It is astonishing that these two devices from 2013 are still going to be supported by the latest Apple OS well into 2019. Apple hardware usually costs more than the Android competition, but iOS support for updates stretches for 6 years or more. Amazing. I have owned both of these devices and I am surprised that there are many still being used (the 5S battery died and I traded mini 2 for iPad 2017)
Wireless headphones experience is still crap. I have tried many wireless headphones, and despite paying around 150USD each time, I always ended with headphones that are less comfortable and sound worse than my wired 40 dollar Koss PortraPro or 60 dollar Sennheiser PX100-ii. Moreover, these super duper "advanced" and expensive headsets have a tendency to stop working within a year. I refuse to carry that stupid dongle. It's just another item that will get lost and it's just plain inconvenient to use.
As for Oneplus, all I can say hasta la vista. It was good while it lasted. I recall the first Oneplus One from 2014 which had flagship build and specs for just 300USD. Now that was a value. But now that Oneplus is another +500USD phone that follows the worst trends, whether in pricing, cheating in benchmarks, or deleting the headphone jack, all I can do is stop considering Oneplus for my next purchase.
I love Yggdrasil, but after 1995 it became somewhat difficult to use. Porting Linux 3.x patches to 0.95 has been notoriously troublesome and we still haven't got the Meltdown patch.
It plays Blu Ray and its hard drive can store and play MP4 (H264) and mp3 files. It runs Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime, HBO Go, and Youtube apps. Not bad for such an old device. I know a 30 dollar Roku express can do most of this better, but I still like being able to play an occasional optical disk. 802.11g wi-fi is the only disappointment as it can take a long while to transfer a media file to the disk over http.
Guess what, people get political stickers because they _want_ to make a political statement. They are aware that not everyone will agree with them. The rest of the article is pretty obvious. When you travel to say Saudi Arabia, you want to leave your "Jesus Saves" sticker.
I have to admit I haven't been very careful about the laptop stickers myself. Once I brought a laptop with Ubuntu stickers to the LISA conference. Everyone is cool with Linux I thought. Well, on my way to hotel, I was ambushed by a group of BSD fanatics, who punched me in the face and broke my laptop. Just another day at the conference I thought. Let's be honest, we all used to be kids and I used to make fun of BSD people too, but this time putting acid drops in the eyelids was going too far. No more stickers on my laptops since then.
This wasn't a densely populated residential area. If you looked at the videos, the airplane was mostly flying over the bay or very sparsely populated areas.
And what is exactly the point of 1gpbs internet for ALL? 1080p stream on Netflix needs at most 6mbps. 4K stream needs less that four times than that. So what the fuck do you need gigabit for?
You idiot, who gives a fuck about what you think is sufficient for broadband. My original post was about the problems of getting broadband in the rural USA. If you think 768kbps will do, then I guess it will do for you, if all you do is post troll posts on Slashdot. Fuck off and die.
I honestly don't know why one need to have 100Mbps down at home except for multiple 4K streams, but we all know that 4K title library is still very limited. The real problem in this country is not that urban dwellers can't get 100Mbit speed (they can, and in fact they can go up to gigabit speeds in most big cities). The problem is that getting even 25 megabit internet is still very hard in rural America.
Gosh, the carrier-branded phones are the bane of today's computing. They come pre-loaded with dozens of non-deletable apps on top of what's installed by OEM. Their update cycle is ridiculously slow because the ROM updates must go through the carrier's customizing and testing. Normally, they're bootloader locked. As result, most of those are behind the unlocked OEM phones in security patch levels. Just say no.
Your comment proves that there exist crappy cheap phones. However, the current crop of 200-300USD smartphones like Moto G6, Huawei Mate SE, Zenfones, or Nokia 6.1 do seem like a very good deal. I just bought the G6 and couldn't be happier. The performance is non an issue. Long battery life good build quality.
I think you are _almost_ right. The only issue with the crop of those smartphones from 2014 was that the fingerprint readers were not common place yet. That crop of Krait based SoCs like SD 800/801/805 was great, and even today those 4 year old SoCs would do fine as your daily driver. Perhaps they weren't ready for shooting 4k video at 60fps, but they could do everything else.
But but, the yearly release cycle is necessary to charge those ridiculous prices on the flagship products. If S8 was Samsung's top mainstream phone today, would they still charge 650USD for it? People would rightfully demand a discount for a +1 year old product. In fact the current price right now is 500USD on Samsung.com. But Samsung is able to sell the S9 for much higher price because 9 is greater than 8.
Let's assume Samsung will plan no new Galaxy phones for the next year. Then, it would clearly make sense for their competitors, like say LG or Huawei, to produce a device for the next year that one ups the current Galaxy phone by offering only a tiny bit more of storage while upgrading the SoC from Snapdragon 845 to 846. Then their marketing people will milk these features endlessly convincing people that 846 is significantly greater than 845.
On top of that, I doubt that cheap phones will catch up as fast as you wish, unless you're talking about some kind of refurbished or gray market phones. For example, most or all of the new 2018 200-300 dollar phones still use the ancient A53 ARM cores from 2015 and still haven't caught up with the performance of the 2014 flagship phones like LG2 or LG G3 that used Krait-based Snapdragon 800 SoCs. Yes, they're still fast enough to browse the web or send messages.
Keeping your music in FLAC format on a smartphone is simply a waste of very expensive storage. 320kbit mp3 will use 10 times less storage and won't make any difference to your perception of sound quality.
Gee, first you admit that this Note device is superior to your ancient S4. Then you proceed to ask why would you want to upgrade from the S4. I guess if you don't care about having a modern up to date Android version, better screen, better camera, fingerprint sensor, bigger and faster storage and memory, stateofart SoC, new large capacity battery, modern USB interface, etc etc, then you can continue using the ancient S4. At this point you don't even need to seek the Note. Even a cheap chinaphone will dominate it too.
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When will Apple switch OSX desktops and laptops to its ARM chips? I think they could give Intel a serious competition.
Indeed. God have mercy on his still tender rectum.
It is astonishing that these two devices from 2013 are still going to be supported by the latest Apple OS well into 2019. Apple hardware usually costs more than the Android competition, but iOS support for updates stretches for 6 years or more. Amazing. I have owned both of these devices and I am surprised that there are many still being used (the 5S battery died and I traded mini 2 for iPad 2017)
If Arby's is so good, then why is Conan O'Brien always making fun of it? I'll pass.
Wireless headphones experience is still crap. I have tried many wireless headphones, and despite paying around 150USD each time, I always ended with headphones that are less comfortable and sound worse than my wired 40 dollar Koss PortraPro or 60 dollar Sennheiser PX100-ii. Moreover, these super duper "advanced" and expensive headsets have a tendency to stop working within a year. I refuse to carry that stupid dongle. It's just another item that will get lost and it's just plain inconvenient to use.
As for Oneplus, all I can say hasta la vista. It was good while it lasted. I recall the first Oneplus One from 2014 which had flagship build and specs for just 300USD. Now that was a value. But now that Oneplus is another +500USD phone that follows the worst trends, whether in pricing, cheating in benchmarks, or deleting the headphone jack, all I can do is stop considering Oneplus for my next purchase.
That's the brief summary of what is happening.
While at it, we shall also adopt gender neutral modifications to our language replacing he and she with they, woman with womyn, and hymen with hymyn.
I love Yggdrasil, but after 1995 it became somewhat difficult to use. Porting Linux 3.x patches to 0.95 has been notoriously troublesome and we still haven't got the Meltdown patch.
It plays Blu Ray and its hard drive can store and play MP4 (H264) and mp3 files. It runs Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime, HBO Go, and Youtube apps. Not bad for such an old device. I know a 30 dollar Roku express can do most of this better, but I still like being able to play an occasional optical disk. 802.11g wi-fi is the only disappointment as it can take a long while to transfer a media file to the disk over http.
We cannot allow Musk to continue milking the government for his toy projects.
Join concerned citizens at http://noboring.com/
Guess what, people get political stickers because they _want_ to make a political statement. They are aware that not everyone will agree with them. The rest of the article is pretty obvious. When you travel to say Saudi Arabia, you want to leave your "Jesus Saves" sticker.
I have to admit I haven't been very careful about the laptop stickers myself. Once I brought a laptop with Ubuntu stickers to the LISA conference. Everyone is cool with Linux I thought. Well, on my way to hotel, I was ambushed by a group of BSD fanatics, who punched me in the face and broke my laptop. Just another day at the conference I thought. Let's be honest, we all used to be kids and I used to make fun of BSD people too, but this time putting acid drops in the eyelids was going too far. No more stickers on my laptops since then.
Prostitutes sue wealthy customers for the loss of virginity.
This wasn't a densely populated residential area. If you looked at the videos, the airplane was mostly flying over the bay or very sparsely populated areas.
Idiot troll. Go back to your cave.
And what is exactly the point of 1gpbs internet for ALL? 1080p stream on Netflix needs at most 6mbps. 4K stream needs less that four times than that. So what the fuck do you need gigabit for?
You idiot, who gives a fuck about what you think is sufficient for broadband. My original post was about the problems of getting broadband in the rural USA. If you think 768kbps will do, then I guess it will do for you, if all you do is post troll posts on Slashdot. Fuck off and die.
I honestly don't know why one need to have 100Mbps down at home except for multiple 4K streams, but we all know that 4K title library is still very limited. The real problem in this country is not that urban dwellers can't get 100Mbit speed (they can, and in fact they can go up to gigabit speeds in most big cities). The problem is that getting even 25 megabit internet is still very hard in rural America.
Gosh, the carrier-branded phones are the bane of today's computing. They come pre-loaded with dozens of non-deletable apps on top of what's installed by OEM. Their update cycle is ridiculously slow because the ROM updates must go through the carrier's customizing and testing. Normally, they're bootloader locked. As result, most of those are behind the unlocked OEM phones in security patch levels. Just say no.
It's not 20th century anymore. You can keep the removable battery, and the tape cassettes too.
Your comment proves that there exist crappy cheap phones. However, the current crop of 200-300USD smartphones like Moto G6, Huawei Mate SE, Zenfones, or Nokia 6.1 do seem like a very good deal. I just bought the G6 and couldn't be happier. The performance is non an issue. Long battery life good build quality.
I think you are _almost_ right. The only issue with the crop of those smartphones from 2014 was that the fingerprint readers were not common place yet. That crop of Krait based SoCs like SD 800/801/805 was great, and even today those 4 year old SoCs would do fine as your daily driver. Perhaps they weren't ready for shooting 4k video at 60fps, but they could do everything else.
But but, the yearly release cycle is necessary to charge those ridiculous prices on the flagship products. If S8 was Samsung's top mainstream phone today, would they still charge 650USD for it? People would rightfully demand a discount for a +1 year old product. In fact the current price right now is 500USD on Samsung.com. But Samsung is able to sell the S9 for much higher price because 9 is greater than 8.
Let's assume Samsung will plan no new Galaxy phones for the next year. Then, it would clearly make sense for their competitors, like say LG or Huawei, to produce a device for the next year that one ups the current Galaxy phone by offering only a tiny bit more of storage while upgrading the SoC from Snapdragon 845 to 846. Then their marketing people will milk these features endlessly convincing people that 846 is significantly greater than 845.
On top of that, I doubt that cheap phones will catch up as fast as you wish, unless you're talking about some kind of refurbished or gray market phones. For example, most or all of the new 2018 200-300 dollar phones still use the ancient A53 ARM cores from 2015 and still haven't caught up with the performance of the 2014 flagship phones like LG2 or LG G3 that used Krait-based Snapdragon 800 SoCs. Yes, they're still fast enough to browse the web or send messages.
Keeping your music in FLAC format on a smartphone is simply a waste of very expensive storage. 320kbit mp3 will use 10 times less storage and won't make any difference to your perception of sound quality.
Gee, first you admit that this Note device is superior to your ancient S4. Then you proceed to ask why would you want to upgrade from the S4. I guess if you don't care about having a modern up to date Android version, better screen, better camera, fingerprint sensor, bigger and faster storage and memory, stateofart SoC, new large capacity battery, modern USB interface, etc etc, then you can continue using the ancient S4. At this point you don't even need to seek the Note. Even a cheap chinaphone will dominate it too.