I know Apple wasn't the first to use it, but they were the first to ride big time success with it. It's pretty blatant that Amazon isn't even bothering to be clever with their own branding.
Normally when there's an article where the answer is best left, "I don't know." It's usually shit.
However, the author of this article is making a pretty good case that RIM's screwed. Profits are down, marketshare is down, and developers are looking to develop for iOS and Android more than QNX and BB6.
I don't think it's that dire, not yet. The upcoming quarterly results are going to shellack their current stock price even worse and shake off the RIM faithful.
The big question is, what about next quarter? RIM doesn't need to be #1, or #2, or even #5. They just need to be profitable to honestly survive.(This is the maybe.)
The question I have for the BB faithful is whether or not RIM's going to start trimming out it's product tree and offer a more limited lineup of phones and focus on optimizing their OS or if they're going to go do something crazy. I think that the Playbook doesn't need to be a winner in the market, just drive sales for BB6 devices, and BB6 devices aren't bad at any rate. (This is the no.)
OTOH, if they were capable of that, they wouldn't have lost ground share in the corporate world to iOS and Android not to mention share in the consumer market. I've seen friends flee the BB Ecosystem after realizing their device model line of choice isn't getting upgraded. This would be the most likely and really sad big fat yes.
RIM's probably going to take it in the pants, but, they have some outs, let's see if they take them. Even if they pare out some of the more redundant lines, like having 4 or so models of the Curve, other BB devices with modern hardware and an optimized OS with better browser should be enticing enough to bring the BB faithful back to the fold. Just, leave Flash for the Playbook.
I've seen non-technical users do absurdly amusing things with technology.
Besides, you're missing the point that Amazon's basically trying to ride Apple's free publicity on the term, "app store."
Prior to the iPhone's app store, I can't think of one instance where that term was ubiquitous among non-techheads. Actually, come to think of it, I can't think of any instance where it was ubiquitous among techheads.
My tech friends who can't do what they did before on their android phones jailbroke. My nontech friends just don't care. Plus they have the excuse of wasting more time with Angry Birds.
Nontech person a: I got this great game on the App store! *waves iPhone around*
Nontech person b: my app store doesn't have it. Are you sure you got it off the app store? *waves around phone with Amazon appstore*
The next 30 minutes are spent trying to figure out what's wrong.
We're in a world where non-techies are using tech. Besides, it's pretty blatant that Amazon wants to ride Apple's coattails in terms of visibility and brand recognition. It's why Cola is a generic term but Coca Cola isn't. Or Coke.
Yeah, the term "App store" is pretty generic, however, in the context of what Amazon's looking to do with the term, it's pretty blatant that they'd choose that name to sell mobile applications on branded equipment, particularly when Apple has stuck it's neck out in such a way that it may in fact cause some confusion for non-tech minded folks.
That's really hard to prove until they catch the perps who did it.
Given that past break ins tended to be whoever was vulnerable, and not largely targeted based on ideology. When was the last time a break in of this nature was based on ideology? Usually those kinds of break ins tend to be defacement of services, etc. Not theft of customer data. I'm pretty sure Albert Gonzalez had no beef against TJX when he broke in, he just wanted the damn money.
When we are talkin about metallica's "Sandman" it's ok to start getting nitpicky over the details. When some jerk just stole my credit card info on the the other hand...
I find for common tasks, the Ribbon is a goddamned godsend. However, for less common tasks, the Ribbon makes life pretty much difficult. It was hard enough to find some obscure feature before, now things are a little harder.
Actually, the CFW was about reclaiming your own system, and the features it had when you bought it.
Other than OtherOS what features does CFW give me that I didn't have before? I never had the ability to play homebrew.
What I was talking about was the CFW dev mode outlined in the context of the article. I doubt the CFW dev mode allowed for the massive leak of customer data.
the ribbon does suck. And yet it's a huge improvement on the office 95 ui concept. Using the ribbon in firefox 4 and ie showed me the ribbon works as a ui element.
The problem you and the parent are running into is that perhaps simple word processing isn't simple anymore and nothing will succinctly untangle the ui mess that office style productivity suites present.
Sony hasn't said that their system was brought down by a custom firmware hack. That's just blind speculation.
My face hurts. it's a bad time to be a sony fanboy. First i was face palming hard at what sony did, now I'm face palming hard at what anti-Sony dicks are saying on the internet. Where's my advil?
If the rumor is indeed true that a custom firmware has been used to get some people free stuff, take note how Sony has handled the situation
Err, no. There was an intrusion into PSN, and personal information has been compromised. They didn't shut down the whole infrastructure because some jerks were getting freebies.
Do you have any contacts at Sony internally? Do you have any insight aside from what they do publicly? I've got some friends who work at Sony's call center for PS3/PSP support and they're telling me a different story.
The F700 has a completely different UI that Samsung hasn't used since 2007.
Name one phone since the F700 that's had that UI design?
Besides, Apple's not suing over the F700, they're suing over the goddamned i9000, which does greatly steal from the iPhone's UI concept. Pages of apps after the unlock screen with a dock for 4 quick run apps? Meizu's M series wasn't this blatant and Apple won a similar lawsuit over their gear.
I'm not necessarily supporting Apple to win this one, but i sure as hell have no sympathy for Samsung either.
Actually, Springboard, the main OS shell, has a slot one section to the left of the apps list that would be *perfect* for widgets.
It would be a minor change to the API to have anything that relies on push technology to write to a table details of the latest push.
I still think widgets aren't terribly useful. there's really not much you can fit into a tiny box. my twitter feed is incredibly active, as is my inbox, calendar, etc. But hey, Apple hasn't disparaged them, I have, and if they add widgets, I'll probably find a way to turn them off.
what boggles my mind is, isn't an SD Card slot a damn near driver-less feature? Aren't most SD card slots attached via the usb bus even on integrated SOCs? Even if it wasn't, why didn't their SOC vendor provide them with a driver? Wait, isn't the SOC powering it a tegra2? I know nVidia doesn't sleep on the job like that. What the hell.
You mean to tell me the Xoom shipped with a non working sd card slot?!
Are you fucking serious?
Makes me wonder what else they neglected under the hood.
Further more. With a year out from the iPad 1, why should we expect anyone other than hardcore tech geeks to find this experience compelling? If I had to chose between a tablet that worked now and one that had to wait for patches to get advertised functionality working now, im going with the iPad.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty clever, compared to say, Ovi Store. :)
(in Finnish, ovi means door.) Or Media Mall, or whatever AT&T was trying to bundle, or VCast, or....
Apple's fighting this because they don't want their brand and marketing to be genericized.
I know Apple wasn't the first to use it, but they were the first to ride big time success with it. It's pretty blatant that Amazon isn't even bothering to be clever with their own branding.
Normally when there's an article where the answer is best left, "I don't know." It's usually shit.
However, the author of this article is making a pretty good case that RIM's screwed. Profits are down, marketshare is down, and developers are looking to develop for iOS and Android more than QNX and BB6.
I don't think it's that dire, not yet. The upcoming quarterly results are going to shellack their current stock price even worse and shake off the RIM faithful.
The big question is, what about next quarter? RIM doesn't need to be #1, or #2, or even #5. They just need to be profitable to honestly survive.(This is the maybe.)
The question I have for the BB faithful is whether or not RIM's going to start trimming out it's product tree and offer a more limited lineup of phones and focus on optimizing their OS or if they're going to go do something crazy. I think that the Playbook doesn't need to be a winner in the market, just drive sales for BB6 devices, and BB6 devices aren't bad at any rate. (This is the no.)
OTOH, if they were capable of that, they wouldn't have lost ground share in the corporate world to iOS and Android not to mention share in the consumer market. I've seen friends flee the BB Ecosystem after realizing their device model line of choice isn't getting upgraded. This would be the most likely and really sad big fat yes.
RIM's probably going to take it in the pants, but, they have some outs, let's see if they take them. Even if they pare out some of the more redundant lines, like having 4 or so models of the Curve, other BB devices with modern hardware and an optimized OS with better browser should be enticing enough to bring the BB faithful back to the fold. Just, leave Flash for the Playbook.
Uh, you'd be pretty wrong.
I've seen non-technical users do absurdly amusing things with technology.
Besides, you're missing the point that Amazon's basically trying to ride Apple's free publicity on the term, "app store."
Prior to the iPhone's app store, I can't think of one instance where that term was ubiquitous among non-techheads. Actually, come to think of it, I can't think of any instance where it was ubiquitous among techheads.
I've seen things go the other way for the iPhone.
My tech friends who can't do what they did before on their android phones jailbroke. My nontech friends just don't care. Plus they have the excuse of wasting more time with Angry Birds.
The reality is, they're doing rather well for themselves.
Nontech person a: I got this great game on the App store! *waves iPhone around*
Nontech person b: my app store doesn't have it. Are you sure you got it off the app store? *waves around phone with Amazon appstore*
The next 30 minutes are spent trying to figure out what's wrong.
We're in a world where non-techies are using tech. Besides, it's pretty blatant that Amazon wants to ride Apple's coattails in terms of visibility and brand recognition. It's why Cola is a generic term but Coca Cola isn't. Or Coke.
Yeah, the term "App store" is pretty generic, however, in the context of what Amazon's looking to do with the term, it's pretty blatant that they'd choose that name to sell mobile applications on branded equipment, particularly when Apple has stuck it's neck out in such a way that it may in fact cause some confusion for non-tech minded folks.
That's really hard to prove until they catch the perps who did it.
Given that past break ins tended to be whoever was vulnerable, and not largely targeted based on ideology. When was the last time a break in of this nature was based on ideology? Usually those kinds of break ins tend to be defacement of services, etc. Not theft of customer data. I'm pretty sure Albert Gonzalez had no beef against TJX when he broke in, he just wanted the damn money.
Uh. Most likely whoever broke in did it for the money. Not in retaliation.
First off, you can't brag about a break in this big and second off, pissing off millions of psn users isn't the way to get then to see it your way.
When we are talkin about metallica's "Sandman" it's ok to start getting nitpicky over the details. When some jerk just stole my credit card info on the the other hand...
I feel like both situations are just as valid. I've discovered a few things in Excel I hadn't before using '10.
I think the problem is, is that either Office does way too much, or the UI needs to be consolidated somehow.
Either way, I don't think the Ribbon was the solution.
I find for common tasks, the Ribbon is a goddamned godsend. However, for less common tasks, the Ribbon makes life pretty much difficult. It was hard enough to find some obscure feature before, now things are a little harder.
Actually, the CFW was about reclaiming your own system, and the features it had when you bought it.
Other than OtherOS what features does CFW give me that I didn't have before? I never had the ability to play homebrew.
What I was talking about was the CFW dev mode outlined in the context of the article. I doubt the CFW dev mode allowed for the massive leak of customer data.
Funny enough. I agree with you and the parent.
the ribbon does suck. And yet it's a huge improvement on the office 95 ui concept. Using the ribbon in firefox 4 and ie showed me the ribbon works as a ui element.
The problem you and the parent are running into is that perhaps simple word processing isn't simple anymore and nothing will succinctly untangle the ui mess that office style productivity suites present.
So what you're saying is that the enthusiast community are a bunch of entitled dicks?
Do what we say or we'll hose your entire business workflow? Isn't that bullying?
Besides, where has it been shown and proven that the PSN break-in was conducted on a compromised console?
The CFW thing was about getting freebies, not users personal details.
Who the hell modded this up?
Sony hasn't said that their system was brought down by a custom firmware hack. That's just blind speculation.
My face hurts. it's a bad time to be a sony fanboy. First i was face palming hard at what sony did, now I'm face palming hard at what anti-Sony dicks are saying on the internet. Where's my advil?
If the rumor is indeed true that a custom firmware has been used to get some people free stuff, take note how Sony has handled the situation
Err, no. There was an intrusion into PSN, and personal information has been compromised. They didn't shut down the whole infrastructure because some jerks were getting freebies.
Sony was the one to act like a bunch of Gestapo in response to the security flaws.
Because suing GeoHot was just like rounding up and gassing the Jews.
Right.
I call Godwin's Law. 3rd down and 15 yard penalty.
Do you have any contacts at Sony internally? Do you have any insight aside from what they do publicly? I've got some friends who work at Sony's call center for PS3/PSP support and they're telling me a different story.
Source?
I doubt Sony would take down it's service especially after a big launch date, the 19th, for less than 1 percent of consoles.
The F700 has a completely different UI that Samsung hasn't used since 2007.
Name one phone since the F700 that's had that UI design?
Besides, Apple's not suing over the F700, they're suing over the goddamned i9000, which does greatly steal from the iPhone's UI concept. Pages of apps after the unlock screen with a dock for 4 quick run apps? Meizu's M series wasn't this blatant and Apple won a similar lawsuit over their gear.
I'm not necessarily supporting Apple to win this one, but i sure as hell have no sympathy for Samsung either.
I disagree.
This is entirely about UI.
This isn't the first time Apple's done it either.
This is just the first time that a major OEM has been so blatant.
Ask Meizu a thing or two about copying apple.
Actually, Springboard, the main OS shell, has a slot one section to the left of the apps list that would be *perfect* for widgets.
It would be a minor change to the API to have anything that relies on push technology to write to a table details of the latest push.
I still think widgets aren't terribly useful. there's really not much you can fit into a tiny box. my twitter feed is incredibly active, as is my inbox, calendar, etc. But hey, Apple hasn't disparaged them, I have, and if they add widgets, I'll probably find a way to turn them off.
what boggles my mind is, isn't an SD Card slot a damn near driver-less feature? Aren't most SD card slots attached via the usb bus even on integrated SOCs? Even if it wasn't, why didn't their SOC vendor provide them with a driver? Wait, isn't the SOC powering it a tegra2? I know nVidia doesn't sleep on the job like that. What the hell.
You mean to tell me the Xoom shipped with a non working sd card slot?!
Are you fucking serious?
Makes me wonder what else they neglected under the hood.
Further more. With a year out from the iPad 1, why should we expect anyone other than hardcore tech geeks to find
this experience compelling? If I had to chose between a tablet that worked now and one that had to wait for patches to get advertised functionality working now, im going with the iPad.