

<comment><USER40> Sorry, but your argument just supports mine.

It is basically: what do you want? This or that supplied function covers your need, you can pass it. Sorry, you can't make yours, what would you possibly want?

Honestly? I don't know right now. Maybe I will have earth-shattering idea next week or month, but I don't know right now. The point is, the original authors of map didn't try to envision what you are going to use map for, and provide enum for choosing an appropriate action. They allowed you to pass any function you want, doing whatever you want.

For example, when speaking about Android, the framework contains class that handles things like managing threads for you. You just plug-in the required functionality, just like you pass your function to built-in map. The boilerplate that you are arguing against is simply not there. Just like with map you know, that "this function will be applied for every item in set" or with filter you know "you will get new set containing items from original set for which the supplied predicate is true", you know that "this functionality will run in background". The accidental complexity of managing it is hidden; the functionality allowed is not fixed.

<comment><USER24> No, I don't think you understand my argument.

>This or that supplied function covers your need, you can pass it. Sorry, you can't make yours, what would you possibly want?

We've had concurrency and services for decades, we already know _every general action you can possibly do with a service_. No one is going to come up with some totally new novel use for a background service anymore than anyone will come up with a new general action to apply to lists. Everything you would ever want to do with a background service can be divided into about 5 kinds of tasks and those are covered. Full stop.

If you disagree then please describe some act with a service and I'll explain to you how that already fits in one of the 4 or 5 kinds of things people do with services. Proposing that some day, some where someone may come up with something that doesn't fit this mold is just hand waving.

<comment><USER8> _Everything you would ever want to do with a background service can be divided into about 5 kinds of tasks and those are covered._

AFAIK it's not possible to simply keep an SSH or IM connection open when you switch to another app.

<comment><USER24> You can have your app continue to run for up to 10 minutes after it's been closed, so it should be possible to use that time to keep your connection open. If no one has contacted you in 10 minutes then chances are they wont in the next 10 either so it would be better to switch to push notification and let the phone manage notifications.

Keeping SSH or IM connections open is an action of a well known use for servers; listening for updates. And that's covered in the API.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best channel to reach developers, as a audience? - <AUTHOR>

Guys, we are building an online service for coders to prove their coding skills, share knowledge with other developers and learn new coding skills/methodologies and it's called Skilleo (http://skilleo.me).
Now, our biggest challenge, like the rest of SaaS or mobile apps is getting user growth/traction.
Right now we are focused on the user acquisition.
So, in your opinion as a techy guy/developer/coding aficionado, what do you believe is the best channel to reach you and how the approach should be made? (no, not the 90's way of the "Try Now!" approach...)
Thanks and cheers Joao <comment><USER2> Check out the new traction book by Gabe Weinberg et al. Tl;dr: run lots of little cheap experiments and see what works. They also run through the 19-odd ways startups generate awareness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing mgirdley.

Also checking here: [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237189](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237189)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think something like guest, "promoted" posts by prominent developers could be a way to jump start the community. Draw people in with informative experiences, anecdotes and lessons from those devs, much like a blog would do. If you hit on a popular topic, it could be well worth whatever it takes to get those devs to post. Just a thought.</comment>


Corona – Norway is now on 3.place by population (Tot cases/1M pop) - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> I wish these reports would contain total administered tests.

The initial papers coming out of China indicate that the infection is asymptomatic or mild in a lot of patients.

We can assume a very significant amounts of undiagnosed patients everywhere.

Wikipedia has a good collection of reported numbers [1].

Norway seems to indeed be one of the most aggressive in testing.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing)

<comment><USER3> There are detailed stats in wordmeter for tests, here: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/)

You can see how some places like US are not treating this like a threat. We Italians have a high number of cases because of the number of tests, same thing for South Korea for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am paranoid about the testing. Indian government doesn't seem to be handling this as well as the media or official report says. There is no mention of tourists from china/itlay present in my _town_ a few days ago and taken away by the authorities after someone complaint.

Total number of tests are too low when you factor in the population size. The airport measures were initially blanket statements and people were coming home without any tests that should have been done at the airport. The healthcare system is already jammed and there is an unusual amount of unidentified deaths (pneumonia deaths increased locally).

Testing facilities are lacking. Even though, there should be 53 facilities across country. Most of the tests are sent to a few only especially pune which makes me wonder if that's also just a useless number.

People are bathing in cow dung, drinking cow urine, selling herbal tea, politicians and health officers even repeating the same. Holi was supposed to be banned but here, locally THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN but in newspaper, it wasall over that it did. Weddings, large gatherings are still happening. No one is taking any precautions. Convincing my family to do anything gets me yelling because they won't listen.

And given the history of Indian government tackling such issues, I feel even more worried. Most statistics for deaths are severely underreported and for this, they will underreport the underreported. There is also swine and bird flu to deal with.

I am surprised there is no internet ban to curb the "panic".

0] [https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/09/hindu-nationalists- magi...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/09/hindu-nationalists-magical- remedies-coronavirus-bjp-india/)

1] [https://youtu.be/_QzKbMF7Kz0](https://youtu.be/_QzKbMF7Kz0)

2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022378/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6022378/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Like brenden2 said, what is being measured is the number of tests performed. If a country looks away, its number will be low. It will show in a few months though.

</comment><comment><USER6> If I were to guess, Norway has a large number of cases because they've been very good about performing tests. The cat's out of the bag already, so at this point it's mostly about figuring out how to contain and help people recover.

<comment><USER7> More likely because there is a week-long winter school holiday in the latter part of February, and many people went to skiing resorts in Switzerland and Austria, transferring through airports in Italy. Those that did are generally young and in good health, so there hasn't been any fatalities yet. In the beginning, all cases could be traced to someone who had been travelling. Now we have internal proliferation, and the largest cities have ordered social distancing/partial lock-down (cancelling of events, closing of schools).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hueibei (Chinese province) is at 1145 cases per million people according to the WHO stats from yesterday... Italy/South Korea/Norway are all bad, but _very_ far from worst case.

</comment><comment><USER9> what does "Tot cases/1M pop" mean?

</comment><comment><USER10> What does "on 3.place" mean? Is that a typo?

<comment><USER11> "Norway is now third by population". "On 3. place" is a direct translation from Norwegian ("på 3. plass") plus a typo.</comment></comment>