I believe the situation is that Creative licensed certain technologies from Dolby for use in Windows XP, but they haven't ponied up for the licenses for use in Windows Vista. Since the guy is posting the drivers in Creative's forums, Dolby could go after Creative. Creative took the steps necessary to stop a possible lawsuit.
None of this would be an issue though if Creative would just pay for the licensing though. Jerks.
Sure you CAN argue that designing it from the ground up can be cheaper, but tacking these on as an afterthought adds more cost, like it or not. And why wouldn't I argue that? How is adding a stereo Bluetooth profile to a PMP that already has Bluetooth an afterthought? Especially when they realized they couldn't design the 3.5mm jack to accommodate many types of headphones. I don't mean to rehash the "my phone has all these features that the iPhone doesn't have" argument that's been made 1000 times before, but given the amount of money spent on advertising, plus the amount of profit that's been estimated on each iPhone, I just fail to see how adding such common things like A2DP, voice recording, MMS, etc comes down to those features costing too much. So many other manufacturers did it, why not Apple?
You're kidding right? The AT&T Tilt has: Stereo Bluetooth, 3 MP camera (with video recording), Mini4 USB 2.0, extended capacity battery, voice recording, and microSD, and I can pick one up for $300. Refurbed for $150.
What service are you using that only rolled out 3g "within the past 2 years." I can't speak for the GP, but AT&T just rolled out 3/3.5G into the Minneapolis/St Paul area 5 months ago, so it's been less than half a year for me. Tmo, as I understand it, has not rolled out any 3G in the States. Maybe listing the two major CDMA providers was just a bad example.
I'm using an HTC Hermes/8525/TyTN. I'd definitely recommend it, I get a ton of use out of it. HTC released it's successor late last year as the Kaiser/AT&T Tilt/TyTN II. Didn't add much except a little more ram and GPS. The Hermes should be really pretty cheap at this point. If you do go with and HTC phone make sure to head over to XDA Dev and grab a custom built OS...they remove all the junk the carriers put on and do a great job at stabilizing everything.
You do not represent the joe-consumer that the iPhone market represents. You represent a minority-group that just complains about not having a free-for-all Anarchist development environment that the majority owners, frankly don't care about. You realize that the iPhone OS is the minority in the Smartphone OS market, right? There are almost 10 times as many people running Symbian.
You believe what Apple is doing is denying consumers choice. Consumers have the brains to not buy a product or to simply go with a different product altogether. I don't believe Apple is denying me something on my iPhone. I don't go around complaining that Apple doesn't let me load app XYZ on it. It's a phone first to me and to most regular Joes with cool video/internet/music support. Then I'm glad you finally found a phone for you. I'm not here to bash iPhone users themselves, if you like it and it works for you where other phones can't, everyone wins.
Why not complain about all the other phones out there that have literally no choice as to what you can put on it? Why focus only on Apple? Get over yourself. You realize this article is about Apple and the iPhone, right? If this was an article about S60 or RIM, I'd make the same comments. Oh wait, the iPhone is the only smartphone with this limitation, my bad.
Few of them will last 5 days while doing anything other than waiting for an occasional ring. When did I say that it lasted that long on a single charge? I was responding to their comment that having several programs open kills the OS. It doesn't. The 163 hours number was just how long the phone has been connected without interruption, ie not soft reset. I know I synced my phone last week, which I have set to disable any data connection (otherwise my VPN connection freaks out on my laptop). I know it's been running without a soft reset longer than 163 hours, but I don't recall exactly when. I just know it's been longer than 163 hours.
Battery life sucks for any smartphone, not just WinMo though. I charge my phone every night, otherwise it lasts maybe 36 hours through regular use. A bit more if I turn off data to disable the 3 email accounts, weather info, web browsing, etc, that I do normally.
But if you are actually using any programs on it, that battery is toast with all that junk open (Windows Media Player? Is it actually playing music? Why leave it open?). This is like the file copy troll all over again. Why leave programs open? Is that a serious question? If it's loaded into RAM then I don't have to wait for it to load from ROM. Reading from RAM is faster than reading from flash memory, in case you were wondering. To answer your question though, no, it isn't playing songs 24/7. However, I can just do a start - WMP and hit play to start playing any random song I've got on there. Same with every other app I've got open. I can either wait for Live Search to load to view a map, or see the map instantly.
This is like the file copy troll all over again. Are you sure it's not you who is the troll? I'm sitting here using the device, and posting my experience from using it. You are posting feedback based on stuff you've heard from clients. Anecdotal, sure, but head over to XDA-Developers some time and ask them about using it. Feel free to message me when you get there, I'm under the same username.
I see your point about battery life being possibly better. I honestly don't see much of a difference between the number of background processes on my phone, unless they're all hitting the network constantly, which they don't.
I guess I just fail to see how giving consumers no choice is somehow good for the consumer.
I'd like to see where you got that definition from. "Smartphone" has never really been defined...and just having a SDK is a pretty terrible definition. I could write apps for my old nokia 3120, and that was definitely not a smart phone whatsoever.
Yeah, currently running IE Mobile, Word Mobile 2007, Comm Manager, Total Commander, Windows Media Player, Remote Desktop Mobile, MS Live Search, Java, Messaging, Calendar, and Solitaire (of course). Just swapping between programs, there's about a one to two second delay to load it, but everything runs pretty snappy except for IEM, which just sucks anyway. Connectivity shows it connected to AT&Ts data for 163 hours, so everything's been running at least a few days.
They actually did a decent job with WinMo 6...cleaned up a lot of the memory issues 5 had. Too bad they screwed up IE in the process, but that's where Opera, Skyfire, Mozilla, etc come in.
If the Mobile OS X platform (right now iPhone and iPod Touch) actually solves this problem I'm all for it. They "solve" the problem by closing every single application when you leave it. There are several task managers for WinMo that do this as well. It's not really a solution, it's a workaround.
Agreed. Nothing ticks me off more than trying to quickly scroll through an embedded presentation only to be immediately halted by a bunch of ridiculous transitions. They were cool to play with in 8th grade speech class, but I've never seen them used effectively other than for a quick laugh.
Yes, this is why they are asking for SCOTUS to get involved. Different courts are citing Fogerty v. Fantasy Inc differently, and if I'm reading the article correctly, the courts are determining that RIAAs lawsuits are not considered frivolous, so no attorney fees should be given to the defendant.
They don't want to have to counter sue, they want attorney fees automatically granted when the RIAA drops the lawsuit since the dependent technically won the case.
Feel free to point out any site that uses flash that you think uses flash and doesnt suck in terms of usability. Homestar Runner would raise a hand to object, if he had any.
I take it you haven't used Adobe Reader LE on a mobile device. It is a fast, reliable, lightweight PDF reader, especially when you compare it to the competition (I'm looking at you, Clearvue).
The headline is full of suck. It's not that MS is finally supporting flash or PDF, they're just shipping their OS with it already installed. Like you said it's been there for years, just as a separate download.
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I believe the situation is that Creative licensed certain technologies from Dolby for use in Windows XP, but they haven't ponied up for the licenses for use in Windows Vista. Since the guy is posting the drivers in Creative's forums, Dolby could go after Creative. Creative took the steps necessary to stop a possible lawsuit.
None of this would be an issue though if Creative would just pay for the licensing though. Jerks.
How are they trying to scam more money out of people? None of Creative's drivers can decode DTS in Vista, not even their newest cards.
You're kidding right? The AT&T Tilt has: Stereo Bluetooth, 3 MP camera (with video recording), Mini4 USB 2.0, extended capacity battery, voice recording, and microSD, and I can pick one up for $300. Refurbed for $150.
I'm using an HTC Hermes/8525/TyTN. I'd definitely recommend it, I get a ton of use out of it. HTC released it's successor late last year as the Kaiser/AT&T Tilt/TyTN II. Didn't add much except a little more ram and GPS. The Hermes should be really pretty cheap at this point. If you do go with and HTC phone make sure to head over to XDA Dev and grab a custom built OS...they remove all the junk the carriers put on and do a great job at stabilizing everything.
Agreed, meant flash/NVRAM.
Battery life sucks for any smartphone, not just WinMo though. I charge my phone every night, otherwise it lasts maybe 36 hours through regular use. A bit more if I turn off data to disable the 3 email accounts, weather info, web browsing, etc, that I do normally. But if you are actually using any programs on it, that battery is toast with all that junk open (Windows Media Player? Is it actually playing music? Why leave it open?). This is like the file copy troll all over again. Why leave programs open? Is that a serious question? If it's loaded into RAM then I don't have to wait for it to load from ROM. Reading from RAM is faster than reading from flash memory, in case you were wondering. To answer your question though, no, it isn't playing songs 24/7. However, I can just do a start - WMP and hit play to start playing any random song I've got on there. Same with every other app I've got open. I can either wait for Live Search to load to view a map, or see the map instantly. This is like the file copy troll all over again. Are you sure it's not you who is the troll? I'm sitting here using the device, and posting my experience from using it. You are posting feedback based on stuff you've heard from clients. Anecdotal, sure, but head over to XDA-Developers some time and ask them about using it. Feel free to message me when you get there, I'm under the same username.
I see your point about battery life being possibly better. I honestly don't see much of a difference between the number of background processes on my phone, unless they're all hitting the network constantly, which they don't.
I guess I just fail to see how giving consumers no choice is somehow good for the consumer.
I'd like to see where you got that definition from. "Smartphone" has never really been defined...and just having a SDK is a pretty terrible definition. I could write apps for my old nokia 3120, and that was definitely not a smart phone whatsoever.
Yeah, currently running IE Mobile, Word Mobile 2007, Comm Manager, Total Commander, Windows Media Player, Remote Desktop Mobile, MS Live Search, Java, Messaging, Calendar, and Solitaire (of course). Just swapping between programs, there's about a one to two second delay to load it, but everything runs pretty snappy except for IEM, which just sucks anyway. Connectivity shows it connected to AT&Ts data for 163 hours, so everything's been running at least a few days.
They actually did a decent job with WinMo 6...cleaned up a lot of the memory issues 5 had. Too bad they screwed up IE in the process, but that's where Opera, Skyfire, Mozilla, etc come in.
If you need transitions to keep your audience awake, you need to work on your public speaking skills.
Agreed. Nothing ticks me off more than trying to quickly scroll through an embedded presentation only to be immediately halted by a bunch of ridiculous transitions. They were cool to play with in 8th grade speech class, but I've never seen them used effectively other than for a quick laugh.
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Yes, this is why they are asking for SCOTUS to get involved. Different courts are citing Fogerty v. Fantasy Inc differently, and if I'm reading the article correctly, the courts are determining that RIAAs lawsuits are not considered frivolous, so no attorney fees should be given to the defendant.
They don't want to have to counter sue, they want attorney fees automatically granted when the RIAA drops the lawsuit since the dependent technically won the case.
Google is definitely in Java updates by default (just unchecked the install box yesterday...) and I believe it's in Flash as well.
You forgot the most frustrating part of all: Open Apple and closed Apple keys.
As explained here, and detailed in this knowledge base, MS actually had a halfway decent reason behind it.
I've been running Flashlite 2 on my Windows Mobile cellphone for months, the same version the GP linked.
I take it you haven't used Adobe Reader LE on a mobile device. It is a fast, reliable, lightweight PDF reader, especially when you compare it to the competition (I'm looking at you, Clearvue).
Agreed on Flash though, doesn't work for crap.
The headline is full of suck. It's not that MS is finally supporting flash or PDF, they're just shipping their OS with it already installed. Like you said it's been there for years, just as a separate download.