There are 8 million webdevelopers and a couple of hundred thousand developers for iOS and Android.
And the two aren't mutually exclusive, iOS and Android have web browsers - in fact Android even has Firefox - so anything that works on Firefox OS should work on iOS and Android anyway.
That is why some think it might have some future
I still don't see why, if you're a web developer you can already develop for all the major devices.
I really don't like the tying of software features to specific phones. Phone manufacturers really try to push it as they know it stratified the market whereas if all the software is the same standard Android platform you can compare phones easily. This is why Android is better value than iphone - it puts phone makers into competition and they don't like it.
I don't understand, Android pushing phone manufacturers to compete is exactly what drives the "feature market division" you're complaining about.
As great as this software is I'm not going to buy into something that makes phones massively more expensive by dividing the market and also giving me less choice.
That's the whole point of Android, to have the OEMs differentiate by adding exclusive features, alternatively Google could just make it closed source and give it away for free.
I think the iOS 5.0 requirement is because when Google Now was released Apple had already said iOS 5.0 was a minimum target for all app store submissions.
Apparently FXOS is supposed to run better than Android on low end hardware, though I still haven't seen anything to justify that claim. The other thing is they would still need to build up an application library to rival Google Play, but also to function well on the low end hardware that FXOS will ship on. They could have put in some mandates to avoid the version fragmentation and OEM/carrier forks that play havoc with the OS updating mechanisms, which would have actually been beneficial but it seems they haven't chosen to do that.
Actually you're wrong, on some devices things do display differently even though they have the same version of Android, one example is text and line rendering on devices with pentile displays vs non-pentile displays.
Fragmentation is a minor issue for developers, it only crops up when you're trying to do specific things. If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2), however if you target 4.0, your application might not work on version 2.3.
That's only if you consider Android to be nothing more than the Android software provided by Google, but it isn't, because Android has to run on hardware and the variations of this hardware vary wildly in CPU architecture, cores and speed, RAM amount, speed and latency, Storage speed and size, GPU architecture, cores, speed, memory size, memory latency, extensions, GPS unit, etc... as such the experience of using even a program targeted at 1.5 will vary greatly across the devices running versions that support that API level.
Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.
He didn't say that at all, but I do think the idea that the vast majority of Android users don't know what version they are using is true and no different to iOS users, the only reason iOS users are up to date is that they get an update notification and a button to press. If Android had a mechanism to deliver updates to all devices you'd see the same thing but the many individual carrier and OEM forks prevent that.
now if we can just get a judge to rule the fundamental concept of an "e-book" is bullshit and nothing more than an encumbered text document designed to peddle locked down e-garbage hardware and fleece the ignorant.
Why? If you don't like particular ebooks then just avoid them and use text documents under creative commons.
Hate it for its Thunderbolt-based expansion or not, the new Mac Pro design is anything but boring
It really reminds me of the G4 Cube and doesn't appear to be particularly well thought out, I like the ability to rotate it so you can access the ports easily and the lighting on it is neat but it's things like the power cord that seem to have been overlooked, everytime you spin it around you wrench up the power cord from behind the desk or you have a whole heap of slack sitting on the desk. Really that applies to any corded device you've got plugged in (so anything that isn't USB dongles) but the power cord is the obvious one that everybody will have and (unless they've added a battery) you will need if you want the lights to function anyway. It just seems to be 'think different' for the sake of 'thinking different'.
Most of their other products a fairly decent blend of form and function (for the most part) - though of course there are things like the inability to do portrait orientation on the iMac that are annoying - but the new Mac Pro doesn't seem to be that at all.
The thing that changed was price, you can now buy a couple of them for that price. You can always spend up big on a pro LCD if you really want (Eizo and Sharp have some), hell IBM had the T220 back in 2001.
I actually find it remarkable that I should have to argue that an open standard that does something like AirPlay would be a good thing if it were done right and caught on.
So like DLNA? That we already have and is widely supported.
He bought the phone in 2011, before Google completed their purchase of Motorola Mobility, likely before Google even made the offer. Google had nothing to do with putting the spying code into this particular phone.
Correct, but as owners of Motorola Mobility became their responsibility, this information was being sent to Motorola Mobility which has been owned by Google for quite some time, so Google knows about this and continues to allow this privacy violation. You are right that they didn't put it there and they probably (certainly give them the benefit of the doubt) haven't done it since buying Motorola Mobility but that doesn't mean they can ignore the fact that it exists and knowingly allow it to continue.
It's MS-only because MS are the only ones that have implemented WebCrypto at the moment (and it's only in a pre-release build of IE) Netflix has stated that Google are currently working on doing that in Chrome but it's just not finished yet. At this stage everybody pretty much continues to use silverlight as before.
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It is invoked by setting a power state level and only 4 cores are ever presented to the OS.
Yes, like I said OS sees 8 cores, but it partitions load using only 4 cores at a time.
Maybe you should actually read what he wrote (and perhaps even what he linked to).
There are 8 million webdevelopers and a couple of hundred thousand developers for iOS and Android.
And the two aren't mutually exclusive, iOS and Android have web browsers - in fact Android even has Firefox - so anything that works on Firefox OS should work on iOS and Android anyway.
That is why some think it might have some future
I still don't see why, if you're a web developer you can already develop for all the major devices.
I really don't like the tying of software features to specific phones. Phone manufacturers really try to push it as they know it stratified the market whereas if all the software is the same standard Android platform you can compare phones easily. This is why Android is better value than iphone - it puts phone makers into competition and they don't like it.
I don't understand, Android pushing phone manufacturers to compete is exactly what drives the "feature market division" you're complaining about.
As great as this software is I'm not going to buy into something that makes phones massively more expensive by dividing the market and also giving me less choice.
That's the whole point of Android, to have the OEMs differentiate by adding exclusive features, alternatively Google could just make it closed source and give it away for free.
I think the iOS 5.0 requirement is because when Google Now was released Apple had already said iOS 5.0 was a minimum target for all app store submissions.
Open up a bash shell on your android phone. It's Linux. Kernel, libraries and standard executables, all present and correct and Linuxy.
Which libraries and executables? The only think Linux is the kernel.
Android is available on cheap phones
Apparently FXOS is supposed to run better than Android on low end hardware, though I still haven't seen anything to justify that claim. The other thing is they would still need to build up an application library to rival Google Play, but also to function well on the low end hardware that FXOS will ship on. They could have put in some mandates to avoid the version fragmentation and OEM/carrier forks that play havoc with the OS updating mechanisms, which would have actually been beneficial but it seems they haven't chosen to do that.
Actually you're wrong, on some devices things do display differently even though they have the same version of Android, one example is text and line rendering on devices with pentile displays vs non-pentile displays.
Fragmentation is a minor issue for developers, it only crops up when you're trying to do specific things. If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2), however if you target 4.0, your application might not work on version 2.3.
That's only if you consider Android to be nothing more than the Android software provided by Google, but it isn't, because Android has to run on hardware and the variations of this hardware vary wildly in CPU architecture, cores and speed, RAM amount, speed and latency, Storage speed and size, GPU architecture, cores, speed, memory size, memory latency, extensions, GPS unit, etc... as such the experience of using even a program targeted at 1.5 will vary greatly across the devices running versions that support that API level.
Most people I know buy high-end Android phones that are either clearly the best phones on the market, or the best for the price (like the nexus 4).
Same with me, but i don't know most people.
Learning a flaky, inconsistent language
JavaScript is "flaky" and "inconsistent"?
What on earth are you talking about?
He means it's gained popularity.
Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.
He didn't say that at all, but I do think the idea that the vast majority of Android users don't know what version they are using is true and no different to iOS users, the only reason iOS users are up to date is that they get an update notification and a button to press. If Android had a mechanism to deliver updates to all devices you'd see the same thing but the many individual carrier and OEM forks prevent that.
now if we can just get a judge to rule the fundamental concept of an "e-book" is bullshit and nothing more than an encumbered text document designed to peddle locked down e-garbage hardware and fleece the ignorant.
Why? If you don't like particular ebooks then just avoid them and use text documents under creative commons.
You can sell, loan, or even copy a book easily and anonymously.
So just keep doing that then.
Hate it for its Thunderbolt-based expansion or not, the new Mac Pro design is anything but boring
It really reminds me of the G4 Cube and doesn't appear to be particularly well thought out, I like the ability to rotate it so you can access the ports easily and the lighting on it is neat but it's things like the power cord that seem to have been overlooked, everytime you spin it around you wrench up the power cord from behind the desk or you have a whole heap of slack sitting on the desk. Really that applies to any corded device you've got plugged in (so anything that isn't USB dongles) but the power cord is the obvious one that everybody will have and (unless they've added a battery) you will need if you want the lights to function anyway. It just seems to be 'think different' for the sake of 'thinking different'.
Most of their other products a fairly decent blend of form and function (for the most part) - though of course there are things like the inability to do portrait orientation on the iMac that are annoying - but the new Mac Pro doesn't seem to be that at all.
Rotate ("pivot") a 16:9 and you get something that is to narrow to be useful.
That's why I use 16:10.
The thing that changed was price, you can now buy a couple of them for that price. You can always spend up big on a pro LCD if you really want (Eizo and Sharp have some), hell IBM had the T220 back in 2001.
Which is why the ability to rotate displays is important.
The classic 4:3 ratio is better in every way.
Except where your content is widescreen.
I actually find it remarkable that I should have to argue that an open standard that does something like AirPlay would be a good thing if it were done right and caught on.
So like DLNA? That we already have and is widely supported.
He bought the phone in 2011, before Google completed their purchase of Motorola Mobility, likely before Google even made the offer. Google had nothing to do with putting the spying code into this particular phone.
Correct, but as owners of Motorola Mobility became their responsibility, this information was being sent to Motorola Mobility which has been owned by Google for quite some time, so Google knows about this and continues to allow this privacy violation. You are right that they didn't put it there and they probably (certainly give them the benefit of the doubt) haven't done it since buying Motorola Mobility but that doesn't mean they can ignore the fact that it exists and knowingly allow it to continue.
Windows 8 'just so I can play my game.'"
Well duh! It's an operating system, that's its purpose, that's the only reason anybody uses any operating system.
What Microsoft obviously doesn't want people doing is buying an Xbox, using only the Kincect, and not buying any media.
And with the kinect for windows being cheaper than an xbox how do you figure this is something anybody would actually do?
If it's still MS only, who gives a shit?
It's MS-only because MS are the only ones that have implemented WebCrypto at the moment (and it's only in a pre-release build of IE) Netflix has stated that Google are currently working on doing that in Chrome but it's just not finished yet. At this stage everybody pretty much continues to use silverlight as before.
An IE specific plugin for video... wait a second.. ActiveDivX?... anyone.. anyone..
Well if you're using IE then obviously yes, if you were using say Chrome you would use the Chrome plugin they make mention of.
You can't have netflix on linux
False.