And the way they do that is by making products people want to buy. Running the same UI on both a Mac, tablet, and phone will result in a sub par experience on all three devices and will surely drive away users. iPhones have no business running a windowed GUI, and Macs need to be able to have multiple windows up due to their expanded screens space. Macs use indirect interaction with highly precise input devices, while iPhones and iPads are direct interaction and have a fairly imprecise input mechanism. So many fundamentals are so different that merging the two UIs would make their devices desirable to no one. Not to mention the fact that iPhones have many more sensors than a Mac. If Apple wanted to pursue your strategy, they wouldn't do it by merging their operating systems. They would do it by locking down OS X while still keeping it as a separate platform.
Unlike you, I will quote your entire post, not just the very last sentence. You sidestepped my whole argument that economic factors NOT technical factors will dictate Apple's future policy.
First, it looks like Windows 8 WILL have a unified interface across all devices (with the option to fall back on the old style Windows 7 interface for old apps on desktops). Their demo shows all desktop apps running full screen, with an interesting side tab switching system and a whole lot of gestures that seem to work best on a touch surface. Watch the youtube video if you don't believe me. So if MS can do it, or at least showcase it, it's definitely possible across Apple devices.
Second, you are thinking as a consumer of Apple products, not as an Apple executive intent on maximizing profits. I must sound like a broken record, but Apple is not your friend, and does not care what you want or need. The bottom line is simple. If they sell you a (theoretical) iPhone, iPad or Macbook running iOS, they control where you buy the apps, where you buy your music, movies and TV shows, and they take at least 30% of every transaction. If however they sell you a Macbook or Macbook Pro running OSX, they DO NOT control any of that. Apple will make iOS work on laptops, mark my words. The technical details will be worked out over the next few generations.
My original post was modded down once, and I expect the same to happen to this post. I just wanted to make it clear what I meant.
This is one of those moronic things that will never happen that are being continuously predicted by people who don't understand anything about usability. Apple knows you can't just shoehorn a "one size fits all" OS onto every device you make; that the ways people use different devices are fundamentally different. Keyboard and Mouse apps do not work well with a touchscreen, and vice versa. Just because Lion imported some of the UI features of iOS like hidden scrollbars and an application launcher does not mean they will merge; they are simply implementing ideas from one platform that have utility on another.
From what I've been seeing, Apple's main interest at the moment is the consumer market. Developers, movie editors, servers all come a distant second. Why else would they cripple Lion server? Why would they make Lion a download only OS? Or why release a very incomplete Final Cut Pro X?
Granted, at the moment iOS cannot function as a full desktop OS. However it's been getting more and more features, and over time it will become an adequate substitute for general purpose computing. The success of the iPad shows that people like it, and would be willing to use it as a main device. This is crucial for Apple, because iOS has something OSX will NEVER have, that is a complete dependency to the App Store. Unless you jailbreak your device, you cannot install apps from alternate sources. We all know the large cut Apple takes from every app, book or doodah sold in the App Store.
If Apple were to try and implement a similar dependency in OSX, there would be a shitstorm overnight even if they tried it a few years from now. People expect OSX to allow them to install apps from whatever source, to tweak the system to some extent, and to generally own it. But if they attack the problem from the other end, by replacing OSX with iOS, not many people will even notice, let alone complain because they are used to the iPhone or iPad being locked in.
I would not be at all surprised if the next MacBook Air will be just an iPad with a keyboard running iOS. Two generations from now, low end MacBooks will also be running iOS, with only the most expensive and profitable MacBook Pros still running OSX. Is it likely to happen? I don't know for sure, but this is where things are pointing at right now with Apple trying to control the hardware, software distribution and entertainment distribution.
Remember that Apple, like every single other company out there, has the single purpose of maximizing its profits for its shareholders. Everything else is irrelevant. If you believe otherwise, you need to learn some history.
I don't really understand the hype behind Bulldozer.
Do people really believe that it'll be on-par with Sandy Bridge? The $200 2500k competes well with their own $700+ CPU's. That is absolutely ridiculous performance that I wouldn't have dreamed of 5-10 years ago, for that price.
Sure, maybe having more cores will mean better multi-threaded performance, but this still isn't taken advantage of. I don't see Intel losing in the single-threaded department anytime soon.
You are still thinking raw CPU power still matters. In a world where even web browsers are 3D accelerated, the GPU suddenly becomes extremely important, even more than the CPU. If you are gaming, the best CPU will still be crippled by the GPU present in that system, and that is what's happening with Intel.
If Bobcat and Llano are any indication, AMD will integrate a GPU that will be at least 2-4 times faster than the GPU in Sandy Bridge while consuming the same amount of power. And if some of the reviews I read are correct, the integrated AMD GPU will be able to work together with the discrete GPU for a 30-70% performance boost.
So if someone buys a very cheap system without a discrete GPU, Bobcat will be faster than Sandy Bridge, and may even be able to play some older games that choke on SB. And Bobcat will be faster for every day tasks as well such as browsing, playing flash movies and games, playing HD content, etc.
Now if someone buys a high end system with a discrete GPU, Bobcat will still be faster, because the integrated GPU will work with the discrete GPU. SB currently does not even have such a feature. Even if it did, SB's integrated GPU is still weaker by far than Bobcat's.
so instead of exploring space for scientific reasons we should do it for thrills and chills? waste of money and illogical.
Sending people into space is absolutely a waste of money and is illogical but it's also exciting. It's something the whole world wants to see and can relate to. And that's how you receive the funding to continue research. If nobody cares that yet another robot landed on Mars, or a probe went into the sun or collected dust from a comet, the budgets will get cut and no research will be done. Which incidentally is pretty much what's happening now. Do you think the US would have put Neil Armstrong on the Moon if the USSR hadn't been the first to send Yuri Gagarin into space?
we are doing the right thing, exploring space with probes for now. when we have fusion power (perhaps from robotic mining of asteroids or moon) we then will have sufficient energy for massive payloads, and be able to colonize the solar system and the near stars
Fusion power is a technology I've been hearing for as long as I remember, and we're always 20 years away. I'm not saying it won't happen, but waiting for it at the expense of everything else is short sighted. The lessons learned from sending small payloads into space can be applied to massive payloads. Solving water, oxygen and food recycling problems is important. Radiation shielding, dealing with the effects of microgravity, etc, etc are all of vital, equal to propulsion issues.
My point is a chunk of Moon rock suddenly became extremely valuable. Why? Because we, as humans, never went there again. And that in my book is a sad thing.
"In 1973," Harris wrote in the lawsuit, "the plaque was widely considered not to have any real monetary value because it was assumed moon trips would soon become a nearly everyday occurrence."
What happened in the past 40 years or so? I am just barely old enough to remember Challenger, but it seems like throughout my life space exploration has stagnated if not outright declined.
Now I understand that from a scientific point of view sending probes to Mars and beyond is cheap, safe (unless you mix up your feet with your hogsheads) and the amount of data gathered is enormous. But sending a human being to another planet is on a completely different level of excitement. Seeing the grainy footage of the astronauts walking on the Moon still sends shivers down my spine, while the highest resolution pictures taken by the Mars rovers leave me unimpressed.
I will venture a guess, but this is one of the reasons the general public does not care that NASA has its budget reduced every year. Recently/. ran a story about a new rover landing on Mars, and I just thought "meh." Now if these missions were part of a larger plan of manned space exploration, then I'd care. But I'm pretty sure it will not get us anywhere, at least not within the rest of my lifetime.
So I ask again, what happened? Where did we go wrong, and how can we, the human race, get back into space?
I posted almost 6 months ago complaining about searching in the market app. In the meantime, none of my complaints have been addressed. Given that Google is still primarily a search engine with a bunch of OSs, browsers, apps and features designed to steer people towards their search engine, I would have expected them to implement a better Market app.
My final point still stands. Google does not want users to be able to easily differentiate between poor apps and high quality apps since they still won't allow you to sort results by number of downloads, rating, and a few other criteria I can think of. In the case of honeycomb I guess it's working against them.
The other thing netbooks do that laptops don't is have a really solid battery life. My netbook is good for six hours between charges, meaning I can casually use it as I need to during the day without too much worry that it's going to punk out. I can extend that further by disabling the wifi, and keeping the screen to its minimal brightness. My poor laptop, on the other hand, went for about two hours, and could possibly make 4 if I really pushed it.
I am not sure if it's a common issue with HP laptops, but I had 3 of them over the years and their battery life SUCKED. The last one was an Elitebook 8440p Core i5 with a measly Nvidia Quadro NVS3100 that barely lasted 4h with everything turned off.
While I do have a cheap netbook for when I travel, my current laptop is an Acer 3820TG Core i5 with a Radeon 6550 (about 4 times faster than the Nvidia Quadro NVS3100) that lasts for 5h+ with minimal power management and the Radeon card enabled. It lasts longer if I switch it to the integrated Intel HD card.
The Acer is also marginally heavier than my netbook. If it weren't for the price difference, I'd dump the netbook and travel with the Acer.
I wasn't going to reply, and to a large extent I agree with you. Netbooks have had their prices artificially kept high for too long given the technology that goes into them.
But you had to make this statement:
and omg grow up, if you think 3kg is heavy go to the freakin gym and quit sitting on your mobile ass in front of the netbook all day
I can only guess you don't travel much by airplane, where your main luggage is limited to 20kg and your carry-on is limited to 10kg. Most airlines allow the carry-on plus a camera/laptop bag but you should see how much my DSLR with 3 lenses, flash and tripod weigh. Saving even 1Kg on a laptop that has to go in the carry-on because my camera HAS to go in its own bag is a BIG deal.
I can't go for a tablet like the iPad, because with their measly storage options, I'd fill it up with pictures in a few days. That is if I could actually connect my camera or an SD card reader to it to actually get the pictures off the card.
Netbook with built-in SD card reader and a 500Gb internal hdd (plus a 500Gb external hdd for backup) is the best solution I was able to find.
And how easy would it be for Google to change the 'open' button to a 'add to home' button instead of disabling it? Instead developers now include an 'app' just to tell you to install the widget, further clogging up the menus. This exactly the attention to detail which creates a sense of quality.
I have no idea how much more difficult your idea would be to implement. But as I've written in one of my previous posts I think the Android Market app is pretty crappy, so I do agree with you to an extent.
One reason developers include an app along with the widgets though is to allow people to edit the widgets. That's the case with Elixir and Minimalistic Text, and those are the only two widgets I settled on. Android does not seem to allow editing custom widgets once they're added to the screen, and you have to delete them then re-add them with different settings. The apps seem to be a workaround.
As to the attention to detail you speak of, can you give me an example of better implemented widgets? Apple does not allow them, Nokia's Maemo had its share of problems and I'm not familiar with BB, WebOS or Symbian widgets.
Go on the Android Market and check out any widget. Invariably you will see comments along the lines "I installed the widget, but now I can't open it. It sucks."
People can't even be bothered to understand that widgets and apps are different. You open apps but you add widgets to your screen. Is it intuitive? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that some people are unwilling or unable to understand anything about the devices they use.
Google has locked down tethering as of 2.3. Instead of making it an external feature, tethering is now built into the core functionality and 2.3 is able to understand when tethering is happening and alert carriers when it does. Still using 2.2 on my Droid X...
Notice I did not say run stock Android, but a custom ROM. Cyanogen has tethering enabled, and the current version is based on Android 2.3.4. And as far as I know, it also does not report anything back to the carriers. Choose wisely, and you will not have any problems.
As to the comments regarding the carriers disabling tethering on their end, in Canada Fido was just forbidden by the courts to do so. They may disable tethering on their own branded phones, but if the customer unlocks it or brings his own phone, they have to allow it.
I don't understand what's the big deal. In the grand scheme of things, I know blocking tethering apps may be against FCC rules, but I'm not betting the carriers will actually follow those rules. But here's what you CAN do:
Step 1. Get an unlockable, rootable phone. ALL carrier phones are locked, but some are easily rooted and all of them can be unlocked for a small fee. So you can still get a subsidized phone, just be careful which one you pick. As a rule of thumb, never pick up a brand new model, but almost every single 3-6 month old model is rootable.
Step 2. Install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod.
Step 3. Use the tethering capabilities built into your ROM, without the need of any extra apps.
If you can't follow these steps, then find friends who can or pay somebody to do it for you. My gf, who doesn't have a clue how to unlock and root phones, is using CM7 nightlies on her HTC just fine.
maybe dell is cheaper because their quality sucks?? i bet the macbook will last much longer than the dell and will have lesser hardware issues the question is: are you willing to pay $600 extra for that?
Do yourself a favour and never visit a Vegas casino because your bet is wrong. The differences between most manufacturers (including Dell and Apple) are very small.
Keeping in mind Apple only sells higher end notebooks and desktops, while Dell sells everything from high end notebooks and desktops to bargain basement netbooks. So I would have expected Apple to have far fewer problems than Dell, but the difference is less than 2%. Afterall, the main justification in charging higher prices is the better materials and build quality.
So if I had $2500 to spend on computing gear, I'd save the $600 and buy a Nexus S smartphone for the difference.
Be aware that the latest nightlies for certain brands and models of handsets might be buggy as hell.
For instance I have an HTC Desire BravoC and the latest nightly build of CM7+ I can run without serious problems is number 72 (May 14th), even though they're up to #85 today.
For this particular handset, #72 is truly golden:-D My battery life has easily doubled with this build.
I have the same phone as you, and you're right that the latest builds have been buggy. I just flashed build 88 to test out the new feature though. I have full nitdroid backups for the past month, so I can always revert if stuff goes truly wrong.
Ad free is stealing from developers... If I met the people who wrote ad free, I'd probably beat them down with baseball bats.
Adfree actually does not work on my HTC Desire because it's not S-OFF. But I found a very nice workaround. I created a signed package with a custom hosts file (taken from Adfree sources) that I flash after every Cyanogen update.
It creates an extra step when flashing, but the bonus is that it works every single time, and there's NOTHING any application can do to circumvent it because it's undetectable.
You're welcome to pay me a visit now with your baseball bat.
Would you rather all applications be paid and therefore inaccessible to 1. people using devices without Android Market (such as AOSP Android tablets) and 2. people outside those few countries where Android Market offers paid applications?
That's not what I mean and you know it. There are plenty of apps on the Market that are supported by ads alone. So they usually have very simple permission requirements. As a fictitious example, a notepad may need to write on the SD card to save files and a network connection to pull ads. It should NOT need to read my GPS or network location, my contact list, my phone ID or IMEI. This is simply the developer getting greedy with MY information.
So I have two options in those cases. Either not use the app or block its offending features. If it's a nice, useful app that I may want or need, I will opt for the latter option.
I don't know about Asia, but gasoline gauges are calibrated differently in cars for the United States market compared to cars for the German market due to different expectations among drivers. A car sold in the United States that has started to show empty still has enough gas to get to a gas station, while on a car sold in Germany, empty means zero, and the engine will stop. Likewise, standards for how to visualize battery charge may differ per region.
You wouldn't happen to be a developer of apps with such underhanded permissions, would you? 1 volt is the same all over the world, and I'm pretty sure on other planets and galaxies as well. Or the Americans use the Imperial Volt while the Chinese use the Mao Volt? Saying that "standards for how to visualize battery charge may differ per region" to justify your point is using the straw man argument.
And if the application hasn't been able to phone home in the past week or so, the developer will block you back by closing its activity and opening the Market page for the paid version of the same application.
That is completely the prerogative of the developer, and I would not blame them one bit.
How could an app developer program around this fine-grained control? Even if he could make sure tha the program failed gracefully when certain permissions were changed, key functions in his app could no longer work. How could that not result in an awful user experience? His app would get awful reviews ("sh!t doesn't work!") and he would lose sales.
First, I run Cyanogen, but not one of the latest nightly builds. I may give it a try later today and report how well it works.
Sometimes there is no way to avoid bad reviews. To give just one example, perfectly working widgets constantly get bad ratings and reviews from people saying "It doesn't work" or "It won't open" because they do not know widgets need to be added to the screen, not opened from the app drawer.
But it doesn't change the fact that far too many apps on the Market request permissions far beyond the scope of their functionality. And as far as I can tell, it's exclusively to collect as much detailed data about the users so it can be resold to advertisers. Why would a battery widget need access to my location? Is the voltage reading dependent on whether I am in North America or in Asia? So if those developers use underhanded tactics to steal information from me, I will just block them.
I already have a modified hosts file that blocks all advertising (sorry, but I really am paying a lot for 3G bandwidth). It's amazing how painfully slow some sites become when ads get loaded, and they speed up by a factor of 10 sometimes without ads.
That's precisely what happened to me. My second last laptop was an HP Elitebook 8440p that had amazing build quality, a very nice 14in matte screen with 1600x900 resolution. The downside was that it had a huge amount of business features (security card reader, fingerprint reader, etc) that I did not need, while gaming performance and battery life was very poor. I did buy it used for a third of retail price, and resold it without a loss.
I replaced it with my current Acer 3840TG that has a much worse build quality, a horrible glossy 13.3in screen with 1366x768 resolution. Another HUGE issue I have with it is the shiny screen bezel that is both a scratch and fingerprint magnet. It's enough to wipe the smudges on the bezel with a cotton cloth or even an eyeglass microfiber cloth, and every speck of dust will make gouges in it.
But while its features are limited, gaming performance is outstanding (I'd say it's the fastest 13in laptop from a generation ago) and the battery life is twice better than the Elitebook. And it cost me brand new less than the Elitebook cost used.
Acer will chalk it up as a sale, and consider me as a satisfied customer. But it was a huge compromise on my part simply because there were no other options in this size, battery life, performance and cost.
Posting this from an N900, so i will be brief. i bought this Nokia N900 for as much as the playbook retails because the hardware was amazing at the time (it still has a better camera than any other phone), it was running a full version of Linux and the software was "a coupe revisions away from being perfect." that was a year and a half ago.
what happened? Nokia released 3 revisions (one of which was at best minor) and then forgot they actually sold me a $600 device. So i learned my lesson. if the device is not perfect, or close, when i decide to buy it, then i don't buy it.
Mark my words, the playbook is doa, and in a year Rim will already have moved on leaving everybody with expensive paperweights.
Start fishtailing on the highway? Apply corrective steering measures.
(Not a native speaker here. I assume that fishtailing is the same as tailgating/driving close to vehicle in front of you).
To the contrary, the best thing about programs as drivers is that they can safely tailgate. The cars can even communicate with each other directly, allowing braking simultaneously, if needed (it also provides you with backup: Eg. if the communication breaks down, the following vehicle will still rely on its own proximity sensors and/or braking light sensors to detect the lead vehicle is breaking). The great thing about tailgating is that it saves a huge amount of fuel, easily 15%.
Bert
Fishtailing means you drive along, make a mistake (such as changing lanes into another car) and you overcorrect. Then the car starts swinging side to side worse and worse because your natural instinct is to counter that motion, until you completely lose control and crash into a guard rail or another car.
I've been saying the same thing for years. The driverless car will never catch on because people want to be in control. I'm still amazed we have autopilots landing aircraft. Granted the pilot is paying attention at all times (or should be) and is ready to take control in case of a malfunction. For driverless cars the dream is that you can read the newspaper while going to work. But the reality is, that even if your car is driving itself, you should still be there to take over in case something malfunctions. If you have to pay attention anyway, you might as well be driving.
Autopilot landing is EASY. You have a stationary runway, known wind, ground velocity, altitude, weather conditions,etc. Also the airplane is in the air, surrounded by nothing for miles unless the air traffic controller messes up. Even autopilot landing a fighter jet on a carrier in choppy seas is more predictable than driving a car in traffic.
A car is surrounded by obstacles on all sides, some stationary others in motion, it has to obey laws, traffic signals, and must adapt to unknown weather and road conditions. Most people don't give it a second thought in a car, but I can promise you nothing ruins a bright, warm day of motorcycle riding faster than hitting gravel in a turn.
This push towards automating driving is yet another attempt to nerf the entire world. Doomed to failure, but that won't stop the "visionaries." They should instead of focusing on having much better driving schools, much more stringent driving exams and recurring examinations. I find it ridiculous that having passed two laughable exams, I can now drive my car and ride my bike FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE (or at least for the next 50 years) without any retest.
Granted, some people will fail more difficult driving exams, and I'm ok with that even if I fail myself. They lack the hand-eye coordination required to be in control of a multi tonne vehicle, and should not be on the road. They can ride the bus, take a cab or walk. I'm not being facetious, I truly mean it. The day I fail a driving exam is the day I stop driving, at least until I can successfully retake it (and there should be a limit on retests too).:)))
I drive manual transmission cars, I ride motorcycles, and I love going to the racetrack and testing the limits of both myself and my vehicles. Never had an at fault accident, but in the interest of disclosure I was rear-ended while waiting at red lights TWICE.
So while I have a personal problem relinquishing control of my car to a computer because I enjoy driving it myself, I can see the benefits of computer aided driving especially on public roads. But I believe an in between system would vastly improve safety while leaving people in control. Instead of the computer having absolute control, have it perform the same analysis and assist in collision avoidance.
Approaching a red light at a speed beyond safety margins? Apply the brakes. Start fishtailing on the highway? Apply corrective steering measures. Changing lanes into another vehicle, cyclist or turning into the path of another vehicle? Sound warnings, apply brakes, etc.
The trick is setting the thresholds to a level where people are completely in control up to the point where they are somewhat close to having an accident. Because if you believe computer driven cars will remove ALL collisions, you're deluded. All it takes if for a child to run out between two parked cars in the path of another car, and all the computer systems in the world will not counter its kinetic energy.
And it would be VERY important for the vehicle to be usable with the computer systems disabled, for several reasons.
First, because many people enjoy driving. Short of banning every single existing car on the road, people like me will always be able to purchase and drive a non-computerized vehicle. Even today I can buy a functioning Ford Model T. Think about that for a second, and you'll realize it could take a hundred years before the last current car stops being available, short of outlawing them. But just like with cigarettes and alcohol, I doubt that will ever happen. Can you imagine the lobby all the wealthy car collectors will mount?
Second, because computer systems fail and sometimes they cannot be inexpensively repaired. A current car can still run with many of its electrical systems disabled (power seats, windows, navigation system, even alternator and starter) for a while. Having worked with cars and motorcycles for a long time, I can tell you I'd rather rebuild an engine than diagnose an electrical problem. A cold solder on a PCB can ruin a while weekend trying to figure out why your car will not start in hot weather, but works fine in cold (I'm looking at you Honda Main Relay!!!) The complexity of a computer that can drive a car is beyond anything we have available today ANYWHERE, and it has thousands of failure points. Sensors, cameras, gps, servo motors, switches, wires, PCBs and only lastly the main CPU. The fact it runs in testing is great, but these systems have to last 10+ years of abuse WITHOUT FAILURE.
Lastly, having fully computer driven cars will make people even more dependent on technology, which is NOT a good thing. I've had my GPS tell me to go down a railway track once. I looked at it, smiled, and found the real route myself. But people HAVE driven on railway tracks, into lakes or in remote areas where they died of hypothermia. Imagine if you program your car to drive you, without any input, and it makes such a mistake?
If I am doing something wrong, please let me know, but browsing the market is absolutely painful. My biggest problem is the fact that you can go to a top category like "Business" and you are limited to THREE filters, "Top Paid", "Top Free" and "Just In". They are all irrelevant for me, because cost is not really an issue for under $20 apps, and "Just In" can list anything from first release betas to minor updates. Searching for a specific term is even worse because then you can't apply any further filters. As a related issue, when browsing categories or searching specifics, apps seem to be listed at random.
I would like to be able to sort apps by rating, developer, price, date uploaded, number downloads, and a whole bunch of other criteria. You know, stuff that I take for granted while searching through Google. You would think that the leading search company would be capable of implementing more than a rudimentary market application...
There are three explanations.
First, I could be incompetent. This is very likely, since I got my first Android phone less than a week ago. However while I'm not a developer, I am not exactly computer illiterate. I was able to unlock and root my HTC Desire, and I already tried 4 different ROMS (currently running Cyanogenmod 7 nightly 22) and a few dozen apps. My last phone was a Nokia N900, and its repository system automatically contained only free, and mostly GPL apps searchable on a variety of criteria. The Market was a very negative culture shock for me. If however I am incompetent, I welcome any suggestions how to better search for apps THROUGH THE MARKETPLACE (I'll come back to this in a second).
Second, Google engineers are inept and can't implement better searching in their own market app. I seriously doubt it, given the extensive features of any other Google app. FFS, think of the analysis Google Goggles, Voice Search or even Maps have to perform, while Market can't even sort apps properly? If the phones themselves are too slow, offload the computing to the Google servers just like Goggles and Voice Search.
Third, it's in Google's interest to force users to browse hunderds of apps, try out a lot of garbage before finding what they are looking for. This also ties in with TFA. Maybe Google wants the bragging rights to say they have hundreds of thousands of apps. Maybe they don't care, but the OP is not the first developer to complain about copied apps. One ADW theme designer stopped releasing the template for his themes because people were copying them and reselling them throu the Market. This is a very serious issue for Google, because Balmer was right. DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! If they start bailing out, your platform dies out, which incidentally is what happened to my Nokia N900.
The ONLY reliable way to find Android apps is to either search through Google's site that we all use, or go to specific Android development forums like XDA and search past threads.
Considering Fukushima I 1 reached first criticality in in 1971 and Fukushima I 6 in 1979, the technology and designs used is probably from the late 50s to mid 60s. Back then much less was understood about earthquakes and effective countermeasures. And it wasn't the reactor itself that failed, the fault seems to be with the backup diesel generators meant to power the emergency coolant system.
Let's see what happens. For now it's just unsubstantiated reports. I mean the article quoted on the first page is from the CBC, as in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Also remember, this was the 5th largest earthquake this century, and the biggest to hit Japan in 140 years. Some things you simply can't plan for.
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Unlike you, I will quote your entire post, not just the very last sentence. You sidestepped my whole argument that economic factors NOT technical factors will dictate Apple's future policy.
First, it looks like Windows 8 WILL have a unified interface across all devices (with the option to fall back on the old style Windows 7 interface for old apps on desktops). Their demo shows all desktop apps running full screen, with an interesting side tab switching system and a whole lot of gestures that seem to work best on a touch surface. Watch the youtube video if you don't believe me. So if MS can do it, or at least showcase it, it's definitely possible across Apple devices.
Second, you are thinking as a consumer of Apple products, not as an Apple executive intent on maximizing profits. I must sound like a broken record, but Apple is not your friend, and does not care what you want or need. The bottom line is simple. If they sell you a (theoretical) iPhone, iPad or Macbook running iOS, they control where you buy the apps, where you buy your music, movies and TV shows, and they take at least 30% of every transaction. If however they sell you a Macbook or Macbook Pro running OSX, they DO NOT control any of that. Apple will make iOS work on laptops, mark my words. The technical details will be worked out over the next few generations.
My original post was modded down once, and I expect the same to happen to this post. I just wanted to make it clear what I meant.
From what I've been seeing, Apple's main interest at the moment is the consumer market. Developers, movie editors, servers all come a distant second. Why else would they cripple Lion server? Why would they make Lion a download only OS? Or why release a very incomplete Final Cut Pro X?
Granted, at the moment iOS cannot function as a full desktop OS. However it's been getting more and more features, and over time it will become an adequate substitute for general purpose computing. The success of the iPad shows that people like it, and would be willing to use it as a main device. This is crucial for Apple, because iOS has something OSX will NEVER have, that is a complete dependency to the App Store. Unless you jailbreak your device, you cannot install apps from alternate sources. We all know the large cut Apple takes from every app, book or doodah sold in the App Store.
If Apple were to try and implement a similar dependency in OSX, there would be a shitstorm overnight even if they tried it a few years from now. People expect OSX to allow them to install apps from whatever source, to tweak the system to some extent, and to generally own it. But if they attack the problem from the other end, by replacing OSX with iOS, not many people will even notice, let alone complain because they are used to the iPhone or iPad being locked in.
I would not be at all surprised if the next MacBook Air will be just an iPad with a keyboard running iOS. Two generations from now, low end MacBooks will also be running iOS, with only the most expensive and profitable MacBook Pros still running OSX. Is it likely to happen? I don't know for sure, but this is where things are pointing at right now with Apple trying to control the hardware, software distribution and entertainment distribution.
Remember that Apple, like every single other company out there, has the single purpose of maximizing its profits for its shareholders. Everything else is irrelevant. If you believe otherwise, you need to learn some history.
I don't really understand the hype behind Bulldozer.
You are still thinking raw CPU power still matters. In a world where even web browsers are 3D accelerated, the GPU suddenly becomes extremely important, even more than the CPU. If you are gaming, the best CPU will still be crippled by the GPU present in that system, and that is what's happening with Intel.
If Bobcat and Llano are any indication, AMD will integrate a GPU that will be at least 2-4 times faster than the GPU in Sandy Bridge while consuming the same amount of power. And if some of the reviews I read are correct, the integrated AMD GPU will be able to work together with the discrete GPU for a 30-70% performance boost.
So if someone buys a very cheap system without a discrete GPU, Bobcat will be faster than Sandy Bridge, and may even be able to play some older games that choke on SB. And Bobcat will be faster for every day tasks as well such as browsing, playing flash movies and games, playing HD content, etc.
Now if someone buys a high end system with a discrete GPU, Bobcat will still be faster, because the integrated GPU will work with the discrete GPU. SB currently does not even have such a feature. Even if it did, SB's integrated GPU is still weaker by far than Bobcat's.
Sending people into space is absolutely a waste of money and is illogical but it's also exciting. It's something the whole world wants to see and can relate to. And that's how you receive the funding to continue research. If nobody cares that yet another robot landed on Mars, or a probe went into the sun or collected dust from a comet, the budgets will get cut and no research will be done. Which incidentally is pretty much what's happening now. Do you think the US would have put Neil Armstrong on the Moon if the USSR hadn't been the first to send Yuri Gagarin into space?
Fusion power is a technology I've been hearing for as long as I remember, and we're always 20 years away. I'm not saying it won't happen, but waiting for it at the expense of everything else is short sighted. The lessons learned from sending small payloads into space can be applied to massive payloads. Solving water, oxygen and food recycling problems is important. Radiation shielding, dealing with the effects of microgravity, etc, etc are all of vital, equal to propulsion issues.
My point is a chunk of Moon rock suddenly became extremely valuable. Why? Because we, as humans, never went there again. And that in my book is a sad thing.
What happened in the past 40 years or so? I am just barely old enough to remember Challenger, but it seems like throughout my life space exploration has stagnated if not outright declined.
Now I understand that from a scientific point of view sending probes to Mars and beyond is cheap, safe (unless you mix up your feet with your hogsheads) and the amount of data gathered is enormous. But sending a human being to another planet is on a completely different level of excitement. Seeing the grainy footage of the astronauts walking on the Moon still sends shivers down my spine, while the highest resolution pictures taken by the Mars rovers leave me unimpressed.
I will venture a guess, but this is one of the reasons the general public does not care that NASA has its budget reduced every year. Recently /. ran a story about a new rover landing on Mars, and I just thought "meh." Now if these missions were part of a larger plan of manned space exploration, then I'd care. But I'm pretty sure it will not get us anywhere, at least not within the rest of my lifetime.
So I ask again, what happened? Where did we go wrong, and how can we, the human race, get back into space?
The TSA operation manual is actually Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Whoever mods me Funny, please don't. It's not a joke.
I posted almost 6 months ago complaining about searching in the market app. In the meantime, none of my complaints have been addressed. Given that Google is still primarily a search engine with a bunch of OSs, browsers, apps and features designed to steer people towards their search engine, I would have expected them to implement a better Market app.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2042754&cid=35526684
My final point still stands. Google does not want users to be able to easily differentiate between poor apps and high quality apps since they still won't allow you to sort results by number of downloads, rating, and a few other criteria I can think of. In the case of honeycomb I guess it's working against them.
I am not sure if it's a common issue with HP laptops, but I had 3 of them over the years and their battery life SUCKED. The last one was an Elitebook 8440p Core i5 with a measly Nvidia Quadro NVS3100 that barely lasted 4h with everything turned off.
While I do have a cheap netbook for when I travel, my current laptop is an Acer 3820TG Core i5 with a Radeon 6550 (about 4 times faster than the Nvidia Quadro NVS3100) that lasts for 5h+ with minimal power management and the Radeon card enabled. It lasts longer if I switch it to the integrated Intel HD card.
The Acer is also marginally heavier than my netbook. If it weren't for the price difference, I'd dump the netbook and travel with the Acer.
I wasn't going to reply, and to a large extent I agree with you. Netbooks have had their prices artificially kept high for too long given the technology that goes into them.
But you had to make this statement:
I can only guess you don't travel much by airplane, where your main luggage is limited to 20kg and your carry-on is limited to 10kg. Most airlines allow the carry-on plus a camera/laptop bag but you should see how much my DSLR with 3 lenses, flash and tripod weigh. Saving even 1Kg on a laptop that has to go in the carry-on because my camera HAS to go in its own bag is a BIG deal.
I can't go for a tablet like the iPad, because with their measly storage options, I'd fill it up with pictures in a few days. That is if I could actually connect my camera or an SD card reader to it to actually get the pictures off the card.
Netbook with built-in SD card reader and a 500Gb internal hdd (plus a 500Gb external hdd for backup) is the best solution I was able to find.
I have no idea how much more difficult your idea would be to implement. But as I've written in one of my previous posts I think the Android Market app is pretty crappy, so I do agree with you to an extent.
One reason developers include an app along with the widgets though is to allow people to edit the widgets. That's the case with Elixir and Minimalistic Text, and those are the only two widgets I settled on. Android does not seem to allow editing custom widgets once they're added to the screen, and you have to delete them then re-add them with different settings. The apps seem to be a workaround.
As to the attention to detail you speak of, can you give me an example of better implemented widgets? Apple does not allow them, Nokia's Maemo had its share of problems and I'm not familiar with BB, WebOS or Symbian widgets.
Go on the Android Market and check out any widget. Invariably you will see comments along the lines "I installed the widget, but now I can't open it. It sucks."
People can't even be bothered to understand that widgets and apps are different. You open apps but you add widgets to your screen. Is it intuitive? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that some people are unwilling or unable to understand anything about the devices they use.
Notice I did not say run stock Android, but a custom ROM. Cyanogen has tethering enabled, and the current version is based on Android 2.3.4. And as far as I know, it also does not report anything back to the carriers. Choose wisely, and you will not have any problems.
As to the comments regarding the carriers disabling tethering on their end, in Canada Fido was just forbidden by the courts to do so. They may disable tethering on their own branded phones, but if the customer unlocks it or brings his own phone, they have to allow it.
I don't understand what's the big deal. In the grand scheme of things, I know blocking tethering apps may be against FCC rules, but I'm not betting the carriers will actually follow those rules. But here's what you CAN do:
Step 1. Get an unlockable, rootable phone. ALL carrier phones are locked, but some are easily rooted and all of them can be unlocked for a small fee. So you can still get a subsidized phone, just be careful which one you pick. As a rule of thumb, never pick up a brand new model, but almost every single 3-6 month old model is rootable.
Step 2. Install a custom ROM like Cyanogenmod.
Step 3. Use the tethering capabilities built into your ROM, without the need of any extra apps.
If you can't follow these steps, then find friends who can or pay somebody to do it for you. My gf, who doesn't have a clue how to unlock and root phones, is using CM7 nightlies on her HTC just fine.
Do yourself a favour and never visit a Vegas casino because your bet is wrong. The differences between most manufacturers (including Dell and Apple) are very small.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/
Keeping in mind Apple only sells higher end notebooks and desktops, while Dell sells everything from high end notebooks and desktops to bargain basement netbooks. So I would have expected Apple to have far fewer problems than Dell, but the difference is less than 2%. Afterall, the main justification in charging higher prices is the better materials and build quality.
So if I had $2500 to spend on computing gear, I'd save the $600 and buy a Nexus S smartphone for the difference.
I have the same phone as you, and you're right that the latest builds have been buggy. I just flashed build 88 to test out the new feature though. I have full nitdroid backups for the past month, so I can always revert if stuff goes truly wrong.
Adfree actually does not work on my HTC Desire because it's not S-OFF. But I found a very nice workaround. I created a signed package with a custom hosts file (taken from Adfree sources) that I flash after every Cyanogen update.
It creates an extra step when flashing, but the bonus is that it works every single time, and there's NOTHING any application can do to circumvent it because it's undetectable.
You're welcome to pay me a visit now with your baseball bat.
That's not what I mean and you know it. There are plenty of apps on the Market that are supported by ads alone. So they usually have very simple permission requirements. As a fictitious example, a notepad may need to write on the SD card to save files and a network connection to pull ads. It should NOT need to read my GPS or network location, my contact list, my phone ID or IMEI. This is simply the developer getting greedy with MY information.
So I have two options in those cases. Either not use the app or block its offending features. If it's a nice, useful app that I may want or need, I will opt for the latter option.
You wouldn't happen to be a developer of apps with such underhanded permissions, would you? 1 volt is the same all over the world, and I'm pretty sure on other planets and galaxies as well. Or the Americans use the Imperial Volt while the Chinese use the Mao Volt? Saying that "standards for how to visualize battery charge may differ per region" to justify your point is using the straw man argument.
First, I run Cyanogen, but not one of the latest nightly builds. I may give it a try later today and report how well it works.
Sometimes there is no way to avoid bad reviews. To give just one example, perfectly working widgets constantly get bad ratings and reviews from people saying "It doesn't work" or "It won't open" because they do not know widgets need to be added to the screen, not opened from the app drawer.
But it doesn't change the fact that far too many apps on the Market request permissions far beyond the scope of their functionality. And as far as I can tell, it's exclusively to collect as much detailed data about the users so it can be resold to advertisers. Why would a battery widget need access to my location? Is the voltage reading dependent on whether I am in North America or in Asia? So if those developers use underhanded tactics to steal information from me, I will just block them.
I already have a modified hosts file that blocks all advertising (sorry, but I really am paying a lot for 3G bandwidth). It's amazing how painfully slow some sites become when ads get loaded, and they speed up by a factor of 10 sometimes without ads.
That's precisely what happened to me. My second last laptop was an HP Elitebook 8440p that had amazing build quality, a very nice 14in matte screen with 1600x900 resolution. The downside was that it had a huge amount of business features (security card reader, fingerprint reader, etc) that I did not need, while gaming performance and battery life was very poor. I did buy it used for a third of retail price, and resold it without a loss.
I replaced it with my current Acer 3840TG that has a much worse build quality, a horrible glossy 13.3in screen with 1366x768 resolution. Another HUGE issue I have with it is the shiny screen bezel that is both a scratch and fingerprint magnet. It's enough to wipe the smudges on the bezel with a cotton cloth or even an eyeglass microfiber cloth, and every speck of dust will make gouges in it.
But while its features are limited, gaming performance is outstanding (I'd say it's the fastest 13in laptop from a generation ago) and the battery life is twice better than the Elitebook. And it cost me brand new less than the Elitebook cost used.
Acer will chalk it up as a sale, and consider me as a satisfied customer. But it was a huge compromise on my part simply because there were no other options in this size, battery life, performance and cost.
Posting this from an N900, so i will be brief. i bought this Nokia N900 for as much as the playbook retails because the hardware was amazing at the time (it still has a better camera than any other phone), it was running a full version of Linux and the software was "a coupe revisions away from being perfect." that was a year and a half ago.
what happened? Nokia released 3 revisions (one of which was at best minor) and then forgot they actually sold me a $600 device. So i learned my lesson. if the device is not perfect, or close, when i decide to buy it, then i don't buy it.
Mark my words, the playbook is doa, and in a year Rim will already have moved on leaving everybody with expensive paperweights.
Fishtailing means you drive along, make a mistake (such as changing lanes into another car) and you overcorrect. Then the car starts swinging side to side worse and worse because your natural instinct is to counter that motion, until you completely lose control and crash into a guard rail or another car.
Autopilot landing is EASY. You have a stationary runway, known wind, ground velocity, altitude, weather conditions,etc. Also the airplane is in the air, surrounded by nothing for miles unless the air traffic controller messes up. Even autopilot landing a fighter jet on a carrier in choppy seas is more predictable than driving a car in traffic.
A car is surrounded by obstacles on all sides, some stationary others in motion, it has to obey laws, traffic signals, and must adapt to unknown weather and road conditions. Most people don't give it a second thought in a car, but I can promise you nothing ruins a bright, warm day of motorcycle riding faster than hitting gravel in a turn.
This push towards automating driving is yet another attempt to nerf the entire world. Doomed to failure, but that won't stop the "visionaries." They should instead of focusing on having much better driving schools, much more stringent driving exams and recurring examinations. I find it ridiculous that having passed two laughable exams, I can now drive my car and ride my bike FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE (or at least for the next 50 years) without any retest.
Granted, some people will fail more difficult driving exams, and I'm ok with that even if I fail myself. They lack the hand-eye coordination required to be in control of a multi tonne vehicle, and should not be on the road. They can ride the bus, take a cab or walk. I'm not being facetious, I truly mean it. The day I fail a driving exam is the day I stop driving, at least until I can successfully retake it (and there should be a limit on retests too). :)))
I drive manual transmission cars, I ride motorcycles, and I love going to the racetrack and testing the limits of both myself and my vehicles. Never had an at fault accident, but in the interest of disclosure I was rear-ended while waiting at red lights TWICE.
So while I have a personal problem relinquishing control of my car to a computer because I enjoy driving it myself, I can see the benefits of computer aided driving especially on public roads. But I believe an in between system would vastly improve safety while leaving people in control. Instead of the computer having absolute control, have it perform the same analysis and assist in collision avoidance.
Approaching a red light at a speed beyond safety margins? Apply the brakes. Start fishtailing on the highway? Apply corrective steering measures. Changing lanes into another vehicle, cyclist or turning into the path of another vehicle? Sound warnings, apply brakes, etc.
The trick is setting the thresholds to a level where people are completely in control up to the point where they are somewhat close to having an accident. Because if you believe computer driven cars will remove ALL collisions, you're deluded. All it takes if for a child to run out between two parked cars in the path of another car, and all the computer systems in the world will not counter its kinetic energy.
And it would be VERY important for the vehicle to be usable with the computer systems disabled, for several reasons.
First, because many people enjoy driving. Short of banning every single existing car on the road, people like me will always be able to purchase and drive a non-computerized vehicle. Even today I can buy a functioning Ford Model T. Think about that for a second, and you'll realize it could take a hundred years before the last current car stops being available, short of outlawing them. But just like with cigarettes and alcohol, I doubt that will ever happen. Can you imagine the lobby all the wealthy car collectors will mount?
Second, because computer systems fail and sometimes they cannot be inexpensively repaired. A current car can still run with many of its electrical systems disabled (power seats, windows, navigation system, even alternator and starter) for a while. Having worked with cars and motorcycles for a long time, I can tell you I'd rather rebuild an engine than diagnose an electrical problem. A cold solder on a PCB can ruin a while weekend trying to figure out why your car will not start in hot weather, but works fine in cold (I'm looking at you Honda Main Relay!!!) The complexity of a computer that can drive a car is beyond anything we have available today ANYWHERE, and it has thousands of failure points. Sensors, cameras, gps, servo motors, switches, wires, PCBs and only lastly the main CPU. The fact it runs in testing is great, but these systems have to last 10+ years of abuse WITHOUT FAILURE.
Lastly, having fully computer driven cars will make people even more dependent on technology, which is NOT a good thing. I've had my GPS tell me to go down a railway track once. I looked at it, smiled, and found the real route myself. But people HAVE driven on railway tracks, into lakes or in remote areas where they died of hypothermia. Imagine if you program your car to drive you, without any input, and it makes such a mistake?
If I am doing something wrong, please let me know, but browsing the market is absolutely painful. My biggest problem is the fact that you can go to a top category like "Business" and you are limited to THREE filters, "Top Paid", "Top Free" and "Just In". They are all irrelevant for me, because cost is not really an issue for under $20 apps, and "Just In" can list anything from first release betas to minor updates. Searching for a specific term is even worse because then you can't apply any further filters. As a related issue, when browsing categories or searching specifics, apps seem to be listed at random.
I would like to be able to sort apps by rating, developer, price, date uploaded, number downloads, and a whole bunch of other criteria. You know, stuff that I take for granted while searching through Google. You would think that the leading search company would be capable of implementing more than a rudimentary market application...
There are three explanations.
First, I could be incompetent. This is very likely, since I got my first Android phone less than a week ago. However while I'm not a developer, I am not exactly computer illiterate. I was able to unlock and root my HTC Desire, and I already tried 4 different ROMS (currently running Cyanogenmod 7 nightly 22) and a few dozen apps. My last phone was a Nokia N900, and its repository system automatically contained only free, and mostly GPL apps searchable on a variety of criteria. The Market was a very negative culture shock for me. If however I am incompetent, I welcome any suggestions how to better search for apps THROUGH THE MARKETPLACE (I'll come back to this in a second).
Second, Google engineers are inept and can't implement better searching in their own market app. I seriously doubt it, given the extensive features of any other Google app. FFS, think of the analysis Google Goggles, Voice Search or even Maps have to perform, while Market can't even sort apps properly? If the phones themselves are too slow, offload the computing to the Google servers just like Goggles and Voice Search.
Third, it's in Google's interest to force users to browse hunderds of apps, try out a lot of garbage before finding what they are looking for. This also ties in with TFA. Maybe Google wants the bragging rights to say they have hundreds of thousands of apps. Maybe they don't care, but the OP is not the first developer to complain about copied apps. One ADW theme designer stopped releasing the template for his themes because people were copying them and reselling them throu the Market. This is a very serious issue for Google, because Balmer was right. DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! If they start bailing out, your platform dies out, which incidentally is what happened to my Nokia N900.
The ONLY reliable way to find Android apps is to either search through Google's site that we all use, or go to specific Android development forums like XDA and search past threads.
Considering Fukushima I 1 reached first criticality in in 1971 and Fukushima I 6 in 1979, the technology and designs used is probably from the late 50s to mid 60s. Back then much less was understood about earthquakes and effective countermeasures. And it wasn't the reactor itself that failed, the fault seems to be with the backup diesel generators meant to power the emergency coolant system.
Let's see what happens. For now it's just unsubstantiated reports. I mean the article quoted on the first page is from the CBC, as in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Also remember, this was the 5th largest earthquake this century, and the biggest to hit Japan in 140 years. Some things you simply can't plan for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant