What's stopping me is I'm not in the market to develop shit, I'm in the market to _buy_ shit to use. If you can't make a decent e-mail client - my money go elsewhere. I don't care if the Android is free or paid - I pay for the phone and for the service.
Both Android's native e-mail client and K9 are piece of crap, compared to iPhone's. iPhone's is not perfect either, but at least it WORKS with multiple accounts properly and has an ability to move messages from folder to folder, among other things, and does not have a huge stupid "DELETE" button in the middle of the screen that deletes messages without confirmation, with no way to undelete it.
And I'm not even talking about the fact that a simple reboot makes Android forget EVERYTHING - what Google Maps was showing last time, what pages were open in the browser et cetera.
But I have to also point out: with this attitude "if you don't like it - make your own" Android will fail. It is already extremely fragmented, and simple updates take AGES to deploy. The gapless music playback in Android has been fixed ages ago, according to their bug tracker, but still hasn't made it into a release.
I've been using Android for half a year. In its current state (2.1) it's a load of crap. I've ultimately switched back to iPhone, and only use my Motorola Droid as a simple phone (seeing as iPhone is on a shitty AT&T network and can't make or receive calls most of the time, and when it can - the call will get dropped with about 90% certainty).
What "best" phones? Most of the phones just barely got the 2.1 update, which brings no useful features other than silly eye candy, with all the bugs and issues of the previous releases. 2.2 will hopefully make its way to the phones in about half a year. And by all signs it looks like many issues plaguing current Android releases are still there (e-mail client, for instance, is still a piece of manure as far as I know).
P.S. Developers - especially Open Source ones - should never be let anywhere near designing GUI for applications.
Maybe I'm an idiot, but isn't the whole point of being SOCIAL in sharing info with others? I mean, it wouldn't be a "social" site if it just locked all information up. If you don't want others to learn things about you you don't want them to learn - don't post them online.
Does it also add emoticons to the text? I mean, transcribed voice mail is good, but nothing beats the live human voice for many reasons, emotions being one of them.
How in a world can a gaming console, which was obsolete even before it got released, last _10 years_??? I mean, really? 256 mb of RAM + 256 mb of VRAM, no hardware scaling, slow BD drive. And last time I checked, the PS3 OS memory footprint was something like 52 megabytes - that's out of 256! I REALLY hope it got better since then, but XBOX 360 OS, for example, takes only 32 megabytes.
Now, with the current state of things, consoles are already WAY behind PC in terms of power. So I'm guessing that in 10 years (8 years now, if I'm not mistaken), PC gaming will be so far ahead - either 360 or PS3 will look like something from the Paleozoic.
And besides, Sony's focus is really somewhere in a completely different universe - they add all irrelevant features to the PS3, trying to make it everything except the one thing that matters: a gaming machine. Its PSN still lacks basic features that Xbox Live has had for years (system-wide mute, player preference/avoidance system, way to report bad behavior etc.) But at least we have Life with Playstation, which probably nobody uses, and Photo Gallery, and Web browser, which doesn't work on probably 80% of web sites...
So, I guess, there's a very good chance that PS3 will only remain as a BD player. If BD lasts that long, that is.
My time is valuable, where I enjoy spending it. I don't enjoy sitting and staring at the screen, while the game is being installed, right in a middle of gameplay. Or loading screens every 30-60 seconds, IN A CHASE SCENE!!!
So while I have the PS3, most multiplatform games I buy for the 360, as the experience is usually better all around. I only buy exclusives for PS3, or multiplatform games that are proven to be at least as good as their 360 versions (so far I know only two - Dead Space and Devil May Cry 4).
Well, I'm thinking of a PS3 as a hardware, developed by someone who has no idea what a _GAMING_ console needs:( And, quite frankly, Sony has mostly been pushing PS3 forward as anything BUT the gaming console, so no wonder it fails in that department:(
And yes, I loved Uncharted, and marginally enjoyed MGS4 (sans its ridiculous cut scenes and ridiculous installation times). Besides that, there aren't many games there that run at least as good as they do on the 360. Dead Space, actually, is the only one that comes to mind, which looks and works at least as good on the PS3 as on 360 (and yes, I have the PS3 version). Fallout 3 is a good example of how BAD many multiplatform games look and work on the PS3:(
Well, I don't give a frak if you think I'm fanboy or anything. MGS takes about 8 minutes first time, and 2-5 minutes every subsequent time. Compare to a few seconds swapping the disk. And speaking of the cut scenes in MGS4 - the length is insane, and worst of all - it's not adding a tiny bit to the game. And I'm not even talking about loading screens every 30-60 seconds in the motorcycle ride scene.
P.S. I own all of them - 360, PS3 and a PC, for a good measure - the one capable of running Crysis at High settings.
Exactly the point: most games look bad on PS3, unless they're exclusive. Then they come close to those on the 360 and sometimes even on PC. End yet, the KZ2 is a far cry from Sony's promised 1080p HD gamin. In fact, it doesn't even seem to be rendered at 720p - looks more like it's been rendered at a lower resolution, and then scaled up with antialiasing (similar to MGS4).
I can't imagine how can you make a true HD game on a device with only 256MB of Video RAM, and with a BluRay drive that can only read data at about 9 megabytes per second. So, you get a MGS4 and the likes, which takes AGES to install onto PS3's internal hard drive, multiple times. I'd rather change a DVD any day - takes a few seconds, than to wait for minutes for the content to get copied at a ridiculously slow speed onto internal hard drive.
That is not to say KZ2 is a bad game - not at all. It's just one of the games that users of 360 and PC have gotten accustomed to long time ago. Hell, just look at one of the ancient games on 360 - Splinter Cell: Double Agent! The graphics there were absolutely fantastic, and that was October 2006 - 2.5 years ago!!!
When I check weather or stocks, I don't interact with _Apple_. I interact with _my_ phone, and with the web site, which provides me with the information. There's absolutely no reason for them to have my IMEI number. Interaction with Apple would be if I visit their web site, or store, or whatever else is directly associated with the company. Neither weather nor stocks are.
When an update is about to be installed on a system with an unknown state - the update process should fail and refuse to continue the installation. In this case update continued and then users found out they're unable to use their quite expensive phones any longer.
As far as "unauthorized" modifications are concerned: the 1.1.1 update contained complete OS update (or, rather, replacement) AND modem firmware. Since this is an OS X operating system, and I know it for a fact that installing updates on Mac doesn't brick "modified" Macs (with software other than that, which comes with OS), I can't imagine why the same can't be true for a mini computer, such as iPhone.
In any event, the "bricking" here is software related, and it would only take about a minute or so to fix that, so Apple's posturing here is not because the phone is "broken" - it is not. What is the reason for the posturing - I don't know. And their suggestion to "go buy a new iPhone"? You have to be kidding, right? Yeah, sure, I'll go and buy a new "iPhone" from the company, which acts like pure assholes to the people, who gave them their money.
Cablevision does cap uploads, though - I personally have been capped many times for what they said "excessive uploading" (namely: I uploaded about 6 gigabytes to my web server once and got capped the next day to 200kbps upload speed).
I guess you can still use the good olde remote control for the original iPod... Or they would release a new version (can't see why not make a remote with a click wheel, though:) ).
Yes, Russia is screwed up quite a bit. But how is that different from the US, for example? Doesn't seem like US can make its shuttles fly without falling apart. And then again, look back at New Orleans disaster - how US has handled that one. And yet, Bush thinks it's appropriate to tell other countries what they should do and how, while the US can't even handle its own internal issues.
I think that what Russians do might actually revitalize the spirit of the people, make them feel proud again. There's quite a lot of despair among Russians, and this might be one of the things that could change that, even if just a little bit.
You're free to do whatever you like with your console - they don't turn it off or remove any of its capabilities. They ban you from the network, where you have to abide by their rules. You can mod your console anything you like, but without "xbox live" service.
I said it multiple times, I repeat it again: Apple has no place in Enterprise until they offer enterprise level of support. Hauling your Mac to Genius Bar, with 2 week repair turn around at best, does not qualify as such. Period.
Apple offers enterprise level support for their XServes, but that's all. Nothing like that for iMacs, Mac Pros or laptops.
If you don't like iTunes - don't buy music from it. I think the choice is pretty clear. iTunes is a complementary thing for iPod. They were designed for one another. If someone doesn't like it - you don't have to use it. Buy a player from another vendor, use another vendor's software and another vendor's music store. It's a free market, you know. It's not like someone is holding a pistol at the back of your head, forcing you to buy music from iTunes.
(1) Why don't you bitch around that XBOX360 software isn't allowed to run on PowerPC machines? Or why router firmware can't run on a home PC. Same thing: apple is hardware company, producing firmware for their computers. Consider Mac OS X a firmware for Macs.
(2) Can't remember a single reference when Apple has done anything to prevent other software from running on their computers. Care to provide examples?
(3) They have never tried to control who and what could put songs on their iPods. They've made it convenient to use with iTunes, and in fact, iPod is "iTunes-to-go", not the other way 'round. They don't have to make iPod convenient to use with anything else. It's always iPod + iTunes.
(4) There are no iPhones yet on the market. We'll see how that works when there actually are.
I think if Apple is "scared" of anything, then it's not the Aero itself, but it's ugly looks. I was scared too the first time I saw Vista's interface - OMFG!!! I'm still having nightmares...
It seems to me that this is a sure way to delay the release indefinitely: they must know how f... well, insecure... the Vista is - now they have a good excuse to miss the promised shipment dates once again:) "Oh, black hats have found yet another hole in our system! Bummer - we have to postpone the relase for another 6 years"...
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What's stopping me is I'm not in the market to develop shit, I'm in the market to _buy_ shit to use. If you can't make a decent e-mail client - my money go elsewhere. I don't care if the Android is free or paid - I pay for the phone and for the service.
Both Android's native e-mail client and K9 are piece of crap, compared to iPhone's. iPhone's is not perfect either, but at least it WORKS with multiple accounts properly and has an ability to move messages from folder to folder, among other things, and does not have a huge stupid "DELETE" button in the middle of the screen that deletes messages without confirmation, with no way to undelete it.
And I'm not even talking about the fact that a simple reboot makes Android forget EVERYTHING - what Google Maps was showing last time, what pages were open in the browser et cetera.
But I have to also point out: with this attitude "if you don't like it - make your own" Android will fail. It is already extremely fragmented, and simple updates take AGES to deploy. The gapless music playback in Android has been fixed ages ago, according to their bug tracker, but still hasn't made it into a release.
I've been using Android for half a year. In its current state (2.1) it's a load of crap. I've ultimately switched back to iPhone, and only use my Motorola Droid as a simple phone (seeing as iPhone is on a shitty AT&T network and can't make or receive calls most of the time, and when it can - the call will get dropped with about 90% certainty).
What "best" phones? Most of the phones just barely got the 2.1 update, which brings no useful features other than silly eye candy, with all the bugs and issues of the previous releases. 2.2 will hopefully make its way to the phones in about half a year. And by all signs it looks like many issues plaguing current Android releases are still there (e-mail client, for instance, is still a piece of manure as far as I know).
P.S. Developers - especially Open Source ones - should never be let anywhere near designing GUI for applications.
Maybe I'm an idiot, but isn't the whole point of being SOCIAL in sharing info with others? I mean, it wouldn't be a "social" site if it just locked all information up. If you don't want others to learn things about you you don't want them to learn - don't post them online.
Duh!
Does it also add emoticons to the text? I mean, transcribed voice mail is good, but nothing beats the live human voice for many reasons, emotions being one of them.
How in a world can a gaming console, which was obsolete even before it got released, last _10 years_??? I mean, really? 256 mb of RAM + 256 mb of VRAM, no hardware scaling, slow BD drive. And last time I checked, the PS3 OS memory footprint was something like 52 megabytes - that's out of 256! I REALLY hope it got better since then, but XBOX 360 OS, for example, takes only 32 megabytes.
Now, with the current state of things, consoles are already WAY behind PC in terms of power. So I'm guessing that in 10 years (8 years now, if I'm not mistaken), PC gaming will be so far ahead - either 360 or PS3 will look like something from the Paleozoic.
And besides, Sony's focus is really somewhere in a completely different universe - they add all irrelevant features to the PS3, trying to make it everything except the one thing that matters: a gaming machine. Its PSN still lacks basic features that Xbox Live has had for years (system-wide mute, player preference/avoidance system, way to report bad behavior etc.) But at least we have Life with Playstation, which probably nobody uses, and Photo Gallery, and Web browser, which doesn't work on probably 80% of web sites...
So, I guess, there's a very good chance that PS3 will only remain as a BD player. If BD lasts that long, that is.
My time is valuable, where I enjoy spending it. I don't enjoy sitting and staring at the screen, while the game is being installed, right in a middle of gameplay. Or loading screens every 30-60 seconds, IN A CHASE SCENE!!!
So while I have the PS3, most multiplatform games I buy for the 360, as the experience is usually better all around. I only buy exclusives for PS3, or multiplatform games that are proven to be at least as good as their 360 versions (so far I know only two - Dead Space and Devil May Cry 4).
Well, I'm thinking of a PS3 as a hardware, developed by someone who has no idea what a _GAMING_ console needs :( And, quite frankly, Sony has mostly been pushing PS3 forward as anything BUT the gaming console, so no wonder it fails in that department :(
And yes, I loved Uncharted, and marginally enjoyed MGS4 (sans its ridiculous cut scenes and ridiculous installation times). Besides that, there aren't many games there that run at least as good as they do on the 360. Dead Space, actually, is the only one that comes to mind, which looks and works at least as good on the PS3 as on 360 (and yes, I have the PS3 version). Fallout 3 is a good example of how BAD many multiplatform games look and work on the PS3 :(
Well, I don't give a frak if you think I'm fanboy or anything. MGS takes about 8 minutes first time, and 2-5 minutes every subsequent time. Compare to a few seconds swapping the disk. And speaking of the cut scenes in MGS4 - the length is insane, and worst of all - it's not adding a tiny bit to the game. And I'm not even talking about loading screens every 30-60 seconds in the motorcycle ride scene.
P.S. I own all of them - 360, PS3 and a PC, for a good measure - the one capable of running Crysis at High settings.
Exactly the point: most games look bad on PS3, unless they're exclusive. Then they come close to those on the 360 and sometimes even on PC. End yet, the KZ2 is a far cry from Sony's promised 1080p HD gamin. In fact, it doesn't even seem to be rendered at 720p - looks more like it's been rendered at a lower resolution, and then scaled up with antialiasing (similar to MGS4).
I can't imagine how can you make a true HD game on a device with only 256MB of Video RAM, and with a BluRay drive that can only read data at about 9 megabytes per second. So, you get a MGS4 and the likes, which takes AGES to install onto PS3's internal hard drive, multiple times. I'd rather change a DVD any day - takes a few seconds, than to wait for minutes for the content to get copied at a ridiculously slow speed onto internal hard drive.
That is not to say KZ2 is a bad game - not at all. It's just one of the games that users of 360 and PC have gotten accustomed to long time ago. Hell, just look at one of the ancient games on 360 - Splinter Cell: Double Agent! The graphics there were absolutely fantastic, and that was October 2006 - 2.5 years ago!!!
When I check weather or stocks, I don't interact with _Apple_. I interact with _my_ phone, and with the web site, which provides me with the information. There's absolutely no reason for them to have my IMEI number. Interaction with Apple would be if I visit their web site, or store, or whatever else is directly associated with the company. Neither weather nor stocks are.
When an update is about to be installed on a system with an unknown state - the update process should fail and refuse to continue the installation. In this case update continued and then users found out they're unable to use their quite expensive phones any longer. As far as "unauthorized" modifications are concerned: the 1.1.1 update contained complete OS update (or, rather, replacement) AND modem firmware. Since this is an OS X operating system, and I know it for a fact that installing updates on Mac doesn't brick "modified" Macs (with software other than that, which comes with OS), I can't imagine why the same can't be true for a mini computer, such as iPhone. In any event, the "bricking" here is software related, and it would only take about a minute or so to fix that, so Apple's posturing here is not because the phone is "broken" - it is not. What is the reason for the posturing - I don't know. And their suggestion to "go buy a new iPhone"? You have to be kidding, right? Yeah, sure, I'll go and buy a new "iPhone" from the company, which acts like pure assholes to the people, who gave them their money.
Cablevision does cap uploads, though - I personally have been capped many times for what they said "excessive uploading" (namely: I uploaded about 6 gigabytes to my web server once and got capped the next day to 200kbps upload speed).
I guess you can still use the good olde remote control for the original iPod... Or they would release a new version (can't see why not make a remote with a click wheel, though :) ).
Yes, Russia is screwed up quite a bit. But how is that different from the US, for example? Doesn't seem like US can make its shuttles fly without falling apart. And then again, look back at New Orleans disaster - how US has handled that one. And yet, Bush thinks it's appropriate to tell other countries what they should do and how, while the US can't even handle its own internal issues. I think that what Russians do might actually revitalize the spirit of the people, make them feel proud again. There's quite a lot of despair among Russians, and this might be one of the things that could change that, even if just a little bit.
How does one "capture" 15.25 (61% out of 25) viruses? Or 6% (1.5), for that matter?
You're free to do whatever you like with your console - they don't turn it off or remove any of its capabilities. They ban you from the network, where you have to abide by their rules. You can mod your console anything you like, but without "xbox live" service.
Apple has already told us.
I said it multiple times, I repeat it again: Apple has no place in Enterprise until they offer enterprise level of support. Hauling your Mac to Genius Bar, with 2 week repair turn around at best, does not qualify as such. Period. Apple offers enterprise level support for their XServes, but that's all. Nothing like that for iMacs, Mac Pros or laptops.
If you don't like iTunes - don't buy music from it. I think the choice is pretty clear. iTunes is a complementary thing for iPod. They were designed for one another. If someone doesn't like it - you don't have to use it. Buy a player from another vendor, use another vendor's software and another vendor's music store. It's a free market, you know. It's not like someone is holding a pistol at the back of your head, forcing you to buy music from iTunes.
(1) Why don't you bitch around that XBOX360 software isn't allowed to run on PowerPC machines? Or why router firmware can't run on a home PC. Same thing: apple is hardware company, producing firmware for their computers. Consider Mac OS X a firmware for Macs. (2) Can't remember a single reference when Apple has done anything to prevent other software from running on their computers. Care to provide examples? (3) They have never tried to control who and what could put songs on their iPods. They've made it convenient to use with iTunes, and in fact, iPod is "iTunes-to-go", not the other way 'round. They don't have to make iPod convenient to use with anything else. It's always iPod + iTunes. (4) There are no iPhones yet on the market. We'll see how that works when there actually are.
I think if Apple is "scared" of anything, then it's not the Aero itself, but it's ugly looks. I was scared too the first time I saw Vista's interface - OMFG!!! I'm still having nightmares...
With its other two martian buddies, celebrating its own birthday in a nearby martian bar... No worries - it'll get back up, once it's sober!
I hope they didn't intend the FireFox team to use the cake to.... Oh, never mind :)
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkA6JZqwc3w )
What if registrar is also NOT in the US?
It seems to me that this is a sure way to delay the release indefinitely: they must know how f... well, insecure... the Vista is - now they have a good excuse to miss the promised shipment dates once again :) "Oh, black hats have found yet another hole in our system! Bummer - we have to postpone the relase for another 6 years"...