Interesting. But still, nothing stops the carriers from making an arrangement with Samsung so that the "retail price" be $10000 outright or $300 on 2 year. Other than the carriers, only Apple and Google sell phones in Canada. So the suggested retail price could be anything. If the carriers can get their bloat on the phones, they can surely choose the suggested price too.
My bet: no contract prices will continue to go up.
I'm pretty sure its apple that sets the unsubsidized price, you know since they're the ones that make the phone and set the actual price they sll it at.
Apple sets the price in their Store. The carriers can charge whatever they like in theirs, with or without subsidy. Only as of now it made no sense to charge more than Apple. With the new code it will.
1.) Carriers must provide the option to unlock a cell phone after 3 months for subsidized phones within the contract period, or immediately if the device was purchased outright.
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced a new unlock policy. You now have the option to unlock your smartphone, provided you pay the price of the phone.
2.) Contracts are now capped at two years, and cancellation fees are limited to the amount of the subsidy.
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced that you can now get the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 for $300 on two years, or $10000 outright. That's a subsidy of $9700. You have the option to cancel anytime, provided that you refund Bell, Telus or Rogers that $9700 subsidy they were so kind to give you in the first place.
3.) Carriers can no longer charge outrageous data overage and international roaming charges. Without explicit consent from the a customer, such charges are capped at $50 and $100 per month, respectively."
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced new roaming rates of $100/bit. Use 1 bit of data and reach the cap. Service is disabled once you reach the cap. Bonus: 50% discount on national roaming.
You don't have to. You can use a software if you want to. Even if you drag and drop 100 files without "managing them", the MP3 player can list them by album, artist, and so on.
The iPod Touch itself is a great device, although you can usually get a better smartphone for the same price or a bit more (which ends up being cheaper if it saves you from buying a dumb phone).
It's the other iPods that suck and are overpriced, and they always did.
For the company itself or the shareholders, you are right, market share doesn't mean winning. However, from a custommer point of view, market share means winning, because it means that the platform is the most widely adopted and will gain support. Chances are that your company will buy Windows PCs because this platform is winning the PC war. Even if Apple made more money on OS X than Microsoft on Windows, that wouldn't change that.
No mater who makes it, in the end, you are getting more performance on Linux than on OS X. Unless you can download a better performing driver for OS X, this is an argument for using Linux.
Why do gaming console manufacturer always insist on the CPU? Nintendo used a 64 bit CPU in its Nintendo 64 and there was no benefit to anyone. The more powerful, later consoles were 32 bits. And now Microsoft choose an 8 cores CPU. Most games won't use more than 2-4 cores and the others will be useless, just like they were in the PS3.
GPU is much more important. And they seem to use a crappy one.
I paid $15 for Windows 8 and it was total crap. And now they are telling me that 8.1 is going to be better for free? You get what you pay for. I don't get that nonsense. Farewell Windows 8. I am switching to Debian 7!
A phone number is not a good identifier. A lot of people share a phone number (or have more than one), or is a land line and can't receive messages. It is also non portable from one country to another. What happens if you change your SIM card? Anyways often the phone number IS the new bit of information, when you already have the email address.
Google Talk also lets me make free international long distance phone calls, while still only has the same limitations that BBM does: it's effectively insecure and only works with other people who subscribe to it.
Not entirely true. It works with anyone with a XMPP account.
Defragmentation is only one example. Block caching has its limits. Let say one block contains a frequently used file. You delete it. The block is then re-used for a file you never use. It might stay in cache for a while just because of the statistics of the previous file.
Block-level SSD caching is a step in the right direction, but not the perfect solution. What we need is file-level SSD caching. It would be stupid to invalidate the cache after hard drive defragmentation. Also we would need it to be configurable, ie. do not cache any file that ends in.mkv,.mp3 or.iso.
Linux already had kernel-level Raid 5 and 6. It is usable with mdadm. The new feature is that BTRFS, a filesystem, now supports Raid 5 and 6 without using the software-raid layer in the kernel.
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Ok for Apple and Nexus devices. But all others don't have a "manufacturer's suggested retail price".
Which is better than nothing, but is still less than the subsidy you can get on 3 years.
Interesting.
But still, nothing stops the carriers from making an arrangement with Samsung so that the "retail price" be $10000 outright or $300 on 2 year.
Other than the carriers, only Apple and Google sell phones in Canada. So the suggested retail price could be anything. If the carriers can get their bloat on the phones, they can surely choose the suggested price too.
My bet: no contract prices will continue to go up.
I'm pretty sure its apple that sets the unsubsidized price, you know since they're the ones that make the phone and set the actual price they sll it at.
Apple sets the price in their Store. The carriers can charge whatever they like in theirs, with or without subsidy.
Only as of now it made no sense to charge more than Apple. With the new code it will.
1.) Carriers must provide the option to unlock a cell phone after 3 months for subsidized phones within the contract period, or immediately if the device was purchased outright.
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced a new unlock policy. You now have the option to unlock your smartphone, provided you pay the price of the phone.
2.) Contracts are now capped at two years, and cancellation fees are limited to the amount of the subsidy.
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced that you can now get the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 for $300 on two years, or $10000 outright. That's a subsidy of $9700.
You have the option to cancel anytime, provided that you refund Bell, Telus or Rogers that $9700 subsidy they were so kind to give you in the first place.
3.) Carriers can no longer charge outrageous data overage and international roaming charges. Without explicit consent from the a customer, such charges are capped at $50 and $100 per month, respectively."
Bell, Telus and Rogers announced new roaming rates of $100/bit. Use 1 bit of data and reach the cap. Service is disabled once you reach the cap.
Bonus: 50% discount on national roaming.
You don't have to. You can use a software if you want to.
Even if you drag and drop 100 files without "managing them", the MP3 player can list them by album, artist, and so on.
Does it actually try to play it as music?
I can't believe somebody is asking this on Slashdot. Non-music files are just ignored. But yes, you can use your MP3 player as a USB thumb drive.
You are joking right? $49 for a MP3 player without display, and only 2GB storage?
and is it easy to get music (and podcasts, and as I said, apps) onto the device and smart playlists, etc?
Almost every non-Apple music player ever made supports "drag and drop" music copying from your PC, without any crappy software required.
The iPod Touch itself is a great device, although you can usually get a better smartphone for the same price or a bit more (which ends up being cheaper if it saves you from buying a dumb phone).
It's the other iPods that suck and are overpriced, and they always did.
Electronic devices are supposed to improve over time. Twice the RAM, twice the storage, twice as fast CPU is about what we expect from Moore's law.
For the company itself or the shareholders, you are right, market share doesn't mean winning.
However, from a custommer point of view, market share means winning, because it means that the platform is the most widely adopted and will gain support.
Chances are that your company will buy Windows PCs because this platform is winning the PC war. Even if Apple made more money on OS X than Microsoft on Windows, that wouldn't change that.
No mater who makes it, in the end, you are getting more performance on Linux than on OS X. Unless you can download a better performing driver for OS X, this is an argument for using Linux.
Why do gaming console manufacturer always insist on the CPU? Nintendo used a 64 bit CPU in its Nintendo 64 and there was no benefit to anyone. The more powerful, later consoles were 32 bits.
And now Microsoft choose an 8 cores CPU. Most games won't use more than 2-4 cores and the others will be useless, just like they were in the PS3.
GPU is much more important. And they seem to use a crappy one.
Not really a problem outside of the US and Saudi Arabia.
In most countries, deniers do not have such a big influence.
I paid $15 for Windows 8 and it was total crap. And now they are telling me that 8.1 is going to be better for free?
You get what you pay for. I don't get that nonsense. Farewell Windows 8. I am switching to Debian 7!
A phone number is not a good identifier. A lot of people share a phone number (or have more than one), or is a land line and can't receive messages. It is also non portable from one country to another. What happens if you change your SIM card?
Anyways often the phone number IS the new bit of information, when you already have the email address.
Google Talk also lets me make free international long distance phone calls, while still only has the same limitations that BBM does: it's effectively insecure and only works with other people who subscribe to it.
Not entirely true. It works with anyone with a XMPP account.
You mean just like the rest of us have been doing with VoIP for years?
So what? You have to know a phone number, which is even harder to memorize.
The Desire S was not a very popular smartphone. The Galaxy S is older and supported.
Defragmentation is only one example. Block caching has its limits. Let say one block contains a frequently used file. You delete it. The block is then re-used for a file you never use. It might stay in cache for a while just because of the statistics of the previous file.
Block-level SSD caching is a step in the right direction, but not the perfect solution. What we need is file-level SSD caching. It would be stupid to invalidate the cache after hard drive defragmentation. Also we would need it to be configurable, ie. do not cache any file that ends in .mkv, .mp3 or .iso.
Linux already had kernel-level Raid 5 and 6. It is usable with mdadm. The new feature is that BTRFS, a filesystem, now supports Raid 5 and 6 without using the software-raid layer in the kernel.
I go to .ca every days. I live in Canada. I also visit a lot of .fr, .de, .se and .uk, to name a few.