LMFAO! I've never used an IDE as buggy as Xcode (having a ton of experience with VS, Eclipse and JDeveloper,that's saying A LOT)
Maybe true. Eclipse is impressive software. JDeveloper is meh.
iBooks dumps all your PDFs and loses them all without prejudice
Definitely not true, I have PDFs that have been synced since probably the iTunes 9 days? And through at least four iOS devices...
iTunes refuses to sync about 80% of the time
Never seen it fail to sync ever here. Since clear back to my first B&W iPod and the iPod Color which are both still working. You using the Windows version?
does really stupid sh-- like trying to sync an 800GB music library with a 32GB iPhone
Never seen that either. It of course is your responsibility to click on the Music tab and tell it what to sync or not sync... that hasn't changed in years. Not difficult. If it starts to sync with things set the wrong way (by you), just hit cancel and fix it.
restores programs that I deleted months ago
Never seen that except at iOS 4 to 5 upgrade and it was because that was a complete wipe and reload which was very clearly documented. If you don't want an App, delete it from your iTunes library. It's pretty hard to sync something that doesn't exist.
Delete from the device is just a flag in the Library. The Library -- up until iCloud started tracking purchases -- was your Master copy of anything. Delete it there, it was gone. Not a difficult concept.
and complicates everything with it's mundane restrictions for anyone wanting to do anything outside what Apple intended.
Are you talking about media restrictions imposed by legions of Intellectual Property Rights lawyers or something else? Not sure what specifically your complaint here is. What is it that you want to do that you can't?
Just works my ass... put the kool-aid down. iThings are successful 5% because they have dead simple interfaces that morons can figure out and 95% because those same morons eat up the marketing (I own a Mac and iPhone and an iPad) .. Jobs was smart because he realized this.
The promise of the IT/Computer industry has been forever that these devices will make your life easier, that you can do things you want to do, and the technology won't get in the way.
Most of us old-timers knew all along that DOS machines and Unix machines don't do that by a long shot without serious training or self-study. It was, and for most software is, a complete lie by the industry.
An example I've had to say time and time again to people would be... "Oh, your Windows machine has this thing we call a 'Registry' and when it gets screwed up I hope you have backups or all your software installation media do we can reinstall your whole machine." ... as one example.
Apple turned that into "Turn on Time Machine, follow instructions to set it up, and forget about it. If you have to reload your machine, the OS installer will ask you if you have a Time Machine backup and the machine will be reloaded identically to where it was before your hard drive crashed. Heck our OS installer will even ask if you're upgrading to a new machine and give you three ways of copying the old one to the new one so you can pick up right where you left off."
That's just one example of the commitment to getting the tech out of an average user's way.
I don't see that as anything bad. Most techie folks lament the fact that "users are morons" but isn't the tech SUPPOSED to make it easier for even morons to get stuff done with their computers?
What is your goal here? To make computers even more difficult for average people? Should everyone on the planet need three or four layers of computer gurus available to them to fix things and/or do things like incremental backups with de-duplication and a simple graphical interface to recover things they deleted by themselves?
THAT is what the "morons" mean by "just works". They don't have to call you or me to set up backups, or show them how to restore from them. They don't have to ask us how to load drivers so they can even plug in a device to USB and have it work. If they buy Apple stuff the integration is already done for them.
(And I'll be the first to admit, iTunes for Windows blows... maybe it shouldn't, but it's definitely not the primary focus at Apple. iTunes for Mac behaves very well.)
But as far as "eating up the marketing", sure. It's what the computer industry has promised since the 80's. Nothing has changed there. Apple just gets closer to delivering the promise each year. Microsoft? Not even trying. Maybe Windows Phone 8, but still light years behind for user simplicity on Windows 8 itself. Office is still the major reason to run Windows. Nothing else really sticks out as a killer App that only Windows has. Some nice work on security in Win 8... But the average user doesn't care.
You also do realize that Apple exists today solely because Jobs ripped off any and everybody he could, Starting with Xerox and his best friend. Not to mention their "sue any and everyone" strategies of quelling competition.
Welcome to Silicon Valley. Gates sold vaporware to IBM to start his business, Shuttleworth threw money at Debian developers to create a new distro instead of just working with the original organization, RedHat sells subscriptions to free software and claims it's for "support", Zuckerberg stole his ideas from the twins and tossed his partner in the street to suffer trying to build a copy of Facebook until he committed suicide a few weeks ago in depression and despair, Larry Ellison destroys his competition with Marketing perennially with a mediocre RDBMS, Cisco... wow, let's not even go there. They're not just a company, they've built a religion far more powerful than Apple has. Try convincing any IT shop not to use Cisco gear in the core. Rare. Or Google? Absolutely ruthless business there.
We could name all the non-ruthless or companies that stopped being ruthless. They're all dead or walking dead. Tandy, Commodore, Amiga, Novell, Foundry Networks (kinda), US Robotics, Hayes, Yahoo (still confused about what they're trying to accomplish), AltaVista (remember them?), AOL (dead walking since Time-Warner bought the scraps), etc.
The ruthless companies were the grandchildren of TI, Motorola, Dallas Semiconductor, and all those old electronics engineering companies were ruthless and ate their own young in the 70s too. Telecoms, same thing.
And the great-granddaddy of them all in many respects... IBM. With a patent book that would take up acres if printed and a fleet of lawyers defending them. Think old man Cray thought they played fair? Ha.
The list of Asperger's Syndrome "great IT leaders" is pretty much all of them. Silicon Valley breeds sociopathic leadership. Definitely not limited to Jobs or Apple. None of this is new. It really shouldn't be such a shock to anyone. Any company not run by a sociopath in Silicon Valley is destined for mediocre returns on investment or failure.
Banks are similar. Egos large enough in their leadership to truly believe they deserved bailouts when their best work utterly failed.
Politics? Insane egos there. Not a shred of remorse at lying to your face to buy your vote.
We're a nation that pretends there's fair play and morals on TV (cop shows always catch the bad guys, business shows always show the "hard working" leaders starting businesses in their garages, etc etc etc. While in reality, the people running these concerns are egotistical maniacs that don't care who they run over on their way to their next ten million.
They even give honorary degrees to those who dropped out to practice their ruthless business practices later as a way to keep the rest of us believing the majority path is the way to the top. The ruthless give excellent speeches at such events.
I've been saying for a long time that Apple plays the 80/20 game almost flawlessly. They target to 80% solution and the 20% are always exceedingly PO'ed at them. Meanwhile they make a fortune on the 80%.
U.S. Aviation manufacturers are squarely focused on the 20% solutions in GA and ignoring the 80%. Is it any wonder they're slowly strangling themselves to death? (Boeing has the 80% for commercial airline aviation products covered.) Who makes the aircraft that 80% of GA purchasers would want, including price? Who makes the 80% solution private business aircraft? They all dogpile on top of each other to make the aircraft the 20% want.
, but somehow "just works" made it to the top of the marketing departments list of "fun things to say"