I guess both produce two-wheeled one-person mobility devices? There is some overlap in utility, but the audience doubting between a petro motorcycle and an electric scooter would be vanishingly thin, I think.
On the other hand, I've been trying to submit changes to Google for several new and vacated roads for over a year (having already updated OSM) and they are constantly rejected. I suspect it is much more that their updates are responsive to car traffic. The segments I'm submitting are or were low-traffic although they include a road that a local municipality has directed people to in official communication for overflow yard waste after some big, recent storms.
I had a similar experience with Google Maps, I used to live in a place where the house on Google maps was located on the wrong street, like one parallel street off.
I put in a few requests from time to time because deliveries were a huge pain, to no avail.
I opened a thread on some Google forum or support place and then it was mentioned that I actually can't change that because only the city is allowed to... why I get the option in the app I don't fully understand.
At some point it got fixed but I have no idea why. Of course it was a few months before I moved out
Google can cheat a little, especially for new roads since they notice when someone is driving over it. When there was a redesign of an intersection near here, someone marked the road as completed in OSM maybe half an hour after it was opened (we have a few quite active mappers), and Google had it open about two hours later and I suspect no one changed the data directly.
Waze definitely does this[1]. As a map editor, I can mark a road segment as closed and it will stay closed for as long as I say, unless reverted by another editor or traffic is observed moving through that closed segment (based on parameters that they set).
This kind of cheating usually works extremely well, from my observation.
Anyhow, Google owns Waze and data goes back and forth between there and Google Maps. They're like two heads of the same snake, so it's implicit that the same thing also works on Google Maps.
I never bought the benevolent technical angle for not supporting flash. I'm pretty sure Apple strategists knew the value of the gate-kept platform, the app-store revenue stream.
The pivotal point was that flash would break this stronghold by allowing rich applications that are reasonably self-publishable. (Excuse me while I go rinse that sentence out of my mouth)
I think the Appstore was planned all along, just did not fit in the first release, so they adapted the launching narrative to: "the browser is enough for all 3rd party software".
Vocally public yes… but they wanted to see what the diy scene created, how the power users were using the device and letting them develop the ideas and implement… they would open up and co-opt… boss tools is your drag down for all your settings case in point.
This has been openly admitted to in interviews after the fact.
They 100% did not let the power users and DIY scene exist. It only existed by exploiting OS security vulnerabilities. Every new iOS release required finding a new way to crack it. That's why a lot of people chose Android.
For the first year, Scott Forstall, the Senior Vice President in charge of the iPhone's software, very directly encouraged companies like Pandora[0] to jailbreak iPhones in order to get a head start on app development, protected that community from Steve Jobs' ire, and then used the existence and popularity of jailbreaking to convince Steve that a sandboxed app store would be a better idea than Apple writing every single app for the iPhone[1].
Once native APIs were available, that was true, but before it was even clear that the iPhone would have an app store, they very much did let it flourish.
I remember seeing stories about Adobe not being able to, or not wanting to, write a good energy efficient flash renderer for the iPhone, thus being another reason not to support it for Jobs (Adobe being of the mind that "Flash is so big, they'll have to support it" and Jobs proving otherwise)
They also either could not or would not write efficient Flash clients on Mac OS or Linux, while the Windows version was fine.
I bounced around a lot between the three OSes at that time, and Flash was bad enough on the other two that I would almost automatically reach for Windows when I had to use it.
Apple didn't even have an AppStore in mind until people started hacking apps onto it.
Remember back in 2007 when Apple first told developers that to develop for the iPhone, they’d need to build WebApps for Safari? Well, that really was the plan. At the time, Jobs said:
The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.
And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today.
The App Store came later and apparently as a reaction to jailbreakers and developer backlash.
According to the biography, Jobs’ longstanding animus toward Adobe helped form his vision for Apple’s tightly controlled mobile environment.
In 1999, he was flatly denied when he asked Adobe to create a version of its popular Adobe Premiere digital-graphics software for the Mac. Adobe also wouldn’t rewrite Photoshop for the Mac’s operating system, even though Macs were popular with designers.
“My primary insight when we were screwed by Adobe in 1999 was that we shouldn’t get into any business where we didn’t control both the hardware and the software, otherwise we’d get our head handed to us,” Jobs said, according to Isaacson.
The two companies go back together even further. Apple invested in Adobe in 1985 and they worked together early on. But Jobs, who in Isaacson’s book comes off sometimes as vindictive and brusque as he was innovative and inspirational, told Isaacson that Adobe went downhill after founder John Warnock retired.
“The soul of Adobe disappeared when Warnock left,” he said. “He was the inventor, the person I related to. It’s been a bunch of suits since then, and the company has turned to crap.
Very OT, but can I say i’ve seen this happen at every company i’ve been? When the founder(s) get out of the picture they kinda bring the soul of the company with them.
Yeah there’s a fading halo still in the air for a while, but it’s just that: a fading halo.
I’m sure it was a combination of factors. One thing to remember back then was that Apple’s position was far more tenuous than now - Microsoft owned the desktop and server market, and the established phone companies were deeply entrenched with things like long-term contracts. Apple knew they had to execute very well _and_ that was coming off of experiences like Motorola’s chip business self-disintegrating and Microsoft playing cutthroat with Office and Internet Explorer, all of which left Apple’s senior management highly determined not to lose control of their platform. I don’t think anyone realistically expected the kind of growth we saw on the App Store as much as making sure they didn’t get squeezed by a more powerful competitor.
(To give you an idea of how bad it used to be, Qualcomm’s BREW platform launched with terms for developers like $50k per carrier per app to be listed AND a percentage of your gross revenue – not just the app, everything!)
The performance problems were very real, too, at a time when they were sweating every bit of RAM and CPU but the bigger problem was usability. Android kicked Flash to the curb, too, because while it was technically possible to make it run on a phone with a touchscreen was horrible — even the Android superfans barely talked about it as an advance because nobody liked Flash even if they had their phone plugged into a charger.
I would buy this argument if Flash as a browser plugin had been proven to perform well on a mobile device of the time, but it never was, on Android or any other platform.
Even AIR apps - think Electron, an application shell for Flash apps - were on the edge of usable on desktop Macs of the era.
I think it was both. If you ever used Flash on an Android phone at the time, it was a very quick way to empty your battery and make your phone a nice heater.
Broadly speaking: IP Transit is the relaying of bandwidth towards the rest of the world.
Dark fiber is a fiber optic connection where you shine light in and get it out on the other end, no other party on the physical fiber strand.
Something akin to ssh agent-forwarding ("oauth-forwarding"?) is really needed.
And it needs to be integrated similarly well like support for jumphosts.
Haven't seen anything like this, I'll try to bring this up with the openssh folks.
Curl can connect over unix domain sockets and ssh can forward them, I feel this would be a decent way to forward authentication as access control rules would apply to the sockets.
Apart from the business model and mobility benefits, those scooters are just plain dangerous. They are absolutely fun to drive, and easy to drive swiftly.
But your body mass is so high off the ground on a very small base, with VERY small wheels. Riding on a bird I hit a small pothole (it looked like a very slight puddle) and catapulted off onto the sidewalk. The physics are undeniable.
Personally I'd like to see the same model with bicycles, even if they are electric.
And for the love of public space: force all competing brands to share vehicles, drop-off zones and handlers.
I'm typing this on my 1 year old Tuxedo InfinityBook (S 14 Gen6, not the Pro).
Now I'm definitely spoiled by the Lenovo X1 series, but I'm not happy.
The hardware is a rebrand from clevo-computer.com - some minor spare parts can be had from there.
The system is VERY prone to overheating, the fan is noisy. They claim the fan noise is "not annoying" which is only true in the short term. I have opened up the bottom shell and I believe the fan recirculates a bit of hot air back into the case. This really is a limiting factor for me, I'm considering an alternate cooling solution.
The case had a minor chip in it within the first ten minutes out of the box (I don't know how that happened, I think it just pinged off by itself!). The palm-rests are starting to show dark spots.
My barrel jack power connector is loose, I have to hold it in with a rubber band. (I still have the usb-c port)
All the rubber feet at the bottom fell off quite some time ago, superglued them back on.
The (super compact) PSU started to whine, that was replaced under warranty - but is stated to be a consumable item!
Out of the box they have their own OS, which is a somewhat modified Ubuntu. My main driver is Debian and almost everything worked right out of the box - sometimes I got back (usb-boot) to their distro to validate things (see: support).
The firmware is more than okay for me; I managed to cross-compile their "control centre" to allow me to change performance/fan characteristics on the fly. The uefi updates work fine (boot from a stick), but they are undocumented.
The support is ... rigid. The first response is to boot their own distro and kernel. This is fair for a mass market product I guess, but I somehow hoped that specific questions would find their way proper Linux Gurus (tm).
There is a very cute penguin instead of a windows logo on the keyboard :-)
Not having owned one personally, the questionable quality of the engineering and QC of Clevo-based laptops has what has kept me away from them. Reviews for them are almost always some shade of "this is mediocre" or "this would be nice if not for X, Y, and Z".
While they still have a ways to go, I'm more hopeful for Framework since they do their own engineering, and I'm interested to see what system76 does in the self-designed laptop they're reportedly working on.
I've owned 2. One for 4+ years the other is 3 months old. They've been fine for me and I move them around a lot. the only issue is junk getting stuck in the fan and replacement was fairly easy. The hinged chipped when it hit the floor once (the plastic surrounding the hinge part.) Spare parts are readily available. I like Mat screens and they tend to have them.
The AMD cpu model I'm using for work is really quite good on power and fast (Ryzen 7 5700u).
One more nit-pick: the screen is polarised the wrong way. You can't see anything when wearing polarised sunglasses (those are always oriented so they filter out the polarisation of water puddles).
One of the things I really considered is that if nobody gives these "independent" Linux-focussed vendors a chance, then Linux-on-the-desktop will forever remain a non-factory option and a second-class citizen in support manners.
That's not the way the market works. How about vendors focus on delivering a quality product, with good hardware and software, proper QA and support, and fair prices? Hell, I'm sure many Linux users would be willing to pay a premium if all the other aspects are there.
Linux will never be a mainstream option with these low effort products.
What evidence? I don't think there's a machine that delivers on all those aspects, and makes Linux a first-class citizen.
Dell and Lenovo generally do a pretty good job, and those machines sell well, but I think the quality is still below what, say, Apple can deliver. Judging by the push to get Linux to run on Apple hardware, I'd say Linux enthusiasts are not only willing to pay a premium for a quality product, but willing to invest time and effort getting it to run well in a hostile and closed ecosystem.
So I think there's a big market opportunity for someone to deliver Apple quality hardware, that integrates well with open source software. Framework is probably at the frontlines in this regard.
> Judging by the push to get Linux to run on Apple hardware
.
That's still a very small subset of a very small market. I highly doubt it would be even remotely viable to develop a product comparable to M1/M2 Macs if you're targeting the Linux market. Even if you can get decent margins the scale is just no there. At best you can get some rebadged Windows laptops like HP Dev One.
Framework is probably an exception but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of those who bought it still use Windows
I have seen a lot of complaining sand saying that the Linux kit is too expensive. Even the stuff that is actually Linux kit (System76, maybe Tux). I'd be glad to be wrong, but I'd be surprised.
I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: the smartest thing Apple ever did was keeping you from running OSX on Windows computers. Nobody buys a commodity PC, slaps OSX on it, and expects it to work as well or better than Windows. Yet this is how many do Linux.
Agree. For my software products, Linux was always the OS where people complain the most and then expect to pay the least. Mac users, on the other hand, tend to be much more willing to pay for a good experience.
Regarding the termination: our local fiber provider handles the termination with some optical precision connector (forgot the name). Both to the sunken-in-sidewalk multiplexer and in the home to the optical termination point (both gpon). So for mass deployments fiber connections do not require fibre welds are not required.
I have to see it play out in practice and I'm not a fan of the idea that one telco controls controls (ie stifles competition) in a gpon scenario. The conduit has recently been placed in our street, so "soon"...
I'm still a fan for cost reasons of FTTN, because I think with Coax in the last mile, you can deliver fantastic performance, so long as you're not also trying to delivery video too.
Furthermore if you actually run Coax in duct for buried circuits, its easy to replace with fiber later.
Our telco converted all its infra to FTTN via fiber. So, I've actually have fiber connection up to the front of my building, then it's terminated and distributed via VDSL to the street.
I have a 50/8 mbps connection at home and, it gives all the performance it can give. The telco keeps the speeds a bit higher to handle VDSL overhead, so we have a real 50/8 mbps IP connection at premises.
I'd rather not rewire my home and use existing equipment (which can handle 350mpbs), rather than bringing in fragile fiber into the home.
I have Sonic fiber in SF. 1Gbps symmetric, over a "fragile fiber" run directly into my home. It works quite well. The drop cable is pre-made in standard lengths with weatherproof connectors. The glass is embedded in a large-ish diameter substrate that resists sharp bends naturally so the installers don't need to take special care to prevent losses, just don't try to force the cable to bend beyond what it wants to do (very different from your standard fiber patch cables in a switch room). It is robust enough you could cable staple it to a wall without issue. Terminates in a tiny ONT that gives me Ethernet on my side.
They're deploying 10Gbps for all new installs and I'm eagerly awaiting my upgrade. No change to the fiber itself are required, just swapping equipment on both ends. This same fiber can do 100Gbps in the future if the need arises, possibly more. No coax plant can come close. The fact that an independent ISP can do this for $40/month and make money at it proves the economics.
There is no reason not to run fiber unless you're more focused on rent extraction than investing in your business... at least in suburbs and cities. (See ATT's public comments and focus on milking wireless while dis-investing in physical plant as an example of goosing profits because they don't face real competition in most of their service area).
I'm using a 1gbps symmetric connection at the office, for the last decade or so. The network speed is limited by my NIC and the cabling to the switch. The network at the office has more bandwidth (we're the network backbone).
We have fiber ran into our apartment buildings. My apartment's termination box is at the wall across my flat door. On the other hand, the speed I can get from that fiber is not higher than the current VDSL offerings, and they both cap at 100mbps downstream (upstream is probably limited at the same speeds with VDSL). Since the FTTN box is also outside, the speeds and stability from that VDSL connection is rock solid.
For no apparent speed advantage, I need to terminate a thick fiber, and need to run it in the open across the house, drilling walls in the process, or move my house's whole internet infrastructure near it. Both are illogical given the floor plan of my house.
Then comes the equipment part. Again, I'll need to change my core router at home and change everything (I have a mesh network at home), or cascade it to ISPs fiber router, which is another box, more cables, and more management. If the ISP allows me to use my own router, I'd need a media converter from fiber to copper. Which's again more cables, more boxes, more management.
As a result, I'd rather use my house's in-wall cabling to get the speeds I'm happy with instead of getting a shiny (pun intended) technology with no speed advantage.
If the speeds offered here changes over time, I can re-evaluate my choices, but as the xDSL technology gets better, I'm guessing that it'll keep the same speeds with fiber offerings, at least for residential stuff in my area. So, I project that I can upgrade my network speeds at least for a decade without changing my network equipment or cabling.
Sorry I should have been clearer: I am referring to "Sonic Fiber" which is their own infrastructure, not any kind of resold service which they do offer in areas where they have not deployed their own fiber infrastructure.
In the Bay Area they have fiber in SF, South SF, Daly City, Redwood City, Berkley, Oakland, San Carlos, Burlingame, Albany, Brentwood, and probably more. They are rolling it out mostly in areas with poles at the moment because the cost of burying is quite high.
They've proposed "microtrenching" in SF to reach areas with all underground utilities but so far the city hasn't been very interested and it isn't cost-effective for them to dig up the sidewalks to install conduit. I hope that will change at some point.
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