1 and 2 - I just checked and the default android keyboard has a "." right next to the space bar, and if I hold that down I get the rest of them.
numbers - you can see little numbers on the keyboard - so that if you hold the key you know you will get that number. I'm not sure what holding letters does on an iphone, but I sure dont want to hold every single one to see what magic characters are hidden behind it.
3. this seems like a half-way mark, but still not as good as selecting the alternative word right up front. more of a niggle I suppose - but the multiple alternatives approach in a horizontal list in android is much better than a vertical list. swype originally had a vertical type list and I hated it.
AFAIK android doesn't autocorrect multiple words - that sounds like it would be useful.
4. maybe I didn't try this - it wasn't obvious...next time perhaps. swype allows you to long-press the "123" button (the one that shows the numbers and symbols keyboard) and it gives you arrow keys. its a very cool feature.
5. it took a bit of practise, and like everything once you're used to it it is very useful. I cant argue that people would find the same with the iphone keyboard - it does seem to be a good (fast) keyboard for thumb typing. I just find it less useful than other keyboards I have used.
Isn't that memory mostly a cache? so if your machine has less memory it will try to use less so it doesn't run out of memory on the machine?
When I had the problem (either the leak I ran into has been fixed, or something changed so I don't hit it anymore), it did run out of memory. Everything would slow to a crawl while the machine was swapping heavily, and then after a while, Firefox would have allocated so much memory that the system ended up killing it. Often Firefox itself was not responding while the rest of the system became slow, like it was stuck in some loop allocating memory - but it could be that the garbage collector just kicked in way too late, and the memory the GC needed would push it over the edge.
So there probably was a bug.
When starting it again, I could click "restore all tabs", and it would work fine (for a while), so it's not like it needed to allocate more memory than the system had.
That's not necessarily true. The cache may be full of things that firefox thinks you "might" be going to look at next. When you closed it, reopened it, then did 'restore all tabs', that cache is likely gone, and all you are left with is just the memory required for the tabs you have open at the time.
I am making assumptions about how firefox (and other browsers) work(s) though...
I admit I haven't used it much, but compared to the features on my android phone keyboard (I've used the default keyboard but I prefer swype), it falls short:
1. need to push another button to access numbers.
2. need to push that same button to access all punctuation and special characters. i believe you can double-space for a "." but I wouldn't have known this without being told, and in any case in the short time I was typing it just never came natural...maybe in time it would?
3. autocorrect can be turned off, but that's hardly what people want. the autocorrect system on android keyboards is much better - you can see the word it will use along with a number of alternatives as you type. you can also tap on a word you previously typed and correct it in-place. With the android default keyboard, if you type a word and it autocorrects it, you can backspace and it will put the word you actually typed back there.
4. there seems to be no way to go forward or back by a single character - you have to try to tap on the exact character you want to change, which is near impossible with my fingers (which are not _that_ fat). Android gives you a little marker you can hold and move. swype used to include an arrow-pad but not sure if they still do - the android built-in solution works for me.
5. no swype (or similar) for iphone. seriously - swype is awesome. not everyone likes it, granted, but the difference is that i'll type out entire emails using it whereas with the normal keyboard I just wouldn't bother. not only is typing faster, you type less mistakes because it can more correctly know what word you were typing.
If I used the iphone some more I could probably come up with more, and probably even get used to it more too, but the above are things I picked up just while attempting to type one SMS. I think they are real disadvantages.
Re:How does it compare to Chrome?
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Isn't that memory mostly a cache? so if your machine has less memory it will try to use less so it doesn't run out of memory on the machine?
and if your pc has oodles of memory it will use it, thereby increasing performance.
unused ram is worthless. software using ram as a cache is a good idea if done right.
dont complain if it uses too much memory - only complain if it doesn't free it when you need it for something else.
Whoa, there are several million linux users worldwide, and that's a conservative estimate.
When you claim there is "no" desktop market for linux, wouldn't YOU like a business with this many potential customers?
I'm not claiming it would be easy to sell a product to these people (you need to create enough value that someone would consider paying for it, rather than use free alternatives), but you need to stop looking at the linux market in percentages of the total PC market.
Yes its a small percentage of the overall market, but on its own it can be a rewarding market for some.
Even Apple's percentage share of the market is pretty small, but you would never claim that they dont have a viable desktop market.
Making money on linux would be no different to any other venture. Find something the users need, cater to that need, offer real value at a price users will pay for, profit. Difficult? yes. Impossible? no.
KDE does this. I use it. I also liked the original 2nd monitor behaviour of gnome3, and with KDE I can set the windows on the other monitor to show on all desktops, and it works a treat.
I thought unity was great on a netbook, but felt too "basic" for a desktop. I was able to be productive in gnome 3, but found KDE to be a bit more featureful. I dont mind KDE's kitchen sink approach, so long as its well organised. Its been getting much better over the last few major releases, and I've noticed a lot of improvement in its stability.
I should mention the above is all in the context of use for my primary employment. I tend to use windows 7 at home because my mouse stopped working in linux about 6 months ago. it doesn't register any clicks until I restart X, and then it works...but this is too inconvenient. something to do with evdev and that its a logitech mouse.
If all you have is a virus, that can delete files and make a nuisance of itself, then a wipe/reinstall is really just doing a better job than the virus would have. I mean, isn't losing all your data what you were afraid the virus would do anyway?
On the other hand, if its malware you're worried about, then a wipe/reinstall is really the best option.
You have to weigh up the cost of reinstalling and restoring backups, against the potential cost of having your bank accounts, email accounts, or even your identity stolen.
I'm not sure if the people who get viruses realise that this is a far worse problem than some mysterious program that deletes the odd file here and there. And I'm not sure if the people who remove viruses for money are doing a good job of informing their customers of this either...
In the fast moving arms race between malware and anti-malware writers, you can bet that anything important and exploitable will have changed in such a long time span.
but a virus writer will try it anyway...so then you'd want to make really sure it actually has changed...rather than just making assumptions.
um, a 100% carb diet will see you dead in a day or two.
OK, I admit - I actually laughed out loud. If that was your intent - good job. If not - I call BS.
its actually probably impossible to find anything that is 100% carbs, so really the point is moot.
But it is true that you cannot survive without a sufficient quantity of both protein and fat (or "essential fatty acids" to be precise).
Protein is great for muscle and fat is great for overall wellbeing and health. carbs are good for giving you sickness, heart disease, and diabetes... Well, you can eat well on carbs (no refined carbs like sugars, white bread/flour etc) but who really does in practice? athletes need carbs for instant energy release, but the rest of us can get plenty from mostly protein and fat, and 50-100g of carbs a day.
And the rather unfortunate part is that I can buy an Android phone today that is not on 2.3, and which probably never will be.
If I buy an iOS phone today, I get the most recent version of the OS, and history suggests that I will get an upgrade in the future.
I'm sorry, but you've lost me.
If anyone buys a phone today that will be stuck on 2.3, and they're upset by that, then its their own fault. There are plenty of phones released last year that will either have 4.0 as an official update, or can at least get it via custom rom.
In any case, what do the version numbers mean if they dont bring you some benefit. iOS has received many updates in the last couple of years but the bulk of those updates (with some exceptions) have been features that android has had since 2.1.
My point isn't to say which is better, but just that if your phone does what you need, why do you need updates? or why do you feel cheated if you dont get updates?
Apple is probably the only one that actually provides updates like you're talking about.
Still, for all the Apple offer, you still cant customize it and you're stuck with the default keyboard and default launcher. Those are deal-breakers for me. I'll put up with whatever android does, because its the only one that meets my needs.
um, a 100% carb diet will see you dead in a day or two.
actually there's no such thing - there will always be protein.
but you also need fat, and cholesterol. Without fatty acids you will die quickly. without cholesterol you wouldn't even be alive to begin with, let alone have a chance to die...
you can live without carbs - but you absolutely cannot live without protein and absolutely not without fat.
Basically you're interpreting thermodynamics wrong. Sure, energy in = energy out. But how do you know exactly how much energy your body is taking in? if your cells dont absorb calories because you have food intollerances, or if something isn't working, then there is no energy in.
You have no way of knowing what your body does with the food you eat. Will it glean the nutrients from all of it? half of it? how much will it discard as waste?
Also, you have no way of measuring "energy out" either. What if your metabolism speeds up - that's greater "energy out" right? even without you doing any exercise...
thermodynamics is true, yes, but you just cant relate it to food in vs usable energy out (ie. exercise/sport). if you have a metabolic disorder, then i'm pretty sure you could eat lots of energy foods and still not feel energetic...and some people can eat a lot of food and still lose weight rapidly if they have a disorder.
Actually these days you CAN download the source, compile it and run it on your phone, provided you have the right phone (or one of the right phones).
I wonder what the OS stands for in AOSP?
Before the ICS source was released, people did have a case with the "its not open" thing...but these days there's enough out there with android you can do whatever hacking you want. your device is closer to being truly "yours" than on any other major platform today.
AND, you still get to access android market and benefit from the wider ecosystem, even with your modified software.
Oh wow shocking, Apple gained sales market share right after releasing a brand new super-hyped phone and lowering their old prices! Android is doomed! DOOOOMED, I tell you!
Anyways, fragmentation is good for the market. Allows for true competition and drives features. The newest Android phones are far and away more featureful than any iPhone, plus you can choose from any carrier and any range of features you want. I would have liked Google to encourage manufacturers to release more updates to their phones so people didn't get stuck on 2.1 or whatnot, but the fact that most Android programs work on most Android devices is nothing short of amazing when you think about the vast array of different hardware they can contain.
that's some sweet tech fantasy you live in where you think most android programs work on most android devices. The developers from Rovio (angry birds) want a hit of that.
so they had to do a bit more work to target some of the users they wanted to make money from.
Weellll, yes, but that's part of the fragmentation. There's the nice, shiny, easy-to-use APIs, but you can't use them if you want to target all devices. That right there is the definitive fragmentation that most people mean when they use the word.
I'm confused.
Why would you want to use new APIs, and then give your app to people who have phones that clearly dont support your app?
for example, if your app uses SIP, why would you care that people without SIP-capable android phones cant use your app? isn't that actually what you want?
Even then, there haven't been that many features added since Android 2.1 - mostly its UI changes and stuff that affects users.
There are new APIs but I cant think of why you'd want to use them to develop for older phones...
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sorry, point 5 - my wording was a bit funny...
I meant that I accept that people would find the iphone keyboard just as good after getting used to it...
1 and 2 - I just checked and the default android keyboard has a "." right next to the space bar, and if I hold that down I get the rest of them.
numbers - you can see little numbers on the keyboard - so that if you hold the key you know you will get that number. I'm not sure what holding letters does on an iphone, but I sure dont want to hold every single one to see what magic characters are hidden behind it.
3. this seems like a half-way mark, but still not as good as selecting the alternative word right up front. more of a niggle I suppose - but the multiple alternatives approach in a horizontal list in android is much better than a vertical list. swype originally had a vertical type list and I hated it.
AFAIK android doesn't autocorrect multiple words - that sounds like it would be useful.
4. maybe I didn't try this - it wasn't obvious...next time perhaps. swype allows you to long-press the "123" button (the one that shows the numbers and symbols keyboard) and it gives you arrow keys. its a very cool feature.
5. it took a bit of practise, and like everything once you're used to it it is very useful. I cant argue that people would find the same with the iphone keyboard - it does seem to be a good (fast) keyboard for thumb typing. I just find it less useful than other keyboards I have used.
When I had the problem (either the leak I ran into has been fixed, or something changed so I don't hit it anymore), it did run out of memory. Everything would slow to a crawl while the machine was swapping heavily, and then after a while, Firefox would have allocated so much memory that the system ended up killing it. Often Firefox itself was not responding while the rest of the system became slow, like it was stuck in some loop allocating memory - but it could be that the garbage collector just kicked in way too late, and the memory the GC needed would push it over the edge.
So there probably was a bug.
When starting it again, I could click "restore all tabs", and it would work fine (for a while), so it's not like it needed to allocate more memory than the system had.
That's not necessarily true. The cache may be full of things that firefox thinks you "might" be going to look at next. When you closed it, reopened it, then did 'restore all tabs', that cache is likely gone, and all you are left with is just the memory required for the tabs you have open at the time.
I am making assumptions about how firefox (and other browsers) work(s) though...
I admit I haven't used it much, but compared to the features on my android phone keyboard (I've used the default keyboard but I prefer swype), it falls short:
1. need to push another button to access numbers.
2. need to push that same button to access all punctuation and special characters. i believe you can double-space for a "." but I wouldn't have known this without being told, and in any case in the short time I was typing it just never came natural...maybe in time it would?
3. autocorrect can be turned off, but that's hardly what people want. the autocorrect system on android keyboards is much better - you can see the word it will use along with a number of alternatives as you type. you can also tap on a word you previously typed and correct it in-place. With the android default keyboard, if you type a word and it autocorrects it, you can backspace and it will put the word you actually typed back there.
4. there seems to be no way to go forward or back by a single character - you have to try to tap on the exact character you want to change, which is near impossible with my fingers (which are not _that_ fat). Android gives you a little marker you can hold and move. swype used to include an arrow-pad but not sure if they still do - the android built-in solution works for me.
5. no swype (or similar) for iphone. seriously - swype is awesome. not everyone likes it, granted, but the difference is that i'll type out entire emails using it whereas with the normal keyboard I just wouldn't bother. not only is typing faster, you type less mistakes because it can more correctly know what word you were typing.
If I used the iphone some more I could probably come up with more, and probably even get used to it more too, but the above are things I picked up just while attempting to type one SMS. I think they are real disadvantages.
Isn't that memory mostly a cache? so if your machine has less memory it will try to use less so it doesn't run out of memory on the machine?
and if your pc has oodles of memory it will use it, thereby increasing performance.
unused ram is worthless. software using ram as a cache is a good idea if done right.
dont complain if it uses too much memory - only complain if it doesn't free it when you need it for something else.
Whoa, there are several million linux users worldwide, and that's a conservative estimate.
When you claim there is "no" desktop market for linux, wouldn't YOU like a business with this many potential customers?
I'm not claiming it would be easy to sell a product to these people (you need to create enough value that someone would consider paying for it, rather than use free alternatives), but you need to stop looking at the linux market in percentages of the total PC market.
Yes its a small percentage of the overall market, but on its own it can be a rewarding market for some.
Even Apple's percentage share of the market is pretty small, but you would never claim that they dont have a viable desktop market.
Making money on linux would be no different to any other venture. Find something the users need, cater to that need, offer real value at a price users will pay for, profit. Difficult? yes. Impossible? no.
say you hate the default iphone on-screen keyboard.....
yes, I really do hate it, along with the dumb "we think you meant this" autocorrect.
The iphone/ipad are great products, but without the ability to customize, it becomes useless (and painful) to me.
I dunno, how many people wanted voice commands on their phone before the iphone 4s came out?
I think Apple tells people what they want quite successfully.
Its not that these people secretly wanted it but didn't know it - more like they didn't want it until they saw it, and then they wanted it.
Its clever, and it seems to work very well for Apple.
Why would you give it away on the platform with no competition but charge on the platform with a free alternative? That seems precisely backwards.
Because you can?
Don't google already get a licensing fee when a manufacturer puts Android on a phone?
um, no.
KDE does this. I use it. I also liked the original 2nd monitor behaviour of gnome3, and with KDE I can set the windows on the other monitor to show on all desktops, and it works a treat.
I thought unity was great on a netbook, but felt too "basic" for a desktop. I was able to be productive in gnome 3, but found KDE to be a bit more featureful. I dont mind KDE's kitchen sink approach, so long as its well organised. Its been getting much better over the last few major releases, and I've noticed a lot of improvement in its stability.
I should mention the above is all in the context of use for my primary employment. I tend to use windows 7 at home because my mouse stopped working in linux about 6 months ago. it doesn't register any clicks until I restart X, and then it works...but this is too inconvenient. something to do with evdev and that its a logitech mouse.
I dunno. I see your logic but still, where I live its the pretty much, the less adequate the lighting is in a suburb the higher the crime.
Given that the moon creates enough light to see your way around, I'm not sure that the complete darkness you're referring to is even likely to happen.
I would suggest that even with the lights off, the criminals can see "enough".
If all you have is a virus, that can delete files and make a nuisance of itself, then a wipe/reinstall is really just doing a better job than the virus would have. I mean, isn't losing all your data what you were afraid the virus would do anyway?
On the other hand, if its malware you're worried about, then a wipe/reinstall is really the best option.
You have to weigh up the cost of reinstalling and restoring backups, against the potential cost of having your bank accounts, email accounts, or even your identity stolen.
I'm not sure if the people who get viruses realise that this is a far worse problem than some mysterious program that deletes the odd file here and there.
And I'm not sure if the people who remove viruses for money are doing a good job of informing their customers of this either...
In the fast moving arms race between malware and anti-malware writers, you can bet that anything important and exploitable will have changed in such a long time span.
but a virus writer will try it anyway...so then you'd want to make really sure it actually has changed...rather than just making assumptions.
um, sorry but this is just wrong.
If Symantec is able to disable itself, then the source code definitely allows a virus-writer to do disable it too.
Having insight into how the AV works, gives them greater ability to disable it, if not work around it.
so if everyone who played the game intentionally did everything wrong, or played badly, would they still use the results?
um, a 100% carb diet will see you dead in a day or two.
OK, I admit - I actually laughed out loud. If that was your intent - good job. If not - I call BS.
its actually probably impossible to find anything that is 100% carbs, so really the point is moot.
But it is true that you cannot survive without a sufficient quantity of both protein and fat (or "essential fatty acids" to be precise).
Protein is great for muscle and fat is great for overall wellbeing and health. carbs are good for giving you sickness, heart disease, and diabetes...
Well, you can eat well on carbs (no refined carbs like sugars, white bread/flour etc) but who really does in practice? athletes need carbs for instant energy release, but the rest of us can get plenty from mostly protein and fat, and 50-100g of carbs a day.
but if you buy the phone from google in the first place, with an unlocked bootloader - is this still the case? I wouldn't have thought so.
And the rather unfortunate part is that I can buy an Android phone today that is not on 2.3, and which probably never will be.
If I buy an iOS phone today, I get the most recent version of the OS, and history suggests that I will get an upgrade in the future.
I'm sorry, but you've lost me.
If anyone buys a phone today that will be stuck on 2.3, and they're upset by that, then its their own fault.
There are plenty of phones released last year that will either have 4.0 as an official update, or can at least get it via custom rom.
In any case, what do the version numbers mean if they dont bring you some benefit. iOS has received many updates in the last couple of years but the bulk of those updates (with some exceptions) have been features that android has had since 2.1.
My point isn't to say which is better, but just that if your phone does what you need, why do you need updates? or why do you feel cheated if you dont get updates?
Apple is probably the only one that actually provides updates like you're talking about.
Still, for all the Apple offer, you still cant customize it and you're stuck with the default keyboard and default launcher. Those are deal-breakers for me. I'll put up with whatever android does, because its the only one that meets my needs.
why would you care that people without SIP-capable android phones cant use your app
I haven't seen any Android phones advertised as SIP-capable--are there any? SIP should run on anything with IP.
There are new APIs but I cant think of why you'd want to use them to develop for older phones...
Obviously you wouldn't. And when your app doesn't work on that other phone, you get fragmentation.
I'm confused as to where the confusion is coming from.
um, android has been able to do voip since 2.3
the fragmentation in that example means that people who CANT use your app, CANT access it.
thats exactly what you want. and it works that way on iOS too if i'm not mistaken.
um, a 100% carb diet will see you dead in a day or two.
actually there's no such thing - there will always be protein.
but you also need fat, and cholesterol. Without fatty acids you will die quickly. without cholesterol you wouldn't even be alive to begin with, let alone have a chance to die...
you can live without carbs - but you absolutely cannot live without protein and absolutely not without fat.
If thermodynamics worked the way you think, then try creating a 500 calorie deficit every day for a year, and then add up the kilos you lost.
calorie theory says that 1lb of fat = 3500 calories, so I'd assume that after 1 year on this diet you should lose exactly 52 pounds, or 23.6kg.
If 10 people ate a 500 calorie deficit diet every day for a year, they should all lose the same amount of weight right?
in fact experiments have been done - where the weight lost was barely even a 10th of what calorie theory says.
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2009/12/the-calorie-theory-is-everywhere-and-wrong/
Basically you're interpreting thermodynamics wrong.
Sure, energy in = energy out. But how do you know exactly how much energy your body is taking in? if your cells dont absorb calories because you have food intollerances, or if something isn't working, then there is no energy in.
You have no way of knowing what your body does with the food you eat. Will it glean the nutrients from all of it? half of it? how much will it discard as waste?
Also, you have no way of measuring "energy out" either. What if your metabolism speeds up - that's greater "energy out" right? even without you doing any exercise...
thermodynamics is true, yes, but you just cant relate it to food in vs usable energy out (ie. exercise/sport). if you have a metabolic disorder, then i'm pretty sure you could eat lots of energy foods and still not feel energetic...and some people can eat a lot of food and still lose weight rapidly if they have a disorder.
Actually these days you CAN download the source, compile it and run it on your phone, provided you have the right phone (or one of the right phones).
I wonder what the OS stands for in AOSP?
Before the ICS source was released, people did have a case with the "its not open" thing...but these days there's enough out there with android you can do whatever hacking you want. your device is closer to being truly "yours" than on any other major platform today.
AND, you still get to access android market and benefit from the wider ecosystem, even with your modified software.
Tell me how it could be MORE open than that...
I believe its the iPhans...not the fandroids that are screaming that...
Most android users, if they are even aware there IS an android market, are not having too many issues with apps just working.
the developers might be having more trouble, but if it wasn't worth their effort, they wouldn't try now would they?
same problem as you have when developing windows applications...except even easier than that.
Oh wow shocking, Apple gained sales market share right after releasing a brand new super-hyped phone and lowering their old prices! Android is doomed! DOOOOMED, I tell you!
Anyways, fragmentation is good for the market. Allows for true competition and drives features. The newest Android phones are far and away more featureful than any iPhone, plus you can choose from any carrier and any range of features you want. I would have liked Google to encourage manufacturers to release more updates to their phones so people didn't get stuck on 2.1 or whatnot, but the fact that most Android programs work on most Android devices is nothing short of amazing when you think about the vast array of different hardware they can contain.
that's some sweet tech fantasy you live in where you think most android programs work on most android devices. The developers from Rovio (angry birds) want a hit of that.
so they had to do a bit more work to target some of the users they wanted to make money from.
poor them.
Weellll, yes, but that's part of the fragmentation. There's the nice, shiny, easy-to-use APIs, but you can't use them if you want to target all devices. That right there is the definitive fragmentation that most people mean when they use the word.
I'm confused.
Why would you want to use new APIs, and then give your app to people who have phones that clearly dont support your app?
for example, if your app uses SIP, why would you care that people without SIP-capable android phones cant use your app? isn't that actually what you want?
Even then, there haven't been that many features added since Android 2.1 - mostly its UI changes and stuff that affects users.
There are new APIs but I cant think of why you'd want to use them to develop for older phones...