Slashdot Mirror

You should think about the big(ger) picture. Copyright is supposed to be temporary. What is going to happen when that DRM'ed software ends up in the public domain? Are we supposed to rely on people (illegally now!) breaking DRM schemes to preserve our culture?
http://www.technologizer.com/2...
(And what is the online store's plan to preserve the different software versions?)

Also, each new DRM scheme and monopolistic store brings us closer to the end of general-purpose computing :
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...

That's a good write-up, but I immediately notice you left out a LOT of intermediate phone company names...

You can't talk about the history of AT&T Mobility without mentioning SBC and Cingular. Or discuss the history of Verizon and Sprint without mentioning they were strangely BOTH formed from GTE.

I found a much more complete history of all the crazy splits and (mostly-) mergers here:

http://www.technologizer.com/2...

Time to update the charts again.

And FFS, this is the DEVELOPER conference. New product announcements here are few and far between. Here's an overview of the last ten years of WWDC. If you can read that list and still be surprised or disappointed at what was or wasn't announced today, you're an idiot.

Awesome page, thanks for the link!

> Last week, Apple execs were promising big announcements, the biggest since the Jobs era.

Citation needed. What *I* heard the execs saying was that they're going to have great products this year. They have 7 months left.

And FFS, this is the DEVELOPER conference. New product announcements here are few and far between. Here's an overview of the last ten years of WWDC. If you can read that list and still be surprised or disappointed at what was or wasn't announced today, you're an idiot.

Here be your ponies.

It would look something like this.

Game sales are down for consoles maybe. With a bit of googling, you might find silly things like NVidia's 23% revenue growth attributed to PC gaming alone. And of course that Steam has 100% sales growth in 2012 over 2011. Oh and Diablo III selling like hotcakes. But hey, this profit growth is all because DRM is making people NOT buy games right?

It has, you just have to be willing to see it: http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-creative-2010-10?slop=1 http://technologizer.com/2011/12/05/how-the-ipad-2-became-my-favorite-computer/

Apple does believe macs are PCs.

http://technologizer.com/2010/12/16/apples-mac-store-is-a-go-and-the-mac-is-a-pc/

But Macs are PCs.

Jobs said so..

http://technologizer.com/2010/12/16/apples-mac-store-is-a-go-and-the-mac-is-a-pc/

If Microsoft is releasing their Superphone in 4Q12, will they announce its end-of-life the quarter before or the quarter after? Remember the Kin's April announcement and June retirement?

April and June are in the same quarter.

If Microsoft is releasing their Superphone in 4Q12, will they announce its end-of-life the quarter before or the quarter after? Remember the Kin's April announcement and June retirement?

Tablets are more oriented towards media consumption -- games, video, that sort of thing.

Wow, someone still labors under that misconception? Who thawed you out of cyro-sleep?

First of all, tablets never had the problems you mentioned. Even back in the distant days of Windows tablets artists liked them. Now with the iPad that is still true, but it's useful for so much more content creation beyond art - movies, music, and even REAL writers find they like to use the iPad for serious writing.

Who billed it as a computer replacement for all tasks?

I don't think anyone has claimed that it is a "computer replacement for all tasks". But ever since the iPad came out people like this guy have been hailing it as a replacement for a complete computer.

You didn't read the comments, which would have been the obvious and polite thing to do before accusing me of trolling. *shrug*

None of the errors pointed out by xaxa actually exist. You got trolled.

They did when I posted, they have been corrected.

The author has posted in the comments admitting this.

Thanks for assuming I'm trolling, but I have better things to do with my time.

Here is a good article about Edwin Land the development of the Polaroid SX-70:

http://technologizer.com/2011/06/08/polaroid/

Yes, keep waiting for the next one, that might ship, that might be that cheap, that might not have some skin that doesn't work well, etc, etc, etc.

Here's a few other tablets that "could have been" then next 'real' tablet, but weren't.

http://technologizer.com/2011/09/30/ipad-alternatives-3/

Just a few months ago, Technologizer wrote a great article about this very item and the work behind it: Polaroid's SX-70: The Art and Science of the Nearly Impossible

In 1972, instant photography was no longer a novelty: the world had been introduced to it in 1947 when Polaroid co-founder Edwin H. Land unveiled the Model 95, the company's first camera...

The existence of previous instant cameras only helped emphasize what a great leap forward the SX-70 was. Unlike any previous Polaroid, it was a single-lens reflex (SLR) model with a viewfinder that showed exactly what you'd get. Unlike any previous Polaroid, it folded up into a 1"-thick leather-encased brick that was (just barely) pocketable. Unlike any previous Polaroid, it built the battery into the film pack. Even the flash--in the form of a Polaroid invention called a flashbar that packed ten bulbs into a double-sided array--was custom-designed for the SX-70.

Most important, unlike any other Polaroid, the SX-70 asked the photographer to do nothing more than focus, press the shutter, and pluck the snapshot as it emerged from the camera--and then watch it develop in daylight. It was the first camera to realize what Edwin Land said had been his dream all along: "absolute one-step photography."

Apple and Android are still both growing in share, it's Symbian and RIM that have been losing. I'd say up until a week ago that Android might have had a sustainable model for share dominance, but then Google went and bought Motorola, and now the whole future of the thing is in question, if Google doesn't handle their relationship with their partners very carefully.

The real question is to define best days.

I think the real question is: "who's paying for the continual stream of anti Google stories in the tech media; why are they so desperate; and do they really think we are that stupid"

We have no idea whether Google's best days are behind it, but Google's main failure has been in social networking where it has finally released a product which, even though it is terribly incomplete, limited and difficult to get into, is considered by most people who've used it as much better than Facebook. The article is so desperate to discredit Google that it links to what seems to be an MS stooge review rather than actual information about sales.

>Apparently there was some sort of major bug with 1.0, or memory leak, or something.

There was an article linked to on Slashdot a while back that explained this. Here is the link:
http://technologizer.com/2010/03/08/the-secret-origin-of-windows/

Windows 1.00 was not quite ready to release to the public but they had some obligation to release, so they branded 1.00 as Windows "Premier Edition" and gave that to certain people. Windows 1.01 was apparently the first version to actually hit the store shelves.

...wtf is up with this dude's chin? http://technologizer.com/2011/04/08/apple-i/13/

Except that it's not and no one was apparently allowed to turn them on since they aren't fully functional (meaning the tablets they claimed were thinner were non-functional)

http://technologizer.com/2011/03/25/is-samsungs-new-galaxy-tab-fibbing-about-its-figure-and-about-those-galaxy-tab-fans/

The battery is closer to half of Apple's 10 hours (if you turn the brightness down).

http://portables.about.com/od/ipadslatetablets/fr/Review-Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-Android-Powered-Tablet.htm

Keep a history of all the bullshitty things a company has done to users.

If it helps, on the same site as the article:

"Microsoft Bob, the Program That Didn't Change the World"

Your company allowed me to play my first ever video game, Lunar Lander on the GT40 graphics terminal

http://technologizer.com/2010/07/23/amiga/

It was ahead of pretty much everything at its début. But they managed to cock it up something fierce - it was amazing to see a decade of PC technology leadership go "poof" with bad management at the helm.

Don't survey a subset of the users and then generalize that to all users. It's inherently unfair.

It's not a survey at all - but just another meaningless on-line poll:

We aren't trying to capture a demographically representative sample of all iPad owners and we didn't normalize the results. The opinions you're about to read reflect only the experiences of the folks who took our survey-readers of Technologizer and other sites (such as Daring Fireball) that linked to it. The State of iPad Satisfaction

"Segmented Keyboard for Portable Computer System" here

This one was. I had one for a few years. If you don't want to carry around a laptop, but want to have a full keyboard, the sj-series keyboards were great.

http://technologizer.com/2010/04/29/palm-patents/3/ looks like a Handspring Visor module.
http://technologizer.com/2010/04/29/palm-patents/9/ looks like a ouija board.

the former is more interesting... I wonder how much of the tech unique to the Visor (i.e. the expansion system) was actually developed at Palm. Surely it was imagined there, but that's not the same thing

http://technologizer.com/2010/04/29/palm-patents/3/ looks like a Handspring Visor module.
http://technologizer.com/2010/04/29/palm-patents/9/ looks like a ouija board.

the former is more interesting... I wonder how much of the tech unique to the Visor (i.e. the expansion system) was actually developed at Palm. Surely it was imagined there, but that's not the same thing

You know the thread the other day about Apple not suing Palm? How about this patent:

http://technologizer.com/2010/04/29/palm-patents/5/

Sounds a lot like the new iPhone to me...

I get hundreds of emails a day offering to upgrade my Wang

http://technologizer.com/2010/02/10/silicon-valleys-island-of-misfit-tech/13/

The recent quote by Brandon Watson is so ironic, yet so true: It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple

News Flash bro.

You may not like/need Flash, but a lot of people like it, maybe most.

Why don't you check out the current Ars Technica poll on how many people would like to have Flash on the iPad:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/poll-technica-do-you-want-flash-on-the-ipad.ars

And yes, Flash is a gaming platform unparalleled on the browser. You may not like Flash games, but a lot of people do. Flash has also ushered back the golden age of game development in the 80s where you could have just 1-3 people teams pumping out fun games, unlike in the late 90's to early 2000s before the explosion of casual gaming where to push out a game in the industry meant spending millions of dollars with tens to hundreds of developers per project, and it was all 3D, 3D, 3D and idea rehashes.

The ease with which authors can ties together together animation, illustration, design, sound & interaction on Flash is has no equal. Not everyone is a developer and that's why HTML5 will not kill Flash.

Coding slick GUIs and programmatic animation ain't an easy task and designers/animators/multimedia artists without programming backgrounds can't pull those off easily. Flash changed that.

H.264 video is also here now with YouTube, but Mozilla Foundation ain't willing to pony up for the proprietary codec so don't expect to see an H.264 bundled video player on Firefox soon. These HTML5 in-browser media players ain't as easy to reskin and meld with other interactive elements as Flash though so you can go stay in your bland Jakob Nielsen-esque world for all everyone else cares.

Btw, re: Flash's sub-par performance on the Mac, it's not all Adobe's fault. See this post from Lee Brimelow of Adobe (scroll down to comment #62):

http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703
"Apple is not cooperating in our attempts to improve the performance of the Flash Player on the Mac. Microsoft is, and in FP 10.1 we cut the CPU utilization in half for watching video. Same with other mobile device manufactures. We would love to work with Apple to do the same but they are making a strategic decision not too so that they can increase their revenue. Hey thats business. Another thing to note is that the site you showed is filled with Flash and just because it takes up a lot of CPU doesnt mean that kids will not want to play with it. Give people the option is what Im saying."

It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple.

Looking at his pic I think he looks like he's put something over on us. Perhaps all of the recent articles on here, eh?

You mean this?
47. Hey, they’re only AOL users. AOL releases twenty million search keywords entered by 650,000 search-engine users, supposedly for the benefit of researchers. The searches have been anonymized, but The New York Times and others discover it’s possible to identify who performed some of them. AOL declares the release a “screw-up” and multiple heads roll, including that of its CTO.

The only one moderately funny of those were the last. http://technologizer.com/2009/08/18/press-releases/8/

and no, I'm not new here.

Well obviously. "Anonymous Coward" has been here since the very beginning and has an even lower UID than CmdrTaco ;)

I'll save everybody the trouble and just link to the only one that's remotely interesting. The AOL-Time Warner merger. How'd that work out again? I stopped getting three AOL CDs/disks a week so they must have done something right ;)

See also the combimouse:
http://www.combimouse.com/
vs
http://technologizer.com/2009/08/05/mouse-patents/5/

Is it just me, or does the mouse on page 4 bear a striking resemblance to Logitech's current line-up of ergonomic mice?

I particularly enjoyed the "child-friendly" mouse shaped like the head of Tweety Bird, where you click by jabbing his(?) eyes.

Does anybody know WTF "Now is the time fob" is supposed to mean on this one?

Too many pages, not so great content. Although some designs, apparently authored by an emulator of Rube Goldberg, are hilarious.

"Well if you consider not having cut and paste, MMS functionality, voice memos and internet tethering out of the original box fine then you're still fucking stupid for buying a substandard phone."

Fucking stupid, or couldn't care less about any of those features? Hmm. What does Professor Occam say?

OTOH, the appearance out of nowhere of the app store and dozens of other new tweaks and features that weren't promised when I bought the phone is exactly how a cellphone vendor gets on my good side.

The iPhone did exactly what I wanted it to do when I bought it, and it does much more now, with a total additional cost so far of $0.00. The definition of "fucking stupid" is someone who doesn't see the value proposition in that. Take care of your users, and you deserve to make money.

I can count how many times I've rooted for Real on a one-bit integer. Yesterday, I didn't even need that.

What does this even mean? I guess it means you aren't rooting for Real.

Well, you damn fucking well should.

RealNetworks are the good guys here. They are trying to make DVDs more convenient and useful, and they fucking bent over backwards trying to make this thing be totally obviously not a piracy tool. If RealDVD cannot win this court case, that means no-one will be able to do anything, no matter how fair use it is, without the permission of the big movie studios and organisations like MPAA.

Why does RealDVD encrypt the saved DVD images? So it won't be a useful piracy tool. And because Kaleidescape encrypt their saved DVD images, and that may have helped them to win their case.

I've actually had a chance to see RealDVD and it's a good program. It's actually kind of Apple-like, in that it does one thing well and does it pretty. I'd buy it for my Grandmother to use.

So, I'm rooting for RealNetworks on this one and you should too.

This was a really good article.

It comes along at the same time as this one:

http://technologizer.com/2009/03/26/whatever-happened-to/

This article is an amazing summary of 25 pieces of technology (HW, SW, services) that are still around but are (almost) completely forgotten by everyone. Good read.

This is the year of the Windows desktop!

Sweet!

Unfortunately, laptops are now outselling desktops.

When will be the year of Windows on the laptop?

Storing data on the _web_ to copy it _locally_ is akin to emptying one's trash by first moving files to a web server and then deleting it there.

http://technologizer.com/2008/12/12/pastebud-it-seemed-like-a-good-idea/#comment-6130