Have you seen the licensing costs for Apple Server software? iTunes may barely break even, but their Enterprise Software division is doing great!
Only half joking; that sort of accounting trick is common as muck, as long as there's an incentive for it. Not sure what that incentive would be in this case, but 5p on the side says that it begins with "T" and ends with "X", without much in the middle. See Starbucks and their "loss making UK division", with a surprisingly high, and highly circuitous, payment to license the brand from their American parent which just so happens to change each year to match whatever their revenues are...
It's all semantic nonsense, really, as TFTitle alluded to. If you take PC to mean "IBM-compatible computer", as it meant at one time in the past, then obviously iPads would be out, as would old PPC Macs, whereas Surface Pros would be in (but not Surface RTs). If you take PC to be synonymous with the old term "microcomputer", then arguably tablets ARE PCs- nobody ever said a microcomputer had to have a keyboard.
It would be tempting to say stop using the term "PC" at all- we should instead talk about top laptop producers, top desktop producers, etc. But the problem there is that laptops and desktops are very similar, in terms of components and user experience- so it is useful to have a term to tie the two together.
Maybe we just need to be clear about our terms whenever we talk figures (as TFA does in this case).
If you showed me iOS and said it was an Android skin, it would be plausible. If you showed me Windows Phone 8 and told me it was an Android skin, it would be plausible (you swipe to get between two views? shocker!). On the surface, all touchscreen OSs work in a pretty similar way. Unless you care about kernels and SDKs, the rest is just rearranging the furniture.
BB10 has a few distinguishing features that I can tell. The sandboxing thing sounds like a very novel feature. The security is still promised to be top-notch. BB messenger is still a big selling point to certain demographics. If it can combine these with a pleasurable user experience, decent build quality, rounded app store selection, and a compelling price- I don't see why it shouldn't do well.
Not only that, but the sort of programmes you need on a desktop are often more unique and/or business critical than anything on a phone. If you can't get Quickbooks or AutoCAD on your new desktop and they're things that you need, the new desktop isn't fit for purpose. If you're a gamer and none of the AAA new games will run on your new gaming rig, then the gaming rig isn't fit for purpose.
Apps on my phone which I've paid for are mostly either utilities (file managers, unzip tools, etc.), cheap and/or indy games (one or two £s each, a few dozen hours of playtime enjoyment), or webservice tie-ins (I think the Wolfram Alpha app was paid for, for example). Nothing I'm going to cry very hard about if I can't replace them like-for-like.
In my experience, smartphone users fall into roughly two categories. 1) There are people like me who haven't spent $100's on apps, and so wouldn't mind moving (I've got maybe $20 of apps that I use regularly; no great hardship). 2) There are people who spend money like there's no tomorrow, have $100's of apps, but also wouldn't think twice about spending it again. People who just pay for everything, because they must have the shiniest and newest things; these people will happily spend the money again, if there's a new shiniest thing to have.
Group number 3- has $100's of apps, but are also sensible with money, aren't likely to be the market-breaking niche.
Protoss can't have been modelled on the Tau- Games Workshop launched the Tau in 2001, whereas StarCraft was 1998.
I've heard the rumour slightly differently- that WarCraft was to be an RTS version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but failed to get official licensing. It's plausible that StarCraft (which came later) was influenced by Warhammer 40k too, but seeing as Blizzard and Games Workshop had already fallen out at that point (in my version of the rumour), it's unlikely that it was ever intended to be a licensed product.
A big screen, a mouse and keyboard, many connectors (half a dozen USBs minimum, plus card readers, eSATA etc.), optical disk drive, ability to run software without it being signed or from an approved source, and good high-spec CPU, GPU, RAM, internal storage, and so forth. Probably more things, but that's a good starter for 10.
It may be true that you can take a tablet (such as the Surface) and make it all of these things with add on peripherals- in which case, assuming it is painless, then I'm all for it. But if it means squinting at a 7" screen trying to use a touch-screen GUI with a mouse and waiting 25 seconds every time I try to sort a column on a spreadsheet, then it isn't going to do for me.
I can't really see there being a situation where a minimal install is required, but a minimal Linux or BSD install is "too big". Especially with the "embedded" flavours.
Still, much kudos to FreeDOS. I always feel a little bad for it whenever I buy a computer with "no OS" on it, and it comes with FreeDOS. It's a real OS too!
If he wants to find out why he is wrong, perhaps he should be consulting with a lawyer. No offense, but I don't want to pay for a DOJ that staffs an extra 2,000 people just so that they can read every piece of email that comes in, and respond back with a detailed analysis of all the legal mistakes made.
Presumably, it is the DoJ's job to look into this sort of matter. If they have done so (i.e., tasked some of their staff or a lawyer to exam the case), presumably a report contains the findings. If I were to write to them with a serious query, I'd expect at least to be pointed in the direction of their findings.
They are a government organisation and a public service, so their findings should reasonably be considered public (redacted if necessary, although I can't see why that would be in this case).
I am in the UK, so YMMV. However how it would work here would be like this- I write to my MP asking a question. My MP isn't in that department, so he submits a formal written question to the relevant minister. The minister's department is legally obliged to answer his question, which he will then share with me.
Frankly, considering the USA is one of the world's most democratic democracies, I'm surprised at the attitude I'm hearing in response to my comment. "Why should the government have to think and answer the questions of Joe Voter? What a waste of time!". I guess in the US it's vote once, don't think about it again for 4+ more years.
If he was wrong, it would be nice if they could respond to each point he raised and tell him why he was wrong. Getting a reply which says "trust us, don't worry about it" is always going to be unsatisfying.
I always thought it sounded like a honey trap to me; whether set up intentionally as one or just treated as one retrospectively doesn't matter.
Authorities can sit it out watching the traffic seeing what's going on. Some people will be smart enough to mask their identity effectively, plenty won't. Pick up lots of leads and gather lots of intelligence in the hopes of cornering one of the big guys. Even if the big guys are the smart ones, hope that the stupid ones give them away by association.
Shutting it down will just mean people disperse to other selling locations- other websites, or back to the back-alleys and dingy pubs. This way they're all in one easily observed place.
The answer is "not necessarily". Imagine you want to build a building the same size as a family home, and that it needs to be thick enough to protect against radiation; that would be many tonnes of rigid material which would still need to be assembled.
On the other hand, and inflatable is light and can fit in small spaces, and the "printer" is just a device capable of melting and squirting regolith; it need not be big at all.Not only that, but one "printer" can be used to build buildings of almost unlimited size- so the fixed investment of putting it up there pays off more and more the more you use it, in comparison with shipping the materials there from the Earth's surface.
Agreed. I'm a Business Analyst for a non-IT company in the UK, and the whole thing is completely alien to me. We still adhere to the strict development models handed down to us by our ancestors. And although admittedly I don't see what goes on behind closed doors at any of our suppliers, I can't imagine the software engineers I've met acting in the way described. And if we ever caught wind of that sort of atmosphere, they'd be dropped like a hot rock.
The attitude in a few college start-ups probably isn't representative of IT in the real world.
I don't think "killer features" are necessarily the be-all-and-end-all. I have an Android device and am by and large happy with it. I picked it at the time because it was the phone that offered everything I wanted- it has a physical keyboard (which I valued highly at the time when making my choice), Android offered easier super-user privileges than the rivals, the user experience was nice, and the price was right. When it comes time for me to replace it, I'll happily look at alternatives to Android- I don't have any emotional investment to it, and my cash investment (in terms of regularly used apps) amounts to relative pocket money.
If Ubuntu Mobile, Tizen, Sailfish, or anything else looks like a better bet, I'll go for it. It doesn't have to have a "killer app"- it just needs to have all the features I want and be competitive.
The reasons I would have for choosing Android over iOS is mostly down to the lock-down and hostility to rooting ("jailbreaking") in the latter. My main objection to Windows Phone is the unpleasant user experience. Not the presence of a "killer app" in Android which the others lack.
Finland has a lot of brand loyalty to Nokia; Nokia would have double digit sales figures there whatever they were selling.
10% is remarkably poor considering what Nokia's previous smartphone share was like in Finland, and considering what an easy market it should in theory be for them. And it certainly doesn't extrapolate to the rest of the world; if Microsoft's only bragging rights are "we're the number 3 phone seller in Finland", their shareholders are unlikely to be impressed.
That's exactly it! What compelling reason is there that people would want to switch from Android or iOS - the established market players - to Ubuntu Mobile, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, Tizen, MeeGo, webOS, et. al? None of these have the 'killer feature' and that's why they fail.
"Why they fail" is overstating it a bit. Of that list, Ubuntu Mobile and Tizen haven't properly launched yet. MeeGo was quite successful in sales terms until it was artificially killed off by corrporate politics. Classic BlackBerry OS was one of the dominant forces in smartphones for many years, only slipping by not staying up to date; and BB10 has only just been released, not failed yet. Windows Phone and webOS are the only two which you can really call "failed", in that they're the only two which have had a good attempt at cracking the market and not managed to gain significant traction in that time.
My wife is a Primary teacher, and her school does just this. It's a little known fact that all teachers have a set period each week where they don't teach- they use this time to do the various admin and collaborative tasks that just have to be done in the working day rather than the evening, and/or go to off-site training or meetings. This period amounts to about half a day each week.
In her school, they have dedicated IT teachers who teach each class in turn while the regular class teachers take their admin time. The "corralling" job is done by a Teaching Assistant- which is a TA's job in all classes, IT and otherwise.
Incidentally, my wife isn't entirely happy with this arrangement, seeing as she is a proficient programmer (or proficient enough to teach 8 year olds, anyway), and IT is one of her favourite subjects. But considering the computer illiteracy of an awful lot of her colleagues, she says she can see the benefits of the system...
As per my sibling post- please remember that Primary School is ages 7-11. They are not going to finish their Primary School CS curriculum and then get a job writing shoddy code- there are a lot of educational steps between those points (such as A levels and a university degree).
At the start of Primary, they're still being taught visual methods of doing sums in maths (number lines etc.), which you would not want them to do for the rest of their life- it's just one of the early steps in teaching them the subject. Teaching them how to do it "properly" comes later- teaching them how to do it all is step number one. And in the case of CS, making sure they're even aware that it exists as a subject is step 0.
Primary school pupils are age 7-11, and IT is not a core subject on the National Curriculum. How do you suggest teaching Computer Science to a 7 year old in limited time, if not by using a simplified programming language to make simple programmes (like games)? Start with decimal/hexadecimal conversion and work your way up?
Admittedly I would have said "Scratch" rather than the obscure MS clone, but it seems like a valid starting place to me. Better than teaching them how to format text in Word, or teaching them no computer skills at all.
iPhone 5 is the current most advanced model from Apple. Anyone buying a phone right now has a choice between iPhone 5 and BB10 (and the rest, obviously). Whether the iPhone 5.5 or 6 will be better when it is released isn't relevant yet; when it is released (or at least announced) it will be relevant.
Also, to nitpick, there is no BB8 or BB9- the last version was BB7. Don't ask why they've skipped two versions, as I have not the foggiest.
For businesses - whether you like it or not - I think its going to be a neck in neck race between Microsoft and BB - Microsoft has an edge with its existing server install base and Office integreation - but I think Blackberry is going to have an edge with its experience in the IT room and its understanding for what IT departments want.
I have yet to see a single Windows Phone in the hands of an enterprise user, from any company, with the one exception of Microsoft employees themselves. Microsoft just doesn't have the market penetration with their phones, in either enterprise or anywhere else.
If BlackBerry can pull it off with their new offerings, they really do have the enterprise field almost all to themselves.I mean Christ, the number of companies that still run almost exclusively BB smartphones, despite how far behind BB have fallen, shows how easy that market should be for them.
We will not know whether BB10 is a success until we start hearing sales figures. Until then, all anyone can do (the stockmarkets included) is speculate.
Seeing as we still don't really know whether Windows 8 is a success or a failure (in sales/market share terms) 3 months after its release, you know we'll have to wait at least that long before BB10's fate reveals itself.
I whole-heartedly disagree. If they had released an Android phone, they'd be toast. They would not have magically whipped any customers away from Samsung, HTC, LG etc., all of whom have large and well-developed ranges of Android phones with semi-loyal user-bases. And they would have also found most of their existing corporate users abandoning ship- their unique selling point is their security, and Android is comparatively a data-leaky operating system (no more so than iOS and Win8, but far more so than BB).
Their only hope really is to release some genuinely good phones of their own. Personally (as someone who has never owned a BB) I hope BB10 succeeds for them- a crowded smartphone market is a good smartphone market from a consumer point of view. I live in fear of smartphones becoming like the PC- with Android playing Windows with 90% of the user market, Apple flitting around in second place with single digit market share numbers, and all the rest sharing a couple of percent between them.
And how would the slide to unlock implementation for Samsung be any different from iPhone?
In that way that he just said?
The claim seems to imply that it covers a mechanism whereby you drag your finger in a specific direction to unlock the screen. On iPhones, slide to unlock works by moving your finger along a set little path- which that claim would cover. On a Galaxy, you touch a designated spot and drag your finger in any random direction you like; so not what the claim would appear to cover. As a sibling post mentioned, the Android "draw a pattern on a grid of nodes" thing presumably would be covered by the claim, however.
Although frankly any patent which makes a distinction between "dragging your finger this way" and "dragging your finger that way" is a great demonstration as to how patents have become completely absurd.
You're right on the examples given, but I'm still not sure what makes the Apple store unique above, for example, a Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U or Virgin Media store. All of those follow the same format (albeit not usually with the same quantity of spaceage chrome)- glass front, products arranged around the edges, demonstration benches down the middle. As the name suggests, Carphone Warehouse has been around quite a long time now...
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Have you seen the licensing costs for Apple Server software? iTunes may barely break even, but their Enterprise Software division is doing great!
Only half joking; that sort of accounting trick is common as muck, as long as there's an incentive for it. Not sure what that incentive would be in this case, but 5p on the side says that it begins with "T" and ends with "X", without much in the middle. See Starbucks and their "loss making UK division", with a surprisingly high, and highly circuitous, payment to license the brand from their American parent which just so happens to change each year to match whatever their revenues are...
It's all semantic nonsense, really, as TFTitle alluded to. If you take PC to mean "IBM-compatible computer", as it meant at one time in the past, then obviously iPads would be out, as would old PPC Macs, whereas Surface Pros would be in (but not Surface RTs). If you take PC to be synonymous with the old term "microcomputer", then arguably tablets ARE PCs- nobody ever said a microcomputer had to have a keyboard.
It would be tempting to say stop using the term "PC" at all- we should instead talk about top laptop producers, top desktop producers, etc. But the problem there is that laptops and desktops are very similar, in terms of components and user experience- so it is useful to have a term to tie the two together.
Maybe we just need to be clear about our terms whenever we talk figures (as TFA does in this case).
If you showed me iOS and said it was an Android skin, it would be plausible. If you showed me Windows Phone 8 and told me it was an Android skin, it would be plausible (you swipe to get between two views? shocker!). On the surface, all touchscreen OSs work in a pretty similar way. Unless you care about kernels and SDKs, the rest is just rearranging the furniture.
BB10 has a few distinguishing features that I can tell. The sandboxing thing sounds like a very novel feature. The security is still promised to be top-notch. BB messenger is still a big selling point to certain demographics. If it can combine these with a pleasurable user experience, decent build quality, rounded app store selection, and a compelling price- I don't see why it shouldn't do well.
Not only that, but the sort of programmes you need on a desktop are often more unique and/or business critical than anything on a phone. If you can't get Quickbooks or AutoCAD on your new desktop and they're things that you need, the new desktop isn't fit for purpose. If you're a gamer and none of the AAA new games will run on your new gaming rig, then the gaming rig isn't fit for purpose.
Apps on my phone which I've paid for are mostly either utilities (file managers, unzip tools, etc.), cheap and/or indy games (one or two £s each, a few dozen hours of playtime enjoyment), or webservice tie-ins (I think the Wolfram Alpha app was paid for, for example). Nothing I'm going to cry very hard about if I can't replace them like-for-like.
In my experience, smartphone users fall into roughly two categories. 1) There are people like me who haven't spent $100's on apps, and so wouldn't mind moving (I've got maybe $20 of apps that I use regularly; no great hardship). 2) There are people who spend money like there's no tomorrow, have $100's of apps, but also wouldn't think twice about spending it again. People who just pay for everything, because they must have the shiniest and newest things; these people will happily spend the money again, if there's a new shiniest thing to have.
Group number 3- has $100's of apps, but are also sensible with money, aren't likely to be the market-breaking niche.
Protoss can't have been modelled on the Tau- Games Workshop launched the Tau in 2001, whereas StarCraft was 1998.
I've heard the rumour slightly differently- that WarCraft was to be an RTS version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but failed to get official licensing. It's plausible that StarCraft (which came later) was influenced by Warhammer 40k too, but seeing as Blizzard and Games Workshop had already fallen out at that point (in my version of the rumour), it's unlikely that it was ever intended to be a licensed product.
A big screen, a mouse and keyboard, many connectors (half a dozen USBs minimum, plus card readers, eSATA etc.), optical disk drive, ability to run software without it being signed or from an approved source, and good high-spec CPU, GPU, RAM, internal storage, and so forth. Probably more things, but that's a good starter for 10.
It may be true that you can take a tablet (such as the Surface) and make it all of these things with add on peripherals- in which case, assuming it is painless, then I'm all for it. But if it means squinting at a 7" screen trying to use a touch-screen GUI with a mouse and waiting 25 seconds every time I try to sort a column on a spreadsheet, then it isn't going to do for me.
I can't really see there being a situation where a minimal install is required, but a minimal Linux or BSD install is "too big". Especially with the "embedded" flavours.
Still, much kudos to FreeDOS. I always feel a little bad for it whenever I buy a computer with "no OS" on it, and it comes with FreeDOS. It's a real OS too!
If he wants to find out why he is wrong, perhaps he should be consulting with a lawyer. No offense, but I don't want to pay for a DOJ that staffs an extra 2,000 people just so that they can read every piece of email that comes in, and respond back with a detailed analysis of all the legal mistakes made.
Presumably, it is the DoJ's job to look into this sort of matter. If they have done so (i.e., tasked some of their staff or a lawyer to exam the case), presumably a report contains the findings. If I were to write to them with a serious query, I'd expect at least to be pointed in the direction of their findings.
They are a government organisation and a public service, so their findings should reasonably be considered public (redacted if necessary, although I can't see why that would be in this case).
I am in the UK, so YMMV. However how it would work here would be like this- I write to my MP asking a question. My MP isn't in that department, so he submits a formal written question to the relevant minister. The minister's department is legally obliged to answer his question, which he will then share with me.
Frankly, considering the USA is one of the world's most democratic democracies, I'm surprised at the attitude I'm hearing in response to my comment. "Why should the government have to think and answer the questions of Joe Voter? What a waste of time!". I guess in the US it's vote once, don't think about it again for 4+ more years.
If he was wrong, it would be nice if they could respond to each point he raised and tell him why he was wrong. Getting a reply which says "trust us, don't worry about it" is always going to be unsatisfying.
I always thought it sounded like a honey trap to me; whether set up intentionally as one or just treated as one retrospectively doesn't matter.
Authorities can sit it out watching the traffic seeing what's going on. Some people will be smart enough to mask their identity effectively, plenty won't. Pick up lots of leads and gather lots of intelligence in the hopes of cornering one of the big guys. Even if the big guys are the smart ones, hope that the stupid ones give them away by association.
Shutting it down will just mean people disperse to other selling locations- other websites, or back to the back-alleys and dingy pubs. This way they're all in one easily observed place.
The answer is "not necessarily". Imagine you want to build a building the same size as a family home, and that it needs to be thick enough to protect against radiation; that would be many tonnes of rigid material which would still need to be assembled.
On the other hand, and inflatable is light and can fit in small spaces, and the "printer" is just a device capable of melting and squirting regolith; it need not be big at all.Not only that, but one "printer" can be used to build buildings of almost unlimited size- so the fixed investment of putting it up there pays off more and more the more you use it, in comparison with shipping the materials there from the Earth's surface.
Agreed. I'm a Business Analyst for a non-IT company in the UK, and the whole thing is completely alien to me. We still adhere to the strict development models handed down to us by our ancestors. And although admittedly I don't see what goes on behind closed doors at any of our suppliers, I can't imagine the software engineers I've met acting in the way described. And if we ever caught wind of that sort of atmosphere, they'd be dropped like a hot rock.
The attitude in a few college start-ups probably isn't representative of IT in the real world.
I don't think "killer features" are necessarily the be-all-and-end-all. I have an Android device and am by and large happy with it. I picked it at the time because it was the phone that offered everything I wanted- it has a physical keyboard (which I valued highly at the time when making my choice), Android offered easier super-user privileges than the rivals, the user experience was nice, and the price was right. When it comes time for me to replace it, I'll happily look at alternatives to Android- I don't have any emotional investment to it, and my cash investment (in terms of regularly used apps) amounts to relative pocket money.
If Ubuntu Mobile, Tizen, Sailfish, or anything else looks like a better bet, I'll go for it. It doesn't have to have a "killer app"- it just needs to have all the features I want and be competitive.
The reasons I would have for choosing Android over iOS is mostly down to the lock-down and hostility to rooting ("jailbreaking") in the latter. My main objection to Windows Phone is the unpleasant user experience. Not the presence of a "killer app" in Android which the others lack.
Finland has a lot of brand loyalty to Nokia; Nokia would have double digit sales figures there whatever they were selling.
10% is remarkably poor considering what Nokia's previous smartphone share was like in Finland, and considering what an easy market it should in theory be for them. And it certainly doesn't extrapolate to the rest of the world; if Microsoft's only bragging rights are "we're the number 3 phone seller in Finland", their shareholders are unlikely to be impressed.
That's exactly it! What compelling reason is there that people would want to switch from Android or iOS - the established market players - to Ubuntu Mobile, Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, Tizen, MeeGo, webOS, et. al? None of these have the 'killer feature' and that's why they fail.
"Why they fail" is overstating it a bit. Of that list, Ubuntu Mobile and Tizen haven't properly launched yet. MeeGo was quite successful in sales terms until it was artificially killed off by corrporate politics. Classic BlackBerry OS was one of the dominant forces in smartphones for many years, only slipping by not staying up to date; and BB10 has only just been released, not failed yet. Windows Phone and webOS are the only two which you can really call "failed", in that they're the only two which have had a good attempt at cracking the market and not managed to gain significant traction in that time.
My wife is a Primary teacher, and her school does just this. It's a little known fact that all teachers have a set period each week where they don't teach- they use this time to do the various admin and collaborative tasks that just have to be done in the working day rather than the evening, and/or go to off-site training or meetings. This period amounts to about half a day each week.
In her school, they have dedicated IT teachers who teach each class in turn while the regular class teachers take their admin time. The "corralling" job is done by a Teaching Assistant- which is a TA's job in all classes, IT and otherwise.
Incidentally, my wife isn't entirely happy with this arrangement, seeing as she is a proficient programmer (or proficient enough to teach 8 year olds, anyway), and IT is one of her favourite subjects. But considering the computer illiteracy of an awful lot of her colleagues, she says she can see the benefits of the system...
As per my sibling post- please remember that Primary School is ages 7-11. They are not going to finish their Primary School CS curriculum and then get a job writing shoddy code- there are a lot of educational steps between those points (such as A levels and a university degree).
At the start of Primary, they're still being taught visual methods of doing sums in maths (number lines etc.), which you would not want them to do for the rest of their life- it's just one of the early steps in teaching them the subject. Teaching them how to do it "properly" comes later- teaching them how to do it all is step number one. And in the case of CS, making sure they're even aware that it exists as a subject is step 0.
Primary school pupils are age 7-11, and IT is not a core subject on the National Curriculum. How do you suggest teaching Computer Science to a 7 year old in limited time, if not by using a simplified programming language to make simple programmes (like games)? Start with decimal/hexadecimal conversion and work your way up?
Admittedly I would have said "Scratch" rather than the obscure MS clone, but it seems like a valid starting place to me. Better than teaching them how to format text in Word, or teaching them no computer skills at all.
iPhone 5 is the current most advanced model from Apple. Anyone buying a phone right now has a choice between iPhone 5 and BB10 (and the rest, obviously). Whether the iPhone 5.5 or 6 will be better when it is released isn't relevant yet; when it is released (or at least announced) it will be relevant.
Also, to nitpick, there is no BB8 or BB9- the last version was BB7. Don't ask why they've skipped two versions, as I have not the foggiest.
For businesses - whether you like it or not - I think its going to be a neck in neck race between Microsoft and BB - Microsoft has an edge with its existing server install base and Office integreation - but I think Blackberry is going to have an edge with its experience in the IT room and its understanding for what IT departments want.
I have yet to see a single Windows Phone in the hands of an enterprise user, from any company, with the one exception of Microsoft employees themselves. Microsoft just doesn't have the market penetration with their phones, in either enterprise or anywhere else.
If BlackBerry can pull it off with their new offerings, they really do have the enterprise field almost all to themselves.I mean Christ, the number of companies that still run almost exclusively BB smartphones, despite how far behind BB have fallen, shows how easy that market should be for them.
We will not know whether BB10 is a success until we start hearing sales figures. Until then, all anyone can do (the stockmarkets included) is speculate.
Seeing as we still don't really know whether Windows 8 is a success or a failure (in sales/market share terms) 3 months after its release, you know we'll have to wait at least that long before BB10's fate reveals itself.
I whole-heartedly disagree. If they had released an Android phone, they'd be toast. They would not have magically whipped any customers away from Samsung, HTC, LG etc., all of whom have large and well-developed ranges of Android phones with semi-loyal user-bases. And they would have also found most of their existing corporate users abandoning ship- their unique selling point is their security, and Android is comparatively a data-leaky operating system (no more so than iOS and Win8, but far more so than BB).
Their only hope really is to release some genuinely good phones of their own. Personally (as someone who has never owned a BB) I hope BB10 succeeds for them- a crowded smartphone market is a good smartphone market from a consumer point of view. I live in fear of smartphones becoming like the PC- with Android playing Windows with 90% of the user market, Apple flitting around in second place with single digit market share numbers, and all the rest sharing a couple of percent between them.
And how would the slide to unlock implementation for Samsung be any different from iPhone?
In that way that he just said?
The claim seems to imply that it covers a mechanism whereby you drag your finger in a specific direction to unlock the screen. On iPhones, slide to unlock works by moving your finger along a set little path- which that claim would cover. On a Galaxy, you touch a designated spot and drag your finger in any random direction you like; so not what the claim would appear to cover. As a sibling post mentioned, the Android "draw a pattern on a grid of nodes" thing presumably would be covered by the claim, however.
Although frankly any patent which makes a distinction between "dragging your finger this way" and "dragging your finger that way" is a great demonstration as to how patents have become completely absurd.
You're right on the examples given, but I'm still not sure what makes the Apple store unique above, for example, a Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U or Virgin Media store. All of those follow the same format (albeit not usually with the same quantity of spaceage chrome)- glass front, products arranged around the edges, demonstration benches down the middle. As the name suggests, Carphone Warehouse has been around quite a long time now...