I have to wonder whey they just don't use manholes with a mesh appearance, rather than a few holes. It would drastically increase the amount of pressure needed to blow the cover if it's more like a screen than a bottle cap.
A year ago I would have agreed with you, as things tended to be pretty balanced, and pretty fair, with initial flambait, troll mods balanced out after a few hours. One of the most recent posts about Apple tells a different story with any positive posts about Apple all being modded down as troll or flamebait regardless of content.
Look at the above link, at what's being modded 'Insightful', 'Informative', and on the opposite side, trolling and flamebait.
Claiming that things are pretty even handed looks a little ridiculous. The above link is about a story where someone hacked an iTunes account and bought his own app. It immediately turned into a slew of Apple is Evil, the Walled Garden doesn't work, the app store is a failure, all modded insightful and informative, when it had nothing to do with apps other than the guy hacking the accounts bought his own app.
Slashdot has become a haven for anti-Apple trolls. Look through that link and tell me that the posts deserved Insightful, and that the trolls deserved the bashing. It's pointless anymore to even enter an Apple thread as it is immediately filled with FUD, "Apple Sucks +Insightful", and "Evil + Informative".
I particularly like the one stating "WTF, did you suck Steve's dick or something" being modded Insightful and Informative.
I have to agree to some extent. On the surface, you would think they would get broader penetration using a mobile web page, rather than a hardware specific app, but then again, getting someone to browse to a web site on a smartphone is not as simple as letting them install an app which targets exactly the information they are trying to get out. Rather than a user browsing to a site, drilling down to the specific area, resizing the page and scrolling as needed, finding links, etc, they can target the interface specifically for that experience. One of the main reasons that integrated apps are so much more popular then web based apps.
It's also very possible that everyone is jumping the gun and that apps for android and rim are in the works...
You link would be more useful if it was for a smartphone market. No one I know browses on a standard phone and the app market for standard phones is pretty much limited to really bad Tetris, or bejeweled clones. It's just too painful.
This bit from TFA links has me a bit worried. With the mobility of these devices compared to WiFi, which is relatively non-mobile, what sort of walking interference (Bluetooth vs. WiFi) can we expect from 4.0 devices?
Moreover, an increased modulation index has actually increased the effective range from 30 feet or so, to beyond 200 feet.
Agreed, this reads as if it's nothing more than a promotional ad for the VP8 codec. How do they expect everyone to take this seriously?
I don't understand the "VP8 holds its own against x264".... The graphs show that it certainly does not hold it's own against x264. For example, if you look at the best quality settings of x264 vs VP8 for the Ice Age clip, at the same quality (SSIM=0.97), x264 takes 800Kbps while VP8 takes ~1.2Mbps... So VP8 takes 50% more bits to achieve the same quality. This shows that VP8 is not nearly as efficient as x264. (Also, note that x264 is only one implementation of an H.264 encoder. There are other implementations that will make different tradeoffs to get better compression efficiency at the cost of performance).
Your credit card number is not exposed in iTunes. The only time you can see the number is when you initially key it in when you are creating your iTunes account. It's hidden after that, even if you go in to verify and/or change your payment information. You can only see the last four digits of the card used. Easily verified by going into itunes, clicking on the Store -> View My Account menus, and then clicking the 'Edit Payment Information' button.
This has nothing to do with the app store other than the fact it happened to be the vendor who was targeted. It's an online vendor that stores a credit card. It could (and does) happen to any high profile vendor that operates in this way. The 'quality' of the app in question is irrelevant, as the hacker could have chosen any app, good or bad, to purchase. Folks are jumping all over themselves trying to make this story about the 'walled garden' when it has absolutely nothing to do with Apples closed system, and everything to do with the fact that Apple gives the user the option to store a credit card number on file with the account.
So a total of 48 apps out of 200,000+ were bad 'Apples', and suddenly the entire App store is a 'dismal failure' I think someone above put it. Unlike the 'banking app' in the droid market that just took bank account usernames and passwords? Does that make the entire Android Market a failure? Not at all. I think the claim here is that Apple failed in it's drive to protect users where I see at least an effort to protect, rather than a free for all that you get with the Android Market. These weren't bad Apps in the same sense as the banking fraud app in the Android Market. They were just crap apps that the designer purchased (which he also happened to write), as part of his scam. They were for crap anime books of questionable content and copyright.
It doesn't matter if these apps 'DO' anything as far as this scam goes. They were book apps. This person or persons would hack into someone's iTunes account, and then he would turn around and purchase his own app. This had the net effect of moving it up in the rankings, and netted him some cash as well via the purchase. Apparently this is a common practice in China where you go into a certain channel, purchase someone's account, and you typically have 24 hours give or take before either Apple, or your credit card company cuts the person off (Yes, Apple will flag your account for suspicious activity as well).
This is no different than someone stealing someone's credit card number, or hacking ANY online account where you store card information.
I saw someone yesterday complaining that they had to call their credit card company to get the charges reversed, discounting the fact that your credit card company is the proper place to stop credit card fraud. The App store is a vendor, and they will be more than happy to sell you whatever you want to buy, just as it happens in the Droid Market, Amazon, etc.
My bank, however, will stop charges before they get out of control, flag the account, and call me for suspicious activity. I would imagine most banks have similar fraud departments. In addition, identity theft typically limits your responsibility and getting a charge reversed is as simple as calling your bank.
Lastly, preventing this is as simple as setting the Payment Option in iTunes to 'None', and/or using a proper password rather than '12345' or some other easily guess-able password. It always amuses me that people are so quick to store credit card information online and then feign surprise when someone hacks their account with a common dictionary password.
It should have a negligible effect on an SSD as each OS is in it's own logical container. Things like outside edge vs. inside edge of a plater affecting seek speed are meaningless for solid state drives.
I also don't buy the fact that the drives in the Macbook Air mentioned in the article may be such poor performers that they would skew the results, although they were definitely not top of their class, they were far above drives that are actively experiencing this problem, meaning the drives performing at their worst, and being effected by this, should drop to a similar 'poor' level of performance. The SSD's on the Macbook Air still performed acceptably with negligible loss (MB's/s rather than KB's/s), even on the random read/write 4K tests.
No, using a windows partition on the Mac and NTFS as the file system via Boot Camp. It would eliminate hardware and allow Apples to Apples (no pun intended) between OS's. It's trivial to set up such a configuration on a Mac.
windos cant boot from hpfs+ (or ext3 or reiserfs (3.6 or 4), or zfs or really anything new and high performance except for uh, ex(tra)fat, then again these filesystems might require acls or a layer to account for windos acls)
I have to wonder why they didn't boot into Windows on the same PC and repeat the tests. That would have identified if it was a hardware issue, or a software (Filesystem) issue that caused the irregularity.
Yes and no. The issue had to do with the scale used. From AppleInsider:
"Apple's iOS allots nearly 40 percent of reception levels to five bars, from -51 dB to -91 dB. But the distance from four bars to one bar of reception is much less, from -91 dB to -113 dB."
Unless you live under a rock, or have never cracked open ANY cell phone manual, you would know that they all recommend avoiding the lower left side where the antenna is located. The problem with Apple's configuration is that they used 5 bars for -51 to -91 db, which in itself is fine, since any call with those signal strengths would be very stable.
The problem has to do with dropping signal strength when you cover the antenna. Although you couldn't cause any phone to lose 63 db from grabbing it, getting a 20 db drop in signal strength isn't all that uncommon. If someone was in the weaker 5 bar range (say -90 db), which is still a decent signal, the phone would display 5 bars. When you covered the antenna, you could potentially get a 20 db drop, bringing you down to -110 db, which is a very poor signal. It gave the impression that someone went from 5 bars to no bars, or even no service (no service being very possible with -110 db).
There are no standards defining what dB is represented by the number of bars. It is totally up to the hardware manufacturer. As to whether or not this was a mistake, who can say? The haters will claim it's a marketing ploy, the lovers will claim it's a fair way to rate the signal. I'll probably fall in between.
What this fix will do is better represent the number of bars by signal strength in a more linear fashion, so that -90 might only be three or two bars, and covering the antenna would drop you to 1 or no bars. Although any phone might make a call at 1 bar, you should also expect that you might drop it with such a poor signal.
Frankly, I think most of the posts in these and other forums are full of 'noise' from people who hate Apple, from Droid fans, to people who just dislike them for their closed systems. It's an ideal way for them to take shots by spreading FUD and making the issue appear far worse than it actually is. Unfortunately, it also makes it much more difficult for people to judge the scope of the problem, which in itself is a win for Droid from a marketing perspective. I do know that I haven't dropped a single call on the iP4 regardless of the bar display. I suspect most fall into the same category. Reviews of the phone also back up the same. Dropped calls have actually been reduced under the iP4, regardless of the number of bars displayed. Anandtech actually has a nice write up and some more thorough testing of signal strength. What they found is that the exposed antenna's do make the iPhone 4 more susceptible to interference, but not so much that it would affect people with decent signal strength. It actually performs better than a droid for signal loss when it's in a cover:
The Antenna is Improved From my day of testing, I've determined that the iPhone 4 performs much better than the 3GS in situations where signal is very low, at -113 dBm (1 bar). Previously, dropping this low all but guaranteed that calls would drop, fail to be placed, and data would no longer be transacted at all. I can honestly say that I've never held onto so many calls and data simultaneously on 1 bar at -113 dBm as I have with the iPhone 4, so it's readily apparent that the new baseband hardware is much more sensitive compared to what was in the 3GS. The difference is that reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in actual use.
With my bumper case on, I made it further into dead zones than ever before, and into marginal areas that would always drop calls without any problems at all. It's amazing really to experience the difference in sensitivity the iPhone 4 brings compared to the 3GS, and issues from holding the phone aside, reception is
In January of 09, they had a Facebook page that had some back and forth discussion about the 'alternate' meaning of teabag with some surprised disdain when they were informed as to what the term meant. They were apparently unaware at that point.
I've heard similar reports from people in Mexico in the AI forums. Someone reported a phone with this problem could not be forced to reproduce the issue when they took it to Mexico.
Odd. The link on electronista is now gone. This is the relevant text from that link:
"A software origin for the hand position bug, nicknamed the "death grip" for its tendency to kill the cellular signal if the antennas are bridged, would explain how some have replicated the problem on the iPhone 3G and the 3GS. As iOS 4 changed the antenna's priority from the strongest possible signal to the most reliable, it may have changed that behavior for all phones, not just the iPhone 4.
Owners of the 3G MicroCell also support this through their lack of trouble; since the femtocell is always the most powerful cellular signal when nearby, iPhones always stay connected. The same behavior may likewise explain why some without MicroCells haven't had success replicating the problem, as any attenuation of the signal might not be enough to confuse the phone if the user is close to a good cell site."
The information I saw stated that they change the antenna priority from 'strongest signal' to 'most reliable', whatever that means. This change was introduced in iOS4. The same issues have also been reported in iPhone 3G and 3GS, which would seem to reinforce the idea that this may be software related. Although having the antenna's outside the case may exaggerate the issue, it does not appear to be the primary factor.
I disagree. The focal point may appear to be 1 meter behind or in front of the screen, but the actual focal point hasn't change off of the 2d plane it's represented on (your tv screen). The same is not true of the older 3D technology that showed a visible offset without glasses on.
Doesn't this issue involve the eyes not focusing properly o a point in space? Typically the path of the eyes meet at a point of focus in the distance with both eyes looking at the same 'point', rather than at an 'infinite' distance. Children with this issue are unable to focus both eyes on the same 'point' in space.
If you are using an auto-stereoscopic display, they are focusing on the same point in space, but each eye is presented with a slightly different image, which tricks the brain into seeing 'depth'.
By contrast, go into any 3D movie that requires glasses, and you will see a very visible offset of the images on screen. I have to wonder if that offset contributes to this issue where the eye is trained not to focus on the same point point in space, but rather relaxes more towards an 'infinite' focus point, much like you use when viewing those old 3D photographs.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to wonder whey they just don't use manholes with a mesh appearance, rather than a few holes. It would drastically increase the amount of pressure needed to blow the cover if it's more like a screen than a bottle cap.
Did anyone else read this and immediately just start giggling? In my defense, it IS Friday...
A year ago I would have agreed with you, as things tended to be pretty balanced, and pretty fair, with initial flambait, troll mods balanced out after a few hours. One of the most recent posts about Apple tells a different story with any positive posts about Apple all being modded down as troll or flamebait regardless of content.
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/07/06/1839240/More-Trouble-In-Apples-App-Store
Look at the above link, at what's being modded 'Insightful', 'Informative', and on the opposite side, trolling and flamebait.
Claiming that things are pretty even handed looks a little ridiculous. The above link is about a story where someone hacked an iTunes account and bought his own app. It immediately turned into a slew of Apple is Evil, the Walled Garden doesn't work, the app store is a failure, all modded insightful and informative, when it had nothing to do with apps other than the guy hacking the accounts bought his own app.
Slashdot has become a haven for anti-Apple trolls. Look through that link and tell me that the posts deserved Insightful, and that the trolls deserved the bashing. It's pointless anymore to even enter an Apple thread as it is immediately filled with FUD, "Apple Sucks +Insightful", and "Evil + Informative".
I particularly like the one stating "WTF, did you suck Steve's dick or something" being modded Insightful and Informative.
I tend to think that most Americans, with an IQ higher than 140 would probably find little interest in going to China to work in an IT shop.
I have to agree to some extent. On the surface, you would think they would get broader penetration using a mobile web page, rather than a hardware specific app, but then again, getting someone to browse to a web site on a smartphone is not as simple as letting them install an app which targets exactly the information they are trying to get out. Rather than a user browsing to a site, drilling down to the specific area, resizing the page and scrolling as needed, finding links, etc, they can target the interface specifically for that experience. One of the main reasons that integrated apps are so much more popular then web based apps.
It's also very possible that everyone is jumping the gun and that apps for android and rim are in the works...
You link would be more useful if it was for a smartphone market. No one I know browses on a standard phone and the app market for standard phones is pretty much limited to really bad Tetris, or bejeweled clones. It's just too painful.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/12/apples_iphone_captures_17_of_worldwide_smartphone_market.html
The top 5 in the Smartphone Market are Nokia, RIM, Apple, HTC, Samsung rounding out the top 5.
This bit from TFA links has me a bit worried. With the mobility of these devices compared to WiFi, which is relatively non-mobile, what sort of walking interference (Bluetooth vs. WiFi) can we expect from 4.0 devices?
Agreed, this reads as if it's nothing more than a promotional ad for the VP8 codec. How do they expect everyone to take this seriously?
Your credit card number is not exposed in iTunes. The only time you can see the number is when you initially key it in when you are creating your iTunes account. It's hidden after that, even if you go in to verify and/or change your payment information. You can only see the last four digits of the card used. Easily verified by going into itunes, clicking on the Store -> View My Account menus, and then clicking the 'Edit Payment Information' button.
It's far easier to just use a PayPal account which can be limited to exactly the amount needed for a purchase.
If you don't want to go that far, just remove your card info all together and put it in as needed for purchases.
This has nothing to do with the app store other than the fact it happened to be the vendor who was targeted. It's an online vendor that stores a credit card. It could (and does) happen to any high profile vendor that operates in this way. The 'quality' of the app in question is irrelevant, as the hacker could have chosen any app, good or bad, to purchase. Folks are jumping all over themselves trying to make this story about the 'walled garden' when it has absolutely nothing to do with Apples closed system, and everything to do with the fact that Apple gives the user the option to store a credit card number on file with the account.
One additional note. You can also just use a PayPal account, and fund it with whatever amount you need, as needed.
So a total of 48 apps out of 200,000+ were bad 'Apples', and suddenly the entire App store is a 'dismal failure' I think someone above put it. Unlike the 'banking app' in the droid market that just took bank account usernames and passwords? Does that make the entire Android Market a failure? Not at all. I think the claim here is that Apple failed in it's drive to protect users where I see at least an effort to protect, rather than a free for all that you get with the Android Market. These weren't bad Apps in the same sense as the banking fraud app in the Android Market. They were just crap apps that the designer purchased (which he also happened to write), as part of his scam. They were for crap anime books of questionable content and copyright.
It doesn't matter if these apps 'DO' anything as far as this scam goes. They were book apps. This person or persons would hack into someone's iTunes account, and then he would turn around and purchase his own app. This had the net effect of moving it up in the rankings, and netted him some cash as well via the purchase. Apparently this is a common practice in China where you go into a certain channel, purchase someone's account, and you typically have 24 hours give or take before either Apple, or your credit card company cuts the person off (Yes, Apple will flag your account for suspicious activity as well).
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2446
This is no different than someone stealing someone's credit card number, or hacking ANY online account where you store card information.
I saw someone yesterday complaining that they had to call their credit card company to get the charges reversed, discounting the fact that your credit card company is the proper place to stop credit card fraud. The App store is a vendor, and they will be more than happy to sell you whatever you want to buy, just as it happens in the Droid Market, Amazon, etc.
My bank, however, will stop charges before they get out of control, flag the account, and call me for suspicious activity. I would imagine most banks have similar fraud departments. In addition, identity theft typically limits your responsibility and getting a charge reversed is as simple as calling your bank.
Lastly, preventing this is as simple as setting the Payment Option in iTunes to 'None', and/or using a proper password rather than '12345' or some other easily guess-able password. It always amuses me that people are so quick to store credit card information online and then feign surprise when someone hacks their account with a common dictionary password.
It should have a negligible effect on an SSD as each OS is in it's own logical container. Things like outside edge vs. inside edge of a plater affecting seek speed are meaningless for solid state drives.
I also don't buy the fact that the drives in the Macbook Air mentioned in the article may be such poor performers that they would skew the results, although they were definitely not top of their class, they were far above drives that are actively experiencing this problem, meaning the drives performing at their worst, and being effected by this, should drop to a similar 'poor' level of performance. The SSD's on the Macbook Air still performed acceptably with negligible loss (MB's/s rather than KB's/s), even on the random read/write 4K tests.
No, using a windows partition on the Mac and NTFS as the file system via Boot Camp. It would eliminate hardware and allow Apples to Apples (no pun intended) between OS's. It's trivial to set up such a configuration on a Mac.
I have to wonder why they didn't boot into Windows on the same PC and repeat the tests. That would have identified if it was a hardware issue, or a software (Filesystem) issue that caused the irregularity.
Yes and no. The issue had to do with the scale used. From AppleInsider:
"Apple's iOS allots nearly 40 percent of reception levels to five bars, from -51 dB to -91 dB. But the distance from four bars to one bar of reception is much less, from -91 dB to -113 dB."
Unless you live under a rock, or have never cracked open ANY cell phone manual, you would know that they all recommend avoiding the lower left side where the antenna is located. The problem with Apple's configuration is that they used 5 bars for -51 to -91 db, which in itself is fine, since any call with those signal strengths would be very stable.
The problem has to do with dropping signal strength when you cover the antenna. Although you couldn't cause any phone to lose 63 db from grabbing it, getting a 20 db drop in signal strength isn't all that uncommon. If someone was in the weaker 5 bar range (say -90 db), which is still a decent signal, the phone would display 5 bars. When you covered the antenna, you could potentially get a 20 db drop, bringing you down to -110 db, which is a very poor signal. It gave the impression that someone went from 5 bars to no bars, or even no service (no service being very possible with -110 db).
There are no standards defining what dB is represented by the number of bars. It is totally up to the hardware manufacturer. As to whether or not this was a mistake, who can say? The haters will claim it's a marketing ploy, the lovers will claim it's a fair way to rate the signal. I'll probably fall in between.
What this fix will do is better represent the number of bars by signal strength in a more linear fashion, so that -90 might only be three or two bars, and covering the antenna would drop you to 1 or no bars. Although any phone might make a call at 1 bar, you should also expect that you might drop it with such a poor signal.
Frankly, I think most of the posts in these and other forums are full of 'noise' from people who hate Apple, from Droid fans, to people who just dislike them for their closed systems. It's an ideal way for them to take shots by spreading FUD and making the issue appear far worse than it actually is. Unfortunately, it also makes it much more difficult for people to judge the scope of the problem, which in itself is a win for Droid from a marketing perspective. I do know that I haven't dropped a single call on the iP4 regardless of the bar display. I suspect most fall into the same category. Reviews of the phone also back up the same. Dropped calls have actually been reduced under the iP4, regardless of the number of bars displayed. Anandtech actually has a nice write up and some more thorough testing of signal strength. What they found is that the exposed antenna's do make the iPhone 4 more susceptible to interference, but not so much that it would affect people with decent signal strength. It actually performs better than a droid for signal loss when it's in a cover:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
Actually no. They carried the very signs that started all of this:
http://washingtonindependent.com/69660/correcting-jay-nordlinger
In January of 09, they had a Facebook page that had some back and forth discussion about the 'alternate' meaning of teabag with some surprised disdain when they were informed as to what the term meant. They were apparently unaware at that point.
This is from the rally in DC on April 15th of 2009:
http://washingtonindependent.com/31868/scenes-from-the-new-american-tea-party
One final little tidbit...the debate by conservatives as to whether or not to wear the title with pride ;)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/to-teabag-or-not-thats-still-the-question-for-conservatives.php
Why do I imagine someone pissing and shitting on their phone?
I've heard similar reports from people in Mexico in the AI forums. Someone reported a phone with this problem could not be forced to reproduce the issue when they took it to Mexico.
Odd. The link on electronista is now gone. This is the relevant text from that link:
The information I saw stated that they change the antenna priority from 'strongest signal' to 'most reliable', whatever that means. This change was introduced in iOS4. The same issues have also been reported in iPhone 3G and 3GS, which would seem to reinforce the idea that this may be software related. Although having the antenna's outside the case may exaggerate the issue, it does not appear to be the primary factor.
iPhone 3G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsfgAXmK0b4
iPhone 3GS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ztRup6cLs
General YouTube results:
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...gnal+ios4&aq=f
Additionally, here is the link that I first found reporting the antenna priority change:
http://www.electronista.com/articles...rly.next.week/
It will be interesting to see how Apple handles this. I recall they had similar issues with frequencies on the first generation iPhone.
If the issue was strictly related to the external antenna's, we wouldn't be seeing this issue pop up once 3G and 3GS users upgraded to iOS4.
I disagree. The focal point may appear to be 1 meter behind or in front of the screen, but the actual focal point hasn't change off of the 2d plane it's represented on (your tv screen). The same is not true of the older 3D technology that showed a visible offset without glasses on.
Doesn't this issue involve the eyes not focusing properly o a point in space? Typically the path of the eyes meet at a point of focus in the distance with both eyes looking at the same 'point', rather than at an 'infinite' distance. Children with this issue are unable to focus both eyes on the same 'point' in space.
If you are using an auto-stereoscopic display, they are focusing on the same point in space, but each eye is presented with a slightly different image, which tricks the brain into seeing 'depth'.
By contrast, go into any 3D movie that requires glasses, and you will see a very visible offset of the images on screen. I have to wonder if that offset contributes to this issue where the eye is trained not to focus on the same point point in space, but rather relaxes more towards an 'infinite' focus point, much like you use when viewing those old 3D photographs.
Auto-stereoscopic displays don't require glasses and wouldn't cause this sort of issue if I'm understanding the vision problems correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy