Really? Sinofsky, famous for his "draw the plan and then stick to it" and his obsession for micromanagement, let some "bitch" to design most prominent part of the new OS, and wanted to switch gears late in the production? Yeah, sounds legit.
I'm rereading this before posting, and am finding that this part doesn't have enough emphasis. So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever. This is not going to fund a development budget. They've reached 5,000 apps now so the vast majority of developers have to have no buyers at all, and probably less than a dozen downloads too. That is some serious suction.
Do you pulling these numbers straight from your imagination, or you have some source (as far as I can see, there's no any download numbers in Zune marketplace)?. Look at this guy:
Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.
No, it's not like developing for the PC. Even on weakest PC you can count on some reasonable display resolution. You can lay out your main screen, toolbars and dialogs without much thinking can the user see them entirely, and in 99% cases everything will be fine. Did you ever tried to design your app to look usable and good on all available Android resolutions - 240x320, 320x480, 480x800, whatever resolution Droid uses and now on tablets? Yes, there's some scaling support built into Andriod layouts, but it's not a miracle.
BTW, it's not all unicorns and roses on PC also - did you ever tried to start reasonably complex application on netbook? Even browser is mostly unusable in non-fulscreen mode.
Here (Belgrade, Serbia) we have a system that works for years: you can buy the ticket, more or less exactly as described, or you can pay for the parking with the mobile phone - just send the SMS with the licence plate number, and you're good.
Do not forget that Google's own applications run native, that means your applications is penalized by using inferior interface.
Which Google's application run native? All major applications on Android (Messaging, Dialer, Contacts, Music, etc) are Java applications, and you can get their source code (I'm trying to do some Android programming when I have time, and I learned a lot from Google's applications).
Yeah, but it can also drive Apple's 30" display at its full 2560x1600. Can the T500 do that?
Dude, I'm talking about freaking NOTEBOOK. You know, the thing that's always with me and the thing I'm expecting to have decent screen resolution and good DPI. Especially when it costs over $2K.
Don't get me wrong - I don't have that big Apple monitor but geek in me wants that ability. I also want a simple way to connect with Space Shuttle and probably with LHC, but first and foremost - we're talking about overpriced notebook that doesn't even have an option to upgrade very mediocre screen resolution.
once again macs seem to be innovating, the dual gpu thing where you have a low power one for run of the mill 2d stuff and high power one for the apps that need it are a good example (i believe this is appearing in pc laptops as well).
Innovating? You heard about Lenovo Think Pad T500? It was released before Steve did his latest thing, it's uglier than Mac Book (heck, it's uglier than anything on the market) but it's built like a tank, it runs cold, and, surprise, it doesn't have that retarded screen resolution. C'mon, Steve, 1440x900 on 15" box with a price that starts on $2K? You must be kidding.
Sorry to tell you this, but LINQ has run almost to the end of its short life.
Actually, no. LINQ is the part of C# 3, and there's no reason to abandon the whole thing just because one library (LINQ to SQL) is not the current db library de jour (MS changes mind about the preferred db access more often than some developers change socks anyway). I never used LINQ to access databases, but shorthands and lazy evaluations that it gives while working with standard collection classes is quite nice.
It's not the official Microsoft release. It's a home project of one (MS) programmer. But, hey, "Hands-On With Touchless SDK made by some dude who happens to work for Microsoft" isn't much of a headline, right?
You obviously never wrote a single line of (C++) server code. When you have your code running in production, and it suddenly starts to leaks after two weeks of running, there's very little you can do except to hope that your logging is good enough to help you figure out the problem. Tools to assist with memory leaks? In my experience, vast number of such tools are unusable when you go to big league (when your code uses 1+ GB of memory) - when you run your program with such tools, it usually slows down so much that you don't have a chance to see actual leak (except if it's really trivial one)
I tried BASIC to teach my little brother programming. Like you, I started with C64 and simple BASIC programs, and that seemed like a good choice.
But... back in the day, with a little luck and couple of free weekends one can finish a game that actually looks somewhat like "commercial" titles, because these titles was made mostly by one (lonely;) ) man in his basement. And now, with multimillion budgets for games, I found that simple animation of letter movement on the screen aren't good enough to keep distracted teenager in front of the keyboard. After BASIC, I tried with some Python programming, but it was already late - the kid wasn't interested any more.
The moral of the story is: take your time to pick the right weapon, and pick something which is flashy and gives immediate results.
The FOSS guys say "release early release often" Well, it's good to "release early release often" when you're writing code for existing device (read: PC or some other common hardware). It's totally different game when you're trying to lure hardware developers to make hardware for your platform, while changing that platform on weekly basis.
I don't have doubt that Google is full of very smart people that wants to build the best platform possible, but they need to put their act together and understand simple fact - they can't put everything in release 1.0, and that "beta" tag can't linger in the same way like on gmail or gnews. Different market, different rules.
BTW, I have high hopes for Android. I very don't like the way Apple made the app store for iPhone, I found almost offending the fact that Apple can simply ban any software that they don't like or considers competitive. Windows Mobile and Symbian simply aren't in the same league as iPhone, so for me it's iPhone or... Android.
Previous lowest resolution was 1024x768. Now it's 1280x800. Look, ma, extra pixels on both side!
Mid range - before 1400x1050, now - 1680x1050. Extra pixels on the right!
High resolution - wide 1920x1200. Is there 4:3 laptop with comparable resolution?
4:3 ratio has its beginnings in the old days of television. Everything other - movies, photographs, books, are *not* in that ratio, but in something nearer to the golden ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio)
Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff?
on
KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released
·
· Score: 1
Did you ever heard of term "inflation"? It's not applicable just to money or Universe, but to software as well:
Before -> After
Alpha -> not ever the programmer can start it
Beta -> Alpha
RC -> Beta
Release x.0 -> RC1
Release x.1 -> Release x.0
Market share is hard to analyse, I would imagine the Windows share is less than people think, purely because there's so many extraneous Windows licences sold. I would imagine the Windows share is actually more than you think, because you obviously don't count in about how much? 25%? 30%? of pirated Windows installations.
Actually, ZX Spectrum didn't had sprites. Graphics was clunky, the screen was divided into 8x8 pixels "character" placeholders that was able to display only 2 colors in the same time (forecolor and backcolor), and if you remember Manic Miner, for example, you can recall that square "ghosts" around the character. It was amazing what people did with that shortcomings - does anyone remembers Uridium, for example?
When they are in MS, we see them as lazy, clumsy, evil, worst programmers in the world, etc. When they switch to Google, they suddenly becomes hottest programmers, managers, whatever in the Universe.
I use gmail. I hate Hotmail (I have account on Hotmail, and use it only on sites that asks for my email address for access). But, is gmail a winner? No. Gmail have some stupidities (I can't receive.zip, or some other files in attachment, and I'm tired to explaining to anyone that wants to send to me something that they need to rename files), and, more important, gmail isn't winner if Yahoo or Hotmail can catch up simply by giving more space to their users.
Clear winner is service that opponents can't be beat simply by changing configuration or with more hardware.
Only problem with "Most people barely use 2% of Excel's capabilities, let's implement just that 2%" theory is - not all people use the same 2% of Excel, or any other software packet.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? Sinofsky, famous for his "draw the plan and then stick to it" and his obsession for micromanagement, let some "bitch" to design most prominent part of the new OS, and wanted to switch gears late in the production? Yeah, sounds legit.
... and not about the open source in general
I'm rereading this before posting, and am finding that this part doesn't have enough emphasis. So I'll say it plain: There are Top Ten apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that have five sales total ever. This is not going to fund a development budget. They've reached 5,000 apps now so the vast majority of developers have to have no buyers at all, and probably less than a dozen downloads too. That is some serious suction.
Do you pulling these numbers straight from your imagination, or you have some source (as far as I can see, there's no any download numbers in Zune marketplace)?. Look at this guy:
http://www.nilzorblog.com/2011/01/android-vs-wp7-for-developers-case.html
He sold 36 copies of his app after a month. I'm looking at top 100 WP7 apps on Bing, can't find his app. Are you sure about that five sales total?
Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.
No, it's not like developing for the PC. Even on weakest PC you can count on some reasonable display resolution. You can lay out your main screen, toolbars and dialogs without much thinking can the user see them entirely, and in 99% cases everything will be fine. Did you ever tried to design your app to look usable and good on all available Android resolutions - 240x320, 320x480, 480x800, whatever resolution Droid uses and now on tablets? Yes, there's some scaling support built into Andriod layouts, but it's not a miracle.
BTW, it's not all unicorns and roses on PC also - did you ever tried to start reasonably complex application on netbook? Even browser is mostly unusable in non-fulscreen mode.
Here (Belgrade, Serbia) we have a system that works for years: you can buy the ticket, more or less exactly as described, or you can pay for the parking with the mobile phone - just send the SMS with the licence plate number, and you're good.
Do not forget that Google's own applications run native, that means your applications is penalized by using inferior interface.
Which Google's application run native? All major applications on Android (Messaging, Dialer, Contacts, Music, etc) are Java applications, and you can get their source code (I'm trying to do some Android programming when I have time, and I learned a lot from Google's applications).
I'm expecting from Microsoft to file a complaint versus Apple demanding inclusion of IE on every iPhone and iPod.
Yeah, but it can also drive Apple's 30" display at its full 2560x1600. Can the T500 do that?
Dude, I'm talking about freaking NOTEBOOK. You know, the thing that's always with me and the thing I'm expecting to have decent screen resolution and good DPI. Especially when it costs over $2K.
Don't get me wrong - I don't have that big Apple monitor but geek in me wants that ability. I also want a simple way to connect with Space Shuttle and probably with LHC, but first and foremost - we're talking about overpriced notebook that doesn't even have an option to upgrade very mediocre screen resolution.
once again macs seem to be innovating, the dual gpu thing where you have a low power one for run of the mill 2d stuff and high power one for the apps that need it are a good example (i believe this is appearing in pc laptops as well).
Innovating? You heard about Lenovo Think Pad T500? It was released before Steve did his latest thing, it's uglier than Mac Book (heck, it's uglier than anything on the market) but it's built like a tank, it runs cold, and, surprise, it doesn't have that retarded screen resolution. C'mon, Steve, 1440x900 on 15" box with a price that starts on $2K? You must be kidding.
Sorry to tell you this, but LINQ has run almost to the end of its short life.
Actually, no. LINQ is the part of C# 3, and there's no reason to abandon the whole thing just because one library (LINQ to SQL) is not the current db library de jour (MS changes mind about the preferred db access more often than some developers change socks anyway). I never used LINQ to access databases, but shorthands and lazy evaluations that it gives while working with standard collection classes is quite nice.
... as opposed to, say, Google App Engine.
It's not the official Microsoft release. It's a home project of one (MS) programmer. But, hey, "Hands-On With Touchless SDK made by some dude who happens to work for Microsoft" isn't much of a headline, right?
You obviously never wrote a single line of (C++) server code. When you have your code running in production, and it suddenly starts to leaks after two weeks of running, there's very little you can do except to hope that your logging is good enough to help you figure out the problem. Tools to assist with memory leaks? In my experience, vast number of such tools are unusable when you go to big league (when your code uses 1+ GB of memory) - when you run your program with such tools, it usually slows down so much that you don't have a chance to see actual leak (except if it's really trivial one)
"The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the "dream,"
It's not "the dream", code name of the gadget is HTC Dream, for Bob's sake!
I tried BASIC to teach my little brother programming. Like you, I started with C64 and simple BASIC programs, and that seemed like a good choice.
But... back in the day, with a little luck and couple of free weekends one can finish a game that actually looks somewhat like "commercial" titles, because these titles was made mostly by one (lonely ;) ) man in his basement. And now, with multimillion budgets for games, I found that simple animation of letter movement on the screen aren't good enough to keep distracted teenager in front of the keyboard. After BASIC, I tried with some Python programming, but it was already late - the kid wasn't interested any more.
The moral of the story is: take your time to pick the right weapon, and pick something which is flashy and gives immediate results.
I don't have doubt that Google is full of very smart people that wants to build the best platform possible, but they need to put their act together and understand simple fact - they can't put everything in release 1.0, and that "beta" tag can't linger in the same way like on gmail or gnews. Different market, different rules.
BTW, I have high hopes for Android. I very don't like the way Apple made the app store for iPhone, I found almost offending the fact that Apple can simply ban any software that they don't like or considers competitive. Windows Mobile and Symbian simply aren't in the same league as iPhone, so for me it's iPhone or... Android.
...nobody steals anything from you.
Previous lowest resolution was 1024x768. Now it's 1280x800. Look, ma, extra pixels on both side!
Mid range - before 1400x1050, now - 1680x1050. Extra pixels on the right!
High resolution - wide 1920x1200. Is there 4:3 laptop with comparable resolution?
4:3 ratio has its beginnings in the old days of television. Everything other - movies, photographs, books, are *not* in that ratio, but in something nearer to the golden ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio)
Did you ever heard of term "inflation"? It's not applicable just to money or Universe, but to software as well:
Before -> After
Alpha -> not ever the programmer can start it
Beta -> Alpha
RC -> Beta
Release x.0 -> RC1
Release x.1 -> Release x.0
etc, etc
Actually, ZX Spectrum didn't had sprites. Graphics was clunky, the screen was divided into 8x8 pixels "character" placeholders that was able to display only 2 colors in the same time (forecolor and backcolor), and if you remember Manic Miner, for example, you can recall that square "ghosts" around the character. It was amazing what people did with that shortcomings - does anyone remembers Uridium, for example?
It gives you ability to easily insert scripting engine into your regular .NET app. That was Jython all about in the Java world.
When they are in MS, we see them as lazy, clumsy, evil, worst programmers in the world, etc. When they switch to Google, they suddenly becomes hottest programmers, managers, whatever in the Universe.
I use gmail. I hate Hotmail (I have account on Hotmail, and use it only on sites that asks for my email address for access). But, is gmail a winner? No. Gmail have some stupidities (I can't receive .zip, or some other files in attachment, and I'm tired to explaining to anyone that wants to send to me something that they need to rename files), and, more important, gmail isn't winner if Yahoo or Hotmail can catch up simply by giving more space to their users.
Clear winner is service that opponents can't be beat simply by changing configuration or with more hardware.
Only problem with "Most people barely use 2% of Excel's capabilities, let's implement just that 2%" theory is - not all people use the same 2% of Excel, or any other software packet.