my little rant...

[Liam Proven]

On 10 November 2017 at 14:03, Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:
>
> I think the problem is a sort of increase in nervosity.

Um. I don't know what that word means.

> It's not just here.
>
> Windows 10 is much more nervous than Windows 7 which is more nervous than
> Windows XP was.

OK, you are using "nervous" in a sense that I do not understand.

> I personally believe the high amount of radiation (wifi, cell) entices the
> ... well, I think our bodies actually become more nervous.

... what?

> I think our nervous system, becomes more nervous.

_WHAT?_

> Attention span has been reduced by the epitomic "180 character limit" (or
> whatever it is)

140. Because SMS was 160. Multipart SMS is 153, to leave room for code
to link them. Twitter reserved another 13 from that.

Now doubled to 280 anyway.


> At the same time companies are moving away from "ownership" of software to
> "rental" of software which is a more nervous thing because the moment your
> money runs out, you lose everything.
>
> A rapid release cycle of software is also nervous.
>
> Ubuntu is focussing (or was focussing) on experimental things like Snaps,
>
> Windows is focussing on experimental things like Cortana and Edge
> and other stuff people don't want.

You are talking about _symptoms_. It is necessary to look deeper and
think about what _causes_ these symptoms. Just discussing the surface
features gets you nowhere. It's not about what is happening, it's why
it's happening.

As usual, this comes back to Apple.

iOS came along nearly a decade after work on OS X started.

It is most instructive to look at what features came in what versions
of iOS and when.

iOS 2 was introduced with the 2nd gen iPhone, the iPhone 3G (2008),
and added the App Store. No apps before that: the functionality it
came with is all you ever got.

iOS 3 added cut/copy and paste.

All these were very important and well-nigh essential. You could
justifiably call the first release and the first update unfinished.

So, Apple pushed these updates out for free to all owners. _That_ is
the most important first thing to note here. That is the takeaway.
First, free updates; secondly, pushed out -- the device nags you until
you install it.

iOS 4 didn't add anything so radical, but it was the first version
that _required_ the 2nd gen iPhone, the iPhone 3G. The original
2G-only iPhone can only run up to iOS 3, and that had issues on the
first model.

So the 2nd iPhone is when the _hardware_ got serious.

The 3rd gen, the 3GS (2009) , got updates all the way to iOS 7, the
last really major change to iOS.

The iPad 1 shipped the year after the 3GS, with the  same amount of
RAM and the same iOS release, iOS 3.

So what you need to note from this is several things:

[1] A precedent for releasing products early, with incomplete
features. Both hardware and software.
[1a] Then, incrementally, successive versions are releases which
complete the feature set and make it more workable.

[2] What Apple learned from iOS: to encourage 3rd party development,
all your users need to be on the current version. You don't just need
to give them free updates, you need to _push_ these update with
constant nagging. So updates need to be regular and scheduled -- like
Ubuntu releases. And Ubuntu's 6-monthly release cycle was set because
GNOME originally released new versions every 6 months. Ubuntu adopted
the no-root-account and the ``sudo'' command from OS X. These things
feed into each other.

So, you can make _big_ tech shifts if you do 2 things:

* Release early, release often. This is from Eric Raymond's original
"the Cathedral and the Bazaar" paper which established the concept of
Open Source, as opposed to Stallman's Free Software.

* Get your users on board with a unfinished version that is missing
vital features. Keep them with free updates.

* This induces customers to run the latest available version. That
keeps your 3rd party vendor ecosystem happy -- they only need to
target the current release.

* Issuing all these free updates costs you money, of course. Lots of
testing, lots of work, no revenue from it.

* But, after a while, the new versions won't run on the previous-gen
hardware. But the customers feel happy -- they've had lots of free
updates and new features, so they are content, so they buy next-gen
hardware in order to get nice shiny new _hardware_ features that
software updates can't provide. Besides, the old device is a bit slow
now, and getting battered and its battery doesn't hold a full charge,
but they feel they got their money's worth.

That is where this model of continuous incremental development with
periodic generation refreshes comes from. Apple made it pay, but
Ubuntu and GNOME led the way with the software development model.
Ubuntu and GNOME, though, were efforts to bring Mac-like simplicity
(e.g. sudo) to the PC and Linux.

The App Store, and the way it made the mobile devices desirable, has
made hundreds of billions of dollars for Apple.

Microsoft wanted a piece of that.

So, like it did with Windows 1, 2, 3 and 95, it pioneered its own,
separate, different UI, not a copy of Apple's. It trialled it on the
Zune media player, then rolled it out across the line: Windows Phone,
Xbox 360, and Windows 8.

Not just the UI -- also, a new development model based on .NET and C#,
with apps with a funky new UI that worked very well on both phones and
tablets and also on games consoles, brought to Windows too. These apps
could only be sold through Microsoft's App Store. Because the new .NET
stuff brought advantages to developers, the App Store meant instant
distribution, no physical media or packaging, centralised updating,
and of course, money for Microsoft.

Only the phones bombed, because 3rd place isn't very profitable, and
desktop users hated the new UI which was pretty good on a touchscreen.
And traditional desktop apps weren't allowed on touchscreen devices,
and they couldn't be sold through the App Store.

Which was purely a licensing thing -- Windows RT came with MS Office,
a desktop version, showing that the hardware and the OS _could_ do it
just fine, but Microsoft didn't _allow_ you.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/microsoft_surface_rt_stockpile/

This pissed off the phone and tablet users _as well as_ the
already-pissed-off desktop users.

Result, misery, market failure.

Meanwhile, Apple goes, ooh look at that, Microsoft users aren't happy
and are abandoning it. But Mac users don't upgrade their OS. Once it
works, they stay there. Why Because 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6,
10.7, all cost money. Less and less, but they cost.

So, OS X 10.8 is made free for all. And they switched to annual
updates, like iOS. And releases are pushed out with nagging, like iOS.

Because if most of your users are on the latest version, developers
like that, because they can target the cool new features and don't
need to support old versions. If upgrading is quick, easy, free, and
it doesn't break anything or need you to reload your data or reinstall
your apps, well, duh, more people do it.

So Apple now had both iOS and OS X on a regular, cyclical, periodic
free update cycle.

Like Ubuntu.

Meanwhile, over in Microsoft land...

So, shit shit shit, our phone users are pissed off, our desktop users
are pissed off. What do we do? OK, rush out an update for the desktop
with the Start Button and the option to boot to the desktop put back.
(Both were there in the betas, but removed.) Update the phones to the
NT kernel. Lots of perfectly good phones can't be upgraded, but screw
them. Offer new models, more compatible with the tablets, which ran
the NT kernel anyway. That's Windows Phone 8 and 8.1, Windows RT 8 and
8.1.

On the desktop, that was Windows 8.1. Free update, again, trying to
copy the Apple model.

Windows 7 is to Windows Vista as Windows 8.1 was to Windows 8.0, but
W7 cost money. 8.1 was free. Copying Apple, trying to win the users
back on side.

Didn't work of course.

So the phones and tablets bombed, and Steve Ballmer was out, Satya
Nadella took over, and a crowd-pleaser release, Windows 10, with a
kinda-sorta Start Menu put back. It doesn't work as nicely on tablets
and phones, but they killed those off. Microsoft climbed down,
retreated, abandoned the lucrative tablet/phone market, and tried to
win its users back... with a free update for everyone. Because the
only way to get developers to target Win10 is to try to get as many
users onto the latest version, like Apple did with the iPhone from day
1. Free regular OS releases, pushed out, like iOS.

So, here's Windows 10, it's free, please download it, please upgrade.
It's the last time we'll ask this, honest. After this, new releases
will happen automatically, like they do on the iPhone and iPad.

Phone and tablet users? Yeah, we don't do that any more. Sorry. Here's
an update. It's called 10 but it looks and works the same as 8.1. But
if you have a super-high-end phone, now you get Continuum -- plug in a
keyboard and mouse, your phone becomes your PC. Only it can't run
desktop apps and nobody likes Modern apps much.

The snag is, the phones were mainly successful in the low-end market,
because they were cheap and they did Facebook and simple games.

So, now, the phones are dead. The "tablets" are laptops with a
detachable keyboard. They run desktop Windows and desktop apps. The
ARM ones are dead, gone.

When you look at _how_ and _why_ things happened as they did, the
reasons why are clear. It's not random. It's not fashion. It's rival
businesses, some trying to execute successfully, others trying to copy
and failing.

> Windows 10 tile interface is nonsensical and dysfunctional and the biggest
> reason Windows Phone failed.

I've tried several. On touchscreens, it worked great.  More innovative
than iOS _or_ Android.

> "Hybrid" devices was a bad idea to begin with, the convergence of
> tablet/laptop or tablet/desktop was a bad idea to begin with.

I have bad news for you. They're selling well and owners love them.

> Meanwhile the Ubuntu release cycle is extremely rapid.

Same as it has been for 13 years, as set by the GNOME release cycle
with which it was synchronised.

Too fast? Use LTS.

> I'm still on 16.04. I still want to use kernel 4.6.

AFAIK, kernel updates are not mandatory.

> Everything goes too fast for me, also because of exterior reasons.

So use Debian, then.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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