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Infineon Chipset May Be Cause of IPhone 3G Issues
JagsLive sends along a CNet blog piece about a plausible theory to explain the iPhone 3G connection problems many users have experienced. Apple has not acknowledged any such problems. "Richard Windsor of Nomura published a research note... Tuesday singling out the iPhone 3G's chipset, made by Infineon, as the probable culprit for the reception problems we reported on Monday. The dropped calls, service interruptions, and abrupt network switches experienced by iPhone 3G users reminded Windsor of similar complaints five years ago, when 3G phones were first launched in Europe. 'We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain that Infineon is the 3G supplier,' Windsor wrote. 'This is not surprising as the Infineon 3G chipset solution has never really been tested in the hands of users. Some people will not experience these problems as it is only in areas where the radio signal weakens that the immaturity of the stack really shows.'"
There is a difference between avoiding and refusing entirely claiming there is no problem. Apple tends to claim the latter.
Look at Windows, apparently the fact that Vista hardly runs on current-gen or last-gen hardware isn't a problem.
I don't consider the sourcecode to a web browser component making OS X "more flexible".
Except that you can actually write standard HTML for a default web browser and it would render correctly? Compare that to IE where about every single line of code has to be duplicated to work on it.
But does it actually make OS X more flexible? I don't believe so. What are you going to do with the source to a web browser component, seriously? What are you going to do with Apple's customization of Samba? CUPS?
Number 1, easier to port applications to. Number 2, easier to write applications for if you don't own the OS. As for Samba and etc, if Apple finds a bug that the other developers haven't found yet, it gets fixed both places and vice versa.
If you sign some NDAs, you can get access to the entire Windows sourcecode.
Under the Open Source Definition, licenses must meet ten conditions in order to be considered open source licenses. Below is a copy of the definition, with unauthorized explanatory additions. There is a link to the original unmodified text below. It was taken under fair use. 1. Free Redistribution: the software can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.) 2. Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.) 3. Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.) 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code: licenses may require that modifications are redistributed only as patches. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: no one can be locked out. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: commercial users cannot be excluded. 7. Distribution of License: The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: the program cannot be licensed only as part of a larger distribution. 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: the license cannot insist that any other software it is distributed with must also be open source. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral: no click-wrap licenses or other medium-specific ways of accepting the license must be required.
An NDA kinda violates all of these points to make things OSS. Just because you can see the source doesn't mean that it is open source.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Vista seems to run fine on current generation hardware. I don't recall Microsoft promoting running Vista on last generation hardware by the way.
And that has nothing to do with having access to the source code of the browser. I will restate the question:
How does having access to the sourcecode of a web browser in OS X make OS X more flexible?
I have written numerous cross-platform applications, and it is quite obvious you have no experience with doing so. This has nothing to do with making it easier to port applications to a specific platform. I can even come up with plenty of instances where I had hell with porting things to OS X.
Such as: standardized cross platform OpenGL code that works between Windows, Linux, Solaris would not work on OS X, without special workarounds for buggy drivers and Apple's OpenGL bugs. The state of handling OpenGL on OS X is so bad, that Codeweavers have to specifically write special hacks for each and every game that they support on crossover games for OS X due to the numerous bug issues - They don't have to do this with the Linux port, at all.
The POSIX environment on OS X is broken, I have had so many issues getting pthreads that work fine under Windows with it's POSIX subsystem, Linux the BSDs that it's ridicules that Windows POSIX subsystem does it properly when OS X, which is supposed to be a certified "Unix" environment does not.
What? A good developer kit makes it easier to write applications for a OS, not OS sourcecode.
Apple has a terrible reputation for fixes. Often, they seem to ignore fixes until some major OS X release that usually requires people to pay for an upgrade. This is especially a huge problem on OS X server - where they can't even package things to work out of the box. Such as packaging the only version of PHP that doesn't work with Squirrel mail that they package by default with the system. Using broken Samba setups etc.
I didn't say it was opensource. I said you can get access to the entirety of Windows' sourcecode under NDAs, while you cannot at all with OS X. The only stuff that appears to be opensource in OS X, is the Darwin kernel - which is so terrible nobody wants to use it and why there isn't really a Darwin community. The only other opensource bits in OS X that I can think of are the projects started as opensource in the opensource community that have what some people refer to as 'viral licensing' which prevents Apple from close sourcing the projects.
I really don't see the additional 'flexibility' in OS X over Windows that you claim. Maybe you should give some practical examples?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.