I read about this update just the other day, and I got to wondering "I wonder how aged the battery is in my 3 year old iPhone 6?" So I grabbed a copy of CoconutBattery and gave it a spin. Much to my surprise, after more than 900 charging cycles, my battery was nearly 90% of the original design capacity!
I could understand cranking up the power management to the extreme if my phone's battery was in really bad shape, or disabling certain features that won't run really well on an older device. But according to CB, my battery was surprisingly new-like all things considered. So this just leaves me feeling more certain that the slowdown was caused by more than simply my battery's health.
I think the app management, specifically the act of killing off background apps, is just too enjoyable of a thing to do (swipe up to send bits to the nevermore).
The biggest problem my crazy brain finds with background apps is when I am looking to navigate between them. Every historically launched app is there 'in the way' such that I feel compelled to kill off everything but my most consistently used apps (mail, podcasts, browser, etc) so they're easily accessible.
I know that the suggested route here is to put these apps on my home screen (which I do), but I'm somewhat obsessive about keeping things clean there, and find it oddly more time consuming to close the app, hunt and peck through rows of icons than it is to double-tap, so I tend to rely on the app switching UI.
Feels like iOS should know enough to know which are my top used apps and to keep those 'in front' of the lesser used ones, in which case I may not feel so inclined to force quit everything to keep it 'clean'.
Or, split the app switching UI from the "this is where I go to kill apps in a fun and satisfying way" UI.:)
the choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich (oh, and another turd sandwich)
given the choices, I guess McCain. *sigh* I really wish Ron Paul were on the list.
On my Suse 9.3, if I want to control the volume, I go to Multimedia -> Volume control and I see NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS, all of which work or don't work to varying degrees, and none of which are simple and easy to use and understand. That's crazy. That's on drugs. That's lame. Say whatever you want about how great Linux is but if my desktop has NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS that is horrific.
Very good point. I like linux, I use it as frequently as I can. I'd like to make it my primary desktop OS however the lack of apps I need (designer, both web and print, I know I know, Gimp is cool, but it just doesn't yet replace Photoshop for me yet). But I must admit that most desktop distros that I have used are not set up for Joe Sixpack & Jane Boxwine.
My brother is a fairly nerdy fella, he loves tech and was interested in linux (after a few gentle nudges from me to try it out) but when he got a distro loaded (he tried Fedora Core 1, and tried again later with a slightly newer release of Mandrake) he was confused. And not just the to-be-expected confused at getting used to a new desktop, new apps, etc.
When he went to do pretty basic tasks and found more than one option he was calling me saying "so which one of these do I use?" I couldn't blame him. The fact that installs include more than one calculator or terminal or volume control utility is confusing for people, and unnecessary.
I realize that a lot of the spirit of the way open source works is that you've always got options and you're not tied to one thing, but when people want to make a distro more friendly for the average person, nobody needs THAT many choices for such basic tasks as volume control.
I will however admit that no, I haven't tried every distro out there (like the non-free Linspire which seems to take direct aim at being a desktop OS) and some do better than others (one I found recently, PCLinuxOS, is set up fairly smart but still has redundant applications)... I simply don't have the time to try all the various distros that exist. I would however like to see more distros do a better job picking what they feel is the best X (X being word processor, calculator, volume control thingy) and have that be installed by default. Let those who are curious install the other options (they're free, afterall) and see for themselves, once they have become accustomed to what they have.
while I can't agree more that the lack of a built in speaker sucks, and the battery life is less than great (though I don't need to charge mine but every couple days) the one thing you said that I can't figure is this:
It would crash every couple of days requiring a reinstall of everything.
The only time I ever had mine crash to such a point (where I had to reinstall from scratch) was when I was trying to force some software install that I probably shouldn't have (meaning it wasn't specifically written for the version of the OS that was installed) or was tinkering around in the terminal and caused something to break in a bad way.
I use mine often, even after 2 years, to pop on free WiFi at a cafe to check imdb, or check email, or yes, ssh into a server to check log files, without so much as a hiccup. Heck, I even use it daily as my morning alarm clock via a handy (and free, like so many other apps for the Zaurus) utility that I find it hard to compare to other more modern PDA's.
the ONLY thing mine doesn't do (because I haven't gone so far as to install OpenZaurus on it yet) is I can't get a WiFi scanner to work on it with my stinky Socket CF card.
I find the Zaurus to be a good PDA, maybe not as pretty as the new PocketPC based ones, but it works just fine. No frequent crashes and total reinstalls.
I couldn't agree more. I liked the show, it was one of the few shows I watched. The first few seasons weren't great, but the last one was quite good, and I was looking forward to a few more years of the same when it was dropped.
Given what else is on regular network TV (keep in mind folks, not everybody has cable and can watch Battlestar Galactica or whatever else), it was the best thing out there.
Regarding your story about Paris, my wife and I had a very similar experience, twice, while there nearly 2 years go.
We had arrived by train from Salzburg, Austria, and had made our way down to the Metro. After the 10hr train ride we were a bit 'out of it' and were standing in front of the ticket machine trying to figure out what to do. This older woman had come up to us, obviously seeing our confusion, and tried to explain how the system worked (our French is a little rusty but we were able to understand her faily well). At the end of her lesson on how to purchase Metro tickets, she proceeded to give us two tickets from her little packet and wished us a good day.
Two days later we were (after a good week of travelling) in need of a laundromat. Finally finding one we were a bit confused as to which slot to stick in the detergent disks and such, and another very friendly helpful woman showed us how it all worked and helped us out.
While speaking a little French probably helped, overall I found our experience very pleasant. We were only treated 'rudely' by stressed out shop owners or waiters at busy restaurants. And even then they were polite. Never once did I get the kind of treatment that I was so concerned about getting while I was there.
And really, if you approach someone, in the US (where I live) or elsewhere, with respect and courtesy you will likely get the same in return. I have had only one 'bad' experience on my trips to various European countries and that was only because I wandered in, out of confusion, to a shop that was closed (the door was open) and didn't know what the heck was going on. Not speaking nearly enough of the language I didn't realize they were telling me to get out.:)
how is it that soulseek stays off EVERYONES RADAR? in all my "research" of what the RIAA is busting this week, i have never once even heard soulseek get namedropped. it's almost like they don't even realize it exists. which, of course, makes me very very happy.
woah cool! yeah, too bad about the lack of built-in wifi, however, that might be a feature I can live without given the hard drive built in. Plus I still have my CF WiFi card that I bought for my 5500. Not quite as elegant but it would work.
Well, I for one have been very happy with my 5500, ever since I bought it. The small built-in keypad is really really handy (I just can't get used to any of the stylus-writing options, probably because I've got horrible hand-writing and any attempt at being precise with a stylus ends up taking me twelve times as long as the built-in Zaurus keypad takes to type anything), decent color screen, and enough free software / games / utilities to choke a small furry forest creature with. Toss in a CF WiFi card and I'm surfing away at the any of the free WiFi AP's in town or home. It's come in handy many many times.
One other thing the Zaurus got a lot of, probably because of the slide-out keypad, was "woah, cool! what's that?" from friends and coworkers, and not even technical ones, just people who thought it was a handy looking PDA.
I was looking forward to another model like the 6000 (but a bit more consumer-based) to buy. Looks like that won't be happening. I was really hoping for a 6000-like device with a mini hard drive in it. oh well... hopefully in a while I can pick up a used 6000 for a decent price.
I don't mind some of the services that are out there, and iTunes seems to be closest to the mark, but the only complaint I have is the price.
$.99 a track is just too steep considering you get no physical product. If tracks were half that I would be far more keen on the idea, the average full-length album would be about 6 or 7 bucks, which for me seems about right for an album without the plastic disc, case, artwork, etc.
The way it is, I prefer buying albums and ripping the tracks. Best of both worlds, with the exception that it takes longer.:)
Also (and I heard this from one of the roadies for a show at a smaller venue in my home town, I can't say for sure if it holds true across the board) if you buy CD's at a band's show, the band gets more $ from your purchase than if you buy it from a store. Something about the band getting their own CD's at wholesale, and any markup goes directly to them. So for the past year or so I've been trying to wait and buy CD's at a show.
I just bought one after attending the Pixies show in Eugene this past Tuesday. They sound good. Tracks are split up and all (and info submitted to cddb within 12 hours, not sure who was responsible for this, but it was a nice surprise the next day).
Can't speak to other shows, but the one I got sounds really good. Only thing is a weak low-end, so the bass drum doesn't thump, and the bass guitar doesn't rumble... but aside from that it sounds great.
Nice way to take the show home with you w/o it sounding like some muffled, mono pile of poo from a tape recorder down your pants.:)
how many is 'many people'? I would much rather see a blank white area than some flickering/flashing animated banner/skyscraper ad.
Lastly, I use the Mozilla addon adblock (adblock.mozdev.org) and you can set it to compact the whitespace where the ad used to be. Crazed or not, I surf w/o popups OR banner ads, and it is nothing aside from glorious.:)
Personally, I'd buy a lot more DVDs if they were upfront with their release schedule. There are too many movies I want to buy, but just can't because I don't know when, or even if, they are going to be releasing special editions. I wonder if the number of people who hold back on DVD purchases for this purpose balance out the number who buy both editions?
I often hold back on buying DVD's due to this very thing. It's frustrating because I've been burned through 'double-dipping' in the past (how many times will they re-release Stargate? first release, Special Edition, Ultimate Edition), so I tend to hold off on buying some dvd's that I suspect will be released in special edition form later on.
The 'Block Images from Server' option is still there, just hidden a bit.
If you type 'about:config' in the URL bar, and locate the line 'imageblocker:enabled', double-click and change the value to 'true' you'll find that you can indeed block images from servers. You had me scared there for a bit, I clearly remembered being able to in 7.01... thank the omnipotent being(s) for about:config.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I read about this update just the other day, and I got to wondering "I wonder how aged the battery is in my 3 year old iPhone 6?" So I grabbed a copy of CoconutBattery and gave it a spin. Much to my surprise, after more than 900 charging cycles, my battery was nearly 90% of the original design capacity!
I could understand cranking up the power management to the extreme if my phone's battery was in really bad shape, or disabling certain features that won't run really well on an older device. But according to CB, my battery was surprisingly new-like all things considered. So this just leaves me feeling more certain that the slowdown was caused by more than simply my battery's health.
I think the app management, specifically the act of killing off background apps, is just too enjoyable of a thing to do (swipe up to send bits to the nevermore).
The biggest problem my crazy brain finds with background apps is when I am looking to navigate between them. Every historically launched app is there 'in the way' such that I feel compelled to kill off everything but my most consistently used apps (mail, podcasts, browser, etc) so they're easily accessible.
I know that the suggested route here is to put these apps on my home screen (which I do), but I'm somewhat obsessive about keeping things clean there, and find it oddly more time consuming to close the app, hunt and peck through rows of icons than it is to double-tap, so I tend to rely on the app switching UI.
Feels like iOS should know enough to know which are my top used apps and to keep those 'in front' of the lesser used ones, in which case I may not feel so inclined to force quit everything to keep it 'clean'.
Or, split the app switching UI from the "this is where I go to kill apps in a fun and satisfying way" UI. :)
I'm with ya. At first I was supportive, but now it's starting to turn me away from the site completely.
What's the point in having laws if they can be "waived" away?
More on the Dreamforce conference: http://valleywag.gawker.com/marc-benioff-is-the-ron-burgundy-of-tech-1469662002
The town that did away with traffic lights was in England, called Poynton. Saw the following Video about it a while back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vzDDMzq7d0
A really nice improvement.
the choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich (oh, and another turd sandwich) given the choices, I guess McCain. *sigh* I really wish Ron Paul were on the list.
Very good point. I like linux, I use it as frequently as I can. I'd like to make it my primary desktop OS however the lack of apps I need (designer, both web and print, I know I know, Gimp is cool, but it just doesn't yet replace Photoshop for me yet). But I must admit that most desktop distros that I have used are not set up for Joe Sixpack & Jane Boxwine.
My brother is a fairly nerdy fella, he loves tech and was interested in linux (after a few gentle nudges from me to try it out) but when he got a distro loaded (he tried Fedora Core 1, and tried again later with a slightly newer release of Mandrake) he was confused. And not just the to-be-expected confused at getting used to a new desktop, new apps, etc.
When he went to do pretty basic tasks and found more than one option he was calling me saying "so which one of these do I use?" I couldn't blame him. The fact that installs include more than one calculator or terminal or volume control utility is confusing for people, and unnecessary.
I realize that a lot of the spirit of the way open source works is that you've always got options and you're not tied to one thing, but when people want to make a distro more friendly for the average person, nobody needs THAT many choices for such basic tasks as volume control.
I will however admit that no, I haven't tried every distro out there (like the non-free Linspire which seems to take direct aim at being a desktop OS) and some do better than others (one I found recently, PCLinuxOS, is set up fairly smart but still has redundant applications)
-r-
while I can't agree more that the lack of a built in speaker sucks, and the battery life is less than great (though I don't need to charge mine but every couple days) the one thing you said that I can't figure is this:
It would crash every couple of days requiring a reinstall of everything.
The only time I ever had mine crash to such a point (where I had to reinstall from scratch) was when I was trying to force some software install that I probably shouldn't have (meaning it wasn't specifically written for the version of the OS that was installed) or was tinkering around in the terminal and caused something to break in a bad way.
I use mine often, even after 2 years, to pop on free WiFi at a cafe to check imdb, or check email, or yes, ssh into a server to check log files, without so much as a hiccup. Heck, I even use it daily as my morning alarm clock via a handy (and free, like so many other apps for the Zaurus) utility that I find it hard to compare to other more modern PDA's.
the ONLY thing mine doesn't do (because I haven't gone so far as to install OpenZaurus on it yet) is I can't get a WiFi scanner to work on it with my stinky Socket CF card.
I find the Zaurus to be a good PDA, maybe not as pretty as the new PocketPC based ones, but it works just fine. No frequent crashes and total reinstalls.
-r-
I couldn't agree more. I liked the show, it was one of the few shows I watched. The first few seasons weren't great, but the last one was quite good, and I was looking forward to a few more years of the same when it was dropped.
Given what else is on regular network TV (keep in mind folks, not everybody has cable and can watch Battlestar Galactica or whatever else), it was the best thing out there.
sad to see it go.
-r-
Regarding your story about Paris, my wife and I had a very similar experience, twice, while there nearly 2 years go.
:)
We had arrived by train from Salzburg, Austria, and had made our way down to the Metro. After the 10hr train ride we were a bit 'out of it' and were standing in front of the ticket machine trying to figure out what to do. This older woman had come up to us, obviously seeing our confusion, and tried to explain how the system worked (our French is a little rusty but we were able to understand her faily well). At the end of her lesson on how to purchase Metro tickets, she proceeded to give us two tickets from her little packet and wished us a good day.
Two days later we were (after a good week of travelling) in need of a laundromat. Finally finding one we were a bit confused as to which slot to stick in the detergent disks and such, and another very friendly helpful woman showed us how it all worked and helped us out.
While speaking a little French probably helped, overall I found our experience very pleasant. We were only treated 'rudely' by stressed out shop owners or waiters at busy restaurants. And even then they were polite. Never once did I get the kind of treatment that I was so concerned about getting while I was there.
And really, if you approach someone, in the US (where I live) or elsewhere, with respect and courtesy you will likely get the same in return. I have had only one 'bad' experience on my trips to various European countries and that was only because I wandered in, out of confusion, to a shop that was closed (the door was open) and didn't know what the heck was going on. Not speaking nearly enough of the language I didn't realize they were telling me to get out.
-r-
how is it that soulseek stays off EVERYONES RADAR? in all my "research" of what the RIAA is busting this week, i have never once even heard soulseek get namedropped. it's almost like they don't even realize it exists. which, of course, makes me very very happy.
:)
shhhh!
-r-
puts a whole new twist on getting ths spins after a good party. (yeah, I know, it's bad. I can't help myself).
-r-
woah cool! yeah, too bad about the lack of built-in wifi, however, that might be a feature I can live without given the hard drive built in. Plus I still have my CF WiFi card that I bought for my 5500. Not quite as elegant but it would work.
thanks for the tip!
-r-
Well, I for one have been very happy with my 5500, ever since I bought it. The small built-in keypad is really really handy (I just can't get used to any of the stylus-writing options, probably because I've got horrible hand-writing and any attempt at being precise with a stylus ends up taking me twelve times as long as the built-in Zaurus keypad takes to type anything), decent color screen, and enough free software / games / utilities to choke a small furry forest creature with. Toss in a CF WiFi card and I'm surfing away at the any of the free WiFi AP's in town or home. It's come in handy many many times.
One other thing the Zaurus got a lot of, probably because of the slide-out keypad, was "woah, cool! what's that?" from friends and coworkers, and not even technical ones, just people who thought it was a handy looking PDA.
I was looking forward to another model like the 6000 (but a bit more consumer-based) to buy. Looks like that won't be happening. I was really hoping for a 6000-like device with a mini hard drive in it. oh well... hopefully in a while I can pick up a used 6000 for a decent price.
bummer.
-r-
I don't mind some of the services that are out there, and iTunes seems to be closest to the mark, but the only complaint I have is the price.
:)
$.99 a track is just too steep considering you get no physical product. If tracks were half that I would be far more keen on the idea, the average full-length album would be about 6 or 7 bucks, which for me seems about right for an album without the plastic disc, case, artwork, etc.
The way it is, I prefer buying albums and ripping the tracks. Best of both worlds, with the exception that it takes longer.
Also (and I heard this from one of the roadies for a show at a smaller venue in my home town, I can't say for sure if it holds true across the board) if you buy CD's at a band's show, the band gets more $ from your purchase than if you buy it from a store. Something about the band getting their own CD's at wholesale, and any markup goes directly to them. So for the past year or so I've been trying to wait and buy CD's at a show.
-r-
I just bought one after attending the Pixies show in Eugene this past Tuesday. They sound good. Tracks are split up and all (and info submitted to cddb within 12 hours, not sure who was responsible for this, but it was a nice surprise the next day).
:)
Can't speak to other shows, but the one I got sounds really good. Only thing is a weak low-end, so the bass drum doesn't thump, and the bass guitar doesn't rumble... but aside from that it sounds great.
Nice way to take the show home with you w/o it sounding like some muffled, mono pile of poo from a tape recorder down your pants.
-r-
how many is 'many people'? I would much rather see a blank white area than some flickering/flashing animated banner/skyscraper ad.
:)
Lastly, I use the Mozilla addon adblock (adblock.mozdev.org) and you can set it to compact the whitespace where the ad used to be. Crazed or not, I surf w/o popups OR banner ads, and it is nothing aside from glorious.
Personally, I'd buy a lot more DVDs if they were upfront with their release schedule. There are too many movies I want to buy, but just can't because I don't know when, or even if, they are going to be releasing special editions. I wonder if the number of people who hold back on DVD purchases for this purpose balance out the number who buy both editions?
I often hold back on buying DVD's due to this very thing. It's frustrating because I've been burned through 'double-dipping' in the past (how many times will they re-release Stargate? first release, Special Edition, Ultimate Edition), so I tend to hold off on buying some dvd's that I suspect will be released in special edition form later on.
-r-
The 'Block Images from Server' option is still there, just hidden a bit.
... thank the omnipotent being(s) for about:config. :)
If you type 'about:config' in the URL bar, and locate the line 'imageblocker:enabled', double-click and change the value to 'true' you'll find that you can indeed block images from servers. You had me scared there for a bit, I clearly remembered being able to in 7.01
-r-
yes, I too was beaten to this one:
... your lupins, please.
Moore: Stand and deliver.
All: Dennis Moore!
Moore: The same. And now my lords, my ladies
-r-
"...including the Stardust mission..."
:)
Ziggy learned to play guitar, flying high with...
etc...
sorry, had to do it.
-r-