Can't help but point out that this wouldn't have happened if Sony hadn't decided to yank the Boot Other OS option.
If you really believe that this product is of absolutely no interest to people who want to run backups of games they have borrowed from 30,000 friends off the internet for an indefinite trial, then I have a bridge to sell you.
I don't have a Facebook account either. Unfortunately, someone I know put up pictures of me on his Facebook account. I've stayed away from Facebook because of privacy concerns. You just can't win.
I'm not sure why people get so het up about Facebook. Prior to that, you couldn't stop people posting them on Flickr, news groups or even their own website.
In short, you haven't been able to prevent people from putting up pictures of you for well over 10 years.
The only difference has been that people previously needed some technical expertise to do it - now almost anyone who can register on a website can.
"Whether Apple Inc. uses the glass in its iPod is a much-discussed mystery since 'not all our customers allow us to say,' said [the] general manager of Corning's specialty materials division."
On the basis that I've seen an iPhone 4 get dropped onto a kitchen tile from a height of about 3ft and the back glass shatter like a spiders web, I'd have to say no, they don't use it.
Either that or they do and it isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be.
I agree that Microsoft should make a play for this arena. If they don't then they are going to have to come up with a way to prevent others from adding their own "value" and ensure that their product updates are frequent and available to all in a timely fashion.
Ack, just remembered that they're doing this by locking down the software. Hmmm, in which case I'm not really sure how excited a handset manufacturer is going to be about an OS they cannot "enhance" to provide extra value.
I'm sure that given a choice, HTC would rather they sold more Android phones with the HTC experience than Windows 7 phones with the Microsoft experience - even if the latter turned out to be better.
And seeing how the "make the OS, leave making the phone (mostly) to others" business model seems to be working rather well for Google, I don't see, why it shouldn't for Microsoft.
It seems to be right now but, at the same time, I cannot help thinking that they are heading down the same line as Windows Mobile. You've got handset manufacturers taking the stock Android UI and then pimping it to make it "better". As a result we have HTC's Sense (which I've complained about before as they've added swathes of new bugs not on other Android devices - not to mention a completely incompatible new widget format), Motorola's MotoBlur which is (unsurprisingly) ugly and Samsung throwing their own (poor) UI on top too.
Next you have the network operators adding cruft, turning off functionality and loading applications onto the device which cannot be unloaded.
So now you're in a situation where when the next version of Android comes up, everyone has to sit around and wait for each of the vendors to update their phone and then the carriers to accredit it. You may dislike the Apple eco-system, but when an iOS update comes up, everyone generally gets it at the same time. With Android, Samsung owners may get it before HTC owners who get it before HTC owners on Network X because they haven't accredited it in time.
Finally, you've got people who think that the HTC experience is Android. They don't realise that it's actually a lot of HTC's pimping. I see the press articles in our papers talking about "Google launching a new phone" or "Microsoft launching a new phone" only to find it's actually HTC.
Palm was the phone that sat in the middle. Slick UI, no handset manufacturer cruft added, no operator interference and when the updates came everyone got them and yet you could still install applications on them that neither the operator or Palm approved of. The problem was that the hardware sucked and the world is moving away from smart-phones with a physical keyboard (despite how much people on/. prefer them). If HP have any sense, they'll kill the physical keyboard, optimise the software and stick it on some beautiful hardware that shows it off to the fullest.
I agree that Microsoft should make a play for this arena. If they don't then they are going to have to come up with a way to prevent others from adding their own "value" and ensure that their product updates are frequent and available to all in a timely fashion.
They've seen how Apple operate and don't have any qualms about copying - so why not take the best bits and leave the rest?
There's a problem there:
OS: What's to concentrate on? They've got like 90%+ of the market.
Office:It's way to late, given that OOo doesn't require re-training and Office 2007 (or whichever) does.
My previous company rolled out Office 2007 to all users over a period of a week. Little to no notice and no training. People complained about it for about a week and now they're perfectly happy using it. Most don't want to go back.
My parents moved to Office 2007 about a month ago. Apart from not being able to find the print button (I'd forgotten to tell them that the orb was clickable) they're doing just fine at the age of 65. Total training time, 5 minutes.
I have no doubts that (in some cases) training would be required and that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but I can't help feeling that we might be blowing this whole "it'll cost a fortune in time and effort to retrain people!" out of proportion a little.
My Android phone (Droid X) sees "the number is 07921 123456 bye" as containing a number. The number is underlined, and if I press it it opens up the dialer. I'm using Google Voice for SMS though so I don't know if that would affect it. I can also press and hold to copy the entire message text, which I can then paste into the text field and edit, and then re-copy if I want just the number. Finally, I tested pasting into the dialer's entry field, and pasted in just fine as "07921 123456".
I added an update here which, I think, explains the issue. In short it looks like Motorola haven't mucked up the SMS and dialer application!
Works the same on pretty much every version of Android. I'm not sure if the GP was referring to that specific number or its format, or that specific phone model's default messaging app + number combination - I don't know.
From my, somewhat limited, research, it looks to be an issue with HTC's modifications to the Android user interface. Essentially they've modified the SMS and dialer application and forgotten cut/copy/paste. The lack of same functionality within the Gmail app appears to be universal to all Android devices though.
Whilst the "copy a number via SMS and then call it" issue isn't Google's fault, the problem is that a lot of people think that HTC's modification are indicative of the whole Android experience.
A rep, sure, but I'd like to think that rank-and-file employees wouldn't be discouraged from using competitive products. How else are you going to know what the competition is doing? Something like "Hey, boss, have you seen how the iPhone handles ${whatever}? That's pretty slick and I think it works better than the way we're doing it." should be considered valuable feedback.
Totally agree and that sort of thing happens all the time.
Having said that, most companies I know prefer that an employees primary phone is one of their own. Quite often it's one that is incomplete and not yet released because it's a good way to weed out bugs - and employees generally love getting shiny new toys that no-one else has.
For years my primary phone was my next product. As soon as it was launched, I changed my phone. My friends always found it amusing that I didn't like having a phone that everyone else had.
I'll agree that 'eating your own dogfood' is good for the phone's development team, but do you really think everyone else has any real input into it? Real customers don't even get real input unless there's an antenna-gate or something.
To be honest, it depends on the company and how good the Product Manager is.
I've Product Managed a number of mobile phones in my time and we handed out large number of testing samples to anyone in the company who was prepared to swap their existing device (for a period of time). We then took every single persons feedback, went through it line by line and determined what to do with each one. That was a hell of a lot of work.
Some of the responses were clearly dumb ("This phone does not lock like a Nokia", well duh, it's not a Nokia), some were completely impossible to implement due to technical reasons or timescales but others were really insightful and accurately reflected the way people use their phone.
In addition, I used to seek information from key bloggers and maintainers and members of major websites dedicated to mobile phones.
To be fair, this was over 5 years ago and the mobile space has changed quite a bit since then.
I've been wondering for a while why companies seem to be so inept at listening to their customers. I understand the concept of 'vocal minority' and all that, but certain things should just be obvious when someone complains about them. Like lack of 'cut and paste' functionality on a 'smart phone'.
Agreed. I see no reason why a company cannot put out a public bug tracker and feature suggestion website that allows people to register, post things up and vote on them. Google has something like that now although I have no idea how much they actually look at it.
What I find so bizarre is that despite these glaring flaws and omissions, websites that review the products don't call it out on that failing and still give it a glowing (often maxium 5* or equivalent) review.
It's absolutely mind-boggling that Windows Phone 7 is missing some very fundamental features, like copy/paste, third-party multitasking, and universal search.
Absolutely mind-boggling you say? How about absolutely doomed?
Whilst I agree with everything you say, for some bizzare reason lack of cut and paste doesn't seem to be as much of a deal breaker as we make out. It's implementation within the HTC Desire is a complete and utter disaster (tapping and holding can do at least 3 different possible things) and there is no cut and paste within the dedicated Gmail application and SMS.
For hilarity, text "the number is 07921 123456 bye" to someone with an HTC Desire and challenge them to call the number without resorting to memorising it or writing it down somewhere. Excluding the fact that you cannot copy the number, even if you could there is no way to paste it into the dialer.
Now I, like you, think this is an absolute deal-breaker and a shocking oversight (especially considering everyone else has managed cut and paste for years - even Apple has in the last two) yet the device still got rave reviews despite these fundamental flaws.
So, how can Microsoft guarantee its Windows Phone 7 devices will enjoy broader adoption than the ill-fated Kin? By giving every Microsoft employee a free one, that's how
I'm sorry but this is a stupid statement and a stupid article. Apple gives a large number of it's employees an iPhone and Google gives a large number of its an Android phone. It's call "eating your own dog food".
In addition they get a friendly pool of testers who can give them instant feedback (and probably quite detailed given that they'll naturally try to use it with the products they are managing) on the devices in real world situations (such as bugs, issues, integration with web services, exchange support) and can also simulate some scenarios (such large scale remote activation, wipe and locate) far better than a couple of devices in a lab can.
Finally, if you're a manufacturer of a product, it doesn't look very good if your employees all use your competitors does it? Whenever I've dealt with a Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Apple, HTC or LG rep I've never seen them use anything but their own phones and I'd be concerned about the statement they are making if they did.
Seems like a pretty cool idea to me. Especially in games where you get a much better experience will a full screen view (driving, exploring, platform, 3d, hell anything really)
The thought of a four player gauntlet type game where each player sees a view centred around their own player (and only the areas of the game where they have visited) would be pretty nifty and would encourage communication between players sitting on the sofa rather than having to contend with a bunch of 13 year olds shouting obscenities on Xbox Live.
I appreciate that other people wouldn't be able to watch, but then I've always found that pretty boring after a while. The fun to me has always been in the playing.
It's a shame the TV I'm about to buy isn't 3D and only 50Hz, but it'll take a few years before this matures anyway.
A loss of 90% of readership isn't an issue if you weren't getting any money out of them in the first place.
Or to put it another way, that's a bit like the local bar offering free drinks on Saturday night for the past two years and then suddenly stopping one weekend. Sure, the numbers may have gone down by 90% but at least the people there now are paying for their drink and you don't have to employ quite as many staff. Plus you could always move to a smaller building and reduce your overheads even more.
I doubt The Times will share the financials before and after the paywall went up but I'm sure it would be interesting reading. Only then will we be able to work out whether or not this was a success.
The new scheme from Microsoft Research does away with complexity requirements entirely while protecting against both dictionary attacks and statistical guessing. The service simply counts how many times any user on the service chooses a given password. When more than a small number of users pick a password, the password is banned and no one else is allowed to choose it. The scheme can only be used by organizations with millions of users--websites like Microsoft's Hotmail, for instance.
I am, by no means, an expert in any of this. Are they suggestion that if (say) 5 people all pick "h3lloth3r3" as their password then this is automatically added to the banned list?
Or are they also suggesting that if a dictionary based attack occurs and 5 people all get "iamgod" as a password tried then it too will get added to the banned list?
The problem I can see with the former is that you could still end up with a deeply insecure password, it's just that no-one else has come up with it. The problem with the latter is that anyone who previously had that password now has to have their account locked until they change it to something more secure.
So Apple are going to give away a free bumper to owners of the iPhone 4 until September.
After then... what? There are only three possible options:
They'll continue to offer a free bumper to new customers whilst pissing off the third party case manufacturers - and be stuck in the position of having to continue to admit that the device design is flawed unless you use a bumper.
They'll stop the offer - and be stuck in the position of having to admit to people that if they want to avoid signal issues, then not only must they buy the phone but them immediately buy a £25 bumper to get the best out it.
They'll issue some sort of fix (probably by coating the antenna) and roll it into the next batch of devices - meaning that they can stop the free bumper deal and get back to selling it for a 12x mark-up as an accessory.
Option (3) seems to be the only viable possibility to me.
So, this is a problem if you've left your router with its default admin password, or there's a vulnerability in the firmware which can be exploited. The same as every other possible exploit of consumer^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hall hardware.
All the routers I've seen in the past couple of years have a sticker at the bottom which displays the default password. It's usually a randomly generated set of letters and numbers - such as "rt2ey67dh6qg8".
In other words, a router left with the default admin password is pretty secure - unless of course the hacker gets direct access to the hardware.
Whilst I appreciate you're trying to be funny/smart, the 6ft drop test is a very real test performed by all the major manufacturers (apart from Apple, so it would seem).
The goal is to ensure that, from a drop of 6ft onto a hard surface, that the screen does not shatter, no pieces of the phone are dislodged (eg. the keyboard doesn't fall off), the battery panel doesn't come away and the battery is still held in firmly. Oh and that the phone powers back up and again continues to work.
Now naturally some of these don't apply to the iPhone (battery falling out for starters) but the thinking is that if it can survive a 6ft drop onto a solid floor then every-day knocks and bumps at a lesser height and onto softer ground - for example, but not limited to (which is what all the Anonymous posters seemed to miss), falling out of trousers, being knocked off a table, accidentally being dropped whilst in someone's hand and so on and so on - will do little to no damage to the phone.
I'm interested to see if they say anything about the glass on the new iPhone.
From what I've seen so far, the device cannot withstand a simple 6ft drop test onto a concrete floor. This is a fairly standard test, isn't particularly hard and ensures that the phone survives the daily wear and tear of being out and about all the time.
To be clear, we're not talking about throwing it onto the floor here, but if it slips out of your pockets and bounces on the floor then there is a (not unrealistic) expectation that it'll survive - especially when you've paid several hundred UK pounds on a phone and tied yourself into an 18 month contract.
I appreciate my data is anecdotal at best, but I've seen quite a few people now with shattered fronts or backs caused by a simple drop onto the floor.
Thanks for the information. I've tried pressing and holding in the GMail app when viewing a message and no pop-up window appears. Same with text messaging.
I don't have the MSDN page to hand but it sounds like some of HTC's "enhancements" to Android have been anything but:(
Slashdot Mirror
If you really believe that this product is of absolutely no interest to people who want to run backups of games they have borrowed from 30,000 friends off the internet for an indefinite trial, then I have a bridge to sell you.
I'm not sure why people get so het up about Facebook. Prior to that, you couldn't stop people posting them on Flickr, news groups or even their own website.
In short, you haven't been able to prevent people from putting up pictures of you for well over 10 years.
The only difference has been that people previously needed some technical expertise to do it - now almost anyone who can register on a website can.
To get é, press "Alt Gr" and then "e".
On the basis that I've seen an iPhone 4 get dropped onto a kitchen tile from a height of about 3ft and the back glass shatter like a spiders web, I'd have to say no, they don't use it.
Either that or they do and it isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be.
Ack, just remembered that they're doing this by locking down the software. Hmmm, in which case I'm not really sure how excited a handset manufacturer is going to be about an OS they cannot "enhance" to provide extra value.
I'm sure that given a choice, HTC would rather they sold more Android phones with the HTC experience than Windows 7 phones with the Microsoft experience - even if the latter turned out to be better.
It seems to be right now but, at the same time, I cannot help thinking that they are heading down the same line as Windows Mobile. You've got handset manufacturers taking the stock Android UI and then pimping it to make it "better". As a result we have HTC's Sense (which I've complained about before as they've added swathes of new bugs not on other Android devices - not to mention a completely incompatible new widget format), Motorola's MotoBlur which is (unsurprisingly) ugly and Samsung throwing their own (poor) UI on top too.
Next you have the network operators adding cruft, turning off functionality and loading applications onto the device which cannot be unloaded.
So now you're in a situation where when the next version of Android comes up, everyone has to sit around and wait for each of the vendors to update their phone and then the carriers to accredit it. You may dislike the Apple eco-system, but when an iOS update comes up, everyone generally gets it at the same time. With Android, Samsung owners may get it before HTC owners who get it before HTC owners on Network X because they haven't accredited it in time.
Finally, you've got people who think that the HTC experience is Android. They don't realise that it's actually a lot of HTC's pimping. I see the press articles in our papers talking about "Google launching a new phone" or "Microsoft launching a new phone" only to find it's actually HTC.
Palm was the phone that sat in the middle. Slick UI, no handset manufacturer cruft added, no operator interference and when the updates came everyone got them and yet you could still install applications on them that neither the operator or Palm approved of. The problem was that the hardware sucked and the world is moving away from smart-phones with a physical keyboard (despite how much people on /. prefer them). If HP have any sense, they'll kill the physical keyboard, optimise the software and stick it on some beautiful hardware that shows it off to the fullest.
I agree that Microsoft should make a play for this arena. If they don't then they are going to have to come up with a way to prevent others from adding their own "value" and ensure that their product updates are frequent and available to all in a timely fashion.
They've seen how Apple operate and don't have any qualms about copying - so why not take the best bits and leave the rest?
My previous company rolled out Office 2007 to all users over a period of a week. Little to no notice and no training. People complained about it for about a week and now they're perfectly happy using it. Most don't want to go back.
My parents moved to Office 2007 about a month ago. Apart from not being able to find the print button (I'd forgotten to tell them that the orb was clickable) they're doing just fine at the age of 65. Total training time, 5 minutes.
I have no doubts that (in some cases) training would be required and that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but I can't help feeling that we might be blowing this whole "it'll cost a fortune in time and effort to retrain people!" out of proportion a little.
I added an update here which, I think, explains the issue. In short it looks like Motorola haven't mucked up the SMS and dialer application!
From my, somewhat limited, research, it looks to be an issue with HTC's modifications to the Android user interface. Essentially they've modified the SMS and dialer application and forgotten cut/copy/paste. The lack of same functionality within the Gmail app appears to be universal to all Android devices though.
Whilst the "copy a number via SMS and then call it" issue isn't Google's fault, the problem is that a lot of people think that HTC's modification are indicative of the whole Android experience.
Totally agree and that sort of thing happens all the time.
Having said that, most companies I know prefer that an employees primary phone is one of their own. Quite often it's one that is incomplete and not yet released because it's a good way to weed out bugs - and employees generally love getting shiny new toys that no-one else has.
For years my primary phone was my next product. As soon as it was launched, I changed my phone. My friends always found it amusing that I didn't like having a phone that everyone else had.
To be honest, it depends on the company and how good the Product Manager is.
I've Product Managed a number of mobile phones in my time and we handed out large number of testing samples to anyone in the company who was prepared to swap their existing device (for a period of time). We then took every single persons feedback, went through it line by line and determined what to do with each one. That was a hell of a lot of work.
Some of the responses were clearly dumb ("This phone does not lock like a Nokia", well duh, it's not a Nokia), some were completely impossible to implement due to technical reasons or timescales but others were really insightful and accurately reflected the way people use their phone.
In addition, I used to seek information from key bloggers and maintainers and members of major websites dedicated to mobile phones.
To be fair, this was over 5 years ago and the mobile space has changed quite a bit since then.
Agreed. I see no reason why a company cannot put out a public bug tracker and feature suggestion website that allows people to register, post things up and vote on them. Google has something like that now although I have no idea how much they actually look at it.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you.
What I find so bizarre is that despite these glaring flaws and omissions, websites that review the products don't call it out on that failing and still give it a glowing (often maxium 5* or equivalent) review.
The first three sites from this list are classic examples.
Whilst I agree with everything you say, for some bizzare reason lack of cut and paste doesn't seem to be as much of a deal breaker as we make out. It's implementation within the HTC Desire is a complete and utter disaster (tapping and holding can do at least 3 different possible things) and there is no cut and paste within the dedicated Gmail application and SMS.
For hilarity, text "the number is 07921 123456 bye" to someone with an HTC Desire and challenge them to call the number without resorting to memorising it or writing it down somewhere. Excluding the fact that you cannot copy the number, even if you could there is no way to paste it into the dialer.
Now I, like you, think this is an absolute deal-breaker and a shocking oversight (especially considering everyone else has managed cut and paste for years - even Apple has in the last two) yet the device still got rave reviews despite these fundamental flaws.
I'm sorry but this is a stupid statement and a stupid article. Apple gives a large number of it's employees an iPhone and Google gives a large number of its an Android phone. It's call "eating your own dog food".
In addition they get a friendly pool of testers who can give them instant feedback (and probably quite detailed given that they'll naturally try to use it with the products they are managing) on the devices in real world situations (such as bugs, issues, integration with web services, exchange support) and can also simulate some scenarios (such large scale remote activation, wipe and locate) far better than a couple of devices in a lab can.
Finally, if you're a manufacturer of a product, it doesn't look very good if your employees all use your competitors does it? Whenever I've dealt with a Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Apple, HTC or LG rep I've never seen them use anything but their own phones and I'd be concerned about the statement they are making if they did.
Seems like a pretty cool idea to me. Especially in games where you get a much better experience will a full screen view (driving, exploring, platform, 3d, hell anything really)
The thought of a four player gauntlet type game where each player sees a view centred around their own player (and only the areas of the game where they have visited) would be pretty nifty and would encourage communication between players sitting on the sofa rather than having to contend with a bunch of 13 year olds shouting obscenities on Xbox Live.
I appreciate that other people wouldn't be able to watch, but then I've always found that pretty boring after a while. The fun to me has always been in the playing.
It's a shame the TV I'm about to buy isn't 3D and only 50Hz, but it'll take a few years before this matures anyway.
A loss of 90% of readership isn't an issue if you weren't getting any money out of them in the first place.
Or to put it another way, that's a bit like the local bar offering free drinks on Saturday night for the past two years and then suddenly stopping one weekend. Sure, the numbers may have gone down by 90% but at least the people there now are paying for their drink and you don't have to employ quite as many staff. Plus you could always move to a smaller building and reduce your overheads even more.
I doubt The Times will share the financials before and after the paywall went up but I'm sure it would be interesting reading. Only then will we be able to work out whether or not this was a success.
I am, by no means, an expert in any of this. Are they suggestion that if (say) 5 people all pick "h3lloth3r3" as their password then this is automatically added to the banned list?
Or are they also suggesting that if a dictionary based attack occurs and 5 people all get "iamgod" as a password tried then it too will get added to the banned list?
The problem I can see with the former is that you could still end up with a deeply insecure password, it's just that no-one else has come up with it. The problem with the latter is that anyone who previously had that password now has to have their account locked until they change it to something more secure.
Thanks for any clarifications!
So Apple are going to give away a free bumper to owners of the iPhone 4 until September.
After then ... what? There are only three possible options:
Option (3) seems to be the only viable possibility to me.
All the routers I've seen in the past couple of years have a sticker at the bottom which displays the default password. It's usually a randomly generated set of letters and numbers - such as "rt2ey67dh6qg8".
In other words, a router left with the default admin password is pretty secure - unless of course the hacker gets direct access to the hardware.
Thanks and well spotted! Unfortunately I realised I had the wrong picture just after I hit the link :(
:)
Having said that, everyone seems to hung up on equating 6ft to the height of someones trouser pockets, rather than examining the pictures
Whilst I appreciate you're trying to be funny/smart, the 6ft drop test is a very real test performed by all the major manufacturers (apart from Apple, so it would seem).
The goal is to ensure that, from a drop of 6ft onto a hard surface, that the screen does not shatter, no pieces of the phone are dislodged (eg. the keyboard doesn't fall off), the battery panel doesn't come away and the battery is still held in firmly. Oh and that the phone powers back up and again continues to work.
Now naturally some of these don't apply to the iPhone (battery falling out for starters) but the thinking is that if it can survive a 6ft drop onto a solid floor then every-day knocks and bumps at a lesser height and onto softer ground - for example, but not limited to (which is what all the Anonymous posters seemed to miss), falling out of trousers, being knocked off a table, accidentally being dropped whilst in someone's hand and so on and so on - will do little to no damage to the phone.
I'm interested to see if they say anything about the glass on the new iPhone.
From what I've seen so far, the device cannot withstand a simple 6ft drop test onto a concrete floor. This is a fairly standard test, isn't particularly hard and ensures that the phone survives the daily wear and tear of being out and about all the time.
To be clear, we're not talking about throwing it onto the floor here, but if it slips out of your pockets and bounces on the floor then there is a (not unrealistic) expectation that it'll survive - especially when you've paid several hundred UK pounds on a phone and tied yourself into an 18 month contract.
I appreciate my data is anecdotal at best, but I've seen quite a few people now with shattered fronts or backs caused by a simple drop onto the floor.
For those of you who don't like the big ugly orange button, Download Squad tells you how to change its colour or make it transparent.
True, but in the context you quote it actually means "to promote or praise energetically".
</pedantic>
Thanks for the information. I've tried pressing and holding in the GMail app when viewing a message and no pop-up window appears. Same with text messaging.
I don't have the MSDN page to hand but it sounds like some of HTC's "enhancements" to Android have been anything but :(