Wear-leveling with SSDs isn't about reliability, more about longevity because a specific bit (really page) on a chip can only be rewritten so many times. Though once that point is hit, the data is still readable, just not writeable. Not really the same scenario as the head of a HDD crashing, making data-recovery far more laborious and expensive.
Actually, it's not. AppNap enables the OS to wake up and have apps refresh their state (enabling more functionality). Battery Saver on the other hand clamps down on apps which periodically refresh when battery is low because a dead battery is useless to the consumer.
Depends on your goals, really. I think a big pitfall most people think is that the goal is to learn a language, when you really should be aiming to learn confidently learn as many as possible. You'll soon start to see how similar they are, and it becomes a lot easier to pick up.
The hard part actually isn't learning a language, but a framework. Frameworks are very platform specific, concepts are less reusable. And because Cocoa Touch is so intimately designed around Objective-C, even if you chose to learn Swift first, you'll need to know Objective-C anyway because of a) the amount of code/books/resources that exists on the internet in Obj-C vs Swift and b) a solution to your problem may only be written in Objective-C in a StackOverflow search result.
As for skipping academic CS, at some point you need to learn the stuff that almost every CS grad is expected to know at some level (data structures/algorithms, operating systems I & II, algorithm complexity (aka Big O notation), software design, etc...) not so much because they'll be explicitly required of you, but as you build larger and more complex apps, without them, code readability, maintainability, and performance are going to go to total shit. Granted, there are some, heck many, CS grads who somehow evade actually knowing this stuff, and things don't turn out so great for the code they write in the end.
My advice, tackle building an iOS app with a goal in mind, written in Objective-C due to the sheer number of resources out there, then expand from there.
You have yet to move into your house. Stop making excuses and run Ethernet. Even if it isn't an in-wall installation (though I absolutely highly recommend it, it *will* add value to your house), since you have no furniture to move, run cords along baseboards and do it the right way so any future home owners won't think you did a crappy job.
Man/woman up and get it done.
Ditto. Because learning the framework takes a LOT longer than learning the language and the fact that the framework was designed with Objective-C in mind, it is foolish to think that you will be able to write a pure Swift iOS app without knowing Objective-C anyway because there isn't enough Swift material out there for Google to find to solve your problems. And unless you *really* enjoy solving those problems on your own, you'd need to convert an Objective-C solution to a Swift one on your own, at which point you are basically learning both languages anyway.
So I would say all new iOS developers need to learn Objective-C because writing a Swift-only app would be too painful otherwise.
This all changes when The Big Nerd Ranch puts out a Swift book, but there's no indication that is anytime soon.
It's pretty simple. Since this is Google, the less time waiting for webpages or video to load, the more pages you visit and the more ads you see/watch.
It wasn't that surprising that AMD was king around 2003-2004, the problem was that Intel was playing very dirty, signing deals with OEMs like Dell to specifically NOT use AMD chips. The fines Intel got from the EU are never going to do as much to help AMD as actually gaining more profits during that period (and who knows, they may not have sold their mobile Radeon group to Qualcomm in an effort to raise cash). It's the domino effect of unknowns that hurts the most.
Are we assuming perfect world or what the average enthusiast might have? Because I'd rather shoot video on a dSLR which has far better optics and real physical zoom than a smartphone that has to cram everything into 7mm or less of space.
The Xbox One doesn't use GDDR5 but DDR3 memory with 32MB eSRAM. They made the decision early on to have 8GB of RAM (regardless of type) before they knew it would be feasible to have 8GB GDDR5 memory at an easily attainable cost.
It is one of the highest bins of the Tegra 3 line, clocked at 1.7Ghz. Most Tegra SoC variants are 1.3Ghz or 1.4Ghz because they have to worry about battery life.
The raw part cost of a smartphone SoC is a tiny portion of the bill of materials (BOM), maybe 10-15%. CPU is maybe $30 at the very high end? So for a box like the OUYA where the CPU is probably the biggest cost and they don't have to worry about a display, camera, battery, cellular radios, or massive amounts of storage, they probably could have sprung for a Snapdragon 600 or Tegra 4. Only thing is it would have delayed the product by 6 months since those chips are in high demand from smartphone OEMs.
Take a look at this cost breakdown analysis of the GS4: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-S4-Carries-236-Bill-of-Materials-IHS-iSuppli-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx $236 worth of parts selling for $699 just shows you how things are roughly priced (granted, MSRP - BOM != profit, but Samsung is in a pretty good position). Also you'll learn the biggest conspiracy of smartphones ever: it does NOT cost $100 to go from 16GB NAND to 32GB, or 32->64, or 64->128.
Does anything besides Direct3D change with new versions anymore? It's not as if there are groundbreaking developments in XInput or DirectSound, and things like DirectShow have been depreciated for other Windows methods.
Microsoft offered up this compromise months ago. And besides, I thought the SkyDrive fight was just being used as a proxy, since the real battle is over Office revenues. No way in hell Microsoft lets Apple get a 30% cut of Office 365 revenue.
Back when the first iPad was released, even a 4.3" phone was considered extremely large, so a 7-8" tablet would have still been significantly larger than phones of the time. And your point is weakened by the fact that larger screen phones exist today and people are still clamoring for smaller tablets. Besides the iPad, there isn't a single, truly successful 10" tablet, but there are several, well-selling 7" ones.
If this were the iOS or Windows Phone stores, then yes, that would be true. But with Google Play, the developer actually IS the merchant. The Play Store itself is only an intermediary. The system is setup like any other online store where there are "ordered" and goods are "shipped". Blame the fact that Google basically grafted the paid Android store onto a system that was meant for real-world goods.
Honestly though, this isn't news. Every Android developer has known this for YEARS. And this is no different than any other online store out there.
If Microsoft wants to make the ultimate entertainment device, it's going to have a Bluray drive. I don't think it has anything to do with "sucking up pride", it's simply impractical to ship a new console with a DVD drive in 2013, and using some proprietary format is just plain idiotic because of the overhead costs. Heck, if even Nintendo has adopted the technology (but not licensed the ability to play BD video), then it's a given that Microsoft will include a Bluray drive in its next console. A given.
I do expect 1st day digital downloads for all games though.
The almost near instant removal of the 500px app last week which went above and beyond Apple's supposed guidelines is more proof that the company does not apply it's rules equally to all companies.
Uhh.. the reason those features don't exist is to clearly push those kinds of customers towards Windows 8 Pro. It's the same reason why Office RT doesn't have Outlook. Microsoft doesn't want Windows RT to be used in enterprise and there are plenty of clues as to why not.
Honestly, the only thing important to DirectX 11.1 besides some optimizations is a standardized way to support 3D instead of proprietary nVidia 3D vision and AMD HD3D. And if you don't care about S3D, then 11.1 is a non issue. Sounds like a bunch of FUD to me.
Regardless, until you see a bunch of DirectX 11.1 exclusive games and DirectX 11 support is dropped (which will never happen), people are ranting about nothing.
The game console will never die, but calling it that certainly will. When people spend far more time doing non-gaming activities, it behooves Microsoft and Sony not to call it that anymore so they can try to grab a wider audience. They want people to rent movies, buy TV shows, listen to music, download apps, etc... in addition to playing games on this device. In fact, if you could record and watch live TV, the cable set top box would be dead (and that's the real market they are trying to go after).
With the apparent success of the $99 Xbox 360 w/ subscription, we are going to see Microsoft push that model further with the next Xbox. I'd say buy the console for $200 (high-end SKU), then for $30/month for at least 2 years, get Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music, and maybe 1 free movie rental a month. The last part clearly indicates it's a media machine, and people have gotten used to paying monthly bills for cellphones and stuff like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Considering the Xbox 360 isn't that much cheaper now than it was when it launched ($299 & $399), the only reasonable reason not to buy a new console immediately is because it lacks any tangible functionality over the old one (back when they only played games). Oh, and the next Xbox must be FAR better at multi-tasking. Taking 3 minutes to boot an app is ridiculous. NEEDS MORE RAM.
When a huge chunk of those users are in China which has effectively banned Facebook in it's current form (it would have to partner with a local Chinese company and jump through TONS of hoops to start making inroads), I don't think you can count on growth from more users anymore. Besides, that doesn't scale very well anyway. They need to make more money PER user. It should be far easier to double the money made per user than to double the number of users.
Old investors who sold their stock for the IPO have already made their money.
New investors who bought at the IPO price (or near it) were suckers since it's lost value.
Retail investors who probably didn't have a chance to buy it at anywhere near the IPO price are probably going to sit this one out since the excitement is now over.
Current shareholders who are most likely employees are disappointed because while they are worth a lot on paper, they can't sell their shares for a good 6 months, and will have to see their fortunes decrease every day.
Bystanders like me are just laughing at the amount of funny money now floating around chasing a company that has a P/E of 100, almost 1 billion users, and no serious way of monetizing that base at the moment other than display ads.
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Wear-leveling with SSDs isn't about reliability, more about longevity because a specific bit (really page) on a chip can only be rewritten so many times. Though once that point is hit, the data is still readable, just not writeable. Not really the same scenario as the head of a HDD crashing, making data-recovery far more laborious and expensive.
On a 4-bay NAS box, there aren't enough slots to have a SSD acting as a cache unless you want to give up one of your very valuable bays.
It's new to desktops. The idea came from Windows Phone, much like Notification Center.
Actually, it's not. AppNap enables the OS to wake up and have apps refresh their state (enabling more functionality). Battery Saver on the other hand clamps down on apps which periodically refresh when battery is low because a dead battery is useless to the consumer.
Depends on your goals, really. I think a big pitfall most people think is that the goal is to learn a language, when you really should be aiming to learn confidently learn as many as possible. You'll soon start to see how similar they are, and it becomes a lot easier to pick up.
The hard part actually isn't learning a language, but a framework. Frameworks are very platform specific, concepts are less reusable. And because Cocoa Touch is so intimately designed around Objective-C, even if you chose to learn Swift first, you'll need to know Objective-C anyway because of a) the amount of code/books/resources that exists on the internet in Obj-C vs Swift and b) a solution to your problem may only be written in Objective-C in a StackOverflow search result.
As for skipping academic CS, at some point you need to learn the stuff that almost every CS grad is expected to know at some level (data structures/algorithms, operating systems I & II, algorithm complexity (aka Big O notation), software design, etc...) not so much because they'll be explicitly required of you, but as you build larger and more complex apps, without them, code readability, maintainability, and performance are going to go to total shit. Granted, there are some, heck many, CS grads who somehow evade actually knowing this stuff, and things don't turn out so great for the code they write in the end.
My advice, tackle building an iOS app with a goal in mind, written in Objective-C due to the sheer number of resources out there, then expand from there.
You have yet to move into your house. Stop making excuses and run Ethernet. Even if it isn't an in-wall installation (though I absolutely highly recommend it, it *will* add value to your house), since you have no furniture to move, run cords along baseboards and do it the right way so any future home owners won't think you did a crappy job. Man/woman up and get it done.
Ditto. Because learning the framework takes a LOT longer than learning the language and the fact that the framework was designed with Objective-C in mind, it is foolish to think that you will be able to write a pure Swift iOS app without knowing Objective-C anyway because there isn't enough Swift material out there for Google to find to solve your problems. And unless you *really* enjoy solving those problems on your own, you'd need to convert an Objective-C solution to a Swift one on your own, at which point you are basically learning both languages anyway. So I would say all new iOS developers need to learn Objective-C because writing a Swift-only app would be too painful otherwise. This all changes when The Big Nerd Ranch puts out a Swift book, but there's no indication that is anytime soon.
It's pretty simple. Since this is Google, the less time waiting for webpages or video to load, the more pages you visit and the more ads you see/watch.
It wasn't that surprising that AMD was king around 2003-2004, the problem was that Intel was playing very dirty, signing deals with OEMs like Dell to specifically NOT use AMD chips. The fines Intel got from the EU are never going to do as much to help AMD as actually gaining more profits during that period (and who knows, they may not have sold their mobile Radeon group to Qualcomm in an effort to raise cash). It's the domino effect of unknowns that hurts the most.
Are we assuming perfect world or what the average enthusiast might have? Because I'd rather shoot video on a dSLR which has far better optics and real physical zoom than a smartphone that has to cram everything into 7mm or less of space.
The Xbox One doesn't use GDDR5 but DDR3 memory with 32MB eSRAM. They made the decision early on to have 8GB of RAM (regardless of type) before they knew it would be feasible to have 8GB GDDR5 memory at an easily attainable cost.
Non-Google certified devices cannot legally access Google services via their proprietary apps (Gmail, Maps, YouTube, etc...).
It is one of the highest bins of the Tegra 3 line, clocked at 1.7Ghz. Most Tegra SoC variants are 1.3Ghz or 1.4Ghz because they have to worry about battery life.
The raw part cost of a smartphone SoC is a tiny portion of the bill of materials (BOM), maybe 10-15%. CPU is maybe $30 at the very high end? So for a box like the OUYA where the CPU is probably the biggest cost and they don't have to worry about a display, camera, battery, cellular radios, or massive amounts of storage, they probably could have sprung for a Snapdragon 600 or Tegra 4. Only thing is it would have delayed the product by 6 months since those chips are in high demand from smartphone OEMs. Take a look at this cost breakdown analysis of the GS4: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-S4-Carries-236-Bill-of-Materials-IHS-iSuppli-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx $236 worth of parts selling for $699 just shows you how things are roughly priced (granted, MSRP - BOM != profit, but Samsung is in a pretty good position). Also you'll learn the biggest conspiracy of smartphones ever: it does NOT cost $100 to go from 16GB NAND to 32GB, or 32->64, or 64->128.
Does anything besides Direct3D change with new versions anymore? It's not as if there are groundbreaking developments in XInput or DirectSound, and things like DirectShow have been depreciated for other Windows methods.
Microsoft offered up this compromise months ago. And besides, I thought the SkyDrive fight was just being used as a proxy, since the real battle is over Office revenues. No way in hell Microsoft lets Apple get a 30% cut of Office 365 revenue.
Back when the first iPad was released, even a 4.3" phone was considered extremely large, so a 7-8" tablet would have still been significantly larger than phones of the time. And your point is weakened by the fact that larger screen phones exist today and people are still clamoring for smaller tablets. Besides the iPad, there isn't a single, truly successful 10" tablet, but there are several, well-selling 7" ones.
If this were the iOS or Windows Phone stores, then yes, that would be true. But with Google Play, the developer actually IS the merchant. The Play Store itself is only an intermediary. The system is setup like any other online store where there are "ordered" and goods are "shipped". Blame the fact that Google basically grafted the paid Android store onto a system that was meant for real-world goods. Honestly though, this isn't news. Every Android developer has known this for YEARS. And this is no different than any other online store out there.
If Microsoft wants to make the ultimate entertainment device, it's going to have a Bluray drive. I don't think it has anything to do with "sucking up pride", it's simply impractical to ship a new console with a DVD drive in 2013, and using some proprietary format is just plain idiotic because of the overhead costs. Heck, if even Nintendo has adopted the technology (but not licensed the ability to play BD video), then it's a given that Microsoft will include a Bluray drive in its next console. A given. I do expect 1st day digital downloads for all games though.
The almost near instant removal of the 500px app last week which went above and beyond Apple's supposed guidelines is more proof that the company does not apply it's rules equally to all companies.
Uhh.. the reason those features don't exist is to clearly push those kinds of customers towards Windows 8 Pro. It's the same reason why Office RT doesn't have Outlook. Microsoft doesn't want Windows RT to be used in enterprise and there are plenty of clues as to why not.
Honestly, the only thing important to DirectX 11.1 besides some optimizations is a standardized way to support 3D instead of proprietary nVidia 3D vision and AMD HD3D. And if you don't care about S3D, then 11.1 is a non issue. Sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. Regardless, until you see a bunch of DirectX 11.1 exclusive games and DirectX 11 support is dropped (which will never happen), people are ranting about nothing.
The game console will never die, but calling it that certainly will. When people spend far more time doing non-gaming activities, it behooves Microsoft and Sony not to call it that anymore so they can try to grab a wider audience. They want people to rent movies, buy TV shows, listen to music, download apps, etc... in addition to playing games on this device. In fact, if you could record and watch live TV, the cable set top box would be dead (and that's the real market they are trying to go after). With the apparent success of the $99 Xbox 360 w/ subscription, we are going to see Microsoft push that model further with the next Xbox. I'd say buy the console for $200 (high-end SKU), then for $30/month for at least 2 years, get Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music, and maybe 1 free movie rental a month. The last part clearly indicates it's a media machine, and people have gotten used to paying monthly bills for cellphones and stuff like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Considering the Xbox 360 isn't that much cheaper now than it was when it launched ($299 & $399), the only reasonable reason not to buy a new console immediately is because it lacks any tangible functionality over the old one (back when they only played games). Oh, and the next Xbox must be FAR better at multi-tasking. Taking 3 minutes to boot an app is ridiculous. NEEDS MORE RAM.
When a huge chunk of those users are in China which has effectively banned Facebook in it's current form (it would have to partner with a local Chinese company and jump through TONS of hoops to start making inroads), I don't think you can count on growth from more users anymore. Besides, that doesn't scale very well anyway. They need to make more money PER user. It should be far easier to double the money made per user than to double the number of users.
Old investors who sold their stock for the IPO have already made their money. New investors who bought at the IPO price (or near it) were suckers since it's lost value. Retail investors who probably didn't have a chance to buy it at anywhere near the IPO price are probably going to sit this one out since the excitement is now over. Current shareholders who are most likely employees are disappointed because while they are worth a lot on paper, they can't sell their shares for a good 6 months, and will have to see their fortunes decrease every day. Bystanders like me are just laughing at the amount of funny money now floating around chasing a company that has a P/E of 100, almost 1 billion users, and no serious way of monetizing that base at the moment other than display ads.