A while ago I realized every single manufacturer of electronic devices I loved has either gone bankrupt or shut down that particular division. Here's my list in no particular order:
- Psion 5, 5MX, 5MX Pro - Palm III, Vx, m500 - Sony Clie NR70, NX70, TH55 and many others - Nokia E71, N900, N9
I hold a particular soft spot for Psion though, as their devices were truly works of art. It took a decade for the same level of integration between the OS and component applications to be matched. The hardware was (almost) bulletproof, with the 5 series sliding keyboard being a truly impressive piece of engineering. However having a battery life measured in DAYS is still a pipe dream...
I do seem to have a knack for picking dying technologies though. A friend joked that I should be given a free Windows phone, that will certainly spell its demise.
#2: avoid twisty two-lane canyon roads, and if cannot, go slow and keep to the right side of the lane. Disproportionately large number of accidents happen on these roads. Some because squids think they're Rossi and crash by themselves, and some because of oncoming cars crossing the center line. By simply not going to these type of roads, you reduce your chance of dying by several orders of magnitude.
Then what's the damn point in riding a bike? Save on gas, crawl from point A to point B and claim "I rode 1000km today in a straight line", or do you just enjoy being uncomfortable and less safe than in a car?
Take away the fun of the twisties and I may as well stick to my cage full time. At least then I can listen to music without headphones, have a smoke and a drink of water without stopping every 200km. And if a distracted driver does manage to plough into me, I'll have a cage and half a dozen airbags to protect me.
It's a bit sad you look at twisties as something to be avoided. Try them sometime, you may find you like them.
The difficulty with the N900 was that they introduced one phone. As an N900 user (still) I know that the N900 is not for everyone, and was targeted more at the tech-savvy user than your bog standard just-want-a-phone-that-works user. Not everyone wants a built in keyboard or a phone that large. In fact, one of the reasons I haven't changed phone is that it is so difficult to get a decent phone with a slide-out keyboard, similar the the N900. Suggestions welcomed...
Nokia needed to produce several phones around a similar theme aimed at different users, or do what Apple did and produce one phone to a very high standard aimed at the average user, not at a niche market (80/20 rule). Doing what they did was narrow minded and poor business sense.
This issue was discussed extensively on talk.maemo.org, but you are mostly correct. I had an N900 for a very long time, and not only did it have an awkward form factor due to its bulk and resistive screen (some UI elements were only accessible with the stylus), the hardware also had an enormous defect. The USB port would fall out even without being abused. At first Nokia denied the issue outright, but then started replacing the damaged phones. Which phone you'd get would be anyone's guess, ranging from the N900, N8 or E7.
I still loved it though, and with care and a couple of mods my USB survived. I loved the fully customizable interface (for instance one thing that just pisses me off about Android is the desktop grid that insists on spacing icons miles away from each other unless you run alternative launchers). I loved the true Linux repositories and apps that did not have ads. Yes, developers should be able to make money, but on the N900 people developed apps like they do on Linux, because it's fun and interesting. And I never found myself missing any features because some random Android app did not have an N900 equivalent.
The N900 was not without other problems. In Canada on my carrier I could only get Edge, not 3G. The hardware, while high end when the phone was released, is really old now and you could feel it. But most importantly, Nokia gave up on it only a year after its release. Ditching a high end, $700 phone so quickly is inexcusable. Their infrequent software updates, left bugs that were never fixed until the CSSU took over.
And you simply can't maintain a community around a single device. Eventually my N900 broke down when I crashed my bike, and when faced with replacing it I opted for a much faster Android. Many lead developers for the N900 went the same route, and I can't blame them.
So yes, Nokia should have released several devices running Maemo 5, and should have continued development of that platform. Jumping to Maemo 6, then Meego, then Windows only made them waste time and resources. I disagree with the need to always have a bleeding edge platform, which is why Maemo 5 was abandoned. Take the Samsung Galaxy Note for instance, which shipped with Android 2.3.5, a year and a half old OS and is extremely popular.
Nokia's support for developers was, frankly, not an enjoyable experience. This is where being part of the Windows universe will be an advantage to Nokia as that will be Microsoft's responsibility, not their own.
So they gave up control over half their product to a company that is known to release crappy OSes. Development and support may no longer be Nokia's responsibility, but it definitely affects its bottom line.
The fact that Google made it exceedingly easy for you to delete the information it has on you did not make you a fan? And it was not an all or nothing thing either. I could choose what to delete and what to keep.
At least as of a couple of months ago you could not delete the phones associated with a Market account. That bugged the hell out of me, because a phone is so easily traceable due to the unique IMEI.
But that's ok, because I started creating a new market account for every new phone I'd get, never to be used again once it was sold.
All Google accomplished through their privacy policy changes is force me to use their services differently. Up until a year ago I used to let gmail keep me logged in all the time. I used to have a YT account with playlists, subscribed channels, etc that was also logged in continuously. I never got into G+, since, well... FB (going to get into that in a bit).
I cannot get rid of my Gmail accounts. I HAVE to use one for Market access on my phone. I do however create a new Gmail account for every new phone I get, since Google in its infinite wisdom will not allow me to delete old phones from their database. It's nice to know that Google remembers all my phone models, ROM versions, IMEI numbers, apps installed better than I do. Migrating from one phone to another without syncing to Google is not even that difficult by the way. All you need is to export your contacts as vcf, back up your apps with Titanium backup, and back up your SMSes with SMS Backup and Restore. The slowest process is moving your pictures, music and videos, but that's a manual process anyway.
Another reason I cannot give up Gmail is that one of those accounts is tied into many website registrations. It would take days to change all my random sites registration info, notify all my contacts and I still haven't found a service as fast and reliable. By far the most difficult part would be migrating my contacts, as I still have idiot friends emailing me to a 10 years old ISP account that is only spam now. However I changed how I use Gmail. Instead of staying logged in all the time, I now log in, check my mail, read/reply/delete messages and then I log out. I also delete every single message that is not relevant, and I delete all messages after a while. Google obviously retains everything, however at some point the deleted messages are bound to become white noise. Did I delete them because they are not relevant, spam, outdated information or because I want to mess with Google's algorithms?
As far as YT is concerned, I had an account there before Google bought them. I saw nothing wrong with tying it into my Gmail account a few years back, since they still stayed separate. But since the privacy policy changes, I've deleted all my uploaded videos (all 3 of them), playlists and subscribed channels. I still listen to music on from YT, but I either bookmarked some clips or I just ripped them with flashgot. This started before the privacy changes, when YT reimplemented their playlist feature. If I'd play a song from my playlist, it would load the entire playlist and then continue playing every song there. I was unable to find a way to disable this behavior except through Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper.
G+ got the axe due to their mandatory name policy. Normally I'd consider having my potential G+ account disabled for using a nom de plume a feature. However that would take my Gmail accounts down as well. And I do have several, legitimate email accounts. So G+ out of principle. Besides, I already have a FB account which has proven to be enough of a PITA to keep at least somewhat private. I really don't need my life readily accessible on two separate security and privacy voids.
So ultimately all Google accomplished is information obfuscation on my part. I, as most people, still need their services. But when I search on Google, I don't want to see what my friends liked. Too many of my friends are idiots, and of the 3-4 whose opinions I actually value, I can easily call them up and talk to them in person. I also use search to look up stuff I did not know before. If I'm looking for a new gaming laptop, the fact I own an Asus should NOT affect the results in any way. And if I'm looking for a new set of racing shocks for my Suzuki, I will type in "Ohlins Sukuki shocks" to get reviews, and if I want a local dealer, I'll type "Ohlins Toronto dealers." I don't need or want Google to second guess me.
Writing on my phone, so I will be brief. After reading your post, I mostly agree with you. We do need clean energy, however i would still argue wind mills are not an answer. At least not in their current form or distribution. Some areas in the world are perfect for them, but not Ontario.
I see hundreds and hundreds of windmills all over west Texas (there are more every time I go out), and I still think they're beautiful. They're an aesthetically pleasing symbol of our progress towards a cleaner, better society.
And then when I head to the Gulf coast I pass all the oil refineries. Fucking disgusting blight on the land.
I know which I'd rather see.
Right, now refer back to my post and tell me where I supported oil or gas as an alternative fuel source. Thank you for providing a perfect demonstration of the straw man argument.
WHEN PROPERLY DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED (I cannot stress this enough), nuclear energy is absolutely safe, with zero emissions of any kind, cheap and reliable. Every single nuclear station that had an accident was based on 40-50 year old designs, and did not take into account all environmental factors. The obligatory car analogy? Look at the crash survivability of a 40-50 year old car compared to a modern one.
The same things applies to nuclear stations. The latest CANDU reactor designs are beyond safe, it is physically impossible for them to go into meltdown even if the plant shuts down unexpectedly and runs out of backup power like it happened with Fukushima. The same goes for other designs. But instead of decomissioning the old stations and building new ones, we continue using the old stations while scrambling for half assed solutions.
If you covered the entire surface of the US with wind mills, you would still run short of baseline power, let alone peak power requirements. Where the hell are you going to get the rest, if not from coal, gas or nuclear?!? Tidal energy? Solar energy? You just look at wind mills and get a warm fuzzy feeling inside without realizing their serious drawbacks. Yes, they work to power a few homes. Yes, they make sense in windy areas. But as an energy source for the entire planet? Give me a break.
And I will use your hatred of oil refineries, which I share, against you. Replacing all the gas and diesel cars on the road with electric ones would push these power requirements even higher. "But we'll charge them overnight." Right, guess when the wind is at its weakest? And where would we store the daytime wind energy? Batteries? Capacitors? Dynamos? All these were tried, and they failed miserably on a large scale.
As a last point, the French and Russians will laugh all the way to the bank once Germany decomissions all its reactors. The French will sell them nuclear energy generated just across the border while the Russians will sell them gas to run their gas power stations. And in the meantime the German landscape will look like it developed a hairy rash of wind mills.
As city dwellers, we tend to think of wind mills as majestic, beautiful sculptures that provide green energy. I used to subscribe to that idea, until I saw what happened to the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, where there are hundreds of wind mills all over a beautiful landscape.
They are a blight!!! As far as I'm concerned, I will never visit Sauble Beach again, because I can't stand driving through that area anymore. So I definitely sympathize with these farmers, their properties have already been devalued. Notice the Ontario government did not install ANY wind mills around Huntsville and other affluent regions. I wonder why?
The same thing happened in the US and Cape Cod (?) offshore wind mills. The Kennedys were the first to oppose them.
I am not going to debate the ecological merits of windmills vs gas vs coal vs nuclear. I am a supporter of nuclear energy, and as far as I'm concerned they can build one in MY back yard rather than a wind mill. Then again, I have family members that work in the plants, and I know that the likelihood or a nuclear accident that would result in any radiation leakage in Canada is zero. While less efficient, Candu reactors are pretty much bullet proof, whether earth quakes, tsunamis or well, bullets were to hit them.
The iPhone revolutionised the mobile phone market, essentially turning smartphones that had limited use and poor experience into things that are quick and reliable. Now we're tweaking and improving, it's hard for anyone to carve a niche. WP7's niche is that it totally integrates your contacts. If you know the same person in twitter, linkedin, your email db, facebook and more, WP7 seamlessly integrates them into the one person they are. That's it's killer app. The problem is that it takes more than a one-day test to really see this benefit so reviews are never going to "get it".
The Nokia N9 and the Nokia N900 had this integration feature for years. It's nice to have, but it was not and will never be a killer app. Otherwise you'd see the Maemo/Meego being the third ecosystem as MS likes to brand itself.
There are no killer apps anymore. Apple has amazing, yet closed hardware that is closely tied into their App Store with millions of apps and into iTunes with millions of songs and movies. So they appeal to fashionistas and people who just want something that works even if overpriced.
Google has shitty or amazing, but open hardware that is tied into their Google Play with hundreds of thousands of apps, and is an open development platform where anyone can cook a ROM, tweak it, etc. So they appeal to poor people, regular people, geeks and everybody else. At the same time Google Play seems to be making a run for iTunes.
What does MS bring to the table? They have sub par, closed hardware (sorry, but the beautiful design of the Lumia 900 does not compensate for the crappy specs), and they have few apps. Given the fiascos that were every single MS foray into digital media distribution, an iTunes style store is pretty much dead in the water.
Maybe future revisions of Windows Mobile will address some of the issues. But do you think Apple, Google and even RIM are sitting around twiddling thumbs? How long did it take MS to implement copypasta? Nokia learned this lesson the hard way. Maemo 5 on the N900 was MILES ahead of Android or iOS. But they sat on it for a couple of years, and by the time Maemo 6 came out, it was outdated. I should know this, because I have both Maemo 6 and ICS in front of me.
MS are keen not to make the mistake Android is making (or that they made in the PCmarket). They want to standardise the platform. This is easy for Apple/iPhone, they're the only ones making one. Not so easy keeping HTC, Samsung, Nokia and others to stick to one design. There's nothing for them to distinguish themselves in the market.
This approach only ever worked for Apple, since they are a vertically integrated company. They differentiate based on hardware specs, design and OS all at once. But if you take away the OS and hardware specs as you propose with a standard Windows platform, that means design is the only thing left. Samsung, Nokia, HTC, LG, etc will become little more than custom case designers.
Nokia took the bait, but it will be a cold day in hell before Samsung drops even their struggling Bada platform in favour of Windows.
Really, tell me how will the hardware manufacturers differentiate themselves when they ALL have to have the exact same OS and hardware specs, and they ALL have access to the same apps, etc.
Roll on Windows 8 and tablets - then iPhone will be under serious threat. For most consumers, the tablet - if properly conceived and integrated - is a far better computer experience than the PC/Laptop.
Define properly conceived and integrated. That's such a platitude, I have a feeling you threw it in there because you were itching to click Submit. Tablets DEFINITELY have a place, but it's a niche. I tried iOS, Android and Windows 7 slate PCs. Yes, the most useful by far was the Samsung Series 7. But you know what? Even though it was a full fledged PC, with decent touch input, it was still limited. No keyboard meant I had to bring an external one.
126.1 mm vs. 115.2 mm
65.4mm vs. 58.6 mm
11.3 MM vs. 9.3 mm
Or 93,190 mm cubed vs 62,781 mm cubed. I would say that 50% larger by volume isn't quite the near-equal size that you portrayed. And note that the thickness is over 20% larger on its own, so it's not just the screen size.
Did you miss the part where I specified the Sensation screen is 4.3in vs less than 4in for the iPhone? Sure that gave HTC more room to play around, but it also made the phone more useable to me.
And don't make me laugh about the 20% difference in thickness, we are talking about 1mm. If that 1mm means I can have a fully removable casing, fully replaceable battery, full size SIM (not that this matters much) and SD card slot, I can definitely live with it.
But what about the other examples I listed? There are plenty of laptops and smartphones out there with the same dimensions as equivalent Apple products that are not glued shut. Would 6-8 tiny screw holes ruin the Apple designs so horribly that screws must be avoided like the plague? Absolutely not.
Face the facts, Apple is only interested in selling extremely expensive disposable devices that have built in obsolescense. My Palm Pilot 5000 still works, although it's barely useful by today's standards because it takes AAA batteries, and it's 16 years old. The point is it's up to ME, the consumer who paid for the device, to decide when it belongs in the garbage heap, not some corporation.
Making it easy for things to come apart and be put back together takes space. The bigger the space budget, the more repairable and upgradable things have been. This has always been the case. This is why laptops have been more hassle than desktops, and why the iPad, which is shoved in there VERY tightly, is even worse.
So really, you figure out what's important to you. Is it more important to have a device you can easily repair, or is it more important that it be thin and light? With tablets, few people vote for heavy and repairable since they've been available for years in the Windows Tablet Edition space.
You were modded insightful, but you're wrong. One example in the smartphone realm is the HTC Sensation. It is slightly larger than the iPhone because it houses a 4.3in screen making it far more useable for my imperfect eyesight. However it is as thin, and if you drop it on concrete from ear height, nothing happens. I tested it. It has user replaceable battery, screen, and anything else you could reasonably want to replace without a soldering iron. HTC was very ingenious in the Sensation design, because unlike many manufacturers that either glue shut the entire device or use a flimsy backplate for the battery, the Sensation's entire casing comes off in one piece at the press of a tab. Solid, functional, slim.
Another smartphone example is the Nokia N9, and its cousin the Nokia Lumia 800. The casing is a single polycarbonate piece that wraps around the internals. On the surface it only has two flaps that cover the SIM and microUSB. Yet you take out two screws under the flaps and everything slides out, making it accessible. And it's as small as the iPhone.
In terms of laptops, the Sony Vaio SZ, the Acer Aspire 3820TG, and a whole bunch of others were MUCH faster than equivalent MacBooks, while still being fully user serviceable. I've taken dozens of laptops apart, replaced components inside including the motherboard, and NONE were as difficult to access as Apple products.
I can't comment on tablets from personal experience, but I have looked at a Samsung a friend has. Intel Core i5, 4Gb RAM, microSSD, plenty of ports, 5+h battery life running Windows 7 and it's marginally thicker but about the same size as the iPad. Again, user accessible as far as I could tell.
Face it, Apple CHOOSES to make their products the way they are. They even went as far as to invent a completely new screw type just to prevent people fro accessing their Macbooks. Sony used to be as bad, but a declining market share smartened them up a bit. Watching the iFixit video you can see the screen is glued all around, which may make sense. But why not put a few screws on the back so the back plate can detach, making battery replacement easy? Not swappable on a daily basis, just once every couple of years.
Stop making excuses for a company that is worth more than half a trillion dollars. They DO think different(ly), as they've gotten screwing their customers down to an art form. And their customers love it.
I completely agree that there are more important things to gaming than pretty graphics. I'd love to see self generating environments, NPCs with voice acting and even quests.
Skyrim (and perhaps other games) tried implementing a random element to quests where the quest line remains static but the location of items is dynamic. But this still falls far short, and after visiting the same cave a couple of times it makes no difference if I need to find item X or Y in there.
I had both the N900 and the N9, and they are completely different. On the N900 everything was customizable and open, with regular Linux repositories that did not require any authentication. Also the kernel was open, and many people modified it without any impact to functionality. Basically a factory rooted device.
The N9 in contrast has a very nice yet completely locked down interface. It depends on the Ovi store which requires authentication, or on community repositories which as of two weeks ago had virtually no apps. The kernel can only be modded if you enable open mode (not the same as dev mode), and that has many drawbacks to functionality.
But the biggest problem with the N9 is the absolute lack of developers. If on the N900 people had faith in the platform, the N9 is a known dead end. Nobody develops for it, except porting some Symbian apps.
Considering even the cheapest N9 is priced above similar Android devices (single core, lower res screen, low RAM), you'd either have to be a huge Nokia fan or severily hate Google to buy one. I personally hate Google, but not enough to waste about $5-600 on an inferior products.
What I'd like is a modern version of the "tablet" computers that Lenovo was selling 8 years ago. The kind where you could flip the screen around and use the thing as a tablet, or you could open it up and have a working laptop? Couple that with an ultraportable 13" laptop that tips the scales around 3lbs, and they could make a ton of money on it. Wouldn't even be that hard, they'd just have to rearrange the hinge design on the laptop I have right now (a Dell Vostro V130), and replace the LCD with a touchscreen. I'd even be willing to accept one that requires a stylus instead of finger input. It would be hugely useful. I would be willing to accept the extra bulk inherent in that kind of design in exchange for the increased usability, and I'd still have something that's more portable than the heavier 15" or 16" laptops most people buy.
Well, you're in luck then, because Lenovo decided to make one just for you. Oh wait, they never stopped making them.
In all seriousness, did you even bother searching? Lenovo as a brand did not exist 8 years ago, but Lenovo the company have been making laptops and tablets for IBM for a very long time. Then in 2005 Lenovo bought IBM's computer division, but for the next year or two they still sold products under IBM's brand.
Regardless, either IBM or Lenovo have been selling tablet PCs for close to a decade (I might be off by a couple of years). Their latest one, the X220 has both finger and pen input.
Indeed, power-assisted braking is not known to be that beefy in race cars. Actually: they don't usually have it at all.
You are correct, many track cars do not have power assisted brakes.
But the Tesla Roadster is NOT a track car, and it weighs 2,723 lb (1,235 kg). To put it in perspective, it weighs 700lbs (325kg) more than the Lotus Elise it's based on, and it weighs 300lbs (136Kg) more than my Hyundai Genesis 2.0T. Both of these latter cars are not pure track cars either, and I can promise you they have power assisted brakes that do NOT fail.
Once you go over a certain weight you NEED power assisted brakes regardless of a street or track setting.
Besides, the damn car came equipped with power assisted brakes which stopped functioning. So I think Top Gear was more than justified in calling them out on it.
The way I see it, there is no way for the UK government to control UK or foreign citizens posting on foreign sites. All this new statute will achieve is moving the servers offshore and killing homegrown businesses. Sure, the new sites will not have the.co.uk domain, but with so many TLDs available today, I doubt it makes as big a difference as it used to.
As an example, one of the sites I frequent is radomcarmodel.to for Toronto, not for Tonga. We are yet to have a single visitor that made that confusion.
I have used a shortened version of my real name in the past, including on Facebook, but generally use pseudonyms for random sites. I simply refuse to be forced to use my full name, especially when it comes to personally identifiable information.
The reasoning is very simple. If I have a FB or G+ account under a pseudonym, a potential employer or a business partner will never find the potentially questionable material associated with my profile. However my friends will know it really is me, and the social networking continues unhindered.
It's not even a matter of being careful what you upload. Somebody, somewhere will have a picture or a video of you behaving like a jackass, they will post it, tag you in it, and the rest is history.
Another huge issue I had with the real name requirement is the banning of pseudonym accounts which leads to losing ALL access to google services associated with them. Getting banned from G+ is fine with me, but losing the gmail account will cause real issues.
What is this Great Pyramid of Giza unit?!? I demand all mass measurements to be reported in the accepted Elephant units. African or Indian, it's your choice.
I understand the fascination with the latest and greatest technology, because I was a willing participant on the upgrade treadmill for many years. But I realized that the best price to performance ratio is actually in used gear.
For the $191 the authors of the article spent on brand new items I could have built a system that is at least twice more powerful, and with better components all around. As an example, I found a Phenom II X4 955 with OEM heatsink for only $4 more than they spent on their Athlon II X2 270. I have many more examples, but the general trend is a used previous generation component will be about twice cheaper than a new current generation component.
When buying used there is the issue of limited availability and timing, since you do need to check your local deals sites daily to find what you need. But even in the worst case scenario I was able to build a system from scratch within a week or two, without compromising on components quality. I may not have been able to chose between Sapphire, eVGA or Asus when buying a new video card, but when saving hundreds of dollars over the brand new prices it suddenly doesn't matter that much.
One thing the article got right was their choice of processors. If costs are not an issue and the overriding criterion is performance, then Intel is your only option. But AMD is by far a much better value as a platform. Most reviews I've seen are comparing the price and performance of the CPUs themselves, but that is only part of the picture. When you add the motherboard and RAM to the equation, an Intel platform becomes significantly more expensive. When the Core i series was released, the cost of the Intel CPU, motherboard and DDR3 RAM was roughly twice more than an equivalent AMD setup with DDR2 RAM, even though the overall performance difference was under 10%.
At that time I chose an AMD Phenom II X4 945 because ironically it was faster than an Intel Core i7 920 when playing Bethesda games (Oblivion and Fallout3 at that time).
I am NOT trolling. Mod me whichever way you wish, but this is a real issue I had with Open Office that made me gave up on it. To put it simply, when running Open Office on a computer running Windows 7 32bit, the spell check would NOT work.
Here are a few things I remember doing. I tried downloading several versions. I tried installing it both as a regular user AND as administrator. I tried deleting, adding and modifying dictionaries. I tried changing languages between different English variants. I tried changing permissions on executables. I even reinstalled Windows 7. I struggled for almost a week to make it work, reading manual pages and searching forums. In the end I gave up trying to fix it. Now here's the kicker though... I did find a way that would fix the issue temporarily. If I would browse to the install folder of Open Office, right click on swriter.exe and select "run as administrator", the spell check would work. So I know all the executables, java environment and dictionaries were in place, but somehow the permissions were wrong and unfixable.
This happened around September of last year, when I was in the middle of my last year at university and I had a LOT of projects to complete. I had to almost live within SPSS and a word processor. Always using the workaround was a chore I did not need. So I completely gave up on OpenOffice and used my student discounts to buy OpenOffice's main competitor.
I can't figure out what is the real point of this post. I suppose I'm just venting, wishing I could get that week of my life back. Oh yes, and sometimes you really do get what you pay for...
Is that a US thing? My wife has an Incredible S (purchased in Taiwan) and I have a Galaxy S2 (purchased in Germany). Both allow tethering. Or am I missing something?
Thanks for making me aware of the per app permission thingy, sounds like I should give Cyanogen a try.
Yes, it is a US and Canadian thing. Basically when the major carriers purchase a phone from the manufacturer, they intentionally have some functionality removed that competes with their paid options. This is justified (in their eyes) by the fact that most people get these phones for free in exchange for signing a lengthy contract. I always buy my phones outright from alternate sources, so I feel no obligation to live with the crippled firmware provided by the carriers
Today tethering is the first to go, because the carriers also sell laptop plans (that require a separate USB stick) . A few years ago BlackBerries and other phones had wireless disabled at the request of the carriers.
There's also another issue with carrier locked phones. A couple of people I know have the Nexus S from Canada's Fido (subsidiary of Rogers). While my HTC Desire is running Cyanogen with the latest Market app and Android 2.3.5, their Google phone is still stuck with the old Market app and Android 2.3.4. Why? Because Fido hasn't pushed the 2.3.5 update yet.
I own a lowly HTC Desire, unlocked and rooted, and I've used it with the stock HTC Sense as well as many other custom firmwares. I have also seen HTC Sense, Motorola Blur and stock Android on other phones
Cyanogen is by far the most advanced of all. If you really are interested in unlocking your phone's true potential, it's the only choice. My HTC Desire running Cyanogen is about twice faster than when running Sense, both in benchmarks and real world use. Maybe if HTC were to update their OS to 2.3.5 like Cyanogen, the performance differences would be reduced, but that hasn't happened yet AFAIK.
As the article states, tethering is enabled by default. And it also allows the user to select per app permissions, something even the stock Android will not do. And if you're adventurous, running the Nightlies guarantees the latest technology. It's actually not as dangerous as it sounds, because in almost 100 Nightlies only 2 or 3 were duds and restoring from backups took 15 minutes.
Whichever phone I purchase next, the main requirement is that Cyanogen supports it. For me it's even more important than camera resolution, screen size or storage space. I mean with a fast SD card and a few tweaks I can fit 100 apps on my HTC Desire.
At this point, pretty much the only selling point a BB has over its competition is the security of its messaging and email system. But if they are willingly cooperating with police to out their customers, then they really do not have a led to stand on anymore.
Don't misunderstand me, in cases like the London riots such behavior is justified. But these cases also undermine any security argument they make. Then there are also the servers set up in Saudi Arabia and in other places that are expressly under government control. I can just see RIM's next ad:
"Your communication is 100% secure*. And yes, it does Flash too**."
*as long as you're only messaging grocery lists and baseball scores **we know nobody cares anymore, but it's all we've got.
Nice, we have a discussion going. Karma be damned.:)
Your comment that companies are there to make a profit is a truism that vastly oversimplifies the topic. Yes, both MS and Apple are there to make a profit, but their strategies for doing so differ enormously. To think that because one company would do something to make a profit, another company would do it is mistaken. Especially if you think Apple would do something just because MS looks to be making steps in that direction.
I mentioned MS's new Windows 8 to show that a unified interface is indeed possible or at least plausible across many types of devices. In your previous post you argued against that because of the widely different input methods, sensors, etc. This is not where my profits argument comes in. I will get into that later.
Apple hasn't risen from near bankruptcy 15 years ago to being the biggest tech company now by simply snatching at every opportunity to make a buck. They've done it because Jobs goal is to create the very best designed products. In the correct belief that that's what people want to buy.
It's exactly the same way that Apple got it's earlier market in DTP. Not because Apple decided that a future DTP market would be worth lots of money and so they pursued it. But rather because Jobs had a background in Calligraphy, and he thought the then standard fixed pitch dot-matrix fonts were awful, so he pioneered proper font handling in the OS. It was a design decision, not a business decision that made their DTP market.
A few years ago I would have completely agreed with you. Apple had and still has some amazing products. The iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro are absolutely gorgeous products, with amazing industrial design. They just scream quality when compared to my cheap Acer laptop or subsidized HTC Desire phone. The amount of features or the costs are a whole different debate, and please let's not go down that route.
So Apple are undoubtedly innovators, and the ease of use of their products, beautiful hardware and software interfaces made existing markets flourish or created completely new markets. There were mp3 players before the iPod, there were smartphones before the iPhone, and there were tablets before the iPad. But the relatively inexpensive devices in these categories sucked, while the good ones cost enormous amounts. I do think it took Apple to show other companies what a sleek interface is supposed to look like, what a good form factor is, what hardware and software features are important.
Likewise, iTunes and the App Store didn't come from a business decision to take a cut from media transactions. They came from design decisions to make things easier for users. Downloading a song from a website, putting the file in an appropriate place in the file system, and transferring it to a MP3 player was more hassle or too complicated for most people to do. Apple designed a complete integrated system to make that easy.
This is where our opinions start to differ. I agree at first iTunes and the App Store started out as means of making things easier for their users. But at some point Apple realized they are a HUGE revenue source. On the consumer end, keeping things locked down on as many different devices as possible protects this revenue. Why else would they revert jailbroken devices with every single OS update? It is pretty clear that the owner of the jailbroken iPhone meant to do it, and wanted it to stay that way. Why can't other applications interface with the iTunes Store if the ultimate purpose is to sell music or movies? Then want to control the entire distribution chain, from the device, software all the way to the server.
If ease of use were the only criterion, they could keep the vertically integrated Apple way of doing things for novice users, while allowing alternatives for advanced users. If something were to go wrong with the alternatives,
Slashdot Mirror
A while ago I realized every single manufacturer of electronic devices I loved has either gone bankrupt or shut down that particular division. Here's my list in no particular order:
- Psion 5, 5MX, 5MX Pro
- Palm III, Vx, m500
- Sony Clie NR70, NX70, TH55 and many others
- Nokia E71, N900, N9
I hold a particular soft spot for Psion though, as their devices were truly works of art. It took a decade for the same level of integration between the OS and component applications to be matched. The hardware was (almost) bulletproof, with the 5 series sliding keyboard being a truly impressive piece of engineering. However having a battery life measured in DAYS is still a pipe dream...
I do seem to have a knack for picking dying technologies though. A friend joked that I should be given a free Windows phone, that will certainly spell its demise.
Then what's the damn point in riding a bike? Save on gas, crawl from point A to point B and claim "I rode 1000km today in a straight line", or do you just enjoy being uncomfortable and less safe than in a car?
Take away the fun of the twisties and I may as well stick to my cage full time. At least then I can listen to music without headphones, have a smoke and a drink of water without stopping every 200km. And if a distracted driver does manage to plough into me, I'll have a cage and half a dozen airbags to protect me.
It's a bit sad you look at twisties as something to be avoided. Try them sometime, you may find you like them.
This issue was discussed extensively on talk.maemo.org, but you are mostly correct. I had an N900 for a very long time, and not only did it have an awkward form factor due to its bulk and resistive screen (some UI elements were only accessible with the stylus), the hardware also had an enormous defect. The USB port would fall out even without being abused. At first Nokia denied the issue outright, but then started replacing the damaged phones. Which phone you'd get would be anyone's guess, ranging from the N900, N8 or E7.
I still loved it though, and with care and a couple of mods my USB survived. I loved the fully customizable interface (for instance one thing that just pisses me off about Android is the desktop grid that insists on spacing icons miles away from each other unless you run alternative launchers). I loved the true Linux repositories and apps that did not have ads. Yes, developers should be able to make money, but on the N900 people developed apps like they do on Linux, because it's fun and interesting. And I never found myself missing any features because some random Android app did not have an N900 equivalent.
The N900 was not without other problems. In Canada on my carrier I could only get Edge, not 3G. The hardware, while high end when the phone was released, is really old now and you could feel it. But most importantly, Nokia gave up on it only a year after its release. Ditching a high end, $700 phone so quickly is inexcusable. Their infrequent software updates, left bugs that were never fixed until the CSSU took over.
And you simply can't maintain a community around a single device. Eventually my N900 broke down when I crashed my bike, and when faced with replacing it I opted for a much faster Android. Many lead developers for the N900 went the same route, and I can't blame them.
So yes, Nokia should have released several devices running Maemo 5, and should have continued development of that platform. Jumping to Maemo 6, then Meego, then Windows only made them waste time and resources. I disagree with the need to always have a bleeding edge platform, which is why Maemo 5 was abandoned. Take the Samsung Galaxy Note for instance, which shipped with Android 2.3.5, a year and a half old OS and is extremely popular.
So they gave up control over half their product to a company that is known to release crappy OSes. Development and support may no longer be Nokia's responsibility, but it definitely affects its bottom line.
At least as of a couple of months ago you could not delete the phones associated with a Market account. That bugged the hell out of me, because a phone is so easily traceable due to the unique IMEI.
But that's ok, because I started creating a new market account for every new phone I'd get, never to be used again once it was sold.
All Google accomplished through their privacy policy changes is force me to use their services differently. Up until a year ago I used to let gmail keep me logged in all the time. I used to have a YT account with playlists, subscribed channels, etc that was also logged in continuously. I never got into G+, since, well... FB (going to get into that in a bit).
I cannot get rid of my Gmail accounts. I HAVE to use one for Market access on my phone. I do however create a new Gmail account for every new phone I get, since Google in its infinite wisdom will not allow me to delete old phones from their database. It's nice to know that Google remembers all my phone models, ROM versions, IMEI numbers, apps installed better than I do. Migrating from one phone to another without syncing to Google is not even that difficult by the way. All you need is to export your contacts as vcf, back up your apps with Titanium backup, and back up your SMSes with SMS Backup and Restore. The slowest process is moving your pictures, music and videos, but that's a manual process anyway.
Another reason I cannot give up Gmail is that one of those accounts is tied into many website registrations. It would take days to change all my random sites registration info, notify all my contacts and I still haven't found a service as fast and reliable. By far the most difficult part would be migrating my contacts, as I still have idiot friends emailing me to a 10 years old ISP account that is only spam now. However I changed how I use Gmail. Instead of staying logged in all the time, I now log in, check my mail, read/reply/delete messages and then I log out. I also delete every single message that is not relevant, and I delete all messages after a while. Google obviously retains everything, however at some point the deleted messages are bound to become white noise. Did I delete them because they are not relevant, spam, outdated information or because I want to mess with Google's algorithms?
As far as YT is concerned, I had an account there before Google bought them. I saw nothing wrong with tying it into my Gmail account a few years back, since they still stayed separate. But since the privacy policy changes, I've deleted all my uploaded videos (all 3 of them), playlists and subscribed channels. I still listen to music on from YT, but I either bookmarked some clips or I just ripped them with flashgot. This started before the privacy changes, when YT reimplemented their playlist feature. If I'd play a song from my playlist, it would load the entire playlist and then continue playing every song there. I was unable to find a way to disable this behavior except through Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper.
G+ got the axe due to their mandatory name policy. Normally I'd consider having my potential G+ account disabled for using a nom de plume a feature. However that would take my Gmail accounts down as well. And I do have several, legitimate email accounts. So G+ out of principle. Besides, I already have a FB account which has proven to be enough of a PITA to keep at least somewhat private. I really don't need my life readily accessible on two separate security and privacy voids.
So ultimately all Google accomplished is information obfuscation on my part. I, as most people, still need their services. But when I search on Google, I don't want to see what my friends liked. Too many of my friends are idiots, and of the 3-4 whose opinions I actually value, I can easily call them up and talk to them in person. I also use search to look up stuff I did not know before. If I'm looking for a new gaming laptop, the fact I own an Asus should NOT affect the results in any way. And if I'm looking for a new set of racing shocks for my Suzuki, I will type in "Ohlins Sukuki shocks" to get reviews, and if I want a local dealer, I'll type "Ohlins Toronto dealers." I don't need or want Google to second guess me.
Writing on my phone, so I will be brief. After reading your post, I mostly agree with you. We do need clean energy, however i would still argue wind mills are not an answer. At least not in their current form or distribution. Some areas in the world are perfect for them, but not Ontario.
Right, now refer back to my post and tell me where I supported oil or gas as an alternative fuel source. Thank you for providing a perfect demonstration of the straw man argument.
WHEN PROPERLY DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED (I cannot stress this enough), nuclear energy is absolutely safe, with zero emissions of any kind, cheap and reliable. Every single nuclear station that had an accident was based on 40-50 year old designs, and did not take into account all environmental factors. The obligatory car analogy? Look at the crash survivability of a 40-50 year old car compared to a modern one.
The same things applies to nuclear stations. The latest CANDU reactor designs are beyond safe, it is physically impossible for them to go into meltdown even if the plant shuts down unexpectedly and runs out of backup power like it happened with Fukushima. The same goes for other designs. But instead of decomissioning the old stations and building new ones, we continue using the old stations while scrambling for half assed solutions.
If you covered the entire surface of the US with wind mills, you would still run short of baseline power, let alone peak power requirements. Where the hell are you going to get the rest, if not from coal, gas or nuclear?!? Tidal energy? Solar energy? You just look at wind mills and get a warm fuzzy feeling inside without realizing their serious drawbacks. Yes, they work to power a few homes. Yes, they make sense in windy areas. But as an energy source for the entire planet? Give me a break.
And I will use your hatred of oil refineries, which I share, against you. Replacing all the gas and diesel cars on the road with electric ones would push these power requirements even higher. "But we'll charge them overnight." Right, guess when the wind is at its weakest? And where would we store the daytime wind energy? Batteries? Capacitors? Dynamos? All these were tried, and they failed miserably on a large scale.
As a last point, the French and Russians will laugh all the way to the bank once Germany decomissions all its reactors. The French will sell them nuclear energy generated just across the border while the Russians will sell them gas to run their gas power stations. And in the meantime the German landscape will look like it developed a hairy rash of wind mills.
As city dwellers, we tend to think of wind mills as majestic, beautiful sculptures that provide green energy. I used to subscribe to that idea, until I saw what happened to the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, where there are hundreds of wind mills all over a beautiful landscape.
They are a blight!!! As far as I'm concerned, I will never visit Sauble Beach again, because I can't stand driving through that area anymore. So I definitely sympathize with these farmers, their properties have already been devalued. Notice the Ontario government did not install ANY wind mills around Huntsville and other affluent regions. I wonder why?
The same thing happened in the US and Cape Cod (?) offshore wind mills. The Kennedys were the first to oppose them.
I am not going to debate the ecological merits of windmills vs gas vs coal vs nuclear. I am a supporter of nuclear energy, and as far as I'm concerned they can build one in MY back yard rather than a wind mill. Then again, I have family members that work in the plants, and I know that the likelihood or a nuclear accident that would result in any radiation leakage in Canada is zero. While less efficient, Candu reactors are pretty much bullet proof, whether earth quakes, tsunamis or well, bullets were to hit them.
The Nokia N9 and the Nokia N900 had this integration feature for years. It's nice to have, but it was not and will never be a killer app. Otherwise you'd see the Maemo/Meego being the third ecosystem as MS likes to brand itself.
There are no killer apps anymore. Apple has amazing, yet closed hardware that is closely tied into their App Store with millions of apps and into iTunes with millions of songs and movies. So they appeal to fashionistas and people who just want something that works even if overpriced.
Google has shitty or amazing, but open hardware that is tied into their Google Play with hundreds of thousands of apps, and is an open development platform where anyone can cook a ROM, tweak it, etc. So they appeal to poor people, regular people, geeks and everybody else. At the same time Google Play seems to be making a run for iTunes.
What does MS bring to the table? They have sub par, closed hardware (sorry, but the beautiful design of the Lumia 900 does not compensate for the crappy specs), and they have few apps. Given the fiascos that were every single MS foray into digital media distribution, an iTunes style store is pretty much dead in the water.
Maybe future revisions of Windows Mobile will address some of the issues. But do you think Apple, Google and even RIM are sitting around twiddling thumbs? How long did it take MS to implement copypasta? Nokia learned this lesson the hard way. Maemo 5 on the N900 was MILES ahead of Android or iOS. But they sat on it for a couple of years, and by the time Maemo 6 came out, it was outdated. I should know this, because I have both Maemo 6 and ICS in front of me.
This approach only ever worked for Apple, since they are a vertically integrated company. They differentiate based on hardware specs, design and OS all at once. But if you take away the OS and hardware specs as you propose with a standard Windows platform, that means design is the only thing left. Samsung, Nokia, HTC, LG, etc will become little more than custom case designers.
Nokia took the bait, but it will be a cold day in hell before Samsung drops even their struggling Bada platform in favour of Windows.
Really, tell me how will the hardware manufacturers differentiate themselves when they ALL have to have the exact same OS and hardware specs, and they ALL have access to the same apps, etc.
Define properly conceived and integrated. That's such a platitude, I have a feeling you threw it in there because you were itching to click Submit. Tablets DEFINITELY have a place, but it's a niche. I tried iOS, Android and Windows 7 slate PCs. Yes, the most useful by far was the Samsung Series 7. But you know what? Even though it was a full fledged PC, with decent touch input, it was still limited. No keyboard meant I had to bring an external one.
You were modded insightful, but you're wrong. One example in the smartphone realm is the HTC Sensation. It is slightly larger than the iPhone because it houses a 4.3in screen making it far more useable for my imperfect eyesight. However it is as thin, and if you drop it on concrete from ear height, nothing happens. I tested it. It has user replaceable battery, screen, and anything else you could reasonably want to replace without a soldering iron. HTC was very ingenious in the Sensation design, because unlike many manufacturers that either glue shut the entire device or use a flimsy backplate for the battery, the Sensation's entire casing comes off in one piece at the press of a tab. Solid, functional, slim.
Another smartphone example is the Nokia N9, and its cousin the Nokia Lumia 800. The casing is a single polycarbonate piece that wraps around the internals. On the surface it only has two flaps that cover the SIM and microUSB. Yet you take out two screws under the flaps and everything slides out, making it accessible. And it's as small as the iPhone.
In terms of laptops, the Sony Vaio SZ, the Acer Aspire 3820TG, and a whole bunch of others were MUCH faster than equivalent MacBooks, while still being fully user serviceable. I've taken dozens of laptops apart, replaced components inside including the motherboard, and NONE were as difficult to access as Apple products.
I can't comment on tablets from personal experience, but I have looked at a Samsung a friend has. Intel Core i5, 4Gb RAM, microSSD, plenty of ports, 5+h battery life running Windows 7 and it's marginally thicker but about the same size as the iPad. Again, user accessible as far as I could tell.
Face it, Apple CHOOSES to make their products the way they are. They even went as far as to invent a completely new screw type just to prevent people fro accessing their Macbooks. Sony used to be as bad, but a declining market share smartened them up a bit. Watching the iFixit video you can see the screen is glued all around, which may make sense. But why not put a few screws on the back so the back plate can detach, making battery replacement easy? Not swappable on a daily basis, just once every couple of years.
Stop making excuses for a company that is worth more than half a trillion dollars. They DO think different(ly), as they've gotten screwing their customers down to an art form. And their customers love it.
I completely agree that there are more important things to gaming than pretty graphics. I'd love to see self generating environments, NPCs with voice acting and even quests.
Skyrim (and perhaps other games) tried implementing a random element to quests where the quest line remains static but the location of items is dynamic. But this still falls far short, and after visiting the same cave a couple of times it makes no difference if I need to find item X or Y in there.
I had both the N900 and the N9, and they are completely different. On the N900 everything was customizable and open, with regular Linux repositories that did not require any authentication. Also the kernel was open, and many people modified it without any impact to functionality. Basically a factory rooted device.
The N9 in contrast has a very nice yet completely locked down interface. It depends on the Ovi store which requires authentication, or on community repositories which as of two weeks ago had virtually no apps. The kernel can only be modded if you enable open mode (not the same as dev mode), and that has many drawbacks to functionality.
But the biggest problem with the N9 is the absolute lack of developers. If on the N900 people had faith in the platform, the N9 is a known dead end. Nobody develops for it, except porting some Symbian apps.
Considering even the cheapest N9 is priced above similar Android devices (single core, lower res screen, low RAM), you'd either have to be a huge Nokia fan or severily hate Google to buy one. I personally hate Google, but not enough to waste about $5-600 on an inferior products.
Well, you're in luck then, because Lenovo decided to make one just for you. Oh wait, they never stopped making them.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series-tablet/x220tablet
In all seriousness, did you even bother searching? Lenovo as a brand did not exist 8 years ago, but Lenovo the company have been making laptops and tablets for IBM for a very long time. Then in 2005 Lenovo bought IBM's computer division, but for the next year or two they still sold products under IBM's brand.
Regardless, either IBM or Lenovo have been selling tablet PCs for close to a decade (I might be off by a couple of years). Their latest one, the X220 has both finger and pen input.
You are correct, many track cars do not have power assisted brakes.
But the Tesla Roadster is NOT a track car, and it weighs 2,723 lb (1,235 kg). To put it in perspective, it weighs 700lbs (325kg) more than the Lotus Elise it's based on, and it weighs 300lbs (136Kg) more than my Hyundai Genesis 2.0T. Both of these latter cars are not pure track cars either, and I can promise you they have power assisted brakes that do NOT fail.
Once you go over a certain weight you NEED power assisted brakes regardless of a street or track setting.
Besides, the damn car came equipped with power assisted brakes which stopped functioning. So I think Top Gear was more than justified in calling them out on it.
The way I see it, there is no way for the UK government to control UK or foreign citizens posting on foreign sites. All this new statute will achieve is moving the servers offshore and killing homegrown businesses. Sure, the new sites will not have the .co.uk domain, but with so many TLDs available today, I doubt it makes as big a difference as it used to.
As an example, one of the sites I frequent is radomcarmodel.to for Toronto, not for Tonga. We are yet to have a single visitor that made that confusion.
I have used a shortened version of my real name in the past, including on Facebook, but generally use pseudonyms for random sites. I simply refuse to be forced to use my full name, especially when it comes to personally identifiable information.
The reasoning is very simple. If I have a FB or G+ account under a pseudonym, a potential employer or a business partner will never find the potentially questionable material associated with my profile. However my friends will know it really is me, and the social networking continues unhindered.
It's not even a matter of being careful what you upload. Somebody, somewhere will have a picture or a video of you behaving like a jackass, they will post it, tag you in it, and the rest is history.
Another huge issue I had with the real name requirement is the banning of pseudonym accounts which leads to losing ALL access to google services associated with them. Getting banned from G+ is fine with me, but losing the gmail account will cause real issues.
What is this Great Pyramid of Giza unit?!? I demand all mass measurements to be reported in the accepted Elephant units. African or Indian, it's your choice.
I understand the fascination with the latest and greatest technology, because I was a willing participant on the upgrade treadmill for many years. But I realized that the best price to performance ratio is actually in used gear.
For the $191 the authors of the article spent on brand new items I could have built a system that is at least twice more powerful, and with better components all around. As an example, I found a Phenom II X4 955 with OEM heatsink for only $4 more than they spent on their Athlon II X2 270. I have many more examples, but the general trend is a used previous generation component will be about twice cheaper than a new current generation component.
When buying used there is the issue of limited availability and timing, since you do need to check your local deals sites daily to find what you need. But even in the worst case scenario I was able to build a system from scratch within a week or two, without compromising on components quality. I may not have been able to chose between Sapphire, eVGA or Asus when buying a new video card, but when saving hundreds of dollars over the brand new prices it suddenly doesn't matter that much.
One thing the article got right was their choice of processors. If costs are not an issue and the overriding criterion is performance, then Intel is your only option. But AMD is by far a much better value as a platform. Most reviews I've seen are comparing the price and performance of the CPUs themselves, but that is only part of the picture. When you add the motherboard and RAM to the equation, an Intel platform becomes significantly more expensive. When the Core i series was released, the cost of the Intel CPU, motherboard and DDR3 RAM was roughly twice more than an equivalent AMD setup with DDR2 RAM, even though the overall performance difference was under 10%.
At that time I chose an AMD Phenom II X4 945 because ironically it was faster than an Intel Core i7 920 when playing Bethesda games (Oblivion and Fallout3 at that time).
I am NOT trolling. Mod me whichever way you wish, but this is a real issue I had with Open Office that made me gave up on it. To put it simply, when running Open Office on a computer running Windows 7 32bit, the spell check would NOT work.
Here are a few things I remember doing. I tried downloading several versions. I tried installing it both as a regular user AND as administrator. I tried deleting, adding and modifying dictionaries. I tried changing languages between different English variants. I tried changing permissions on executables. I even reinstalled Windows 7. I struggled for almost a week to make it work, reading manual pages and searching forums. In the end I gave up trying to fix it. Now here's the kicker though... I did find a way that would fix the issue temporarily. If I would browse to the install folder of Open Office, right click on swriter.exe and select "run as administrator", the spell check would work. So I know all the executables, java environment and dictionaries were in place, but somehow the permissions were wrong and unfixable.
This happened around September of last year, when I was in the middle of my last year at university and I had a LOT of projects to complete. I had to almost live within SPSS and a word processor. Always using the workaround was a chore I did not need. So I completely gave up on OpenOffice and used my student discounts to buy OpenOffice's main competitor.
I can't figure out what is the real point of this post. I suppose I'm just venting, wishing I could get that week of my life back. Oh yes, and sometimes you really do get what you pay for...
I bow my hat to you. Your fellow Dungeon and Dragons players are closer than your acquaintances.
Yes, it is a US and Canadian thing. Basically when the major carriers purchase a phone from the manufacturer, they intentionally have some functionality removed that competes with their paid options. This is justified (in their eyes) by the fact that most people get these phones for free in exchange for signing a lengthy contract. I always buy my phones outright from alternate sources, so I feel no obligation to live with the crippled firmware provided by the carriers
Today tethering is the first to go, because the carriers also sell laptop plans (that require a separate USB stick) . A few years ago BlackBerries and other phones had wireless disabled at the request of the carriers.
There's also another issue with carrier locked phones. A couple of people I know have the Nexus S from Canada's Fido (subsidiary of Rogers). While my HTC Desire is running Cyanogen with the latest Market app and Android 2.3.5, their Google phone is still stuck with the old Market app and Android 2.3.4. Why? Because Fido hasn't pushed the 2.3.5 update yet.
I own a lowly HTC Desire, unlocked and rooted, and I've used it with the stock HTC Sense as well as many other custom firmwares. I have also seen HTC Sense, Motorola Blur and stock Android on other phones
Cyanogen is by far the most advanced of all. If you really are interested in unlocking your phone's true potential, it's the only choice. My HTC Desire running Cyanogen is about twice faster than when running Sense, both in benchmarks and real world use. Maybe if HTC were to update their OS to 2.3.5 like Cyanogen, the performance differences would be reduced, but that hasn't happened yet AFAIK.
As the article states, tethering is enabled by default. And it also allows the user to select per app permissions, something even the stock Android will not do. And if you're adventurous, running the Nightlies guarantees the latest technology. It's actually not as dangerous as it sounds, because in almost 100 Nightlies only 2 or 3 were duds and restoring from backups took 15 minutes.
Whichever phone I purchase next, the main requirement is that Cyanogen supports it. For me it's even more important than camera resolution, screen size or storage space. I mean with a fast SD card and a few tweaks I can fit 100 apps on my HTC Desire.
At this point, pretty much the only selling point a BB has over its competition is the security of its messaging and email system. But if they are willingly cooperating with police to out their customers, then they really do not have a led to stand on anymore.
Don't misunderstand me, in cases like the London riots such behavior is justified. But these cases also undermine any security argument they make. Then there are also the servers set up in Saudi Arabia and in other places that are expressly under government control. I can just see RIM's next ad:
"Your communication is 100% secure*. And yes, it does Flash too**."
*as long as you're only messaging grocery lists and baseball scores
**we know nobody cares anymore, but it's all we've got.
Nice, we have a discussion going. Karma be damned. :)
I mentioned MS's new Windows 8 to show that a unified interface is indeed possible or at least plausible across many types of devices. In your previous post you argued against that because of the widely different input methods, sensors, etc. This is not where my profits argument comes in. I will get into that later.
A few years ago I would have completely agreed with you. Apple had and still has some amazing products. The iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro are absolutely gorgeous products, with amazing industrial design. They just scream quality when compared to my cheap Acer laptop or subsidized HTC Desire phone. The amount of features or the costs are a whole different debate, and please let's not go down that route.
So Apple are undoubtedly innovators, and the ease of use of their products, beautiful hardware and software interfaces made existing markets flourish or created completely new markets. There were mp3 players before the iPod, there were smartphones before the iPhone, and there were tablets before the iPad. But the relatively inexpensive devices in these categories sucked, while the good ones cost enormous amounts. I do think it took Apple to show other companies what a sleek interface is supposed to look like, what a good form factor is, what hardware and software features are important.
This is where our opinions start to differ. I agree at first iTunes and the App Store started out as means of making things easier for their users. But at some point Apple realized they are a HUGE revenue source. On the consumer end, keeping things locked down on as many different devices as possible protects this revenue. Why else would they revert jailbroken devices with every single OS update? It is pretty clear that the owner of the jailbroken iPhone meant to do it, and wanted it to stay that way. Why can't other applications interface with the iTunes Store if the ultimate purpose is to sell music or movies? Then want to control the entire distribution chain, from the device, software all the way to the server.
If ease of use were the only criterion, they could keep the vertically integrated Apple way of doing things for novice users, while allowing alternatives for advanced users. If something were to go wrong with the alternatives,