He called Apple Care, a service run by a third party company on Apple's behalf and staffed by non-Apple employees who thought they were being pranked (I don;t blame them).
Apple's corporate PR number is listed on their website. He did not call that number, since they would most certainly have taken it seriously and told him to return the phone to the head office. If it was outside of office hours he can wait for them to open and then call them before flogging the phone to a tech blog.
Incidentally, it is that same tech blog who bought the phone who "say" he tried to call Apple and return it. For all we know that never happened, such is the nature of eyewitness/human testimony.
Yes, he called AppleCare, which is run by call centres (in the US) that are managed by third party companies, with staff who do not work directly for Apple. I'm not surprised they thought he was prank calling them. He knew very well that the support number is *not* going to know what to with a lost prototype (assuming they even believe him) other than "call Apple corporate" - with a specific PR office number listed right on Apple's site, which I presume he didn't since they would certainly have told him to return the phone immediately. Also, "they weren't in" is no excuse - he could call them in office hours the next day.
He did the very minimum necessary to make it look like he tried to give it back, while deliberately skirting around anyone who would tell him that in no uncertain terms. He had the 4G prototype in his hands - you *really* think he is going to hear "umm, what prototype" from the support reps and then assume "I guess Apple, a company well known for its secrecy, doesn't want the phone back" and then proceeded to sell it for $5000.
Also, the source of the "he tried to give it back, honest" is Gizmodo itself - the very people under criminal investigation and the people he sold the phone to. What do you expect them to say?
It's the calibration of the charging circuit. It's not so much "breaking in" the battery as it is calibrating the charging software/hardware to the specific cell and it takes a couple of full charge cycles to get it right.
It's common to Lithium ion/polymer batteries that have microcontrollers built in or as part of the device they power.
They weren't in a position to pick and choose - the telcos had the keys to the kingdom (customers) and Apple had an unproven, new smartphone, at a time when smartphone meant "blackberry". It's wasn't quite as bad as 6 publishers rejecting the first harry potter, but Apple's bargaining position was much weaker than it is now - hype alone is not going to sell it to the Telcos, not when they hold all the cards. That's why we ended up with the selective tethering and carrier-locked phones.
In the UK, O2 kept tethering, and you don;t need to jailbreak to use it.
They need to sell the phone, and the only way to do that (effectively) is to subsidise it with cellphone contracts - that means carrier support.
Apple has no reason to disable tethering. It gets no money or positive publicity from it. It gets no kickbacks from AT&T, it has no "pay us $ and we'll enable tethering" - at the time they negotiated the contract to get the iPhone into stores, AT&T will have stipulated the conditions, and among them would be tethering control as a decision by them. Apple's choice is "don;t sell the phone" or "look at another carrier, who is going to impose similar restrictions".
That last sentence is the crux: it's things like that that get modded flamebait. I have been having a similar discussion with someone else here on the pros and cons of Droid vs iPhone and despite holding loosely opposing views we are both getting flamebait and troll mods.
I think the bugged backup may in fact give you the partial backup, but you can then manually sync it and get a full backup done. It doesn't always stick like that, but it is very annoying.
Yes, the phone respects AT&T's contractual requirement.
If Apple had said "no, tethering will no be disabled" AT&T would have said "ok, we won't carry the iPhone".
Remember, when it was released, the iPhone was the cellphone equivalent of Harry Potter - the children's book no one would publish, until JKR finally got a limited publishing run at the 6th attempt.
Now the tables have turned, and they could say "in iPhone OS 4.0, tethering will be unrestricted" and AT&T would just have to deal with it. As a popular platform, you can be damn sure Verizon wants the iPhone now.
Someone almost always has the upper hand in these sort of things - at the time of launch, Apple needed AT&T. The fact that iPhones in non-uS countries can use tethering suggests that Apple really doesn't care one way or the other - it a feature of the phone software by default. I did not need to jailbreak mine to make it work. The decision is down to the carrier, and if there aren;t controls in place to enable/disable it, the carriers can simply refuse to carry it.
You can try and twist this around to make Apple the bad guy, but ultimately the truth is that the iPhone *can* tether, and does do so if it is enabled by the carrier it is on. It's not a lack of feature on the phone, it's a switched off feature from the carrier.
My non-jailbroken iPhone does bluetooth tethering.
Also, that long back up bug is annoying - When it gets stuck like that you can "prod" it by clicking the x in the iTunes display window and you'll see the bar suddenly fill up very quickly. I have no idea what causes it, but that always seems to fix it, and when it's stuck like that, the x doesn't cancel the sync as you would expect - it continues as normal.
(and trust me, it's not just the pro-Apple mods out in force - there has been some judicious flamebait modding of reasoned discussion on both sides of this today).
While I have an iPhone and can sympathise with many of your points, some are not accurate - you don;t have to use iTunes to sync your calendars and contacts and music and so on, there are other programs that can do it: The Missing Sync for example, on both Mac and Windows. The sync API in OS X does enable you to leave out iTunes if you wish.
Battery life is not great compared to a non-smartphone, I agree, but it did get much better after a few charge cycles. I don't think this is limited to the iPhone though - pretty much all of the large LCD touchscreen phones have this sort of issue.
The iPhone is not unique in "strongly discouraging" very large data transfers over 3G, even if you have an unlimited plan, but I admit it could be annoying if you really needed that file right then (like buying a movie on the store, or an album etc). This is a network issue - "unlimited" data, except when you actually want to use it like wifi...
Bluetooth needs fixing. I should definitely be able to file transfer with it.
In terms of compatibility with old connectors... it's a sticky one. I see it as a very similar situation to USB. You have no guarantee that connecting a new USB device (say a printer or scanner or something specific rather than a mass storage device) is going to work without needing drivers. The iPhone (and later generation iPods) have new control software that makes them especially pernickety with things like car audio - something I have run up against while researching a new HU for my car recently. The option is either to upgrade the software on the old device (the head unit expecting an old ipod) or maintain backwards compatibility if possible, or make the dock connector different.
The first one seems logical, the second one is possible, the third one would draw criticism that they were just changing the connector to force people to buy even more expensive adapters/proprietary cables. They standardised on the dock connector and have maintained it so that the bulk of third party accessories do continue to work. How outraged would be be if the iPhone 4G changed the dock connector so that none of the current third party chargers, leads, mic adaptors, cradles, docks etc no longer fitted?
As far as maintaining backwards compatibility in software, I am not sure why this is not the case - only that something big has changed and it's just not possible without an update on the now-incompatible machine. Some car radios can't charge iPod 5th gen/iPhone/iPod Touch and above, for example and you would think this is just a simple +5V across the pins in the USB connector, but I assume the issue arises from software control of the charging system.
The phone I had before my iPhone (SE K-750i) was "better" than the iPhone in some respects - battery life, external memory slot, bluetooth file transfer, and if you move the criteria like that you can define "better" any way you like. My 750i had a woeful browser, for example.
As it is, my iPhone contract is up in June and I am looking to see if I should continue it - there's no possible chance I'll be going back to the K-750i though. My current choices are Android (either on a new phone, or wait to see how the Droid-on-iPhone project pans out) or continue with the current 3G I have right now.
Perhaps they are a vocal bunch (there's no doubting that), but hyperbole to criticise them is not going to help. System 5? My goodness. I think Noah used that. System 7 might be a little close, but even then you're not looking at anything really good until OS 8 and OS 9.
Early PPC *was* better than Intel at the time, but more because x86 was burdened with legacy issues and general lack of performance - a fault that Intel quickly addressed to eliminate the gap. I'm not sure the gap was ever twice the power for the same speed, and it didn't exist for very long at any rate.
Consider also that while there are a fair few Apple fans here on slashdot that are an *enormous* number of anti-Apple zealots (in the absence of a better term) whose entire platform appears to be anything that Apple is not (ie, they are defined by their hate of Apple more than their like of an alternative). There's a lot of crossover with the anti-Google crowd, so perhaps it is more a "big business is coming to get me" mentality.
Either way, there are just as vocal opponents as fans here - you only have to look at the comments on a typical Apple article.
I also don't recall anyone (serious) demanding that anything a hypothetical grandma couldn't use as a valid use of a computer. Just because that part of the computing market exists and is being addressed by Apple doesn't negate the other areas - OS X has a strong base of people who do everything from the command line, and do pretty much anything "non-grandma-like" on OS X if you so choose, while your grandma video chats to her grandkids in the next room on the same OS. You're implying disparity where none exists - creating easier to use interfaces and apps isn't a snub to people who want to do it the old fashioned way, nor is it "dumbing down".
Is the goal of the Ubuntu community to marginalise "power Linux users" or to encourage more people who wouldn't otherwise be a target audience for Linux to have a go with it? They're not synonymous.
I'm also not sure you can claim that OSS evangelism doesn't exist - just reading over the comments on many articles here would provide examples, just like it does for Apple fanboys.
As a rule, Scientologists steer clear of Apple users - they saw Independence Day and are worried that when the spaceship finally comes to take them all off to Xenu or L Ron Hubbard's colon or whereever it is going that Jeff Goldblum will upload a virus using his trusty Apple Powerbook and cause it to crash.
Immaturity is calling your perceived opponents "babies" and calling products you don't like by deliberately derogatory terms.
The term "counterpoint upside" refers to the downsides I mentioned for each device.
Downside: made of stone, heavy Counterpoint: won't rust, sturdy
Counterpoint here is broadly a synonym, and in the phrase "counterpoint upside" it is an adjective.
The original article was written by a guy in the UK comparing the iPhone to the Desire, since his point was that (when the Incredicle is released, as he notes) it will not be available in the UK. Thus, in a comparison article, the Desire is as good as it's going to get until more release information is forthcoming - ie, that it's a fair comparison, and not a comparison of the iPhone with an "older model that will soon be upgraded").
The point of the article was a side by side of the Desire vs the iPhone, with a note to UK users that the soon-to-be-released Incredible is not coming to the UK, so is not an alternative choice that needs to be considered at this time. There's no confusion at all here.
They are clearly comparable - two groups who advocate (and in fact, vehemently argue) that their platform and way is the only way to go, and all other things should be killed with fire/destroyed/marginalised and the users of said alternates should be ridiculed/mocked/yelled/patronised etc.
It's bad from both groups, but the important point to note is that neither group entirely defines the entire "side" of that divide - to claim that Apple's fanboys are worse, and that I'm not seeing it is denying your own "side" (and I have to pseudo quote that, since it's really an artificial distinction) has extremists.
Whether there are more or worse evangelists on one side does not negate the comparison that they do exist on both sides and do not accurately reflect the views and opinions of everyone concerned.
Well, by that definition I wouldn't class you as a Linux zealot - a zealot wouldn't go near windows, and would berate his friends for using Windows. Maybe you'd install it for them, but you'd try to make them feel like they were making the biggest mistake since Yoko's friend introduced her to John.
You're clearly much more moderate than that, like the majority of Apple users I know (personal majority, perhaps not indicative of the wider audience - I just don;t know many extreme Apple zealots).
I also do Windows installs for friends, and show them Firefox if they haven't seen it before, and offer options for new computer purchases. Obviously I am going to mention Apple, but as an option, not the only game in town. Of the several people who have come to me for advice, some have gone on to purchase Apple, some have stayed on Windows but have gone for specific hardware rather than just buying the very cheapest laptop, and some have bought Apple hardware solely to run Windows on it because they liked the form factor of the Alumnium iMac but required the use of Sage and some other specific windows-only software for custom electronics that the guy supplies to industry.
I lay out the benefits and downsides of each platform, and while I haven't been able to suggest Linux to anyone yet, I have been looking at it on my old 15" PowerBook.
I am embarrassed by people at the fringes who see the world in black and white terms, that there is no alternative except WinTel/Apple/Linux/BeOS (ok, not many of those around). Most Apple users are not in that camp, but they do make the most noise.
Clearly if you ran your website from your Android phone, you could have done this on the move? The Desire does have a full install of Wordpress right, and an always-on 3G connection?;)
It's amusing that you are classing the discussions in this thread as coming from "babies" when yours is the first immature post I have come across. Everyone else has been discussing the pros and cons of the Desire vs the iPhone with relative lack of immaturity. And yes, there are clearly downsides to the iPhone, much like there are downsides to the HTC Desire, both of which have counterpoint upsides.
The trick is to find the phone where you have more "upsides" (on a person by person basis) than downsides. For some that will be iPhone, for others that will be the HTC Desire, or some other smartphone.
Anyway, I think it's time for you to do your homework, the adults are talking now.
I agree with many of your points, but Apple did not block tethering. That was a carrier decision. My iPhone (not jailbroken) does tethering on O2 with no interference from Apple. Don't blame Apple for AT&T's decision about that. There are enough valid points to criticise without resorting to something they just aren;t responsible for (unless they are to blame because of rhe exclusivity deal with AT&T, but in the respect they are no different to other cellphone providers that frequently make such carrier-exclusive deals, especially early in a phone's life).
I think his battery life will go up as he uses it more. It's a feature of these small lithium batteries that they need to bed in. It's very noticeable on the iPhone, where I was charging the phone once a day from red to doing it every couple of days without changing my usage at all. The same was true for my sister's iPhone. I'm sure the Desire is very similar once the charging system has calibrated the battery after a few cycles.
It also seems, regarding sound quality, that the Desire can have carrier-custom firmwares that affect the sound, and restoring the default HTC one improve the quality considerably. Score one for being able to modify the firmware yourself.
And while there are certainly people like that who like Apple, they are no different than Linux zealots; and would you say that either camp was indicative of the userbase of both platforms?
I can't work out if you're being sarcastic or not.
DAT dropped right off the radar, superceded by MiniDisc in the pro market. Betacam was the standard in professional video for years, and has evolved into HDCAM and continues to go on. If you watched TV in the late 80s, the 90s and all of the 2000's then you have definitely watched a *lot* of VT coming of a Betacam deck. HDV has firmly established itself in the consumer market, and you pretty much get s/pdif for free on all audio gear these days.
Hi8 had a brief time in the spotlight, but was always destined to fail since S-VHS tapes had the physical compatibility bonus going for them, where Hi8 was stuck as an incompatible tape size.
The ferry and train services out of Europe were slammed from the minute the closure was announced. They just weren't set up to handle the sudden demand. The Eurostar has been booked solid ever since, and it still booked to capacity with the backlog of passengers.
It's a great plan to take the Eurostar back - so great that everyone else had the same idea. There's a reason the British Royal Navy has been acting as a ferry service from European ports back to the UK - supply is far short of demand at the moment.
He's not talking about engine damage, although that is one problem. As well as melting in the engine and constricting the exit to the core causing compressor stalls the ash is also abrasive enough that it strips the paint off the leading surfaces of your aircraft, as happened to Speedbird 9 in Indonesia in the 80s. Not only did they have clogged engines (all four!), but their windscreen was sandblasted so it was practically opaque and impossible to use for a visual landing.
They had a tiny bit of unaffected window near the edge, and used an instrument approach to land, but any situation that is going to do that to your windscreen on a frequent basis is going to add up the repair costs quickly, even if you get past all the engine issues, you're going to need to repaint the leading edges and replace the screens frequently.
This fine ash also affects the pitot tubes, which really can throw a spanner in the works
And if your entire business folds on a single set of apps on a single platform, you reap what you sow.
If you are making money on software, you make a commercial decision based on the potential return. I'm not necessarily agreeing with Apple's decision to limit the language you can use (I think it is a little silly to be honest), but you have to work with the landscape in front of you.
MS did it with DirectX - an interface that was exclusive to Windows. If you wanted your game to work well on Windows, you used DirectX, and of course you did because of the installed base of Windows users. (and ignoring the graphics side of it, since there is obviously OpenGL, but there's more to it than just graphics - it handles controller input and so on, and it's a no brainer to use on Windows - your game will have better performance if you do use it). So now if you want a multiplatform game, you need to run two codebases.
The iPhone is a similar beast. Like it or loathe it, it has a large share of the market (large enough that writing apps for it as a mobile apps developer is a no brainer), so you work with the restrictions because the rewards are so high.
The GP was asserting that any company that devoted resources to developing for this highly lucrative market was "reckless" and should be a good indication for their stock price (I guess he assumes all companies are traded on the stock market) should go down because of it.
I am not advocating single platform development, merely the ludicrous assertion that developing apps for the iPhone was somehow a crazy business decision. Clearly the mobile market is booming right now, which is excellent - with a decent choice of competing operating systems in the iPhone OS, Android and WM. Anyone wanting to seriously make money in that area should definitely be looking at all avenues, even if it does mean your code is not quite as simple as you like - it's only natural that the competing smartphone interests will attempt to differentiate themselves. It may be a crappy move on Apple's parts, but they hold the keys to a lucrative pot of gold.
Slashdot Mirror
Where do you park your car? I need a new set of wheels.
He called Apple Care, a service run by a third party company on Apple's behalf and staffed by non-Apple employees who thought they were being pranked (I don;t blame them).
Apple's corporate PR number is listed on their website. He did not call that number, since they would most certainly have taken it seriously and told him to return the phone to the head office. If it was outside of office hours he can wait for them to open and then call them before flogging the phone to a tech blog.
Incidentally, it is that same tech blog who bought the phone who "say" he tried to call Apple and return it. For all we know that never happened, such is the nature of eyewitness/human testimony.
Yes, he called AppleCare, which is run by call centres (in the US) that are managed by third party companies, with staff who do not work directly for Apple. I'm not surprised they thought he was prank calling them. He knew very well that the support number is *not* going to know what to with a lost prototype (assuming they even believe him) other than "call Apple corporate" - with a specific PR office number listed right on Apple's site, which I presume he didn't since they would certainly have told him to return the phone immediately. Also, "they weren't in" is no excuse - he could call them in office hours the next day.
He did the very minimum necessary to make it look like he tried to give it back, while deliberately skirting around anyone who would tell him that in no uncertain terms. He had the 4G prototype in his hands - you *really* think he is going to hear "umm, what prototype" from the support reps and then assume "I guess Apple, a company well known for its secrecy, doesn't want the phone back" and then proceeded to sell it for $5000.
Also, the source of the "he tried to give it back, honest" is Gizmodo itself - the very people under criminal investigation and the people he sold the phone to. What do you expect them to say?
It's the calibration of the charging circuit. It's not so much "breaking in" the battery as it is calibrating the charging software/hardware to the specific cell and it takes a couple of full charge cycles to get it right.
It's common to Lithium ion/polymer batteries that have microcontrollers built in or as part of the device they power.
They weren't in a position to pick and choose - the telcos had the keys to the kingdom (customers) and Apple had an unproven, new smartphone, at a time when smartphone meant "blackberry". It's wasn't quite as bad as 6 publishers rejecting the first harry potter, but Apple's bargaining position was much weaker than it is now - hype alone is not going to sell it to the Telcos, not when they hold all the cards. That's why we ended up with the selective tethering and carrier-locked phones.
In the UK, O2 kept tethering, and you don;t need to jailbreak to use it.
They need to sell the phone, and the only way to do that (effectively) is to subsidise it with cellphone contracts - that means carrier support.
Apple has no reason to disable tethering. It gets no money or positive publicity from it. It gets no kickbacks from AT&T, it has no "pay us $ and we'll enable tethering" - at the time they negotiated the contract to get the iPhone into stores, AT&T will have stipulated the conditions, and among them would be tethering control as a decision by them. Apple's choice is "don;t sell the phone" or "look at another carrier, who is going to impose similar restrictions".
That last sentence is the crux: it's things like that that get modded flamebait. I have been having a similar discussion with someone else here on the pros and cons of Droid vs iPhone and despite holding loosely opposing views we are both getting flamebait and troll mods.
I think the bugged backup may in fact give you the partial backup, but you can then manually sync it and get a full backup done. It doesn't always stick like that, but it is very annoying.
Yes, the phone respects AT&T's contractual requirement.
If Apple had said "no, tethering will no be disabled" AT&T would have said "ok, we won't carry the iPhone".
Remember, when it was released, the iPhone was the cellphone equivalent of Harry Potter - the children's book no one would publish, until JKR finally got a limited publishing run at the 6th attempt.
Now the tables have turned, and they could say "in iPhone OS 4.0, tethering will be unrestricted" and AT&T would just have to deal with it. As a popular platform, you can be damn sure Verizon wants the iPhone now.
Someone almost always has the upper hand in these sort of things - at the time of launch, Apple needed AT&T. The fact that iPhones in non-uS countries can use tethering suggests that Apple really doesn't care one way or the other - it a feature of the phone software by default. I did not need to jailbreak mine to make it work. The decision is down to the carrier, and if there aren;t controls in place to enable/disable it, the carriers can simply refuse to carry it.
You can try and twist this around to make Apple the bad guy, but ultimately the truth is that the iPhone *can* tether, and does do so if it is enabled by the carrier it is on. It's not a lack of feature on the phone, it's a switched off feature from the carrier.
My non-jailbroken iPhone does bluetooth tethering.
Also, that long back up bug is annoying - When it gets stuck like that you can "prod" it by clicking the x in the iTunes display window and you'll see the bar suddenly fill up very quickly. I have no idea what causes it, but that always seems to fix it, and when it's stuck like that, the x doesn't cancel the sync as you would expect - it continues as normal.
(and trust me, it's not just the pro-Apple mods out in force - there has been some judicious flamebait modding of reasoned discussion on both sides of this today).
While I have an iPhone and can sympathise with many of your points, some are not accurate - you don;t have to use iTunes to sync your calendars and contacts and music and so on, there are other programs that can do it: The Missing Sync for example, on both Mac and Windows. The sync API in OS X does enable you to leave out iTunes if you wish.
Battery life is not great compared to a non-smartphone, I agree, but it did get much better after a few charge cycles. I don't think this is limited to the iPhone though - pretty much all of the large LCD touchscreen phones have this sort of issue.
The iPhone is not unique in "strongly discouraging" very large data transfers over 3G, even if you have an unlimited plan, but I admit it could be annoying if you really needed that file right then (like buying a movie on the store, or an album etc). This is a network issue - "unlimited" data, except when you actually want to use it like wifi...
Bluetooth needs fixing. I should definitely be able to file transfer with it.
In terms of compatibility with old connectors... it's a sticky one. I see it as a very similar situation to USB. You have no guarantee that connecting a new USB device (say a printer or scanner or something specific rather than a mass storage device) is going to work without needing drivers. The iPhone (and later generation iPods) have new control software that makes them especially pernickety with things like car audio - something I have run up against while researching a new HU for my car recently. The option is either to upgrade the software on the old device (the head unit expecting an old ipod) or maintain backwards compatibility if possible, or make the dock connector different.
The first one seems logical, the second one is possible, the third one would draw criticism that they were just changing the connector to force people to buy even more expensive adapters/proprietary cables. They standardised on the dock connector and have maintained it so that the bulk of third party accessories do continue to work. How outraged would be be if the iPhone 4G changed the dock connector so that none of the current third party chargers, leads, mic adaptors, cradles, docks etc no longer fitted?
As far as maintaining backwards compatibility in software, I am not sure why this is not the case - only that something big has changed and it's just not possible without an update on the now-incompatible machine. Some car radios can't charge iPod 5th gen/iPhone/iPod Touch and above, for example and you would think this is just a simple +5V across the pins in the USB connector, but I assume the issue arises from software control of the charging system.
The phone I had before my iPhone (SE K-750i) was "better" than the iPhone in some respects - battery life, external memory slot, bluetooth file transfer, and if you move the criteria like that you can define "better" any way you like. My 750i had a woeful browser, for example.
As it is, my iPhone contract is up in June and I am looking to see if I should continue it - there's no possible chance I'll be going back to the K-750i though. My current choices are Android (either on a new phone, or wait to see how the Droid-on-iPhone project pans out) or continue with the current 3G I have right now.
This is true, but I don't think that's true if Apple cult members - I think they're actually pretty proud to call themselves a cult.
The rest of us, not so much.
Perhaps they are a vocal bunch (there's no doubting that), but hyperbole to criticise them is not going to help. System 5? My goodness. I think Noah used that. System 7 might be a little close, but even then you're not looking at anything really good until OS 8 and OS 9.
Early PPC *was* better than Intel at the time, but more because x86 was burdened with legacy issues and general lack of performance - a fault that Intel quickly addressed to eliminate the gap. I'm not sure the gap was ever twice the power for the same speed, and it didn't exist for very long at any rate.
Consider also that while there are a fair few Apple fans here on slashdot that are an *enormous* number of anti-Apple zealots (in the absence of a better term) whose entire platform appears to be anything that Apple is not (ie, they are defined by their hate of Apple more than their like of an alternative). There's a lot of crossover with the anti-Google crowd, so perhaps it is more a "big business is coming to get me" mentality.
Either way, there are just as vocal opponents as fans here - you only have to look at the comments on a typical Apple article.
I also don't recall anyone (serious) demanding that anything a hypothetical grandma couldn't use as a valid use of a computer. Just because that part of the computing market exists and is being addressed by Apple doesn't negate the other areas - OS X has a strong base of people who do everything from the command line, and do pretty much anything "non-grandma-like" on OS X if you so choose, while your grandma video chats to her grandkids in the next room on the same OS. You're implying disparity where none exists - creating easier to use interfaces and apps isn't a snub to people who want to do it the old fashioned way, nor is it "dumbing down".
Is the goal of the Ubuntu community to marginalise "power Linux users" or to encourage more people who wouldn't otherwise be a target audience for Linux to have a go with it? They're not synonymous.
I'm also not sure you can claim that OSS evangelism doesn't exist - just reading over the comments on many articles here would provide examples, just like it does for Apple fanboys.
As a rule, Scientologists steer clear of Apple users - they saw Independence Day and are worried that when the spaceship finally comes to take them all off to Xenu or L Ron Hubbard's colon or whereever it is going that Jeff Goldblum will upload a virus using his trusty Apple Powerbook and cause it to crash.
Immaturity is calling your perceived opponents "babies" and calling products you don't like by deliberately derogatory terms.
The term "counterpoint upside" refers to the downsides I mentioned for each device.
Downside: made of stone, heavy
Counterpoint: won't rust, sturdy
Counterpoint here is broadly a synonym, and in the phrase "counterpoint upside" it is an adjective.
The original article was written by a guy in the UK comparing the iPhone to the Desire, since his point was that (when the Incredicle is released, as he notes) it will not be available in the UK. Thus, in a comparison article, the Desire is as good as it's going to get until more release information is forthcoming - ie, that it's a fair comparison, and not a comparison of the iPhone with an "older model that will soon be upgraded").
The point of the article was a side by side of the Desire vs the iPhone, with a note to UK users that the soon-to-be-released Incredible is not coming to the UK, so is not an alternative choice that needs to be considered at this time. There's no confusion at all here.
That's an enormous non-sequitur.
They are clearly comparable - two groups who advocate (and in fact, vehemently argue) that their platform and way is the only way to go, and all other things should be killed with fire/destroyed/marginalised and the users of said alternates should be ridiculed/mocked/yelled/patronised etc.
It's bad from both groups, but the important point to note is that neither group entirely defines the entire "side" of that divide - to claim that Apple's fanboys are worse, and that I'm not seeing it is denying your own "side" (and I have to pseudo quote that, since it's really an artificial distinction) has extremists.
Whether there are more or worse evangelists on one side does not negate the comparison that they do exist on both sides and do not accurately reflect the views and opinions of everyone concerned.
To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
Well, by that definition I wouldn't class you as a Linux zealot - a zealot wouldn't go near windows, and would berate his friends for using Windows. Maybe you'd install it for them, but you'd try to make them feel like they were making the biggest mistake since Yoko's friend introduced her to John.
You're clearly much more moderate than that, like the majority of Apple users I know (personal majority, perhaps not indicative of the wider audience - I just don;t know many extreme Apple zealots).
I also do Windows installs for friends, and show them Firefox if they haven't seen it before, and offer options for new computer purchases. Obviously I am going to mention Apple, but as an option, not the only game in town. Of the several people who have come to me for advice, some have gone on to purchase Apple, some have stayed on Windows but have gone for specific hardware rather than just buying the very cheapest laptop, and some have bought Apple hardware solely to run Windows on it because they liked the form factor of the Alumnium iMac but required the use of Sage and some other specific windows-only software for custom electronics that the guy supplies to industry.
I lay out the benefits and downsides of each platform, and while I haven't been able to suggest Linux to anyone yet, I have been looking at it on my old 15" PowerBook.
I am embarrassed by people at the fringes who see the world in black and white terms, that there is no alternative except WinTel/Apple/Linux/BeOS (ok, not many of those around). Most Apple users are not in that camp, but they do make the most noise.
We should meet for coffee if you're in the UK any time soon. I feel the Apple community is misrepresented by its more extreme members.
Also, is it really recruitment if you have to buy something? ;)
Clearly if you ran your website from your Android phone, you could have done this on the move? The Desire does have a full install of Wordpress right, and an always-on 3G connection? ;)
It's amusing that you are classing the discussions in this thread as coming from "babies" when yours is the first immature post I have come across. Everyone else has been discussing the pros and cons of the Desire vs the iPhone with relative lack of immaturity. And yes, there are clearly downsides to the iPhone, much like there are downsides to the HTC Desire, both of which have counterpoint upsides.
The trick is to find the phone where you have more "upsides" (on a person by person basis) than downsides. For some that will be iPhone, for others that will be the HTC Desire, or some other smartphone.
Anyway, I think it's time for you to do your homework, the adults are talking now.
I agree with many of your points, but Apple did not block tethering. That was a carrier decision. My iPhone (not jailbroken) does tethering on O2 with no interference from Apple. Don't blame Apple for AT&T's decision about that. There are enough valid points to criticise without resorting to something they just aren;t responsible for (unless they are to blame because of rhe exclusivity deal with AT&T, but in the respect they are no different to other cellphone providers that frequently make such carrier-exclusive deals, especially early in a phone's life).
I think his battery life will go up as he uses it more. It's a feature of these small lithium batteries that they need to bed in. It's very noticeable on the iPhone, where I was charging the phone once a day from red to doing it every couple of days without changing my usage at all. The same was true for my sister's iPhone. I'm sure the Desire is very similar once the charging system has calibrated the battery after a few cycles.
It also seems, regarding sound quality, that the Desire can have carrier-custom firmwares that affect the sound, and restoring the default HTC one improve the quality considerably. Score one for being able to modify the firmware yourself.
And while there are certainly people like that who like Apple, they are no different than Linux zealots; and would you say that either camp was indicative of the userbase of both platforms?
I can't work out if you're being sarcastic or not.
DAT dropped right off the radar, superceded by MiniDisc in the pro market. Betacam was the standard in professional video for years, and has evolved into HDCAM and continues to go on. If you watched TV in the late 80s, the 90s and all of the 2000's then you have definitely watched a *lot* of VT coming of a Betacam deck. HDV has firmly established itself in the consumer market, and you pretty much get s/pdif for free on all audio gear these days.
Hi8 had a brief time in the spotlight, but was always destined to fail since S-VHS tapes had the physical compatibility bonus going for them, where Hi8 was stuck as an incompatible tape size.
The ferry and train services out of Europe were slammed from the minute the closure was announced. They just weren't set up to handle the sudden demand. The Eurostar has been booked solid ever since, and it still booked to capacity with the backlog of passengers.
It's a great plan to take the Eurostar back - so great that everyone else had the same idea. There's a reason the British Royal Navy has been acting as a ferry service from European ports back to the UK - supply is far short of demand at the moment.
He's not talking about engine damage, although that is one problem. As well as melting in the engine and constricting the exit to the core causing compressor stalls the ash is also abrasive enough that it strips the paint off the leading surfaces of your aircraft, as happened to Speedbird 9 in Indonesia in the 80s. Not only did they have clogged engines (all four!), but their windscreen was sandblasted so it was practically opaque and impossible to use for a visual landing.
They had a tiny bit of unaffected window near the edge, and used an instrument approach to land, but any situation that is going to do that to your windscreen on a frequent basis is going to add up the repair costs quickly, even if you get past all the engine issues, you're going to need to repaint the leading edges and replace the screens frequently.
This fine ash also affects the pitot tubes, which really can throw a spanner in the works
And if your entire business folds on a single set of apps on a single platform, you reap what you sow.
If you are making money on software, you make a commercial decision based on the potential return. I'm not necessarily agreeing with Apple's decision to limit the language you can use (I think it is a little silly to be honest), but you have to work with the landscape in front of you.
MS did it with DirectX - an interface that was exclusive to Windows. If you wanted your game to work well on Windows, you used DirectX, and of course you did because of the installed base of Windows users. (and ignoring the graphics side of it, since there is obviously OpenGL, but there's more to it than just graphics - it handles controller input and so on, and it's a no brainer to use on Windows - your game will have better performance if you do use it). So now if you want a multiplatform game, you need to run two codebases.
The iPhone is a similar beast. Like it or loathe it, it has a large share of the market (large enough that writing apps for it as a mobile apps developer is a no brainer), so you work with the restrictions because the rewards are so high.
The GP was asserting that any company that devoted resources to developing for this highly lucrative market was "reckless" and should be a good indication for their stock price (I guess he assumes all companies are traded on the stock market) should go down because of it.
I am not advocating single platform development, merely the ludicrous assertion that developing apps for the iPhone was somehow a crazy business decision. Clearly the mobile market is booming right now, which is excellent - with a decent choice of competing operating systems in the iPhone OS, Android and WM. Anyone wanting to seriously make money in that area should definitely be looking at all avenues, even if it does mean your code is not quite as simple as you like - it's only natural that the competing smartphone interests will attempt to differentiate themselves. It may be a crappy move on Apple's parts, but they hold the keys to a lucrative pot of gold.