I was curious, so I Googled this up, and got this open letter from Camera Bits, a maker of photographic workflow software. I can't vouch whether the information there is still accurate, but the claim is that iPad applications don't have direct access to the camera's memory card's filesystem, so photos must first be imported through Apple's Photo Library application; and then, the only way for a third-party app to access those photos is to use an Apple-provided API and UI widget that is not adequate for advanced users.
Good example of why the world hates a walled garden with its feet.
The android market has a very small fraction of the high end apps and games that the itunes store offers. I believe this will change in the future, but as of today its not even close.
Hmm, could that have had to do with no credible Android tablets released until the Xoom? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to foresee a repeat of the smart phone market takeover.
Honest question, I'm wondering what you feel the upcoming gingerbread tablets are lacking that makes the iPad that much better? I'm still not convinced i need.. or even want.. either, but right now if i did it would be android simply so i'm not locked into iTunes again. Hated that with my iPhone, don't want to go back.
In my opinion, iPad 2 is not a better piece of hardware than Motorola Xoom, quite the contrary. On board USB is a big deal for me. Proprietary dock is a deal breaker. Higher screen resolution, better camera, removable flash and battery are are all additional sweeteners for Xoom, and lack of the latter are again deal breakers for iPad. Knowing Xoom is readily rooted my decision is easy: as soon as the wifi-only Xoom comes out I order it. I know exactly what I'm going to do with it and it's going to be a lot of fun (hint: has to do with my shiny new Kurz PC3). I suppose the iPad could perform the task I have in mind but it would be a force fit. Why should I put up with nonsense like no removable flash and extra cables and gizmos dangling off it that get in the way and have no reason to exist? Come to think of it, without on board USB, iPad is a complete non-starter for my application, that's all there is to it.
Oh, a little anecdote, I have a friend who is a pop star in an Asian country and when we used to hang out I would usually pay more than my share of the bill. I was sworn never to reveal the dark secret: broke pop star. It seems stars do not necessarily make as much money as the industry machine would have us believe.
I live in Santa Monica and the place is crawling with celebs. I haven't recognised a single one in five years, though I have been told on a number of occasions I was rubbing shoulders with so and so or nearly bumped into such and such, or all those security people are in the store because grand high poobah is shopping at the moment. Usually I don't know who so and so or such and such is or which movies they appeared in, nor am I particularly interested in improving my knowledge in that regard. I would recognize Linus or Andrew on the other hand, provided I'm not too deep in working out some algorithm. These are the people who matter to me and as far as I am concerned, are much far important than someone famous for having been put on display.
None of these corporations is ever going to experience any serious side effect of these patent "wars."
Nonsense. A company run by lawyers is a doomed company, and that is just what the patent game does to companies. I will state the obvious: Sony is doomed. They are weakened by their console war with Microsoft and have seriously damaged their community support with various unacceptable antics. They have lost their engineering lead to the likes of Samsung and LG. They have nearly single handedly set the stage for the final act of the console story: it is now abundantly clear that console hardware cannot ever again hope to keep up with the personal computer market, just because of economies of scale. The only thing keeping the console form factor on life support is the proprietary content lock. That was greatly weakened in this generation (see all the former exclusives that went cross platform) and will be largely ineffective in the next, negating the only strong argument to buy a console. The nice, unintended effect, is that Microsoft was also greatly weakened in the skirmish. Maybe there is such a thing as karma. (Sorry, drifted a little there but it felt good.)
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, knew how to focus and disregard outdated academic status.
Sorry, you are talking about the "be there at the right time and place" lottery. You cannot count on that, far from it. On the other hand, developing an academic career and a reputation are pretty much a sure thing if you follow the advice of many of the obviously experienced posters to this article. Just don't get sucked in by success without college myth, you do not want to leave your career prospects to chance.
Very low power consumption, decent processor throughput and decent integrated GPU performance. For me its really the first and third that matter most so I am definitely in the market for designs based on this architecture.
Indeed, got me, but in no way did you contradict my point: author in fact had nothing to say about anything "inside" this stupid idea, and commented only indirectly on security. For your part, you might consider your own advice.
It isn't ActiveX that is the problem, but the fact that you are allowing any site to install and run a DLL.
Your comment should be rated -5, clueless. The problem is what the native code is able to do, which only incidentally includes loading DLL's. Hostile name code running with any privilege at all on your system is a recipe for rooting, particularly if that system is a Windows box but not only.
And to be even more fair, the word "security" does not even appear once in the article which makes the author a clueless idiot who flatters himself to believe he understands anything remotely resembling the internal details of this stupid idea.
+1, and in addition, what about the PS2 emulation that isn't? And what about the 60 meg original I have sitting around as a doorstop because I'm tired of paying Sony $150 to fix their faulty equipment then have it break again immediately?
You're sighting exceptions to the norm. sintel took over $3 million to create and didn't use open content creation until after it was released. While I'm sure more content will come about this way, it's not enough to keep an entire market segment that is swaying to mobile and dedicated devices at a rapid pace.
I am citing what will become the new norm, just as the new norm in embedded operating systems is open source Linux. Sintel was created with an open toolchain and much of the content is open, as is the end product. By the way, could you please provide a pointer to the $3 million figure. If it really was that much (which I doubt) that would just be a convincing testament to the power of the open model.
Gaming on a PC is becoming more cumbersome every day with useless DRM, and less relevant every day with half-ass console ports. The gaming industry has always been a niche market, and PC gaming is even a smaller niche. While some companies have been very successful in this market, the future of it is dead.
Insightful, but not quite right. It is true as you say that Microsoft's PC gaming hegemony has no future, however Microsoft has inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of a viable open content creation industry. See my upcoming talk at Scale 9x, and see Sintel.
If Microsoft wanted to improve the status of PC gaming, they would produce a new XBOX with an x64 processor in it.
If Microsoft truly wanted to improve the status of PC gaming it would just go away and die immediately. Of course Microsoft has no intention of doing that so its dead hand on the gaming industry will continue to hold things back for some time yet. Fortunately, there is no longer anything Microsoft can do to prevent the emergence of an independent content creation industry on platforms it does not control. See my upcoming talk at Scale 9x
Dalkvik doesn't interpret Java bytecode. It's register based which makes it more analogous to a virtual CPU than a JVM.
Bafflegab. Respectfully, please do not lecture me on interpreter design;-)
Performance isn't too bad with it
Nonsense. There is no way you can make an interpreter of any description run at more than a fraction of the speed of native code. Note that conclusions derived from false premises are likely also to be false.
That said, I think it is retrograde to compile to any native instruction set, even ARM.
You may think that but the battery in your phone will disagree.
And that is probably the only reason they were not sucked dry and spit out as an empty husk like practically every company that has made an exclusive deal with Microsoft.
A lot of people would argue.Net is a much better development environment than Qt.
Those people can argue whatever they want if they are willing to be wrong. For one thing,.Net is not a development environment, it is a managed code execution environment. For another, QT is not a development environment, it is a GUI support library. And most importantly, even if they were both development environments, which they are not, nobody except Microsoft needs a development environment or a library full of patent traps waiting to be sprung.
Absolute revisionist rubbish. So far, Google is not known for sticking its fangs into its partners and sucking them dry as is Microsoft's habit. Quite the contrary. Google has lots of partners and would whither quickly without them.
That's impossible when GUI code is normally responsible for
I understand this mentality runs counter-intuitive for the faith-based programmers, who can't comprehend profiling their code and then rewriting it to be more efficient.
Bad attitude, Mr AC. Even if the GUI is only 1% in total, that 1% tends to show up as annoying latency when you start your application that sucks the real CPU, or try to control it. And think about subtle but easily visible issues like a pointer lagging behind the control movement or sluggish scrolling.
I think QT has a place on Android. Think of all those useful Linux apps you'd like to see on your tablet for example.
Not to mention a UI without the CPU overhead of Java bytecode interpretting or Jitting. Incidentally, there is really only one target architecture for smart phones these days: ARM, with pretty much identical instruction sets. Hardware differences appear mostly at the chipset level, in other words, this is the concern of libraries not the compiler.
Slashdot Mirror
I was curious, so I Googled this up, and got this open letter from Camera Bits, a maker of photographic workflow software. I can't vouch whether the information there is still accurate, but the claim is that iPad applications don't have direct access to the camera's memory card's filesystem, so photos must first be imported through Apple's Photo Library application; and then, the only way for a third-party app to access those photos is to use an Apple-provided API and UI widget that is not adequate for advanced users.
Good example of why the world hates a walled garden with its feet.
Why are so many anti-Apple posters on Slashdot anonymous?
I am not buying anything from Apple.
Not as long as the Apple Police are breaking down the doors of journalists.
When was the last time Motorola made a decent piece of hardware it didn't abandon 6 months later?
Droid, mr Troll.
The android market has a very small fraction of the high end apps and games that the itunes store offers. I believe this will change in the future, but as of today its not even close.
Hmm, could that have had to do with no credible Android tablets released until the Xoom? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to foresee a repeat of the smart phone market takeover.
Honest question, I'm wondering what you feel the upcoming gingerbread tablets are lacking that makes the iPad that much better? I'm still not convinced i need.. or even want.. either, but right now if i did it would be android simply so i'm not locked into iTunes again. Hated that with my iPhone, don't want to go back.
In my opinion, iPad 2 is not a better piece of hardware than Motorola Xoom, quite the contrary. On board USB is a big deal for me. Proprietary dock is a deal breaker. Higher screen resolution, better camera, removable flash and battery are are all additional sweeteners for Xoom, and lack of the latter are again deal breakers for iPad. Knowing Xoom is readily rooted my decision is easy: as soon as the wifi-only Xoom comes out I order it. I know exactly what I'm going to do with it and it's going to be a lot of fun (hint: has to do with my shiny new Kurz PC3). I suppose the iPad could perform the task I have in mind but it would be a force fit. Why should I put up with nonsense like no removable flash and extra cables and gizmos dangling off it that get in the way and have no reason to exist? Come to think of it, without on board USB, iPad is a complete non-starter for my application, that's all there is to it.
Oh, a little anecdote, I have a friend who is a pop star in an Asian country and when we used to hang out I would usually pay more than my share of the bill. I was sworn never to reveal the dark secret: broke pop star. It seems stars do not necessarily make as much money as the industry machine would have us believe.
I live in Santa Monica and the place is crawling with celebs. I haven't recognised a single one in five years, though I have been told on a number of occasions I was rubbing shoulders with so and so or nearly bumped into such and such, or all those security people are in the store because grand high poobah is shopping at the moment. Usually I don't know who so and so or such and such is or which movies they appeared in, nor am I particularly interested in improving my knowledge in that regard. I would recognize Linus or Andrew on the other hand, provided I'm not too deep in working out some algorithm. These are the people who matter to me and as far as I am concerned, are much far important than someone famous for having been put on display.
None of these corporations is ever going to experience any serious side effect of these patent "wars."
Nonsense. A company run by lawyers is a doomed company, and that is just what the patent game does to companies. I will state the obvious: Sony is doomed. They are weakened by their console war with Microsoft and have seriously damaged their community support with various unacceptable antics. They have lost their engineering lead to the likes of Samsung and LG. They have nearly single handedly set the stage for the final act of the console story: it is now abundantly clear that console hardware cannot ever again hope to keep up with the personal computer market, just because of economies of scale. The only thing keeping the console form factor on life support is the proprietary content lock. That was greatly weakened in this generation (see all the former exclusives that went cross platform) and will be largely ineffective in the next, negating the only strong argument to buy a console. The nice, unintended effect, is that Microsoft was also greatly weakened in the skirmish. Maybe there is such a thing as karma. (Sorry, drifted a little there but it felt good.)
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, knew how to focus and disregard outdated academic status.
Sorry, you are talking about the "be there at the right time and place" lottery. You cannot count on that, far from it. On the other hand, developing an academic career and a reputation are pretty much a sure thing if you follow the advice of many of the obviously experienced posters to this article. Just don't get sucked in by success without college myth, you do not want to leave your career prospects to chance.
Very low power consumption, decent processor throughput and decent integrated GPU performance. For me its really the first and third that matter most so I am definitely in the market for designs based on this architecture.
Indeed, got me, but in no way did you contradict my point: author in fact had nothing to say about anything "inside" this stupid idea, and commented only indirectly on security. For your part, you might consider your own advice.
It isn't ActiveX that is the problem, but the fact that you are allowing any site to install and run a DLL.
Your comment should be rated -5, clueless. The problem is what the native code is able to do, which only incidentally includes loading DLL's. Hostile name code running with any privilege at all on your system is a recipe for rooting, particularly if that system is a Windows box but not only.
And to be even more fair, the word "security" does not even appear once in the article which makes the author a clueless idiot who flatters himself to believe he understands anything remotely resembling the internal details of this stupid idea.
+1, and in addition, what about the PS2 emulation that isn't? And what about the 60 meg original I have sitting around as a doorstop because I'm tired of paying Sony $150 to fix their faulty equipment then have it break again immediately?
You're sighting exceptions to the norm. sintel took over $3 million to create and didn't use open content creation until after it was released. While I'm sure more content will come about this way, it's not enough to keep an entire market segment that is swaying to mobile and dedicated devices at a rapid pace.
I am citing what will become the new norm, just as the new norm in embedded operating systems is open source Linux. Sintel was created with an open toolchain and much of the content is open, as is the end product. By the way, could you please provide a pointer to the $3 million figure. If it really was that much (which I doubt) that would just be a convincing testament to the power of the open model.
Gaming on a PC is becoming more cumbersome every day with useless DRM, and less relevant every day with half-ass console ports. The gaming industry has always been a niche market, and PC gaming is even a smaller niche. While some companies have been very successful in this market, the future of it is dead.
Insightful, but not quite right. It is true as you say that Microsoft's PC gaming hegemony has no future, however Microsoft has inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of a viable open content creation industry. See my upcoming talk at Scale 9x, and see Sintel.
If Microsoft wanted to improve the status of PC gaming, they would produce a new XBOX with an x64 processor in it.
If Microsoft truly wanted to improve the status of PC gaming it would just go away and die immediately. Of course Microsoft has no intention of doing that so its dead hand on the gaming industry will continue to hold things back for some time yet. Fortunately, there is no longer anything Microsoft can do to prevent the emergence of an independent content creation industry on platforms it does not control. See my upcoming talk at Scale 9x
Dalkvik doesn't interpret Java bytecode. It's register based which makes it more analogous to a virtual CPU than a JVM.
Bafflegab. Respectfully, please do not lecture me on interpreter design ;-)
Performance isn't too bad with it
Nonsense. There is no way you can make an interpreter of any description run at more than a fraction of the speed of native code. Note that conclusions derived from false premises are likely also to be false.
That said, I think it is retrograde to compile to any native instruction set, even ARM.
You may think that but the battery in your phone will disagree.
HTC's deals with Microsoft were non-exclusive.
And that is probably the only reason they were not sucked dry and spit out as an empty husk like practically every company that has made an exclusive deal with Microsoft.
A lot of people would argue .Net is a much better development environment than Qt.
Those people can argue whatever they want if they are willing to be wrong. For one thing, .Net is not a development environment, it is a managed code execution environment. For another, QT is not a development environment, it is a GUI support library. And most importantly, even if they were both development environments, which they are not, nobody except Microsoft needs a development environment or a library full of patent traps waiting to be sprung.
Partnering with Google would have killed Nokia
Absolute revisionist rubbish. So far, Google is not known for sticking its fangs into its partners and sucking them dry as is Microsoft's habit. Quite the contrary. Google has lots of partners and would whither quickly without them.
Qt and C++ were great in 1995. Last time I checked, it's not 1995 anymore.
If you think that either QT or C++ are irrelevant in 2012 then you are uninformed, delusional or both.
That will never happen, Google loves Java and Python (both are stupid choices if you ask me).
Obvious for the former, +1 for the latter. Guido shows an irresponsible ignorance of the importance of runtime efficiency.
That's impossible when GUI code is normally responsible for
I understand this mentality runs counter-intuitive for the faith-based programmers, who can't comprehend profiling their code and then rewriting it to be more efficient.
Bad attitude, Mr AC. Even if the GUI is only 1% in total, that 1% tends to show up as annoying latency when you start your application that sucks the real CPU, or try to control it. And think about subtle but easily visible issues like a pointer lagging behind the control movement or sluggish scrolling.
I think QT has a place on Android. Think of all those useful Linux apps you'd like to see on your tablet for example.
Not to mention a UI without the CPU overhead of Java bytecode interpretting or Jitting. Incidentally, there is really only one target architecture for smart phones these days: ARM, with pretty much identical instruction sets. Hardware differences appear mostly at the chipset level, in other words, this is the concern of libraries not the compiler.