> He's a subscriber, so it's not surprising he has first post. Is anything even remotely critical of Android on Slashdot these days automatically considered an Apple or MS shill?
No, not at all. For instance, I have several large beefs with Google, and I'm not happy with either MS or Apple for several reasons I'd be happy to bore you with at a later time. As geeks we have to use *some* devices to get our work done; the difference is, non-fanbois tend to judge devices on a case by case basis rather than buying entirely on logo and calling it good.
What made the thread originator (since vanished, for some reason) an Apple shill is how he went on and on for paragraphs about how wonderful Apple's philosophy is yadda yadda. People who have any interest at all in the original topic are unlikely to be interested in how Apple is so much better. It's something that's written for the benefit of the writer rather than the reader.
And just incidentally to the original poster if he's still listening, if Samsung won't play nice on Android versions, there's a simple solution: Don't buy Samsung. That's the thing about Android. When the vendor screws up, you don't have to go through the mental gymnastics to try to convince yourself that the vendor is correct and that's the way it's supposed to work and you're a better person for missing that feature. You just buy from a different vendor. Apple fanbois don't have any concept of that, and this causes a cognitive disconnect when they try to talk to the rest of us.
> There's always at least one "squad" of 4-8 MS shills operating on Slashdot.
I've noticed a couple, but they usually get shouted down fairly quickly. My impression is that the users at large just aren't buying it anymore.
> Apple doesn't need shills, they have fanboys:-P
I noticed that... It's built into the culture. Why spend extra money astroturfing when your fans will do it for you? Apple marketing has to have the most brilliant strategists on the planet.
Holo theme is not mandatory, only support for the Holo theme for devices that use the Android marketplace. So applications can be written that use the Holo theme with some confidence that they will display correctly. This is a good thing. It gives developers a minimum standard look and feel that is required to work.
> If these businesses didn't have something that required them running windows they would've already done so, no?
There were reasons why they didn't in the past, but they're doing so now, for fairly good reasons.
> [...] Linux [...]
Who said anything about Linux? You think 2012 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop? I don't.
Mind you, I'm not an Apple fan -- I was offered an Apple laptop and an iPad, and turned them down. I'm still on Windows. XP. And I don't really care to upgrade, because I need to get work done.
And yes, I know about the different platforms. I have a G4 that I used to do Photoshop on, before I migrated that task to Windows.
I'm saying what I *observe* in my own company is a migration to Mac *instead* of a migration to Windows 7. For whatever reason. But personally, (this might be a hint) I don't think the number of upgrades is nearly as important as how traumatic individual upgrades are.
Yes, of course, there's nothing stopping you from upgrading if you want to, just realize that it's a hobby, like buying and installing Crysis 2. (Although more expensive and less fun.)
If you make your living as an admin, there may even be a professional reason to upgrade, if your company is crazy enough to spend a bazillion dollars migrating off a known, working quantity, to an unknown, perhaps less working one.
...but seriously, what pet wants to be petted by a robot? If that actually worked, I could program the robot to pet the dog periodically, and just ignore it. At least, until the dog buries the pieces in the back yard.
Bingo. But there's an ugly side to trying to force migration -- you can't always control to what product businesses will migrate.
FOR INSTANCE, a year ago my company allowed employees to requisition Mac laptops instead of PCs. And now, you can just about judge how long an employee has been here by what kind of laptop they carry. Does Microsoft truly think that trying to FORCE the remaining employees off XP will somehow magically make them all move to Windows 7? Is it something in the Redmond water system that causes such questionable judgement?
What Microsoft really needs is something else to sell. Something that people actually want to buy. Instead of trying to force us away from something that works to something else that we're not sure works. In what universe is that considered a winning move?
What's keeping me on XP is that it works. As long as this is true, why would I spend the $150 to upgrade?
The purpose of the OS is to manage resources and load programs. XP does that just fine. Yes, I know Microsoft is threatening to stop supporting it, but the only time I have EVER called Microsoft Support is when "Genuine Advantage" borked on a laptop and deactivated my license.
Back in the old days, when we were on the steep end of the curve, we got the next version as soon as it came out just out of self defense, to correct all the crap code in the previous version. Windows 2000 was the first truly reliable Windows, and XP after SP1 was even better.
There is no POINT, in my estimation, to upgrading an OS just to be upgrading. If you don't have a reason, leave well enough alone. We don't do our jobs just using the OS, we do our jobs with the applications the OS loads for us. It's vital to remember that.
And so, with this philosophy, I, on my work and home PCs, and all my family, completely missed out on the debacle that is Vista. I cautiously tell friends, family and co-workers that Windows 7 is ok (but not "home basic").
All that said, I do have one (1) machine running Windows 7 64 bit, upgraded from XP when I doubled the memory to 8GB. (I could have gone XP 64 bit but it was no longer available.) The overriding reason for the upgrade was that this particular machine runs an application (there that is again) that needed more than 3.6 GB or whatever the limit was under 32 bit. That's the only reason.
So, what about device support? Yeah (sarcastically), what about it. I actually *lost* a device when I went to Windows 7. The XP drivers for my scanner would not work on the Windows 7 machine, and there were never any Windows 7 drivers written for it. I had to move the scanner to another box still running.... XP... So much for upgrades.
Otherwise, leave well enough alone and continue to get real work done, as opposed to the "meta-work" of maintaining your operating system. There may be a lot of personal satisfaction in upgrading and maintaining your OS, but it is not real work unless you are a Windows admin, and even then you're doing it so someone else can run an APPLICATION.
So.... my Windows 7 64 bit machine... When Windows 8 comes out... yeah, I'm pretty much going to ignore it. Because my stuff works just fine with Windows 7. Let someone else be unpaid QA.
There was a time when Microsoft was making money hand over fist because people would line up to get the next version as soon as it became available. Someone in Redmond *had* to realize that this was not a sustainable business model.
I've had few problems with Blackberry phones. (The original Bold had a bad mechanical design and build problems, but electronics were excellent.) The problem with Blackberry in my case was reliance on BES, and when BES is working it's excellent. When you lay off all your local BES admins and outsource to a foreign country who's never seen a Blackberry, well, it isn't pretty. This is the one and only reason I carry an Android phone, and I still miss my Blackberry.
Um, unless the special projects group finally got the bugs worked out of Microsoft Magic Wand, [1] the cost of putting in that kind of infrastructure would be prohibitive. They would have to buy an existing carrier, which is not, I think, what you meant.
[1] The biggest issue, as I recall, was how to incorporate a "Start" button.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft management has an absolute imperative to use the same code on all platforms. So the cell phone division has absolutely no choice but to run Windows. And Windows doesn't work well on a handheld device. But Windows is Microsoft's core competency and must run on all their platforms. It's a circular argument that will continue to dominate on the desktop and continue to suck everywhere else. They can't help it; it's built into the way the company does business.
In another thread, someone suggested that Microsoft could force corporate adoption of Windows phones by making the next version of Exchange work only with Windows PCs and Windows devices. Assuming that could even be done, what that means to me is that the previous version of Exchange would be the last version ever adopted by corporate. There just isn't any longer a business imperative to run Microsoft.
You're right in that they were early to market in this genre, mostly by blindly releasing devices with a "start" button and running some version of Office and Outlook and calling it good. And it wasn't. Part of being early is that when you get it wrong, you have to recoup your mindshare in some way, and I don't think Microsoft has done that in any significant way. Windows phones featured on TV shows isn't going to do it. And pulling out of CES is the consumer equivalent of making a movie and refusing to pre-screen. It bodes ill. Personally, I thought Microsoft pulled out of CES because they didn't want consumers to touch Windows 8 and find out how much it sucks. The strategy seems to be to go from very carefully controlled demos directly to sales. $$ Profit, we all live like kings.
I've designed fpgas, understand what you're talking about. It could be done, but designing a modern microprocessor is a prodigious undertaking. Although, I suppose you'd be free from compatibility issues, and could design whatever makes sense per today's level of technology. I started out thinking this was impractical, but now I'm not sure.
Yes, there is something to that also. Bloat naturally increases to fill up all available resources, so naturally as resources increase, bloat does also. Someone has already made the point that eye candy, for instance, sucks up significant resources, without which one could probably make do with much cheaper hardware, which is kind-of the point of this product. And then an iOS junky jumped in and said something to the effect that people *have* to have those visual cues in order to know how to operate the device. And those of us who have written programs on punch cards, or toggled in a boot routine on front panel switches, feel really sad for, and a little ashamed of, the current generation.
> If you REALLY need a a computer to help you plant crops, then couldn't you do far more for the same price or the same for less with a stationary computer?
I don't think you're going to get this, perhaps unless you go over there and see the conditions. Laptops and tablets, even when they're plugged in, have a natural UPS that gets you through frequent power hiccups. Desktops not only draw more power, which is a huge disadvantage in that environment, but UPS and power conditioning costs extra, and then we're back to the price thing. Moreover, in places with no power, it's more practical to charge up a device with a small, ultra cheap solar panel (dc to dc) than to put together panel, storage (external deep-cycle batteries) and inverter (dc to ac) to power a desktop unit. I've done both; can attest to this. Even in the US you can charge up a slate or laptop with a $22 panel, probably a lot cheaper over there. There are other issues, but you should at least be able to understand that one.
Parenthetically, the first time I was there, I was trying to power my company's communications gear from their diesel generators and the results weren't pretty. I put in a big industrial power conditioner between their power and the equipment. First time I'd ever seen a conditioner catch fire.
In fact, if Datawind is listening, I'm wondering if you couldn't make a "deep country" version of the slate, where the back of the slate is a solar panel. Flip over to charge.
Thanks, PopeRatzo, you saved me from having to type all of that in. Some people just don't have a clue. Or they don't want to have a clue. And that's fine, you can't force people to look up from Angry Birds, take the earbuds out, and see what's actually going on in the world. But it's kinda sad.
Um, not a troll, was sarcasm -- you're in violent agreement with original poster.
But thanks for making your points. I also started career in the late seventies, developed software on massively expensive workstations with resources much less than is currently available in an ipod nano. (I still have an original DEC VT100, and it still works.) These young earbud junkies... [1] appear to be incapable of understanding that valuable work can be done on hardware that is not the latest and greatest trendy up-to-the-minute cutting edge stuff. I think it goes back to the device itself being the thing, rather than what you can accomplish with the device.
[1] At least I assume they're young.... it'd be kinda sad and pointless if they were my age and still had that worldview.
> I'm Indian you know.. Perhaps it does not occur to you, but there are people in this country who earn less in a year than you'd pay for a decent meal at a two star restraunt.
Having worked in many parts of India, I understand, and have tried to point that out also. I personally don't understand the philosophy "well if you can't afford an ipad you don't need a tablet" and I'd like to assure you that there are many of us here who think that's an offensive, ugly-firstworlder position to take, comparable to saying "I don't understand why you're hungry. Why don't you just go out and buy some food?"
Slashdot Mirror
> He's a subscriber, so it's not surprising he has first post. Is anything even remotely critical of Android on Slashdot these days automatically considered an Apple or MS shill?
No, not at all. For instance, I have several large beefs with Google, and I'm not happy with either MS or Apple for several reasons I'd be happy to bore you with at a later time. As geeks we have to use *some* devices to get our work done; the difference is, non-fanbois tend to judge devices on a case by case basis rather than buying entirely on logo and calling it good.
What made the thread originator (since vanished, for some reason) an Apple shill is how he went on and on for paragraphs about how wonderful Apple's philosophy is yadda yadda. People who have any interest at all in the original topic are unlikely to be interested in how Apple is so much better. It's something that's written for the benefit of the writer rather than the reader.
And just incidentally to the original poster if he's still listening, if Samsung won't play nice on Android versions, there's a simple solution: Don't buy Samsung. That's the thing about Android. When the vendor screws up, you don't have to go through the mental gymnastics to try to convince yourself that the vendor is correct and that's the way it's supposed to work and you're a better person for missing that feature. You just buy from a different vendor. Apple fanbois don't have any concept of that, and this causes a cognitive disconnect when they try to talk to the rest of us.
You too, huh?
> There's always at least one "squad" of 4-8 MS shills operating on Slashdot.
I've noticed a couple, but they usually get shouted down fairly quickly. My impression is that the users at large just aren't buying it anymore.
> Apple doesn't need shills, they have fanboys :-P
I noticed that... It's built into the culture. Why spend extra money astroturfing when your fans will do it for you? Apple marketing has to have the most brilliant strategists on the planet.
Holo theme is not mandatory, only support for the Holo theme for devices that use the Android marketplace. So applications can be written that use the Holo theme with some confidence that they will display correctly. This is a good thing. It gives developers a minimum standard look and feel that is required to work.
Are there still MS shills? I thought they all had to get real jobs.
> If these businesses didn't have something that required them running windows they would've already done so, no?
There were reasons why they didn't in the past, but they're doing so now, for fairly good reasons.
> [...] Linux [...]
Who said anything about Linux? You think 2012 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop? I don't.
Mind you, I'm not an Apple fan -- I was offered an Apple laptop and an iPad, and turned them down. I'm still on Windows. XP. And I don't really care to upgrade, because I need to get work done.
And yes, I know about the different platforms. I have a G4 that I used to do Photoshop on, before I migrated that task to Windows.
I'm saying what I *observe* in my own company is a migration to Mac *instead* of a migration to Windows 7. For whatever reason. But personally, (this might be a hint) I don't think the number of upgrades is nearly as important as how traumatic individual upgrades are.
The "latest technology" of what? That's a serious question.
Yes, of course, there's nothing stopping you from upgrading if you want to, just realize that it's a hobby, like buying and installing Crysis 2. (Although more expensive and less fun.)
If you make your living as an admin, there may even be a professional reason to upgrade, if your company is crazy enough to spend a bazillion dollars migrating off a known, working quantity, to an unknown, perhaps less working one.
Exactly. Kinda reminds me of Disneyland. Us adults see a cute cartoon character. Kids see a giant rat. And parents wonder why they're crying.
Combine with Wolowitz's robot hand...
Bingo. But there's an ugly side to trying to force migration -- you can't always control to what product businesses will migrate.
FOR INSTANCE, a year ago my company allowed employees to requisition Mac laptops instead of PCs. And now, you can just about judge how long an employee has been here by what kind of laptop they carry. Does Microsoft truly think that trying to FORCE the remaining employees off XP will somehow magically make them all move to Windows 7? Is it something in the Redmond water system that causes such questionable judgement?
What Microsoft really needs is something else to sell. Something that people actually want to buy. Instead of trying to force us away from something that works to something else that we're not sure works. In what universe is that considered a winning move?
What's keeping me on XP is that it works. As long as this is true, why would I spend the $150 to upgrade?
The purpose of the OS is to manage resources and load programs. XP does that just fine. Yes, I know Microsoft is threatening to stop supporting it, but the only time I have EVER called Microsoft Support is when "Genuine Advantage" borked on a laptop and deactivated my license.
Back in the old days, when we were on the steep end of the curve, we got the next version as soon as it came out just out of self defense, to correct all the crap code in the previous version. Windows 2000 was the first truly reliable Windows, and XP after SP1 was even better.
There is no POINT, in my estimation, to upgrading an OS just to be upgrading. If you don't have a reason, leave well enough alone. We don't do our jobs just using the OS, we do our jobs with the applications the OS loads for us. It's vital to remember that.
And so, with this philosophy, I, on my work and home PCs, and all my family, completely missed out on the debacle that is Vista. I cautiously tell friends, family and co-workers that Windows 7 is ok (but not "home basic").
All that said, I do have one (1) machine running Windows 7 64 bit, upgraded from XP when I doubled the memory to 8GB. (I could have gone XP 64 bit but it was no longer available.) The overriding reason for the upgrade was that this particular machine runs an application (there that is again) that needed more than 3.6 GB or whatever the limit was under 32 bit. That's the only reason.
So, what about device support? Yeah (sarcastically), what about it. I actually *lost* a device when I went to Windows 7. The XP drivers for my scanner would not work on the Windows 7 machine, and there were never any Windows 7 drivers written for it. I had to move the scanner to another box still running.... XP... So much for upgrades.
Otherwise, leave well enough alone and continue to get real work done, as opposed to the "meta-work" of maintaining your operating system. There may be a lot of personal satisfaction in upgrading and maintaining your OS, but it is not real work unless you are a Windows admin, and even then you're doing it so someone else can run an APPLICATION.
So.... my Windows 7 64 bit machine... When Windows 8 comes out... yeah, I'm pretty much going to ignore it. Because my stuff works just fine with Windows 7. Let someone else be unpaid QA.
There was a time when Microsoft was making money hand over fist because people would line up to get the next version as soon as it became available. Someone in Redmond *had* to realize that this was not a sustainable business model.
I've had few problems with Blackberry phones. (The original Bold had a bad mechanical design and build problems, but electronics were excellent.) The problem with Blackberry in my case was reliance on BES, and when BES is working it's excellent. When you lay off all your local BES admins and outsource to a foreign country who's never seen a Blackberry, well, it isn't pretty. This is the one and only reason I carry an Android phone, and I still miss my Blackberry.
$400 off $299... RIM was trying to sell the Playbook for $700? No wonder it failed.
Um, unless the special projects group finally got the bugs worked out of Microsoft Magic Wand, [1] the cost of putting in that kind of infrastructure would be prohibitive. They would have to buy an existing carrier, which is not, I think, what you meant.
[1] The biggest issue, as I recall, was how to incorporate a "Start" button.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft management has an absolute imperative to use the same code on all platforms. So the cell phone division has absolutely no choice but to run Windows. And Windows doesn't work well on a handheld device. But Windows is Microsoft's core competency and must run on all their platforms. It's a circular argument that will continue to dominate on the desktop and continue to suck everywhere else. They can't help it; it's built into the way the company does business.
In another thread, someone suggested that Microsoft could force corporate adoption of Windows phones by making the next version of Exchange work only with Windows PCs and Windows devices. Assuming that could even be done, what that means to me is that the previous version of Exchange would be the last version ever adopted by corporate. There just isn't any longer a business imperative to run Microsoft.
You're right in that they were early to market in this genre, mostly by blindly releasing devices with a "start" button and running some version of Office and Outlook and calling it good. And it wasn't. Part of being early is that when you get it wrong, you have to recoup your mindshare in some way, and I don't think Microsoft has done that in any significant way. Windows phones featured on TV shows isn't going to do it. And pulling out of CES is the consumer equivalent of making a movie and refusing to pre-screen. It bodes ill. Personally, I thought Microsoft pulled out of CES because they didn't want consumers to touch Windows 8 and find out how much it sucks. The strategy seems to be to go from very carefully controlled demos directly to sales. $$ Profit, we all live like kings.
I agree. I'm thinking, maybe they meant a really *large* MS phone...
I just couldn't get enough of that in Windows Mobile 6, looking forward to it in Microsoft's new superphone.
I've designed fpgas, understand what you're talking about. It could be done, but designing a modern microprocessor is a prodigious undertaking. Although, I suppose you'd be free from compatibility issues, and could design whatever makes sense per today's level of technology. I started out thinking this was impractical, but now I'm not sure.
You have a strong stomach. I think I threw up in the back of my mouth.
Yes, there is something to that also. Bloat naturally increases to fill up all available resources, so naturally as resources increase, bloat does also. Someone has already made the point that eye candy, for instance, sucks up significant resources, without which one could probably make do with much cheaper hardware, which is kind-of the point of this product. And then an iOS junky jumped in and said something to the effect that people *have* to have those visual cues in order to know how to operate the device. And those of us who have written programs on punch cards, or toggled in a boot routine on front panel switches, feel really sad for, and a little ashamed of, the current generation.
> If you REALLY need a a computer to help you plant crops, then couldn't you do far more for the same price or the same for less with a stationary computer?
I don't think you're going to get this, perhaps unless you go over there and see the conditions. Laptops and tablets, even when they're plugged in, have a natural UPS that gets you through frequent power hiccups. Desktops not only draw more power, which is a huge disadvantage in that environment, but UPS and power conditioning costs extra, and then we're back to the price thing. Moreover, in places with no power, it's more practical to charge up a device with a small, ultra cheap solar panel (dc to dc) than to put together panel, storage (external deep-cycle batteries) and inverter (dc to ac) to power a desktop unit. I've done both; can attest to this. Even in the US you can charge up a slate or laptop with a $22 panel, probably a lot cheaper over there. There are other issues, but you should at least be able to understand that one.
Parenthetically, the first time I was there, I was trying to power my company's communications gear from their diesel generators and the results weren't pretty. I put in a big industrial power conditioner between their power and the equipment. First time I'd ever seen a conditioner catch fire.
In fact, if Datawind is listening, I'm wondering if you couldn't make a "deep country" version of the slate, where the back of the slate is a solar panel. Flip over to charge.
Thanks, PopeRatzo, you saved me from having to type all of that in. Some people just don't have a clue. Or they don't want to have a clue. And that's fine, you can't force people to look up from Angry Birds, take the earbuds out, and see what's actually going on in the world. But it's kinda sad.
Um, not a troll, was sarcasm -- you're in violent agreement with original poster.
But thanks for making your points. I also started career in the late seventies, developed software on massively expensive workstations with resources much less than is currently available in an ipod nano. (I still have an original DEC VT100, and it still works.) These young earbud junkies... [1] appear to be incapable of understanding that valuable work can be done on hardware that is not the latest and greatest trendy up-to-the-minute cutting edge stuff. I think it goes back to the device itself being the thing, rather than what you can accomplish with the device.
[1] At least I assume they're young.... it'd be kinda sad and pointless if they were my age and still had that worldview.
> I'm Indian you know.. Perhaps it does not occur to you, but there are people in this country who earn less in a year than you'd pay for a decent meal at a two star restraunt.
Having worked in many parts of India, I understand, and have tried to point that out also. I personally don't understand the philosophy "well if you can't afford an ipad you don't need a tablet" and I'd like to assure you that there are many of us here who think that's an offensive, ugly-firstworlder position to take, comparable to saying "I don't understand why you're hungry. Why don't you just go out and buy some food?"