Posts by Dan Wilkinson 107 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2008
It's not new, it's not entirely made up, it's not the equivalent of the star wars prequels etc. All the material exists in printed form in either the 12 strong "History of Middle Earth" series of books that Christoper Tolkien edited, or Unfinished Tales etc. That which is not already extant in story form, is already part of the canon in reference form, either in timelines or other "reference" forms.
It'll be no different to the existing trilogy, by which I mean it might not be "pure", but the tonal quality should be enough. Anyone that wants "pure" won't like the film trilogy as it stands, so why please them for these films, they'll already be predisposed to hate them.
Let's have it, I say, I want to see the Council of the White, and the removal of Sauron from Dol Guldor. I don't care if they are not in the Hobbit book, I know they "happened", and that there is plenty of information kicking around on what happened during the events to make a good stab at filming it.
I tried a quick search for said error codes. Seems you need to do a re-install. Seems fairly straightforward. Of course, you wouldn't have had to feel my teeth if you had said "I have trouble restoring" rather than asserting that downgrading is not possible.
You're welcome.
It's not really closed - why not? Because it's not a standalone device. You need a PC or a Mac to use it properly, to copy your photo's onto it, and your music, and your films etc etc etc. Now if this thing had a single USB port, and the ability to import the above from a memory stuck, USB CD drive, etc, then you might be onto something.
It's not the end of computing as we know it, It's an accessory device to your existing computing infrastructure, only one that doesn't need security software and the associated $ubscriptions, doesn't have a dozen ways to install and/or remove software, doesn't present you with a thousand tray icons bugging you individually about software updates, doesn't feel the need to tell you that version 12.34.5678 of your graphics drivers are now available, doesn't magically speed up when you remember to defrag it/run a registry cleaner or slow down as your startup items folder fills with trash, won't fill your screen with 25% of the screen real estate taken up with title bars/minimise buttons/unwanted toolbars and un-needed scroll paraphernalia, won't ever prompt you to perform upgrades and force a reboot after they are applied in the middle of using it for something else (Yes, I know that upgrades will be available, but the point is that you do the upgrade at the point of synchronising the device, ergo when you are not using it for other tasks), doesn't have a noisy fan that kicks in when you start a game, or visit a website with a flash advert, or a battery that will barely get you through an evening of youtube etc etc ad infinitum.
Some people, maybe people who don't lurk on tech websites, might appreciate some of this. Personally, I long for the day when the standalone iPad comes out, then I can make a 90% saving on my Family IT Bill in time spent faffing with shite that people who don't want to know, don't NEED to know...and at the end of the day, for those of us that want more power and freedom...guess what, we still have it!
Now this would be more interesting if they were showing what percentage of web usage was windows based, and how much of that was the new version of windows, and then comparing that against how much was Mac OS X based, and how much of that was the new version of OS X, particularly when compared to the same timescales.
The interesting thing is surely not Mac V OS X, but instead how ready the users of those "competing" operating systems are to upgrade to the latest, and how many won't budge from XP/Tiger etc etc.
But that wouldn't allow them to beat the drum in the same way, so I can see why they would choose to misrepresent instead ;)
Let's take the phone out of the equation and repeat the question in hand (for at least one aspect of the article anyway):
I upgrade my computer from AmigaDos 23, to AmigaDos 24. Then I back it up. Then I decide to downgrade my computer back to AmigaDos 23 using a fresh install. Then I try to restore my data using my AmigaDos 24 backup software and dataset. Anyone see a problem here?
I have an extra step which spoils your results - before upgrading to AmigaDos 24, take a full backup of AmigaDos 23 including your apps, and save it somewhere. Then, when you need to revert, revert using a restore from this backup, not a fresh install!
The fact that you have to downgrade iTunes is a bummer, but it's no different to needing to restore a Netbackup backup for a server using a client that matches the server that was used to make the image.
This is all perfectly normal behaviour for any computer system, the phone is not particularly different.
Also, there is no need to do the DFU finger dance to revert to a previous OS anyway, just click Shift-Restore in iTunes and choose the version you wish to use. Done.
The Apps is another matter, but there are ways of doing it that again are not so different to doing it with any other app on any other OS. The trouble is that iTunes will only hold 1 version of any app you have downloaded, and because you choose the file and it downloads it for you, you don't exactly get a choice of filename or location, so a new version always overwrites the old one. Also, iTunes will only hold the very latest, not an archive of previous versions. This doesn't mean you cannot re-install the old one - on the assumption that you are a sensible user who takes backups, you can just restore it into this area from your own backup, remove the app from the phone, then sync again. On a Mac this is as simple as locating the directory where the apps are saved, firing up time machine, choosing your app file, and rolling back until you find the older one. Shouldn't be much different on Windows assuming you actually take backups (and if you don't, you have no right to complain about the lack of ability to restore to past versions...)
This isn't ideal, it passes the responsibility for archiving to the user, but it's perfectly possible, and no different to keeping hold of old downloads that eventually get removed online (I have versions of Skype saved from way back, because they are Win98 compatible and are no longer downloadable - don't ask!).
What the article doesn't touch on, which is worthy of further investigation, is the whole business of storing your user data within the actual application bundle. Restoring an app to a previous version may well have the effect of restoring your data to the same point in time. This is more of an issue than having to understand a little about backup and restore for the OS and apps, as most people are probably not aware of how all this works. I don't fully understand it myself to be honest, because many apps seem to be able to retain my data on an upgrade, so it's not as simple as just swapping over the binary for the new version. I suspect that the single downloadable file contains a data area inside that iTunes knows to pull out and copy into the new download, and that any new version must be written to be able to understand that data if there have been changes to the underlying structure - theoretically if may be possible to pull the data (if you have changed it and want to keep it) from the new version, and shoe-horn this into the old version, but there's nothing to see it will work or the old version will understand it.
"First Malicious iPhone Worm Slithers Into iPhones That Have Been Jailbroken Against The EULA, Had SSH Downloaded And Installed And Left Running With Default Root Password By People Who Couldn't Find Their Ass With Both Hands And Therefore Deserve What They Get"
Honestly, if you don't understand the security implications of installing a remote access daemon on your phone/server/fridge, namely that if you can get in then others can at least try also, then you really just plain shouldn't. It's not even like you need to any more anyway, most apps are available on Rock/Cydia etc, at least enough for your average "home user" jailbreaker.
If you are still using SSH, hell even if you just know that you *can* log in to your phone via SSH, then surely you *must* understand about password files etc also?!
Fools!
You can only patent methods, not ideas. This patent is for achieving the sudo like functionality via a specific method. You can't just say "it's the same as sudo!" and not allow it, because a) there is (in all likelihood) no patent already in place for sudo, and b) the prior art has to me for the method, not the functionality.
Is this the worst thing that anyone has found, such that it deserves an article on it's own? I mean, a plugin for displaying Ads (on the whole) is back level by (wait for it) not a major number, not even a minor number, but 10.0.23.1 instead of 10.0.32.18?
Ah, but now I'm exposed to a raft of potential attacks and exploits which have been targeted on Adobe's software in recent months! Oh, but now Safari plugins are sandboxed, so the exploits won't work anyway.
@Sergie Kaponitovicz
With pain as minimal as this, you risk losing out on the pleasure
@Pollo
This is actually a bad line of attack, there have been numerous known issues that it's taken Apple as much as 6 months to fix (Perl and DNS builds being back level for one). Microsoft's security updates are actually pretty good, albeit largely because they HAVE to be in order to stay above water. Sometimes Apple are lax in this area.
Why are you comparing Word and Pages, in an OS comparison? Why would you do this anyway, when Word is available on both systems?
The same goes for mail clients. Outlook isn't cheap, and most people who buy Office for Word and Excel buy the home/student version, which doesn't even include it. OK, it's a great app, but for comparison purposes it might be fairer to mention that out of the box, Mac OS X includes a mail and calendar client with Exchange support that matches maybe (number from out of my ass here) 80% of the functionality of Outlook, whereas Windows 7 doesn't include a mail or calendar client at all, not even a pop3 client.
I look forward to a more indepth comparison later, presume you will do one.
>And Puma, Cheetah, Leopard etc is clearer because...?
Because they are nicknames that you don't need to use. Let me provide a brief rundown of say the last 8 major Mac OS revisions...
Mac OS 8
Mac OS 9
Max OS X (or "Ten", if you insist)
Max OS X 10.1 (Cheetah, why not)
Max OS X 10.2 (Jaguar, between friends)
Max OS X 10.3 (Panther, if you feel the need)
Max OS X 10.4 (Tiger, if you must)
Max OS X 10.5 (Leopard, if you insist)
Max OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard, if you insist)
No premium editions, home editions, pro editions, versions without a browser, versions without a media player, versions that are only available on netbooks, versions that restrict functionality based on how much you spent merely by using a registry key to stop you using software that is included but turned off, etc, no seperate 64 bit versions, no concurrently available versions based on entirely seperate kernels - I think you get the point. Surely?
What are there, something like 20 versions of Windows 7 coming out, when you include the EU ones without I.E., and another full set without a media player? And how many versions of Vista are there? And really, can you explain the differences between them adequately to someone who isn't some sorm of nerd like us, say your mum, without them being dumbstruck about the pointlessness of it all? It's worse than Linux kernel numbers...
The 99cents a song doesn't appear on all cards, and those that it does appear on have terms and conditions which further clafity the card as being worth "$15 of itunes credit" or similar. I would LOVE to see the purchasing history of this woman, and specifically if she has purchased any tunes at $1.29 BEFORE buying the gift cards. After all, why is she buying gift cards to use for herself? All very stupid really.
>Great. So I pay loads for MobileMe and now have to pay even more for a separate set of applications and syncing systems that I must keep maintained on my iPhone and Macs. No thanks.
There are free ones, there are (very) expensive ones, there are ones in the middle. There are ones that provide replacement desktop task management software, there are ones that integrate into your existing data stores. Choose. I don't think you will see a native sync until the desktop side of things receives a significant bump in usefulness, maybe with Snow Leopard.
>How am I being 'dumb'? I have notes in Apple Mail. I have notes in Notes on my iPhone. There is no overlap between the two. They are completely separate systems. There is no facility in MobileMe to sync these two things to each other. There ought to be.
You didn't mention MobileMe, just that they wouldn't sync. They do, mine are synced anyway, and not through manual intervention. It may have done it over USB during the upgrade and associated fiddling whilst cabled up, but the point is that they do sync. Maybe OTA sync would be nice, but it's not as important as emails and calendars.
>MobileMe syncs my subscribed calendars between my Macs so clearly it could also do it to my iPhone. But it doesn't. Which is poor. I shouldn't have to do all this manually.
It would be better to have it let you pick and choose to have it done for you, but it's not a huge job to setup the initial config yourself. No worse then inputting your MobileMe settings in the first pace, in fact easier as it just requires you to click on a URL link.
>Not the same thing.
That sort of behaviour works from many other areas like email, so I'm sure it will come in a future update.
> When I get a text message it says 'text from FOO'. All I want is a similar thing that tells me I have an email from FOO without having to unlock my iPhone and go into Mail to see who the new mail is from. It really wouldn't be hard to add such an obviously desirable option.
It doesn't just do that tho does it, it previews the contents also, so it's not exactly like for like. Have you requested this as a feature? I'm not sure having to acknowledge email notifications for every email I get is desirable at all. Maybe a choice would be good.
>Yes, I found that earlier. It should have happened automatically, but didn't.
Actually for many people it did happen automatically, but you could jump the queue by requesting is manually. I reckon that O2 had a good couple of million accounts to make such ammendments to.
>Steady on, Dan. Do you work for Apple or something?
No, although I wouldn't be averse to the idea.
This is potentially the 2nd entirely free OS update that you have had on your phone. You've complained and called it lame because it doesn't have a few features that it never said it would have anyway, all of which are fairly minor (in my opinion) things, like slightly altered email notification, OTA notes syncing, and ToDo/Calendar syncing.
Half of these are MobileMe specific issues, and would mean nothing to people who don't have that anyway. All of them have or will have workarounds via other apps. Maybe they will update MM in a few weeks to support a few more features? Perhaps they didn't want to bite off more than they could chew this year?
You've utterly ignored all the new features you DO have (with the exception of MMS, which you still had a sowner on because you had to type a 3 character text to initialise), and pronounced it lame because it doesn't do things that you want.
>Where's the app for To Do Items, synced from my Mac over MobileMe?
Missing, it's the last glaring omission for me, however the App store has several dozen alternatives, many with free over the air syncing ALA MobileMe.
>Why the hell can't I sync Notes on my iPhone to Notes on my Mac and vice versa? Utterly stupid having two different systems which don't talk to each other.
Because you're being dumb? It's all there. Are you looking at Stickies on your desktop, not Notes in mail or something?
>Why don't my subscribed calendars on my Mac sync to my iPhone over MobileMe?
You can't subscribe to a subscription. You merely need to subscribe to the calendar again on your iPhone. Right click on the subscribed calendar in your desktop, click "Copy URL", save it as a note in Mail, or email it to yourself. Open up the note or email on your phone, click the link, confirm when it asks if you want to subscribe. Done.
>Why can't I click on the location in a Calendar event and have it bring up the location in the Map??
Dunno, but you can cut and paste it into Maps...
>Why can't I get preview messages for emails when the phone is locked in the same way that I do with text messages?
I would hazard a guess that it's because texts are plain text, and emails could be anything. How will they offer a preview of a mail that consists of links to images on a seperate server? All you would see if the text at the top of most mails that says "If you cannot read this mail, ....." etc.
>Why do I still have to go through that stupid system logging into O2's website with a code to view incoming picture messages? Shouldn't they just come straight to my iPhone now?
Text "mms" to 1010 to setup the feature on your account, presuming you already have a text bundle on contract. Then they will show in messages like they should.
>All in all, LAME.
All in all, do some homework before complaining, you don't have a leg to stand on.
For a start, the screen has been lengthened in the picture, as indicated by the talk of moving the microphone - this would result in either a modified (increased) screen resolution with a different aspect ratio, or a stretched display - both of which are clearly stupid and don't even need explanation as to why.
There is a finite size in which to squeeze in your megapixels. I've seen 12mp phones advertised, although these haven't exactly been what I would call "slim". But for a more direct comparison a lot of the competition seem to be hovering around the 6mp area.
There is an interesting argument to be had about the quantity v quality debate when it comes to increasing the amount of pixels you cram into your lens. Without moving to larger form factors than a slim phone, the rule of thumb is that clearly having too few pixels gives a poorer picture. But this doesn't tell the whole story. Cram in too many, and you start to have to reduce the size of them, leading to each pixel letting in less light, and as such producing poorer results. Bigger filesize, larger image, poorer quality overall.
Now obviously there is a happy medium inbetween, one that balances everything from the size requirements, the speed at which the captured picture can be written to flash (again, more pixels = slower), even the amount of JPEG compression used to keep both the kilobytes down and the time taken to write it.
I reckon that having a lesser resolution high quality lens/CMOS etc, that doesn't need to compress the image when it saves it, is going to produce a similar overall "quality" of image to a camera with more lower quality pixels and associated compression...ESPECIALLY when you consider what the intended usage of the photo will be - and let's face it most pictures taken on digital devices are only ever viewed on other digital devices. I really can't see the point in having massive photos that will have one of three things happen to it:
1) It stays in a folder, and you view it downscaled to fit a maximised monitor on your PC/Mac. Let's be generous and say you have a full HD 1900x1080 display. That'll be 2.1 megapixels then...
2) You stick it on Flickr/Facebook - after downscaling it to 800x600
3) You print it. Chances are you will print it at 6x4 inches, at which 2mp is sufficient.
Don't be fooled by the megapixel scam - it's like the Mhz wars of years ago. More is not ALWAYS better, unless you are using a full size form factor. In smaller portable packages more can be less.
I'm sure Apple did plenty of actuall testing and analysis and tried numerous lens/CMOS combinations, before settling on the one that produced the best overall package for the camera given it's brief. Clearly there is no technical engineering reason why they couldn't wang a 10mp monster in there, but what does it gain them? Just bragging rights, and if they wanted to compete on the more is better front, they wouldn't do that and then leave out other features like MMS etc. They aren't competing on spec sheets, like many other manufacturers, they are competing on the overall experience.
I'm happy with the camera for what I use it for, I'm sure the next hardware revision will have a higher megapixel camera in it, but it will also I'm sure be done for quality reasons, not marketing. I also bet it will still be less than 5mp. Personally, I'd rather see them throw in autofocus...
Hmmm, so Apple not only tricked Windows users into installing Safari (because everyone knows on Windows you only need to Next>Next>Finish and there is no requirement to actually check what you are doing), but the also managed to set it as the default browser, and then miraculously force people into continuously using it since that time? Yeah, OK, I buy that...
And because there are "better, cheaper, more functional and better looking phones and mp3 players available", then those users don't deserve to have their statistics included? Well, on that basis, why not exclude every single I.E. user out there. Yay! Firefox wins the web!
Maybe it's shaped like a 12-volt car power plug, in white, with an Apple logo embossed into it etc. Just standard practice to patent the design to stop (read: try to stop, in vain) counterfeiters and Ebayers from Hong Kong. No different from patenting the design of, say, an ipod.
Biggest non-story ever on Reg, although to be fair I suspect they knew it, and only ran it because of the double entendre potential.
I have quite a lot of apps on my phone (many many more in iTunes that I don't sync ay more). The ratio is probably 4:1 in favour of the free apps. I've downloaded some stinkers, but none that I have had to pay for. My only gripe is that some of the apps should really be part of the phone in the first place (VoiceNotes, MMS, EasyTask, eReader), but as only 1 of these app store fill-ins was paid, I'm still happy.
Now if only I could REMOVE the Stocks/Weather/YouTube apps....
Based on this article, and this article alone, I have to say it reads thus: "Yang is an idiot, the company was already 3 sheets to the wind, he's only been CEO for 18 months, but it's all his fault, even the stuff that happened when someone else was in charge, ergo, Yang is an idiot" A refreshing lack of actual content to say why he's an idiot though, free lunch or not. I'm sure he is one, but this article makes me want to stick up for him.
Re: Unlimited - my O2 guy said the limit was 3Gb, but that they couldn't actually monitor it accurately enough to enforce it. Not sure how much of this was crap.
Re: Excessive traffic - I'm not sure it's Apples job to ban an app because it will use loads of data. For a start, who's to say it will always be 3G data, and not your home WIFI while sat in the garden. And anyway, the users pay for it, if they use too much it's to the operators to enforce the "fair use policy", not the handset maker.
Re: Version number - An update to the Google app has the following in the update description once "Lower emissions, Enhanced version number"....
I don't get it, what competition would there be? Everyone will get the new firmware versions as and when they are out, and as everyone has already paid for the phone and the updates are free (well, apart from full version increases, like the V1 to V2) what copetetive disdvantage could Apple be at by letting people sell something that they intend to give away? At worst, they get 30% of sales for a product that potentially no-one needs as they will give it away soon? Looks more like a gift horse than a threat to me.
Reminds me of the quote "I'm already number 1, so why try harder?"...
I'm sure it can be improved, there's vast commercial coverage but unless you have deep enough pockets to pay for access at T-Mobile/Cloud/BT hotspots then you might not have access to your provider from anywhere near anough places.
I like the above idea of providing a basic (256k would be fine for me) free service to all an sundry form everywhere - that would allow people to get to the net for email and such at acceptable speeds, and then charge for high speed access.
It all looks a bit Joomla, but hey, if they got rid of the old front page where the order of stories changed all the time for no apparent reason, and had old one stuck at the top for days etc, then I'm all for it.
I get more upset when news.bbc.co.uk changes, but then whenever I have the urge to check out the "man marries goat" story, I alway think how crap the old layout was after all.
I think you misundertood my comment, you appear to agree wholeheartedly in your own words.
I know that certain industries and companies have the requirement and indeed the sense to use complex methods to ensure that component failure cannot affect the system as a whole. They may make use of straightforward redundancy, or the disparate redundancy mentioned by a few other posters where (to take a previously mentioned idea for example) you don't only have Cisco routers etc, but a mixture from seperate manufacturers that provde the same functionality. As you say yourself, for some areas, maybe including the LSE, "it would be prudent to have the system designed with this capability". Exactly what I said; that is part of system design, not Disaster Recovery. Maybe I should have used the "DR" wording, rather than Service Continuity.
The point is is that this "requirement" is built into the system as a whole, and not only as part of your DR/SC requirements. It is THE system design. If you need this level of protection, then BOTH your production site, AND your DR site will have a mixture of (again, for example) say Cisco/HP/IBM switches. Your design used a mixed environment, and your DR site should mirror that EXACTLY. It's no use using Cisco at your production site, and HP at your DR site - that is poor design.
Your DR systems are there to replicate your production environment in the event of it's failure, they are not there to provide dedundancy that should be present in production in the first place if it is so important.
This article irritated me greatly. Now I can't comment on what happens at the very top level of such a large business, but as someone who has recently jumped ship from being a "geek like you" to a service continuity manager, I have to take issue, and especially with this bit in particular:
"If the DR site was working, why didn’t it take over? Can the LSE put paid to the rumour that they were running exactly the same software for both live and standby? If you are Clara Furse reading this, here’s a hint, two copies of the same software will probably crash at the same time, given the same inputs. That’s why grownups use multiple versions.”
Did Accenture tell you that? Did it sound like a luxury to the media beancounters you appointed? What a load of rubbish. Are you seriously suggesting that the reason you have a DR system, is merely in case the software crashes? And that the way to recover from a software crash is to have some "different" software on your DR system? If so, how different? A newer version? How about an older version? Should my production systems use Oracle on unix, and the DR system DB2 on mainframe?
No, the DR system should be identical to your production system in terms of it's design and functional behaviour wherever possible. OK, depending on the size of your business and the importance of the system in question you may have have lower capacity, or other limitations as part of your design, but these differences should be carefully considered, and may be chosen for reasons of cost, complexity or any number of other reasons, but the nutshell is that what you choose to make available in a DR situation has to mirror the functionality, if not the specification. You can't make arbritary changes to second-guess potential future problems.
To deliberately choose to run a different system in case there is some sort of bug, or error that could cause the design in question to fail is both impossible to do effectively, and not a function of service continuity, but of system design. This is important!
I would like to see what happens when there is a problem in terms of there being a real "disaster" (fire/flood/power cut/sysadmin-gone-mental), whereby the failover to DR systems would have worked, only didn't because the software was different. Your comment "but it’s obvious from this event that if the pathetically vulnerable St. Paul’s site is taken out, we can have no confidence in when the market will be back on line." misses the point that it's entirely possible that the DR site could have worked perfectly, if the cause of the fault had actually been the primary site being "taken out" rather than suffering from potentially poor design, or unexpected "input" (whatever you mean by that).
I note that there hasn't been much press coverage in sufficient details for me to understand what actually went wrong, but I know that if it were my systems, I would not want you to be working to fix it, not only do you misunderstand the concept of what service continuity is and how to effect it, but your "holier-than-though" attitude would surely waste peoples time and misdirect their efforts. You may understand when you become one of us "grownups", stop publishing these childish rants and behave like a (fully) responsible journalist...
Fancy getting this wound up, it's tragic.
Apple sell computers, whole ones, not computer hardware, and not operating systems seperately. Not components. They aren't PC world, of your favourite online tat bazarre.
I bought a Macbook with Tiger (go on, boo and hiss), then I upgraded it to Leopard. The Leopard DVD I bought isn't an off the shelf operating system, that I am free to install (as one wonderful comment above notes) on my washing machine or whatever I like, I am free to use it on a previously bought computer system from Apple.
It's not possible to install Leopard (legally) without proving that I have qualifying media. I needs to know I have an Apple supplied copy of a previous OS that was purchased with an Apple computer first.
There is no way Pystar can possibly install leopard without breaking this fundamental rule. The end.
Anti-Trust? Not with less than 5% world market share
Invalid EULA? Rock solid in concept, and I suspect in legal-ese also.
These guys are ripping off on the hard work of others. As for anyone seriously suggesting that Apple should just sell the OS anyway, and let you choose what to run it on - honestly, this may appeal to your "me me me" way of thinking, but it's just not going to work - the profits made from selling the hardware, help fund the company to help produce the software. It's a closed system. If they just sold the OS and let the clone makers run free, how long before it would be unsustainable to produce new hardware, and how long before they abandon OSX development because they can't make a profit on it, thus sending even the clone makers out of the market.
Balmer made a great point about the whole MAC eco system as being closed, which is why they were successful. It's a different way of doing thigs to Microsoft. Yes you can buy a shrink wrap copy of Vista (how much is a decent copy of Vista when compared to Leopard? How much would Leopard suddently cost when they can't subsidise it through hardware sales...) and install it on your firdge if it will take it, just because the vast majority of PC Windows users do just that doesn't mean that defacto it if the only way to sell an OS.
Apple sells computers. When they make new computers, with newer operating systems, they provide the opportunity for previous users to access the updated OS, for their older hardware. They are not an OS vendor. There is no "right" to install this on a clone PC.
I once received several empty boxes from IBM. Ostensibly they were used to fill the spaces in a larger box in which was a couple of cryptographic cards, but the packing system was obviously clever in knowing how many boxes were needed inside the box. Sadly it wasn't clever enough, so after working out that it needed 7 empty boxes to fill the void, and only 6 fitting inside....the 7th was dutifully posted anyway.
They were about 8=6=4 in size, and curiously actually had "empty box" printed onto them, not using stickers...
Sadly, this was before camera phones (12 years or so ago), so no evidence.
I grasp it in it's entirety, for a number of users there are genuine problems causing genuine hassle and heartache for a paid service from which you ought to expect more. I pay for it too, and it has been nothing except fine for me. Maybe I'm just naturally lucky. I'd be pissed if it was broke for me, but it isn't.
I stand by what I said, I think you are in the minority, and you (like others) are being very vocal about it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be, maybe it's the only way to get the attention of anyone at Apple (that's another story), and I'm not saying that the responses that you have been able to elicit are acceptable.
I'm glad you are causing a fuss, it may help me when they release "mobile hive mind" in a few years, but while it can't help make you feel any better, most people really are just fine. I hope your stuff starts working soon, cause if it worked like mine does, you would be happy too.
Having said all that, 1% (Even if it was 5%...) may be a small minority, but it can still be a shed load of people. Hence wondering what the user base was. So despite being thoroughly happy (did I mention that? ;) ) I know full well that in the ideal world they should have:
a) Not tried to tie it in with the iPhone release - no need really. I don't have an iPhone, but I still want this
b) Not forced people over from .mac, just maybe phased out the ability to renew .mac so that within a year they would have to *choose* (as it were) to use mobile me instead, in there own time, therefore making it look more like a consumer choice, and reducing the huge transfer of accounts.
The silver lining is that they know they haven't been good enough, and in their own way are making a better stab at making amends than maybe they have with previous problems...and I get a free month for nothing.
Disclaimer: I have a Mac. And 3 PCs, and an Amiga, PS3, DS, Dragon, CPC464 (2, both with 3 inch disk drives), several Ultra Sparcs, a palm and solar powered pocket calculator. No Linux though. I'm a fanboy, but not an Apple one.
...It's been plain sailing for me. I love it.
I'd like to see how many users they have, and how many have got problems.
Anything else is just so much internet drama. It's pretty much a proven fact that people love to complain, but aren't so vociferous in praise. Because if you are happy with what you have got, and how it's working for you, why would you find the need to make yourself heard telling everyone?
I'd also quite like to see how many affected people have actually lodged an official support request (I'm not saying it would necessarily get you anywhere) versus just moaning about it in discussion forums etc. I'm willing to bet your average Joe Bloggs (who doesn't like to comment in forums etc, and probably wouldn't even know where to look if they wanted to moan/praise) has just see a bit of slow webmail access now and then, and the odd me.com timeout.
But as ever, the vocal minority make the headlines.
I figured the 02 store in the town centre would be busier than the CPW, so I went there instead. Sure enough, by 8.45 when I left, only 1 phone had actually left the store. However, the nice chaps informed us that once we had started the credit check process (which was indeed broken, or tediously slow) the phone you had requested was earmarked to you, and so "safe" from being resold until the credit check was abandoned or cancelled.
As such, we all left the store for them to complete the checks after the rush was over, and I just got a call saying mine was all finished, and I can pay for and pick up my phone whever I want.
Altogether, I'm happy with the whole process. Anyone who isn't, needs to get perspective. I heard all the people moaning in the queue (15 minutes for me, big deal) about how "you would have thought they would be prepared" etc is just silly.
This is a once a year thing, and unlike a website where you can buy extra bandwidth for periods of time etc, the scope of the systems for performing credit checks etc will be geared towards being just about good enough for general usage, plus say 20%. No-one is going to quadruple the capacity of their systems for a 1 day rush. It's not as simple as hiring more staff to flood the systems even more. It may require new servers, extra licenses etc, plus all the associated third parties doing the same. CPW don't do credit checks, they run it through experian, or equifax, and they pay for a certain SLA. It would be foolish and cost a fortune, just to stop a few people (relative, to the number of overall 02 customers) having to use patience?
You couldn't buy it, but I believe that the first CD pressed in the format we still see today was a piece of Beethoven (sic?), and the bit-rate and sample frequency that we use now were chosen specifically in order to fit this piece of music onto a single disc at the highest quality.
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