By Facebook opting you in to having facial recognition done on you... how many random people I have never met would be covered by them doing facial recognition on my pictures and associating them with you?
None, because presumably none of them are friends with you.
Don't forget the handsets. A fair few flagship handsets, like the HTC Evo 4G, have had pretty atrocious battery life due to their hardware.
That's not necessarily fair on Android, because there are as many handsets with acceptable battery life as there are with mediocre battery life. But the mediocre ones are the ones that you hear about, and the reputation can stick. And there aren't any touch-screen smartphones that can come close to the battery life of older, dumber feature phones, simply because they're doing more, so you're never going to hear anybody singing the praises of their Android smartphone's battery life.
This is one of the advantages of Apple's vertical market (for Apple anyway) - the reputation of iOS for battery life lives or dies by the batteries that Apple choose to put in their devices.
Everything else they've done could be argued to be altruistic
Altruistic? That's a difficult argument to make. LulzSec are not whitehat. An altruist would not release credit card details onto the internet for shits and giggles.
This really is a case of, First they came for PSN, but I didn't speak out because I was a Sony hater...
For that matter, who pays $50 a month for an entry-level contract any more? Mobile contracts in the UK (and this is a UK story so I'll quote prices in GBP) start at around the £10 a month mark. For an application like this, you'd probably be far better off on a pre-pay tariff. The postman only comes once a day, and you're not going to be having long conversations with him over the intercom.
Remember that this system most likely just places voice calls, so won't need any data allowance.
Probably so that they can sell it as a self-contained product. Once you start relying on the end-user to provide components of a system critical to its operation, things very quickly start to go wrong.
Also, using VoIP is much more complex than using off-the-shelf cellphone circuitry to place ordinary voice calls.
I agree that a WiFi model is the next logical step, but it sounds to me that they just wanted to get a demonstrable prototype out the door.
In the image, it actually looks a lot like I imagine Iain Banks' Culture ships to look. Combine that with the news that robots are developing their own language to talk to each other, and real life starts to look a little like Excession.
Fair enough, I'm not in the States so I don't know what those two networks were advertising.
Here in the UK, light web browsing was about as much as the networks thought people would do with data (excluding video calling and MMS). The browsing experience on features phones was woeful. It might have been better on the smartphones of the time, but smartphones were a small niche in the market.
Oh come on, Windows Mobile was a desktop paradigm shoe-horned into a pocket device. These devices may have been considered usable at the time, but they don't compare to modern smartphones.
Would it please your Apple-hating sensibilities if I said that everything I've said about the iPhone in this thread could equally be said about Android?
And again, you're mixing up 'usability' and 'usefulness'. They are two different things.
More like, it's not enough time to make a satisfactory* return on the original investment involved in rolling out 3G before putting more investment into upgrades.
Bear in mind that, if your customers are all on 'unlimited' packages, you will see zero return on any investment in additional capacity.
This might be more true in the UK than the US, mind you. The UK government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to auction off 3G licences, and the networks blew so much money on the licences that they could barely afford to roll out the networks. They expected to make the money back on expensive video calling, which (probably because of the cost and lack of a timely roll-out) never took off.
* Your definition of 'satisfactory' is likely to be lower than the networks'.
Ah, no, you miss my point. It's not about what a phone can or can't do, but how many users are actually using those features.
Current networks were designed based on data usage patterns from before the iPhone was released. Back then, very few people were using the data-intensive features that phones had, because they were difficult to use.
Nowadays, those features have become much easier to use, so more people are using them and more data is therefore being transferred. The networks are having to deal with more data traffic than they were designed for.
So it's not the phone's capabilities or features that are the issue, it's the usability.
That's a great feature list, but it has nothing to do with my argument that there were no usable smartphones before the iPhone.
I still have my old Samsung SGH-Z560 flip phone. It has most of the features that my current iPhone has, but actually using those features is an absolute nightmare. it was built with a checklist like yours, an not the user, in mind.
The 3G networks were rolled out before the iPhone was announced. Nobody could have been expected to predict that phones would actually become usable for any amount of data use.
There are a whole bunch of iPhone-compatible external battery packs, with some even acting as cases. Sure, they're not ideal, but they do have the added advantage that you don't need to turn the phone off and fiddle with removable parts when you need a power boost.
Also, if you're on the motorway, you're probably better off relying on a car charger than additional batteries. If you get a USB one, you can charge almost anything off them.
I'd wager that the space gained by not having to accomodate a removable battery is greater than the space lost by having to accommodate a larger SIM tray.
I've had to swap SIMs on a lot of phones (more than my fair share), so I've seen a lot of different methods of securing a SIM. Despite the fact that it requires a tool, the iPhone 4's tray is one of my favourites. No sharp edges, no fingernails, no scratched or bent SIMs, no moments of panic when it seems that the SIM just won't come out, and no SIMs flying across the room. And the metal MicroSIM tray is much more sturdy than the 3G's plastic SIM tray.
I'm actually very surprised that no other manufacturers have adopted the MicroSIM standard in a big way. I would've thought it was one of those situations where there was a desire for a smaller SIM, but nobody was brave enough to take the first step. It's not like it requires any significant new hardware, it's just a differently shaped piece of plastic.
Yes, because the object of the game will cease to be capturing the dragons or whatever, and become trying to get the cheapest price/most cash refunded.
Slashdot Mirror
None, because presumably none of them are friends with you.
Typical Slashdot knee-jerk reaction.
Don't forget the handsets. A fair few flagship handsets, like the HTC Evo 4G, have had pretty atrocious battery life due to their hardware.
That's not necessarily fair on Android, because there are as many handsets with acceptable battery life as there are with mediocre battery life. But the mediocre ones are the ones that you hear about, and the reputation can stick. And there aren't any touch-screen smartphones that can come close to the battery life of older, dumber feature phones, simply because they're doing more, so you're never going to hear anybody singing the praises of their Android smartphone's battery life.
This is one of the advantages of Apple's vertical market (for Apple anyway) - the reputation of iOS for battery life lives or dies by the batteries that Apple choose to put in their devices.
Altruistic? That's a difficult argument to make. LulzSec are not whitehat. An altruist would not release credit card details onto the internet for shits and giggles.
This really is a case of, First they came for PSN, but I didn't speak out because I was a Sony hater...
For that matter, who pays $50 a month for an entry-level contract any more? Mobile contracts in the UK (and this is a UK story so I'll quote prices in GBP) start at around the £10 a month mark. For an application like this, you'd probably be far better off on a pre-pay tariff. The postman only comes once a day, and you're not going to be having long conversations with him over the intercom.
Remember that this system most likely just places voice calls, so won't need any data allowance.
Probably so that they can sell it as a self-contained product. Once you start relying on the end-user to provide components of a system critical to its operation, things very quickly start to go wrong.
Also, using VoIP is much more complex than using off-the-shelf cellphone circuitry to place ordinary voice calls.
I agree that a WiFi model is the next logical step, but it sounds to me that they just wanted to get a demonstrable prototype out the door.
Apple used the name in their press release. It's not speculation.
I thought Google Talk was available everywhere. Maybe you're thinking of Google Voice?
Is he green? It's hard to tell in the black-and-white photo.
It's a BBC technology article. You weren't expecting anything else, were you?
In the image, it actually looks a lot like I imagine Iain Banks' Culture ships to look. Combine that with the news that robots are developing their own language to talk to each other, and real life starts to look a little like Excession.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that a lot of businesses use Dells in their offices and Macs at their reception, for this reason.
I'm sure that's what MS and RIM thought.
Now, BlackBerry is haemorrhaging users, and Windows Mobile has virtually disappeared off the map.
Meanwhile, Android and iOS are the strongest platforms on the market.
(I'd put Palm's failure down to undesirable hardware rather than anything to do with WebOS.)
Fair enough, I'm not in the States so I don't know what those two networks were advertising.
Here in the UK, light web browsing was about as much as the networks thought people would do with data (excluding video calling and MMS). The browsing experience on features phones was woeful. It might have been better on the smartphones of the time, but smartphones were a small niche in the market.
Oh come on, Windows Mobile was a desktop paradigm shoe-horned into a pocket device. These devices may have been considered usable at the time, but they don't compare to modern smartphones.
Would it please your Apple-hating sensibilities if I said that everything I've said about the iPhone in this thread could equally be said about Android?
And again, you're mixing up 'usability' and 'usefulness'. They are two different things.
More like, it's not enough time to make a satisfactory* return on the original investment involved in rolling out 3G before putting more investment into upgrades.
Bear in mind that, if your customers are all on 'unlimited' packages, you will see zero return on any investment in additional capacity.
This might be more true in the UK than the US, mind you. The UK government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to auction off 3G licences, and the networks blew so much money on the licences that they could barely afford to roll out the networks. They expected to make the money back on expensive video calling, which (probably because of the cost and lack of a timely roll-out) never took off.
* Your definition of 'satisfactory' is likely to be lower than the networks'.
I'm not sure it was ever 'designed for data', that's just how it's being used. 3G networks were designed for video calling.
Ah, no, you miss my point. It's not about what a phone can or can't do, but how many users are actually using those features.
Current networks were designed based on data usage patterns from before the iPhone was released. Back then, very few people were using the data-intensive features that phones had, because they were difficult to use.
Nowadays, those features have become much easier to use, so more people are using them and more data is therefore being transferred. The networks are having to deal with more data traffic than they were designed for.
So it's not the phone's capabilities or features that are the issue, it's the usability.
That's a great feature list, but it has nothing to do with my argument that there were no usable smartphones before the iPhone.
I still have my old Samsung SGH-Z560 flip phone. It has most of the features that my current iPhone has, but actually using those features is an absolute nightmare. it was built with a checklist like yours, an not the user, in mind.
Usable smartphones did not exist before the iPhone.
The E61 may have been a good smartphone in 2006, but it's a piece of junk next to the range of smartphones available today.
The 3G networks were rolled out before the iPhone was announced. Nobody could have been expected to predict that phones would actually become usable for any amount of data use.
There are a whole bunch of iPhone-compatible external battery packs, with some even acting as cases. Sure, they're not ideal, but they do have the added advantage that you don't need to turn the phone off and fiddle with removable parts when you need a power boost.
Also, if you're on the motorway, you're probably better off relying on a car charger than additional batteries. If you get a USB one, you can charge almost anything off them.
I'd wager that the space gained by not having to accomodate a removable battery is greater than the space lost by having to accommodate a larger SIM tray.
I've had to swap SIMs on a lot of phones (more than my fair share), so I've seen a lot of different methods of securing a SIM. Despite the fact that it requires a tool, the iPhone 4's tray is one of my favourites. No sharp edges, no fingernails, no scratched or bent SIMs, no moments of panic when it seems that the SIM just won't come out, and no SIMs flying across the room. And the metal MicroSIM tray is much more sturdy than the 3G's plastic SIM tray.
I'm actually very surprised that no other manufacturers have adopted the MicroSIM standard in a big way. I would've thought it was one of those situations where there was a desire for a smaller SIM, but nobody was brave enough to take the first step. It's not like it requires any significant new hardware, it's just a differently shaped piece of plastic.
At which point, the winning move is not to play.
And I bet that software was a lot more expensive to write than the equivalent software today.
What was considered 'productive' in the 70s and 80s would be seen as hideously unproductive today.
Are you quite sure about those figures?
Japan's area is 377 944 km^2. California's is 423 970 km^2. That makes Japan smaller than California alone.
Japan's population density is 337.1 persons/km^2. New York state's is 157.81 persons/km^2. That makes Japan's population twice as dense.