If Google's customers were inherently the carriers, then why did they release a phone that was so far-removed from carrier lock-in that people still question why it was even supported by them in the first place?
I don't think Google's target customers were the carriers; the AOSP is mostly open-source and can be modified as needed, so it seems more like a byproduct of design and licensing. Perhaps the leaders of this project foresaw carriers designing the experience as they wished, though it makes me wonder whether they preferred that. Considering how the Nexus One was tailored, I would like to think that wasn't the case. (If anything, the ROM used by the Droid is pretty disconnected from Verizon, though they certainly have the manpower to pull old tricks and paint the ROM red like they only know how.)
I guess for the same reasons people get these Android phones that can't officially get updated anymore either...
For what it's worth, jailbreaking an iPhone is as easy as downloading an application and running it. Rooting one's device is far more laborous, or at least I think it would be for a typical user.
You're the one who says the Android stock UI can't be gotten back to, and yet, getting it back is as easy as clicking 'install' on a free app from the Marketplace.
Not so simple. Yes, you can "get it back" by downloading LauncherPro et al, but it's still running underneath regardless. Actually removing it usually requires a custom ROM, which is blocked from official update paths too.
It was a great success. Look at the phones that have been released before (Droid, Aria, Espresso, Behold, etc.) and after (Droid X, Galaxy S, EVO) the Nexus One. I won't say that it was directly responsible for the proliferation of seriously powerful and (reasonably) feature-packed devices, but it did push the platform forward just like the G1 did.
I think Google will make another effort down the line. Android seems to be losing its focus, since it's becoming a lot like Windows Mobile in its execution. The ONLY phone shipping the "Google Experience" (i.e. Android as intended, more or less) was the Nexus One, every other phone out there has some sort of skin FORCEFULLY installed on it (HTC Sense, MOTOBLUR, TouchWiz, etc). To further feed the fire, many of those phones have tons of applications that are completely unnecessary and only seem to help the carrier --- COMPLETELY like the carrier-provided smart (and dumb!) phones that came before the smartphone explosion.
Forget the fact that most of these phones are a bit difficult to root/unlock. When a person buys an iPhone, they get software that, in its stock form, is EXACTLY as Apple intended it. It doesn't have Facebook or anything like that pre-installed; the user get the Apple bits right from the beginning, and everything added after that is entirely up to him or her. Not so when you buy Android...and the sad part is that the stock UI is actually quite good! It's not like Windows Mobile where HTC et. al. HAD to put TouchFLO/Sense on top of it because it was fugly compared to everything else out there.
Look at TouchWiz on the Vibrant, for instance. It tries really, really hard to provide an iPhone-like interface in hopes of being easy to use. The only problem is that it's not. They COULD try and provide something 'different' (which a LOT of people would probably appreciate, if it works) like HTC does with Sense, but that would make way too much sense.
A lot of people automatically associate Android with Google because the first line of Android-capable phones (G1, Hero, myTouch3G) were marketed that way. In fact, I think the release of the Droid on Verizon officially put a stop to that trend, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Thus, I'd say that surveying how many are likely to get Google-branded phones is a pretty reasonable indicator of how well Android is doing in the marketplace.
Nonetheless, even though Android doesn't seem to be getting a lot of love lately (or at least according to this survey), the thing to keep in mind is that Android's market presence has become notably stronger since the G1 came out. I honestly think that from a phone perspective, the Nexus One had serious potential to realistically compete with the iPhone (3GS) behemoth, considering that it's similar to the iPhone while offering a completely different, and completely usable, experience at a lower price. It's a shame that Google (and T-Mobile!) didn't promote the phone as actively as they could have; it had TONS of potential. Look at how well the Droid's doing on Verizon! (Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S line is much more feature-rich, but it's a toy. The Nexus One was a statement...and a damned good looking one.)
Let's put it this way: at least it's not just Blackberry and Windows Mobile anymore!
They'll replace magnetics at the consumer level, but unless their MTBF increases considerably in the next few years, it'll be a LOOONG way out before they become the de facto storage medium in the datacentre. SLC SSDs are the only real alternative to reliable, (theoretically) long-lasting and high-performance magnetic hard drives, but they are prohibitively expensive. An all-SSD SAN would be insane...but will cost a fortune!
Dude, I was flashing the Touch Pro every other day to make it functional. It was a piece of crap compared to the phones I had after it. The camera sucked, the GPS barely worked, its battery life was awful and because Windows Mobile can't be stable if its life depended on it, everything else ALMOST worked. Playing music on it sucked too; its DAC was substandard to the one on my iPod (much noisier) and Windows Mobile seems to have ZERO good media players for it.
I'm really, really surprised that HTC decided to make the HD2 a Windows Mobile 6.5 device. Such a waste.
I believed some of those things too until I actually took a risk and bought one. I decided to do this after I tried out the iPhone 4 at the Apple Store near Central Park.
The screen is amazing and is WAY better than the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4. Text is quite sharp, but not as sharp as the latter. Because it's an OLED screen, blacks are REALLY black and colors are very vibrant. Let's put it this way, compared to the 3GS that it sits right next to on my drawer, the Nexus One makes that screen look washed out. Never though I'd say that.
It's also a really good touchscreen, though gestures aren't as smooth as they are on iPhone. Nothing is; Android has somewhat jerky visuals at best and the (stupid) 30 FPS frame rate cap on this device makes them look much slower than they should be.
It's visible in sunlight, though not as bright as my iPhone was. I didn't think it was as bad as the media made it seem, though it's not the best screen for picture taking.
It feels great (extremely similar form factor to the iPhone, sans plastic), has great call quality and is FAST. It's a good phone; shame that you really can't try it before you buy it unless you run into people that have it. (Google only sold 130,000 of them, so good luck with that!)
Not entirely true; a lot of that brand recognition comes from viral marketing and word-of-mouth. Don't the bulk of iPhone and iPad sales come from urban cities, just like the MacBooks and iMacs in the computer space?
At least one can still service their iPhone after they jailbreak it. One restore, and it's as good as gold! Unlocking the bootloader on the Nexus One voids its warranty FOR GOOD because they can't be re-locked (at least from what I've been reading).
Oops, meant WineBottler...winetricks is the shell script that does all of the application installation magic. Huge gripe I have is that it relies on its maintainers hardcoding SHA1 signatures in the file to verify downloads. If it's outdated, it breaks.
Does Outlook on Wine still crash hard when trying to configure it to use RPC/HTTPS? That made using Exchange in Wine really, really hard. (Yes, I know there's DavMail and the plugin for Thunderbird...but Exchange and Outlook are a REALLY nice, and pretty important, combination.
Does it still include no support for IE7 and IE8? Tried installing both of these versions on OS X via Winetricks (Thanks, Mike!) to test a website I'm developing, and it took ages to go nowhere...
WINE is a great tool...except when it's not. Which is, unfortunately, almost every single time I need that cross-compatibility. Better idea is running a modified WinPE or lightweight Windows installation under a VM; much more stable (for some things)
Even if we assume that the thief knows zilch about IP addresses or even computers (i.e. stole it to make a quick buck, unbeknowest of the value of the item or the information it contains), it's tough to get even a reasonably approximate location from the IP address alone. Geolocation could give you a potential lead, but (a) I have no idea if one can exploit the API to find the location of a device using IP address alone and (b) it utilizes the position of other devices, such as GPS receivers and the wireless AP the computer might be connected to, to triangulate its position.
The best you can hope for is that the IP addresses you collected belong to an ISP pool, since you could theoretically have the police subpoena that ISP for more details (like the vicinity that pool belongs to, or maybe an exact location if it's a static IP). While improbable, a thief that's actually savvy about how this works would probably obfuscate that to close up that hole. Or if the police even care enough to go through all that work; keep in mind that it's highly possible that many, many folks lose valuable items every single day and hope that the police invests time in recovering them.
If it's a college town or somewhere even remotely urban, I would check your local Craiglist or ask your pawn shops to see if your item turns up. In the future, it might be a good idea to place a sticker or some other identifiable, but subtle, marker to remove any doubt that it belongs to you. As another poster suggested, insurance is a worthwhile investment if/when you purchase your next notebook. Unfortunately, hindsight is always 20/20.
On a slightly unrelated note, is it true that Apple can track their laptops by serial number?
These are not very strong arguments for discouraging people from getting Dells. Almost all OEM computers come with tons of trialware, probably from legal agreements and some such. Additionally, almost all of the major companies have outsourced their bottom-tier warranty support overseas. Fortunately, though, it's pretty easy to get quicker and higher-tiered support; you just have to pay for it. (I get parts replaced for my Latitude E6500 overnight, and all of the reps I've dealt with were nice, friendly and spoke very clearly.) Finally, quality has "dropped" across the market because of outsourcing...but business-class PCs are usually built with better designs and components depending on how they are customized.
I like brick and mortar too, but it's really, really tough to buy a PC any cheaper than what Dell offers at the moment unless you --- surprise, surprise --- get low-end stuff from Newegg, eBay or similar, which will STILL cost about the same as a higher-spec'ed Inspiron with a crappier warranty.
If you're script or program is not time-sensitive, then it's definitely better to optimize development and maintenance time. However, if you're in finance and are working with numbers that translate to real cash, then execution time is critically paramount.
Right. It's another classic case of completely missing the point. Sure, there are tons of folks that use Twitter for pointless crap, but there is a plethora of great information underneath that superficiality, with a super-fast distribution method to boot. I knew about the iPhone unlock for today's release the SECOND it was released by Twitter through Tweetdeck. Other than Facebook (which doesn't offer as much anonymity as the former, and would be rejected by most of this sample even if it did), there is nothing quicker than that.
Chai tea with real leaves or the chai tea concentrate that they sell? They're quite different (they almost always use the concentrate; not sure if they do it with leaves if you ask), though those lattes are really good:-)
...and provided that they're in the right area. You can't really compete with Starbucks in the urban space, as they will just open another store two blocks down where more folks waiting to be assimilated by the corporates that be will willing shell $3.95 three times a day for weak lattes.
This isn't so much the case in a place like, say, Martinez, CA.
I tried that and it didn't taste like water; it just tasted like more of stuff I didn't like. But I will give it another shot someday when I get tired of drinking coffee.
Actually, Starbucks has some of the best beans in the world and are highly ranked in coffee tastings and such. The only problem is that they sell the low-grade shit; their Pike Place roast is fucking terrible (it's their cheapest roast), but their Bold roasts are much better.
I also highly disagree that most restaurants sell "real" coffee. I've been to tons of restaurants/diners/coffee shops across the country and have only been to a select few that don't sell watered-down bullshit that people pass as decent. And guess what? Most of them charge the same for a 8oz cup as Starbucks does. Funny anecdote, actually: one of the places I love and frequent sells one of the best-tasting cups of coffee I know at 6oz a pop. The place is a super small bar out in (practically) the middle of nowhere. I hear their alcohol is pretty good too; maybe I'll have some next time I go out there to work on some things.
Starbucks is what happens when to many people have more money than sense.
No; Starbucks is what happens when you want to actually sit down and enjoy the drink. They have TONS of variety; have you looked at their menu? They might not be the best, but most places are set up so damn well that you have to overlook that.
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If Google's customers were inherently the carriers, then why did they release a phone that was so far-removed from carrier lock-in that people still question why it was even supported by them in the first place?
I don't think Google's target customers were the carriers; the AOSP is mostly open-source and can be modified as needed, so it seems more like a byproduct of design and licensing. Perhaps the leaders of this project foresaw carriers designing the experience as they wished, though it makes me wonder whether they preferred that. Considering how the Nexus One was tailored, I would like to think that wasn't the case. (If anything, the ROM used by the Droid is pretty disconnected from Verizon, though they certainly have the manpower to pull old tricks and paint the ROM red like they only know how.)
For what it's worth, jailbreaking an iPhone is as easy as downloading an application and running it. Rooting one's device is far more laborous, or at least I think it would be for a typical user.
You're the one who says the Android stock UI can't be gotten back to, and yet, getting it back is as easy as clicking 'install' on a free app from the Marketplace.
Not so simple. Yes, you can "get it back" by downloading LauncherPro et al, but it's still running underneath regardless. Actually removing it usually requires a custom ROM, which is blocked from official update paths too.
Jailbreaking is the solution. It's absurdly easy, but so many are afraid of it.
It was a great success. Look at the phones that have been released before (Droid, Aria, Espresso, Behold, etc.) and after (Droid X, Galaxy S, EVO) the Nexus One. I won't say that it was directly responsible for the proliferation of seriously powerful and (reasonably) feature-packed devices, but it did push the platform forward just like the G1 did.
I think Google will make another effort down the line. Android seems to be losing its focus, since it's becoming a lot like Windows Mobile in its execution. The ONLY phone shipping the "Google Experience" (i.e. Android as intended, more or less) was the Nexus One, every other phone out there has some sort of skin FORCEFULLY installed on it (HTC Sense, MOTOBLUR, TouchWiz, etc). To further feed the fire, many of those phones have tons of applications that are completely unnecessary and only seem to help the carrier --- COMPLETELY like the carrier-provided smart (and dumb!) phones that came before the smartphone explosion.
Forget the fact that most of these phones are a bit difficult to root/unlock. When a person buys an iPhone, they get software that, in its stock form, is EXACTLY as Apple intended it. It doesn't have Facebook or anything like that pre-installed; the user get the Apple bits right from the beginning, and everything added after that is entirely up to him or her. Not so when you buy Android...and the sad part is that the stock UI is actually quite good! It's not like Windows Mobile where HTC et. al. HAD to put TouchFLO/Sense on top of it because it was fugly compared to everything else out there.
Look at TouchWiz on the Vibrant, for instance. It tries really, really hard to provide an iPhone-like interface in hopes of being easy to use. The only problem is that it's not. They COULD try and provide something 'different' (which a LOT of people would probably appreciate, if it works) like HTC does with Sense, but that would make way too much sense.
A lot of people automatically associate Android with Google because the first line of Android-capable phones (G1, Hero, myTouch3G) were marketed that way. In fact, I think the release of the Droid on Verizon officially put a stop to that trend, but I'm not entirely sure about that. Thus, I'd say that surveying how many are likely to get Google-branded phones is a pretty reasonable indicator of how well Android is doing in the marketplace.
Nonetheless, even though Android doesn't seem to be getting a lot of love lately (or at least according to this survey), the thing to keep in mind is that Android's market presence has become notably stronger since the G1 came out. I honestly think that from a phone perspective, the Nexus One had serious potential to realistically compete with the iPhone (3GS) behemoth, considering that it's similar to the iPhone while offering a completely different, and completely usable, experience at a lower price. It's a shame that Google (and T-Mobile!) didn't promote the phone as actively as they could have; it had TONS of potential. Look at how well the Droid's doing on Verizon! (Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S line is much more feature-rich, but it's a toy. The Nexus One was a statement...and a damned good looking one.)
Let's put it this way: at least it's not just Blackberry and Windows Mobile anymore!
They'll replace magnetics at the consumer level, but unless their MTBF increases considerably in the next few years, it'll be a LOOONG way out before they become the de facto storage medium in the datacentre. SLC SSDs are the only real alternative to reliable, (theoretically) long-lasting and high-performance magnetic hard drives, but they are prohibitively expensive. An all-SSD SAN would be insane...but will cost a fortune!
Dude, I was flashing the Touch Pro every other day to make it functional. It was a piece of crap compared to the phones I had after it. The camera sucked, the GPS barely worked, its battery life was awful and because Windows Mobile can't be stable if its life depended on it, everything else ALMOST worked. Playing music on it sucked too; its DAC was substandard to the one on my iPod (much noisier) and Windows Mobile seems to have ZERO good media players for it.
I'm really, really surprised that HTC decided to make the HD2 a Windows Mobile 6.5 device. Such a waste.
I believed some of those things too until I actually took a risk and bought one. I decided to do this after I tried out the iPhone 4 at the Apple Store near Central Park.
The screen is amazing and is WAY better than the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4. Text is quite sharp, but not as sharp as the latter. Because it's an OLED screen, blacks are REALLY black and colors are very vibrant. Let's put it this way, compared to the 3GS that it sits right next to on my drawer, the Nexus One makes that screen look washed out. Never though I'd say that.
It's also a really good touchscreen, though gestures aren't as smooth as they are on iPhone. Nothing is; Android has somewhat jerky visuals at best and the (stupid) 30 FPS frame rate cap on this device makes them look much slower than they should be.
It's visible in sunlight, though not as bright as my iPhone was. I didn't think it was as bad as the media made it seem, though it's not the best screen for picture taking.
It feels great (extremely similar form factor to the iPhone, sans plastic), has great call quality and is FAST. It's a good phone; shame that you really can't try it before you buy it unless you run into people that have it. (Google only sold 130,000 of them, so good luck with that!)
and sell them to Gizmodo or Engadget for enough money to start a franchise :)
Not entirely true; a lot of that brand recognition comes from viral marketing and word-of-mouth. Don't the bulk of iPhone and iPad sales come from urban cities, just like the MacBooks and iMacs in the computer space?
...without even seeing what it was like in person!
Common sense scores again!
(disclaimer: I have a Nexus One [for now]. Definitely worth it!)
At least one can still service their iPhone after they jailbreak it. One restore, and it's as good as gold! Unlocking the bootloader on the Nexus One voids its warranty FOR GOOD because they can't be re-locked (at least from what I've been reading).
Oops, meant WineBottler...winetricks is the shell script that does all of the application installation magic. Huge gripe I have is that it relies on its maintainers hardcoding SHA1 signatures in the file to verify downloads. If it's outdated, it breaks.
WINE is a great tool...except when it's not. Which is, unfortunately, almost every single time I need that cross-compatibility. Better idea is running a modified WinPE or lightweight Windows installation under a VM; much more stable (for some things)
Even if we assume that the thief knows zilch about IP addresses or even computers (i.e. stole it to make a quick buck, unbeknowest of the value of the item or the information it contains), it's tough to get even a reasonably approximate location from the IP address alone. Geolocation could give you a potential lead, but (a) I have no idea if one can exploit the API to find the location of a device using IP address alone and (b) it utilizes the position of other devices, such as GPS receivers and the wireless AP the computer might be connected to, to triangulate its position.
The best you can hope for is that the IP addresses you collected belong to an ISP pool, since you could theoretically have the police subpoena that ISP for more details (like the vicinity that pool belongs to, or maybe an exact location if it's a static IP). While improbable, a thief that's actually savvy about how this works would probably obfuscate that to close up that hole. Or if the police even care enough to go through all that work; keep in mind that it's highly possible that many, many folks lose valuable items every single day and hope that the police invests time in recovering them.
If it's a college town or somewhere even remotely urban, I would check your local Craiglist or ask your pawn shops to see if your item turns up. In the future, it might be a good idea to place a sticker or some other identifiable, but subtle, marker to remove any doubt that it belongs to you. As another poster suggested, insurance is a worthwhile investment if/when you purchase your next notebook. Unfortunately, hindsight is always 20/20.
On a slightly unrelated note, is it true that Apple can track their laptops by serial number?
Good luck!
These are not very strong arguments for discouraging people from getting Dells. Almost all OEM computers come with tons of trialware, probably from legal agreements and some such. Additionally, almost all of the major companies have outsourced their bottom-tier warranty support overseas. Fortunately, though, it's pretty easy to get quicker and higher-tiered support; you just have to pay for it. (I get parts replaced for my Latitude E6500 overnight, and all of the reps I've dealt with were nice, friendly and spoke very clearly.) Finally, quality has "dropped" across the market because of outsourcing...but business-class PCs are usually built with better designs and components depending on how they are customized.
I like brick and mortar too, but it's really, really tough to buy a PC any cheaper than what Dell offers at the moment unless you --- surprise, surprise --- get low-end stuff from Newegg, eBay or similar, which will STILL cost about the same as a higher-spec'ed Inspiron with a crappier warranty.
If you're script or program is not time-sensitive, then it's definitely better to optimize development and maintenance time. However, if you're in finance and are working with numbers that translate to real cash, then execution time is critically paramount.
I was going to respond to the fluffy article on multitasking here, but I found this article to be much more useful reading.
Right. It's another classic case of completely missing the point. Sure, there are tons of folks that use Twitter for pointless crap, but there is a plethora of great information underneath that superficiality, with a super-fast distribution method to boot. I knew about the iPhone unlock for today's release the SECOND it was released by Twitter through Tweetdeck. Other than Facebook (which doesn't offer as much anonymity as the former, and would be rejected by most of this sample even if it did), there is nothing quicker than that.
Chai tea with real leaves or the chai tea concentrate that they sell? They're quite different (they almost always use the concentrate; not sure if they do it with leaves if you ask), though those lattes are really good :-)
...and provided that they're in the right area. You can't really compete with Starbucks in the urban space, as they will just open another store two blocks down where more folks waiting to be assimilated by the corporates that be will willing shell $3.95 three times a day for weak lattes.
This isn't so much the case in a place like, say, Martinez, CA.
I tried that and it didn't taste like water; it just tasted like more of stuff I didn't like. But I will give it another shot someday when I get tired of drinking coffee.
But then, I live in an area that has a lot of independent coffee shops and not a lot of Starbucks locations, so I guess they're not competing.
How can you compete against the distributor that has a damn shop on every other corner on an avenue?
I also highly disagree that most restaurants sell "real" coffee. I've been to tons of restaurants/diners/coffee shops across the country and have only been to a select few that don't sell watered-down bullshit that people pass as decent. And guess what? Most of them charge the same for a 8oz cup as Starbucks does. Funny anecdote, actually: one of the places I love and frequent sells one of the best-tasting cups of coffee I know at 6oz a pop. The place is a super small bar out in (practically) the middle of nowhere. I hear their alcohol is pretty good too; maybe I'll have some next time I go out there to work on some things.
Starbucks is what happens when to many people have more money than sense.
No; Starbucks is what happens when you want to actually sit down and enjoy the drink. They have TONS of variety; have you looked at their menu? They might not be the best, but most places are set up so damn well that you have to overlook that.
Tea tastes just like water, and everyone who's said different puts tons upon TONS of sugar to make the taste pop.
I'm pretty sure I've tried the "legit" teas too and felt the same way.
I really would switch to tea if it weren't for that. Until then, dame mas cafe!