kids who got their first job, have lots of income, live at home and pay little rent or expenses and have nothing but free time to spend gazing at the glass tube. they want to impress their also-same lifetyled friends so they blow money on expensive toys, like big tvs.
they also like to spend on 7.1 speaker systems and crowd their little rooms with more speakers than any sane person needs.
its about consumerism and boredom, I think.
but its a young man's game...
You know how your average well-off woman can blow hundreds of dollars at a time on shoes, clothes, purses, etc? It's not to impress guys (do straight guys usually notice a woman's shoes?), it's trying to outdo other women.
Buying tech gadgets are the guy's version of this. Before that it was cars.
You may have accidentally written "US" (instead of "Us") vs. Them, but it neatly illustrates why the party system is broken. Both sides essentially claim they represent "true" US interests and US values, everyone else is wrong. There is no middle ground, and compromise is as dirty a word and concept as communism.
That was the exact amount recorded by the phone as cell usage when I reset the stats and loaded the front page (actually, it was more; I excluded the 10 or 20 kb uploaded). If it was compressed for data transmission then that's the compressed size and the comparison with Siri still stands.
In other words, I could use Siri 6 or 7 times, and still consume less "bandwidth" (data) than loading the mobile version of Slashdot's front page (418 kB when I checked just now).
And a fair number of Samsung's smartphone sales would also be at their lower end. So we're back to square one.
A fairer study would track the support issues of specific models or price ranges, but if the call centers didn't provide that level of detail we're not going to hear about it.
The average consumer cares about cost first, followed by capabilities, including "does it run app X". I doubt market share by itself plays much of a role in their decision, although there are certainly those that absolutely refuse to buy an Apple product.
Market penetration of a "platform" is only useful for bragging rights and developers, and the latter must contend with the entire Android device spectrum and decide what to support and what not to. And for developers caring about "platform" they also get to include iOS running on iPod touches and iPads even though they obviously aren't included in mobile market numbers.
This is ridiculous. People are crying over a 5 dollar fee, which is in fact an absolute right for a bank to charge for an account [...]
For years environmental groups advocated replacing plastic grocery bags with bags you bring yourself (re-use). Few listened.
What finally kicked off the re-usable bag trend? A voluntarily (i.e. not government-mandated) fee of 5-cents per new grocery bag, at almost all grocery stores and supermarkets here. Even for grocery runs so large that it takes up the entire cart and might fill ten bags, and cost over $100, consumers were enraged that ten bags would cost an extra half-dollar, and they switched to re-usable bags en masse.
If Android fans had from the start done honest, "true comparisons" as you suggest, we wouldn't be having this little debate over apples and oranges.
When Android (software) started being counted, even on less capable devices, Apple fans wanted iPod touch numbers counted too, since it was also a measure of software. Both sides are flawed.
RIM actually has many very cheap phones, very plasticky feel too, but they are at least built to be rather durable.
Three coworkers would beg to differ. Together, they went through five Blackberries in a single year. Since getting iPhones almost two years ago, two of them haven't had a single hardware problem (the third got a BB Torch, which is admittedly doing okay too).
iPhone fans have been arguing for awhile now that low-end Android phones shouldn't be counted in marketshare comparisons with iPhones, for pretty much the same reasons you brought up (Google makes the software, over half of Android devices are cheap no-name crap, etc). As those fall on deaf ears, so too shall your complaint about the "bogus"-ness of this study.
The design flaw was never "fixed" in the original iPhone 4--ie they weren't recalled and replaced. An iOS software update apparently mitigated some of the issue, but no physical change was made until the CDMA (Verizon) iPhone came out earlier this year, and the 4S also had an improved antenna design. No notable "death grip" issues since then.
Its not really surprising that the failure rate across all devices of an OS that is available on lower-end devices as well as high-end devices would be higher than ones that are only available on high-end devices.
It would be more interesting to see a failure rate comparison that controlled for the retail price of the device at introduction.
Interesting premise, I wouldn't mind seeing that actually.
I have to say though, you brilliantly worded it in a way that excludes the current iPhone 3GS ($0 on contract) from being compared to the current slew of $0 Android phones. I don't think that's entirely fair; Apple shouldn't be penalized just because they chose not to confuse the consumer with a "new" phone that's really a re-branded older model. For a proper comparison, all phones offered at different ranges of non-promo prices for a given time period (e.g. $0, under $50, $50-$100, $100-$200, over $200, for the last year... or for the first year since introduction at that price).
A "well, duh" also goes to anyone saying Android is beating iOS (phone) in market share. Of *course* it will, when you add all the crap devices running Android on them (even cheap ones from reputable brands like LG or Samsung) to the count of "premium" Android phones too.
And yet, iPhone fans are called sheep when pointing this out. I'm wondering if Android fans taking a similar stance to your comment (I'm not assuming you are one) recognize the double-standard.
The no name Android white boxes are the problem. They fail at a much higher rate than either iDevices, BBs, or their higher quality Android cousins and drag down the averages. They're costing the carriers a lot, because they were "free" to the consumer to begin with, and they have to be replaced quite often. Frankly I'm not feeling too bad for the carriers. They use cheap ass rap to lure people in to sign contracts, it's their problem that the crap predictably breaks and costs them money to replace. A nice phone flame war is always fun, but the title and summary of this otherwise interesting article are complete flamebait.
It's not flamebait at all. Android advocates are always counting every single Android phone against the iPhone when looking at marketshare. And I would bet that cheap Android phones make up more than half of Android's mobile market share.
So if the "cheap-ass crap" phones running Android are counted against iPhone numbers, then too bad if they're also dragging the overall Android hardware failure rate up. You can't have it both ways.
I remember reading about a episode of The OC where they actually used A9.com as a verb ("I'll a9.com it" or some similar nonsense), in response to Google getting verb'ed. Even reading about it made me cringe at how pathetic the attempt was, and frankly "I'll Bing it" isn't far behind.
All the components may have existed separately, but more than a few comments said that the result after 8 hours was something they installed and deleted five minutes later because it was nowhere near usable (the authors themselves said it was alpha).
To use a car analogy, it sounds like the 8-hour solution is a cobbled-together car with parts from different manufacturers. It might technically be drivable, but the parts don't fit together right, doesn't drive well, and isn't comfortable to be in. A car geek might love it for its technical ingenuity, but ordinary people won't go near it.
The fact that half a month after this "8 hour hackathon", they're still working on it to make it close to seamless and usable as Siri, indicates it's a lot more than just glue code.
*can* take 10-15 seconds doesn't mean *will* take that long.
In 90% of my tests the response time was less than a second for on-system commands (appointments, timer, reminders, etc), and less than 2 for queries that hit Wolfram or came back with "search the web for X?". Very occasionally did I get the "thinking about it" or similar message.
I will admit to being disappointed that Siri *requires* an internet connection for everything, even on-system commands. In airplane mode or low/no net-connectivity areas, it should have the option to default to the older Voice Commands (which you get if you disable Siri).
It's evolutionary in technical terms--combining several (mostly) existing types of speech processing into a single service, albeit one that requires internet access to use. But like the iPod and original iPhone, it's not what the parts are, it's the integration into a seamless offering that may prove to be groundbreaking. It might not, in small part because most people will hesitate at dictating an appointment with their proctologist out loud (then again, youths of today have no problem blabbing out every little sordid detail of their lives to each other or over the phone while on a bus...).
I looked up Treo voice commands and one result was this November 2008 article, less than a year before basic voice commands appeared in the iPhone 3GS. My point isn't that Treo voice commands were introduced this late--according to Wikipedia Microsoft introduced the technology in 2003, so it does precede the iPhone by a few years. My point is that looking at the available Treo commands in 2008, they are mostly straightforward commands--you can ask it what appointments you already have, but couldn't add or change any by voice alone.
The takeaway from Iris seems to be, then, that despite most of Slashdot and others claiming Siri is a copy of various other voice-recognition systems, such a system/service DID NOT in fact exist prior to Apple buying and re-introducing an integrated Siri?
Why even bother with Iris, if a complete Siri-like service already existed on Android?
What Android/Winmobile/Blackberry/other system existed before that does everything Siri does?
Not quite. Apple themselves sell phones directly, through their own stores too. They may be tied to a carrier at point-of-sale (contract/subsidized), or it's unlocked (full price).
Apple also knows, with probably 99.99%+ accuracy, how many actual units were sold to end-users through carriers and resellers, because activation still requires authentication against an Apple server.
Samsung and other Android phones activate against a Google server. Google might or might not be providing specific device activation info to the manufacturers afterwards.
For units not sold in their own store, Apple can fairly accurately correlate iPhone sales to new iPhone activations against Apple's authorization servers. Barring the odd theft or units sold to companies doing teardowns and reverse-engineering, or blending them.
Android activations are apparently against Google's servers, you'd think this would include actual device info in the activations, and Google would contractually provide this info to Samsung and other Android phone vendors.
Slashdot Mirror
... I remember who the target audience is.
kids who got their first job, have lots of income, live at home and pay little rent or expenses and have nothing but free time to spend gazing at the glass tube. they want to impress their also-same lifetyled friends so they blow money on expensive toys, like big tvs.
they also like to spend on 7.1 speaker systems and crowd their little rooms with more speakers than any sane person needs.
its about consumerism and boredom, I think.
but its a young man's game...
You know how your average well-off woman can blow hundreds of dollars at a time on shoes, clothes, purses, etc? It's not to impress guys (do straight guys usually notice a woman's shoes?), it's trying to outdo other women.
Buying tech gadgets are the guy's version of this. Before that it was cars.
You may have accidentally written "US" (instead of "Us") vs. Them, but it neatly illustrates why the party system is broken. Both sides essentially claim they represent "true" US interests and US values, everyone else is wrong. There is no middle ground, and compromise is as dirty a word and concept as communism.
n/t
That was the exact amount recorded by the phone as cell usage when I reset the stats and loaded the front page (actually, it was more; I excluded the 10 or 20 kb uploaded). If it was compressed for data transmission then that's the compressed size and the comparison with Siri still stands.
Excuse me for being curious. I assumed you were a techy geek and would be interested in that kind of information just for the sake of knowing.
How much cell data do you actually consume per month? I have a 6 GB plan the last two years but have never exceeded 500 MB in a month.
(In case you're wondering, the 6GB was at a promo price that that the 500 MB plan usually goes for, so it would've been nuts not to choose it).
About 63 kB per Siri query.
In other words, I could use Siri 6 or 7 times, and still consume less "bandwidth" (data) than loading the mobile version of Slashdot's front page (418 kB when I checked just now).
And a fair number of Samsung's smartphone sales would also be at their lower end. So we're back to square one.
A fairer study would track the support issues of specific models or price ranges, but if the call centers didn't provide that level of detail we're not going to hear about it.
The average consumer cares about cost first, followed by capabilities, including "does it run app X". I doubt market share by itself plays much of a role in their decision, although there are certainly those that absolutely refuse to buy an Apple product.
Market penetration of a "platform" is only useful for bragging rights and developers, and the latter must contend with the entire Android device spectrum and decide what to support and what not to. And for developers caring about "platform" they also get to include iOS running on iPod touches and iPads even though they obviously aren't included in mobile market numbers.
Ridiculous.
This is ridiculous. People are crying over a 5 dollar fee, which is in fact an absolute right for a bank to charge for an account [...]
For years environmental groups advocated replacing plastic grocery bags with bags you bring yourself (re-use). Few listened.
What finally kicked off the re-usable bag trend? A voluntarily (i.e. not government-mandated) fee of 5-cents per new grocery bag, at almost all grocery stores and supermarkets here. Even for grocery runs so large that it takes up the entire cart and might fill ten bags, and cost over $100, consumers were enraged that ten bags would cost an extra half-dollar, and they switched to re-usable bags en masse.
If Android fans had from the start done honest, "true comparisons" as you suggest, we wouldn't be having this little debate over apples and oranges.
When Android (software) started being counted, even on less capable devices, Apple fans wanted iPod touch numbers counted too, since it was also a measure of software. Both sides are flawed.
RIM actually has many very cheap phones, very plasticky feel too, but they are at least built to be rather durable.
Three coworkers would beg to differ. Together, they went through five Blackberries in a single year. Since getting iPhones almost two years ago, two of them haven't had a single hardware problem (the third got a BB Torch, which is admittedly doing okay too).
iPhone fans have been arguing for awhile now that low-end Android phones shouldn't be counted in marketshare comparisons with iPhones, for pretty much the same reasons you brought up (Google makes the software, over half of Android devices are cheap no-name crap, etc). As those fall on deaf ears, so too shall your complaint about the "bogus"-ness of this study.
Others have already kindly researched the publisher of this study. While it was almost certainly commissioned and paid for, it was very likely not by Apple or RIM as you slyly imply, but by Android stakeholders.
The design flaw was never "fixed" in the original iPhone 4--ie they weren't recalled and replaced. An iOS software update apparently mitigated some of the issue, but no physical change was made until the CDMA (Verizon) iPhone came out earlier this year, and the 4S also had an improved antenna design. No notable "death grip" issues since then.
Its not really surprising that the failure rate across all devices of an OS that is available on lower-end devices as well as high-end devices would be higher than ones that are only available on high-end devices.
It would be more interesting to see a failure rate comparison that controlled for the retail price of the device at introduction.
Interesting premise, I wouldn't mind seeing that actually.
I have to say though, you brilliantly worded it in a way that excludes the current iPhone 3GS ($0 on contract) from being compared to the current slew of $0 Android phones. I don't think that's entirely fair; Apple shouldn't be penalized just because they chose not to confuse the consumer with a "new" phone that's really a re-branded older model. For a proper comparison, all phones offered at different ranges of non-promo prices for a given time period (e.g. $0, under $50, $50-$100, $100-$200, over $200, for the last year... or for the first year since introduction at that price).
A "well, duh" also goes to anyone saying Android is beating iOS (phone) in market share. Of *course* it will, when you add all the crap devices running Android on them (even cheap ones from reputable brands like LG or Samsung) to the count of "premium" Android phones too.
And yet, iPhone fans are called sheep when pointing this out. I'm wondering if Android fans taking a similar stance to your comment (I'm not assuming you are one) recognize the double-standard.
The no name Android white boxes are the problem. They fail at a much higher rate than either iDevices, BBs, or their higher quality Android cousins and drag down the averages. They're costing the carriers a lot, because they were "free" to the consumer to begin with, and they have to be replaced quite often. Frankly I'm not feeling too bad for the carriers. They use cheap ass rap to lure people in to sign contracts, it's their problem that the crap predictably breaks and costs them money to replace. A nice phone flame war is always fun, but the title and summary of this otherwise interesting article are complete flamebait.
It's not flamebait at all. Android advocates are always counting every single Android phone against the iPhone when looking at marketshare. And I would bet that cheap Android phones make up more than half of Android's mobile market share.
So if the "cheap-ass crap" phones running Android are counted against iPhone numbers, then too bad if they're also dragging the overall Android hardware failure rate up. You can't have it both ways.
I remember reading about a episode of The OC where they actually used A9.com as a verb ("I'll a9.com it" or some similar nonsense), in response to Google getting verb'ed. Even reading about it made me cringe at how pathetic the attempt was, and frankly "I'll Bing it" isn't far behind.
All the components may have existed separately, but more than a few comments said that the result after 8 hours was something they installed and deleted five minutes later because it was nowhere near usable (the authors themselves said it was alpha).
To use a car analogy, it sounds like the 8-hour solution is a cobbled-together car with parts from different manufacturers. It might technically be drivable, but the parts don't fit together right, doesn't drive well, and isn't comfortable to be in. A car geek might love it for its technical ingenuity, but ordinary people won't go near it.
The fact that half a month after this "8 hour hackathon", they're still working on it to make it close to seamless and usable as Siri, indicates it's a lot more than just glue code.
*can* take 10-15 seconds doesn't mean *will* take that long.
In 90% of my tests the response time was less than a second for on-system commands (appointments, timer, reminders, etc), and less than 2 for queries that hit Wolfram or came back with "search the web for X?". Very occasionally did I get the "thinking about it" or similar message.
I will admit to being disappointed that Siri *requires* an internet connection for everything, even on-system commands. In airplane mode or low/no net-connectivity areas, it should have the option to default to the older Voice Commands (which you get if you disable Siri).
So what they're admitting is, no Siri-like system existed on Android before Apple (re-)released it?
It's evolutionary in technical terms--combining several (mostly) existing types of speech processing into a single service, albeit one that requires internet access to use. But like the iPod and original iPhone, it's not what the parts are, it's the integration into a seamless offering that may prove to be groundbreaking. It might not, in small part because most people will hesitate at dictating an appointment with their proctologist out loud (then again, youths of today have no problem blabbing out every little sordid detail of their lives to each other or over the phone while on a bus...).
I looked up Treo voice commands and one result was this November 2008 article, less than a year before basic voice commands appeared in the iPhone 3GS. My point isn't that Treo voice commands were introduced this late--according to Wikipedia Microsoft introduced the technology in 2003, so it does precede the iPhone by a few years. My point is that looking at the available Treo commands in 2008, they are mostly straightforward commands--you can ask it what appointments you already have, but couldn't add or change any by voice alone.
The takeaway from Iris seems to be, then, that despite most of Slashdot and others claiming Siri is a copy of various other voice-recognition systems, such a system/service DID NOT in fact exist prior to Apple buying and re-introducing an integrated Siri?
Why even bother with Iris, if a complete Siri-like service already existed on Android?
What Android/Winmobile/Blackberry/other system existed before that does everything Siri does?
Not quite. Apple themselves sell phones directly, through their own stores too. They may be tied to a carrier at point-of-sale (contract/subsidized), or it's unlocked (full price).
Apple also knows, with probably 99.99%+ accuracy, how many actual units were sold to end-users through carriers and resellers, because activation still requires authentication against an Apple server.
Samsung and other Android phones activate against a Google server. Google might or might not be providing specific device activation info to the manufacturers afterwards.
For units not sold in their own store, Apple can fairly accurately correlate iPhone sales to new iPhone activations against Apple's authorization servers. Barring the odd theft or units sold to companies doing teardowns and reverse-engineering, or blending them.
Android activations are apparently against Google's servers, you'd think this would include actual device info in the activations, and Google would contractually provide this info to Samsung and other Android phone vendors.