I grew up in rural Nebraska, where most of the country roads are fairly well maintained. Despite this, there are cars on the market that are horribly suited to driving on many of these roads, especially during the rainy season when deep ruts form, and thereafter when the ruts harden.<p>Far away from this setting, in the more urban environments, there is a phenomenon where consumers take vehicles - even those that might otherwise be suitable for these roads - and they modify them to make them exceedingly unfit by lowering the suspension. It has been going on for so long that the song "Low Rider" by the band War is used as a cliched reference to the 70s.<p>I know of someone, in the 2000s, who had a terrible time finding an apartment because his Jetta, modified at great expense, couldn't survive an apartment with speed-bumps in the parking lot. Not long afterward, he totaled his car - going over a speed bump he did not see.<p>At the other end of the suspension-spectrum we have millions of SUVs on the road, many of them capable of taking all manner of abuse, only to be driven exclusively on concrete to tame destinations like grocery stores and shopping malls. These vehicles are a suburban male peacock display: the suspension serves no function other than to signal virility.<p>I'm not trying to extend the analogy by mentioning any of this. But I do think that if we're looking to the automobile industry for guidance we should probably take note of the diversity and realize that there's probably room in the mobile computer space for devices without Flash.
If the iCar is truly revolutionary (for instance, it can guarantee you will NEVER get into a fatal car accident) then I'd say the "full road" is a small sacrifice.<p>People who want the full road can still buy traditional cars, right?<p>Vote with your dollar.
I know the author's intent is to weaken Jobs' arguments, but to me he seems to strengthen them. The vast majority of people driving cars never need to drive on country roads. Anyone that needs to drive on country roads is by no means forced to drive an iCar - they are free to choose whatever car they want.
I like the parody but it's not really a fair comparison. In many cases paved roads evolve out of country roads while nothing can ever evolve out of Flash.
Very interesting, but I think most of the comments are missing the point that this isn't about the technology.<p>It is about telling the user where they can and cannot go.<p>We wouldn't accept that in a car for any reason.<p>Wanna go to Yosemite, great! But that parking lot isn't paved, so you can't stop there.
You can drive by and see the rest of it from the highway though!<p>Oh, that highway is nice and paved, but it leads to google and some fancy voice technology they built. I'm sure as a driver you'd like to see it, but you'll just have to stick to our roads and roads that don't compete with us on any level.
This parody did more to convince me of Jobs' point of view than anything I've read so far. If my car were as impressive an improvement over the status quo car as the iPhone is over the phone, I'd gladly give up the ability to drive on rural roads.
I find the other extreme of this satire -- the idea that every car would have to be as fully capable as a military grade Hummer, to be far more off putting. The market will decide what it wants. Hopefully that includes a wide variety of options.
I'm sorry. But Flash has a fallback (HTML5 for the web and iPhone Apps if wanna go native), country roads has not.<p>Also, real infrastrucures are a bit distant than web-infrasctructures. I mean, Google could possibly switch it's search engine from XYZ platform to ABC platform in a matter of months (made up numbers), try to switch road infrastructures of a country.
People made the same arguments when Jobs killed the floppy. And serial ports.<p>And OS 9.<p>And built-in modems.<p>Surprisingly, nobody misses them.<p>Yawn. More histrionic nerd-posturing. It will be forgotten soon enough.
I thought Hacker News readers were educated and intelligent but there are so many iTards it's not funny anymore. The Apple Cult ... is depressing. You are little ants who forgot what freedom means. Wake up guys ! Sorry to be harsh but I'm starting to be really angry I'm gonna stop reading anything about Apple/Adobe.