Go watch a 2D movie sometime. Nearly every close-up shot has the depth-of-field narrowed right down, so the subject is clear and the background is blurred (i.e. bokeh). Are you telling me the director isn't dragging your eyes to the subject? Are you able to focus on the background here?
3D cinema certainly has its issues, but that's not one of them. In fact, in 2D movies, isolating the subject with DoF is generally considered a *good* thing..
If petrol's going to get (more) heavily taxed - or banned altogether - that's a good incentive to make your next car one that doesn't use petrol. You may even find you prefer them.
I really don't see why it's apparently one or the other. They aim at doing pretty different things, and you'd really want both ports.
As soon as Intel bothers to include it in their chipsets, USB3 will get ubiquitous as USB2. It's now fast enough for pretty much anything general-purpose. More importantly, devices using USB controllers are significantly cheaper - USB is a much simpler protocol (since the host does most of the work), and is cheap as chips to implement. Add in the backwards compatibility and USB isn't going anywhere, even if most peripherals don't take full advantage of its full speed.
Thunderbolt has even more performance, and you'd want one just to plug in to your monitor, since it carries a full DisplayPort channel. Since it also carries 4 PCIe lanes & allows full access to system memory, you can attach almost anything to it, even a USB3 host or an external GPU (though at 4 lanes it still won't be as fast as internal). However, you need a full PCIe controller at the external end, so it will never be as cheap to implement, or as ubiquitous, as USB.
I hear that "cost advantage" argument a lot, but I really don't think there's much validity to it.
Ifixit breakdowns show the iPad material costs aren't that high. I'm sure Apple gets good supplier deals, but that's just adding to their profits; they've got plenty of room to lower the price if they want to.
Competing tablet manufacturers are pricing their tablets the same or higher because their product has the same or better hardware and they want to make a good profit themselves; the market is too new to commodify it yet. They've got room to undercut the iPad if they had to.
The proof is the NookColor - an Android tablet that is virtually equal to the original iPad in specs (though a smaller screen), yet because it's aimed at a different, cheaper market (eReaders), it was sold at half the iPad's price, as low as $200.
After all, if Apple is getting such good deals on parts why isn't the iPhone undercutting its competition too?
Though arguably, since 2.2's inclusion of an automatic JIT compiler, everything is native code now. And of course the system libraries always were, which is what 90%+ of most apps' time is spent in.
Then there's the hardware - CPU speed, available RAM etc, which tend to be higher on flagship Android devices as a rule. But I expect you're not really interested in actual resulting performance, you've probably just got something against VMs.
If Apple was really interested in helping its geekier customers rather than just locking people into their own services, they'd provide their own equivalent of Google's "fastboot oem unlock" - voids your warranty, no support, knock yourself out. Even Microsoft gets this.
Oh, and they'd probably relax their "duplication" clause and allow apps that compete with their own services, like better mail clients or even the improved Google Maps, rather than hiding behind their lame "oh the consumer might get confused" excuse. As it is, you have to admit they have their less-technical customers (and their own bottom line) much more firmly in mind.
If by "content creation" you mean some basic typing or low-end media editing. I'm sure it's fine for consumers (blogging, youtube etc) and I do know a couple of professionals who prefer the iPad for filling out reports, simple presentations etc, but for almost anything substantial, there's no comparison at all with laptops & PCs. Tablets are sharply limited by screen area, resolution, memory, processor speed, storage, connection bandwidth, graphics power, peripherals - pretty much in every possible way except mobility.
- Substantial writing is a lot easier with more screen area, especially if you want to research stuff at the same time. - Detailed photoshopping, large images, not the basic levels & color stuff. - Drawing/painting (with a pressure tablet, as you said earlier) - Final Cut/Avid-level film editing - Compositing - 3D rendering - Software development - Web page development - CAD
and far more; these are just some of the things I occasionally need to do.
Even the many things a tablet *can* do, can be done far more easily with more powerful hardware, larger screens and richer input peripherals. The sole advantage a tablet has is mobility, and that's a pretty small consideration for the vast majority of real, paid work - *especially* content creation. While tablets certainly have their place (I have one), they're never going to replace PCs or laptops for most of what many, many people need to do.
P.S. This of course applies to all tablets, not just iPads, so relax.
I believe the Koran itself doesn't actually specify how many virgins; that was mentioned in the Book of Suran instead as a fifth-hand recollection of something Mohammed said. Also, there's no mention of them being specifically available only for martyrs.
There's also some doubt about the virgin part. Some scholars believe that the word "hur" is better translated as "white raisin".
Stop complaining, download SL4A, and build your own tea-timer in 2 lines of the scripting language of your choice. One of the examples is a two-line script that scans a barcode and looks it up on Amazon - did your 433MHz Celeron do that?
Seriously, there will of course be many things your phone cannot do relative to your PC (lack of keyboard, small screen blah blah) and conversely many things your phone can that your PC hasn't a hope of (mobility, GPS, camera blah blah). People write phone apps based on what they think people will use the platform for, and there are thousands of apps that do stuff that is totally impractical on PCs.
Yes, you can install ffmpeg to recode video with if you want, or busybox and go further. The kernel is Linux, so you can get the NDK, cross-compile gcc for it, and start writing or porting whatever you like. If you don't mind using vi on a 3.7" touchscreen.
there is also the possibility that Apple did this only to protect developers interests
That's a more cynical view, but I think it quite likely factored in (after all, Apple would get their cut of further sales).
I agree that pixel-doubling is the most practical scaling approach, though with hardware scaling I doubt the CPU/GPU load of arbitrary scales would be too great for most apps (games may be another matter), and even filtered scaling can look fine at retina pixel densities. Using pixels as logical units makes sense, though if the coords are aren't floating point then they're going to be stuck with integer multiples of the resolution like it or not, which is definitely going to be restricting at some point if it isn't already (e.g. the rumoured doubled 2K iPad screen would be a big ask, and reportedly had to be put off for a year, while Android tablets scaled relatively easily to 720p in the meantime, just like how the 3GS was stuck on HVGA while other phones had already moved forward to WVGA).
I certainly agree that dynamic-layout UIs, while better than nothing, are hardly going to solve everything - as you say, there are too many cases where it fits awkwardly at best. Using Fragment panes as tools to divide up your screen area is definitely going to help in many cases, independently of any dynamic element layout, and will ease the job of having a single app lay itself out for a wider range of screens (also helpful for separate "HD" versions of apps, if desired). I personally think having a single app covering both phones and tablets is preferable (though not always practical), but the main thing IMHO is to give the developer the choice.
Really? Well that sucks. You're saying Apple deliberately chose a sub-par method of scaling legacy apps solely to force developers to improve them? Even I didn't think they were that cruel to their developers, or to their users. As you say, it just results in legacy apps being dismissed by users, and who wants that (or the 5 inch buttons)?.
Users will of course prefer a better-optimised layout, so many developers will update their apps without being forced, in order to remain competitive. Otherwise, users will simply switch to a better app - there's plenty of competition. No need to cripple the old apps to try and force this. Rather, I suspect Apple was just doing the best it could given its relatively fixed UI API.
But the fact is, some apps will never get updated, so a better method of making those apps usable has to be preferable. Android's UI behaves more like a resizable window, so text & buttons stay the same (physical) size but lists get longer and text fields get larger. You may still see wasted space in some cases, but it works better than naïve scaling and double-size buttons.
Personally, I think Honeycomb's new Fragments API is a great idea, though not exactly innovative. Resizable/reusable view panes on PCs have been around for a dozen years plus, they work well there, and will definitely make things easier on the phone/tablet side. I'd like to know more about the iOS API too, to see what Apple's approach is like, but as I don't own the required Mac for development, it's just idle curiosity.
I read the original post, and the one I replied to. Perhaps you could point out to me where it talks about the iPad being hard to beat at its pricepoint, or even where he says there's nothing competitive for $100 less?
All I could see were complaints about how Android tablets ought to be as little as $200, but that the 8 (eight!) cheapo $200 tablets he bought were unsurprisingly all crap. He does say that tablets priced the *same* as the iPad were far better, but apparently this isn't good enough for him somehow. Moving on, I saw him putting words into some guy's mouth followed by a list of crappy tablets and a request to be shown "ONE that is not garbage" (I mentioned two, both of which cost less than the iPad).
If he didn't WANT to buy a crappy tablet, why did he buy *eight*? Is it so hard to guess that that's all you'll get for so little money (especially after the first couple)? Perhaps you interpreted his words somewhat differently to me, but I don't see a list of bad $200 tablets to be evidence that a $500 tablet is as cheap as you can get, especially when there are obvious counter-examples (Notion Ink's Adam starts from US$375 and frankly embarrasses the $499 iPad in most respects). But if the fight *isn't* over price, as you say, then I guess that leaves hardware features (nod to Android) and choice of platform (subjective).
The Adam has been shipping for a month, and people have them in their hands.
The Xoom will be available in stores Feb 24th, i.e. tomorrow (after a week's delay). Is that close enough for you? It's a little more expensive than the iPad, but has far more features. The wifi-only version is equivalently priced but further off, yes.
A rooted Nook Color is certainly a geek's toy; I'd agree it's not a mass-market product. Luckily, we're all geeks on Slashdot, yes? It's definitely a valid option for many people here.
Why do you keep buying such ridiculously cheap tablets when you know they're all so crappy? And why do you focusing so hard on the crap when there are much better tablets available?
If you want an Android tablet that's half the price of an iPad without being complete junk, buy a Nook Color and root it. If you want a tablet that is quite a lot better than the iPad and still cheaper, look at the Adam. Just don't keep scraping the bottom of the market then complaining, as if it was somehow Google's fault.
I certainly agree that the cheapest Android tablets are junk, just like the cheapest phones, cheapest cars, and cheapest products of any open market. But we don't judge all cars by the crap ones when there are many great alternatives, and those are now arriving (with Google's blessing).
Take the Notion Ink Adam - cheaper than iPad, much fancier hardware (including a Pixel Qi screen option for full daylight operation), and a UI with lots of nice tablet-oriented improvements. The Galaxy Tab sold well (with less than 2% returns) despite rumours to the contrary, and of course the new Honeycomb tablets now arriving are far more capable for a similar or slightly higher price to the nearest competing iPad.
Incidentally, you might want to check out the Kno. It's a single (or dual) 14.1" screen tablet with stylus, running Ubuntu.
You can get Android tablets at slightly cheaper prices (Notion Ink's Adam), equivalent prices and higher prices (Xoom) - and of all of these significantly outstrip the iPad in features. From what we've heard, they will outstrip the iPad 2 as well. Don't know why you think this isn't competitive.
If you go a fair bit cheaper, the Nook Color makes a very decent alternative (some assembly required). Going much cheaper unsurprisingly requires a big drop in features and usability, but we're talking less than half the price of the cheapest iPad now. Still, there's hardware and price points for every budget.
Can't imagine why you think Android is directionless.
The difference is that, where Apple controls, restricts and micromanages as you say, Google simply leads Android, and vendors are free to follow along or not (most do). The only incentive to follow that Google explicitly provides is its own apps and Market, which are arguably important but not actually necessary.
The iPad also had a pretty limited selection of "optimised" apps at release; didn't take long for that to change.
And unlike with iOS, most existing Android apps scale nicely to any resolution and aspect, rather than just being pixel-doubled, thanks to Android's resolution-independent UI API. You can release a tablet-optimised version of your app to take better advantage of the extra screen area, but at least it won't be ignored altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm more worried about all those Arabic numerals in front of the units...
Melting glaciers put fresh water into the ocean, which is less dense than salt water.
It appears that the Daily Star alterted the MOD about their stupidity
So even the Daily Star is smarter than the Ministry of Defense now?
We are so screwed.
The website apparently does :-/
Go watch a 2D movie sometime. Nearly every close-up shot has the depth-of-field narrowed right down, so the subject is clear and the background is blurred (i.e. bokeh). Are you telling me the director isn't dragging your eyes to the subject? Are you able to focus on the background here?
3D cinema certainly has its issues, but that's not one of them. In fact, in 2D movies, isolating the subject with DoF is generally considered a *good* thing..
If petrol's going to get (more) heavily taxed - or banned altogether - that's a good incentive to make your next car one that doesn't use petrol. You may even find you prefer them.
You got 39 years to decide; no rush.
I really don't see why it's apparently one or the other. They aim at doing pretty different things, and you'd really want both ports.
As soon as Intel bothers to include it in their chipsets, USB3 will get ubiquitous as USB2. It's now fast enough for pretty much anything general-purpose. More importantly, devices using USB controllers are significantly cheaper - USB is a much simpler protocol (since the host does most of the work), and is cheap as chips to implement. Add in the backwards compatibility and USB isn't going anywhere, even if most peripherals don't take full advantage of its full speed.
Thunderbolt has even more performance, and you'd want one just to plug in to your monitor, since it carries a full DisplayPort channel. Since it also carries 4 PCIe lanes & allows full access to system memory, you can attach almost anything to it, even a USB3 host or an external GPU (though at 4 lanes it still won't be as fast as internal). However, you need a full PCIe controller at the external end, so it will never be as cheap to implement, or as ubiquitous, as USB.
I hear that "cost advantage" argument a lot, but I really don't think there's much validity to it.
Ifixit breakdowns show the iPad material costs aren't that high. I'm sure Apple gets good supplier deals, but that's just adding to their profits; they've got plenty of room to lower the price if they want to.
Competing tablet manufacturers are pricing their tablets the same or higher because their product has the same or better hardware and they want to make a good profit themselves; the market is too new to commodify it yet. They've got room to undercut the iPad if they had to.
The proof is the NookColor - an Android tablet that is virtually equal to the original iPad in specs (though a smaller screen), yet because it's aimed at a different, cheaper market (eReaders), it was sold at half the iPad's price, as low as $200.
After all, if Apple is getting such good deals on parts why isn't the iPhone undercutting its competition too?
Guess you were lucky.
That's when the Native Development Kit was first released.
Though arguably, since 2.2's inclusion of an automatic JIT compiler, everything is native code now. And of course the system libraries always were, which is what 90%+ of most apps' time is spent in.
Then there's the hardware - CPU speed, available RAM etc, which tend to be higher on flagship Android devices as a rule. But I expect you're not really interested in actual resulting performance, you've probably just got something against VMs.
If Apple was really interested in helping its geekier customers rather than just locking people into their own services, they'd provide their own equivalent of Google's "fastboot oem unlock" - voids your warranty, no support, knock yourself out. Even Microsoft gets this.
Oh, and they'd probably relax their "duplication" clause and allow apps that compete with their own services, like better mail clients or even the improved Google Maps, rather than hiding behind their lame "oh the consumer might get confused" excuse. As it is, you have to admit they have their less-technical customers (and their own bottom line) much more firmly in mind.
If by "content creation" you mean some basic typing or low-end media editing. I'm sure it's fine for consumers (blogging, youtube etc) and I do know a couple of professionals who prefer the iPad for filling out reports, simple presentations etc, but for almost anything substantial, there's no comparison at all with laptops & PCs. Tablets are sharply limited by screen area, resolution, memory, processor speed, storage, connection bandwidth, graphics power, peripherals - pretty much in every possible way except mobility.
- Substantial writing is a lot easier with more screen area, especially if you want to research stuff at the same time.
- Detailed photoshopping, large images, not the basic levels & color stuff.
- Drawing/painting (with a pressure tablet, as you said earlier)
- Final Cut/Avid-level film editing
- Compositing
- 3D rendering
- Software development
- Web page development
- CAD
and far more; these are just some of the things I occasionally need to do.
Even the many things a tablet *can* do, can be done far more easily with more powerful hardware, larger screens and richer input peripherals. The sole advantage a tablet has is mobility, and that's a pretty small consideration for the vast majority of real, paid work - *especially* content creation. While tablets certainly have their place (I have one), they're never going to replace PCs or laptops for most of what many, many people need to do.
P.S. This of course applies to all tablets, not just iPads, so relax.
Nice try, but there's no "book of Suran."
Sorry, I misspelled that. I was referring to the Sunan al-Tirmidhi. The GP's link mentions it.
I believe the Koran itself doesn't actually specify how many virgins; that was mentioned in the Book of Suran instead as a fifth-hand recollection of something Mohammed said. Also, there's no mention of them being specifically available only for martyrs.
There's also some doubt about the virgin part. Some scholars believe that the word "hur" is better translated as "white raisin".
Try building a house using a teddybear sometime.
Stop complaining, download SL4A, and build your own tea-timer in 2 lines of the scripting language of your choice. One of the examples is a two-line script that scans a barcode and looks it up on Amazon - did your 433MHz Celeron do that?
Seriously, there will of course be many things your phone cannot do relative to your PC (lack of keyboard, small screen blah blah) and conversely many things your phone can that your PC hasn't a hope of (mobility, GPS, camera blah blah). People write phone apps based on what they think people will use the platform for, and there are thousands of apps that do stuff that is totally impractical on PCs.
Yes, you can install ffmpeg to recode video with if you want, or busybox and go further. The kernel is Linux, so you can get the NDK, cross-compile gcc for it, and start writing or porting whatever you like. If you don't mind using vi on a 3.7" touchscreen.
there is also the possibility that Apple did this only to protect developers interests
That's a more cynical view, but I think it quite likely factored in (after all, Apple would get their cut of further sales).
I agree that pixel-doubling is the most practical scaling approach, though with hardware scaling I doubt the CPU/GPU load of arbitrary scales would be too great for most apps (games may be another matter), and even filtered scaling can look fine at retina pixel densities. Using pixels as logical units makes sense, though if the coords are aren't floating point then they're going to be stuck with integer multiples of the resolution like it or not, which is definitely going to be restricting at some point if it isn't already (e.g. the rumoured doubled 2K iPad screen would be a big ask, and reportedly had to be put off for a year, while Android tablets scaled relatively easily to 720p in the meantime, just like how the 3GS was stuck on HVGA while other phones had already moved forward to WVGA).
I certainly agree that dynamic-layout UIs, while better than nothing, are hardly going to solve everything - as you say, there are too many cases where it fits awkwardly at best. Using Fragment panes as tools to divide up your screen area is definitely going to help in many cases, independently of any dynamic element layout, and will ease the job of having a single app lay itself out for a wider range of screens (also helpful for separate "HD" versions of apps, if desired). I personally think having a single app covering both phones and tablets is preferable (though not always practical), but the main thing IMHO is to give the developer the choice.
Anyhow, thanks for your comments.
Really? Well that sucks. You're saying Apple deliberately chose a sub-par method of scaling legacy apps solely to force developers to improve them? Even I didn't think they were that cruel to their developers, or to their users. As you say, it just results in legacy apps being dismissed by users, and who wants that (or the 5 inch buttons)?.
Users will of course prefer a better-optimised layout, so many developers will update their apps without being forced, in order to remain competitive. Otherwise, users will simply switch to a better app - there's plenty of competition. No need to cripple the old apps to try and force this. Rather, I suspect Apple was just doing the best it could given its relatively fixed UI API.
But the fact is, some apps will never get updated, so a better method of making those apps usable has to be preferable. Android's UI behaves more like a resizable window, so text & buttons stay the same (physical) size but lists get longer and text fields get larger. You may still see wasted space in some cases, but it works better than naïve scaling and double-size buttons.
Personally, I think Honeycomb's new Fragments API is a great idea, though not exactly innovative. Resizable/reusable view panes on PCs have been around for a dozen years plus, they work well there, and will definitely make things easier on the phone/tablet side. I'd like to know more about the iOS API too, to see what Apple's approach is like, but as I don't own the required Mac for development, it's just idle curiosity.
I read the original post, and the one I replied to. Perhaps you could point out to me where it talks about the iPad being hard to beat at its pricepoint, or even where he says there's nothing competitive for $100 less?
All I could see were complaints about how Android tablets ought to be as little as $200, but that the 8 (eight!) cheapo $200 tablets he bought were unsurprisingly all crap. He does say that tablets priced the *same* as the iPad were far better, but apparently this isn't good enough for him somehow. Moving on, I saw him putting words into some guy's mouth followed by a list of crappy tablets and a request to be shown "ONE that is not garbage" (I mentioned two, both of which cost less than the iPad).
If he didn't WANT to buy a crappy tablet, why did he buy *eight*? Is it so hard to guess that that's all you'll get for so little money (especially after the first couple)? Perhaps you interpreted his words somewhat differently to me, but I don't see a list of bad $200 tablets to be evidence that a $500 tablet is as cheap as you can get, especially when there are obvious counter-examples (Notion Ink's Adam starts from US$375 and frankly embarrasses the $499 iPad in most respects). But if the fight *isn't* over price, as you say, then I guess that leaves hardware features (nod to Android) and choice of platform (subjective).
The Adam has been shipping for a month, and people have them in their hands.
The Xoom will be available in stores Feb 24th, i.e. tomorrow (after a week's delay). Is that close enough for you? It's a little more expensive than the iPad, but has far more features. The wifi-only version is equivalently priced but further off, yes.
A rooted Nook Color is certainly a geek's toy; I'd agree it's not a mass-market product. Luckily, we're all geeks on Slashdot, yes? It's definitely a valid option for many people here.
Why do you keep buying such ridiculously cheap tablets when you know they're all so crappy? And why do you focusing so hard on the crap when there are much better tablets available?
If you want an Android tablet that's half the price of an iPad without being complete junk, buy a Nook Color and root it. If you want a tablet that is quite a lot better than the iPad and still cheaper, look at the Adam. Just don't keep scraping the bottom of the market then complaining, as if it was somehow Google's fault.
I certainly agree that the cheapest Android tablets are junk, just like the cheapest phones, cheapest cars, and cheapest products of any open market. But we don't judge all cars by the crap ones when there are many great alternatives, and those are now arriving (with Google's blessing).
Take the Notion Ink Adam - cheaper than iPad, much fancier hardware (including a Pixel Qi screen option for full daylight operation), and a UI with lots of nice tablet-oriented improvements. The Galaxy Tab sold well (with less than 2% returns) despite rumours to the contrary, and of course the new Honeycomb tablets now arriving are far more capable for a similar or slightly higher price to the nearest competing iPad.
Incidentally, you might want to check out the Kno. It's a single (or dual) 14.1" screen tablet with stylus, running Ubuntu.
You can get Android tablets at slightly cheaper prices (Notion Ink's Adam), equivalent prices and higher prices (Xoom) - and of all of these significantly outstrip the iPad in features. From what we've heard, they will outstrip the iPad 2 as well. Don't know why you think this isn't competitive.
If you go a fair bit cheaper, the Nook Color makes a very decent alternative (some assembly required). Going much cheaper unsurprisingly requires a big drop in features and usability, but we're talking less than half the price of the cheapest iPad now. Still, there's hardware and price points for every budget.
Can't imagine why you think Android is directionless.
The difference is that, where Apple controls, restricts and micromanages as you say, Google simply leads Android, and vendors are free to follow along or not (most do). The only incentive to follow that Google explicitly provides is its own apps and Market, which are arguably important but not actually necessary.
The iPad also had a pretty limited selection of "optimised" apps at release; didn't take long for that to change.
And unlike with iOS, most existing Android apps scale nicely to any resolution and aspect, rather than just being pixel-doubled, thanks to Android's resolution-independent UI API. You can release a tablet-optimised version of your app to take better advantage of the extra screen area, but at least it won't be ignored altogether.