Windows, whose current shipping OS is sold as Windows 7 but is really Windows NT 6.1
This is a distinction between a brand name and a kernel version number. Why is this more absurd compared to "Precise Pangolin" for instance?
Regardless, I think you'll find names of almost any product in a sufficiently crowded marketplace become absurd as they try to differentiate themselves and also avoid stepping on any trademarked names. You see this with domain names in particular.
now that Steve Jobs is dead, there is no reason to continue his personal thermonuclear war
Isn't the reason obvious? Apple is not a well-diversified company; they make a small number of shiny gadgets from which they derive the vast majority of their massive profits. Their personal computer division, software sales, and app-store/itunes sales are peanuts by comparison. Android, and Samsung in particular threatens those massive profits. That Tim Cook would not do everything in his power to destroy Android is completely counter to his role as CEO (to ensure those massive profits).
What the hell is ratified science? Peer review is an important part of the scientific process, but make no mistake there is no process or entity (journals, institutions, or otherwise) which officiates scientific process. Our state of understanding of the universe is in a constant state of flux; even work that has been peer reviewed can be proven wrong by later work, or work that has been rejected by peers can later be proven correct. Peer-reviewed research has a little more credibility than otherwise, true. However, this talk about "how research becomes science" seems reminiscent of "how a bill becomes a law," and the scientific process simply doesn't work like that.
Except the vast majority of the article is with respect to only the sample, and not the population. I know the/. article title would lead you to believe otherwise, but you shouldn't draw conclusions on someone's professional aptitude based on a sensationalized headline intended to incite controversy.
Except this was an intro statistics course taught by one of the best authorities on statistics in the world. I think the point of this whole example is that while Thrun is an amazing statistician and a world-renowned researcher in the field, maybe that's not really what it takes to make online education successful. All the focus is on top universities, like MIT and Stanford; and top researchers, like Norvig and Thrun, putting their course material online, but maybe what we really need is fresh blood taking a stab at this.
Someone who hasn't been entrenched in higher education for the last 20 years (or in MIT or Stanford's case, 100 years) might have the fresh approach that online education deserves to be successful. We say we will only trust the online courses from institutions or individuals with top credentials, yet all these sources are simply taking the same stodgy old offline course format and broadcasting it and calling it "online education". Udacity has some good ideas with their interactive tools, but at its core it's still the same lecture->homework->test->lecture->homework... format as any other offline course.
Quite simply I've never seen any persuasive evidence that organic food from the grocery store is tastier or more nutritious than non-organic food and I've never met anyone who could tell the difference just by taste or appearance.
Organic milk definitely tastes different, and for some reason it lasts 3x longer than regular milk. I don't know if it's technically healthier or not, but it without a doubt tastes very different.
In some ways, but every departure from WP7 seems to be an improvement. WP8 is a complete superset of WP7: same interface, same apps, same ecosystem. What I like about WP7 will still be there in WP8.
MS is notorious for cutting features from the operating systems.
Okay, I'll keep a tally. But it doesn't really matter because even if they cut 100% of the leaked SDK features (well, at least two have been demoed officially), the biggest features have already been announced in June (windows 8 core, native code, background multitasking, better hardware).
You have no idea beyond the basics what features will be in store and you
I don't have to. WP8 is a superset of WP7, so if I like WP7, it seems to me I'm going to like using WP8. In terms of developing for WP8, yeah, I don't know what kind of phones will be released, and what features the final SDK will have, but that doesn't preclude a projection that I'll be developing for the platform in the future.
you develop nothing for Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7 apps don't count
That's an interesting take on it, seeing as that all WP7 apps will work on WP8. Hard to understand how developing an app that will work on the platform is not developing for the platform. Regardless, I'm currently developing a metro app that I intended to port to WP8, so I'm very curious if that will be as easy as they imply it will be.
You can anticipate anything you want as your next platform.... But when you make those kind of statements on the tail end of a post detailing how disappointed you are at the lack of dev tools, and feature details
You seem to have gone to great lengths to try and pick apart why all of my reasons for anticipating WP8 are worthless, so not sure if I can conclude you're sincere in that regard. My disappointment about pre-release dev tools is probably the least consequential factor in my determination of which phone I will buy next personally. My disappointment with the lack of more information is notwithstanding what they've released so far is more than enough to sway me.
This post here is the most critical thing I've ever seen you say about the platform
Not sure if you've noticed, but Engadget and this site have no lack of critical things to say about WP. Whatever negative I have to say about WP (and if you really care to know I have a lot) has already been said, and will be said time and again with or without me piling on.
So you don't know what the features are yet it will be your next phone
Yes, based on my satisfaction with the current platform, the leaked SDK, the information that's been released so far, and the fact that I develop software for the platform, I don't see why it's unreasonable to anticipate WP8 will be my next platform.
you tirelessly come on here (and Engadget) to attack Android.
I'd love for you to point me to this tireless attack on Android... I have a measly 400 total comments on Engadget over the course of like 3 years. So tireless!
Thanks for confirming you are little more than a sheep fanboy who's opinions are completely worthless.
And who exactly are you, AC? Try logging in first and then talk to me about reputation.
Next Wednesday I’ll share detailed instructions on how current Windows Phone developers with published apps can apply. But I do want to set your expectations that program access will be limited. (emphasis added)
So it's restricted to developers with published apps and only a limited subset of them... maybe first come first serve, who knows. They're being very coy about this whole thing, which is what makes it that much more frustrating. They say: "The full Windows Phone 8 SDK will be made publically available later this year when we unveil Windows Phone 8." Well *when* is that? October? November? December 31 11:59:59 PM?
It's obvious: WP8 isn't really ready yet. They gave a sneak preview a while back that only contained a few features, they've been coy about when the damn thing will be released, they only showed off a couple additional features at the Lumia event, and they still won't tell us when they'll be showing off the rest of the features (BUILD 2012? who knows?), when phones are being released, which carriers will be getting them etc. Look, I like WP, and I like developing for WP, and WP8 will be my next OS, but this is getting beyond stupid.
And if the leaders of the startup don't understand the power and limitations of those cards, then you're in trouble.
True to an extent. As an early-stage entrepreneur, you need to put on many hats. These include marketing, HR, R&D, accounting, etc. So you need to be versed in many aspects of your businesses. This, I agree, usually entails being the one building the product. But as the business grows you have to make a choice: lead the organization or continue developing products. You really cannot do both. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to do both, and this is where the organization usually fails.
Keep in mind also, that as an entrepreneur you're selling a product, not the code. I've met many very successful entrepreneurs of later stage enterprises, who have gone through multiple rounds of funding and are worth hundreds of millions. The people at the helm were all there in the beginning, but they are no longer part of the day-to-day, and probably could not explain the fine-grain details of the product anymore as well as the chemists on the ground floor could. But they can still sell their product without knowing the exact details of the chemical processes, and they made the tough choice of divorcing themselves from the day-to-day research in favor of steering the overall direction of the ship.
TFA does not ask (or answer) "Do Tech Entrepreneurs Need To Know How To Code?" Rather it asks "Do nontechnical entrepreneurs of digital start-ups need to learn code?" (emph. added).
This really depends on which stage of a startup you're at. If you're in the garage building the prototype, yeah, you pretty much need to be R&D, which involves coding. If you're further along in the enterprise, perhaps raising money, perhaps building a team, perhaps concentrating on distribution or manufacturing, then being on the ground floor of R&D is much less important. Many founders turned CEO who started at ground zero developing products are ousted (bringing in an outside CEO or other manage) at later points in the life of their company simply because they are too focused on the minutia of product development and R&D, and haven't actually learned how to run and manage their organization.
Make no mistake, ideas are dime a dozen. Everyone has one, and everyone thinks their idea will make them a million dollars. The reason not everyone is a millionaire is that the conversion between idea and money is dependent much more on execution of the idea than the idea itself. If more entrepreneurs understood this instead of focusing on the product, there would be fewer failure stories to talk about. Now don't get me wrong, a good product is *very* important, but it's still a small part of the larger picture.
That seems to be an admission that it's not yet in product, but I'll concede that maybe they have some sort of prototype.
I get the feeling you're not actually looking at my links. I showed three examples of IOS working on actual 920 hardware, not "some sort of prototype"
I'm not sure which commercial you're talking about. Got a link?... Ah, found the one you're talking about.
I'm talking about this ad, which I linked to in my first post, in the same sentence as the Siri commercial side by side reproduction. This ad claims 3G is "twice as fast" (4 times in the commercial) as I guess EDGE. That's not the problem though: the problem is the commercial completes all the tasks over "3G" three times faster than over a full strength 3G connection, as demonstrated in the side by side real world reproduction. You don't need a stopwatch to know the ad is obviously taking shortcuts.
Critical difference.
It's a difference without a distinction. Apple showed their iPhone using Siri, but you're suggesting to achieve the same you'll need your own personal server running Apple's Siri backend, and you'll need to be trained to talk how siri expects (better not have an accent like in the video I linked). Apple used editing and a series of cuts to demonstrate how Siri can be used as a personal assistant, and it can. Apple used a simulated network and editing to show how 3G can be used to quickly find relevant data, and it can. Nokia used an OIS enabled camera to show the benefit of OIS and used editing to imply this same technology exists on the 920, and it does. The common thread between all these examples is that editing is carefully used to demonstrate a level of performance that doesn't exist in the real world even in ideal conditions. If they wanted to be honest about all these product's Apple and Nokia would show average performance with no cuts under real world experiences by average users. But no one does that in advertising. I just really don't see how you can bring down Nokia for doing it while simultaneously letting Apple off the hook. Personally, I don't hold it against either company (since that's just advertising, *every* commercial does it), but there's a real clear hypocrisy here coming from you.
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype.
If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results.
If you need that many qualifiers to bring the idealized version to reality, then no, it's not the same. And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
Look, I don't even think what Apple is doing in their ads is bad. I think it's fine. They're depicting the function of their product in an idealized setting in a dramatized way to demonstrate its capabilities. I get that. I'm fine with that. But I don't see how that is substantially different than depicting the capabilities of OIS in an idealized, dramatized way to demonstrate the capabilities of OIS on the 920.
No, the phone does do that, but not as well. Just like Siri does respond to voice commands as depicted, but not as well. Just as the iPhone does work over 3G but not at the speeds depicted. I really don't see how "The phone could potentially work like this in ideal conditions that don't exist and will never exist" is not a lie. If ideal conditions will never exist, then the phone *can't* work like that. With Siri you often have to wait many seconds for the response to come back, or you have to annunciate very clearly to get the correct understanding. With 3G even with perfect signal it's still 3x slower than depicted in the ad.
The same film could be redone, shot by shot with the 920. It would not look as good, but it would look considerably better compared to a camera without OIS. That's the point of the advertisement: that OIS makes your pictures look better, that the 920 has OIS. Just as the point of the Siri ads are to show what fun you can have with an AI personal assistant, and how fast your phone will be over 3G.
They don't claim they were using a "larger prototype", they simply confess that it's not a 920 at all.
I think maybe I read it wrong. They said the images were shot with a prototype and scaled down.
Those ads are Siri, albeit Siri at its absolute, unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best.... Here, Nokia's not even using a 920 at all. It's... misleading in a "doesn't actually exist at all" way.
How is "unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best" much different or generally less misleading compared to "doesn't actually exist at all"? Nokia 920 has optical image stabilization that improves image quality. This is demonstrated. It's probably not as great as a DSLR but it does what they say. Siri is an AI that responds to voice commands. It doesn't perform exactly like the video but it does what they say. Apple shows iPhone downloading at faster than network speeds over 3G. Of course it doesn't do it just like that, much slower in fact, but it does what they say.
It's misleading in the same way that Apple's Siri ads or iPhone ads are: show real capabilities of a technology in an augmented or enhanced manner. As the video posted from the 920 shows, the phone is indeed capable of what they claim. Maybe not as good as the larger prototype they claim they were using in the video, but nonetheless very good. Just as Siri doesn't get right every time with instantaneous response, and iPhone isn't lightening fast like in the ads.
I enjoyed this little thread; this is one of the reasons I come to slashdot. Unfortunately I won't be able to respond to your post in detail except to say I understand your position on my point of view more clearly, and agree with some aspects, but I still can't discern what you would consider a fully working implementation given the current technology climate (the ideal situation I posed is not tenable). That is, you say Microsoft has all the pieces, but what according to you is unites them to your satisfaction? I don't see any reasonable resolution given the constraints your impose. If Microsoft isn't the server provider, and the user isn't the server provider (too complicated, too much configuration) who is? Or is there even a centralized server coordinating devices in your view?
I realize you are sort of a MS shill, and I get where you're coming from.
Sorry, not even close. It's a shame the climate on slashdot is as such that I have to actually type this out to justify my point of view without being labeled a shill. What you're implying is that I post opinions here I don't actually hold outside of monetary compensation from Microsoft. This is not true at all. I bought all the aforementioned products (except Windows 8, which I have through Dreamspark Premium) after comparing them with the competition and choosing which is best for me, given my requirements. I'm probably the opposite of many Slashdotters in that I use Linux daily for work and use Windows at home by my own choice. My profession is roboticist, and I'm a published researcher in the field. I contribute regularly to the largest open source robotics project, ROS. I have no connections with Microsoft, live on the east coast, and no one in my family or friend group works for or is associated with Microsoft (except my girlfriend's cousin was Bill Gate's personal assistant for many years. Never met her.). I hold a positive view of Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Microsoft Office including the Ribbon and Metro interface, and use each by my own choice regardless of any outside influences. I also own an iMac, an iPad, various cheap Android tablets for hacking, and I have positive views of those pieces of hardware as well.
Windows 8 is terrible, so no one is going to use it. So that's not helping. It doesn't matter what you *can* do with it, it won't be done because no one sane wants to use Windows 8.
Windows 8 is an excellent OS for almost all objective measures of OS quality. It's stable, secure, compatible with a vast array of hardware, it maintains compatibility with old software, it is easy to configure, easy to maintain, and the resource footprint is very low. More importantly, on all of these points it exceeds its predecessor. That is, it is more stable, secure, etc. than Windows 7 for a variety of reasons I can list if you really want me to. Please note that in all discussions held here on Slashdot, these points have not been in question. No one is talking about how buggy and bloated and unstable Windows 8 is (because it isnt't; there's nothing to complain about in that regard). All discussions revolve around the most subjective and personal aspect of the OS (and also the most customizable): the UI.
What I think you mean when you say Windows 8 is terrible, and correct me if I'm wrong and you really mean the other aspects I mentioned of the OS are in question, is that you hate the UI (and therefore most everyone else will hate it). I think for a great many users, Metro offers benefits that perhaps aren't realized by most people on slashdot, as they are more computer literate. These include consistency in the UI, as search and settings is in the same spot for every app; predictability across the OS, as pressing the right mouse button, pressing the windows key, swiping in from edges or mousing to corners does the same thing no matter where you are in the OS; easy to manage controls, as most user centric settings have been distilled into a simplified settings screen; easy ways find, update, and uninstall apps, as there's a centralized repository to manage this, and uninstalling them is as simple as right clicking instead of delving into the control panel. Most of these benefits are not realized for people like you or me, but, as evidenced by the success of the iPad, simple interfaces like this can be very effective for novice users (which is most everyone).
That might leave you to say MS has abandoned the power user in Windows 8, but I find it's customizable enough to fit my needs. Here's my current start screen on one of my test machines I'm experimenting with. The transparent background is a little buggy with animations, but it's coming along. I like this much better than the start m
Right, so do I. I suspect most/. users can do almost all of these things already. But we are the distinct minority.
This is where you're wrong, doing these things takes no expertise and no futzing or fiddling with settings. You sign in to Windows Phone or Windows 8 with your microsoft account, and everything I mentioned is all automatic. Log into a Windows 8 PC or Windows RT tablet for the first time and you have your mail, calendar, contacts, pictures, music, apps are all ready. Same for Windows Phone. Skydrive is installed by default and there's no configuring required. Xbox smartglass is as simple as starting the app. No configuration is needed to get things talking as long as you are both on the same network. Not a single "advanced configuration" option is required to enable the above. The catch is you have to be within the Microsoft ecosystem of products to have everything talking together, but that's the price to pay for things "just working".
The game ARMED is a good example of a non MS app that works great on Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 7. There are many cross platform MS apps, but I'm sure after all three platforms are released we'll see more.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows, whose current shipping OS is sold as Windows 7 but is really Windows NT 6.1
This is a distinction between a brand name and a kernel version number. Why is this more absurd compared to "Precise Pangolin" for instance?
Regardless, I think you'll find names of almost any product in a sufficiently crowded marketplace become absurd as they try to differentiate themselves and also avoid stepping on any trademarked names. You see this with domain names in particular.
now that Steve Jobs is dead, there is no reason to continue his personal thermonuclear war
Isn't the reason obvious? Apple is not a well-diversified company; they make a small number of shiny gadgets from which they derive the vast majority of their massive profits. Their personal computer division, software sales, and app-store/itunes sales are peanuts by comparison. Android, and Samsung in particular threatens those massive profits. That Tim Cook would not do everything in his power to destroy Android is completely counter to his role as CEO (to ensure those massive profits).
So if you find a secret message in a court transcription, we have a case of a steganographer stenographer?
Space elevator.
What the hell is ratified science? Peer review is an important part of the scientific process, but make no mistake there is no process or entity (journals, institutions, or otherwise) which officiates scientific process. Our state of understanding of the universe is in a constant state of flux; even work that has been peer reviewed can be proven wrong by later work, or work that has been rejected by peers can later be proven correct. Peer-reviewed research has a little more credibility than otherwise, true. However, this talk about "how research becomes science" seems reminiscent of "how a bill becomes a law," and the scientific process simply doesn't work like that.
Except the vast majority of the article is with respect to only the sample, and not the population. I know the /. article title would lead you to believe otherwise, but you shouldn't draw conclusions on someone's professional aptitude based on a sensationalized headline intended to incite controversy.
Sounds like the author took one bad course
Except this was an intro statistics course taught by one of the best authorities on statistics in the world. I think the point of this whole example is that while Thrun is an amazing statistician and a world-renowned researcher in the field, maybe that's not really what it takes to make online education successful. All the focus is on top universities, like MIT and Stanford; and top researchers, like Norvig and Thrun, putting their course material online, but maybe what we really need is fresh blood taking a stab at this.
Someone who hasn't been entrenched in higher education for the last 20 years (or in MIT or Stanford's case, 100 years) might have the fresh approach that online education deserves to be successful. We say we will only trust the online courses from institutions or individuals with top credentials, yet all these sources are simply taking the same stodgy old offline course format and broadcasting it and calling it "online education". Udacity has some good ideas with their interactive tools, but at its core it's still the same lecture->homework->test->lecture->homework... format as any other offline course.
Quite simply I've never seen any persuasive evidence that organic food from the grocery store is tastier or more nutritious than non-organic food and I've never met anyone who could tell the difference just by taste or appearance.
Organic milk definitely tastes different, and for some reason it lasts 3x longer than regular milk. I don't know if it's technically healthier or not, but it without a doubt tastes very different.
8 is to be a significant departure from 7.x
In some ways, but every departure from WP7 seems to be an improvement. WP8 is a complete superset of WP7: same interface, same apps, same ecosystem. What I like about WP7 will still be there in WP8.
MS is notorious for cutting features from the operating systems.
Okay, I'll keep a tally. But it doesn't really matter because even if they cut 100% of the leaked SDK features (well, at least two have been demoed officially), the biggest features have already been announced in June (windows 8 core, native code, background multitasking, better hardware).
You have no idea beyond the basics what features will be in store and you
I don't have to. WP8 is a superset of WP7, so if I like WP7, it seems to me I'm going to like using WP8. In terms of developing for WP8, yeah, I don't know what kind of phones will be released, and what features the final SDK will have, but that doesn't preclude a projection that I'll be developing for the platform in the future.
you develop nothing for Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7 apps don't count
That's an interesting take on it, seeing as that all WP7 apps will work on WP8. Hard to understand how developing an app that will work on the platform is not developing for the platform. Regardless, I'm currently developing a metro app that I intended to port to WP8, so I'm very curious if that will be as easy as they imply it will be.
You can anticipate anything you want as your next platform.... But when you make those kind of statements on the tail end of a post detailing how disappointed you are at the lack of dev tools, and feature details
You seem to have gone to great lengths to try and pick apart why all of my reasons for anticipating WP8 are worthless, so not sure if I can conclude you're sincere in that regard. My disappointment about pre-release dev tools is probably the least consequential factor in my determination of which phone I will buy next personally. My disappointment with the lack of more information is notwithstanding what they've released so far is more than enough to sway me.
This post here is the most critical thing I've ever seen you say about the platform
Not sure if you've noticed, but Engadget and this site have no lack of critical things to say about WP. Whatever negative I have to say about WP (and if you really care to know I have a lot) has already been said, and will be said time and again with or without me piling on.
So you don't know what the features are yet it will be your next phone
Yes, based on my satisfaction with the current platform, the leaked SDK, the information that's been released so far, and the fact that I develop software for the platform, I don't see why it's unreasonable to anticipate WP8 will be my next platform.
you tirelessly come on here (and Engadget) to attack Android.
I'd love for you to point me to this tireless attack on Android... I have a measly 400 total comments on Engadget over the course of like 3 years. So tireless!
Thanks for confirming you are little more than a sheep fanboy who's opinions are completely worthless.
And who exactly are you, AC? Try logging in first and then talk to me about reputation.
Next Wednesday I’ll share detailed instructions on how current Windows Phone developers with published apps can apply. But I do want to set your expectations that program access will be limited. (emphasis added)
So it's restricted to developers with published apps and only a limited subset of them... maybe first come first serve, who knows. They're being very coy about this whole thing, which is what makes it that much more frustrating. They say: "The full Windows Phone 8 SDK will be made publically available later this year when we unveil Windows Phone 8." Well *when* is that? October? November? December 31 11:59:59 PM?
It's obvious: WP8 isn't really ready yet. They gave a sneak preview a while back that only contained a few features, they've been coy about when the damn thing will be released, they only showed off a couple additional features at the Lumia event, and they still won't tell us when they'll be showing off the rest of the features (BUILD 2012? who knows?), when phones are being released, which carriers will be getting them etc. Look, I like WP, and I like developing for WP, and WP8 will be my next OS, but this is getting beyond stupid.
Without this ability there's an impossible tradeoff between comments and the clarity of comment-free code
As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as comment-free code that is clear.
And if the leaders of the startup don't understand the power and limitations of those cards, then you're in trouble.
True to an extent. As an early-stage entrepreneur, you need to put on many hats. These include marketing, HR, R&D, accounting, etc. So you need to be versed in many aspects of your businesses. This, I agree, usually entails being the one building the product. But as the business grows you have to make a choice: lead the organization or continue developing products. You really cannot do both. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to do both, and this is where the organization usually fails.
Keep in mind also, that as an entrepreneur you're selling a product, not the code. I've met many very successful entrepreneurs of later stage enterprises, who have gone through multiple rounds of funding and are worth hundreds of millions. The people at the helm were all there in the beginning, but they are no longer part of the day-to-day, and probably could not explain the fine-grain details of the product anymore as well as the chemists on the ground floor could. But they can still sell their product without knowing the exact details of the chemical processes, and they made the tough choice of divorcing themselves from the day-to-day research in favor of steering the overall direction of the ship.
TFA does not ask (or answer) "Do Tech Entrepreneurs Need To Know How To Code?" Rather it asks "Do nontechnical entrepreneurs of digital start-ups need to learn code?" (emph. added).
This really depends on which stage of a startup you're at. If you're in the garage building the prototype, yeah, you pretty much need to be R&D, which involves coding. If you're further along in the enterprise, perhaps raising money, perhaps building a team, perhaps concentrating on distribution or manufacturing, then being on the ground floor of R&D is much less important. Many founders turned CEO who started at ground zero developing products are ousted (bringing in an outside CEO or other manage) at later points in the life of their company simply because they are too focused on the minutia of product development and R&D, and haven't actually learned how to run and manage their organization.
Make no mistake, ideas are dime a dozen. Everyone has one, and everyone thinks their idea will make them a million dollars. The reason not everyone is a millionaire is that the conversion between idea and money is dependent much more on execution of the idea than the idea itself. If more entrepreneurs understood this instead of focusing on the product, there would be fewer failure stories to talk about. Now don't get me wrong, a good product is *very* important, but it's still a small part of the larger picture.
That seems to be an admission that it's not yet in product, but I'll concede that maybe they have some sort of prototype.
I get the feeling you're not actually looking at my links. I showed three examples of IOS working on actual 920 hardware, not "some sort of prototype"
I'm not sure which commercial you're talking about. Got a link? ... Ah, found the one you're talking about.
I'm talking about this ad, which I linked to in my first post, in the same sentence as the Siri commercial side by side reproduction. This ad claims 3G is "twice as fast" (4 times in the commercial) as I guess EDGE. That's not the problem though: the problem is the commercial completes all the tasks over "3G" three times faster than over a full strength 3G connection, as demonstrated in the side by side real world reproduction. You don't need a stopwatch to know the ad is obviously taking shortcuts.
Critical difference.
It's a difference without a distinction. Apple showed their iPhone using Siri, but you're suggesting to achieve the same you'll need your own personal server running Apple's Siri backend, and you'll need to be trained to talk how siri expects (better not have an accent like in the video I linked). Apple used editing and a series of cuts to demonstrate how Siri can be used as a personal assistant, and it can. Apple used a simulated network and editing to show how 3G can be used to quickly find relevant data, and it can. Nokia used an OIS enabled camera to show the benefit of OIS and used editing to imply this same technology exists on the 920, and it does. The common thread between all these examples is that editing is carefully used to demonstrate a level of performance that doesn't exist in the real world even in ideal conditions. If they wanted to be honest about all these product's Apple and Nokia would show average performance with no cuts under real world experiences by average users. But no one does that in advertising. I just really don't see how you can bring down Nokia for doing it while simultaneously letting Apple off the hook. Personally, I don't hold it against either company (since that's just advertising, *every* commercial does it), but there's a real clear hypocrisy here coming from you.
No, it's not. As Nokia admits, the 920 doesn't have the image stabilization yet. It hasn't been demonstrated, because they haven't even gotten a working prototype.
Sure about that?
Comparison with SGS3
OIS and low light demonstration
OIS demonstration
If you took an iPhone 4S and had a perfectly silent room with a trained speaker, and an 802.11n connection to a local server to do the decoding and searching, you could get the same results.
If you need that many qualifiers to bring the idealized version to reality, then no, it's not the same. And what about the 3G commercial you seem to be completely bypassing, which is showing a 3G connection working 3x faster than possible? How is that not lying.
Look, I don't even think what Apple is doing in their ads is bad. I think it's fine. They're depicting the function of their product in an idealized setting in a dramatized way to demonstrate its capabilities. I get that. I'm fine with that. But I don't see how that is substantially different than depicting the capabilities of OIS in an idealized, dramatized way to demonstrate the capabilities of OIS on the 920.
No, the phone does do that, but not as well. Just like Siri does respond to voice commands as depicted, but not as well. Just as the iPhone does work over 3G but not at the speeds depicted. I really don't see how "The phone could potentially work like this in ideal conditions that don't exist and will never exist" is not a lie. If ideal conditions will never exist, then the phone *can't* work like that. With Siri you often have to wait many seconds for the response to come back, or you have to annunciate very clearly to get the correct understanding. With 3G even with perfect signal it's still 3x slower than depicted in the ad.
The same film could be redone, shot by shot with the 920. It would not look as good, but it would look considerably better compared to a camera without OIS. That's the point of the advertisement: that OIS makes your pictures look better, that the 920 has OIS. Just as the point of the Siri ads are to show what fun you can have with an AI personal assistant, and how fast your phone will be over 3G.
Damnit... I do that all the time
They don't claim they were using a "larger prototype", they simply confess that it's not a 920 at all.
I think maybe I read it wrong. They said the images were shot with a prototype and scaled down.
Those ads are Siri, albeit Siri at its absolute, unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best.... Here, Nokia's not even using a 920 at all. It's ... misleading in a "doesn't actually exist at all" way.
How is "unlikely-to-actually-occur-in-reality best" much different or generally less misleading compared to "doesn't actually exist at all"? Nokia 920 has optical image stabilization that improves image quality. This is demonstrated. It's probably not as great as a DSLR but it does what they say. Siri is an AI that responds to voice commands. It doesn't perform exactly like the video but it does what they say. Apple shows iPhone downloading at faster than network speeds over 3G. Of course it doesn't do it just like that, much slower in fact, but it does what they say.
It's misleading in the same way that Apple's Siri ads or iPhone ads are: show real capabilities of a technology in an augmented or enhanced manner. As the video posted from the 920 shows, the phone is indeed capable of what they claim. Maybe not as good as the larger prototype they claim they were using in the video, but nonetheless very good. Just as Siri doesn't get right every time with instantaneous response, and iPhone isn't lightening fast like in the ads.
I enjoyed this little thread; this is one of the reasons I come to slashdot. Unfortunately I won't be able to respond to your post in detail except to say I understand your position on my point of view more clearly, and agree with some aspects, but I still can't discern what you would consider a fully working implementation given the current technology climate (the ideal situation I posed is not tenable). That is, you say Microsoft has all the pieces, but what according to you is unites them to your satisfaction? I don't see any reasonable resolution given the constraints your impose. If Microsoft isn't the server provider, and the user isn't the server provider (too complicated, too much configuration) who is? Or is there even a centralized server coordinating devices in your view?
Anyway, cheers.
I realize you are sort of a MS shill, and I get where you're coming from.
Sorry, not even close. It's a shame the climate on slashdot is as such that I have to actually type this out to justify my point of view without being labeled a shill. What you're implying is that I post opinions here I don't actually hold outside of monetary compensation from Microsoft. This is not true at all. I bought all the aforementioned products (except Windows 8, which I have through Dreamspark Premium) after comparing them with the competition and choosing which is best for me, given my requirements. I'm probably the opposite of many Slashdotters in that I use Linux daily for work and use Windows at home by my own choice. My profession is roboticist, and I'm a published researcher in the field. I contribute regularly to the largest open source robotics project, ROS. I have no connections with Microsoft, live on the east coast, and no one in my family or friend group works for or is associated with Microsoft (except my girlfriend's cousin was Bill Gate's personal assistant for many years. Never met her.). I hold a positive view of Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Microsoft Office including the Ribbon and Metro interface, and use each by my own choice regardless of any outside influences. I also own an iMac, an iPad, various cheap Android tablets for hacking, and I have positive views of those pieces of hardware as well.
Windows 8 is terrible, so no one is going to use it. So that's not helping. It doesn't matter what you *can* do with it, it won't be done because no one sane wants to use Windows 8.
Windows 8 is an excellent OS for almost all objective measures of OS quality. It's stable, secure, compatible with a vast array of hardware, it maintains compatibility with old software, it is easy to configure, easy to maintain, and the resource footprint is very low. More importantly, on all of these points it exceeds its predecessor. That is, it is more stable, secure, etc. than Windows 7 for a variety of reasons I can list if you really want me to. Please note that in all discussions held here on Slashdot, these points have not been in question. No one is talking about how buggy and bloated and unstable Windows 8 is (because it isnt't; there's nothing to complain about in that regard). All discussions revolve around the most subjective and personal aspect of the OS (and also the most customizable): the UI.
What I think you mean when you say Windows 8 is terrible, and correct me if I'm wrong and you really mean the other aspects I mentioned of the OS are in question, is that you hate the UI (and therefore most everyone else will hate it). I think for a great many users, Metro offers benefits that perhaps aren't realized by most people on slashdot, as they are more computer literate. These include consistency in the UI, as search and settings is in the same spot for every app; predictability across the OS, as pressing the right mouse button, pressing the windows key, swiping in from edges or mousing to corners does the same thing no matter where you are in the OS; easy to manage controls, as most user centric settings have been distilled into a simplified settings screen; easy ways find, update, and uninstall apps, as there's a centralized repository to manage this, and uninstalling them is as simple as right clicking instead of delving into the control panel. Most of these benefits are not realized for people like you or me, but, as evidenced by the success of the iPad, simple interfaces like this can be very effective for novice users (which is most everyone).
That might leave you to say MS has abandoned the power user in Windows 8, but I find it's customizable enough to fit my needs. Here's my current start screen on one of my test machines I'm experimenting with. The transparent background is a little buggy with animations, but it's coming along. I like this much better than the start m
Right, so do I. I suspect most /. users can do almost all of these things already. But we are the distinct minority.
This is where you're wrong, doing these things takes no expertise and no futzing or fiddling with settings. You sign in to Windows Phone or Windows 8 with your microsoft account, and everything I mentioned is all automatic. Log into a Windows 8 PC or Windows RT tablet for the first time and you have your mail, calendar, contacts, pictures, music, apps are all ready. Same for Windows Phone. Skydrive is installed by default and there's no configuring required. Xbox smartglass is as simple as starting the app. No configuration is needed to get things talking as long as you are both on the same network. Not a single "advanced configuration" option is required to enable the above. The catch is you have to be within the Microsoft ecosystem of products to have everything talking together, but that's the price to pay for things "just working".
The game ARMED is a good example of a non MS app that works great on Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 7. There are many cross platform MS apps, but I'm sure after all three platforms are released we'll see more.