I don't want to say it's a dumb move by DropBox, because ultimately why should they - from a business point of view - care about free users? If people want to walk away instead of upgrading to the paid plans, they aren't really losing out.
But avoiding the three device limit isn't enough to get people to jump from £0 to £8/month. Certainly not if they were happy with 2GB and don't need 1TB.
If they want to retain users, with the prospect of them upgrading to the higher plans later, then they really needed to offer something at much lower cost.
Maybe £1/month for 10GB - 50GB with unlimited devices - or rather £12/year billed annually. But certainly something much cheaper than is currently on offer.
Personally, I get enough battery life out of a OnePlus 5. A little more would be nice, but it's not that important on the phone.
Of course, what helps battery life is turning off unnecessary wireless connections - like wifi, and even bluetooth when you don't need it. And they'll be delivering Android 9, which should improve matters further.
Where I do have a problem with battery life is on wireless headsets - you just can't get anything that I am comfortable with wearing that has more than 8 hours continuous battery life.
When I'm travelling long distances, I'll use *wired* headsets - in order to improve my "battery life". So removing the 3.5" jack for slightly better battery life on the phone isn't solving any problems that I have. It is simply creating one.
Having a view really depends on how important distractions and refocusing are - sometimes it is really useful to be able to look away from your work; to think and reflect on it for a while.
Light - well, quality of light certainly matters. Making sure you light that is either neither too dull nor too bright, not having problematic reflections, glare, light sources in eyesight, etc.
Whether it is natural or artificial light is far less relevant to me. I don't hate natural light, but I find that it creates more problems - different levels of brightness during the day, different positions of the sun, etc. And how you control the natural environment - shutting or opening blinds, etc. - often leads to tensions amongst workers as people are affected differently given where they are located in the office.
There isn't much point to the Kindle Voyage - it doesn't have enough advantage over the Paperwhite to justify the cost.
Simplifying the lineup makes sense - you have the basic device without a built-in light, a mid-range device with a built-in light, and a premium device with larger reading area extra features (e.g. bluetooth audio for audiobooks).
They were jerks for launching something that could never, ever be sustainable (*).
(* The only way it could ever have been sustainable is if the theaters capitulated and started working with MoviePass, and reducing the cost of tickets... dramatically.)
In theory, yes, there could be a higher environmental cost to making small deliveries. But then the delivery driver's route will depend on what else they are delivering. Marginally, there is only a small environmental cost of going from one stop to the next. Regardless of whether you've bought anything or not, there is likely to be a delivery van in your neighbourhood on any given day.
And even that cost can be reduced by the delivery firm investing in lower emission vehicles.
Compare that to the emissions and the traffic caused by people choosing to drive to their "local" stores instead.
When I install Windows, I expect it to have a web browser. I don't care if it is IE or EDGE - if I don't want to use what's provided, the first thing I do is download an alternative. But I can't do that if the operating system is crippled.
Same with Android. If I buy an Android phone, I expect it to have certain defaults, and I expect it to have the Play store. From there I can go and do whatever I want to configure it to my needs.
Yes, there are problems with limited choice - but there are also practical problems with switching between platforms.
But ultimately most people look at these type of decisions and don't see any benefit in them - if anything, they see it as something that undermines their expectations.
Or, we can say that, empirically, digital recordings provide for a better, more accurate format.
We can run around in circles saying that this sounds better than that - we have different hearing profiles, different sensitivities, so some things can sound better to one person and worse than another.
Whatever people like listening to, great. Nobody should be forced into listening to something the "correct" way.
But when they are digitally mapping the audio in order to create the vinyl, it should be pretty evident that - at a suitable resolution - it is not the digital format itself that some people object to, but the lack of "flaws" inherent in vinyl.
You could just as easily apply a (subtle) digital filter to the digital audio to create a sound that those people would find preferable.
Instead of individual countries / regional governments coming up with daft rules on how the internet should operate, how about we recognise that we should have a global body with competence in this area?
Simple - if I didn't use an RSS reader, I would rarely visit any of the sites I'm keeping track of.
Clicking through to the site when a story interests me and/or I want to comment on it, they are getting more traffic out of me using an RSS reader than if I didn't.
Backup and sync replacing Google Drive is probably fine for home users. It exists, and people can get on with it now.
But I don't use the Google Drive app for personal files. I use it for my company's G Suite set up. For which they are directing people to "Drive File Stream" - an application that doesn't exist yet (there is an early access program, with a number of restrictions).
It's decidedly premature to announce the end of the Google Drive app, when the replacement for business users isn't ready to go.
And certainly not all users are coders (depending on quite how you term "developer")
Yes, I am a developer, but amongst the activities I use GitHub for, I host a website. Not all of the contributors (who have user accounts and have submitted pull requests), are developers.
What about people just uploading data sets to GitHub for sharing?
What about people that contribute just to the artwork or documentation of a project (where those files are in GitHub)?
What about users who have an account solely to open issues in the issue tracker? Or contribute to wikis?
And then there are students, or even just hobbyist coders, never in the industry but just doing it for fun?
Saying that you can't have more users than the industry is pretty dumb, and suggests that the CEO doesn't understand his own product.
I've not looked into Jigsaw / JSR 376 in any detail, so I can't comment on it's virtues or problems.
But I wonder if the bigger picture isn't being missed here - part of the reason why other languages are taking off is a lack of progress with Java. Although, I've always seen the calls for modularity a bit misguided - the classloader provides separation within a JVM when it is required. An "interpreted" mode (e.g. watches.java files for changes, and compiles / replaces the class behind the scenes) would be a big win for developer productivity.
Strongly suspect the main reason the browser developers like Microsoft Defender as a "well behaved" AV is because it's purely a file level defence, and so doesn't interfere with the behaviour of the browser. Unlike many third party AVs, that will intercept internet traffic, looking for bad stuff before it hits your browser.
That's good from a browser point of view, because they don't have to deal with browsing problems being caused by the AV engine (for example, without whitelisting, ESET's engine will cause logins to my wireless router's web interface to break).
But it's not so good from an end user perspective, when malicious content is attacking the HTML / Javascript engines. There are trade offs to however you choose to manage your security, but I suspect for most people, actually using a good 3rd party paid-for AV is a good balance of having reasonably good protection without having to be overly pro-active in managing it.
I don't want a cheap device for the sake of having a cheap device - I'm prepared to pay a bit more for the right set of features. It needs to be the right size, it needs to have a good battery life, it needs a headphone jack...
But when you can get very capable handsets like the OnePlus 3 at a reasonable price, there is no point in paying twice as much for a Pixel or an iPhone - regardless of what features they add.
And the UK has a majority government with only a third of the votes cast, only a quarter of the total electorate.
The thing with governments, prime ministers and presidents though is that you have to have someone doing the job. There are some checks and balances to potentially limit what they can do, and you have to have another vote on them in a few years.
Leaving the EU isn't like that. Theoretically we could choose to reapply after we have left, but the terms would be different, and there is no guarantee that we would be welcomed. There is no fixed term to say we will re-evaluate it in four years, or four years after that, etc. It's not an absolutely permanent position, but it's a fundamentally more rigid.
Then again, I only bought a laptop last year, so I wasn't in the market anyway - but if I was, I wouldn't buy it.
But, as laptops usually have an average of 3 - 5 years life, then you might say up to 80% of the future market for upgrades weren't ready to buy one now anyway.
Surely that 80% should be allowed to be vocal that the changes are heading in the wrong direction, otherwise there is no chance of Apple listening to feedback in even the medium term.
I don't need a phone that can tell me when I've climbed a flight of stairs, I'm well of aware of that - especially now I can't use my noise cancelling headphones.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't want to say it's a dumb move by DropBox, because ultimately why should they - from a business point of view - care about free users? If people want to walk away instead of upgrading to the paid plans, they aren't really losing out.
But avoiding the three device limit isn't enough to get people to jump from £0 to £8/month. Certainly not if they were happy with 2GB and don't need 1TB.
If they want to retain users, with the prospect of them upgrading to the higher plans later, then they really needed to offer something at much lower cost.
Maybe £1/month for 10GB - 50GB with unlimited devices - or rather £12/year billed annually. But certainly something much cheaper than is currently on offer.
Blade Runner would be a very different movie if reCAPTCHA was used as the test.
Personally, I get enough battery life out of a OnePlus 5. A little more would be nice, but it's not that important on the phone.
Of course, what helps battery life is turning off unnecessary wireless connections - like wifi, and even bluetooth when you don't need it. And they'll be delivering Android 9, which should improve matters further.
Where I do have a problem with battery life is on wireless headsets - you just can't get anything that I am comfortable with wearing that has more than 8 hours continuous battery life.
When I'm travelling long distances, I'll use *wired* headsets - in order to improve my "battery life". So removing the 3.5" jack for slightly better battery life on the phone isn't solving any problems that I have. It is simply creating one.
Having a view really depends on how important distractions and refocusing are - sometimes it is really useful to be able to look away from your work; to think and reflect on it for a while.
Light - well, quality of light certainly matters. Making sure you light that is either neither too dull nor too bright, not having problematic reflections, glare, light sources in eyesight, etc.
Whether it is natural or artificial light is far less relevant to me. I don't hate natural light, but I find that it creates more problems - different levels of brightness during the day, different positions of the sun, etc. And how you control the natural environment - shutting or opening blinds, etc. - often leads to tensions amongst workers as people are affected differently given where they are located in the office.
There isn't much point to the Kindle Voyage - it doesn't have enough advantage over the Paperwhite to justify the cost.
Simplifying the lineup makes sense - you have the basic device without a built-in light, a mid-range device with a built-in light, and a premium device with larger reading area extra features (e.g. bluetooth audio for audiobooks).
They were jerks for launching something that could never, ever be sustainable (*).
(* The only way it could ever have been sustainable is if the theaters capitulated and started working with MoviePass, and reducing the cost of tickets... dramatically.)
In theory, yes, there could be a higher environmental cost to making small deliveries. But then the delivery driver's route will depend on what else they are delivering. Marginally, there is only a small environmental cost of going from one stop to the next. Regardless of whether you've bought anything or not, there is likely to be a delivery van in your neighbourhood on any given day.
And even that cost can be reduced by the delivery firm investing in lower emission vehicles.
Compare that to the emissions and the traffic caused by people choosing to drive to their "local" stores instead.
When I install Windows, I expect it to have a web browser. I don't care if it is IE or EDGE - if I don't want to use what's provided, the first thing I do is download an alternative. But I can't do that if the operating system is crippled.
Same with Android. If I buy an Android phone, I expect it to have certain defaults, and I expect it to have the Play store. From there I can go and do whatever I want to configure it to my needs.
Yes, there are problems with limited choice - but there are also practical problems with switching between platforms.
But ultimately most people look at these type of decisions and don't see any benefit in them - if anything, they see it as something that undermines their expectations.
C++ is a very good language. But it's not a good choice for many circumstances. Use it where it makes sense, don't use it where it doesn't.
Or, we can say that, empirically, digital recordings provide for a better, more accurate format.
We can run around in circles saying that this sounds better than that - we have different hearing profiles, different sensitivities, so some things can sound better to one person and worse than another.
Whatever people like listening to, great. Nobody should be forced into listening to something the "correct" way.
But when they are digitally mapping the audio in order to create the vinyl, it should be pretty evident that - at a suitable resolution - it is not the digital format itself that some people object to, but the lack of "flaws" inherent in vinyl.
You could just as easily apply a (subtle) digital filter to the digital audio to create a sound that those people would find preferable.
Instead of individual countries / regional governments coming up with daft rules on how the internet should operate, how about we recognise that we should have a global body with competence in this area?
Simple - if I didn't use an RSS reader, I would rarely visit any of the sites I'm keeping track of.
Clicking through to the site when a story interests me and/or I want to comment on it, they are getting more traffic out of me using an RSS reader than if I didn't.
We absolutely must end the ability of people to pretend to kill others, whilst doing nothing to stop people being able to kill each other.
... if Netflix keeps moving in the direction it's going, I won't be staying for the TV.
Backup and sync replacing Google Drive is probably fine for home users. It exists, and people can get on with it now.
But I don't use the Google Drive app for personal files. I use it for my company's G Suite set up. For which they are directing people to "Drive File Stream" - an application that doesn't exist yet (there is an early access program, with a number of restrictions).
It's decidedly premature to announce the end of the Google Drive app, when the replacement for business users isn't ready to go.
An Apple has far less ability to any fiddling with it.
It's not any less necessary than Windows - but when you do have an issue with Windows, it's often a lot easier to fix the problem.
And certainly not all users are coders (depending on quite how you term "developer")
Yes, I am a developer, but amongst the activities I use GitHub for, I host a website. Not all of the contributors (who have user accounts and have submitted pull requests), are developers.
What about people just uploading data sets to GitHub for sharing?
What about people that contribute just to the artwork or documentation of a project (where those files are in GitHub)?
What about users who have an account solely to open issues in the issue tracker? Or contribute to wikis?
And then there are students, or even just hobbyist coders, never in the industry but just doing it for fun?
Saying that you can't have more users than the industry is pretty dumb, and suggests that the CEO doesn't understand his own product.
I've not looked into Jigsaw / JSR 376 in any detail, so I can't comment on it's virtues or problems.
But I wonder if the bigger picture isn't being missed here - part of the reason why other languages are taking off is a lack of progress with Java. Although, I've always seen the calls for modularity a bit misguided - the classloader provides separation within a JVM when it is required. An "interpreted" mode (e.g. watches .java files for changes, and compiles / replaces the class behind the scenes) would be a big win for developer productivity.
Nobody cares, because the intelligence community is supposed to be able to get information that the "bad dudes" want to keep from them.
Strongly suspect the main reason the browser developers like Microsoft Defender as a "well behaved" AV is because it's purely a file level defence, and so doesn't interfere with the behaviour of the browser. Unlike many third party AVs, that will intercept internet traffic, looking for bad stuff before it hits your browser.
That's good from a browser point of view, because they don't have to deal with browsing problems being caused by the AV engine (for example, without whitelisting, ESET's engine will cause logins to my wireless router's web interface to break).
But it's not so good from an end user perspective, when malicious content is attacking the HTML / Javascript engines. There are trade offs to however you choose to manage your security, but I suspect for most people, actually using a good 3rd party paid-for AV is a good balance of having reasonably good protection without having to be overly pro-active in managing it.
I don't want a cheap device for the sake of having a cheap device - I'm prepared to pay a bit more for the right set of features. It needs to be the right size, it needs to have a good battery life, it needs a headphone jack...
But when you can get very capable handsets like the OnePlus 3 at a reasonable price, there is no point in paying twice as much for a Pixel or an iPhone - regardless of what features they add.
And the UK has a majority government with only a third of the votes cast, only a quarter of the total electorate.
The thing with governments, prime ministers and presidents though is that you have to have someone doing the job. There are some checks and balances to potentially limit what they can do, and you have to have another vote on them in a few years.
Leaving the EU isn't like that. Theoretically we could choose to reapply after we have left, but the terms would be different, and there is no guarantee that we would be welcomed. There is no fixed term to say we will re-evaluate it in four years, or four years after that, etc. It's not an absolutely permanent position, but it's a fundamentally more rigid.
I'm not going to buy it.
Then again, I only bought a laptop last year, so I wasn't in the market anyway - but if I was, I wouldn't buy it.
But, as laptops usually have an average of 3 - 5 years life, then you might say up to 80% of the future market for upgrades weren't ready to buy one now anyway.
Surely that 80% should be allowed to be vocal that the changes are heading in the wrong direction, otherwise there is no chance of Apple listening to feedback in even the medium term.
.. so, instead of carrying a few dollar bills around, you can carry a 15" MacBook Pro everywhere.
Better yet, you won't have any cash left to spend.
I don't need a phone that can tell me when I've climbed a flight of stairs, I'm well of aware of that - especially now I can't use my noise cancelling headphones.