The problem is these are labeled Unsafe Packages and Dangerous Packages, now with those descriptions what user is going to say "yes I want those"? It states that these can affect stability, which is true, but leaves out that they could be critical security patches, which is also true.
The real beneficial fix to end users here would be to state the whole truth about these updates.
I suppose our developer doesn't understand that one can go with slightly more intelligent tools, like apt-get on the CLI, to get those packages upgraded? If so, he's no developer I'd give a shit about.
He likely does, but that's not really the point is it? It's whether the average users know to do this.
Remember the old days where you had your Phone for years and it just worked?. Yay for forced upgrades and greed, and of course ignorance on behalf of the consumer.
The old days? That's still the case now, nobody is forcing you to upgrade, if you don't want to upgrade then don't but don't justify it by pretending you are oppressed and powerless, perhaps you just like to feel that way. Even my original iPhone still works, it doesn't receive updates and new functionality but then again neither did my Nokia 3210.
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Microsoft doesn't give you an entire functional open source OS while keeping back just a few proprietary apps.
While I agree that it is far from as closed as Microsoft it certainly is more than "just a few proprietary apps", pretty much all the stock apps are proprietary as is Google Play Services which provides APIs like GCM, SSO, multiplayer apis, cloud saves, location, maps, ads. Google Play Services is a great idea to combat the problems of phones not being able to update to the latest versions of the operating system by providing new OS features as APIs in a separate APK that users can install on older versions of the OS but why did they make it proprietary and closed? Programs that use any of these new features require the proprietary google platform atop stock Android so these programs become "Google Play Services" programs rather than "Android" programs, a very clever move if you want more control of the platform.
I thought the target for Cyanogenmod was always those devices that have been abandoned by their manufacturers and giving them updates, be they security or functionality, in the case of the latter it usually means new APIs that newer programs take advantage of. Though with Google Play Services they are trying to eliminate this as being such a problem.
Nexus phones are supposed to be well-supported anyway - in fact aren't they the phone to get if you want updates? - so I'm not sure what the appeal of Cyanogenmod is for them unless you want to de-google it?
Yeah, CPU wise it's pretty much the same, the i5-4200U gains maybe 2-6% on the i5-3230M.
The battery saving is significant and the GPU performance increase of the former is also significant.
As for screen real-estate I didn't see the 1080P, and even then it is not worth the extra money. For ~$100 and 1 extra pound you can get a second USB monitor @15" and the same res as your laptop for a mobile dual screen setup. Dual screen would be more useful, especially at the sizes we are talking about.
As for the HDD, what the hell are you going to do with 128GB, carry around an external drive everywhere too? There goes your weight benefits.
Hang on, so you won't carry a portable HDD if you needed one but you advocate carrying an additional USB monitor?! And no, if you need extra space you could use an sd card or carry a 0.3lb external HDD which makes it still less than the lenovo.
If carrying an extra 1-2 pounds is going to kill you, you have some pretty serious health problems and really should spend the money on a Doctor / gym membership...
Nice argumentum ad absurdum, I shouldn't worry about things unless they are going to kill me.
There also is no reason to need SSD performance when coding into terminals / eclipse, other than e-peen bragging rights.
Right because nobody actually compiles that code or runs programs that actually do things and the only thing developers do is type code into editors.
As for the ignoring the "non-trivial" differences, as I said SSD that small is useless, and while 1080P / fullHD may be nice is not necessary, and may even be a bitch to read depending on how the font scaling / sizing is set up. You could argue over power usage and battery life, but realistically, for development you should be sitting in one spot, not wandering around with no access to power, so could plug it in 99% of the time making the power savings both from the CPU and the SSD ( which I can't see being all that much more than a properly set up spinning disk; maybe minutes, maybe 1/4 hour? ) a moot point.
All you are arguing is that the things that make it more costly are things you don't need, so the question ultimately is why are you at all interested in something you clearly don't need? You know why it's more expensive and you're complaining effectively that it shouldn't exist because you don't want it, that's just idiotic. Obviously you think developers are just people who sit next to power points and type into text editors, that is false.
SSD performance, CPU/GPU performance, resolution, portability and battery life clearly are not trivial elements, but if you don't consider them important then obviously a system that is defined by those differences isn't for you, so why are you so hung up on something that you don't want?
It sure as hell isn't the specs, you can get a Lenovo ( or HP equivalent ) g500s touch ($550-600ish, either keep the 6GB RAM or spend $60 for 16GB upgrade) as a mobile dev platform for ~1/2 the price.
It's less portable, heavier and with less than half the screen pixels on a larger display making the resolution far less than half that of the Dell, no SSD, far slower CPU, 1 year next day onsite warranty and of course the year of support (whether you need that is a different story). If it were similarly priced to the G500s I would be wondering why the hell the G500s was such terrible value in comparison. What I'm wondering is why you ignored the obvious and non-trivial differences in specifications between the two?
Also, most companies try selling Linux laptops on severely underpowered hardware and then they complain it doesn't sell.
A huge part of the advantage of Linux is not requiring such highend specs to run so that is not the problem, the value proposition is that you don't have to buy such expensive hardware to run it. Otherwise ultimately why switch to Linux? If not for cost then why abandon all your application compatibility on Windows or OSX?
I would imagine we will still see defects, though they shouldn't be thermal-related defects. If this is indeed a HDMI issue then that is pretty poor, they've already put out a number of revisions of a HDMI console (my first-gen PS3 is still going strong and fine on all the TVs I've used it on) and they haven't introduced any new features in that area either so they shouldn't be making mistakes there.
You've conveniently ignored my point, by focusing on the fact that I said homescreen and not homescreen.
You just wrote the exact same thing twice.
On iOS, users have no choice but to have icons for all installed applications displayed on their homescreen(s), only being able to organize them in folders or move to to different homescreens, but not prevent them from displaying.
Who cares? Whether they are on a homescreen or in the app drawer makes no difference functionally unless you for some reason need everything there and arranged in alphabetical order, if you need that then great, you don't need to get so emotional about it.
There is the option of the exact same functionality without ever having to use the app drawer, or you can have only the icons you want on a homescreen and use the app drawer for the rest.
And on iOS instead of having "the rest" in the app drawer they just end up on additional homescreens, it's essentially the same thing. The point of difference is merely in that "the rest" exist in an alphabetically sorted grid which is the same thing as a homescreen anyway, it's just that it's called the app drawer and you can't arrange them or put them in folders, you have to duplicate them by putting them on the actual homescreen to do that. There really is very little difference between the two so I don't get why you're so hung up on it, it's just like Windows Phone and its 'all applications' list, equally unusable if you have - like you said - 200 apps, which is why searching is far more efficient. But just because it's more efficient doesn't mean you have to prefer it.
You cannot do the same thing on iOS, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is a technical limitation, not a subjective preference.
You have no choice but to have your icons on iOS. You can hide them in folders, but you still need them on the homescreen.
There is no "the homescreen", you can have as many homescreens as you want.
That's not true on Android. If I only want to have 3 icons and no folders across 2 homescreens, I can. That is impossible on iOS.
But I can do 3 icons and no folders across 2 homescreens in exactly the same way and everything else can reside on additional homescreens, from a functional point of view it's the same.
Again, you're trying to argue that a lack of choice is an advantage, It isn't.
No i'm not, where do you believe I argued that? I'm saying the additional duplication is pointless. Having everything lumped in one alphabetical list provides no benefit.
Your second sentence indicates a lack of understanding about how the App Drawer actually works.
How exactly? It's an alphabetically-sorted grid of application icons, if you add things the positions move so it is always going to be more efficient to search from the homescreen than to open the app drawer and scroll through it. On Android I work the same as I do on iOS because that app drawer is pointless and inefficient.
If I have 200 apps, I can have 2 homescreens with 20 of my most frequently used apps
On iOS you can do the same thing.
and go to the app drawer if I need to.
The app drawer is pointless if you are looking through an alphabetical list of 200 apps, that's a lot of screens and it is far more efficient to just search for it, which you can do on either platform.
There's another BIG way they can make it better, create an installer that runs on other operating systems say, like GNU/Linux or OSX?
I'm sure that will come at some point but it's a relatively tiny portion of the market to support initially. Alternatively anybody could have written this and nothing stops anybody from writing a GNU/Linux or OSX version.
When's the last time you voided a warranty on a real computer's hardware for modifying some fucking *software*?!
Overclocking.
I should be able to pop in a micro SD card into any smartphone (yes, all smartphones should support one) and install any operating system with the right drivers.
Nobody is obligated to sell you such a device, take the initiative and support programs like OpenMoko.
Value isn't a function of work done, like I said you can do the same amount of work to produce something that appeals to nobody as you do for something that appeals to almost everybody, a song for instance. So the current system works on paying more to people who's product appeals to more people even if it took the same amount of work to produce as the product that appeals to nobody. If you consider work as a function of value that is how it currently works, you just don't know it upfront.
The difference is there is no app drawer on ios, the app drawer is in practice the homescreens.
On android the app drawer is separate, and the homescreens have icons you actually use, so it is less cluttered.
So you feel the app drawer is just insane clutter like you feel iOS is, ok but you don't have to have it cluttered, you can arrange it how you like with the same options as Android has except applications don't have widgets, that's the only difference. As you say the app drawer is too cluttered to be useful so on Android and iOS I just arrange applications on my homescreens and if it's not on one of my homescreens I just search for it.
On the one hand, I think that the amount of pay you get should be proportional to the amount of work you do.
If you get twice as much work done in a day, you should get twice the pay.
But what job is so monotonous that you can quantify all work in some standardized unit of work?
It seems absurd to do some amount of work once, like to write a song, and expect to get paid over and over again, each time someone new wants to hear the song. You didn't do more work, so why do you deserve more pay?
It depends on what your unit of work is, if it takes into account the value of what you produced then if what you produced is appealing to more people then it is of higher value. In theory you could put in an equal amount of work to create something that nobody wants as you could for something that everybody wants, do you think the former should be rewarded the same as the latter?
The app drawer does not hide away applications, it makes them just as accessible, but without the insane clutter ios causes.
The app drawer is just a collection of all your applications, how is that less cluttered than iOS?
You can have folders, multiple homescreens, widgets (a major failing of ios), orn o folders if you want.
On iOS you can have folders and multiple homescreens, you're right there are no widgets and you can also have no folders if you want. The only difference is the lack of widgets.
The argument all the kneejerkers all say is that people would stop making media for cash. And yes, suddenly only people who strongly believed in sharing with the world would still make media. This means the little guy would have more power of expression. If big projects needed to be made, we could just have projects like kickstart do them.
The point to remember is that this can be done now, if it is viable then it can be proven and if it is indeed better then piracy and copyright will be a non-issue anyway. It's a nice idea you've got there but it seems pretty much nobody actually wants to do it.
Side note: Looks like we all are a victim of "bait and switch". Back then when Google needed market share, they were throwing the juicy bits in, and now that they've got it, they're taking them out, one by one. The boiling frog syndrome.
All the stock Android apps used to be free too and leverage AOSP features, now most of them have been abandoned and replaced with closed-source versions that use the proprietary Google Play Services features.
Hmm, there are billions of Linux netbooks, smart phones and tablets out there - an order of magnitude more than the total number of Windows machines ever shipped.
I'd be really interested to know where you get than info from. The popularity of Netbooks was extremely shortlived and smartphones have only just finally had a quarter where they've actually surpassed PC sales, I doubt there are as many Linux netbooks, smartphones and tablets in existence than Windows machines, much less an order of magnitude more than ever shipped.
Between this and some of the stuff they are pulling with Android (Play Store, API lock-ins) and Chromecast they seem to be all about turning down the openness lately.
Don't forget that pretty much all the open source stock Android apps have been abandoned in favor of proprietary Google ones. Android is becoming just the low level interface upon which the proprietary Google platform runs, so applications using services offered through the Google Play Services platform - like GCM, maps, wallet, geofencing, admob, etc - aren't really Android apps, they are Google Play apps which will only work if you have the proprietary Google Play platform installed and that platform is where most of the features are being added now.
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Except from the point of view of system stability and change control
No, it already does highlight that, what it doesn't mention is the fact that these might contain critical security patches.
The problem is these are labeled Unsafe Packages and Dangerous Packages, now with those descriptions what user is going to say "yes I want those"? It states that these can affect stability, which is true, but leaves out that they could be critical security patches, which is also true.
The real beneficial fix to end users here would be to state the whole truth about these updates.
I suppose our developer doesn't understand that one can go with slightly more intelligent tools, like apt-get on the CLI, to get those packages upgraded? If so, he's no developer I'd give a shit about.
He likely does, but that's not really the point is it? It's whether the average users know to do this.
But keep in mind that you're holding in your hand a very expensive *telephone*, not some hacker toy.
If all you wanted was a telephone then why did you spend $500 on a smartphone that is effectively a portable computer?
Remember the old days where you had your Phone for years and it just worked?. Yay for forced upgrades and greed, and of course ignorance on behalf of the consumer.
The old days? That's still the case now, nobody is forcing you to upgrade, if you don't want to upgrade then don't but don't justify it by pretending you are oppressed and powerless, perhaps you just like to feel that way. Even my original iPhone still works, it doesn't receive updates and new functionality but then again neither did my Nokia 3210.
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Microsoft doesn't give you an entire functional open source OS while keeping back just a few proprietary apps.
While I agree that it is far from as closed as Microsoft it certainly is more than "just a few proprietary apps", pretty much all the stock apps are proprietary as is Google Play Services which provides APIs like GCM, SSO, multiplayer apis, cloud saves, location, maps, ads. Google Play Services is a great idea to combat the problems of phones not being able to update to the latest versions of the operating system by providing new OS features as APIs in a separate APK that users can install on older versions of the OS but why did they make it proprietary and closed? Programs that use any of these new features require the proprietary google platform atop stock Android so these programs become "Google Play Services" programs rather than "Android" programs, a very clever move if you want more control of the platform.
I thought the target for Cyanogenmod was always those devices that have been abandoned by their manufacturers and giving them updates, be they security or functionality, in the case of the latter it usually means new APIs that newer programs take advantage of. Though with Google Play Services they are trying to eliminate this as being such a problem.
Nexus phones are supposed to be well-supported anyway - in fact aren't they the phone to get if you want updates? - so I'm not sure what the appeal of Cyanogenmod is for them unless you want to de-google it?
Well, the US would be an odd place to manufacture a Japanese product
Why is that?
Yeah, CPU wise it's pretty much the same, the i5-4200U gains maybe 2-6% on the i5-3230M.
The battery saving is significant and the GPU performance increase of the former is also significant.
As for screen real-estate I didn't see the 1080P, and even then it is not worth the extra money. For ~$100 and 1 extra pound you can get a second USB monitor @15" and the same res as your laptop for a mobile dual screen setup. Dual screen would be more useful, especially at the sizes we are talking about.
As for the HDD, what the hell are you going to do with 128GB, carry around an external drive everywhere too? There goes your weight benefits.
Hang on, so you won't carry a portable HDD if you needed one but you advocate carrying an additional USB monitor?! And no, if you need extra space you could use an sd card or carry a 0.3lb external HDD which makes it still less than the lenovo.
If carrying an extra 1-2 pounds is going to kill you, you have some pretty serious health problems and really should spend the money on a Doctor / gym membership...
Nice argumentum ad absurdum, I shouldn't worry about things unless they are going to kill me.
There also is no reason to need SSD performance when coding into terminals / eclipse, other than e-peen bragging rights.
Right because nobody actually compiles that code or runs programs that actually do things and the only thing developers do is type code into editors.
As for the ignoring the "non-trivial" differences, as I said SSD that small is useless, and while 1080P / fullHD may be nice is not necessary, and may even be a bitch to read depending on how the font scaling / sizing is set up. You could argue over power usage and battery life, but realistically, for development you should be sitting in one spot, not wandering around with no access to power, so could plug it in 99% of the time making the power savings both from the CPU and the SSD ( which I can't see being all that much more than a properly set up spinning disk; maybe minutes, maybe 1/4 hour? ) a moot point.
All you are arguing is that the things that make it more costly are things you don't need, so the question ultimately is why are you at all interested in something you clearly don't need? You know why it's more expensive and you're complaining effectively that it shouldn't exist because you don't want it, that's just idiotic. Obviously you think developers are just people who sit next to power points and type into text editors, that is false.
SSD performance, CPU/GPU performance, resolution, portability and battery life clearly are not trivial elements, but if you don't consider them important then obviously a system that is defined by those differences isn't for you, so why are you so hung up on something that you don't want?
It sure as hell isn't the specs, you can get a Lenovo ( or HP equivalent ) g500s touch ($550-600ish, either keep the 6GB RAM or spend $60 for 16GB upgrade) as a mobile dev platform for ~1/2 the price.
It's less portable, heavier and with less than half the screen pixels on a larger display making the resolution far less than half that of the Dell, no SSD, far slower CPU, 1 year next day onsite warranty and of course the year of support (whether you need that is a different story). If it were similarly priced to the G500s I would be wondering why the hell the G500s was such terrible value in comparison. What I'm wondering is why you ignored the obvious and non-trivial differences in specifications between the two?
Also, most companies try selling Linux laptops on severely underpowered hardware and then they complain it doesn't sell.
A huge part of the advantage of Linux is not requiring such highend specs to run so that is not the problem, the value proposition is that you don't have to buy such expensive hardware to run it. Otherwise ultimately why switch to Linux? If not for cost then why abandon all your application compatibility on Windows or OSX?
I would imagine we will still see defects, though they shouldn't be thermal-related defects. If this is indeed a HDMI issue then that is pretty poor, they've already put out a number of revisions of a HDMI console (my first-gen PS3 is still going strong and fine on all the TVs I've used it on) and they haven't introduced any new features in that area either so they shouldn't be making mistakes there.
You've conveniently ignored my point, by focusing on the fact that I said homescreen and not homescreen.
You just wrote the exact same thing twice.
On iOS, users have no choice but to have icons for all installed applications displayed on their homescreen(s), only being able to organize them in folders or move to to different homescreens, but not prevent them from displaying.
Who cares? Whether they are on a homescreen or in the app drawer makes no difference functionally unless you for some reason need everything there and arranged in alphabetical order, if you need that then great, you don't need to get so emotional about it.
There is the option of the exact same functionality without ever having to use the app drawer, or you can have only the icons you want on a homescreen and use the app drawer for the rest.
And on iOS instead of having "the rest" in the app drawer they just end up on additional homescreens, it's essentially the same thing. The point of difference is merely in that "the rest" exist in an alphabetically sorted grid which is the same thing as a homescreen anyway, it's just that it's called the app drawer and you can't arrange them or put them in folders, you have to duplicate them by putting them on the actual homescreen to do that. There really is very little difference between the two so I don't get why you're so hung up on it, it's just like Windows Phone and its 'all applications' list, equally unusable if you have - like you said - 200 apps, which is why searching is far more efficient. But just because it's more efficient doesn't mean you have to prefer it.
You cannot do the same thing on iOS, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is a technical limitation, not a subjective preference.
You have no choice but to have your icons on iOS. You can hide them in folders, but you still need them on the homescreen.
There is no "the homescreen", you can have as many homescreens as you want.
That's not true on Android. If I only want to have 3 icons and no folders across 2 homescreens, I can. That is impossible on iOS.
But I can do 3 icons and no folders across 2 homescreens in exactly the same way and everything else can reside on additional homescreens, from a functional point of view it's the same.
Again, you're trying to argue that a lack of choice is an advantage, It isn't.
No i'm not, where do you believe I argued that? I'm saying the additional duplication is pointless. Having everything lumped in one alphabetical list provides no benefit.
Your second sentence indicates a lack of understanding about how the App Drawer actually works.
How exactly? It's an alphabetically-sorted grid of application icons, if you add things the positions move so it is always going to be more efficient to search from the homescreen than to open the app drawer and scroll through it. On Android I work the same as I do on iOS because that app drawer is pointless and inefficient.
If I have 200 apps, I can have 2 homescreens with 20 of my most frequently used apps
On iOS you can do the same thing.
and go to the app drawer if I need to.
The app drawer is pointless if you are looking through an alphabetical list of 200 apps, that's a lot of screens and it is far more efficient to just search for it, which you can do on either platform.
There's another BIG way they can make it better, create an installer that runs on other operating systems say, like GNU/Linux or OSX?
I'm sure that will come at some point but it's a relatively tiny portion of the market to support initially. Alternatively anybody could have written this and nothing stops anybody from writing a GNU/Linux or OSX version.
When's the last time you voided a warranty on a real computer's hardware for modifying some fucking *software*?!
Overclocking.
I should be able to pop in a micro SD card into any smartphone (yes, all smartphones should support one) and install any operating system with the right drivers.
Nobody is obligated to sell you such a device, take the initiative and support programs like OpenMoko.
Value isn't a function of work done, like I said you can do the same amount of work to produce something that appeals to nobody as you do for something that appeals to almost everybody, a song for instance. So the current system works on paying more to people who's product appeals to more people even if it took the same amount of work to produce as the product that appeals to nobody. If you consider work as a function of value that is how it currently works, you just don't know it upfront.
The difference is there is no app drawer on ios, the app drawer is in practice the homescreens.
On android the app drawer is separate, and the homescreens have icons you actually use, so it is less cluttered.
So you feel the app drawer is just insane clutter like you feel iOS is, ok but you don't have to have it cluttered, you can arrange it how you like with the same options as Android has except applications don't have widgets, that's the only difference. As you say the app drawer is too cluttered to be useful so on Android and iOS I just arrange applications on my homescreens and if it's not on one of my homescreens I just search for it.
On the one hand, I think that the amount of pay you get should be proportional to the amount of work you do. If you get twice as much work done in a day, you should get twice the pay.
But what job is so monotonous that you can quantify all work in some standardized unit of work?
It seems absurd to do some amount of work once, like to write a song, and expect to get paid over and over again, each time someone new wants to hear the song. You didn't do more work, so why do you deserve more pay?
It depends on what your unit of work is, if it takes into account the value of what you produced then if what you produced is appealing to more people then it is of higher value. In theory you could put in an equal amount of work to create something that nobody wants as you could for something that everybody wants, do you think the former should be rewarded the same as the latter?
The app drawer does not hide away applications, it makes them just as accessible, but without the insane clutter ios causes.
The app drawer is just a collection of all your applications, how is that less cluttered than iOS?
You can have folders, multiple homescreens, widgets (a major failing of ios), orn o folders if you want.
On iOS you can have folders and multiple homescreens, you're right there are no widgets and you can also have no folders if you want. The only difference is the lack of widgets.
The argument all the kneejerkers all say is that people would stop making media for cash. And yes, suddenly only people who strongly believed in sharing with the world would still make media. This means the little guy would have more power of expression. If big projects needed to be made, we could just have projects like kickstart do them.
The point to remember is that this can be done now, if it is viable then it can be proven and if it is indeed better then piracy and copyright will be a non-issue anyway. It's a nice idea you've got there but it seems pretty much nobody actually wants to do it.
Side note: Looks like we all are a victim of "bait and switch". Back then when Google needed market share, they were throwing the juicy bits in, and now that they've got it, they're taking them out, one by one. The boiling frog syndrome.
All the stock Android apps used to be free too and leverage AOSP features, now most of them have been abandoned and replaced with closed-source versions that use the proprietary Google Play Services features.
Hmm, there are billions of Linux netbooks, smart phones and tablets out there - an order of magnitude more than the total number of Windows machines ever shipped.
I'd be really interested to know where you get than info from. The popularity of Netbooks was extremely shortlived and smartphones have only just finally had a quarter where they've actually surpassed PC sales, I doubt there are as many Linux netbooks, smartphones and tablets in existence than Windows machines, much less an order of magnitude more than ever shipped.
Between this and some of the stuff they are pulling with Android (Play Store, API lock-ins) and Chromecast they seem to be all about turning down the openness lately.
Don't forget that pretty much all the open source stock Android apps have been abandoned in favor of proprietary Google ones. Android is becoming just the low level interface upon which the proprietary Google platform runs, so applications using services offered through the Google Play Services platform - like GCM, maps, wallet, geofencing, admob, etc - aren't really Android apps, they are Google Play apps which will only work if you have the proprietary Google Play platform installed and that platform is where most of the features are being added now.