In fact, the biggest money maker for a high frequency trader *IS* front-running someone else's order. Other profits from HFT algorithms, such as simple arbitrage, are a lot lower than profits from front-running opportunities. I very much doubt that the infrastructure investments HFT firms have made would be worth doing without the front-running component, so it will be interesting to see what happens down the line.
The front-running is possible when the other person's order is placed on multiple exchanges but not delayed so it hits them all at the same time. If the order hits, say, the BATS exchange first and there is a 100ms delay before it hits, say, the NYSE, then HFT algorithms will see the order on BATS and will be able to front-run the order on the NYSE using their superior network connections to the NYSE to get ahead of the original order that is still in-transit to the NYSE.
This might be a surprise to you, but it has already happened. The growth in dark pools is directly attributable to major investment managers exiting the public markets and doing their trading in the pools in order to avoid the HFTs and other shenanigans (both real and imagined). The public exchanges have lost a huge amount of business over the last few years... hoist by their own petard, so to speak. At least to a degree.
Insofar as regular investors go, HFT doesn't really have much of an effect so there's no reason to take our business elsewhere. Losing a penny here and there, when it happens at all, is nothing compared to what trading cost us even 10 years ago. Our trades are simply too small for the HFTs to be able to act on.
But if you are really worried, just use limit orders that are slightly outside the bid/ask range (i.e. so they don't fill instantly) and wait for the fill. Nobody can front-run a small order so making it public beforehand prevents the HFTs from being able to do anything with it. You have to be a bit patient, but that's all. (this advise does not apply to thinly-traded names, only to liquid names).
Hedge funds tend to be used by the affluent, not by regular people with regular incomes. In addition, hedge funds usually lock your funds up... there may be only a few times a year where you can cash out and you have to give them notice (3-6 months, depending). Only investors with serious excess capital that they can afford to put aside for a few years uses a hedge fund.
And even then, hedge funds are hardly any guarantee of good returns. As a class Hedge funds returns have been horrible over the last year, for example. And while the media likes to hype up the returns that some hedge funds have been able to make, they tend to ignore the larger number of hedge funds that underperform the market.
That is total and complete nonsense. Ultimately the stock price is a reflection of the company, not the other way around. If a stock winds up being mis-priced due to an out-of-control trading program (and I've seen that happen plenty of times), it doesn't stay that way for long as investors pounce on it. You should count your blessings when it happens, because being able to buy a stock that an out of control trading program drops $10 in 60 seconds is virtually guaranteed profit.
There are a number of good solutions available. If anyone actually read the book, defeating the HFTs basically comes down to adding a delay to multi-exchange transactions such that the transaction reaches each exchange at the same time.
The real problem here is that the regular exchanges prioritized their own profits over their duty to provide a fair market to participants. That much is obvious, and frankly I think there should be criminal prosecutions for what they did (I doubt it will happen though).
This sort of things has happened in other areas. There are several market reports that sell early copies to a select group of clients. One just recently was selling an 'electronic' version even earlier than its main group of clients. It turned out that the HFTs who purchased the ultra-early version were using the data to front-run the normal clients (who in turn were trying to front-run regular investors reacting to the report when it goes public).
The instant it was revealed what the early-early group was doing, the regular clients stopped trading on the early news and the early-early group were suddenly not able to make any money front-running the regular clients. The producer of the report was forced to retract the early-early report or lose *all* of their regular clients who were tired of being front-run.
The stock exchanges are engaged in the same sort of crap with the HFTs, selling them special access and trade types that other investors do not have. Now the exchanges are in a position of having to deny that they are making things unfair when it is obvious that they are making things unfair.
This just goes to show how convoluted things can become. But once it gets into the light of day, corrective action can happen pretty quickly.
If our regulatory agencies were more competent, this would have been dealt with years ago instead of letting it fester as long as it has.
Apple has bought back a huge number of shares, as well as increased their dividend 8% this round. The share buy-back is capital-efficient for investors and a big deal. Not only that, but at a minimum they can fold in the dividend they don't have to pay any more for those repurchased shares into the dividend they are paying the remaining shareholders, so you get the best of both worlds.
Believe me, it actually is a big deal. Ignore the crap that comes out of the media.
Well, you are assuming that the company is valueless when you say that. Most companies are not valueless. Most, in fact, make a profit, and as an investor you own a piece of that profit. The profits are not a phantom... that's cold hard cash and it means something whether the company has a dividend or not. It's very real.
Many people treat the market like a game, and there are some game-like elements to it, but the underlying reality is that it isn't a game. The secondary markets have many uses... it is the liquidity and transactional efficiency of the secondary market that gives U.S. industry a level of flexibility that no other country can compete with. our energy infrastructure, renewables industries, small businesses. When the world changes, dollars flow where they are needed.
By dismissing the secondary market you basically dismiss any need for liquidity. You are wrong. The markets aren't about giving people a free pass... it's survival of the fittest. If anything, investors have it the easiest. We can shift our resources literally in a few seconds, and other than the crash of 1929, no crash since has lost investors who stuck with it any money in any reasonable period of time unless they were stupid and sold at the bottom (not understanding what stock ownership actually means).
Look at a graph of the 2008 crash. The economy might have gotten screwed due to the lack of regulation of the financial industry, but the markets recovered relatively quickly and that happened because the efficiency of the secondary markets allowed investment resources to be shifted very quickly. Just looking at tops and bottoms doesn't give you a full picture... very few investors actually went 'all-in' at the top and sold 'all-out' at the bottom. No matter how hyped-up a story you get from the media, it isn't an accurate representation of what people actually made or lost.
If you think the stock market is a crap-shoot then you are probably thinking a bit too short-term. It's never been a crap-shoot. Not even during the 1929 crash.
Sounds idiotic to me. Non-linear steering is great, but any sort of dynamic/adaptive steering that changes according to conditions is stupid beyond belief and will cause an endless stream of accidents because the driver can no longer predict how the car will react to similar steering motions.
Reading Rainbow was a wonderful show on PBS that ran for a long long time, and LeVar Burton has been involved with it and with kids education for decades (even before playing his role in Star Trek TNG). Even though it has reached its goal, I'm throwing in a hundred or two myself. My opinion: Anything donated will be well spent, LeVar Burton is just that type of person, who you know you can depend on.
It's kinda hard to have any sympathy when only an idiot connects these 'smart' consumer devices to the internet in the first place. These devices do not have any functionality that I can't already get simply using a Roku or AppleTV or Airplay or Chromecast.
I have a bunch of these... VCRs, Receivers (for the integrated Pandora), etc. I leave them all disconnected from the internet, and so should everyone.
Having just one media device be connected to the internet is kinda like picking your poison, but at least you have a choice. And something like a Roku or an AppleTV is going to be far, *far* more secure than the crap you find in VCRs and SmartTVs and other devices of that ilk.
I was driving down the street and noticed something odd about the car in front of me... the keys were dangling off the back of the trunk! We came to a red-light and I hopped out and tapped on the woman's window.
She was rather startled but I put on my most innocent face and she rolled down her window a little and I said "Miss, sorry for startling you but your car keys are dangling off the back of your trunk!". She did a double take and then realized that it was true! Her button ignition switch had worked because the keys just happened to be 'close enough'.
I said "wait a moment, I'll get them for you now" (I didn't want to get them first because she might have driven off and would then not have had her keys at all). I went to the back, got the keys, and handed them to her through the window. She smiled and said thank you.
I went back to my car and managed to get my seatbelt back on and ready to go before the light turned green again.
That Canon can actually do 4K video uncompressed. Why he wasn't using Magic Lantern I just don't understand. There's no point comparing ANY 1080p output against 4K output under those lighting conditions, the post production run has so much more information to work with when downsizing 4K output it isn't even funny. Not to mention the poor lens choice.
I guess the real question is... why would someone want to take 4K video with a cell phone anyway? What's the point? If the lighting conditions aren't perfect, the output is going to be crap.
But I gotta question the Canon setup... was he intentionally trying to create the worst setup possible? It was clearly not in focus, and I sure hope he wasn't running that Sigma lens either wide-open or fully stopped-down because its junky when it isn't mid-range. And if the intent was to compare 4K video he should have done all the tests with Magic Lantern on the Canon and the YouTube video should have been cropped rather than down-sized. There's so much post-processing being done that those videos just aren't meaningful as-shown. He also didn't define what he meant by 'raw' vs 'not raw'. What exact video mode was he using for the two halves?
Well, you get the picture. It's just not a valid comparison. Apples and Oranges.
In anycase, I think a large percentage of people will be quite happy with their cell-phone cameras and video. Cell phones have taken a huge bite out of the camera maker's point-and-shoot cameras as well as the DSLRs. But it's like the pad-vs-PC war. Those people didn't need the DSLRs in the first place, and the people who care about quality are still going to stick with their DSLRs.
It only takes once expensive vacation with poor shots for someone to start wishing they had brought something a bit better than their cell phones along.
Well they don't really make 5.25" HDDs anymore. 3.5" is next on the list to go. I don't bother with 3.5" HDDs anymore myself, in fact, not even for servers. I stopped buying them last year. Everything is 100% 2.5" now. It's a much nicer form factor and easier to match IOPS requirements against the enclosure with today's drive densities.
In the beginning there were 3.5" SSDs. OCZ for example. They rapidly disappeared. If you go on, say, newegg right now, they list 724 2.5" SSDs and exactly 6 3.5" SSDs. 1.8" is starting to creep up, with 16 offerings.
You are talking as though joe consumer can actually run something like that when joe consumer cannot. With Android, joe consumer downloads an app from the app store and runs it, and the app happily slurps all of his data. With Apple joe consumer does the same thing and iOS pops up windows asking him if he wants to allow the app to access his contacts, or his GPS position, etc.
Similarly, Apple at least encrypts everything by default. Android requires you to use an option. Apple closes jailbreaks. Android... not.
VPN? You'd better hope Google store does a better job vetting those apps because the little requestor they put up is generated by the app, not by android. Apple puts VPN apps in its store through a sieve.
Joe consumer... you know, 99.9999% of the customers of these devices, can't program a single line of code and thinks linux is some sort of marsupial.
Guess which one is more secure? I'll give you a hint: People who give a shit about the security of their data and the integrity of their device don't choose android.
Google knows this is a problem. They just don't know how to fix it. But they had better pretty damn fast because fewer and fewer people are interesting in giving away all their personal data to every little app they download.
Urm. You are implying that this isn't a problem on Android devices? Sorry to break the news to you, but App incompatibilities on iOS get fixed. I've seen Apps on my ipad-2 break every once in awhile, but they don't stay broken for long.
App incompatibilities on Android, particularly when it relates to a driver bug that requires a vendor fix or app-developer work around, often do not EVER get fixed. It's one reason why apps tend to get developed for iOS first, because developing an Android app that works across umpteen different devices each with its own hardware bugs is a nightmare.
If you are an Apple user then buy an AppleTV ($100) to hook up to your 55" screen. You can then AirPlay video from your ipad onto your T.V. wirelessly. You will find yourself wanting to watch certain programs on the 55" screen a lot more often.
Probably 80% of what I watch on my T.V. these days is AirPlayed from my ipad. The canned iOS apps (such as PBS's app) are much nicer operated on the ipad than they are through the set-top box's remote. Website video works just as easily. Mostly though, it's the great iOS apps that make video streaming a pleasure to operate.
(There are numerous TV box products, the Roku is a fine box as well and Amazon has a box out now, but for an Apple device user, the AppleTV's AirPlay feature is fully integrated, convenient, and seamless).
*NO* Android vendor keeps their phones up to date past one or two updates, and sometimes not even one. They can't, because their business model isn't compatible with keeping old phones around. They need sales volume to make any profit on their thin margins which means they want their customers to 'upgrade' to new hardware as often as possible.
Even the Motortola's (when Google owned them) were woefully behind (and still are). I think of all the devices over a year old only Google's nexus series is running a reasonably recent version.
Apple only needs customer retention (which they have), and has additional revenue streams after the iOS device has been purchased, so Apple's business model is very different.
So basically you aren't willing to write Apple a check for $100 for a hassle-free battery replacement on a pad that you've used to good effect for, say, 5 years?
I'll bet 95% of Apple's customers would have no trouble writing that check. I would do it in a heartbeat, if that were the only thing that needed replacing.
But that's just plain wrong. If you take the entire possible set of customers who need 'computing devices', most of them will not EVER need anything more powerful than what the ipad provides. Period. That's why consumer PC sales have been plummeting. PCs and more capable laptops are still alive because they are a good fit for businesses. But in the consumer space they are screwed and it shows.
You are thinking only for yourself and not thinking with any business sense whatsoever. What you are hawking is something that only a relatively small number of people actually need. And, Frankly, Apple takes a huge bite out of even that customer group too with their line of laptops. Almost totally maintenance-free devices whereas with Windows... good luck when you break something.
Which is why my brothers and I ripped Windows out of my parent's house and replaced the whole mess with Apple gear. We spend a hell of a lot less time having to fix things.
No, I have the same crash-drain problem on my Nexus-7 too. Actually, every Android device I've ever owned has *very inconsistent* battery draw-down when sleeping.
Apple makes the same amount of money either way. Doesn't matter to Apple which way you go. But for very old devices no consumer is going to replace e.g. an ipad-1 with another ipad-1.
It comes down to statistics. Apple offers deals for cost conscious consumers but a large percentage of Apple customers are either going to want a newer device or are not so price sensitive that they aren't willing to spend $200 more for a new device. In fact, a lot of customers don't use the trade-in at all and keep the old device.
So even though Apple offers these deals, garnering very high customer loyalty in the process, it doesn't actually impact their bottom line a whole lot.
Ok. Here's my suggestion then... run Debian on a Chromebook. Yes, you can run Debian on a chromebook. I know that for a fact because I have an Acer C720 in front of me running whatever the hell I want.
There are three caveats:
(1) Make sure the chromebook can run linux. Google it for the specific chromebook. Older chromebooks are locked to chrome, but newer ones tend to have a special mode that allows you to boot whatever you want. The chromebook under the hood is just a basic Intel system, albeit with a nice Haswell laptop cpu, with a few special I2C devices for the touchpad etc.
(2) Chromebooks usually only come with a 16GB SSD (M.2 form factor SATA SSD... i.e. tiny). Not enough if you are serious. Buy a bigger M.2 form factor SSD. Also be sure to configure a good amount of swap space, most of these babies only have 1-2 GB of ram in them. But paging to a SSD every once in a while is not a problem and very fast so you won't notice it.
(3) Once configured you will have to hit CTRL-L on boot to get it past the warning screen. Every time you boot.
The chromebooks based on the Haswel architecture laptop cpu's are MUCH faster than the old atom-based netbooks (I have both. huge difference). Not as fast as a higher-end laptop obviously but still blasted fast and my little Acer C720 only eats 5-8W of power... that's at least 6 hours of battery life at normal idle without going into a full sleep mode (not sure if Debian can enter a full sleep mode anyhow on these things).
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In fact, the biggest money maker for a high frequency trader *IS* front-running someone else's order. Other profits from HFT algorithms, such as simple arbitrage, are a lot lower than profits from front-running opportunities. I very much doubt that the infrastructure investments HFT firms have made would be worth doing without the front-running component, so it will be interesting to see what happens down the line.
The front-running is possible when the other person's order is placed on multiple exchanges but not delayed so it hits them all at the same time. If the order hits, say, the BATS exchange first and there is a 100ms delay before it hits, say, the NYSE, then HFT algorithms will see the order on BATS and will be able to front-run the order on the NYSE using their superior network connections to the NYSE to get ahead of the original order that is still in-transit to the NYSE.
-Matt
This might be a surprise to you, but it has already happened. The growth in dark pools is directly attributable to major investment managers exiting the public markets and doing their trading in the pools in order to avoid the HFTs and other shenanigans (both real and imagined). The public exchanges have lost a huge amount of business over the last few years... hoist by their own petard, so to speak. At least to a degree.
Insofar as regular investors go, HFT doesn't really have much of an effect so there's no reason to take our business elsewhere. Losing a penny here and there, when it happens at all, is nothing compared to what trading cost us even 10 years ago. Our trades are simply too small for the HFTs to be able to act on.
But if you are really worried, just use limit orders that are slightly outside the bid/ask range (i.e. so they don't fill instantly) and wait for the fill. Nobody can front-run a small order so making it public beforehand prevents the HFTs from being able to do anything with it. You have to be a bit patient, but that's all. (this advise does not apply to thinly-traded names, only to liquid names).
-Matt
Hedge funds tend to be used by the affluent, not by regular people with regular incomes. In addition, hedge funds usually lock your funds up... there may be only a few times a year where you can cash out and you have to give them notice (3-6 months, depending). Only investors with serious excess capital that they can afford to put aside for a few years uses a hedge fund.
And even then, hedge funds are hardly any guarantee of good returns. As a class Hedge funds returns have been horrible over the last year, for example. And while the media likes to hype up the returns that some hedge funds have been able to make, they tend to ignore the larger number of hedge funds that underperform the market.
-Matt
That is total and complete nonsense. Ultimately the stock price is a reflection of the company, not the other way around. If a stock winds up being mis-priced due to an out-of-control trading program (and I've seen that happen plenty of times), it doesn't stay that way for long as investors pounce on it. You should count your blessings when it happens, because being able to buy a stock that an out of control trading program drops $10 in 60 seconds is virtually guaranteed profit.
-Matt
There are a number of good solutions available. If anyone actually read the book, defeating the HFTs basically comes down to adding a delay to multi-exchange transactions such that the transaction reaches each exchange at the same time.
The real problem here is that the regular exchanges prioritized their own profits over their duty to provide a fair market to participants. That much is obvious, and frankly I think there should be criminal prosecutions for what they did (I doubt it will happen though).
This sort of things has happened in other areas. There are several market reports that sell early copies to a select group of clients. One just recently was selling an 'electronic' version even earlier than its main group of clients. It turned out that the HFTs who purchased the ultra-early version were using the data to front-run the normal clients (who in turn were trying to front-run regular investors reacting to the report when it goes public).
The instant it was revealed what the early-early group was doing, the regular clients stopped trading on the early news and the early-early group were suddenly not able to make any money front-running the regular clients. The producer of the report was forced to retract the early-early report or lose *all* of their regular clients who were tired of being front-run.
The stock exchanges are engaged in the same sort of crap with the HFTs, selling them special access and trade types that other investors do not have. Now the exchanges are in a position of having to deny that they are making things unfair when it is obvious that they are making things unfair.
This just goes to show how convoluted things can become. But once it gets into the light of day, corrective action can happen pretty quickly.
If our regulatory agencies were more competent, this would have been dealt with years ago instead of letting it fester as long as it has.
-Matt
Apple has bought back a huge number of shares, as well as increased their dividend 8% this round. The share buy-back is capital-efficient for investors and a big deal. Not only that, but at a minimum they can fold in the dividend they don't have to pay any more for those repurchased shares into the dividend they are paying the remaining shareholders, so you get the best of both worlds.
Believe me, it actually is a big deal. Ignore the crap that comes out of the media.
-Matt
Well, you are assuming that the company is valueless when you say that. Most companies are not valueless. Most, in fact, make a profit, and as an investor you own a piece of that profit. The profits are not a phantom... that's cold hard cash and it means something whether the company has a dividend or not. It's very real.
Many people treat the market like a game, and there are some game-like elements to it, but the underlying reality is that it isn't a game. The secondary markets have many uses... it is the liquidity and transactional efficiency of the secondary market that gives U.S. industry a level of flexibility that no other country can compete with. our energy infrastructure, renewables industries, small businesses. When the world changes, dollars flow where they are needed.
By dismissing the secondary market you basically dismiss any need for liquidity. You are wrong. The markets aren't about giving people a free pass... it's survival of the fittest. If anything, investors have it the easiest. We can shift our resources literally in a few seconds, and other than the crash of 1929, no crash since has lost investors who stuck with it any money in any reasonable period of time unless they were stupid and sold at the bottom (not understanding what stock ownership actually means).
Look at a graph of the 2008 crash. The economy might have gotten screwed due to the lack of regulation of the financial industry, but the markets recovered relatively quickly and that happened because the efficiency of the secondary markets allowed investment resources to be shifted very quickly. Just looking at tops and bottoms doesn't give you a full picture... very few investors actually went 'all-in' at the top and sold 'all-out' at the bottom. No matter how hyped-up a story you get from the media, it isn't an accurate representation of what people actually made or lost.
If you think the stock market is a crap-shoot then you are probably thinking a bit too short-term. It's never been a crap-shoot. Not even during the 1929 crash.
-Matt
Sounds idiotic to me. Non-linear steering is great, but any sort of dynamic/adaptive steering that changes according to conditions is stupid beyond belief and will cause an endless stream of accidents because the driver can no longer predict how the car will react to similar steering motions.
-Matt
Reading Rainbow was a wonderful show on PBS that ran for a long long time, and LeVar Burton has been involved with it and with kids education for decades (even before playing his role in Star Trek TNG). Even though it has reached its goal, I'm throwing in a hundred or two myself. My opinion: Anything donated will be well spent, LeVar Burton is just that type of person, who you know you can depend on.
-Matt
It's kinda hard to have any sympathy when only an idiot connects these 'smart' consumer devices to the internet in the first place. These devices do not have any functionality that I can't already get simply using a Roku or AppleTV or Airplay or Chromecast.
I have a bunch of these... VCRs, Receivers (for the integrated Pandora), etc. I leave them all disconnected from the internet, and so should everyone.
Having just one media device be connected to the internet is kinda like picking your poison, but at least you have a choice. And something like a Roku or an AppleTV is going to be far, *far* more secure than the crap you find in VCRs and SmartTVs and other devices of that ilk.
-Matt
I was driving down the street and noticed something odd about the car in front of me... the keys were dangling off the back of the trunk! We came to a red-light and I hopped out and tapped on the woman's window.
She was rather startled but I put on my most innocent face and she rolled down her window a little and I said "Miss, sorry for startling you but your car keys are dangling off the back of your trunk!". She did a double take and then realized that it was true! Her button ignition switch had worked because the keys just happened to be 'close enough'.
I said "wait a moment, I'll get them for you now" (I didn't want to get them first because she might have driven off and would then not have had her keys at all). I went to the back, got the keys, and handed them to her through the window. She smiled and said thank you.
I went back to my car and managed to get my seatbelt back on and ready to go before the light turned green again.
True story :-)
-Matt
That Canon can actually do 4K video uncompressed. Why he wasn't using Magic Lantern I just don't understand. There's no point comparing ANY 1080p output against 4K output under those lighting conditions, the post production run has so much more information to work with when downsizing 4K output it isn't even funny. Not to mention the poor lens choice.
-Matt
I guess the real question is... why would someone want to take 4K video with a cell phone anyway? What's the point? If the lighting conditions aren't perfect, the output is going to be crap.
But I gotta question the Canon setup... was he intentionally trying to create the worst setup possible? It was clearly not in focus, and I sure hope he wasn't running that Sigma lens either wide-open or fully stopped-down because its junky when it isn't mid-range. And if the intent was to compare 4K video he should have done all the tests with Magic Lantern on the Canon and the YouTube video should have been cropped rather than down-sized. There's so much post-processing being done that those videos just aren't meaningful as-shown. He also didn't define what he meant by 'raw' vs 'not raw'. What exact video mode was he using for the two halves?
Well, you get the picture. It's just not a valid comparison. Apples and Oranges.
In anycase, I think a large percentage of people will be quite happy with their cell-phone cameras and video. Cell phones have taken a huge bite out of the camera maker's point-and-shoot cameras as well as the DSLRs. But it's like the pad-vs-PC war. Those people didn't need the DSLRs in the first place, and the people who care about quality are still going to stick with their DSLRs.
It only takes once expensive vacation with poor shots for someone to start wishing they had brought something a bit better than their cell phones along.
-Matt
Well they don't really make 5.25" HDDs anymore. 3.5" is next on the list to go. I don't bother with 3.5" HDDs anymore myself, in fact, not even for servers. I stopped buying them last year. Everything is 100% 2.5" now. It's a much nicer form factor and easier to match IOPS requirements against the enclosure with today's drive densities.
In the beginning there were 3.5" SSDs. OCZ for example. They rapidly disappeared. If you go on, say, newegg right now, they list 724 2.5" SSDs and exactly 6 3.5" SSDs. 1.8" is starting to creep up, with 16 offerings.
Performance per cubic meter, anyone?
-Matt
You are talking as though joe consumer can actually run something like that when joe consumer cannot. With Android, joe consumer downloads an app from the app store and runs it, and the app happily slurps all of his data. With Apple joe consumer does the same thing and iOS pops up windows asking him if he wants to allow the app to access his contacts, or his GPS position, etc.
Similarly, Apple at least encrypts everything by default. Android requires you to use an option. Apple closes jailbreaks. Android... not.
VPN? You'd better hope Google store does a better job vetting those apps because the little requestor they put up is generated by the app, not by android. Apple puts VPN apps in its store through a sieve.
Joe consumer... you know, 99.9999% of the customers of these devices, can't program a single line of code and thinks linux is some sort of marsupial.
Guess which one is more secure? I'll give you a hint: People who give a shit about the security of their data and the integrity of their device don't choose android.
Google knows this is a problem. They just don't know how to fix it. But they had better pretty damn fast because fewer and fewer people are interesting in giving away all their personal data to every little app they download.
-Matt
Urm. You are implying that this isn't a problem on Android devices? Sorry to break the news to you, but App incompatibilities on iOS get fixed. I've seen Apps on my ipad-2 break every once in awhile, but they don't stay broken for long.
App incompatibilities on Android, particularly when it relates to a driver bug that requires a vendor fix or app-developer work around, often do not EVER get fixed. It's one reason why apps tend to get developed for iOS first, because developing an Android app that works across umpteen different devices each with its own hardware bugs is a nightmare.
-Matt
If you are an Apple user then buy an AppleTV ($100) to hook up to your 55" screen. You can then AirPlay video from your ipad onto your T.V. wirelessly. You will find yourself wanting to watch certain programs on the 55" screen a lot more often.
Probably 80% of what I watch on my T.V. these days is AirPlayed from my ipad. The canned iOS apps (such as PBS's app) are much nicer operated on the ipad than they are through the set-top box's remote. Website video works just as easily. Mostly though, it's the great iOS apps that make video streaming a pleasure to operate.
(There are numerous TV box products, the Roku is a fine box as well and Amazon has a box out now, but for an Apple device user, the AppleTV's AirPlay feature is fully integrated, convenient, and seamless).
-Matt
*NO* Android vendor keeps their phones up to date past one or two updates, and sometimes not even one. They can't, because their business model isn't compatible with keeping old phones around. They need sales volume to make any profit on their thin margins which means they want their customers to 'upgrade' to new hardware as often as possible.
Even the Motortola's (when Google owned them) were woefully behind (and still are). I think of all the devices over a year old only Google's nexus series is running a reasonably recent version.
Apple only needs customer retention (which they have), and has additional revenue streams after the iOS device has been purchased, so Apple's business model is very different.
-Matt
To be fair though HTML5 apps, and I run a few of them (Google's gmail app for the ipad for example) aren't anywhere near as smooth as native apps.
-Matt
So basically you aren't willing to write Apple a check for $100 for a hassle-free battery replacement on a pad that you've used to good effect for, say, 5 years?
I'll bet 95% of Apple's customers would have no trouble writing that check. I would do it in a heartbeat, if that were the only thing that needed replacing.
-Matt
Don't be stupid. Cyanogenmod is for programmers and hackers, which is exactly 0.00001% of the customers who buy these devices.
Try to at least be realistic.
-Matt
But that's just plain wrong. If you take the entire possible set of customers who need 'computing devices', most of them will not EVER need anything more powerful than what the ipad provides. Period. That's why consumer PC sales have been plummeting. PCs and more capable laptops are still alive because they are a good fit for businesses. But in the consumer space they are screwed and it shows.
You are thinking only for yourself and not thinking with any business sense whatsoever. What you are hawking is something that only a relatively small number of people actually need. And, Frankly, Apple takes a huge bite out of even that customer group too with their line of laptops. Almost totally maintenance-free devices whereas with Windows... good luck when you break something.
Which is why my brothers and I ripped Windows out of my parent's house and replaced the whole mess with Apple gear. We spend a hell of a lot less time having to fix things.
-Matt
No, I have the same crash-drain problem on my Nexus-7 too. Actually, every Android device I've ever owned has *very inconsistent* battery draw-down when sleeping.
-Matt
Apple makes the same amount of money either way. Doesn't matter to Apple which way you go. But for very old devices no consumer is going to replace e.g. an ipad-1 with another ipad-1.
It comes down to statistics. Apple offers deals for cost conscious consumers but a large percentage of Apple customers are either going to want a newer device or are not so price sensitive that they aren't willing to spend $200 more for a new device. In fact, a lot of customers don't use the trade-in at all and keep the old device.
So even though Apple offers these deals, garnering very high customer loyalty in the process, it doesn't actually impact their bottom line a whole lot.
-Matt
Ok. Here's my suggestion then... run Debian on a Chromebook. Yes, you can run Debian on a chromebook. I know that for a fact because I have an Acer C720 in front of me running whatever the hell I want.
There are three caveats:
(1) Make sure the chromebook can run linux. Google it for the specific chromebook. Older chromebooks are locked to chrome, but newer ones tend to have a special mode that allows you to boot whatever you want. The chromebook under the hood is just a basic Intel system, albeit with a nice Haswell laptop cpu, with a few special I2C devices for the touchpad etc.
(2) Chromebooks usually only come with a 16GB SSD (M.2 form factor SATA SSD... i.e. tiny). Not enough if you are serious. Buy a bigger M.2 form factor SSD. Also be sure to configure a good amount of swap space, most of these babies only have 1-2 GB of ram in them. But paging to a SSD every once in a while is not a problem and very fast so you won't notice it.
(3) Once configured you will have to hit CTRL-L on boot to get it past the warning screen. Every time you boot.
The chromebooks based on the Haswel architecture laptop cpu's are MUCH faster than the old atom-based netbooks (I have both. huge difference). Not as fast as a higher-end laptop obviously but still blasted fast and my little Acer C720 only eats 5-8W of power... that's at least 6 hours of battery life at normal idle without going into a full sleep mode (not sure if Debian can enter a full sleep mode anyhow on these things).
-Matt