Re: Is that it? @Jason

"You can try to make PCs smaller but then you end up with a $1000 Steam Box or a Mac Mini."

Though note that MicroATX form boards are commonplace, and there are plenty of small-size PC boxes. Not that I disagree with the gist of your post - in particular, these weren't around (or at least, not common) in the 1990s, so any £5 PC he finds from that era is going to be big. But there's a lot more choice than those two options.

Most people don't need a dedicated graphics card these days, meaning the days of PC cards are gone, similarly one can do away with the DVD drives.

Re: Is that it?

"but it is sometimes hard to see how it's really any better than a second hand laptop or PC costing £5"

Honest question - how easy it is to get such a £5 PC? Typically second hand PC prices tend to have a lower limit that's much higher than that, even if they don't seem worth it. And anything worth less than that is likely to be thrown out, so it's a matter of luck as to whether you know someone with some old hardware to give away. Admittedly Freecycle may help - but I can see the point that, just because a 1990s PC ought to cost £5, doesn't mean I can easily get hold of one, when most of them are now lost, collecting dust, faulty or thrown out.

Re: Lack of Applications?

Everyone knows! Er, a shame her bank doesn't. Or the commenters criticising BB for a lack of apps; I argue this should be directed at the app developers (as with Windows only applications). I wasn't telling everyone, let alone you, I was simply mentioning a fact as part of that point.

I'm not sure that random comments on a forum constitute anything like the level of criticism when something like BBC iplayer was Windows only. Everyone knows that people say they buy iphones because of something only supporting that, but I still found it useful for the OP to make that comment.

Re: Alicia Keys

But then that's an argument against every phone (such as £400 S3, £500 iphone 5), and the real question should be, why isn't the Nexus 4 dominating everything else?

Re: Lack of Applications?

A shame your friend doesn't change her bank, rather than her choice of phone...

This situation is sadly depressing - an unfair advantage Apple get, and something that all other platforms (not just BB) have to fight with.

I remember the uproar when a bank's site or whatever might decide to cater for "only" the mere 90% of Windows users. Yet if a bank now only provides for iphone users - never having been the number one platform, and barely ever above 20%, it seems there's silence.

Android has rocketed past the majority 50% point, now approaching 80%; Samsung Android phones alone outsell iphones by tens of millions; even one single Android device out of thousands outsells Apple's flagship (Q3 2012, the Samsung S3). Android also is now number one on non-phone tablets too. Yet it seems that the number of adverts advertising only "get this on your iphone" or "from the app store" is increasing...

(I think Google Play must have now overtaken to be number one, or will do soon? But unfortunately a lot of the bigger businesses/services still seem to be clueless about phone market share, preferring to cater for fishermen with ipads and so on.)

Re: Price Ideas?

"If they are gonna pitch at Apple prices, the battle is settled. People will buy Appl e instead."

Not really true, plenty of people buy high end Android phones, whilst plenty of Apple phone sales are made up of older iphones. Even at a high price, I'd bet Andoid still comes first.

And when you look at the specs - 5" screens, full HD, maps that work - why not? The iphone 5 just brought it in line with Android phones 18 months earlier.

Bigger competition is likely Samsung, who produce similar high end Android phones, but seem to be a lot more well known than Huawei.

Though yes, it's frustrating to see what's happened to the Nexus 4.

Re: I agree...

"Both black. Both show tickets appearing out of a pocket (half shown)."

Wow, two pictures of tickets in a wallet both look like tickets in a wallet. And the colour black is patented now, is it?

"Now go figure and have a beer on me."

Your beer icon looks just like this other beer icon I saw! Yet I can find this third beer icon that looks completely different, just a simple line drawing, therefore your icon must be a copy, with no sense of style.

(Also, a 2007 iphone's grid of coloured icons looks like my 2005 feature phone, or a 1985 Amiga come to that.)

Re: I agree...

"At least make the logo radically different if you're going to be inspired from an existing idea."

Who says they were inspired from Apple?

And why is it always everyone else who has to make things look radically different, when Apple don't have to?

Your use of "sham" makes no sense.

Re: indeed

"I think you could ask 1000 people to draw a picture of a wallet and you wouldn't get anything like a simple leather pouch with some tickets stuffed into it, together, at jaunty angles."

But this isn't just a wallet, a key part of the functionality is the tickets. So the test would be to ask people to draw a wallet with some tickets in it. Yes, you would get similar (and the only differences would be if their drawing skill wasn't as good as a professional graphic artist).

"Second, saying that there's basically only one way for a clock to look shows a startling ignorance of IP/copyright/trademark law. "

Well, I guess a 2007 iphone is in violation for looking like earlier phones, by that logic.

Re: indeed

I agree. The evidence present by this article is so hilarious, I think it's either a parody, or just flamebait. Let's see:

"Guess what Passbook uses – yup, bar codes."

Bar codes? My god, did all the items at the local shop also copy Apple too, with their lavish use of *bar codes*?

Then we have the comparison of icons. Google only looks different because it looks nothing recognisable like a wallet. MS is only different because it's an overly simplified representation. Apple and Samsung look similar, because they're both more realistic images of a wallet and tickets. Many tickets have cutouts.

Guess what, if I take a photo of my wallet, it also looks like a wallet. Apple copied my wallet!

I wasn't aware that Apple now have a patent on the colours green, yellow and blue (though given the rounded-corners, who knows).

Re: Still enforcing "real names"?

Says "JDX" - is that your real name? Your Register account will be banned until you provide legal documentation showing this.

(Your passport analogy is meaningless - I don't need a passport to leave a Google Play rating, or comment on a website, nor would I want such a requirement. Are you seriously suggesting those things should have the same level of security as entering another country?)

Also for Google Play reviews now

My thoughts too, especially how atrocious their enforcement of it is (claiming it's okay to use a name you're commonly known by, but then banning people for unusual names even if it is their common or legal name) - but I'm also worried that Google have now restricted Google Play reviews to Google+ accounts.

All the usual arguments about real names apply here: yes, there's some argument about having accountability for reviews, but there are plenty of reasons for wanting privacy (suppose it's an app for a gay dating website, and someone doesn't want to be outed, or have their pseudonym on that site linked to their real name) (also if you use a pseudonym on a website, and there's an app for it, it's actually less anonymous to leave a review with that same pseuodnym). As a developer, I also don't like this change, as it means people are less likely to leave reviews (I like getting good reviews!) Also, the dumb 1 star "it didn't download" reviews tend to be sincere, even if misguided - so requiring a real name won't stop this, these reviews aren't the result of trolling.

But there's also a far bigger additional problem - it means to leave a review, your Google+ Real Name account is now linked to your Google account/phone. So the idea of using a Google account specific to your phone (as I and many others do) goes out the window, as it'll be linked with your real name and that other account anyway.

Re: A somewhat harsh editorial...

"Even the mighty Android and iOS had issues when they were first launched and had extremely small markets for their first year or so."

It's also worth noting that iphone's 2nd place really is very recent - the history of smartphones has really been Symbian, then Android, with iphone mostly in 3rd, 4th or 5th place. It pipped into 2nd with Symbian being dropped, and BB's loss in share, but it's really more than Android has come to dominate, now at near 80% share. (Indeed, the gap between iphone and Android is far greater than iphone and whoever's in 3rd place.)

And whilst Android grew rapidly after its first year, it took iphone around 3 or 4 years to get anywhere near comparable to other platforms.

I agree - they also say "They hope to use a purpose-built app to test the theory, immortalised in the film Alien, that "in space no-one can hear you scream"."

Which again sounds more like "theory" in its sloppy non-scientific use, in particular, the way they say "the theory", suggesting there is a specific scientific theory of "in space no-one can hear you scream". It also again carries the implication that this is still a matter of debate.

Re: "Theory" - in science

A theory is more than conjecture.

But theories never become laws - a law is more like a "rule of thumb", such as a relation between observed behaviour. The law of gravity is the equation, the theory of gravity is the model that explains it. Laws can be incorrect - e.g., gas laws don't work in practice.

Re: I'm not sure what you mean by "Operator apps"

So applications on phones today in 2013 are better than in 2005, and you say that's because the latter were "operator apps"?

It couldn't possibly be due to the change in technology... (most phone games today look roughly comparable to computer games of around 1990, so if 8 years ago they were like a Vic 20, I'd say that's roughly matching the state of progress - interestingly phones are capable of a lot more, having the computing power of desktops within the last 10 years, but most games don't take advantage of that).

Yes, it's true that "apps" offered by websites or companies are rubbish, but then I'm not sure what that's got to do with phone network operators. Indeed, your argument seems contradictory - first you say "operator apps" are bad because they were worse than what you can get on an iphone today, then you say "operator apps" are bad, because there are bad apps on an iphone today...

"If you could only get apps from your Operator"

Note that this was never, at least not on my Vodafone phone - the operator portal was offered in addition to apps I could download anywhere on the Internet. I agree making it so you can only download from one place is a bad thing, thankfully only iphone does that.

Re: Puzzled

Yes, I have used it, that's how I knew about it(!)

Sure, you can awkwardly arrange 3 of your slots to cover nothern England, and then still not have enough for other places in the world you might want to travel to. And it's hopeless if you'll be driving across Europe, or around a wide area in the US, say. Meanwhile, on Nokia Maps I just clicked the countries or continents I wanted - none of this "arrange 3 of my limited number of slots to cover part of a country".

The fact that it only comes to less than 200MB is exactly my point - if I have GBs free, why can't I use it?

Re: Puzzled

On Google maps, "offline maps" means you can select a few city-sized regions at a time. And there's a hard coded limit on the number (I forget how many, less than 10), even if you have GBs of storage free!

On Nokia maps, "offline maps" means you select what maps you want, countries or continents at a time, or even the whole world if you want.

The Google method means you have to know in advance - that's feasible if you're just travelling to a city, but not if you'll be travelling about in the country. Also it's much easier to just always store entire countries/continents/the world, rather than having to update every time you go travelling.

(I use Android, but still waiting for this feature 7 years after Nokia did it.)

Re: Specs

Wait, did you seriously criticise a 15 euro phone, for being thicker than a £500 phone? (Also the volume of a 109 may well be pretty small anyway - when a phone is that small, it's harder to make it thin too.)

There was a time when a phone couldn't do things like apps at all. Like year 2000-era £15 phones, or a 2007 iphone.

Re: Nokia NEVER learn

Quite right - iphone 5 is better than iphone 4, iphone 4 is better than iphone 4S - wait. But still we know that iphone 4/4S was better than 3GS (not to be confused with a Samsung GS3, or indeed a Stargate SG-3) which was better than an iphone 3S, sorry, iphone 3G, which was better than iphone 2. Hang on a moment.

But yes, it's true, of course everyone knew that the iphone 5 would be the next one after iphone 4, that's why the media were going on about it for 18 months, when actually the 4S was released instead.

Still, looking forward to the iphone 6, or iphone 5S, or iphone 4G, in whichever order they come.

Re: Silver Bullet syndrome

Though cross-platform toolkits are still useful - even if you still give attention and tweaks to different platforms, it's much better than rewriting everything from scratch each time.

You can get an ipad mini with a card slot and Nexus 7 price ... and a good screen, come to that?

Re: Looks like a Nexus 7 clone...

That $30 is more than enough to buy a 32GB microSD (around £10 last time I looked), giving a 40GB tablet compared to a 16GB one. Or shove in a 64GB card for even more storage.

The 7" tablets that do have microSD all seem to be similarly specced to the HP one (as well as being no name brands, so HP may do better on that front), except for ones that involve ordering from China.

Though I would love for a mainstream manufacturer to produce a Nexus 7 level tablet with either microSD, or 64GB storage. (The recently announced Note 8 might qualify, though it's likely to be way more expensive.)

Re: operators gave away all their apps revenue

Not really, as a developer and user, I like the choice on Android to submit to different places, and download from different places (e.g., there's F Droid, focused on Open Source, which is normally difficult to find on Google Play, having to wade through all the applications where "free" means "laden with adverts").

I'm not sure what you mean by "Operator apps" - this isn't talking about the ones stuffed on your phone, but the portals like Vodafone Live years ago, where even on a feature phone you could download or buy games, apps, videos as well as read news. (Meanwhile, an original iphone couldn't even run apps.) Of course there was a lot less then than now, as would be expected with the change and improvements in technology.

Re: NO! It doesn't make sense. It would ruin Apple!

Given the number of chavs waving Apple phones around, I'd say they've already reached the Burberry point. Also consider the cheapo ipods they happily sell. Go to any cheap store in the US, and you'll see the stock of cheap ipod and iphone tat. People think of them as Ferraris and Armani, but the reality is not at all like this (also consider, Ferrarri and Armani don't need to slap big light up logos over their stuff - you know what the products are, or if you don't, you're not their target market).

"Yeah, I get that some people - and perhaps the majority of reg readers - don't but into this schtick, but millions of bozos others do."

Well that's the problem with the RDF - they could sell a £50 turd, and people would still consider it prestige - though yes, they'd rather get away with selling £500 turds while they can.

Re: RIM is hanging, alright...

Well actually if Amiga (the company) had introduced a new OS a decade and a half ago (rather than minor updates, or a port to PPC far more recently than 15 years ago), it might have been something. And before 1996, the Amiga was solely a product, not a company.

Not sure what you mean by real smartphones and not Blackberries, sounds like a No True Scotsman...

Re: Blame the Marketing Dept

Although the real question is why the Nexus 4 isn't trashing over every other phone - why pay £400 for an S3 (which has microSD, but that's about it), or £500 for an Apple iphone 5? Google/LG need to step up their marketing (and supply).

Re: deja vu

I was going to say - "looks just like a phone home screen"? - looks just like any computer screen back before the introduction of things like start menus... My Amiga had a grid of coloured icons in 1985 :)

(Also still looks like most people's Windows desktops.)

Re: "Blow"?

Even the Surface Pro is likely to be cheaper than this by the looks of it. Given that the cheap Surface haters seem to have resorted to "it's too expensive" for the Pro version, despite the Chromebooks being competition, this does provide a marketing boost to the Surface Pro (as well as the help from raising awareness of touchscreen PCs in general).

(Personally I'm not likely to buy either of these devices, but still think it's good to see competition and choice.)

I'm not sure how you mean - I mean yes, I'd rather run Windows (or Linux) than ChromeOS any day. But if people are buying Chromebook laptops instead of other laptops (and they are), it's competition.

I think it makes a lot of sense - whilst low cost Chromebooks will bring ChromeOS to the masses, even though this Pixel will sell far less, they make much bigger profits. And looking at the people with Apple Airs, there are certainly people willing to spend over £1000 for a laptop even if it's just for things like web and email, maybe some word processing or games, all of which can be done on a Chromebook. I believe it supports offline - the "restrictiveness" is more that it only supports HTML5 for applications, which makes it harder to port software, and makes it less interesting to programmers like me unless I were to switch entirely to writing HTML5 applications - but most people aren't developers, and given the sales, I'm sure increasing numbers of applications will be written for it. (See https://chrome.google.com/webstore for what's already there.)

Indeed, whilst ChromeOS is obvious competition for Windows, I think Apple have more to worry about: people often buy them because they think PC laptops are bulky, and only Apple do ultra-portables - now Chromebooks are getting a lot of coverage; people who don't want Windows/MS now have a better alternative; people who think having as many pixels as possible is important now have a better alternative; raising the awareness and acceptance of touchscreen laptops makes MS look more like they made the right move, with Apple having to choose between following after with this functionality, or never having it; plus those rocketing Chromebook sales could put Mac OS into 3rd place - even if they don't actually lose any sales to it, marketing-wise that's a bad thing for them.

Re: it does mention battery life...

Often these ratings are measured along the lines of "whilst running full screen video", so you might get a bit more out of them with say web browsing.

Though yes - people can moan about Atom being slow, but I'll gladly keep my 10 hour battery life on my Samsung netbook :) (And if I'm at home and want performance, I'll take my i7 and NVIDIA Clevo laptop.)

To be fair, this is no worse than any other Intel Core based laptop. And it's good to see more choice and competition in laptops. (Though I do wonder how much extra battery the high resolution saps - still, for people who think that pixels is the only thing that matters, it'll stop Apple getting all those sales.)

Re: This is worth a patent?

My thoughts too - don't you have to make something to patent it?

I also wasn't aware Apple were into manufacturing displays, let alone flexible one. If computerised watches finally take off (something often predicted in visions of the future, when instead mobile computing converged onto phones) due to flexible displays, it'll be thanks to technology made by the likes of Samsung, judging by their recent announcements and demos.

Re: typing fail

"Yes, IF you can remember the name. If it's something you don't use so often, then you need a GUI."

I feared that would be an issue, but most of the time it's not. Yes, if you don't know the name, you fall back to the GUI, but how is Windows 8 worse than 7 (or indeed XP) in that regard? What platform solves this problem in a better manner?

The "classic" menu did have the ability that you could organise things manually into subcategories making the search faster, but that went away with XP. Also this is nothing to do with "only for touch", if I'm looking through a list for an application, it's just as fast or slow either with touch or mouse.

"Yet they are terrified of the command line."

I'm not. Though typing a name is far easier than using command line. By your logic, anyone who can type words into Google to search should be able to use a command line (or alternatively, you think that typing words into Google is just as hard as a command line, and a better search UI would work purely with a mouse, but oddly not with a touchscreen).

"If it's a GUI that requires you to type to be productive then that GUI is WINDOWS 8 GUI FAIL!"

No, the claim being made is that Windows 8 has abandoned everything other than touchscreens, which are most notable by their lack of keyboard (since a touch UI will still work with a mouse). My example is a counter argument. So which is it - Windows 8 is bad because it only works with pure touchscreens, or that it works well with a keyboard?

Re: RE: comparison with a PC and PC performance

I'm not saying that it isn't possible to outdo a compiler in some cases, and hand-optimising some performance critical components may be useful, as I say - though even there, if only 5% of programmers can outdo a compiler, that is part of the point I'm making about the difficulty.

I was questioning the idea that it's always better, especially when claims such as an order of magnitude are thrown around. How does a GPU-bound game run 10x faster with assembly rather than C?

How does shader code compare to fixed function - is assembly shader 10x faster than fixed function? Or is shader code written in Cg/HLSL/GLSL 10x slower than fixed function?

Re: RE: comparison with a PC and PC performance

"If everyone wrote they're PC games in x86 Assembler, and their graphics code in the AMD or Nvidia equivalent, we'd see performance an order of magnitude better than we do now."

I'm not convinced - these aren't additional "layers" that have to be got through at runtime, because things are compiled. So the question is whether compilers are better than humans at creating assembler/machine code. A lot of the time, the performance is restricted by choice of algorithm or bottlenecks in a particular area, not the choice of machine code instruction. And compilers - written by people who know CPUs very well, and developed over years - may well know better than an individual developer about what is more efficient.

Assembly language made more sense in the 80s and early 90s, but since then, compilers have got better, the processing power available to compilers has improved, whilst CPUs have got vastly more complex - and human brains have remained the same. Plus there is still the option of hand optimising some performance critical areas if there is a compiler deficiency. The idea of writing 100% assembly - and that this could give a 10x speed up - does not seem realistic at all.

I don't really see your language analogy is fair. I'm not sure I'd call assembly a "native" language for anyone. The question is whether the translation is done by the programmer, or the compiler.

Although note that first point applies to 10" tablets too (and I agree - at that size, it's less efficient than a mouse, as your hand is moving further, and it's awkward having to hold it at the same time).

At least with PCs, even if they have touchscreens, it's an optional extra, in combination with mouse and keyboard (which yes, Windows 8 still works with - e.g., it's still fastest to launch software by typing the name, than clicking the icon, with both 7 and 8; I assume ChromeOS would work with both too).

Re: Well hello there...

Was the processor really the reason, given that most people aren't writing in assembly anymore even for games (and even if they were, I thought traditionally x86 was harder...)?

I thought the issues were more to do with things like graphics APIs - obviously MS have Direct X for X Box. Whilst Open GL does fine, my understanding was that not all consoles have great support (or in some cases use some custom API)?

"we'll receive PC-like games to a console."

I'm not sure that matters - I'd have thought things like the available controllers (which most PC owners don't have, restricting them to mouse and keyboard), or apparent buying trends in the people who tend to buy them, would have more effect?

The original X Box was x86 PC hardware - did that have PC-like games, that the X Box 360 didn't?

Re: Nexus 4

That's now in Android 4.2 for any device. It's not Swype - and after trying it for a bit, I went back to Swype.

A great thing about Swype is that you can press any word that's wrong and choose from alternatives, whilst the Android one only lets you do this for the last typed word (and typically I tend to type it all quick, then proof-read what I've written). (Anyone know if Swiftkey does this too?) Also I found that the guesses at what I'd swiped tended to be more accurate for Swype. A shame that Swype isn't in Google Play (not that downloading it elsewhere is a problem, but it's annoying to have to sign up with an email address, and it's in a perpetual beta state...)

Re: "Companies often do better in their home market"

Well, I know companies are multinational, but the effect is more based on perception from consumers and the media - they still see a multinational's original country, and don't care where the offices are physically located. More generally, my point is that things can vary worldwide significantly (this is especially true for [smart]phones), but for some reason the UK media loves to report the US situation as if it were typical (consider that recent Register article claiming iphone was the number one platform in Q4, but actually the stats were just the US).

Re: Awesome

I guess by "proper" Linux you mean GNU/Linux(?) similar to what Maemo/Meego were. But is Tizen that? Given there only seems to be support for HTML5, it's unclear if this is Linux anymore than Android or ChromeOS (i.e., only using the kernel)? Similarly with FirefoxOS. Though of course Ubuntu, and I think Sailfish, are GNU/Linux OSs.

Re: No native support, only HTML5, oh dear!

"The latter is bound to use proprietary extensions in an effort to lock you into their ecosystem."

The whole goal of Tizen I thought was to not lock people into ecosystems, and to be compatible with FirefoxOS and web browsers. I'm not sure if this is just an assumption you're making, or if you know something more about the politics involved?

I agree it's a shame to not support other languages, as it is nice to have other options to make cross-platform applications (I use Qt too) - same issue with ChromeOS.

Re: Yes but,...

Except Tizen is supported by Samsung, the number one smartphone and phone company. Of course that doesn't guarantee sales (they sell WP too, after all), but it does mean its worth keeping an eye on.

For developers, Tizen and Firefox OS both use HTML5, so should be compatible with each other (as well as ChromeOS, and running on many other platforms too through a browser). Ubuntu (and I think Sailfish) is compatible with GNU/Linux.

And since when did geeks care about market share? I remember people leaping onto Android because it was cool, even when its market share was tiny.

I think there's still a market for standalone mp3 players (though I can't believe the ipod touch, basically a 3.5" tablet, still sells for over £200 in some cases - just get a much cheaper small Android tablet and put in a 32GB microSD - when the former get all the publicity, and the latter don't, it's no surprise Apple get more money). Though it annoys me more that there's an entire industry of things like speakers that still only work with ipods, even though plenty of people might prefer to connect with say their Android phone - or maybe they just Think Different, and want to use a different player like a Sansa.

(My LG Smart TV takes USB, and Just Works OOTB with any kind of player or device you connect to it - strange that a TV works better as an audio player, because of the audio industry catering to only one company. That can't even keep compatibility with itself having changed the connector - I'm not sure how that now works with these "works with your ipod" products...)

I can also see a point for hard drive based players with lots of storage - though the real question is why it's not possible to get a tablet with a big hard disk, since the obvious use as a media player.