I agree; the Transformer Prime is an interesting example here, though, since it does have a keyboard dock accessory with integrated trackpad, extra keyboard, and USB host port, which holds the tablet itself like the screen on a laptop (hence the name "Transformer" - it's a major feature of that tablet). The hardware has the potential to be something closer to an Android netbook, although the software isn't there yet. LibreOffice is supposed to be coming to tablets, but I don't see a port of Eclipse any time soon. What with Ubuntu for Android coming out, that kind of future might not be so far away though.
I agree, it was a strange decision. 41 megapixels is a huge headline-grabber, and they use that to promote the platform they're killing off rather than the one they're trying to build up?
The analogy about what you're allowed to grow in your garden is a decent one... On the Apple side we have a controlled neighbourhood where you're required to select one of the limited number of approved layouts and plant only the kind of plants that the committee allow, ensuring that you have a nice garden but restricting your freedom to develop it in the way you like. There are no controls on Android gardens, giving potential for more creative designs and interesting gardens, but with nothing stopping you letting your garden overgrow with thorns and weeds other than your own care and attention.
Tegra 3 has 5 Cortex A9 cores, of which one is low power and used for light loads. The other 4 make up the full-power quad-core, and each core is power-gated so they're only used when required. This means that despite it having 5 cores, battery life is as good or better than the dual-core Tegra 2.
That's generally true, but it's increasingly difficult to get large performance improvements on a single core, particularly on the desktop (mobile was lagging for a long time, though it's catching up now). It's relatively easy to add extra cores, and they provide a substantial boost in performance - provided applications can make use of them, of course.
Having two cores is immediately pretty beneficial regardless of application multithreading, since it means that any background grumblings can be shunted off to a second core and don't get into contention with the foreground task. There's less case for four on mobile right now because few programs are written to use that many threads, but I'm sure we'll be moving that way eventually.
It's not as far-fetched as it sounds: the first limb reattachment was of an arm, in 1962. The patient apparently had function and sensation in the arm, and could lift 20 pounds with it.
It does seem unnecessary if it's a motorway in the middle of nowhere. But it's helpful around junctions and more built-up areas, and there can be cyclists, pedestrians and even horses on A roads.
I wish they couldn't get away with this in the UK... at least as far as advertising standards goes, "unlimited" can mean anything as long as the company can claim that the majority of users don't run into the limit, it seems.
Yep. Why spend time trying to polish your paper and get it into a top-tier journal if it means your job is on the line? Just find the least publishable unit and get it out there somewhere.
I agree, it's ridiculous hyperbole. It also declares that "OS X Lion is already the best consumer OS by far. When Mountain Lion ships, it will only increase Apple's lead. Anyone who uses a computer for both pleasure and work won't want to use anything else." Well, we've been told.
Then the actual article talks about such strange decisions as having no Save As... option in first-party applications, and justifies it because there's an improved workaround for that problem in this version.
So, isn't this rather similar to the feature that Windows has had for years that warns you about running downloaded files, except this also requires elevation to run them if they weren't signed?
True. There are some fringe uses, but mostly you're just going to be intercepting someone planning how to get to their meeting tomorrow, or looking for the nearest Starbucks. You'd have to have a target in mind before it would be worthwhile spending the computational resources.
Both platforms will run Metro applications, though, and Microsoft sees users using predominantly Metro apps as the future of Windows. Metro UI isn't an optional, Media Center-like feature on desktop x86/x64 versions of Windows 8 which is targeted primarily at ARM, or even at tablets - it's the default UI everywhere, with the traditional desktop relegated to a load-on-demand alternative. Sure, Microsoft can't kill the desktop because abolishing all backwards compatibility would be a disaster. But Metro apps are what they eventually see most users spending most of their time using, and they run on both x86 and ARM, and are distributed the same way.
So, yeah, they are different for now due to differential support for legacy/traditional applications, but Microsoft intends for there to be an equivalent experience on both platforms in the future as Metro takes over as the standard UI. I'm not so sure about their vision myself, but that seems to be the way it's going.
I agree. "Hacking", to me, implies something that's at least reasonably technically demanding. This reminds me of the "phone hacking" scandal in the UK, which was actually the "unauthorised access of voicemail because no-one had changed the default PIN" scandal - but that wasn't nearly as catchy. It seems that "hacking" now encompasses any form of unauthorised access, no matter how secure the system was or whether it was defeated by technological means or social engineering.
It's an interesting project, but I fear that its progress is too slow for it to be of any practical use. It's been under development since 1998, and is still in alpha and lacking core features. As a hobbyist project I'm sure it's great, and it's hugely ambitious, so I'm hardly surprised that progress has been slow. But I have no idea when it's going to achieve its aim of being 100% compatible with Windows, if ever.
I presume that's what they would have to do. But I don't think it would work. You can sell Kinect to people because it's an obviously novel accessory that enables the console to do brand new things. But I don't think the game-playing public are going to take kindly to having to buy some $100 box of tricks to make Battlefield 6 run when Battlefield 5 worked perfectly well before, and there would probably be a lot of unhappy customers buying games that turn out to be incompatible without an upgrade.
The only way I could see it working would be requiring that games would run on every version of the system, but that higher quality settings could be automatically applied if you had the requisite hardware upgrades. If that was the case, I doubt they'd sell enough upgrade packs to make it worthwhile, though - it would be difficult to communicate the benefit of buying the upgrades to the public. The existing console will be good enough for the majority provided it plays the games. Why are DVDs still popular when people could be buying Blu-ray discs? You need to provide something more than an incremental improvement to the same content to generate strong demand and get people to spend extra.
A single-core 1GHz Cortex A9 and 512MB RAM isn't cutting edge these days, but the price is low. I guess it's in the Kindle Fire bracket, and judging by that device's success, that might be no bad thing - if it's well-promoted and has a strong selection of software easily available. It could fall down on both of those counts, though... we'll see!
Apple provide the features that most people want, and make them easy-to-use. The iPod came out with fewer features than the competition, but most people didn't want an interface cluttered by FM radios and audio recorders and other optional features. They wanted to play music, and the iPod made it very easy to play music. Apple don't try to please everyone, but you get a long way by pleasing the majority.
The alternative strategy is to try to please everyone by offering every conceivable feature and making everything highly customisable. This is great for the minority who want the lesser-used features and want control over every aspect of the experience, and this is the route that Google take with Android. I prefer it, I have two Android devices, and I would never trade them for iOS ones. But to the average user, all this ancillary stuff is, at best, superfluous, and at worst, gets in the way. The average person wants a phone that has a button they press to get Facebook, and the iPhone OS UI is little more than a grid of buttons you press to get to stuff, compared to Android's highly customisable but undeniably more complex homescreens and widgets.
Apple innovation is focused on experience and ease-of-use, Google innovation is focused on features and engineering.
I found SpeakToIt Assistant to work fairly well - when the voice recognition worked. Maybe it was my British accent, but Google's voice recognition seems to be rather hit and miss to me.
FaceTime was one that really bugged me, yes. Suddenly, video calling was the Next Big Thing, even though it was already widely available and actually not very popular (I've had phones capable of video calling for perhaps 8 years, and I've never made or received one video call, or seen anyone doing the same).
When Apple add features, even if they're available on other platforms or are relatively minor improvements, they always dress them up as brand new and revolutionary. And, as much as it irritates me when they claim they've just invented Android's notifications system or video calling, it does work.
Yeah. I'm all for polyamorous people being able to have their relationships legally recognised, but it's not as simple as saying "ok, you can marry more than one person". It would require a substantial reworking of many laws, I'm sure.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree; the Transformer Prime is an interesting example here, though, since it does have a keyboard dock accessory with integrated trackpad, extra keyboard, and USB host port, which holds the tablet itself like the screen on a laptop (hence the name "Transformer" - it's a major feature of that tablet). The hardware has the potential to be something closer to an Android netbook, although the software isn't there yet. LibreOffice is supposed to be coming to tablets, but I don't see a port of Eclipse any time soon. What with Ubuntu for Android coming out, that kind of future might not be so far away though.
I agree, it was a strange decision. 41 megapixels is a huge headline-grabber, and they use that to promote the platform they're killing off rather than the one they're trying to build up?
The analogy about what you're allowed to grow in your garden is a decent one... On the Apple side we have a controlled neighbourhood where you're required to select one of the limited number of approved layouts and plant only the kind of plants that the committee allow, ensuring that you have a nice garden but restricting your freedom to develop it in the way you like. There are no controls on Android gardens, giving potential for more creative designs and interesting gardens, but with nothing stopping you letting your garden overgrow with thorns and weeds other than your own care and attention.
Tegra 3 has 5 Cortex A9 cores, of which one is low power and used for light loads. The other 4 make up the full-power quad-core, and each core is power-gated so they're only used when required. This means that despite it having 5 cores, battery life is as good or better than the dual-core Tegra 2.
That's generally true, but it's increasingly difficult to get large performance improvements on a single core, particularly on the desktop (mobile was lagging for a long time, though it's catching up now). It's relatively easy to add extra cores, and they provide a substantial boost in performance - provided applications can make use of them, of course.
Having two cores is immediately pretty beneficial regardless of application multithreading, since it means that any background grumblings can be shunted off to a second core and don't get into contention with the foreground task. There's less case for four on mobile right now because few programs are written to use that many threads, but I'm sure we'll be moving that way eventually.
Sounds like it would have been a better idea. It must be difficult enough to for the body to adapt to one newly-attached limb, let alone 4 at once.
Missed my link: http://www.massgeneral.org/transplant/about/newsarticle.aspx?id=3057
It's not as far-fetched as it sounds: the first limb reattachment was of an arm, in 1962. The patient apparently had function and sensation in the arm, and could lift 20 pounds with it.
I've heard of iPhone batteries causing fires, but marketing that as a feature is just ridiculous.
It does seem unnecessary if it's a motorway in the middle of nowhere. But it's helpful around junctions and more built-up areas, and there can be cyclists, pedestrians and even horses on A roads.
I wish they couldn't get away with this in the UK... at least as far as advertising standards goes, "unlimited" can mean anything as long as the company can claim that the majority of users don't run into the limit, it seems.
Yep. Why spend time trying to polish your paper and get it into a top-tier journal if it means your job is on the line? Just find the least publishable unit and get it out there somewhere.
I agree, it's ridiculous hyperbole. It also declares that "OS X Lion is already the best consumer OS by far. When Mountain Lion ships, it will only increase Apple's lead. Anyone who uses a computer for both pleasure and work won't want to use anything else." Well, we've been told.
Then the actual article talks about such strange decisions as having no Save As... option in first-party applications, and justifies it because there's an improved workaround for that problem in this version.
So, isn't this rather similar to the feature that Windows has had for years that warns you about running downloaded files, except this also requires elevation to run them if they weren't signed?
True. There are some fringe uses, but mostly you're just going to be intercepting someone planning how to get to their meeting tomorrow, or looking for the nearest Starbucks. You'd have to have a target in mind before it would be worthwhile spending the computational resources.
Both platforms will run Metro applications, though, and Microsoft sees users using predominantly Metro apps as the future of Windows. Metro UI isn't an optional, Media Center-like feature on desktop x86/x64 versions of Windows 8 which is targeted primarily at ARM, or even at tablets - it's the default UI everywhere, with the traditional desktop relegated to a load-on-demand alternative. Sure, Microsoft can't kill the desktop because abolishing all backwards compatibility would be a disaster. But Metro apps are what they eventually see most users spending most of their time using, and they run on both x86 and ARM, and are distributed the same way.
So, yeah, they are different for now due to differential support for legacy/traditional applications, but Microsoft intends for there to be an equivalent experience on both platforms in the future as Metro takes over as the standard UI. I'm not so sure about their vision myself, but that seems to be the way it's going.
That's true... and, of course, policies should prevent it being changed to 12345.
I agree. "Hacking", to me, implies something that's at least reasonably technically demanding. This reminds me of the "phone hacking" scandal in the UK, which was actually the "unauthorised access of voicemail because no-one had changed the default PIN" scandal - but that wasn't nearly as catchy. It seems that "hacking" now encompasses any form of unauthorised access, no matter how secure the system was or whether it was defeated by technological means or social engineering.
It's an interesting project, but I fear that its progress is too slow for it to be of any practical use. It's been under development since 1998, and is still in alpha and lacking core features. As a hobbyist project I'm sure it's great, and it's hugely ambitious, so I'm hardly surprised that progress has been slow. But I have no idea when it's going to achieve its aim of being 100% compatible with Windows, if ever.
I presume that's what they would have to do. But I don't think it would work. You can sell Kinect to people because it's an obviously novel accessory that enables the console to do brand new things. But I don't think the game-playing public are going to take kindly to having to buy some $100 box of tricks to make Battlefield 6 run when Battlefield 5 worked perfectly well before, and there would probably be a lot of unhappy customers buying games that turn out to be incompatible without an upgrade.
The only way I could see it working would be requiring that games would run on every version of the system, but that higher quality settings could be automatically applied if you had the requisite hardware upgrades. If that was the case, I doubt they'd sell enough upgrade packs to make it worthwhile, though - it would be difficult to communicate the benefit of buying the upgrades to the public. The existing console will be good enough for the majority provided it plays the games. Why are DVDs still popular when people could be buying Blu-ray discs? You need to provide something more than an incremental improvement to the same content to generate strong demand and get people to spend extra.
A single-core 1GHz Cortex A9 and 512MB RAM isn't cutting edge these days, but the price is low. I guess it's in the Kindle Fire bracket, and judging by that device's success, that might be no bad thing - if it's well-promoted and has a strong selection of software easily available. It could fall down on both of those counts, though... we'll see!
Apple provide the features that most people want, and make them easy-to-use. The iPod came out with fewer features than the competition, but most people didn't want an interface cluttered by FM radios and audio recorders and other optional features. They wanted to play music, and the iPod made it very easy to play music. Apple don't try to please everyone, but you get a long way by pleasing the majority.
The alternative strategy is to try to please everyone by offering every conceivable feature and making everything highly customisable. This is great for the minority who want the lesser-used features and want control over every aspect of the experience, and this is the route that Google take with Android. I prefer it, I have two Android devices, and I would never trade them for iOS ones. But to the average user, all this ancillary stuff is, at best, superfluous, and at worst, gets in the way. The average person wants a phone that has a button they press to get Facebook, and the iPhone OS UI is little more than a grid of buttons you press to get to stuff, compared to Android's highly customisable but undeniably more complex homescreens and widgets.
Apple innovation is focused on experience and ease-of-use, Google innovation is focused on features and engineering.
I found SpeakToIt Assistant to work fairly well - when the voice recognition worked. Maybe it was my British accent, but Google's voice recognition seems to be rather hit and miss to me.
FaceTime was one that really bugged me, yes. Suddenly, video calling was the Next Big Thing, even though it was already widely available and actually not very popular (I've had phones capable of video calling for perhaps 8 years, and I've never made or received one video call, or seen anyone doing the same).
When Apple add features, even if they're available on other platforms or are relatively minor improvements, they always dress them up as brand new and revolutionary. And, as much as it irritates me when they claim they've just invented Android's notifications system or video calling, it does work.
Yeah. I'm all for polyamorous people being able to have their relationships legally recognised, but it's not as simple as saying "ok, you can marry more than one person". It would require a substantial reworking of many laws, I'm sure.