It's enjoyable to think everyone spoke like that at the time, but I suspect their spoken language was more pedestrian (though it would be quite odd to our ears).
These days it's written language that is pedestrian (especially with WFH because COVID, I write more than I speak these days, except to my cat, who can't read) - it is, as you say, spewing out words, though usually onto a screen. There is vanishingly small cost to each character typed, and erasing/editing is free, and we're all in a terrible hurry to get on to the next thing.
Back then, there were no keyboards, the physical act of writing took time, and the materials had cost. There was more need to think about the words before writing them down. If you were halfway down the page of a neatly worded letter, you'd consider your next words more carefully before writing them down, because changing your mind after scribbling something down was messy and time-consuming - try to erase the ink, or scratch something out, or recopy it all onto a new sheet.
These days, though, I find myself spewing nearly stream of consciousness, then tweaking for a bit before sending, even on a short missive. I keep going back, for instance, to an English teacher who drilled into me to reconsider every it/they/he/she to see if it read better (more clearly) that way, or with repeating the name. Lots of little editing bits like that.
Of course, by that standard, someone with an iPad with a keyboard attached (the ones that are part of a case/cover) could just as easily consider their keyboard "permanent".
Okay but how many people run iPads with keyboard attachments yet don't have a desktop or laptop that would be better for the purpose anyways? I'd wager few.
If that market were larger it would be catered to.
Sounds like a chicken and egg problem. No one does it because the software they need doesn’t exist. The software they need doesn’t exist because no one uses the iPad that way.
Counter-counterpoint would be, Apple becomes a customer of the API, and then someone else (Google, Facebook, whoever) buys Dark Sky and Apple has to scramble.
I'm bitter too, I build my own local/remote weather station at home (several Raspberry Pi's, an Arduino with a custom shield, and 15k lines of Python), which uses Dark Sky's API as one of its data sources. This means I have a year or so to find a new data source and rewrite a bunch of code (and no source is going to give me exactly the same data from the same sensors, so my 3-4 years of historical data is going to have a definite before/after cutoff in it).
> Apple has a monopoly on the channel to deliver iOS apps.
That's only a monopoly in the same sense that McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs. It's within their own ecosystem. Customers can decide whether they want to buy into that ecosystem or choose an alternative (like Burger King, or Android).
Buying a burger is an independent transaction. Buying a Big Mac one day doesn't make you less likely to buy a Whopper the next.
Buying a phone is an investment that locks you into that ecosystem for ~2 years (until you buy a new one), and once that time comes, both ecosystems encourage you to stick with your existing choice via purchase transfers, exclusives, and (more) seamless data transfers.
Your comparison would only make sense in a world where McD and BK competed by lacing their burgers with different drugs to get you chemically addicted.
Fuck Apple, fuck Google, and fuck Tim Cook in particular. This is fucking depressing, and almost makes COVID seem appealing. At least it would take your mind off this bullshit for a while.
We're not talking about a monopoly on selling particular phones as physical products. We're talking about apps, which often, but not always are much more 'burger-like'.
I think the best analogy would be video games on console platforms, does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games? Well, kind of if you squint really hard, not that it seems to stand in the way of a vibrant and competitive console industry and that's the key issue. If there's a competitive market that is serving customer needs, and no deceptive practices so customers have a clear choice then it's hard to argue there's a market dysfunction such as a monopoly.
> does Sony have a 'monopoly' on PlayStation games?
Yes? The whole console industry is equally awful, and does the same bullshit. That said, there used to be a few mitigating factors for consoles, but they have never been relevant for phones:
1. Generational incompatibility: Since console generations generally weren't backwards-compatible, every new generation would more or less reset the playing field.
2. You could have multiple consoles connected to your TV. You probably won't bring multiple phones with you every day.
Utilities within a city are monopoly providers of electricity, water, and sewer services.
"That's only a monopoly in the same sense that McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs. It's within their own ecosystem. Customers can decide whether they want to buy into that ecosystem or choose an alternative" (like living in the next town over, or solar power, water delivery, and portable toilets).
The fact that alternatives exist (live somewhere else! live disconnected!) does not negate the fact that the utility is a monopoly provider of those services.
The primary difference between utility monopolies and the iOS monopoly is that utilities are a "natural" monopoly (there are significant infrastructure costs to enter the market of providing running water to homes in a city) whereas the iOS monopoly is government-granted via copyrights and contracts and digital locks that exclude competitors, and those locks are again protected by DMCA copyright law.
There is no natural reason there cannot be a competing app store on iOS, except that Apple wants to preserve its monopoly.
Would you let a home builder dictate what food delivery options you have? Why let a phone builder dictate what software delivery options you have?
Oh we used to dream of having electrons! We used to have rotten fish dumped on us every morning and we'd use the presence of a head to indicate a true bit. Where do you think "running headless" comes from?
I did my Fortran in high school on punched cards, because the small timesharing system we had (a Cromemco Z80-based S-100 bus machine with a handful of terminals) had a habit of crashing and eating files - but it couldn't eat cards. We had a couple of surplus IBM 029 card punches, and they were a blast to use - they had nice crisp keyboards, and when you pressed a key the machine punched the corresponding holes with what felt like a major league bat hitting a major league fastball pitch - it was a really hard thwhack. Very satisfying.
I remember being astonished when my dad told me how they handled punch card accuracy at his office: engineers would write out their programs on (special) paper forms (i.e. a box for each character on each line), and hand the forms off to the computer department, where they'd have two different keypunch operators key in the program. Then they'd feed the two stacks of cards into a special punched-card-comparator machine, which would tell whether the decks matched. If so, it was considered successfully transcribed (and one of the decks could be thrown away).
I also remember reading a story long ago about decks of cards containing scientific programs being sent by rail between cities in two different countries in Europe (IIRC), and they kept having problems with the programs not working. Finally, they sent a courier along with the box of cards at one point. And, as the train crossed the border, the customs inspector boarded the train and checked passports and such, and inspected goods that were being transported, and, as is customary, took a sample from many of the transported goods (as one might take a bit of grain, say)... and, yeah, they took a couple random cards out of the box. Problem identified, if not immediately solved.
These days it's written language that is pedestrian (especially with WFH because COVID, I write more than I speak these days, except to my cat, who can't read) - it is, as you say, spewing out words, though usually onto a screen. There is vanishingly small cost to each character typed, and erasing/editing is free, and we're all in a terrible hurry to get on to the next thing.
Back then, there were no keyboards, the physical act of writing took time, and the materials had cost. There was more need to think about the words before writing them down. If you were halfway down the page of a neatly worded letter, you'd consider your next words more carefully before writing them down, because changing your mind after scribbling something down was messy and time-consuming - try to erase the ink, or scratch something out, or recopy it all onto a new sheet.
These days, though, I find myself spewing nearly stream of consciousness, then tweaking for a bit before sending, even on a short missive. I keep going back, for instance, to an English teacher who drilled into me to reconsider every it/they/he/she to see if it read better (more clearly) that way, or with repeating the name. Lots of little editing bits like that.
But I do love the sound of a well-turned phrase.