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This is the community forum for my apps Pythonista and Editorial.
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A sense of entitlement
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I do not know when and how it started. Probably when the internet evolved into a commodity. Up to that point, updates came on floppy disks then on CDs whenever a vendor decided. Decent applications, including compilers, cost hundreds of dollars and users had to pay for new versions. Pryor to this, updating was a foreign concept. You had to manage what you had to get the results you needed. Sometimes, that meant "poking" machine instructions strait into the bare metal and read memory dumps just like you do with modern high level source codes. Always on internet standards provided vendors and hackers alike a free ride into your machines. Companies now had the perfect excuse to remotely take over your hardware under the pretense of protecting you with their "critical" updates. Users soon turned into digital junkies begging to get faster and faster updates. With the advent of mobile devices early developers fixed the price of quality programs at under ten dollars. This is probably due to the false perception that mobile devices are not computers and users will not be willing to pay much more for an app. This user bonanza happened to the dismay of big IT companies facing the existential threat of losing their cash cows in the ever popular mobile echo systems. It did not take long for them to recover by introducing SAS into the mobile world. They got their addicts back and strengthen their position with another costly digital indulgence eerily baptized as "the clouds". This whole scheme had to be supported by a constant stream of often unnecessary updates and upgrades to give the paying customers the impression that they are getting value for their money. The culture of entitlement was born and users started to expect regular updates for whatever programs they are using regardless of needs. However, this expectation is unwarranted in the case of free or low cost software. Pythonista is one of them. It cost less than a fast food order. However, as it stands, it is fairly stable, strong, versatile, reasonably complete and extremely useful. If you need more, it is your duty as a programmer to use "objc" or your imaginative skills to get the results you want. Furthermore, upgrades are not always possible, practical or even desirable (I still miss skeuomorphism). The early pentium processors had an inherent bug in their FPUs. Although Intel recalled the affected chips, if you had one in your machine, you either had to bypass the problem or stop working. Incidentally, it has just transpired that there is a new "unpatchable" iPhone exploit on hundreds of millions of devices.
I am waiting for your big class action lawsuit for Apple to update your expensive devices or refund your money.
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@Ti-Leyon I really like your post.
I'm almost 70 years old.I began as an engineer in electronics, building his own integrated circuits from slices of silicium cylinder in a lab at the university. Then, been working 40 years at IBM, big(gest) IT company, thus I understand your prose.Edit: what a souvenir 😀 " poking machine instructions strait into the bare metal and read memory dumps"
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Kudos to you @cvp for what sounds like a rewarding career. May these memories live with us for ever. I relive them from time to time through a collection emulators and virtual machines. I run the emulators in my mobile devices and it is unfortunate that Apple restrict their use on IOS. I was pleasantly surprise to find a port of an Apple II emulator in this forum. It was written by @JonB and I was able to poke a few 6502 opcodes. I am still amaze at all that was accomplished using the 56 instructions set of that chip.
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As mentioned above, SAAS and the cloud have become a major source of income for big IT. According to Gartner Inc, “Software as a service (SaaS) remains the largest segment of the cloud market, with revenue expected to grow 17.8 percent to reach $85.1 billion in 2019.”
Ref.: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-09-12-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-revenue-to-grow-17-percent-in-2019