Three Microsoft engineers and three Apple employees are travelling by train to a computer conference. At the station, the three Microsoft engineers each buy tickets and watch as the three Apple employees buy only a single ticket.
“How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?” asks a Microsoft engineer. “Watch and you`ll see,” answers the Apple employee.
They all board the train. The Microsoft engineers take their respective seats, but all three Apple employees cram into a restroom and close the door behind them.
Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, “Ticket, please.” The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes the ticket and moves on.
The Microsoft engineers saw this and agreed it was quite a clever idea. So after the conference, the Microsoft engineers decide to do the same on the return trip and save some money.
When they get to the station, they buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the Apple employees don`t buy any ticket, at all.
“How are you going to travel without a ticket?” asks one perplexed Microsoft engineer.
“Watch and you`ll see,” answers an Apple employee.
When they board the train the three Microsoft engineers cram into a restroom and the three Apple employees cram into another one nearby. The train departs.
Shortly afterward, one of the Apple employees leaves his restroom and walks over to the restroom where the Microsoft engineers are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, “Ticket, please…”
Tag Archives: apple
Daring Fireball: Mobile Phone Keyboards
Are software touchscreen keyboards good for everyone? Certainly not. But this is another aspect of the Apple Way. Apple tries to make things that many people love, not things that all people like. The key is that they’re not afraid of the staunch criticism, and often outright derision, that comes with breaking conventions.
via Daring Fireball: Mobile Phone Keyboards.
..and you know what?
He’s damn right – Apple products aren’t for everyone, and that’s okay.
No, it’s not about “maintaining exclusivity”, or anything like that. It’s not about “being of a higher status” than someone else. Mostly, it’s just about having quality.
People have said that the Mac is a way of life – once you go Mac, you won’t go back and all that – but it’s more than that.
There’s a heap of people out there that shop on price alone. And that’s totally okay – everyone loves a good bargain, and it doesn’t make sense to be ripped off.
However, I get the feeling that those that compare spec for spec don’t take into account the other things – things like the OS, design, all the R&D money, etc. It’s those things that make the whole package, and one of the things that appeal the most to new Mac users.
A day in the iLife
via diesel sweeties: 8-bit robot romance webcomic and geeky t-shirts : A Day in the iLife.
Even if you haven’t worked in an actual Apple Retail store, it’s still damn true.
The impact of the iPhone 3GS RAM increase
The most significant thing that Apple’s been touting about new iPhone 3GS is its speed. Generally, when you think about speed improvements, you think of faster CPUs, faster GPUs, and such. But one very important difference in the 3GS that’s contributing to the overall performance is the increased RAM and that’s pretty much gone under the radar.
[…]
CPU (central processing unit):
- original iPhone: ARM 11, 412 MHz
- iPhone 3G: ARM 11, 412 MHz
- iPhone 3GS: ARM Cortex, 600 MHz
GPU (graphics processing unit):
- original iPhone: PowerVR MBX Lite
- iPhone 3G: PowerVR MBX Lite
- iPhone 3GS: PowerVR SGX
RAM (random access memory):
- original iPhone: 128 MB
- iPhone 3G: 128 MB
- iPhone 3GS:256 MB
via tap tap tap ~ 256÷128=10?! The impact of the iPhone 3GS RAM increase.
Just goes to show, once again, that you can ALWAYS do with more RAM, regardless of whether you’re upgrading a computer or an iPhone – especially when you’re doubling the original amount of RAM to begin with.
On Firefox 3.5, HTML 5, and The Third Great Format War…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have noticed that Firefox 3.5 was released.
With it, came the mainstream acceptance of HTML 5, the new web standard – and as a direct result of that, XHTML is effectively dead.
What’s most interesting about HTML 5 is the new <video> tag, however – allowing web content people (what’s their name again?) to embed videos directly without using clunky <object> or <embed> tags.
About time, too. Video is now more prevalent than ever on the internet, and the widespread usage of sites such as YouTube just goes to show just how popular such sites are. Even Flickr, a primarily still-photo based site, are now incorporating video features into their lineup.
Now, about this format war…
So the story goes a little like this…
Right now, the common way to include video on the web is by use of Flash, a closed-source technology. The answer to this is the HTML5 video tag, which allows you to embed video into HTML pages without the use of Flash or any other non-HTML technology; combined with open video codecs, this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardize the web.
via Slashdot.
The problem lies in which codec they’re going to use for this video. Mozilla, along with the rest of the open-source community, think it should be something open-source, such as the Ogg Theora codec which is based on open-source standards. The issue is that not all parties in the browser war agrees – Apple and Microsoft, in particular are against the move to use an open-source codec. Being the large corporations that they are, they want to use their own patented codecs. As they’re not a small portion of the browser market, Mozilla can’t simply ignore them and implement Ogg as the primary codec for the <video> tag in HTML5 (paraphrased from Slashdot comments).
So the question is: why don’t all the parties do what Chrome is doing and just support both proposed formats (H.264 and Ogg Theora) at the same time? In my opinion, this would undoubtedly be the way to go. The issue here is that “Safari won’t support Ogg Theora and Firefox and Opera won’t support H.264 — doesn’t mean you can’t support all three browsers. It just means that to support all three, you need to include at least two <source> elements within the <video> tag, one pointing to an H.264-encoded file, the other to an Ogg Theora file” (thanks to John Gruber for that one.)
That having been said and done, pleas enjoy the video below, whichever browser you happen to be using 🙂
Okay, scratch that idea. Either I just fail at using the <video> tag, or WordPress doesn’t like it, or something. I can play video just fine on the Firefox demo page, but Firefox itself doesn’t seem to want to play ogg video from any page that I create. I’ll just go now…
Copy and Paste
That we had to wait two years for the iPhone’s text selection and pasteboard is a good example of one aspect of the Apple way: better nothing at all than something less than great. That’s not to say Apple never releases anything less than great, but they try not to.2 This is contrary to the philosophy of most other tech companies — and diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Microsoft. And it is very much what drives some people crazy about Apple — it’s simply incomprehensible to some people that it might be better to have no text selection/pasteboard implementation while waiting for a great one than to have a poor implementation in the interim.
via Daring Fireball: Copy and Paste.
Better late and completely awesome than early and epically retarded, right?
Right?!
I’d actually go so far as to say that Apple made the decision not to release copy and paste until now, iPhone haters be damned. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and that applies to the iPhone just as it applies to any other mainstream consumer electronics device. And they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, eh Palm? 😉
Even with all of 3.0’s numerous improvements, it’s hard to think that this shouldn’t have been the OS that shipped with the device back in 07. People have commented that iPhone OS 3.0 should have been there from the start – but look where we’ve come! That, ladies and gentlemen, is progress in it’s finest form.
Nice work, Apple. Kudos.