Domain: tomsguide.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to tomsguide.com.
Comments · 150
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Re:Limited Screen Time by App Type for Kids
At least on iOS, this is not possible due to limitations imposed by Apple.
You're mistaken. There's plenty of iOS apps doing exactly that. e.g.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pi... -
Do no evil, right?
Here is my problem: Google has a long history of cooperating with NSA.
Don't believe me? Fine: read these links instead... Yahoo News article about cooperation between Google and NSA, Guardian article, Tom's Guide article.
Even if Google does not/did not/will not cooperate with NSA, Eric Schmidt himself has been cooperating with the US Government, which cast serious doubts about his desire to protect the private information of Google clients.
Again, don't believe me? Fine, read this instead: Julian Assange on Eric Schmidt. Or (even better) this transcript.
Even if Eric Schmidt does not cooperate with the US Government, he has said himself, repeatedly, that privacy is dead and that it's something for hackers.
Don't believe me? Fine, read this instead: EFF article, Gawker article.
In other words, a company that cooperated with the NSA, led by a man who does not care about your privacy (but cares very much about his) is telling you that there is nothing to see here, sure we are protecting your privacy, please buy our products, we are safe and professionals and there is nothing to be afraid of.
Seriously? How come this gasbag is a freaking CEO, paid millions of dollars a year?
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Re:Fire all the officers?
Considering your comments, would you too side with the cops who run people over in their cars while texting on their personal cell phones and then blame the victim for throwing themselves in front of their cars, all the while perjuring themselves as has also happened recently?
It's getting a bit off topic but examples of the above have actually happened.
Well, okay, not the blaming the victim bit, but "immediately before the incident, the Albemarle officer, Gregory C. Davis, was involved in "excessive texting." Furthermore, according to the document, Officer Davis may, under oath, have intentionally downplayed his texting."
Then there is this story. The officer in question was criminally charged this time, but still got away with a mere 30 months probation (and two years suspended from the job, with pay). The two girls he slammed into, on the other hand, got to remain dead. Anyone else who had committed the same crime would have lost their job (with no pay) and ended up in jail for a long time.
And this
Compared to the above, the fact that police illegally delete video from a phone without any repercussions is in no way surprising.
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Re:"Net neutrality"
There it is. It has been known since Obama and the FCC first started talking about this. You see "Net Neutrality" to the rest of us means, leave it alone because it's been just fine for years. But Mr. Obama and the FCC came up with their own plan to make it a utility under the control of the FCC and they called their plan "Net Neutrality". The SAME name.
This is an attempt of government to seize control of communications, and that is usually what happens just before war.
I will not tolerate or accept or aknowledge any FCC authority whatsoever. and I will encrypt EVERYTHING.
Web sites can and should implement a client side encryption for even posting blogs, so it can't be captured and used by the FCC or anybody else.
It's long over due for everybody to establish a MESH network, outside the control of government or corporations. And the mesh network needs to be without any need of DNS, as that too is a security threat.
Get active in these efforts.
:DIME (Formerly Darkmail) http://www.tomsguide.com/us/di... :SQRL (Pronounced Squirrel). https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.... :MESH Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... :Eliminate DNS Sorry, I don't have any good links on this one. :VIDEO - Mr. President https://www.youtube.com/watch?...Work hard, or sacrifice your freedom. This is the world your children will end up living in.
Title II Common Carrier classification will do none of the things you claim it will do. That said, I agree that everything should be encrypted with strong encryption. However, those are two separate issues. Please educate yourself. Or not. But if you don't, you're just making yourself look ignorant.
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Re:Undespecced in every way even at $800
Other than display, why is it benchmarking better than the Samsung Galaxy S5?
Half the cores, half the ram, and
... no appreciable gain in performance.Never mind last year's 300 dollar phones.
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Re:Nope
[...] software like the interlock concept doesn't exist on a phone.
What? I've seen a couple of products that do just that, but how well implemented is up for debate. Here's a two-year-old Tom's review of Scosche's interlock. I'm curious how the emailed alert that the interlock was disabled is supposed to work...
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Re: Samsung: so sue us
Some are FRAND and some are not.. A number of M$ patents have expired, ergo Samsung's position is much stronger now. Additionally, M$ transferred a large number of patents to a 3rd party, so they don't have nearly as much to offer in a cross license agreement.
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3D printing has too many problems
Many of those problems will not be resolved. The most important one, and one that will always be worse in the case of 3D printing compared to traditional mass manufacturing methods, is the extreme energy inefficiency. For example, when printing with plastic, a 3D printer uses 50-100 times more electricity than an injection molding machine making the same part, not to mention that it wastes a lot of material left in the print bed that's not recyclable as feed for the printer because its properties have been corrupted. Home and office use should also be discouraged because of the emittance of ultrafine particles. Want your place of living/work's air even more polluted? Source for these: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/3d...
There are other problems as well, including cultural ones. From the article:
3D printing might someday encourage a new kind of pollution: rapid garbage generation. Engineers being trained to respect their raw materials are taught "Think twice, cut once." When people get ahold of easy production tools, however, it’s easy to not heed that wise old adage.
Like we don't have enough of a throw-away culture as it is.
3D printing should only be used to manufacture objects which cannot be made by other methods. -
Abuse paid for by Microsoft?
Microsoft has been, in my opinion, extremely abusive. See my article, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest. Part of the story: Steve Ballmer was fired after being called the "worst CEO". Firing a CEO with no technical knowledge did not fix the problems. Microsoft has been collapsing.
The comments on this Tom's Guide article are interesting: TrueCrypt Encryption Software Shut Down, May Be Compromised. -
Re:Congestion by choice
Like I said, "If you build it, they will come" Granted, it may be niche market in North America right now, mainly due to to price, but the big box stores around here are all selling 4K TVs. They wouldn't do that if there was no demand.
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Re:Send it back....
For all you know it's a placebo button ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... ) and they might still collect everything anyway (you many have to look at data sent). I remember news stories about someone who analyzed the network data and found data still being sent (that was an LG though, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/lg...).
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Microsoft has several new programs coming up
I think the idea is they will be exclusive to the xbox marketplace/video service thing they have. One of the programs is the documentary on unearthing the Atari E.T. cartridges.
"The first round of Xbox Originals will contain a healthy variety of shows, from the futuristic teen drama about robots "Humans," to the steampunk Western "Deadlands" (based on the tabletop role-playing game of the same name), to the street soccer documentary "Every Street United." Other programs included "Winterworld," "Gun Machine," "Extraordinary Believers" and "Food Show."
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Re:Dumb move...
this is the best possible move for the platform. customers win when they can play great games that they feel are a reasonable price. OUYA is giving devs freedom to experiment with different ways to pay. the best games and ways to pay will float to the top. As somebody who invested a couple hundred $$ into onlive, I'm a big fan of online gaming.
Maybe, but OUYA still received $8 million in funding with the promise that "ALL GAMES FREE TO PLAY". The fact that they're going back on their promise now makes every kickstarter campaign look bad.
Whether the games are free or not is the not the reason OUYA is failing, the reasons are obvious: it doesn't play regular android games (game must be OUYA compatiable), poor controller, it's slower than modern smartphones and tablets, and when you can just plug your tablet or smartphone into your TV why buy a OUYA at all? -
Re:Really missed the point
It seems to me they're trying to move away from having gMail as the central account to Google+ being the central account. The problem is that people don't want that because Google+ is another social service (that you don't need to use, but that's what it is.) What they probably should have done is to have a simple Googler Account service that does nothing but contain your basic information and some gommon settings. Gmail, Google+, YouTube, etc are all just service that are associated with a specific Google Account
Exactly! I have a serious dislike for social networking. I avoid Facebook and similar things at all costs. If I needed to make a "Google account" which I then explicitly attached features to I (and many others) wouldn't be so upset. The problem with this is that it's not at all what Google wants. Google sees Facebook as a threat and is trying to be them.
So I doubt they would take this approach, despite how good it is. Alienating their customers who despite social networking along the way.
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Re:It's about control of information
They know, if "they" are LG and your TV is connected to the Internet.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/lg-smarttv-snooping-update,news-17902.html
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Re:Oh, I totally agree...
There are only two ways to avoid having orientation. You can have pins on both sides of the connector in a mirrored formation, or you can have a multiplexer in the device.
Actually, there's also a third way, commonly used in audio cables: Make the plug and all contacts rotationally symmetric. That strategy might not work well for the type of signal USB carries (I have no idea if it does), but in terms of being rotationally symmetric, it can't be beaten. You can even rotate the plug while plugging it in.
Ironically, Paceblade (anybody remember them?) has actually already tried this, and failed to gain any traction in the marketplace.
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Re:And Apple
Holy how, your trying to claim that Apple has a "level of integrity" and want them to "remain honest" in selling the iPhone? Are you on crack, willfully ignorant, a simple idiotic fanboy, or a paid shill?
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-iphone-3g,news-2422.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-iphone-4-retina-display-claims-are-false-marketing-2010-6
http://forum.sdx-developers.com/index.php?topic=19901.0;wap
http://gawker.com/5042380/misleading-iphone-ad-banned-in-the-uk
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Re:My give-a-darn meter is reading negative GADs
Apple started the smartphone wars patent lawsuits, and accordingly they deserve to be the most patent trolled company. Samsung does not. Between phones, display, and wireless tech, Samsung has been involved in patent lawsuits with Apple, LG, Ericsson, Kodak, AMD, Sharp, LG, Microsoft. But in none of those cases did Samsung start the suits; they have only been counter-suing.
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It beter have a way of telling me that it's on
It better have a way of telling me that it's on. A flashing light, a noise when it's taking a picture also not to mention the laws about recording sound. I know when I put a servalance camera in my front yard I was told by police that in my state I can not record sound without the permission of the people who would be videoed. Also we need to think of the kids. How can we be sure our kids are safe from acvdental looks in windows and such if they can do play back. I can just see the conversation "Oh I'm sorry your kid was in their bedroom changing when I walked by and was already videoing and acdentally caught them underssed. I only saw what I recorded in the play back once and then deleted it. yea yea I'll deleted it." or "Oh I forgot it was recording when I walked into the wrong dressing room. I'll deleted it, yea, yea I'll deleted it."
Also what about other places like museums where you can't take photos of the paintings and such, I guess they will be banned from use, but if they have perscription lenses I guess a refund to the patron will be given.
Anyways
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Camera-phones-noise-photo-Congress,news-3371.html -
Re:They told me
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Re:wtf
You might prefer more freedom. I'm not sure exactly how that will benefit you, but that's not for me to say. It's simply good enough that you (and others) have different preferences. Fair enough. Fortunately, Android is available and does exactly what you want.
So what's to complain about? Is anyone forcing you to use Apple's App Store? I've never heard of that happening.
maybe i like everything else about apple. i suppose its difficult for the koolaid-drinkers like yourself that will swallow whatever apple gives you to understand that normal people may have a criticism or two about the platform which doesnt necessarily mean we are going to use something else, i am sure you believe the privilege of them allowing you to use their platform is enough to suppress any thoughts of imperfection or will to have an opinion other than that fed to you by apple. your mentality is that of a pathetic sheep.
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Re:just google it
There are wireless proximity alarms (designed for keychains or children) that work with your smart fone, setting off an alarm on your phone when the distance goes beyond about 10 meters:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/keyfinder-wireless-clicker-keys,review-1689.html
Also look for Loc8tor plus: the range is supposed to be 100 meters.
Battery life is an issue...
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Why do you need a stylus?
When you can just use a sausage.
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Re:The actual reason
The fanboy's all bought Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices laughing at the Beta Test campaign. Imagine being a Windows nerd, having done that, and found out that your phone is obsolete in less than the period of a standard phone contract (24mths most places; 3 years in some) how your Apple fanboy friends will laugh at you if you turn up with a Windows 8 device.
"Are you hoping for a free upgrade to 3.11"?
"If the Windows 7 was the Gamma test, Windows 7.5 was the delta test, Windows 8 is the epsilon test, do you think they'll get it fixed before they run out of Greek letters?"
"Windows Phone; straight from Alpha to bargain bin without going through 'test'".
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Re:it became a problem
In that case I think that they should be more worried about the religious sites.
Excellent. So I can use the phrase, "Religion is like a virus...." in everyday conversation?
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Re:it became a problem
In that case I think that they should be more worried about the religious sites.
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Isn't the FBI in FAVOUR of data breaches?Why yes.
Yes, yes they do.
It was just last month I was reading about it. Again.
Or is it that they only want this access for themselves and you're a tairist if you don't think the FBI should have all access to all your activities and communications.
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Re:Please, Please, Please start a trend.
Hmm, not sure what the hell happened to my link, but I'll try again: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/BitTorrent-Sony-Pictures-TorrentFreak-Hollywood-Piracy,news-13521.html
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Canada Got it Backwards
the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion warning about the potential for constitutional violations.
Quick pro-tip, Canada: You're supposed to stuff your DoJ with ex-RIAA lawyers, then you won't have that problem.
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Re:I know the answer!
No troll. This is what I have concluded based on what has been available and Neil Young agrees with me about lossy formats.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/neil-young-mp3-dsd-digital-music-audio,news-14088.html
So there!
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Re:That sucks though
I think they could do themselves a huge favor if they fired all the minimum wage idiots who probably lose business for them and paid knowledgeable people a good wage instead.
They fired their well paid knowledgeable people a long time ago so they could hire the minimum wage idiots.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/best_buy_firing_employees_not_pushing_company_credit_card_apps
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/roger-kline-best-buy-thief,news-11080.html
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Re:Most won't notice
I didn't see the information you cited at the other end of that link, which seems to just announce that a meter has been in place since the end of 2009, starting with Portland. It might be in there somewhere, but I could only spare 5 minutes to poke around. I'm not saying I don't believe you that the median usage is 2-4 GB/mo, but I don't have any data to parse. On top of that, we can probably filter out Comcast internet service users that also subscribe to Comcast's cable or streaming services, as a vast amount of their data usage doesn't count toward a total anyway.
This was a pretty good read, and it's a year old: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/dsl-service-cable-service-internet-service,news-10514.html. Data usage has only gone up from there.
I don't know how close my family is to 300 GB a month, but I'm positive we've got at least one stream (and very often 2 or even 3, if either of my kids have friends over and don't want to watch what I am) rolling for ~12 hours of the day (I work days, my spouse nights, and then there's my kids when I have them in the summers. We don't have cable or satellite; Netflix and various streaming services are how we consume media, period. That's not counting torrents, hi-resolution image downloads, software pushes, my office VPN (in my line of work it's not uncommon for me to transfer a 4+ GB .psd from my home design station overnight so it's RIP'd and ready to print the next morning) etc. Basing my calculations of the leg-work the author in the above link has done, I'd say I'm probably near or past even his family's usage.
Sure, I may be an outlier now, especially when considering how often I bandy hi-res images about, but everyone's bandwidth usage has been steadily increasing... I'm betting it will continue to do so. Very shortly, 300 GB will be a pretty weak cap, and I'm sure Comcast is banking on people creeping past it, so they can spring their trap on us all (hehe, I love over-vilifying Comcast...). -
Re:Interesting technology
The true way to combat piracy is to look at why people are pirating and modify your business strategy so that pirates become paying customers by their own choice.
They could start by pricing DVDs and Blu-rays reasonably. Next step would be to remove all the crap that goes on between "insert disc" and "watching movie," which often cannot be skipped without violating the DMCA (I'd like to violate the DMCA, actually, with the business end of a shovel).
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Re:virus
Ask and you shall receive: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ie9-chrome10-safari5-opera11-browser-security-phishing-spam,news-11880.html
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Re:Different kind of anti-social
He's not been banned under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act. He's been refused entry because "his presence here was not conducive to the public good".
The UK is a country that allows Muslim clerics who call for the extermination of Jews in, but keeps martial artists and talk radio hosts who have committed no crime out.
There's a huge difference between refusing entry and deporting. A "Muslim clerics who call for the extermination of Jews" from outside the EU would undoubtably also be refused entry.
Michael Savage (the talk show host) was denied entry because he was "considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence".
The US also has strong restrictions on entry, so this isn't unprecedented. Indeed recently the US denied entry to a couple of British teens on the basis of a humorous tweet.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Twitter-Department-Homeland-Security-British-Couple-Denied-Entry-tweets,news-14043.html -
Speaking of Lamar Smith...
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/REddit-TestPAC-SOPA-PIPA-Lamar-Smith,news-14720.html
"What better way to kill the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill for good than to nuke its author right out of Congress? That's what a group of Reddit users are trying to do after forming a Political Action Committee, or PAC. They want Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX.) booted out of office, and will do everything they can to see it happen."
If they succeed in booting Smith in the primary, that should put some fear into others who might otherwise support SOPA/PIPA style legislation.
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Re:New movie
3rd post and its a fanboi. Thank you. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iOS-Apple-iPad-iPhone-malware,news-13122.html
It exists. Might be less, maybe even much less, but it's there.
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Fear mongering and ignoring the rest of the world
We'll have to wait for consumer spending to go up before the 'flying surfboard' arrives
How dumb is a quote like that? Well in France they actually HAVE a flying surfboard, RIGHT NOW. Way for your first "prediction" to be completely wrong. I won't bother to point out the "news" source that would publish this kind of hyper-pessimist attitude, you can fill in the blank yourselves.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Water-Powered-Jetpack-Boots-Rocket,news-13444.html
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Re:Why only iDevices?
Besides, Apple's devices are notoriously known for having huge profit margin going to Apple, without actual technical or manufacturing reasons for that.
Suuuure. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/foxconn-contract-manufacturing-apple-ipad-ihone,news-11477.html
While telling its shareholders that it has made substantial investments to increase the production volume of Apple products, Foxconn dropped a note that Apple products are "very difficult to make", according to a report published by Bloomberg.
I guess there is a non technical or manufacturing reasons for them to be so difficult to make - maybe the Apple Haters trying to sabotage production or something like that.
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Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie...
You can lie about age on the internet for now. That is, until the government creates an online id.
In Korea, every citizen is assigned a National Registration number, that online sites are required to collect before opening an account, even a MMORPG account, and that identifies the subscriber's age.
So yeah... your ability to lie about your age on the internet relies upon you living in a free country, or being able to do business with other organizations in a free country, without them being blocked.
Where free country is defined as a country that doesn't assign each citizen an ID number and require every provider of a product / service / online account to collect the ID number and verify age using that ID before entering into a business relationship.
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Re:...no, really.
Like buying over half of the capacitive glass touch panels created in 2010 forcing other companies to use lesser quality displays?
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Re:Not a competitor
Umm, I have an office suite on my Xoom. With WP, Spreadsheets, graphics.
It wasn't *free* mind, but it was £5, which is a hell of alot less than MS Office.
As for malware, it's been proven that malware can and has gotten past the ios app store filters. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iOS-Apple-iPad-iPhone-malware,news-13122.html
All your post shows is that you're complacent.
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Independents?
Good if you live where they offer coverage. I have looked into getting Teksavvy myself after getting abused by Cogeco and Bell for years. However according to their website there is no service to Peterborough, Ontario.
It a good win, and a surprising one for consumers however, a small step to a better future in broadband.
However one spinoff I see of this, is the purposeful degradation of lines, and further inhibiting of growth. Both Bell and Rogers won the right previously in an earlier CRTC ruling to be able to throttle speeds based on usage (p2p or whatever they like really, no regulation). They justify this by saying that they do it to their own customers, and thus it is a fair market (they tried to show that they needed to, to protect the network from congestion, however internal leaked Bell documents showed this was a pile of BS). What use is a unlimited or 300GB account if your speed is reduced to a crawl.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/P2P-Internet-Torrents-Comcast,news-3340.html
Anyway currently this isn't the case, but it could be a result of this decision. So long as the big two (Bell/Rogers) do the same to their own networks it would not be in violation of the previous ruling by the CRTC.
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Re:Price is low because of subsidy, not size.
There was exactly one source that was saying that Fire is sold below cost, it was just wildly cited and re-cited all over the Net until it became an "everyone knows" kind of thing - e.g. like this. I've seen several people pick that analysis apart for numerous reasons (e.g. apparently some components were price-estimated at retail, not what they actually cost for a large production run) - can't give you the link easily, but some of that discussion was right here on
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Re:Google App Account
According to a recent comment by Google execs, Apps support should be coming "in days."
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Re:one other reason
The trouble is that maybe Samsung doesn't really like being in the mobile space. Given Microsoft/Nokia and Google/Motorola, they might just see the writing on the wall. Mobile devices are a small fraction of Samsung's business, but a very, very large fraction of Apple's. If Samsung decides they're better off exiting the business and then demanding a sizable chunk of Apple's profits, they end up in the position of a patent troll with a number of very fundamental mobile device patents and Apple would have no obvious counter if Samsung does not fear an injunction.
Samsung seems very interested in mobile. Apple's also a HUGE customer. Samsung stopped reporting mobile/tablet sales individually, but I don't think anybody seriously expects their end game to be walking away from selling 20+ million handsets a quarter, despite margins on other products dragging down their profitability last quarter, just so they can hurt Apple, who represents a tenth of their sales anyway. That makes no more sense then those who think Intel's end game is to destroy the MacBook Air with their new ultra notebook initiative. It's to increase sales of their low power chips, presumably to gain a foothold with Microsoft and Windows 8 and stem the tide of ARM taking over a large segment of this sector. The more Intel based systems Apple sells... guess what, Intel doesn't suffer from that.
I completely agree that Apple would sooner accept a reduction in volume than a reduction in margin, but that doesn't take anything away from the need to make the trade off. Apple was on a growth vector before Android, now they have a consistent market share with little to no growth.
There's just no truth that Android has slowed Apple's sales. Apple hasn't quickly become a 25% player in desktop OS either, but sales are SURGING, even though Windows 7 proved to be the release everyone wished Vista had been. Last quarter was the best ever for iPhone sales even though iPhone 5 is perceived as delayed from it's usual lifecycle. It's hard to believe, but Apple consistently just doesn't care about marketshare. They care about profits. So their margins remain high and their sales continue to increase 140% at a time year over year in this sector. Ask HP how they feel about that? Being #1 isn't necessarily the way to profitability. Would you rather run Apple's notebook division or HPs? Yet HP is the number one seller, and Dell fast on their heels. Apple is a distant third hardware wise, and their OS is absurdly lagging Windows in marketshare.
Look, you are right that Android will probably have the highest footprint in smartphones over the next several years. Apple doesn't care about that number, WebOS is as dead as they come, Blackberry is stagnated and Windows Phone hasn't taken off the way MS had hoped. It's just that most people realize it's not important to Apple's bottom line, customer base, or shareholders. -
Re:Not Ready For Prime Time Yet
A more technically informative article on this device can be found here:
The device has two 1280 x 720 OLED panels. At an $800 price point, that's impressive.
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Re:The obvious first question...
Interesting, new to me.
Here is an article I goggled that seems to explain it pretty well.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ssd-value-performance,review-1455-5.html
The difficulty is I just did a 5 min review of what is out there for SSD, and only OCZ and Intel seem to like to put that in there specifications (none in corsair that I checked), though that could have just been the online store, however every single one that did was MLC, so I am not sure how available SLC is really.
Though there was a neat chart in the toms article that basically shows that SSD failure rate seems to be pretty heavily correlated to capacity size, where the smaller the device, the longer it lasts. So buying the cheaper, smaller unit will actually last longer, so I guess that it just goes to show you should buy within your means.
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Re:I read the article
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15th Aug 2011 - The real day Ballmer lost his job
Coiffin, meet nail. He just blew the m$ mobile plan B: extortion through litigation, since plan A - a quality mobile OS - is clearly dead in the water.