Wow. Just...wow.

It wasn't mean to belittle. It was meant to illustrate the point (that many rabidly Pro-Apple/Pro-Jobs people are hung up on HIGHLY revisionist history).

And look throughout the rest of the thread. I've openly SAID that Apple revolutionized the smartphone market.
But they did NOT create it, and they CERTAINLY did not do it from "nothing".

The GIMP *wishes*.

Inkscape is one of those 'Best of Breed' open source apps where it's pretty much all you need to do the task you're downloading it for. It beats the ever-living SNOT out of Illustrator on simplicity, ease-of-use, and, of course, price. You're not locked into Adobe's new SasS model or a huge license fee, yet can create great looking vector art with fantastic compatibility.

Compare to, say, PuTTY, or VLC Media Player. They do a single job, and they do it REALLY freakin' well.

GIMP does not. GIMP's UI is STILL a cluster@#$@ after years and years of development and user feedback, and the last time I checked, it still lacked the support for color matching that would make it viable for creating images that were print-ready.

Frankly, if you're working on Windows, you are far more behooved to use Paint.Net than you are The GIMP.

Those who can squeeze by on the margins.

Sure, a bunch of weak sisters are going to fall by the wayside in the interim.

But we'll continue to see major OEMs produce standardized machines, and we'll continue to see boutique shops selling highly customized ones. The market is not going anywhere.

The thing is, the phone built on the foundation of the Apple Newton and what they learned from that. As well as the iPod (which was also influenced by the Apple Newton).

So, again, it wasn't "something out of nothing". But an iterative process between 1987 (when the Newton was released) and 2007 (when the iPhone was released).
And while I'm sure there were tons of creative leaps that came more or less out of nowhere, it isn't like Steve Jobs was seized by inspiration, locked himself in his office for a week and then walked out with a fully functional iPhone (REGARDLESS of how the fanbois wanna spin it).

Who says I'm the one dying? Especially since I'm right.

Basically ANYONE fapping over any brand's products needs an ass-kicking.

That includes my uncle, the asshole Microsoft evangelist.

"disenchanted/upset customer"? Clearly, you haven't worked in tech support, or known anyone who has, or read any of the blogs or horror stories, or, really, informed yourself in any way about this. Humans have a bell curve of both "crazy" and "mean", and the tail end of either is not something you'd ever want to come into contact with.

I know loads of people who have anti-authoritarian spirit who take great care about where they say things, and try to clean up any record of what they've said.

Ah... the old "the .0000000001% of the population I know behave like x, therefore x is representative of the whole population" fallacy.

My sympathies are with the Comcast tech support on this one. As bad as Comcast can be, which is at least 300 milli-Hitlers bad, the tail-end of the worst people to call customer support can be worse still. Or just too stupid to be allowed to own a computer.

Again. I don't hate Apple.

I just hate the fanboy bullshit.

Did Apple revolutionize the market?
YES! FUCK YES! HELL THE FUCK YES!

Did they CREATE the market out of "nothing"?

No.

Right. This is the long and short of my point.

http://time.com/3560875/iphone...

You may want to check your factbook.

Ah. Goalposts firmly moved into PDA-land now...

How refreshing...

No. Steve was ALWAYS a control freak.

Oh! No doubt! I won't even waste anyone's time trying to deny this.

I don't "hate" Apple.

Their products aren't my particular cup of tea. But I don't hate them.

I save my hatred for the circle-jerking culture club that grew up around it. Mostly because rampant idiocy and fanaticism annoy the fuck out of me.

Fallacy. The desktop is, and will remain relevant.
Fallacy. The PC market is NOT dying.

The PC market is in the midst of a correction.
Prior to the latest rounds of smartphone/tablet introduction, people were primarily using PCs in situations where a full-blown Wintel system was complete and utter overkill.
With touchscreen smartphones and tablets becoming more or less ubiquitous over the last 3-5 years, we're seeing people looking to replace their older desktop/media/laptop PCs with something, and finding that tablets and the like fit the need better and at a better price point than a full-blown desktop/laptop.

Additionally, in business, we're seeing virtualization starting to make inroads into reversing the trend of moving from centralized resources to localized resources.
As noted, modern Wintel hardware is GROTESQUELY overpowered for most office productivity uses. And in lots of businesses, servers are wasting massive power on idle cycles. On top of that, the support costs, even with dedicated personnel, can be astronomical.
So, instead of dropping a $500-1000 system on everyone's desk, they're virtualizing. Users get a thin client or RDP into a terminal server and work from there.
This way, the business can lock down their platform, deliver only the software needed for the business (saving them money), and allows them to be more agile, since they can set up an office pretty much ANYWHERE, so long as they have internet connectivity.

Now, neither the virtualization market, nor the smartphone/tablet markets have hit critical mass yet. So there's likely to be a bit more of a drain from the desktop PC market for a bit. But it'll eventually peter out and the PC market, while smaller, will still be there. Additionally, it'll allow PC manufacturers to better utilize their resources to deliver products that fit their new market. Rather than shotgunning product all over the place.

So, anyone who's trying to sell you the "The PC is dying" line, basically doesn't know what they're talking about.