Yes, but what's your point? If I'm going to use Opera, it won't be because it's "the original", it'll be because it has the best features and user experience of modern browsers. It's not like you're going to use Mosaic because it was the first graphical browser.
That said, I'll check out 11.60. Opera has enough rabid fans that I check it out every now and then, but so far I've always gone back disappointed.
11/11/1918 was Armistice Day, and it occurred at 11:00. "Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" and all that. But I'm not sure why that makes this objectionable. It's celebrating the end of the war if it's celebrating anything, which--last I knew--was a good thing.
The first few levels were somewhat entertaining when I was riding the metro in DC, but after 30 or so stages, it quickly became tedious. I, too, do not understand the popularity.
Agreed; I am actually interested in this, and may reactivate since I already plan on buying Diablo 3. I thought Cataclysm wasn't terribly exciting after hitting 85, whereas WotLK was great until the end. I always wanted a monk class in the game, too. But really, Blizzard, what we need is playable murlocs, not pandas.
FTA: "The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers[...]"
"There's nothing wrong with crabgrass. It just has a bad name, that's all. Everyone would love it if it had a cute name, like, uh, elf grass." --Homer Simpson
Wouldn't the easiest solution be to give the satellites an "exclusion range" of coordinates? Don't turn them off, simply don't have them send results if the device is in a certain area.
Seems to me that that's really the only way to get in the game at this point--make things as easy as possible for developers. Free SDK, free publishing license, and higher payouts for devs. Hopefully RIM has learned a lot from these days (and if you read the followups, it looks like they're making an effort).
Though I've never owned or really even used a Blackberry device, I do wish them well, just like I wish Microsoft well. I don't want the only players to be Google and Apple anymore than I wanted the only players to be RIM and Microsoft. We could use more honest competition in this space.
I would much rather they work on more outstanding bugs (not that this is even a bug--it really is working as intended) than spend time and effort on something as trivial as this. I prefer tabs on top, but my browser of choice (Safari on OS X, though I use Chrome elsewhere) doesn't do it that way. Would I like them to change it? Yes, but it won't happen. Apple briefly tried it with the Safari 4 beta, and reverted it back. Oh well.
In Safari, I'm much more happy with new features like Reading List, Reader mode, and sandboxed plugins, than a silly UI non-issue. Same with Chrome and its respective feature set.
You are right, I misspoke...No new features, but the performance improvements are pretty big. My point was that they are, at least, still updating it for the time being.
Actually, HP just released a big update today. 3.0.4 77. In my early testing, it is nearly as fast as the device was when I had it overclocked to 1.7GHz and a bunch of performance patches installed. A very pleasant surprise.
I've never really seen the use for multiple accounts on my phone, but multiple profiles (same data, apps, etc., only some data is emphasized over others in different profiles) would be useful. Another nice thing would simply be a "game mode", for handing my phone to my nieces and nephews, that would only let them play games and not access anything else on the phone.
"Losing ground" = higher sales year-over-year? Record sales to the tune of 1,000,000 units preordered in one day for the 4S? Android has more market share, but that doesn't mean that Apple is hurting. At all. The market is growing, and both Android and Apple are doing well.
I still don't see it. Calling it a "seductive trap" seems nothing more than hyperbole. The reason you see such spirited defense is because people's devices actually do what people want them to. The only way in which I have ever felt restricted by my iPhone is that I can't freely develop my own apps for my own use, which is a genuine complaint--that doesn't affect 99% of users.
What seems to be the problem with Stallman (and indeed, many people on this site) is that he can't imagine anyone else having a different viewpoint from him. He thinks people are being bamboozled when they buy an iPhone or iPad or $APPLE_PRODUCT, and that they will be instantly unhappy once they find out they can't do $COOL_GEEKY_THING.
Problem is, even if most people do "sleepwalk" into it, the vast majority of them don't ever see a problem with their choice. To them, the walled garden gives them exactly what they need. For everyone who complains about needing to use iTunes to drop files onto their phone, there are ten who don't care. This goes with a lot of the things people on this site complain about.
Most people who don't know the "ins and outs of the factors" couldn't care less. If you want statistics, look at the customer satisfaction for the iPhone and Apple in general, which are both higher than any other manufacturer or product in its class.
I have, actually. And I dabbled in iOS, but didn't want to pay $99/year. iOS was definitely more difficult to learn, but Mac programming was stupid easy to get an application running. Of course, doing advanced things takes a lot more work, but that's the case with everything. Easy to learn, difficult to master, and all that.
While I didn't spend that much time looking at Cocoa Touch, the sheer number of iOS apps available tells me that learning Objective-C and Apple's frameworks can't be that tough. I think it's more a case of people not liking change.
Objective-C is a strict, and rather simple, superset of C. It's really easy to learn. I think most people freak out when they realize its syntax isn't like Java or C++ (it's more like Smalltalk). Sounds like you're complaining more about the libraries and frameworks, which obviously take a lot longer. It would be nice if iOS had automatic garbage collection, though--Java has a clear win there. Obj-C 2.0 on the Mac has it, though, so I imagine it will show up on iOS devices at some point.
Even the original iPad is smoother than the new Android tablets, from what I've seen, and often more responsive. It's certainly the case versus the HP Touchpad (though webOS is still a much better interface overall). Granted, it's been a couple months, so things may have changed.
There's a difference. An AT&T customer is guaranteed to make AT&T money over the long run, because that "free" 3GS requires a two-year contract. There's no guarantee that an Amazon customer will make Amazon money, however, because there's no guarantee an Amazon customer will spend even $1 on an eBook on Amazon's store. It's perfectly valid to say the hardware is sold at a loss.
What about all the people with the 3G and the 3GS? For them, it is a huge upgrade. A friend of mine is still on an old 3G, and the thing is nearly unusable with iOS 4. He had to disable a bunch of stuff, like location services, to make it tolerable. For him, the 4S is a perfect, and logical upgrade. For me with my 4, it doesn't make sense, and so I won't get it unless I can get one at a full discount.
That said, iPhone 4s (plural, not 4S) start at $230 used on eBay, with the next auction at the time of this writing ending at $350. If you can get a full discount, just unlock and sell your old one and make some money, and still get the new one.
Marketing explains initial buy-in, but not repeat customers. If Apple's success were only marketing, they would have to attract ridiculous amounts of new customers to replace the ones fleeing the platform. That's not the case. Last I read, the iPhone has something like an 80% retention rate. The iPhone 5 is the most-anticipated phone out there, and Apple has said nothing about it. Clearly, people must buy their products for more reasons than Apple's heavy marketing push.
For myself, I tend to buy Apple products because I know the build quality will be there, and I like OS X. Can I spend less for a faster machine? Yup (this is especially the case when you're coming up to a hardware refresh). Will it run OS X? Not without a lot of hassle and research to make sure that everything will be compatible. When I was in high school, that kind of thing was fun, but now I just want to get to work and do other, more enjoyable things. Will another PC have the same top-notch build quality? Not in that price range.
(That's ignoring the form factor. I know many people are attracted to the iMac for the simplicity of needing only one cord for a fully functional system. I don't know of any PC manufacturers that are currently offering this.)
Status? The only Apple device anyone ever sees me with is an iPhone, and that's hardly a status symbol--almost everyone I know has one. The iPhone was a status symbol when it first came out, but not now. Apple may be a status thing for some people, but if so, that's ridiculous.
Other companies don't understand Apple, and so they think they can charge as much as Apple without doing all the other things that make Apple products such a joy to use for the average person. They are slowly learning that this isn't the case.
Many posters on Slashdot don't understand Apple, and so they post ignorant messages about Apple only being successful because of marketing. Their marketing is good. It's what gets lots of people to try their products for the first time. But marketing isn't what makes people repeat customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but what's your point? If I'm going to use Opera, it won't be because it's "the original", it'll be because it has the best features and user experience of modern browsers. It's not like you're going to use Mosaic because it was the first graphical browser.
That said, I'll check out 11.60. Opera has enough rabid fans that I check it out every now and then, but so far I've always gone back disappointed.
11/11/1918 was Armistice Day, and it occurred at 11:00. "Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" and all that. But I'm not sure why that makes this objectionable. It's celebrating the end of the war if it's celebrating anything, which--last I knew--was a good thing.
The first few levels were somewhat entertaining when I was riding the metro in DC, but after 30 or so stages, it quickly became tedious. I, too, do not understand the popularity.
Agreed; I am actually interested in this, and may reactivate since I already plan on buying Diablo 3. I thought Cataclysm wasn't terribly exciting after hitting 85, whereas WotLK was great until the end. I always wanted a monk class in the game, too. But really, Blizzard, what we need is playable murlocs, not pandas.
Sheesh, my bad. I was thinking Nina was from Tesla. Thanks for the correction.
FTA: "The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers[...]"
Sounds like it's both.
"There's nothing wrong with crabgrass. It just has a bad name, that's all. Everyone would love it if it had a cute name, like, uh, elf grass."
--Homer Simpson
I shouldn't post right when I get up. I was assuming the satellites did the calculations, not the ground devices.
Wouldn't the easiest solution be to give the satellites an "exclusion range" of coordinates? Don't turn them off, simply don't have them send results if the device is in a certain area.
I'm assuming RIM isn't completely clueless and doesn't require developers to only give exclusive apps.
Seems to me that that's really the only way to get in the game at this point--make things as easy as possible for developers. Free SDK, free publishing license, and higher payouts for devs. Hopefully RIM has learned a lot from these days (and if you read the followups, it looks like they're making an effort).
Though I've never owned or really even used a Blackberry device, I do wish them well, just like I wish Microsoft well. I don't want the only players to be Google and Apple anymore than I wanted the only players to be RIM and Microsoft. We could use more honest competition in this space.
I would much rather they work on more outstanding bugs (not that this is even a bug--it really is working as intended) than spend time and effort on something as trivial as this. I prefer tabs on top, but my browser of choice (Safari on OS X, though I use Chrome elsewhere) doesn't do it that way. Would I like them to change it? Yes, but it won't happen. Apple briefly tried it with the Safari 4 beta, and reverted it back. Oh well.
In Safari, I'm much more happy with new features like Reading List, Reader mode, and sandboxed plugins, than a silly UI non-issue. Same with Chrome and its respective feature set.
You are right, I misspoke...No new features, but the performance improvements are pretty big. My point was that they are, at least, still updating it for the time being.
Actually, HP just released a big update today. 3.0.4 77. In my early testing, it is nearly as fast as the device was when I had it overclocked to 1.7GHz and a bunch of performance patches installed. A very pleasant surprise.
Random link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Precentralnet/~3/UVQV0BP2eHI/hands-on-webos-3-0-4-video
I've never really seen the use for multiple accounts on my phone, but multiple profiles (same data, apps, etc., only some data is emphasized over others in different profiles) would be useful. Another nice thing would simply be a "game mode", for handing my phone to my nieces and nephews, that would only let them play games and not access anything else on the phone.
I'd never actually looked at the raw data before, so I decided to based on your post. And...yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Anyone interested... http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=RIM:CN
"Losing ground" = higher sales year-over-year? Record sales to the tune of 1,000,000 units preordered in one day for the 4S? Android has more market share, but that doesn't mean that Apple is hurting. At all. The market is growing, and both Android and Apple are doing well.
I still don't see it. Calling it a "seductive trap" seems nothing more than hyperbole. The reason you see such spirited defense is because people's devices actually do what people want them to. The only way in which I have ever felt restricted by my iPhone is that I can't freely develop my own apps for my own use, which is a genuine complaint--that doesn't affect 99% of users.
What seems to be the problem with Stallman (and indeed, many people on this site) is that he can't imagine anyone else having a different viewpoint from him. He thinks people are being bamboozled when they buy an iPhone or iPad or $APPLE_PRODUCT, and that they will be instantly unhappy once they find out they can't do $COOL_GEEKY_THING.
Problem is, even if most people do "sleepwalk" into it, the vast majority of them don't ever see a problem with their choice. To them, the walled garden gives them exactly what they need. For everyone who complains about needing to use iTunes to drop files onto their phone, there are ten who don't care. This goes with a lot of the things people on this site complain about.
Most people who don't know the "ins and outs of the factors" couldn't care less. If you want statistics, look at the customer satisfaction for the iPhone and Apple in general, which are both higher than any other manufacturer or product in its class.
I have, actually. And I dabbled in iOS, but didn't want to pay $99/year. iOS was definitely more difficult to learn, but Mac programming was stupid easy to get an application running. Of course, doing advanced things takes a lot more work, but that's the case with everything. Easy to learn, difficult to master, and all that.
While I didn't spend that much time looking at Cocoa Touch, the sheer number of iOS apps available tells me that learning Objective-C and Apple's frameworks can't be that tough. I think it's more a case of people not liking change.
Objective-C is a strict, and rather simple, superset of C. It's really easy to learn. I think most people freak out when they realize its syntax isn't like Java or C++ (it's more like Smalltalk). Sounds like you're complaining more about the libraries and frameworks, which obviously take a lot longer. It would be nice if iOS had automatic garbage collection, though--Java has a clear win there. Obj-C 2.0 on the Mac has it, though, so I imagine it will show up on iOS devices at some point.
Even the original iPad is smoother than the new Android tablets, from what I've seen, and often more responsive. It's certainly the case versus the HP Touchpad (though webOS is still a much better interface overall). Granted, it's been a couple months, so things may have changed.
There's a difference. An AT&T customer is guaranteed to make AT&T money over the long run, because that "free" 3GS requires a two-year contract. There's no guarantee that an Amazon customer will make Amazon money, however, because there's no guarantee an Amazon customer will spend even $1 on an eBook on Amazon's store. It's perfectly valid to say the hardware is sold at a loss.
What about all the people with the 3G and the 3GS? For them, it is a huge upgrade. A friend of mine is still on an old 3G, and the thing is nearly unusable with iOS 4. He had to disable a bunch of stuff, like location services, to make it tolerable. For him, the 4S is a perfect, and logical upgrade. For me with my 4, it doesn't make sense, and so I won't get it unless I can get one at a full discount.
That said, iPhone 4s (plural, not 4S) start at $230 used on eBay, with the next auction at the time of this writing ending at $350. If you can get a full discount, just unlock and sell your old one and make some money, and still get the new one.
Marketing explains initial buy-in, but not repeat customers. If Apple's success were only marketing, they would have to attract ridiculous amounts of new customers to replace the ones fleeing the platform. That's not the case. Last I read, the iPhone has something like an 80% retention rate. The iPhone 5 is the most-anticipated phone out there, and Apple has said nothing about it. Clearly, people must buy their products for more reasons than Apple's heavy marketing push.
For myself, I tend to buy Apple products because I know the build quality will be there, and I like OS X. Can I spend less for a faster machine? Yup (this is especially the case when you're coming up to a hardware refresh). Will it run OS X? Not without a lot of hassle and research to make sure that everything will be compatible. When I was in high school, that kind of thing was fun, but now I just want to get to work and do other, more enjoyable things. Will another PC have the same top-notch build quality? Not in that price range.
(That's ignoring the form factor. I know many people are attracted to the iMac for the simplicity of needing only one cord for a fully functional system. I don't know of any PC manufacturers that are currently offering this.)
Status? The only Apple device anyone ever sees me with is an iPhone, and that's hardly a status symbol--almost everyone I know has one. The iPhone was a status symbol when it first came out, but not now. Apple may be a status thing for some people, but if so, that's ridiculous.
Other companies don't understand Apple, and so they think they can charge as much as Apple without doing all the other things that make Apple products such a joy to use for the average person. They are slowly learning that this isn't the case.
Many posters on Slashdot don't understand Apple, and so they post ignorant messages about Apple only being successful because of marketing. Their marketing is good. It's what gets lots of people to try their products for the first time. But marketing isn't what makes people repeat customers.