It's one thing to say that they've gone down, but another entirely to claim what's causing it.
I used to download music because it was more convenient than driving to the store and let me sample the music before deciding if I even wanted it. Then companies started offering digital downloads, but most of it was DRM-encumbered so I still stayed away. However, after most stores went DRM-free there was no reason not to use them. Sure I could still get it for free somewhere else, but the music stores made it quicker to find what I wanted.
The only thing that still needs to change is allowing me to listen to an entire album at least once before buying it. Not all songs are done justice by thirty second previews and some albums can't even begun to be appreciated if the only thing you get are half-minute slices.
Based on my own experiences, clamping down on P2P isn't going to do anything. There are still plenty of other ways to get at the content if you want it badly enough. If companies started releasing DRM-free video at reasonable prices I'd probably spent a lot more money on that as well. If you give people a convenient solution they'll gravitate towards it. That means online, no DRM-hassle, and reasonable prices. Now that music meets those criteria I've been buying more than at any other point in my life, even before P2P was an option.
Actually, there's a good deal of profit to be made. HTC already settled a suit with Microsoft and is now paying Microsoft royalties for the Android devices they sell. Some of the companies that file them don't care if Android continues to be wildly successful because they'll still make money. If Oracle is successful in their suit, it's possible that Google or the handset manufacturers will owe some amount of money for every Android device sold. At that point it's in Oracle's interest to make sure Android keeps doing well because they make money off of it.
For a lot of people it probably could replace a laptop. Just because the Slashdot crowd doesn't fall into that group doesn't mean that the device is useless. It's unfortunate that 95% of tech journalists don't cater to 5% of the market, but such is life.
Interesting, but don't routers have buffers, which store information, albeit only temporarily? Not to mention RAM for various things.
Honestly, this kind of action should have its own set of laws to cover it rather than relying on existing laws that weren't designed to cover such activities.
Either you're being facetious or you're missing the point. If an enemy can easily fool these systems they can make it harder for soldiers to determine their position or they could possibly use the fireworks as a diversion to get soldiers to take cover in a position that leaves those soldiers vulnerable to actual enemy fire.
Don't mean to stop the two minutes hate, but this is being done to determine if California would be an appropriate venue for the lawsuit. The defendant is from New Jersey and obviously wants the case tried there, where as having it there would be more costly for Sony. Sony is arguing that because the defendant may have received money from people residing in the state of California, it would be an appropriate venue. They want the records to see how many people from California sent him money. So far this has nothing to do with charging anyone else and it may be impossible to do with the data they get from this.
As far as I know, what he did may have been illegal. Circumvention of copyright protection has been illegal in the US, although recently some of these restrictions have been eased. It's possible that in this case the court will decide the laws are unjust or don't apply. That's how the system works. You're stuck with a bad law until it gets repealed or overturned in court.
In my opinion Sony shot themselves in the foot by removing the other OS feature. I think that really made developers work towards hacking the console more than anything else. To be perfectly honest, there have already been plenty of other reasons not to buy from Sony. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for you? Either way, I'll let you get back to overreacting.
Although nowhere near 45,000 tests, Anandtech recently ran a preview of the iPad 2 and did some browsing benchmarks to test the CPU where they loaded the pages for the iPad 2, Xoom, and the original iPad. Obviously the two tablets are different animals than the two phones, but given they run essentially the same OS and have beefier CPUs, we should expect similar results.
However, the iPad 2 is clearly faster in 7 of the 8 tests and the same speed as the Xoom in the remaining 1. It's possible that the websites used aren't good predictors for general load time though. Given that the two both have dual-core ARM chips running at similar clock rates, we shouldn't be seeing those results, especially if the ones from this study are a valid indicator of performance. The only other conclusions that can be drawn are that performance regressed in Android 3.0 (Or at least Motorola's implementation of it.), the Tegra 2 is a pile of crap, or that Apple is now somehow capable of making a significantly better SoC than many established players.
I can't speculate regarding the first, but given that the Xoom has a similar SunSpider result and a better BrowserMark result than the iPad 2, it's unlikely that either of the other two conclusions are correct. Would like to have additional data before concluding one way or the other, but it does appear as though some things are not adding up.
Really they're just smart devices that also happen to be able to make and receive phone calls and use cellular data. Outside of those features you can get relatively similar functionality out of an iPod Touch. Branding and selling them as phones makes it easier to move such devices because 99% of the population groks cellphones and the carriers already have a large distribution base which makes it easy to get the devices into the hands of consumers.
With future additions of NFC and other technologies to these smart devices, they will invariably become more of a personal computer than the PC ever managed to be, phone calls will eventually just become another checklist item. The cellular data network will still be important, but in some areas of the world, WiFi saturation may make it less necessary.
It's unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple.
So, they have no idea whether or not it's actually malicious, but they've decided to run with the story using an inflammatory headline anyway.
According to Apple developers posting to the web, the speed issue has been discussed in the company's developer support forums, and one developer – the same unnamed developer quoted above – confirms with The Reg that multiple bugs have been filed on the issue.
Developers are using proper channels to report what's most likely a bug and this is most likely a non-story as of the next minor update, but they've still decided to run with it anyway.
Apple isn't degrading the speed of home screen web apps. It's boosting the speed of web apps in the browser. But in the long run, the effect is the same. And if this is a bug, Apple has yet to fix it.
So, in fact, Apple hasn't intentionally hobbled anything, it's just that they haven't sped them up, possibly due to a bug, yet they're still going to run this story.
This developer reiterates that if Apple didn't specifically introduce these problems in iOS, it's aware of them now. And he says that the Mobile Safari team has indicated the issues will not be fixed.
You'd think that such damning evidence would be posted, but it isn't. Complete hearsay, but they've decided to run the story, inflammatory headline and all, regardless.
I wouldn't classify problem solving as vague. Hell, I would consider good problem solving as the ability to examine a problem and determine a good course of action to approach it. Even if 90% of the time that approach is doing some Google searching to see if there's already a solution, that's not bad. Entirely too many people run into a problem, have no idea how to solve it, and give up at that point.
People who can solve problems and grow from the experience are exactly that kind of workers you'd like to have. It doesn't matter if they don't know everything when they start, but they're willing and able to tackle issues that they've never experienced before. Anyone who's unable to do this is going to be the first sorry sod replaced by computers, robots, etc. as they're just the functional equivalent and a lot more expensive to keep around.
On a general note, of course employers always want more. In a down economy where jobs are tight, they can even expect to get a little more than they usually would. Some of it's just HR pie-in-the-sky requirements, but that doesn't mean all of it is unrealistic. If a job lists problem solving skills, make sure to be ready to give an example of how you've solved a problem during the interview.
Makes sense that they would throw more money at the Xbox. They get a fee for every game sold on the Xbox whereas they get absolutely nothing for almost everything sold on the PC. Linux gaming doesn't show any signs of catching on or taking off in a big way and even though Mac gaming is growing, it's nowhere near as popular as PC gaming and I suspect that a decent portion of Mac users boot into Windows to game anyways. Throwing money at the platform isn't going to get them anywhere. And Intel could care less what Microsoft does. As long as the hardware is using an Intel chip, they really don't care what operating system it runs or whose game it is. They just want to sell chips.
Actually it's better that Honeycomb is coming out now. If it weren't, companies would still be releasing Android tablets, but they would all be based on 2.2 or 2.3, which many will admit isn't exactly designed for the tablet form factor. The companies that make these tablets really don't care if the OS isn't the best, they're more concerned with shipping units and making money. They've seen how successful Apple has been, and depending on whose numbers you believe, the Galaxy S Tab may have also done impressively well.
Google saw that this ship was going to sail whether they had a tablet optimized version of Android released or not. Honeycomb might be a little rushed, but it's going to be better than having dozens of tablets running a non-tablet optimized version of the OS and completely trashing the Android brand. The 7" Dell tablet got demolished in reviews. If more tablets like that were to come out, it might create a lot of aversion to Android devices in the future. Google doesn't want that to happen so they'd rather ship something early that still needs a little work than wait another two or three months while less than stellar devices tarnish their brand.
Half-baked or not, Honeycomb is better for tablets than Froyo or Gingerbread. There are too many chips on the table right now and Google can't afford to be too late. With the Xoom and other tablets releasing before the next iPad comes out, there's a good sales window for Android hardware manufacturers to make sales.
The people who want it for free won't care if it's not 1080p. Non-HD quality is good enough for a decently sized portion of the population. If it's a story-driven movie to begin with, enhanced visuals aren't going to make it any better.
The dedicated pirates aren't going to care either. They'll find another way to rip the 1080p stream or if nothing else exists they can point a 1080p camera at the screen and record it that way. Until humans have a digital jack implanted in their heads, there's always going to be a weakness once you have to present the media. Sophisticated recording hardware keeps getting cheaper making it even easier to produce a high quality 'pirated' version.
The only people who could benefit from this are the people who make and sell HDMI cables.
Their catalog isn't really any worse than iTunes, but that's not good enough. Neither iTunes or Amazon have everything I want and Amazon doesn't usually disappoint.
On a side note, if anyone knows where I can get a digital copy of Z-Rock Hawaii I'd be more than willing to provide some business to them. None of the major online stores have the album and I haven't found it on any of the streaming sites either.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather own my music (DRM-free of course.) so that I don't need a net connection in order to listen to it. A lot of bands have been offering samples of their music for free, whether it's through YouTube videos or through their official site. Paying for a subscription seems like a waste. Honestly, having your music freely available online makes me more likely to listen to it and consider buying it. It's not that I want free so much as I'm just lazy. If you make me jump through too many hoops I'll just find something else.
Here's the easy fix. Ditch your app and make a web-based app. Apple has no control over that and it will port more easily to other platforms such as Android, Web OS, WP7, MeeGo, etc. If you're doing it right, you can even make it easy for your users to make a shortcut to your web-app that shows up as though it were an app.
If that's too much work, don't offer subscriptions through the iOS app. Make a free version that throws in commercials every so often. 30% of $0.00 is $0.00.
I think these companies want to complain because 30% cuts into their profits, but I don't know how many will leave because the iOS user base is still worthwhile even at 70%.
As for the anti-competitiveness of it all, is it really a problem? After all, Apple has been losing market share to Android so who really cares if they want to make themselves a much less attractive platform. On the other hand, I can't buy e-books from Apple and have them work on my Kindle so as far as I'm concerned it's not a good argument for Amazon. If nothing else, hopefully these spats will help drive DRM-free ebooks.
Doubtful. As impressive as their win is, and as much as they've learned from it, they mostly have a computer that's really good at Jeopardy. I don't think that it could answer an essay question in a satisfactory manner.
We still have a long way to go despite how far we've come.
I don't see the problem with the phone being the pervasive computer device. Another way to look at it is that your pervasive computing device happens to have a phone built-in to it. The ARM chips being put into phones are already becoming more than sufficient for most smart phone uses. The Atrix is exploring the concept of docking the phone in a device that makes it more like a computer. In five years such things might be a lot more common place. Hell, eventually companies might set up kiosks for people who need to get some quick work done but don't want to drag their notebook-dock device around with them. While in phone mode, the device only uses one or two cores, but once it's docked it starts using all of its cores to deal with heavier workloads.
Apple's already solved the problem with hooking your phone up to the TV. If you have an Apple TV the two devices can communicate wirelessly. There's nothing stopping someone from creating an open standard that any device can use and just building the wireless capabilities right into the TV itself so you don't need the box. Similarly, you could wirelessly connect to a projector and control a PowerPoint presentation right from your device.
Of course PCs aren't going to go away. They'll always be a few orders of magnitude more powerful and for professional work you're going to want that extra power. I don't foresee people doing their Photoshop work or heavy 3D rendering jobs on their phones, but they might take the finished product with them on their phone rather than carrying a notebook with them.
Stop thinking of these devices as phones that are trying to be computers and start thinking of them as computers that conveniently have a phone built-in. Getting everything else to work is just an engineering problem and the people who solve those problems are going to be rich. PCs aren't going to go away, but they may not be anywhere near as important in fifteen years as they are today. The personal computing device that does damn near everything and fits in your pocket is the way forward.
If it's anything like the Tegra 2 it's going to be regular Cortex-A9 cores, an Nvidia GPU, and the usual dedicated hardware found on most ARM SoCs. Here's a picture of the Tegra 2 so I imagine that the Tegra 3 will look similar, just with more cores and a beefier GPU.
However, the Tegra 2 doesn't perform any better than the Exynos from Samsung or TI's newest OMAP based on AnandTech benchmarks, so I don't expect Tegra 3 to be much different from other parts available at the time. Considering Sony has said their next PSP, which is targeted to ship around the holidays, is going to have a 4 C-A9 cores and 4 SGX543 graphics cores, the Tegra 3 probably won't be a runaway performance monster.
What I'm most excited for are the ARM Cortex-A15 products that should be out next year. Those will allow for much higher clock rates and should make for great netbook performance. Keep the usual SoC dedicated hardware components and battery life will be even more phenomenal.
The laws of unintended consequences suggest that this will have the exact opposite of the desired effects as the same people who run the content farms use this extension to report legitimate sites and get them removed or have their ranks lowered, further increasing the prominence of content farm placement in Google's search results. Shortly thereafter Bing's results will also go to hell since it's been implied that they're taking results from Google. Search as we know it will be set back by over a decade! Anyone know if Altavista is still around?
Even if you were to clearly spell out the malicious crap that an application is going to do, some people won't bother to read it or won't understand and will keep clicking until the application is installed. People who are completely incapable or unwilling to act responsibly shouldn't be given absolute freedom in cases where their careless actions could cause harm to others.
While that's great for you and I, the average user is probably at least leaning against the idiot fence, if not straddling it, and is likely to do something stupid. Look at the number of malware infested PCs. It's not always the users fault, but if they download and click on NataliePortmanHotGritsXXX.jpeg.exe and the device obeys them, there's only so much that can be done. Normally I wouldn't care too much, but these devices store contact information and have network connections. I definitely don't want spam to start spreading to mobile phones any more than it already has.
You might be productive with an extra length of rope, but for a lot of users it's just more to hang themselves. It's likely that Google will keep offering their Nexus line of phones, so there will always be at least one that's inline with your ordering. The masses are probably better off with the added layers of protection. Most probably won't even know that they're there and if it really bothers them, they can always root the device and install a custom ROM. If they don't know how to do that or can't follow the directions online, they probably don't need it.
Unlike driving there aren't any repercussions for being an irresponsible shithead with a computer device. Imagine how hazard roadways would be if the same idiotic behavior shown by computer users was permitted by motorists. Sticking people in a walled garden is fine by me if it stops them from crapping all over everyone else's experience. If they're smart enough to break out of the garden they're probably smart enough to avoid having their phone turned into a zombie.
Slashdot Mirror
It's one thing to say that they've gone down, but another entirely to claim what's causing it.
I used to download music because it was more convenient than driving to the store and let me sample the music before deciding if I even wanted it. Then companies started offering digital downloads, but most of it was DRM-encumbered so I still stayed away. However, after most stores went DRM-free there was no reason not to use them. Sure I could still get it for free somewhere else, but the music stores made it quicker to find what I wanted.
The only thing that still needs to change is allowing me to listen to an entire album at least once before buying it. Not all songs are done justice by thirty second previews and some albums can't even begun to be appreciated if the only thing you get are half-minute slices.
Based on my own experiences, clamping down on P2P isn't going to do anything. There are still plenty of other ways to get at the content if you want it badly enough. If companies started releasing DRM-free video at reasonable prices I'd probably spent a lot more money on that as well. If you give people a convenient solution they'll gravitate towards it. That means online, no DRM-hassle, and reasonable prices. Now that music meets those criteria I've been buying more than at any other point in my life, even before P2P was an option.
Actually, there's a good deal of profit to be made. HTC already settled a suit with Microsoft and is now paying Microsoft royalties for the Android devices they sell. Some of the companies that file them don't care if Android continues to be wildly successful because they'll still make money. If Oracle is successful in their suit, it's possible that Google or the handset manufacturers will owe some amount of money for every Android device sold. At that point it's in Oracle's interest to make sure Android keeps doing well because they make money off of it.
For a lot of people it probably could replace a laptop. Just because the Slashdot crowd doesn't fall into that group doesn't mean that the device is useless. It's unfortunate that 95% of tech journalists don't cater to 5% of the market, but such is life.
To paraphrase a rather famous quote:
No keyboard, less power than a notebook. Lame.
Interesting, but don't routers have buffers, which store information, albeit only temporarily? Not to mention RAM for various things.
Honestly, this kind of action should have its own set of laws to cover it rather than relying on existing laws that weren't designed to cover such activities.
Either you're being facetious or you're missing the point. If an enemy can easily fool these systems they can make it harder for soldiers to determine their position or they could possibly use the fireworks as a diversion to get soldiers to take cover in a position that leaves those soldiers vulnerable to actual enemy fire.
Don't mean to stop the two minutes hate, but this is being done to determine if California would be an appropriate venue for the lawsuit. The defendant is from New Jersey and obviously wants the case tried there, where as having it there would be more costly for Sony. Sony is arguing that because the defendant may have received money from people residing in the state of California, it would be an appropriate venue. They want the records to see how many people from California sent him money. So far this has nothing to do with charging anyone else and it may be impossible to do with the data they get from this.
As far as I know, what he did may have been illegal. Circumvention of copyright protection has been illegal in the US, although recently some of these restrictions have been eased. It's possible that in this case the court will decide the laws are unjust or don't apply. That's how the system works. You're stuck with a bad law until it gets repealed or overturned in court.
In my opinion Sony shot themselves in the foot by removing the other OS feature. I think that really made developers work towards hacking the console more than anything else. To be perfectly honest, there have already been plenty of other reasons not to buy from Sony. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for you? Either way, I'll let you get back to overreacting.
Although nowhere near 45,000 tests, Anandtech recently ran a preview of the iPad 2 and did some browsing benchmarks to test the CPU where they loaded the pages for the iPad 2, Xoom, and the original iPad. Obviously the two tablets are different animals than the two phones, but given they run essentially the same OS and have beefier CPUs, we should expect similar results.
However, the iPad 2 is clearly faster in 7 of the 8 tests and the same speed as the Xoom in the remaining 1. It's possible that the websites used aren't good predictors for general load time though. Given that the two both have dual-core ARM chips running at similar clock rates, we shouldn't be seeing those results, especially if the ones from this study are a valid indicator of performance. The only other conclusions that can be drawn are that performance regressed in Android 3.0 (Or at least Motorola's implementation of it.), the Tegra 2 is a pile of crap, or that Apple is now somehow capable of making a significantly better SoC than many established players.
I can't speculate regarding the first, but given that the Xoom has a similar SunSpider result and a better BrowserMark result than the iPad 2, it's unlikely that either of the other two conclusions are correct. Would like to have additional data before concluding one way or the other, but it does appear as though some things are not adding up.
Creative use of whitespace?
As an Irishman, I don't know how anyone can drink Guinness.
Too light for you? Just because you Irish drink like you're— well, Irish, doesn't mean you have to Harp on the rest of us.
;)
Really they're just smart devices that also happen to be able to make and receive phone calls and use cellular data. Outside of those features you can get relatively similar functionality out of an iPod Touch. Branding and selling them as phones makes it easier to move such devices because 99% of the population groks cellphones and the carriers already have a large distribution base which makes it easy to get the devices into the hands of consumers.
With future additions of NFC and other technologies to these smart devices, they will invariably become more of a personal computer than the PC ever managed to be, phone calls will eventually just become another checklist item. The cellular data network will still be important, but in some areas of the world, WiFi saturation may make it less necessary.
It's unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple.
So, they have no idea whether or not it's actually malicious, but they've decided to run with the story using an inflammatory headline anyway.
According to Apple developers posting to the web, the speed issue has been discussed in the company's developer support forums, and one developer – the same unnamed developer quoted above – confirms with The Reg that multiple bugs have been filed on the issue.
Developers are using proper channels to report what's most likely a bug and this is most likely a non-story as of the next minor update, but they've still decided to run with it anyway.
Apple isn't degrading the speed of home screen web apps. It's boosting the speed of web apps in the browser. But in the long run, the effect is the same. And if this is a bug, Apple has yet to fix it.
So, in fact, Apple hasn't intentionally hobbled anything, it's just that they haven't sped them up, possibly due to a bug, yet they're still going to run this story.
This developer reiterates that if Apple didn't specifically introduce these problems in iOS, it's aware of them now. And he says that the Mobile Safari team has indicated the issues will not be fixed.
You'd think that such damning evidence would be posted, but it isn't. Complete hearsay, but they've decided to run the story, inflammatory headline and all, regardless.
It doesn't, but if you're personal information is going to be whored out anyway, you might as well at least be the one pimping it.
I wouldn't classify problem solving as vague. Hell, I would consider good problem solving as the ability to examine a problem and determine a good course of action to approach it. Even if 90% of the time that approach is doing some Google searching to see if there's already a solution, that's not bad. Entirely too many people run into a problem, have no idea how to solve it, and give up at that point.
People who can solve problems and grow from the experience are exactly that kind of workers you'd like to have. It doesn't matter if they don't know everything when they start, but they're willing and able to tackle issues that they've never experienced before. Anyone who's unable to do this is going to be the first sorry sod replaced by computers, robots, etc. as they're just the functional equivalent and a lot more expensive to keep around.
On a general note, of course employers always want more. In a down economy where jobs are tight, they can even expect to get a little more than they usually would. Some of it's just HR pie-in-the-sky requirements, but that doesn't mean all of it is unrealistic. If a job lists problem solving skills, make sure to be ready to give an example of how you've solved a problem during the interview.
Makes sense that they would throw more money at the Xbox. They get a fee for every game sold on the Xbox whereas they get absolutely nothing for almost everything sold on the PC. Linux gaming doesn't show any signs of catching on or taking off in a big way and even though Mac gaming is growing, it's nowhere near as popular as PC gaming and I suspect that a decent portion of Mac users boot into Windows to game anyways. Throwing money at the platform isn't going to get them anywhere. And Intel could care less what Microsoft does. As long as the hardware is using an Intel chip, they really don't care what operating system it runs or whose game it is. They just want to sell chips.
Actually it's better that Honeycomb is coming out now. If it weren't, companies would still be releasing Android tablets, but they would all be based on 2.2 or 2.3, which many will admit isn't exactly designed for the tablet form factor. The companies that make these tablets really don't care if the OS isn't the best, they're more concerned with shipping units and making money. They've seen how successful Apple has been, and depending on whose numbers you believe, the Galaxy S Tab may have also done impressively well.
Google saw that this ship was going to sail whether they had a tablet optimized version of Android released or not. Honeycomb might be a little rushed, but it's going to be better than having dozens of tablets running a non-tablet optimized version of the OS and completely trashing the Android brand. The 7" Dell tablet got demolished in reviews. If more tablets like that were to come out, it might create a lot of aversion to Android devices in the future. Google doesn't want that to happen so they'd rather ship something early that still needs a little work than wait another two or three months while less than stellar devices tarnish their brand.
Half-baked or not, Honeycomb is better for tablets than Froyo or Gingerbread. There are too many chips on the table right now and Google can't afford to be too late. With the Xoom and other tablets releasing before the next iPad comes out, there's a good sales window for Android hardware manufacturers to make sales.
Utterly pointless in more ways than one.
The people who want it for free won't care if it's not 1080p. Non-HD quality is good enough for a decently sized portion of the population. If it's a story-driven movie to begin with, enhanced visuals aren't going to make it any better.
The dedicated pirates aren't going to care either. They'll find another way to rip the 1080p stream or if nothing else exists they can point a 1080p camera at the screen and record it that way. Until humans have a digital jack implanted in their heads, there's always going to be a weakness once you have to present the media. Sophisticated recording hardware keeps getting cheaper making it even easier to produce a high quality 'pirated' version.
The only people who could benefit from this are the people who make and sell HDMI cables.
If I'm going monthly, I want everything.
Their catalog isn't really any worse than iTunes, but that's not good enough. Neither iTunes or Amazon have everything I want and Amazon doesn't usually disappoint.
On a side note, if anyone knows where I can get a digital copy of Z-Rock Hawaii I'd be more than willing to provide some business to them. None of the major online stores have the album and I haven't found it on any of the streaming sites either.
Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather own my music (DRM-free of course.) so that I don't need a net connection in order to listen to it. A lot of bands have been offering samples of their music for free, whether it's through YouTube videos or through their official site. Paying for a subscription seems like a waste. Honestly, having your music freely available online makes me more likely to listen to it and consider buying it. It's not that I want free so much as I'm just lazy. If you make me jump through too many hoops I'll just find something else.
Here's the easy fix. Ditch your app and make a web-based app. Apple has no control over that and it will port more easily to other platforms such as Android, Web OS, WP7, MeeGo, etc. If you're doing it right, you can even make it easy for your users to make a shortcut to your web-app that shows up as though it were an app.
If that's too much work, don't offer subscriptions through the iOS app. Make a free version that throws in commercials every so often. 30% of $0.00 is $0.00.
I think these companies want to complain because 30% cuts into their profits, but I don't know how many will leave because the iOS user base is still worthwhile even at 70%.
As for the anti-competitiveness of it all, is it really a problem? After all, Apple has been losing market share to Android so who really cares if they want to make themselves a much less attractive platform. On the other hand, I can't buy e-books from Apple and have them work on my Kindle so as far as I'm concerned it's not a good argument for Amazon. If nothing else, hopefully these spats will help drive DRM-free ebooks.
Doubtful. As impressive as their win is, and as much as they've learned from it, they mostly have a computer that's really good at Jeopardy. I don't think that it could answer an essay question in a satisfactory manner.
We still have a long way to go despite how far we've come.
I don't see the problem with the phone being the pervasive computer device. Another way to look at it is that your pervasive computing device happens to have a phone built-in to it. The ARM chips being put into phones are already becoming more than sufficient for most smart phone uses. The Atrix is exploring the concept of docking the phone in a device that makes it more like a computer. In five years such things might be a lot more common place. Hell, eventually companies might set up kiosks for people who need to get some quick work done but don't want to drag their notebook-dock device around with them. While in phone mode, the device only uses one or two cores, but once it's docked it starts using all of its cores to deal with heavier workloads.
Apple's already solved the problem with hooking your phone up to the TV. If you have an Apple TV the two devices can communicate wirelessly. There's nothing stopping someone from creating an open standard that any device can use and just building the wireless capabilities right into the TV itself so you don't need the box. Similarly, you could wirelessly connect to a projector and control a PowerPoint presentation right from your device.
Of course PCs aren't going to go away. They'll always be a few orders of magnitude more powerful and for professional work you're going to want that extra power. I don't foresee people doing their Photoshop work or heavy 3D rendering jobs on their phones, but they might take the finished product with them on their phone rather than carrying a notebook with them.
Stop thinking of these devices as phones that are trying to be computers and start thinking of them as computers that conveniently have a phone built-in. Getting everything else to work is just an engineering problem and the people who solve those problems are going to be rich. PCs aren't going to go away, but they may not be anywhere near as important in fifteen years as they are today. The personal computing device that does damn near everything and fits in your pocket is the way forward.
Wow. Cricket or baseball?
If it's anything like the Tegra 2 it's going to be regular Cortex-A9 cores, an Nvidia GPU, and the usual dedicated hardware found on most ARM SoCs. Here's a picture of the Tegra 2 so I imagine that the Tegra 3 will look similar, just with more cores and a beefier GPU.
However, the Tegra 2 doesn't perform any better than the Exynos from Samsung or TI's newest OMAP based on AnandTech benchmarks, so I don't expect Tegra 3 to be much different from other parts available at the time. Considering Sony has said their next PSP, which is targeted to ship around the holidays, is going to have a 4 C-A9 cores and 4 SGX543 graphics cores, the Tegra 3 probably won't be a runaway performance monster.
What I'm most excited for are the ARM Cortex-A15 products that should be out next year. Those will allow for much higher clock rates and should make for great netbook performance. Keep the usual SoC dedicated hardware components and battery life will be even more phenomenal.
The laws of unintended consequences suggest that this will have the exact opposite of the desired effects as the same people who run the content farms use this extension to report legitimate sites and get them removed or have their ranks lowered, further increasing the prominence of content farm placement in Google's search results. Shortly thereafter Bing's results will also go to hell since it's been implied that they're taking results from Google. Search as we know it will be set back by over a decade! Anyone know if Altavista is still around?
Even if you were to clearly spell out the malicious crap that an application is going to do, some people won't bother to read it or won't understand and will keep clicking until the application is installed. People who are completely incapable or unwilling to act responsibly shouldn't be given absolute freedom in cases where their careless actions could cause harm to others.
While that's great for you and I, the average user is probably at least leaning against the idiot fence, if not straddling it, and is likely to do something stupid. Look at the number of malware infested PCs. It's not always the users fault, but if they download and click on NataliePortmanHotGritsXXX.jpeg.exe and the device obeys them, there's only so much that can be done. Normally I wouldn't care too much, but these devices store contact information and have network connections. I definitely don't want spam to start spreading to mobile phones any more than it already has.
You might be productive with an extra length of rope, but for a lot of users it's just more to hang themselves. It's likely that Google will keep offering their Nexus line of phones, so there will always be at least one that's inline with your ordering. The masses are probably better off with the added layers of protection. Most probably won't even know that they're there and if it really bothers them, they can always root the device and install a custom ROM. If they don't know how to do that or can't follow the directions online, they probably don't need it.
Unlike driving there aren't any repercussions for being an irresponsible shithead with a computer device. Imagine how hazard roadways would be if the same idiotic behavior shown by computer users was permitted by motorists. Sticking people in a walled garden is fine by me if it stops them from crapping all over everyone else's experience. If they're smart enough to break out of the garden they're probably smart enough to avoid having their phone turned into a zombie.