Is it a phone? Does it have front facing camera? What video resolutions are supported? Can it even record video? Does it have gyroscope? Accelerometer? GPS?... the list goes on.
You have to design separately for phone and tablet. (And that's true for any quality app for any other platform too.) Within those two categories supporting the differing resolution on iOS is simple. Just provide extra copies of any bitmaps you use, at double the resolution, with @2x appended on the filename. Everything else just works.
The taller screen of the iPhone4 is pretty easy to deal with too, as most app screens tend to be table views, again there's nothing to be done.
Depending on the app you may have to check the specifics of the hardware on most other platforms too. At least with iOS there are a small number of such differences. The Android permutations for example are far greater.
And MS? They seem to completely change direction on mobile every couple of years, so good luck with that. Dev Studio is nice, but you wouldn't choose a development platform based on slight preferences of IDEs.
The in-app purchase rule is one of the more egregious ones and I'd love to see it go.
So a developer puts out a "free" app, which requires a paid account and that account is created and paid for away from the Apple App Store. How does Apple get paid for the bandwidth, and the service of listing the app on the store?
For sure, they've made it possible for developers who want to put genuinely free apps on the store. And for those, Apple eats the costs. But why should they do so for developers that are charging for their app (via off store paid accounts.)
But what about retina iPad apps? They will look like shit if they run at all.
No they won't. All retina apps ship with multiple artwork. One set for the original iPad res, and one set for Retina res. The iPad mini will run with the original iPad res graphics and look just fine.
Which ones, old, pre-retina iPad apps or newer retina iPad apps that will look like shit if they work at all?
You haven't a clue how this works. Those apps are in the vast majority of cases exactly the same. It's just that the developer supplies artwork at the two different resolutions. And for text, it renders much more nicely on the double resolution Retina display.
But as a media consumer or internet front-end device it will fail.
Every device Apple has released has had people like you declaring they would fail. And with few exceptions, such predictions couldn't be more wrong. Prepare to look stupid.
Yes. Apple streamed many of these keynotes in the past. They stopped a few years ago. I think the live streams became too popular, and there was the problem that the stream demand was overloaded. I guess they've decided that there is now sufficient bandwidth to do a reliable stream again.
Trademark law is quite specific that competing companies can use a trademark for the purpose of identification when doing comparisons. So it's perfectly possible to say that they have a display better than Apple Retina.
The reason that nobody does, is that nobody has better displays than Apple's Retina yet.
Other companies are allowed to use trademarks to identify competing products for comparison. Thus it would be perfectly OK for Samsung to say that their "Super-XL[tm]" displays have a higher resolution than "Apple's Retina[tm]" displays.
Except Samsung can't, because they don't have any such Retina beating displays in any of their phones yet.
Do you always research? Before buying a tin of beans? (Which brand tastes nicest, which is healthier?) A pair of jeans? (Do you honestly know the dernier number for the jeans you buy? Do you know all the different styles of stitching, and which is best?) A piece of furniture? (How are the cushions on that sofa constructed?) A car? (OK, you're a geek, so there's a reasonable chance that you have done decent research on this one. But you can't expect everyone to know everything that happens under the hood.) A bunch of flowers? (Do you know how long each type of flower will typically last?) A roll of toilet paper? (How many sheets does it have?) A bottle of Wine? (You'd need to attend many wine classes before you are in a position to objectively judge the wines on offer to buy the best for the purpose.)
So, if you researched every purchase, you'd be having very long shopping trips.
Obviously you can say anything you like here, I don't know you. But you'd be unique if you did truly research every thing you bought. And it would mean that this particular form of shopping was your main interest.
In reality, consumers tend to have 3 main techniques for buying. 1) Buy the cheapest. 2) Rely on brand names. e.g. They'll buy Heinz Beans instead of researching every possible beans option. 3) Buy the most attractive. (The actual product, or the packaging.)
You many be happy to do hours of research before buying a phone. Indeed your chosen leisure reading material may mean that you already have most of the research done before you even start to consider a new phone. But it's unrealistic to expect most people to be like that. And it's silly to call them stupid when they don't. Unless you are prepared to be called stupid on the purchasing decisions you haven't researched.
All product manufacturers know that most of their customers don't research before buying.
I think you need reminding that you too are a consumer.
And it's nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity. It's domain knowledge. You happen to be knowledgable about computers. Other people have different specialisms. There are plenty of topics that you will know little about. How about if people called you stupid because of it.
People shopping for TVs in Walmart understand resolution and pixel size, especially if they get to stand 1 foot from a 70" 1080p TV and see that it doesn't really look very good up close compared to a 720p 32" TV at the same distance.
I don't think so. They understand High Def TV. And some of them are aware of the terms 1080p and 720p, and assume that the bigger number is better. But they'll rarely know what the number before the p means.
They don't need to see the keynote. The formula is only for geeks. The meaning of Retina display is given in consumer oriented language in the description of the device.
There's nothing crazy about it at all. The vast majority of UK police don't carry firearms. And the murder and firearms offence rates in the UK are a fraction of US ones.
Actually, during the UK riots of the summer before last, which were really just a mass exercise in looting, it turned out that most of the organisation took place via blackberry messaging. Not having a Blackberry I'm not sure why, but it seems something about the Blackberry messaging system makes Blackberries the phone of choice for criminal gangs.
If you think about it (a high standard, apparently) you will find a ton of gray area in that. There are a lot of legal, and quite responsible actions, that fall under "advancing towards potential harm".
And lots that are not, yet provide a shield for deliberate murder.
Your username shows your priority, and why you don't think about this issue rationally.
Let's not forget this event happened several months before it was mysteriously chosen, out of hundreds of other homicide cases, to be dragged out into the national spotlight by the media, complete with misleading and inflammatory pictures and storyline.
No it wasn't. It happened Feb 26th 2012. The national media coverage started that same day and ran almost continually for weeks.
That limits you to software you wrote yourself, or rather small programs written by others. Chances of having the skills and time to meaningfully analyse an OS and browser for example are almost nil.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it a phone? Does it have front facing camera? What video resolutions are supported? Can it even record video? Does it have gyroscope? Accelerometer? GPS? ... the list goes on.
You have to design separately for phone and tablet. (And that's true for any quality app for any other platform too.) Within those two categories supporting the differing resolution on iOS is simple. Just provide extra copies of any bitmaps you use, at double the resolution, with @2x appended on the filename. Everything else just works.
The taller screen of the iPhone4 is pretty easy to deal with too, as most app screens tend to be table views, again there's nothing to be done.
Depending on the app you may have to check the specifics of the hardware on most other platforms too. At least with iOS there are a small number of such differences. The Android permutations for example are far greater.
And MS? They seem to completely change direction on mobile every couple of years, so good luck with that. Dev Studio is nice, but you wouldn't choose a development platform based on slight preferences of IDEs.
And interface builder sucks balls. And just hope you won't have to localize.
Interface builder is great. What's your problem with localisation?
The in-app purchase rule is one of the more egregious ones and I'd love to see it go.
So a developer puts out a "free" app, which requires a paid account and that account is created and paid for away from the Apple App Store. How does Apple get paid for the bandwidth, and the service of listing the app on the store?
For sure, they've made it possible for developers who want to put genuinely free apps on the store. And for those, Apple eats the costs. But why should they do so for developers that are charging for their app (via off store paid accounts.)
I didn't expect it to be cheaper than the competition but i wasn't expecting it to be as much as the full sized iPads either.
What are you talking about? The new full size iPad starts at $499. The new iPad mini starts at $329.
But what about retina iPad apps? They will look like shit if they run at all.
No they won't. All retina apps ship with multiple artwork. One set for the original iPad res, and one set for Retina res. The iPad mini will run with the original iPad res graphics and look just fine.
Apple is cleverer than you.
Which ones, old, pre-retina iPad apps or newer retina iPad apps that will look like shit if they work at all?
You haven't a clue how this works. Those apps are in the vast majority of cases exactly the same. It's just that the developer supplies artwork at the two different resolutions. And for text, it renders much more nicely on the double resolution Retina display.
But as a media consumer or internet front-end device it will fail.
Every device Apple has released has had people like you declaring they would fail. And with few exceptions, such predictions couldn't be more wrong. Prepare to look stupid.
If your "live stream" is only viewable by a select group of devices I don't consider that "live".
Then you're confusing the word "live" with "universal".
And yet it's still the best 7" tablet.
Yes. Apple streamed many of these keynotes in the past. They stopped a few years ago. I think the live streams became too popular, and there was the problem that the stream demand was overloaded. I guess they've decided that there is now sufficient bandwidth to do a reliable stream again.
Trademark law is quite specific that competing companies can use a trademark for the purpose of identification when doing comparisons. So it's perfectly possible to say that they have a display better than Apple Retina.
The reason that nobody does, is that nobody has better displays than Apple's Retina yet.
Other companies are allowed to use trademarks to identify competing products for comparison. Thus it would be perfectly OK for Samsung to say that their "Super-XL[tm]" displays have a higher resolution than "Apple's Retina[tm]" displays.
Except Samsung can't, because they don't have any such Retina beating displays in any of their phones yet.
Do you always research?
Before buying a tin of beans? (Which brand tastes nicest, which is healthier?)
A pair of jeans? (Do you honestly know the dernier number for the jeans you buy? Do you know all the different styles of stitching, and which is best?)
A piece of furniture? (How are the cushions on that sofa constructed?)
A car? (OK, you're a geek, so there's a reasonable chance that you have done decent research on this one. But you can't expect everyone to know everything that happens under the hood.)
A bunch of flowers? (Do you know how long each type of flower will typically last?)
A roll of toilet paper? (How many sheets does it have?)
A bottle of Wine? (You'd need to attend many wine classes before you are in a position to objectively judge the wines on offer to buy the best for the purpose.)
So, if you researched every purchase, you'd be having very long shopping trips.
Obviously you can say anything you like here, I don't know you. But you'd be unique if you did truly research every thing you bought. And it would mean that this particular form of shopping was your main interest.
In reality, consumers tend to have 3 main techniques for buying.
1) Buy the cheapest.
2) Rely on brand names. e.g. They'll buy Heinz Beans instead of researching every possible beans option.
3) Buy the most attractive. (The actual product, or the packaging.)
You many be happy to do hours of research before buying a phone. Indeed your chosen leisure reading material may mean that you already have most of the research done before you even start to consider a new phone. But it's unrealistic to expect most people to be like that. And it's silly to call them stupid when they don't. Unless you are prepared to be called stupid on the purchasing decisions you haven't researched.
All product manufacturers know that most of their customers don't research before buying.
the consumer is stupid in general.
I think you need reminding that you too are a consumer.
And it's nothing to do with cleverness or stupidity. It's domain knowledge. You happen to be knowledgable about computers. Other people have different specialisms. There are plenty of topics that you will know little about. How about if people called you stupid because of it.
People shopping for TVs in Walmart understand resolution and pixel size, especially if they get to stand 1 foot from a 70" 1080p TV and see that it doesn't really look very good up close compared to a 720p 32" TV at the same distance.
I don't think so. They understand High Def TV. And some of them are aware of the terms 1080p and 720p, and assume that the bigger number is better. But they'll rarely know what the number before the p means.
They don't need to see the keynote. The formula is only for geeks. The meaning of Retina display is given in consumer oriented language in the description of the device.
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/
The point of the formula is to disprove the assertion that this is just a marketing term.
Of course if Apple hadn't trademarked it, other companies would have used "retina" for displays that don't match the criteria.
Apple has been moving away from relying on Samsung for parts, for over a year now.
Indeed. This reminds me of the manoeuvre when an employee says "I resign" just before his employer fires him.
Of course unarmed police is a crazy idea
There's nothing crazy about it at all. The vast majority of UK police don't carry firearms. And the murder and firearms offence rates in the UK are a fraction of US ones.
Actually, during the UK riots of the summer before last, which were really just a mass exercise in looting, it turned out that most of the organisation took place via blackberry messaging. Not having a Blackberry I'm not sure why, but it seems something about the Blackberry messaging system makes Blackberries the phone of choice for criminal gangs.
Your argument against gun control is so that people have the ability to shoot the cops? Who's masturbating?
If you think about it (a high standard, apparently) you will find a ton of gray area in that. There are a lot of legal, and quite responsible actions, that fall under "advancing towards potential harm".
And lots that are not, yet provide a shield for deliberate murder.
Your username shows your priority, and why you don't think about this issue rationally.
"Stand your ground" is a very reasonable doctrine, it simply allows self-defense without retreating first.
It appears to be interpreted by the gun lobby as allowing killing someone after deliberately advancing towards potential harm.
Let's not forget this event happened several months before it was mysteriously chosen, out of hundreds of other homicide cases, to be dragged out into the national spotlight by the media, complete with misleading and inflammatory pictures and storyline.
No it wasn't. It happened Feb 26th 2012. The national media coverage started that same day and ran almost continually for weeks.
Your links are to the same story covered on two different sites. The story was debunked on Slashdot at the time it first appeared.
That limits you to software you wrote yourself, or rather small programs written by others. Chances of having the skills and time to meaningfully analyse an OS and browser for example are almost nil.