Um, Unless you were kidding, the transit time is a measure of LAG, not transfer speed. The original statement, that it can take 90 minutes to transmit an image to Earth, is a measure of the transfer speed, IE, when the message finishes leaving the orbiter. When Earth actually receives it is a different question. So the 10 to 20 minute speed of light lag would be in addition to the the 90 minute estimate.
That was a deliberate misunderstanding that went right past you.:-) But seriously, us Android users, (mine is a DroidX) we aren't appreciated much in Apple-related threads. Just sayin'.
Seriously, at very least, this pretty much assures Bloomberg's re-election, as who could compete with an incumbent financed by every traffic camera maker in the world?
Lower the price! Lower the damned price. You have to be a boutique item to charge boutique prices, and the Android tablets aren't, yet, and may never be. As long as they try to go toe-to-toe with Apple on profit margins, they're only going to appeal to people who absolutely wouldn't own an Apple product but still need some kind of tablet device. Oh, as they fail one by one they'll come up with a variety of excuses, but the real reason is that the devices are too expensive for what the public perceives them to be.
Somewhat agree, but ram is dirt cheap right now and the cost of storage options in these devices is being kept artificially high by marketing rather than by parts costs. Make cheaper tablets, but with storage that more properly reflects how cheap 64 bits of flash truly is, and you might have something.
This is where Apple is vulnerable -- a significant part of their profit margin depends on people's perception that buying a device with 16 additional gigabytes should cost $110 more, and it just isn't true anymore and hasn't been in awhile. If someone like Lenovo started pumping out cheap tablets that have storage that *start* at the highest storage Apple offers, *and* included an SD card slot, I think people would pay attention.
> it's 'on the rise' because it is recognized and diagnosed more accurately.
That's certainly possible. That's true of a lot of afflictions -- that they're being recognized and diagnosed more accurately these days. But it's also possible that at least in some cases, it's being overdiagnosed, or "diagnosed" by non-professionals (school counselors for instance -- aw, don't get me started...) and repeated as true, skewing our perceptions.
> Maybe no one who can name all eleven doctors [...]
I'm sorry, really, but the first time I read that what shot through my mind was "Sure, I can do that. The first doctor. The second doctor. The third doctor." But that's either very silly or even more deeply geeky than what you meant. Can't decide. Never mind.
Parenthetically, I'd bet lunch that my teenage daughter can name at very least the actors who played the doctor since 1996, and probably three of the "classic" doctors, and she actually has a life.
So if bookstores choose to boycott Amazon-published books, leaving Amazon to sell the books themselves like they do most other books, doesn't this make brick-and-mortar bookstores even less relevant?
...will run a multicore, blazing hot CPU, will be slightly clunky to make room for enough battery to give it a reasonable usage time,...and oh, it'll have a keyboard and a mouse.
> As far as tablets go, there has yet to be a well designed third option.
You might be right. I actually *hope* you're right, because that gives us more choices and lower prices. But Microsoft has pissed in their bed with "Windows Tablet Edition" and "Windows CE" and "Windows Mobile" and there really isn't a compelling reason to go there again.
The point the article seemingly misses is that "the market entry remained slight" for Windows Tablet Edition for a very specific reason. It SUCKED. XP Tablet Edition sucked. Windows 7 Tablet Edition continues to suck. And just parenthetically, Windows CE sucked and every mobile platform ever based on it sucked. Now, I'm writing this on a Windows 7 PC, and it doesn't suck. This is Microsoft's strength, they've gotten good at it, and the hardware industry has finally caught up to the point where even with all the software bloat from the last two decades it still doesn't perform too badly.
But tablets? Phones? Some unified Windows that's supposed to run everywhere, WELL? There's a whole bunch of people out there, myself included, who have several devices in the junk drawer, nothing wrong with them functionally, except in usage they're painful and frustrating and try to force you into KVM paradigms not appropriate for a non-PC. Not to mention reusing very old code stacks that drag down the performance of already underpowered devices. And don't get me started on "This application has caused an error and has to close" popups... on a PHONE. Where was I? Oh yeah, so we've got these devices we've already tried, and throughout that long and arduous experience, Microsoft has TAUGHT US that any mobile device running their code is going to take more effort to get the job done than just about any other platform. I won't be touching another one unless the company I work for makes it a job requirement. And right now they're in love with the iPad so I think I'm safe.
And just incidentally, "handwriting recognition has been improved" is by itself an absolute indicator that M$ still doesn't Get It. This is not the 1980's and the Newton is no longer the platform to beat. If you touch a text area, a virtual keyboard should pop up that DOESN'T COVER THE TEXT AREA. The fact that after two decades they still did not understand this means to me that Windows 8, when people start actually using it, will illustrate a bunch of other stuff they don't understand.
My daughter is on her fifth Galaxy S in a little over one calendar year. (Four in-store replacements for various hardware failures.) And any Galaxy S owner should be acquainted with the upgrade fiasco and the GPS fiasco and factor this into their choice for their next phone. I'm sorry, I can't recommend Samsung regardless of their developer policies until they clean up their tech support and address the reliability of their hardware. And get the damned GPS to work right. And it'd help if they would acknowledge the pain early adopters of the Galaxy S line had to go through. Parenthetically, I don't care if the S2 turned straw into gold -- we shouldn't have to buy another phone to get the features we were promised in our current phone.
Because I'm pissed off at Samsung for, among other things, the way they handle updates to non-rooted phones. They take forever to come out with official updates, seemingly wanting you to buy a new phone to get an incrementally later (not even current) version of Android. This is very specifically why I do not pick Samsung as my work phone, as I am not allowed to install unofficial updates and am unlikely to see official updates in a timely manner, despite the press releases.
And just incidentally, my daughter is a Galaxy S owner, and she's currently on her fifth (!) phone in two years. The first two the GPS didn't work at all, the third had a bad compass, touchscreen failed on the fourth, and her current phone hangs randomly requiring reboot. And the three phones for which GPS did work, were consistently off position by several blocks despite the GPS patch from Samsung and a firmware upgrade. If you ask me, the Galaxy S is a sexy phone on the outside with crap guts and crap support. Based on these experiences, it would be irresponsible of me as a consumer to buy another Samsung. (AT&T acknowledges problems with the phone, but can only replace it, which admittedly they have done without issue.)
So don't talk to me about Samsung. They need to provide unequivocal evidence that they have made lasting changes to tech support and hardware reliability before I'll ever touch them again.
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Um, Unless you were kidding, the transit time is a measure of LAG, not transfer speed. The original statement, that it can take 90 minutes to transmit an image to Earth, is a measure of the transfer speed, IE, when the message finishes leaving the orbiter. When Earth actually receives it is a different question. So the 10 to 20 minute speed of light lag would be in addition to the the 90 minute estimate.
That was a deliberate misunderstanding that went right past you. :-) But seriously, us Android users, (mine is a DroidX) we aren't appreciated much in Apple-related threads. Just sayin'.
Other than an Apple product??? I don't understand. Do you mean, like a toaster?
Seriously, at very least, this pretty much assures Bloomberg's re-election, as who could compete with an incumbent financed by every traffic camera maker in the world?
Good with a soldering iron, are you?
Lower the price! Lower the damned price. You have to be a boutique item to charge boutique prices, and the Android tablets aren't, yet, and may never be. As long as they try to go toe-to-toe with Apple on profit margins, they're only going to appeal to people who absolutely wouldn't own an Apple product but still need some kind of tablet device. Oh, as they fail one by one they'll come up with a variety of excuses, but the real reason is that the devices are too expensive for what the public perceives them to be.
Somewhat agree, but ram is dirt cheap right now and the cost of storage options in these devices is being kept artificially high by marketing rather than by parts costs. Make cheaper tablets, but with storage that more properly reflects how cheap 64 bits of flash truly is, and you might have something.
This is where Apple is vulnerable -- a significant part of their profit margin depends on people's perception that buying a device with 16 additional gigabytes should cost $110 more, and it just isn't true anymore and hasn't been in awhile. If someone like Lenovo started pumping out cheap tablets that have storage that *start* at the highest storage Apple offers, *and* included an SD card slot, I think people would pay attention.
> it's 'on the rise' because it is recognized and diagnosed more accurately.
That's certainly possible. That's true of a lot of afflictions -- that they're being recognized and diagnosed more accurately these days. But it's also possible that at least in some cases, it's being overdiagnosed, or "diagnosed" by non-professionals (school counselors for instance -- aw, don't get me started...) and repeated as true, skewing our perceptions.
Good thing my wife can't figure out which end of a cell phone to talk into. Daughter (now a teen) is social and a geek. I guess I got lucky.
> Maybe no one who can name all eleven doctors [...]
I'm sorry, really, but the first time I read that what shot through my mind was "Sure, I can do that. The first doctor. The second doctor. The third doctor." But that's either very silly or even more deeply geeky than what you meant. Can't decide. Never mind.
Parenthetically, I'd bet lunch that my teenage daughter can name at very least the actors who played the doctor since 1996, and probably three of the "classic" doctors, and she actually has a life.
That became less true when geeks started to make serious money, but it's still an issue, yes.
Which just goes to show, if you're offered a new position organizing team building activities, don't take it!
(Trust me on this.)
Easy for him to say. He could afford to have a teen's heart transplanted into him once a decade.
So if bookstores choose to boycott Amazon-published books, leaving Amazon to sell the books themselves like they do most other books, doesn't this make brick-and-mortar bookstores even less relevant?
> As far as tablets go, there has yet to be a well designed third option.
You might be right. I actually *hope* you're right, because that gives us more choices and lower prices. But Microsoft has pissed in their bed with "Windows Tablet Edition" and "Windows CE" and "Windows Mobile" and there really isn't a compelling reason to go there again.
The point the article seemingly misses is that "the market entry remained slight" for Windows Tablet Edition for a very specific reason. It SUCKED. XP Tablet Edition sucked. Windows 7 Tablet Edition continues to suck. And just parenthetically, Windows CE sucked and every mobile platform ever based on it sucked. Now, I'm writing this on a Windows 7 PC, and it doesn't suck. This is Microsoft's strength, they've gotten good at it, and the hardware industry has finally caught up to the point where even with all the software bloat from the last two decades it still doesn't perform too badly.
But tablets? Phones? Some unified Windows that's supposed to run everywhere, WELL? There's a whole bunch of people out there, myself included, who have several devices in the junk drawer, nothing wrong with them functionally, except in usage they're painful and frustrating and try to force you into KVM paradigms not appropriate for a non-PC. Not to mention reusing very old code stacks that drag down the performance of already underpowered devices. And don't get me started on "This application has caused an error and has to close" popups ... on a PHONE. Where was I? Oh yeah, so we've got these devices we've already tried, and throughout that long and arduous experience, Microsoft has TAUGHT US that any mobile device running their code is going to take more effort to get the job done than just about any other platform. I won't be touching another one unless the company I work for makes it a job requirement. And right now they're in love with the iPad so I think I'm safe.
And just incidentally, "handwriting recognition has been improved" is by itself an absolute indicator that M$ still doesn't Get It. This is not the 1980's and the Newton is no longer the platform to beat. If you touch a text area, a virtual keyboard should pop up that DOESN'T COVER THE TEXT AREA. The fact that after two decades they still did not understand this means to me that Windows 8, when people start actually using it, will illustrate a bunch of other stuff they don't understand.
Ok, that works for me.
My daughter is on her fifth Galaxy S in a little over one calendar year. (Four in-store replacements for various hardware failures.) And any Galaxy S owner should be acquainted with the upgrade fiasco and the GPS fiasco and factor this into their choice for their next phone. I'm sorry, I can't recommend Samsung regardless of their developer policies until they clean up their tech support and address the reliability of their hardware. And get the damned GPS to work right. And it'd help if they would acknowledge the pain early adopters of the Galaxy S line had to go through. Parenthetically, I don't care if the S2 turned straw into gold -- we shouldn't have to buy another phone to get the features we were promised in our current phone.
So no, not Samsung.
Because I'm pissed off at Samsung for, among other things, the way they handle updates to non-rooted phones. They take forever to come out with official updates, seemingly wanting you to buy a new phone to get an incrementally later (not even current) version of Android. This is very specifically why I do not pick Samsung as my work phone, as I am not allowed to install unofficial updates and am unlikely to see official updates in a timely manner, despite the press releases.
And just incidentally, my daughter is a Galaxy S owner, and she's currently on her fifth (!) phone in two years. The first two the GPS didn't work at all, the third had a bad compass, touchscreen failed on the fourth, and her current phone hangs randomly requiring reboot. And the three phones for which GPS did work, were consistently off position by several blocks despite the GPS patch from Samsung and a firmware upgrade. If you ask me, the Galaxy S is a sexy phone on the outside with crap guts and crap support. Based on these experiences, it would be irresponsible of me as a consumer to buy another Samsung. (AT&T acknowledges problems with the phone, but can only replace it, which admittedly they have done without issue.)
So don't talk to me about Samsung. They need to provide unequivocal evidence that they have made lasting changes to tech support and hardware reliability before I'll ever touch them again.