> it's called 'manual focus' and in the right hands, it is much faster than any auto-focus system out there.
Hey kid, get offa my lawn. I was shooting glamour with a manual focus F3 in 1982, using (for the most part) a non-AI 85mm f1.8 made in the sixties. What were you doing in 1982?
> I admit, your system of tracking a subject in motion would be very useful, but the DSLR market is geared towards professionals who are expected to know how to use manual controls.
tracking objects in motion to establish focus is more likely a feature for the point and shoot market, where the user is assumed to be unskilled, needing software to hold their hand and do all the hard work.
Why, how consdescending. The feature I was referring to is available on Nikon's D700 ($2,397 at Amazon, body only) up to the D3X ($7,999 at Amazon, body only) but not, as far as I know, on Nikon's lower end models. If you consider these cameras point-and-shoot, what the holy hell are you using? Do you make your own lenses?
Let me tell you a story. (It's what old pharts do.) A long time ago, there was this thing called Usenet. It was sort-of like a web forum, except without the web and for the most part without the forum. In rec.photo, in the eighties, we were arguing about this new thing called matrix metering. It seemed a good idea but it was prone to error. I remember a guy yelling at the rest of us that these computer metering systems were a poor excuse for metering, that indeed all camera meters were worthless, and any Real Photographer would go out and get an incident light meter and learn to expose properly. Turns out he mostly took pictures of his cats, but I bet they were properly exposed.
Twenty-odd years later, matrix metering actually works pretty well, and even professional photographers use it where they need to be concentrating on composition in changing light. (Although curiously, on full automatic, my daughter's D50 inexplicably blows out about one frame in 20.)
Now we're starting to see more complex focusing systems. They're making their appearance in prosumer and professional bodies, and like matrix metering when it first came out, these new features don't really work very well. Nikon's tutorial shows an example of focus tracking of a horse and rider walking around a ring, and for objects moving that slowly it works fairly well. The manual says 3d matrix focus tracking will track fast moving objects like a flight of birds, and in that they are wildly, wildly optimistic. When I first got the body (my first professional digital Nikon -- I already owned three film bodies and a lower end digital body), I read the manual and believed it, hence my puzzlement when the function did not work as predicted. Talking to other owners straightened me out.
So, now that you understand where I'm coming from, allow me to repeat my challenge. Now that the pixel wars are over, let's go back and make advanced features like this actually useful, rather than something to pad the brochure. 3D matrix focus tracking of a moving object on a static background would actually be useful, even to a professional, if it worked.
That works. And the software tool wouldn't require you flip through hundreds of photos. You'd get a typical photo, indicate with the mouse where you wanted the focus point to be, and the software would select the closest frame.
If you theorized a new file type, -- "digital negative" on steroids -- you could hold all hundred or so views in a single file along with the accompanying metadata.
Not very far. The casing is actually quite delicate compared to the forces involved. Without support of the chamber, the casing will always fragment, letting the gas escape before the bullet gets much energy. Injuries from ignition outside the gun are invariably from case fragments.
You're absolutely right. The thing is, the stuff Apple did get right is really very cool. I'm frustrated that the list of annoyances is too long for me to consider owning one. When I was a Palm junkie, I felt the same way about the Centro. Bluetooth 1.2? In 2008??
I understand what you're saying about live view, but again, I'm not talking about what cameras currently do, I'm talking about what I want them to do. Cameras wouldn't do what they do now if the envelope wasn't pushed. I don't care how it's done -- an additional CCD on the eyeball side of the mirror, 50,000 point autofocus feeding a hyper-parallel Cray processor, whatever it takes. Just find a way to stay in focus. I know it's difficult to do. That's why it's called "a challenge".:-)
I seen it. A friend has one. Touch screen and slide-out keyboard. A little on the thick side, but chock full of features.
It runs Windows Mobile 6. He (my friend) has had better stability than most, because with the exception of turn-by-turn instructions, he has no 3rd party software installed that might affect reliability. He sometimes goes a whole day without having to reboot his phone, and it will reliably receive calls, say, 17 times out of 20. Pretty good for Windows Mobile.
But, you see, I'm not just looking for features. There used to be this concept called "dial-tone reliability", which means no matter what, even in pitch dark, you'll still get a dial tone, and your call has a very high likelihood of going through. This was back in the days of land lines, maybe you don't remember.
What Windows Mobile brings to the table is "PC reliability". A phone as reliable as your average desktop computer. I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Perhaps my standards are too high.
Before I get another Windows Mobile device, I'd get an i-phone 3G and just leave it on Edge.
> Scenario one - I have a phone with a miniUSB port. To charge it, I carry a cable that is USB on one end and miniUSB on the other.
> Count, one!
> Secenario two - I have an iPhone, and USB to iPhone cable that comes with the phone. To charge it, I attach that cable to any USB port.
> Count, one!
Woah, New Math! Let's say, as in the original example, that I own (stay with me, this is a stretch...) more than one electronic device, (hard to believe, huh?) and they're not all made by Apple. I could stop there, but I see the necessity of really grinding this example into the dirt. Wife has a Motorola flip phone, I have a Bold, daughter has a Curve, and let's say the company phone I sometimes have to carry is a Nokia. How many chargers do I need for these four phones from three different manufacturers? One.
Now, let's say I chose the company iPhone instead of the Blackberry. How many chargers do I now need? For those who went to public school, the answer is, two. One for all the other stuff, and one for the iPhone. I actually need three, because I personally own a 3rd generation iPod which, although it shares the same connector as the iPhone, it won't @$*#(^& charge from USB.
Ok, let's grind this example into the bedrock. Let's say that you're on a trip to the middle of nowhere, to the place where God Left His Car Keys, and you forgot your damned charge cable. You have 20 minutes to buy another one before your battery expires. Good thing USB to mini-USB cables are available anywhere... Wait, no, you have an IPHONE. Oh God, you need a stylish white data cable with a proprietary connector that no other company on earth uses. Lucky for you there's an Apple store near every major airport... except this is Dumphuke, Arizona (north-east of Prescott) and the local Rat Shack doesn't sell stylish white cables.
It won't be too long before you won't be able to buy a cell phone with a proprietary data/charge connector, with the single exception of the i-phone. And somehow Apple users will just accept this. Nay, I tell a lie, they won't just accept it, they'll see it as a feature.
Who says it has to kill all mosquitoes? We're not talking a chemical fogger here. Anything that automatically targets mosquitoes individually could stop at 43.853233% of total.
> The basic issue is that you have a laser system capable of reaching down into the atmosphere to kill things close to or on the ground. There are two basic problems:
The first being, I really don't think anyone is suggesting we nuke mosquitoes from orbit. I mean, that would be really cool, and if they do it that way I hope I get a chance to see it in action. I can just imagine the gentle sparkle of flaming mosquitoes lighting up the twilight sky over Khartoum. It would be a tourist attraction.
But, reading the article, they talk about must shorter distances, like, say, across the room. Although disappointing, this kind-of solves the power problem, and the hijacking problem, and the destabilizing weapons platform in space problem. (We'll leave that last one to the Chinese.)
I don't have an opinion about blinding commuters from space, except to say the view from space is pretty much straight down, so you'd have to get a bunch of commuters to all look up at the same time. But if you could do that, blinding them would be redundant.
I'd be interested in what you're thinking of. To me, the advantage of this system (if it ever works) would be that it doesn't leave residue behind, except for the bug carcass, of course. It's not just another bug spray, but a really efficient flyswatter. The idea even lends itself to solar power. (Collect during the day, dish out in the evening.)
> But let's face it: that's the best the current technology can achieve.
I don't believe that. I was reading last year about high-end point-and-shoots in Japan that could recognize faces and make decisions based on that information. And in the computer world, tracking a moving object across a static background, and doing it fast and accurately, is a known technology. It may not be in cameras yet, but it should be. That's what we're talking about -- what camera companies should be working on now that the pixel wars have been won, or lost, or whatever.
> What I already asked Nikon is to implement focus bracketing (Ã la Contax), which requires a mere firmware update, so I can shoot at 9fps and maybe get 1 in-focus picture out of 3 or 4, but of course I'm no famous professional so they don't listen...
Maybe their competition will.:-) But seriously, I think you set your sights too low. Yes, focus bracketing would be extremely useful (why doesn't Nikon have it??) but it's now time for the next quantum leap. C'mon camera companies, thrill me.
While I was re-reading my own article, I was worried that I was throwing too many Blackberry references out there, which creates an opportunity to cloud the real issue. I don't suggest that the i-phone be just like a blackberry. Some people prefer a larger screen at the expense of a tactile keyboard, and all the other things that makes an i-phone an i-phone, and that's ok -- it depends on your personal usage and style. I don't have an iphone (my company issues them, but I looked carefully at the strengths and weaknesses and decided on a Bold instead) but we do own an ipod touch, and it's a really cool device with a cool interface.
It's not about making the i-phone the same as a blackberry. It's about keeping up with technology. Blackberry didn't invent stereo bluetooth, tethering with Macbooks, native DiVX support, micro-SD cards, or the micro-USB connector. They took advantage of those technologies to put out a more feature-rich phone, and -- this is the point -- they're not alone amongst Apple's competitors to do so. The Blackberry just happens to be the phone with which I have most recent experience. We could instead talk about the Treo, which had in the 1990's features the i-phone doesn't yet have.
When the i-phone first came out, it was a truly innovative GUI and packaging around... let's call it a collection of mature technology. Two factors have since changed -- "Mature" has progressed to "Elderly", and competitors are right on the edge of catching up on the packaging and GUI.
Apple has undeniably led the way, for some definitions of "way" -- my Bold probably wouldn't have had native wifi if they hadn't had to compete with the Jesus Phone, and for that I am thankful. There's a whole bunch (some would say too many) of new touch screen phones that wouldn't exist if the iphone had not. There's no denying that the i-phone has been insanely successful. My point is that there is danger in thinking your only competition is your own previous model. Palm made that mistake, and nearly vanished -- could, still. Microsoft made that mistake... and that story hasn't played out yet. Blackberry still has their own special hubris -- that it isn't mobile email if it doesn't go through a blackberry email server. Finally people are starting to code around that. (Web mail doesn't count.) Apple undeniably had a winner -- the question is, do they still?
This is a profoundly stupid, "darwin award"-grade act, but let's make it clear that the bullet isn't going to go flying off and shoot you. It's the casing fragments that are dangerous, and they tend to be lightweight and don't penetrate well. Enough to put an eye out, which I guess would give you a great story about why you wear that patch.
I understand what you're saying, -- seriously, we would probably agree on a lot of things -- but where mosquitoes are a real health hazard, there tend not to be adequate predators. The two issues kind-of go hand in hand.
It's much easier to have these concerns in a first world country where the issue has been controlled. I hope you appreciate that someone living in the Sahel may feel differently.
I'm a little concerned that we'll reach a point where we tell a third world country, where significant numbers of people are dying of malaria, "We have this technology that will make a profound difference in the mosquito vector, but we're not going to allow you to use it because we're concerned about potential, but as-yet unspecified damage to your environment. Hope the fever gets better."
I mean *really* faster. I recently acquired a professional-grade digital SLR and was astonished to find that the "3d matrix motion sensitive autofocus tracking" or whatever it's called, wouldn't accurately track a dog chasing a ball. The camera would graciously show me the autofocus points of successive frames -- clumps of grass, small pebbles, a trash can, and occasionally the actual subject. It was somewhat surprising to me that, to get accurate focus of moving objects, I could get better results by turning off all the "moving object" settings and rely on my own targeting skills. With all the computer power at our disposal, the durned camera should be able to recognize, not just distance and color and lighting, but the *shape* of the object I first targeted, and then track that object for successive shots as it moves around on the screen.
I've ranted about this on other subjects, but it's worth a small rant here: stop making memory -- in this case the memory buffer -- a selling point to get you to pay for overpriced pro models. Memory is *cheap*. The first major company that puts a substantial memory buffer in all their models, enabling a significant number of continuous frames before writing to the card -- is going to clean up. I have a friend who not long ago bought a pair (his and hers) of high-end snapshot cameras (you know what I mean -- fixed lens but mechanical zoom and nice glass) only to find (while on vacation) that the write speed was so poor as to make them unusable in the field. I know, you can fix this a little with faster memory cards, but ram will always be orders-of-magnitude faster than mass storage. This is a cheap addition that makes a huge difference in the user experience.
Geeze, how could I forget this? Apple, remember that commercial you did a long time ago -- "the first office network at 30,000 feet". Remember that? Now, how could that concept be applied to the PDA?
...but at least as good as the phones currently out there. This is where Apple shows that they're up to the challenge, or not. Simply providing a 32 Gbyte version of the same old thing (which is, sadly, what I expect) is not going to be good enough.
Most of these points have already been made -- sync all your stuff, not just your email. Make everything searchable, not just contacts. Apple, PDAs have done this since before the turn of the century. Get on the stick.
Full bluetooth support. The i-phone should pair seamlessly with car audio systems that support stereo bluetooth. Blackberry already does this. Funky, proprietary cables and scratchy FM transmitters are so two decades ago.
Support for bluetooth peripherals, including (let me be clear on this) a decent keyboard. Blackberry already does this. Apple, you're missing out on a whole new line of stylish white iphone peripherals. Your marketing geeks should be thinking "micro-office".
Not just tethering, but bluetooth tethering. It's just amazing to me that you can tether a Blackberry to a Mac but you can't tether an i-phone to a Mac. How could Apple allow this to happen?
Speaking of proprietary cables, it's time Apple take a clue from the rest of the cell phone industry and switch to a micro-USB connector on the phone. Last time I said that in this forum, someone replied that Apple has been providing USB support for some time, which just goes to show how misunderstood this issue is. All three of our phones, and the company phone when I have to carry it, will charge from the same charger despite being different manufacturers. The ipod touch needs that proprietary stylish white charger with the stylish white proprietary connector. Where the hell has that thing gone now... Apple, please hear this. Proprietary data connectors are so last century.
MMS... geeze... don't get me started...
Apple has got to stop screwing around with locking down memory and calling it a feature. Flash memory is cheap, plentiful and standardized. A phone without a micro-SD slot is just plain not interesting. Why in God's name should you have to buy another phone to get more memory? How green is that? How financially responsible is that? Ipod and Iphone owners -- let me clue you in on a secret that Apples doesn't want you to know about... Memory has been cheap and more importantly, interchangeable for years. To upgrade my Blackberry from 8 Gbytes to 16 Gbytes costs $40.99 (Amazon) and can be done in a few seconds. To do a similar upgrade to an ipod touch is $284.95 (Amazon) minus whatever I could get on the used market for the old ipod. This is incredibly backwards. Flash memory is a commodity item.
I'm sure there are Apple marketing people who will say that locking down memory in iphone and ipod devices is a positive revenue stream for Apple. To them I say, the current arrangement results in a thriving used device market, from which you don't get revenue. Wouldn't you rather be selling stylish white SD cards at Apple's usual markup?
And finally, I won't even consider a phone that doesn't have a user replaceable battery. My phone is, like, my phone, it's what I use for my livelihood. I can't be without it for any longer than it takes to pop off the back and put in another battery. I'm sorry, if you're going to be a serious contender to serious phone/pda users, you're going to have to rethink this.
Again, I expect the next i-phone to be like the current 3G phone except more memory and a few bugfixes. What I hope happens is that Apple steps up to the plate and fields a phone that does everything the current competition does, only better. But -- reality check -- different isn't necessarily better. Example: Email is not a substitute for MMS. Email is Email, and MMS is MMS, and your competition has both.
> This latest ploy probably has little to do with crime, and more to do with bringing in more cash to fund the gov't's pet projects.
So given that, for the sake of argument, it seems to me that the proposed solution should be carefully crafted to have minimal effect, because if you take the issue away, you can't use it later.
> I just tried in all sections. I ended up leaving a message with the Gov. Perhaps the webmaster didn't know anything about web programming?
I was under the impression that a Microsoft webmaster didn't have to know anything about web programming. Just buy some really expensive tools and drag and drop. A secretary could do it.
Slashdot Mirror
> it's called 'manual focus' and in the right hands, it is much faster than any auto-focus system out there.
Hey kid, get offa my lawn. I was shooting glamour with a manual focus F3 in 1982, using (for the most part) a non-AI 85mm f1.8 made in the sixties. What were you doing in 1982?
> I admit, your system of tracking a subject in motion would be very useful, but the DSLR market is geared towards professionals who are expected to know how to use manual controls. tracking objects in motion to establish focus is more likely a feature for the point and shoot market, where the user is assumed to be unskilled, needing software to hold their hand and do all the hard work.
Why, how consdescending. The feature I was referring to is available on Nikon's D700 ($2,397 at Amazon, body only) up to the D3X ($7,999 at Amazon, body only) but not, as far as I know, on Nikon's lower end models. If you consider these cameras point-and-shoot, what the holy hell are you using? Do you make your own lenses?
Let me tell you a story. (It's what old pharts do.) A long time ago, there was this thing called Usenet. It was sort-of like a web forum, except without the web and for the most part without the forum. In rec.photo, in the eighties, we were arguing about this new thing called matrix metering. It seemed a good idea but it was prone to error. I remember a guy yelling at the rest of us that these computer metering systems were a poor excuse for metering, that indeed all camera meters were worthless, and any Real Photographer would go out and get an incident light meter and learn to expose properly. Turns out he mostly took pictures of his cats, but I bet they were properly exposed.
Twenty-odd years later, matrix metering actually works pretty well, and even professional photographers use it where they need to be concentrating on composition in changing light. (Although curiously, on full automatic, my daughter's D50 inexplicably blows out about one frame in 20.)
Now we're starting to see more complex focusing systems. They're making their appearance in prosumer and professional bodies, and like matrix metering when it first came out, these new features don't really work very well. Nikon's tutorial shows an example of focus tracking of a horse and rider walking around a ring, and for objects moving that slowly it works fairly well. The manual says 3d matrix focus tracking will track fast moving objects like a flight of birds, and in that they are wildly, wildly optimistic. When I first got the body (my first professional digital Nikon -- I already owned three film bodies and a lower end digital body), I read the manual and believed it, hence my puzzlement when the function did not work as predicted. Talking to other owners straightened me out.
So, now that you understand where I'm coming from, allow me to repeat my challenge. Now that the pixel wars are over, let's go back and make advanced features like this actually useful, rather than something to pad the brochure. 3D matrix focus tracking of a moving object on a static background would actually be useful, even to a professional, if it worked.
That works. And the software tool wouldn't require you flip through hundreds of photos. You'd get a typical photo, indicate with the mouse where you wanted the focus point to be, and the software would select the closest frame.
If you theorized a new file type, -- "digital negative" on steroids -- you could hold all hundred or so views in a single file along with the accompanying metadata.
Not very far. The casing is actually quite delicate compared to the forces involved. Without support of the chamber, the casing will always fragment, letting the gas escape before the bullet gets much energy. Injuries from ignition outside the gun are invariably from case fragments.
You're absolutely right. The thing is, the stuff Apple did get right is really very cool. I'm frustrated that the list of annoyances is too long for me to consider owning one. When I was a Palm junkie, I felt the same way about the Centro. Bluetooth 1.2? In 2008??
I understand what you're saying about live view, but again, I'm not talking about what cameras currently do, I'm talking about what I want them to do. Cameras wouldn't do what they do now if the envelope wasn't pushed. I don't care how it's done -- an additional CCD on the eyeball side of the mirror, 50,000 point autofocus feeding a hyper-parallel Cray processor, whatever it takes. Just find a way to stay in focus. I know it's difficult to do. That's why it's called "a challenge". :-)
I seen it. A friend has one. Touch screen and slide-out keyboard. A little on the thick side, but chock full of features.
It runs Windows Mobile 6. He (my friend) has had better stability than most, because with the exception of turn-by-turn instructions, he has no 3rd party software installed that might affect reliability. He sometimes goes a whole day without having to reboot his phone, and it will reliably receive calls, say, 17 times out of 20. Pretty good for Windows Mobile.
But, you see, I'm not just looking for features. There used to be this concept called "dial-tone reliability", which means no matter what, even in pitch dark, you'll still get a dial tone, and your call has a very high likelihood of going through. This was back in the days of land lines, maybe you don't remember.
What Windows Mobile brings to the table is "PC reliability". A phone as reliable as your average desktop computer. I'm sorry, that doesn't work for me. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Perhaps my standards are too high.
Before I get another Windows Mobile device, I'd get an i-phone 3G and just leave it on Edge.
Bingo! You take the prize, sir!
> Let's play "Count the cable(s)"!
> Scenario one - I have a phone with a miniUSB port. To charge it, I carry a cable that is USB on one end and miniUSB on the other.
> Count, one!
> Secenario two - I have an iPhone, and USB to iPhone cable that comes with the phone. To charge it, I attach that cable to any USB port.
> Count, one!
Woah, New Math! Let's say, as in the original example, that I own (stay with me, this is a stretch...) more than one electronic device, (hard to believe, huh?) and they're not all made by Apple. I could stop there, but I see the necessity of really grinding this example into the dirt. Wife has a Motorola flip phone, I have a Bold, daughter has a Curve, and let's say the company phone I sometimes have to carry is a Nokia. How many chargers do I need for these four phones from three different manufacturers? One.
Now, let's say I chose the company iPhone instead of the Blackberry. How many chargers do I now need? For those who went to public school, the answer is, two. One for all the other stuff, and one for the iPhone. I actually need three, because I personally own a 3rd generation iPod which, although it shares the same connector as the iPhone, it won't @$*#(^& charge from USB.
Ok, let's grind this example into the bedrock. Let's say that you're on a trip to the middle of nowhere, to the place where God Left His Car Keys, and you forgot your damned charge cable. You have 20 minutes to buy another one before your battery expires. Good thing USB to mini-USB cables are available anywhere... Wait, no, you have an IPHONE. Oh God, you need a stylish white data cable with a proprietary connector that no other company on earth uses. Lucky for you there's an Apple store near every major airport... except this is Dumphuke, Arizona (north-east of Prescott) and the local Rat Shack doesn't sell stylish white cables.
It won't be too long before you won't be able to buy a cell phone with a proprietary data/charge connector, with the single exception of the i-phone. And somehow Apple users will just accept this. Nay, I tell a lie, they won't just accept it, they'll see it as a feature.
Who says it has to kill all mosquitoes? We're not talking a chemical fogger here. Anything that automatically targets mosquitoes individually could stop at 43.853233% of total.
> The basic issue is that you have a laser system capable of reaching down into the atmosphere to kill things close to or on the ground. There are two basic problems:
The first being, I really don't think anyone is suggesting we nuke mosquitoes from orbit. I mean, that would be really cool, and if they do it that way I hope I get a chance to see it in action. I can just imagine the gentle sparkle of flaming mosquitoes lighting up the twilight sky over Khartoum. It would be a tourist attraction.
But, reading the article, they talk about must shorter distances, like, say, across the room. Although disappointing, this kind-of solves the power problem, and the hijacking problem, and the destabilizing weapons platform in space problem. (We'll leave that last one to the Chinese.)
I don't have an opinion about blinding commuters from space, except to say the view from space is pretty much straight down, so you'd have to get a bunch of commuters to all look up at the same time. But if you could do that, blinding them would be redundant.
I'd be interested in what you're thinking of. To me, the advantage of this system (if it ever works) would be that it doesn't leave residue behind, except for the bug carcass, of course. It's not just another bug spray, but a really efficient flyswatter. The idea even lends itself to solar power. (Collect during the day, dish out in the evening.)
> Nikon D3
D700 here.
> But let's face it: that's the best the current technology can achieve.
I don't believe that. I was reading last year about high-end point-and-shoots in Japan that could recognize faces and make decisions based on that information. And in the computer world, tracking a moving object across a static background, and doing it fast and accurately, is a known technology. It may not be in cameras yet, but it should be. That's what we're talking about -- what camera companies should be working on now that the pixel wars have been won, or lost, or whatever.
> What I already asked Nikon is to implement focus bracketing (Ã la Contax), which requires a mere firmware update, so I can shoot at 9fps and maybe get 1 in-focus picture out of 3 or 4, but of course I'm no famous professional so they don't listen...
Maybe their competition will. :-) But seriously, I think you set your sights too low. Yes, focus bracketing would be extremely useful (why doesn't Nikon have it??) but it's now time for the next quantum leap. C'mon camera companies, thrill me.
While I was re-reading my own article, I was worried that I was throwing too many Blackberry references out there, which creates an opportunity to cloud the real issue. I don't suggest that the i-phone be just like a blackberry. Some people prefer a larger screen at the expense of a tactile keyboard, and all the other things that makes an i-phone an i-phone, and that's ok -- it depends on your personal usage and style. I don't have an iphone (my company issues them, but I looked carefully at the strengths and weaknesses and decided on a Bold instead) but we do own an ipod touch, and it's a really cool device with a cool interface.
It's not about making the i-phone the same as a blackberry. It's about keeping up with technology. Blackberry didn't invent stereo bluetooth, tethering with Macbooks, native DiVX support, micro-SD cards, or the micro-USB connector. They took advantage of those technologies to put out a more feature-rich phone, and -- this is the point -- they're not alone amongst Apple's competitors to do so. The Blackberry just happens to be the phone with which I have most recent experience. We could instead talk about the Treo, which had in the 1990's features the i-phone doesn't yet have.
When the i-phone first came out, it was a truly innovative GUI and packaging around... let's call it a collection of mature technology. Two factors have since changed -- "Mature" has progressed to "Elderly", and competitors are right on the edge of catching up on the packaging and GUI.
Apple has undeniably led the way, for some definitions of "way" -- my Bold probably wouldn't have had native wifi if they hadn't had to compete with the Jesus Phone, and for that I am thankful. There's a whole bunch (some would say too many) of new touch screen phones that wouldn't exist if the iphone had not. There's no denying that the i-phone has been insanely successful. My point is that there is danger in thinking your only competition is your own previous model. Palm made that mistake, and nearly vanished -- could, still. Microsoft made that mistake... and that story hasn't played out yet. Blackberry still has their own special hubris -- that it isn't mobile email if it doesn't go through a blackberry email server. Finally people are starting to code around that. (Web mail doesn't count.) Apple undeniably had a winner -- the question is, do they still?
This is a profoundly stupid, "darwin award"-grade act, but let's make it clear that the bullet isn't going to go flying off and shoot you. It's the casing fragments that are dangerous, and they tend to be lightweight and don't penetrate well. Enough to put an eye out, which I guess would give you a great story about why you wear that patch.
I understand what you're saying, -- seriously, we would probably agree on a lot of things -- but where mosquitoes are a real health hazard, there tend not to be adequate predators. The two issues kind-of go hand in hand.
It's much easier to have these concerns in a first world country where the issue has been controlled. I hope you appreciate that someone living in the Sahel may feel differently.
I'm a little concerned that we'll reach a point where we tell a third world country, where significant numbers of people are dying of malaria, "We have this technology that will make a profound difference in the mosquito vector, but we're not going to allow you to use it because we're concerned about potential, but as-yet unspecified damage to your environment. Hope the fever gets better."
I want one in my back yard. Could be really entertaining.
Seriously, in my area we have bats, and mosquitoes aren't much of a problem.
I mean *really* faster. I recently acquired a professional-grade digital SLR and was astonished to find that the "3d matrix motion sensitive autofocus tracking" or whatever it's called, wouldn't accurately track a dog chasing a ball. The camera would graciously show me the autofocus points of successive frames -- clumps of grass, small pebbles, a trash can, and occasionally the actual subject. It was somewhat surprising to me that, to get accurate focus of moving objects, I could get better results by turning off all the "moving object" settings and rely on my own targeting skills. With all the computer power at our disposal, the durned camera should be able to recognize, not just distance and color and lighting, but the *shape* of the object I first targeted, and then track that object for successive shots as it moves around on the screen.
I've ranted about this on other subjects, but it's worth a small rant here: stop making memory -- in this case the memory buffer -- a selling point to get you to pay for overpriced pro models. Memory is *cheap*. The first major company that puts a substantial memory buffer in all their models, enabling a significant number of continuous frames before writing to the card -- is going to clean up. I have a friend who not long ago bought a pair (his and hers) of high-end snapshot cameras (you know what I mean -- fixed lens but mechanical zoom and nice glass) only to find (while on vacation) that the write speed was so poor as to make them unusable in the field. I know, you can fix this a little with faster memory cards, but ram will always be orders-of-magnitude faster than mass storage. This is a cheap addition that makes a huge difference in the user experience.
Geeze, how could I forget this? Apple, remember that commercial you did a long time ago -- "the first office network at 30,000 feet". Remember that? Now, how could that concept be applied to the PDA?
Most of these points have already been made -- sync all your stuff, not just your email. Make everything searchable, not just contacts. Apple, PDAs have done this since before the turn of the century. Get on the stick.
Full bluetooth support. The i-phone should pair seamlessly with car audio systems that support stereo bluetooth. Blackberry already does this. Funky, proprietary cables and scratchy FM transmitters are so two decades ago.
Support for bluetooth peripherals, including (let me be clear on this) a decent keyboard. Blackberry already does this. Apple, you're missing out on a whole new line of stylish white iphone peripherals. Your marketing geeks should be thinking "micro-office".
Not just tethering, but bluetooth tethering. It's just amazing to me that you can tether a Blackberry to a Mac but you can't tether an i-phone to a Mac. How could Apple allow this to happen?
Speaking of proprietary cables, it's time Apple take a clue from the rest of the cell phone industry and switch to a micro-USB connector on the phone. Last time I said that in this forum, someone replied that Apple has been providing USB support for some time, which just goes to show how misunderstood this issue is. All three of our phones, and the company phone when I have to carry it, will charge from the same charger despite being different manufacturers. The ipod touch needs that proprietary stylish white charger with the stylish white proprietary connector. Where the hell has that thing gone now... Apple, please hear this. Proprietary data connectors are so last century.
MMS... geeze... don't get me started...
Apple has got to stop screwing around with locking down memory and calling it a feature. Flash memory is cheap, plentiful and standardized. A phone without a micro-SD slot is just plain not interesting. Why in God's name should you have to buy another phone to get more memory? How green is that? How financially responsible is that? Ipod and Iphone owners -- let me clue you in on a secret that Apples doesn't want you to know about... Memory has been cheap and more importantly, interchangeable for years. To upgrade my Blackberry from 8 Gbytes to 16 Gbytes costs $40.99 (Amazon) and can be done in a few seconds. To do a similar upgrade to an ipod touch is $284.95 (Amazon) minus whatever I could get on the used market for the old ipod. This is incredibly backwards. Flash memory is a commodity item.
I'm sure there are Apple marketing people who will say that locking down memory in iphone and ipod devices is a positive revenue stream for Apple. To them I say, the current arrangement results in a thriving used device market, from which you don't get revenue. Wouldn't you rather be selling stylish white SD cards at Apple's usual markup?
And finally, I won't even consider a phone that doesn't have a user replaceable battery. My phone is, like, my phone, it's what I use for my livelihood. I can't be without it for any longer than it takes to pop off the back and put in another battery. I'm sorry, if you're going to be a serious contender to serious phone/pda users, you're going to have to rethink this.
Again, I expect the next i-phone to be like the current 3G phone except more memory and a few bugfixes. What I hope happens is that Apple steps up to the plate and fields a phone that does everything the current competition does, only better. But -- reality check -- different isn't necessarily better. Example: Email is not a substitute for MMS. Email is Email, and MMS is MMS, and your competition has both.
> This latest ploy probably has little to do with crime, and more to do with bringing in more cash to fund the gov't's pet projects.
So given that, for the sake of argument, it seems to me that the proposed solution should be carefully crafted to have minimal effect, because if you take the issue away, you can't use it later.
And they won't have the stamina to chase after you.
From personal experience, I've found that SD cards can get chewed up by a small dog but micro-SD cards pass through unscathed.
Don't ask...
I for one welcome our new mini-Decepticon masters.
> I just tried in all sections. I ended up leaving a message with the Gov. Perhaps the webmaster didn't know anything about web programming?
I was under the impression that a Microsoft webmaster didn't have to know anything about web programming. Just buy some really expensive tools and drag and drop. A secretary could do it.
Why aren't some other big companies coming to TomTom's defense? "We must hang together or we will hang separately".