They looked at World of Warcraft's Rogue and Diablo II's Assassin, but decided each was ultimately unsatisfying for a game like Diablo III.
Is that so? Because everything else listed sounds exactly like what the Assassin was in Diablo II (By the way, I really liked the Assassin).
Thus was born the combo system. Many of the Monk's major attacks have three different stages. Clicking on an enemy once gives you the first stage, clicking again (within a short period of time) gives you the second stage, and another click for the third stage. For example: Exploding Palm. The first stage hits for 35% of your weapon damage. Second stage hits for 50%.
Three charges? "Exploding palm".. I guess that's more original than exploding kick, right?:-)
Now, the most interesting part about these combos is that you can mix and match.
Remind anyone of the combo system for the Assassin?
An attack called Seven Sided Strike makes the Monk zip around part of the screen, teleporting between enemies to attack them.
An interesting twist on Dragon Flight, I suppose?
Blizzard seems to be borrowing a WHOLE LOT from themselves on Diablo II.
GPS units have basically taken a map and stored it digitally, created a way to keep the map up to date, track your location on that map and give you verbal cues based on that very same map again.
This is like saying Audio books are the end of reading.
While each qubit is actually made up of a billion aluminum atoms, it acts like a single atom that can occupy two different energy states.
This sounds a like a bose-einstein condensate, where many atoms will act is if though they are all part of a larger, single atom. Also, it gains some pretty interesting properties, neither of which can be described exactly as solid, liquid or gas.
The article didn't mention anything about near absolute zero temps, though.
If they did it specifically to push the limits of the law, they need to be given a sentence of having to clean parking meters or something else tedious and annoying that makes the point that this isn't a good thing.
Testing the law is not illegal and if the acts to test it are not deemed illegal, then no punishment is necessary, IMO.
But, as soon as they hit a critical mass, the bureaucracy becomes the dominate force and turns the talent into powerless labor.
When companies *have* to be large, I believe keeping small, relatively autonomous groups of talented employees is the cure. Once a group becomes too large or the group is stripped of its autonomy to enforce mono-culture, innovation takes a back seat to sweeping, generic, stuffy rules that attempt to keep things 'safe' and 'organized'.
Just about every company wants complete control from the top -- The problem is it's dangerous to assume people from the 'top' have enough insight and knowledge to make good decisions for the 'bottom'. Letting groups of people do their own thing is chaotic, but it's probably good for incubating fresh material and novel ideas.
And that sounds much like parts of corporate America and the "rank" system, where those best able to manipulate their managers and stab their co-workers in the back successfully are best enabled for advancement
Phew, wow... I'm sure glad that doesn't happen anywhere else... I was worried it might be like that in other places too.
Wikipedia is missing the media rich content found on every other software-based encyclopedia, like Encarta and Worldbook. Since such software is dying off because the things like Wikipedia are so packed full of free, up-to-date information, it seems like a natural extension for the free encyclopedia.
Sure, links to other websites are fine, but the archival of human knowledge found in Wikipedia is important too. Links get broken, external media disappears... I'm sure WP would much rather have their own content which they control, than rely on other sources that taint media with ads, that are inconsistent in formats etc...
When you see the kind of junk on YouTube, I know, its worrysome. I know there will be copyright issues, pornography etc... It will cost more money for sure... But it's time to make use of the rich feature set Internet brings to us and WP. It's an advantage WP has over printed textbooks and they should use such advantages IF they can handle it.
I guess that's the issue though: Even YouTube is having a hard time profiting from video hosting.
Speaking of YouTube -- and maybe this is a disastrous idea -- but what if Wikipedia relied on a service like YouTube? Obviously that's not going to work (advertising, comments, flash player etc...), but think about it: Hosting videos and filtering inappropriate stuff is what they are good at. Maybe with some negotiation and charitable good will on YouTube's part, there could be special provisions for Wikipedia. For example, YouTube could host user-uploaded video content for WP, but without all the commercial baggage (Read: charitable). However, if you followed the link, it would take you to YouTube to show the video in high-def or whatever... commercial free, no junk comments etc. It wouldn't be profitable for YouTube, but they'd have *more* useful content on their website thanks to WP, drawing more users and good will. Also, WP would benefit from the already established efficiency of YouTube.
Again though, that's kind of a crazy idea with a plethora of potential pit falls, but just brain storming. Yes, there would have to be many changes to accommodate these videos, WP would have to be pretty trusting of TY and finally YT would have to be in an awfully giving mood itself.
Personally, I'd much rather have WP host the material, but find a way to do so for far less than I'm imagining the real cost will be.
What I wonder is: How can Apple distribute the Remote application for free? It is an additional feature that was not provided with the original sale. There is no technical difference between downloading Remote through iTunes and downloading iPhone OS 3.0 through iTunes.
In the case of not charging for Apple Remote: Arguably, Apple DID charge iPod customers for it -- $10 for the 2.0 update. The 2.0 firmware actually introduced the App Store itself, which means Remote is conceivably covered under that $10 fee.
I think... Somewhere... somehow... someone makes the decision as to whether it's a feature 'worthy' of a new product or not. Enabling hardware features seem to be presumed as such, but occasionally software counts too (Think: App Store, which provides far more value than your average, new feature). 3.0 enabled A2P bluetooth (Enabled hardware, in a sense?) and some other highly anticipated changes. It probably could have sold *exclusively* as an iPod Touch successor and I think that would be their reasoning. Apple doesn't usually charge for the incremental updates though (eg. 2.1 etc..), right?
While I'm trying pretty hard to reason this out, it's pretty dicey. Personally, I think Apple is being greedy and using this as an excuse. Even if charging for updates were *required* by law, I imagine they could probably just charge $0.99 and cover their legal bases.
I know... this doesn't change the fact they charge for iPod firmware updates -- and Apple's reasoning is certainly open to well-deserved criticism -- but they lay the blame squarely on the Sarbanes-Oxley act.
From what I understand, SOX is a law that intends to make public companies more accountable to share holders. Apple has interpreted SOX in such a way that it feels as though it *must* charge for updates which unleash new features that substantially increase the potential value of the device. This appears to be applicable to virtually all hardware-enabling features and reasonably 'novel' software features. 3.0 is such an update.
Why doesn't this affect the iPhone? That's because the iPhone is a subscription-based device. As such, it continually generates profit for the company and its shareholders. The iPod Touch has no subscription, meaning that anytime Apple unleashes a new set of big features for free, they supposedly have "cheated" shareholders by not releasing a new product instead. To generate revenue, they charge for the update. The idea is this keeps them in compliance with SOX by generating extra revenue for 'shareholders'. Obviously, Apple is making a profit, but I understand SOX compliance also costs big companies millions of dollars in fees (lawyers, accountants and God knows what else)... Who knows. And remember: Minor updates are supposedly fine; major updates are supposedly not fine -- although I'm not sure who the legally viable arbiter of that decision would be, exactly.
Like it or not... Believe it or not... It's the way Apple has dealth with this. Incidentally, it's the same reason they charged $2.99 for 802.11n support on Macbooks through Software Updater.
Moonsecure is an AV based on clamwin: it actually employs a real-time scanner. clamwin offers no active protection, so it is pretty much useless for most user scenarios.
In all honesty, I've given both Moonsecure and clamwin many chances over the past couple of years. I don't want to admit it, but I feel as though I've been largely disappointed with the detection rates, the interface and the speed of both AVs. I've used them mostly in a 'workbench' setting though, scanning client drives outside of the system. In comparison to the other (commercial) scanners I use regularly, I've not been impressed.
NOD32 works fantastically well, although the licenses are comparatively more expensive when compared to some of the competition that's in the 'same league' (Eg. Kaspersky)
I haven't used the remote administrator to manage NOD32 clients (We don't have enough here), but after scanning thousands of PCs, I can vouch for the quality of NOD32. It's anecdotal, but I concur with many of the online results which show NOD32 has near-perfect detection rates and very low false positives. We keep trying different scanners, but NOD32 seems to do the best job.
"Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?'
Additionally, this isn't correct. Microsoft isn't charging you to remove the sulfur smell -- it's free. If the water company offered to do it for free, I'd say sign me up.
I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly
Monopoly? What the hell are you talking about?
Google is an advertiser.. Just like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of other companies on the Interweb and in real life. Google surely has a tremendous market share, but they don't prevent anyone from advertising with other companies... And these other companies get a LOT of advertising despite Google's presence. Hell, Yahoo! is still worth billions of dollars, and their products don't have nearly the crazy media glitz that Google seems to get. Lots of people still advertise with other companies like Yahoo! and Google's competition can still turn huge profits. Being #1 doesn't make your a monopoly.
The same goes with their web search product: They aren't even close to being a monopoly. I have a choice to use Yahoo, or Metacrawler or Ask or some other God awful search engine. What Google IS though, is very good. Because of this, most people *choose* to use it. They have a lot of inertia because they do lots of cool, free things and capitalize upon their good will and free publicity. Google is not a monopoly. Also, their search product isn't perfect... It would take some clever work, but any individual or company that creates a search engine which can compete with the quality of Google and offer something useful and novel could very well compete with them.
If Google had an exclusive deal with major Internet browser companies and/or ISPs to block competitors in the advertising and/or search markets... Well, that would be much closer to a monopoly.
SD card? Not on *most* phones, but a Micro SD... sure.
I think it is important to note these are all a hell of a lot more expensive (and slower) than an equivalent SD card for 16GB+ memory capacities. It *would* be nice if any of the iPhone came with an expansion slot, but it comes with more memory than any other phone -- standard.
I'm sure Apple weighed the pros and cons of this. They always seem to put a substantial emphasis on physical design and probably decided adding to the size of the phone or working the electronics within the the reduced available space wasn't a fair trade off in terms of style or cost.
I share your view in a sense, but that's an unfair comparison.
While I'm sure there's a substantial markup, don't forget they have to integrate this memory on the board which takes up valuable PCB real estate. The memory may also even be of better quality (Think solid state hard drives, where faster, more expensive SLC flash might be used).... Okay, probably not, but just playing devil's advocate for a bit.:-)
Regardless, I'm sure it doesn't *really* cost anywhere near $100... but sdcard comparisons are a little unfair.
Im sure 90% of the popular apps out there can be coded up as web apps, but instead Apple has created a market for buyable apps instead of promoting cross-platform free web apps.
When the iPhone was first released, Apple insisted web applications were the best thing since sliced bread. They kept this mentality for nearly a year. Needless to say, customers were unhappy because web apps require access to the Interwebs, many things can't be practically done (Ocarina, Shazaam, 3D games etc..) and functionality can be limited. So, a *real* SDK was released and now we have apps that can do or be almost anything.
Maybe web apps work best for what YOU do with your phone -- and that's cool -- but don't write off the importance of real, non-web applications.
I just saw an iphone commercial about "there's an app to find apartments." Err, my beater Treo with WinMo5 does that. I just visit the apartment sites with my browser. No need to spend 10 dollars on another app.
.. And you can still do that on an iPhone. This is not an issue - Apple has just given you a second way of doing it. The Safari browser on the iPhone is honestly the best one available for a mobile phone and way better than that Internet Explorer crap that you use to look for apartments (eg. WM5's IE supports only a tiny subset of Javascript).
Besides, there are plenty of free (and good) apps on the iTunes store. I think you just have that common case of iPhone dispositionitis that's going around...;-)
"If they start making products people don't want, and start losing users, then Apple's strategy will run into problems," said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital.
Microsoft To be fair, everyone seems to hate the company and have nothing but bitter contempt for all of their products... but Microsoft is indeed doing OK.
There is nothing amazing about applications in a browser, it is not necessary, and while it is convenient at times (at a computer that is not your own), when available a native code app will usually do the same job but "better".
I think you already know this, but it's not about doing it better: It's about ubiquity.
While I agree it's another "layer of abstraction", the point of using a browser is access from anywhere / anything. Whether it's a desktop, netbook, phone, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, CISC, RISC etc.. you can potentially run whatever it is and have the same exact same experience on any platform. That's pretty cool.
By using native applications, you just don't get that ubiquity. People also want stuff that just works... Users don't want to install different versions of the same app on different devices and deal with the occasional issues of not having the correct libraries, UI differences and so on. It's also a terrible pain for the developers: Who wants to maintain, port and compile dozens of versions of the same product?
With the idea of native apps not being practical for the purpose of ubiquity, one would probably point to cross-platform frameworks, like Java or GTK. That's fine and good, but these things require some "coaxing", if you will, especially in the UI department. A really simple app might be work just fine, but you have to be careful about using OS-specific functions and more complex programs sometimes need to be changed substantially. Applications that use web browser technologies don't really suffer from this.
So, how do we keep the experience exactly the same on every system, every device, everywhere? Why not use well supported web technologies like HTML, CSS, Ajax, Javascript, Flash etc? To me, it just seems like a natural extension of that greater desire to be "ubiquitous". There are certainly limitations and a native app will be faster, but is it better? I think that depends on how you define "better". Functionality and compatibility are the main concern of web apps and to address these things, using the browser as a platform of sorts... well... it makes a lot of sense.
*bludgeons you repeatedly* WERE, WERE. This is not Kentucky!
"was" and "were" as used here are both correct -- which shows the AC's ignorance.
The only nit pick you can make is that the subjunctive mood of "was" in this case (probably) isn't as correct as "were" in this sentence. If given the choice, "were" is a better fit because the sentence implies something that (probably) isn't something the GP was going to do, but if the GP were really considering claming pirated movies, then "was" would actually be the most appropriate word choice.
The best choice is merely subjective. By the way, I used to live in KY... I'm sorry the educational system failed you so miserably.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
They looked at World of Warcraft's Rogue and Diablo II's Assassin, but decided each was ultimately unsatisfying for a game like Diablo III.
Is that so? Because everything else listed sounds exactly like what the Assassin was in Diablo II (By the way, I really liked the Assassin).
Thus was born the combo system. Many of the Monk's major attacks have three different stages. Clicking on an enemy once gives you the first stage, clicking again (within a short period of time) gives you the second stage, and another click for the third stage. For example: Exploding Palm. The first stage hits for 35% of your weapon damage. Second stage hits for 50%.
Three charges? "Exploding palm".. I guess that's more original than exploding kick, right? :-)
Now, the most interesting part about these combos is that you can mix and match.
Remind anyone of the combo system for the Assassin?
An attack called Seven Sided Strike makes the Monk zip around part of the screen, teleporting between enemies to attack them.
An interesting twist on Dragon Flight, I suppose?
Blizzard seems to be borrowing a WHOLE LOT from themselves on Diablo II.
A pixel is a pixel, regardless of how many pixels reside within a particular space. That doesn't change that fact that 1m = 1 pixel.
Worse yet, the DPI setting on your OS doesn't effect the actual "DPI" of your screen.
Regardless, it still takes 5x Chrome's startup time with the fix so... peh.
It's true. ;-)
GPS units have basically taken a map and stored it digitally, created a way to keep the map up to date, track your location on that map and give you verbal cues based on that very same map again.
This is like saying Audio books are the end of reading.
While each qubit is actually made up of a billion aluminum atoms, it acts like a single atom that can occupy two different energy states.
This sounds a like a bose-einstein condensate, where many atoms will act is if though they are all part of a larger, single atom. Also, it gains some pretty interesting properties, neither of which can be described exactly as solid, liquid or gas.
The article didn't mention anything about near absolute zero temps, though.
If they did it specifically to push the limits of the law, they need to be given a sentence of having to clean parking meters or something else tedious and annoying that makes the point that this isn't a good thing.
Testing the law is not illegal and if the acts to test it are not deemed illegal, then no punishment is necessary, IMO.
Two Words. Socialized Healthcare.
Yes, I much prefer the warm, caring bureaucracy of a private insurance agency over the cold, sterile bureaucracy of a government agency...
But, as soon as they hit a critical mass, the bureaucracy becomes the dominate force and turns the talent into powerless labor.
When companies *have* to be large, I believe keeping small, relatively autonomous groups of talented employees is the cure. Once a group becomes too large or the group is stripped of its autonomy to enforce mono-culture, innovation takes a back seat to sweeping, generic, stuffy rules that attempt to keep things 'safe' and 'organized'.
Just about every company wants complete control from the top -- The problem is it's dangerous to assume people from the 'top' have enough insight and knowledge to make good decisions for the 'bottom'. Letting groups of people do their own thing is chaotic, but it's probably good for incubating fresh material and novel ideas.
And that sounds much like parts of corporate America and the "rank" system, where those best able to manipulate their managers and stab their co-workers in the back successfully are best enabled for advancement
Phew, wow... I'm sure glad that doesn't happen anywhere else... I was worried it might be like that in other places too.
Wikipedia is missing the media rich content found on every other software-based encyclopedia, like Encarta and Worldbook. Since such software is dying off because the things like Wikipedia are so packed full of free, up-to-date information, it seems like a natural extension for the free encyclopedia.
Sure, links to other websites are fine, but the archival of human knowledge found in Wikipedia is important too. Links get broken, external media disappears... I'm sure WP would much rather have their own content which they control, than rely on other sources that taint media with ads, that are inconsistent in formats etc...
When you see the kind of junk on YouTube, I know, its worrysome. I know there will be copyright issues, pornography etc... It will cost more money for sure... But it's time to make use of the rich feature set Internet brings to us and WP. It's an advantage WP has over printed textbooks and they should use such advantages IF they can handle it.
I guess that's the issue though: Even YouTube is having a hard time profiting from video hosting.
Speaking of YouTube -- and maybe this is a disastrous idea -- but what if Wikipedia relied on a service like YouTube? Obviously that's not going to work (advertising, comments, flash player etc...), but think about it: Hosting videos and filtering inappropriate stuff is what they are good at. Maybe with some negotiation and charitable good will on YouTube's part, there could be special provisions for Wikipedia. For example, YouTube could host user-uploaded video content for WP, but without all the commercial baggage (Read: charitable). However, if you followed the link, it would take you to YouTube to show the video in high-def or whatever... commercial free, no junk comments etc. It wouldn't be profitable for YouTube, but they'd have *more* useful content on their website thanks to WP, drawing more users and good will. Also, WP would benefit from the already established efficiency of YouTube.
Again though, that's kind of a crazy idea with a plethora of potential pit falls, but just brain storming. Yes, there would have to be many changes to accommodate these videos, WP would have to be pretty trusting of TY and finally YT would have to be in an awfully giving mood itself.
Personally, I'd much rather have WP host the material, but find a way to do so for far less than I'm imagining the real cost will be.
What I wonder is: How can Apple distribute the Remote application for free? It is an additional feature that was not provided with the original sale. There is no technical difference between downloading Remote through iTunes and downloading iPhone OS 3.0 through iTunes.
In the case of not charging for Apple Remote: Arguably, Apple DID charge iPod customers for it -- $10 for the 2.0 update. The 2.0 firmware actually introduced the App Store itself, which means Remote is conceivably covered under that $10 fee.
I think... Somewhere... somehow... someone makes the decision as to whether it's a feature 'worthy' of a new product or not. Enabling hardware features seem to be presumed as such, but occasionally software counts too (Think: App Store, which provides far more value than your average, new feature). 3.0 enabled A2P bluetooth (Enabled hardware, in a sense?) and some other highly anticipated changes. It probably could have sold *exclusively* as an iPod Touch successor and I think that would be their reasoning. Apple doesn't usually charge for the incremental updates though (eg. 2.1 etc..), right?
While I'm trying pretty hard to reason this out, it's pretty dicey. Personally, I think Apple is being greedy and using this as an excuse. Even if charging for updates were *required* by law, I imagine they could probably just charge $0.99 and cover their legal bases.
I know... this doesn't change the fact they charge for iPod firmware updates -- and Apple's reasoning is certainly open to well-deserved criticism -- but they lay the blame squarely on the Sarbanes-Oxley act.
From what I understand, SOX is a law that intends to make public companies more accountable to share holders. Apple has interpreted SOX in such a way that it feels as though it *must* charge for updates which unleash new features that substantially increase the potential value of the device. This appears to be applicable to virtually all hardware-enabling features and reasonably 'novel' software features. 3.0 is such an update.
Why doesn't this affect the iPhone? That's because the iPhone is a subscription-based device. As such, it continually generates profit for the company and its shareholders. The iPod Touch has no subscription, meaning that anytime Apple unleashes a new set of big features for free, they supposedly have "cheated" shareholders by not releasing a new product instead. To generate revenue, they charge for the update. The idea is this keeps them in compliance with SOX by generating extra revenue for 'shareholders'. Obviously, Apple is making a profit, but I understand SOX compliance also costs big companies millions of dollars in fees (lawyers, accountants and God knows what else)... Who knows. And remember: Minor updates are supposedly fine; major updates are supposedly not fine -- although I'm not sure who the legally viable arbiter of that decision would be, exactly.
Like it or not... Believe it or not... It's the way Apple has dealth with this. Incidentally, it's the same reason they charged $2.99 for 802.11n support on Macbooks through Software Updater.
Moonsecure is an AV based on clamwin: it actually employs a real-time scanner. clamwin offers no active protection, so it is pretty much useless for most user scenarios.
In all honesty, I've given both Moonsecure and clamwin many chances over the past couple of years. I don't want to admit it, but I feel as though I've been largely disappointed with the detection rates, the interface and the speed of both AVs. I've used them mostly in a 'workbench' setting though, scanning client drives outside of the system. In comparison to the other (commercial) scanners I use regularly, I've not been impressed.
Suggesting: don"t use MS Windows.
Yes, and don't venture into the outer world either... You'll obtain the swine consumption.
NOD32 works fantastically well, although the licenses are comparatively more expensive when compared to some of the competition that's in the 'same league' (Eg. Kaspersky)
I haven't used the remote administrator to manage NOD32 clients (We don't have enough here), but after scanning thousands of PCs, I can vouch for the quality of NOD32. It's anecdotal, but I concur with many of the online results which show NOD32 has near-perfect detection rates and very low false positives. We keep trying different scanners, but NOD32 seems to do the best job.
"Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?'
Additionally, this isn't correct. Microsoft isn't charging you to remove the sulfur smell -- it's free. If the water company offered to do it for free, I'd say sign me up.
I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly
Monopoly? What the hell are you talking about?
Google is an advertiser.. Just like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of other companies on the Interweb and in real life. Google surely has a tremendous market share, but they don't prevent anyone from advertising with other companies... And these other companies get a LOT of advertising despite Google's presence. Hell, Yahoo! is still worth billions of dollars, and their products don't have nearly the crazy media glitz that Google seems to get. Lots of people still advertise with other companies like Yahoo! and Google's competition can still turn huge profits. Being #1 doesn't make your a monopoly.
The same goes with their web search product: They aren't even close to being a monopoly. I have a choice to use Yahoo, or Metacrawler or Ask or some other God awful search engine. What Google IS though, is very good. Because of this, most people *choose* to use it. They have a lot of inertia because they do lots of cool, free things and capitalize upon their good will and free publicity. Google is not a monopoly. Also, their search product isn't perfect... It would take some clever work, but any individual or company that creates a search engine which can compete with the quality of Google and offer something useful and novel could very well compete with them.
If Google had an exclusive deal with major Internet browser companies and/or ISPs to block competitors in the advertising and/or search markets... Well, that would be much closer to a monopoly.
I have no clue why that posted anonymously. I didn't check the box...
SD card? Not on *most* phones, but a Micro SD... sure.
I think it is important to note these are all a hell of a lot more expensive (and slower) than an equivalent SD card for 16GB+ memory capacities. It *would* be nice if any of the iPhone came with an expansion slot, but it comes with more memory than any other phone -- standard.
I'm sure Apple weighed the pros and cons of this. They always seem to put a substantial emphasis on physical design and probably decided adding to the size of the phone or working the electronics within the the reduced available space wasn't a fair trade off in terms of style or cost.
same thing in an SD card is roughly $20.
I share your view in a sense, but that's an unfair comparison.
... Okay, probably not, but just playing devil's advocate for a bit. :-)
While I'm sure there's a substantial markup, don't forget they have to integrate this memory on the board which takes up valuable PCB real estate. The memory may also even be of better quality (Think solid state hard drives, where faster, more expensive SLC flash might be used).
Regardless, I'm sure it doesn't *really* cost anywhere near $100... but sdcard comparisons are a little unfair.
Through what appears to be the universal language of mathematics... what else?
Im sure 90% of the popular apps out there can be coded up as web apps, but instead Apple has created a market for buyable apps instead of promoting cross-platform free web apps.
When the iPhone was first released, Apple insisted web applications were the best thing since sliced bread. They kept this mentality for nearly a year. Needless to say, customers were unhappy because web apps require access to the Interwebs, many things can't be practically done (Ocarina, Shazaam, 3D games etc..) and functionality can be limited. So, a *real* SDK was released and now we have apps that can do or be almost anything.
Maybe web apps work best for what YOU do with your phone -- and that's cool -- but don't write off the importance of real, non-web applications.
I just saw an iphone commercial about "there's an app to find apartments." Err, my beater Treo with WinMo5 does that. I just visit the apartment sites with my browser. No need to spend 10 dollars on another app.
.. And you can still do that on an iPhone. This is not an issue - Apple has just given you a second way of doing it. The Safari browser on the iPhone is honestly the best one available for a mobile phone and way better than that Internet Explorer crap that you use to look for apartments (eg. WM5's IE supports only a tiny subset of Javascript).
;-)
Besides, there are plenty of free (and good) apps on the iTunes store. I think you just have that common case of iPhone dispositionitis that's going around...
"Amazing insight from Mr Genius"
"If they start making products people don't want, and start losing users, then Apple's strategy will run into problems," said Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital.
Microsoft
To be fair, everyone seems to hate the company and have nothing but bitter contempt for all of their products... but Microsoft is indeed doing OK.
There is nothing amazing about applications in a browser, it is not necessary, and while it is convenient at times (at a computer that is not your own), when available a native code app will usually do the same job but "better".
I think you already know this, but it's not about doing it better: It's about ubiquity.
While I agree it's another "layer of abstraction", the point of using a browser is access from anywhere / anything. Whether it's a desktop, netbook, phone, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, CISC, RISC etc.. you can potentially run whatever it is and have the same exact same experience on any platform. That's pretty cool.
By using native applications, you just don't get that ubiquity. People also want stuff that just works... Users don't want to install different versions of the same app on different devices and deal with the occasional issues of not having the correct libraries, UI differences and so on. It's also a terrible pain for the developers: Who wants to maintain, port and compile dozens of versions of the same product?
With the idea of native apps not being practical for the purpose of ubiquity, one would probably point to cross-platform frameworks, like Java or GTK. That's fine and good, but these things require some "coaxing", if you will, especially in the UI department. A really simple app might be work just fine, but you have to be careful about using OS-specific functions and more complex programs sometimes need to be changed substantially. Applications that use web browser technologies don't really suffer from this.
So, how do we keep the experience exactly the same on every system, every device, everywhere? Why not use well supported web technologies like HTML, CSS, Ajax, Javascript, Flash etc? To me, it just seems like a natural extension of that greater desire to be "ubiquitous". There are certainly limitations and a native app will be faster, but is it better? I think that depends on how you define "better". Functionality and compatibility are the main concern of web apps and to address these things, using the browser as a platform of sorts... well... it makes a lot of sense.
So if I was to upload pirated movies
*bludgeons you repeatedly* WERE, WERE. This is not Kentucky!
"was" and "were" as used here are both correct -- which shows the AC's ignorance.
:-)
The only nit pick you can make is that the subjunctive mood of "was" in this case (probably) isn't as correct as "were" in this sentence. If given the choice, "were" is a better fit because the sentence implies something that (probably) isn't something the GP was going to do, but if the GP were really considering claming pirated movies, then "was" would actually be the most appropriate word choice.
The best choice is merely subjective. By the way, I used to live in KY... I'm sorry the educational system failed you so miserably.