* Posts by CS3000

42 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2010

Apple to buy Sony? Good one!

CS3000

Some sense at last

It's good to read a balanced opinion at last from el Reg.

Steve Jobs actually said it all a couple of years ago when he described Sony as "a dead fish washed up on the beach".

And it wasn't long before that relationships between himself and the head of the playstation division became so bad that it scuppered the collaboration negotiations entirely due to differences of personalities.

Apple do not need anybody and they are smart enough to know it.

iPad spends 20% of time in bed

CS3000

Another sad excuse...

For nerds to whine about how useless the iPad is for doing anything or using anywhere and how wonderful a netbook is. Get over it. We are now many months down the line from its launch - If it was shit to use believe me you would hear about how Apple got it wrong from millions of people.

Ubuntu tablet threat to iPad? Nah

CS3000

What are you smoking?

And you think Apple fans are drinking the cool-aid?

CS3000

Open Source Tablets...

Are you having a laugh?

Here is the reality and why Apple deserve respect wether you buy there stuff or not:

To make a purely touch/gesture tablet style device a success (and again; like it or not the iPad is a runaway success) you need to throw out all you have developed for a desktop mouse and keyboard GUI and then spend millions of man-hours on developing a new user interface metaphor, then spend years refining it till it feels natural for Joe public to just pick up and use...

Sorry but that takes a persistence of vision; obsession with detail, and eye for aesthetics that a load of UBuntu bedroom code bashers would never be able to string together. The best they could hope to do is copy iOS.

As for all this whining that you are "so limited" by what software you are allowed to install on a non open source device... Exactly what? Believe me, if there was anything worth having that is not already available someone would develop it and make Money from it.

You may hate Steve Jobs for his perceived control freak and ruthless nature but that's what it takes to make a success out of a concept others have tried to bring to market before and failed so miserably.

CS3000

Defensive?

Where do you get the idea from that people who buy and actually use Apple products are defensive about it?

Sorry mate but I have never met one.

No flame intended but it always seems to me that it's tits like you who have to justify why you are so clever in choosing to use crap open source applications and a half baked OS you did not have to pay for.

The iPad: Unsubsidised, unaffordable, unloved?

CS3000

Reg Missing the point entirely... Again

The iPad is not an iPhone.

Yes there is a range of models that offers 3G connectivity but I don't see the iPads major role as being out on the open road without a wifi hotspot in sight.

I dont see why carriers would even want to sell iPads with contracts... you cant make calls from it so they would not make any money to pay for a subsidy anyway.

I am getting a 3G iPad in a few weeks time... Why? I don't really know... But I do know that if I ever DO need a slow 3G link this is the only (simple) way to get it... besides its also the only way to also get one GPS enabled.

Brit consumers shun the iPad - for now

CS3000

Apple makes lots of money from the app store?

I must have missed those sales figures...

According to Apple they make a small amount of money from the App Store.

They make an awful lot of money selling the hardware that can use apps from the App Store though!

Apple make a reasonable percentage on apps that are for sale on the app store... this must pay for hosting and checking the app is not full of worms. However... they make no money from all the free apps available even though it costs them the same for hosting etc. And there are a lot more free apps downloaded than paid apps.

Android users just dont get it... What developer or large software company in their right minds is going to invest significant amounts of manpower in developing apps that can be pirated so easily?

And as for all those Flash Fanbois (god I hate that term) that think Flash can compete with app store apps such as N.O.V.A or The Sims for example you are living with your head up your ass.

Cant wait to see Flash Player 10.2 on a phone..... Ha!

CS3000

Print...

...There's an app for that

Just had a quick look at the app store and counted about 18 apps for printing from the iPad.

And I expect it will be rolled into iPhone OS4 in September.

WiFi is fixed

Apple iPad

CS3000

BBC iPlayer missing

You did read the whole review didn't you?

Perhaps you missed the page where the reviewer laments the lack of iPlayer on the iPad until the beeb update their servers to recognise the iPad like they do for an iPhone / iPod touch and instead of Flash serve up H264 goodness.

Cant really blame the Beeb for this though.... the iPad wont be here officially until 28 May and if you were trying to access iPlayer from the US (no matter what machine you are using) you would find you were blocked anyway.

CS3000

Its just a big iPod Touch

Yes it is.... and thats brilliant!

Anyone having trouble with that as a concept should go check out some of the ultra cool apps that exist in both iPod and iPad incarnations. Surely you can see how much more you can achieve with the extra screen real estate, drop down menu's, file system, etc....

Then there are apps which are just mouth wateringly delicious... Check out something like Korg's iElectribe or Looptastic HD

There are real world apps out there that will use the iPads main strength... it does not have a keyboard and can be used like an instrument... try doing that with a netbook!

Microsoft's 'record' quarter can't match Apple

CS3000

Look at it now...

"I'm sure there are some in Apples board room that look at the Xbox and the outstanding lead Sony had with the Playstation - look at it now"

If Apple made a product that lost billions over the last 5 years like the Xbox has... Then I dare say the board would form a lynching party and string up the CEO for letting his company (and stockholders) bleed dry.

Worldwide sales figures

1. Wii – 67.4 million, as of 31 December 2009[8]

2. Xbox 360 – 39 million, as of 1 January 2010[30]

3. PlayStation 3 – 33.5 million, as of 31 December 2009[31]

When you consider that the 360 was on the market a full year ahead of the PS3 and that the rise in PS3 sales has been astronomic over the last year (+44% as opposed to the 360 +3%) I am not sure the 360 will be in the number 2 position for long.

CS3000

What are you smoking?

While Apple is doing undeniably well, it is fundamentally a selfish company.

Microsoft is in no way doing badly.

However, Microsoft is not a 'selfish' company.

Either you have failed to make your point or you are waffling.

Apple make hardware and the core software that hardware needs to run it.

Microsoft are principally a software company providing Operating System and Application software.

Where the hell does "Selfishness" come into it?

CS3000

An erratic claim

"Jobs has become increasing erratic over the past decade, and the control freakery isn’t something that any sane business would risk."

Care to expand on what Jobs has done over the last decade to warrant such a claim as being "increasingly erratic"?

CS3000

Xbox success

How much do Microsoft make out of selling Xbox's?

Last I heard they were running at a loss.

CS3000

What?

Either you are being sarcastic or you are just another numpty that gives Mac users a bad name.

Here is why Apple are thriving... They know their market and its Consumers and Creatives. They really are not going after the stagnant business market. Never have been really. Could not give a toss about it probably. That market belongs to Microsoft.

Microsoft on the other hand are trying their (pathetic) best to break into the Consumer market... and I don't see them being successful... Zune anyone?

Its irrelevant if Apple are more valuable than Microsoft. It changes nothing

CS3000

Xbox success

Is that the same Xbox that has lost them billions over the last 5 years?

Is that the same Xbox 360 that was rushed to market to get a head start on the PS3... and due to its piss poor design and manufacturing had an initial 70% failure rate coming off the production line?

You might see it as a success because you can buy one and hundreds of games for it but I am not sure from a financial position Microsoft could claim it a success.

Microsoft cuts out paste

CS3000

iPhone cut and paste

There was no technical reason why cut and paste was not in the first iPhone OS.... They took there time trying to find the best user interface in implementing it.

And as far as I can see its a verry nice interface too.

Steve Jobs Flash rant put to the test

CS3000

Flash Blocker

I totally agree about flash being complete garbage... For a company the size of Adobe to not be able to produce something better is just shameful. As with Photoshop they seem more content to add bloat year upon year than actually innovate.

Best plug in I have ever come across is ClickToFlash which not only speeds up browsing considerably but has the added advantage of blocking all that inane advertising we are subjected to....

I agree with having a choice... And I choose not to see dumb adverts.

CS3000

The real reason?

The vast majority of apps that could easily be replaced by Flash web sites are free on the app store...

That means that not only do Apple receive no money when someone downloads a free app, it still costs Apple just the same as a paid app for hosting it.

In other words they LOSE money on every free app on the app store....

Bang goes your comical "commercial" theory.

CS3000

Safari is very stable without Flash

I can second that one!

And the added bonus is surfing is so much nicer without the flash adverts glaring at you.

CS3000

Being held hostage by Adobe

You have hit the nail on the head.

Just think of the nightmare Flash on the iPhone would be if Apple had to rely on Adobe to fix security and bugs in it. Let alone compatibility issues with each release of iPhone OS.

Apple were correct in not allowing any virtual machines on the iPhone.

CS3000

Apple to implement Flash?

Hold on... I thought it was Adobe that implemented Flash.... And thats the major problem with it...

Adobe would be implementing a virtual machine on the phone and contrary to what you believe most people don't see that as an advantage. They want speed, reliability, battery life and security on their phone not crap adverts that take forever to download when they are on the road.

Hell, if Flash was such a huge deal breaker then no one would buy an iPhone in the first place and customer satisfaction would be abysmal (which it clearly is not).

I am willing to wager that the vast majority of current iPhone owners will one day replace their aging phones with yet another iPhone.

CS3000

Get real

You obviously have no idea about Apple making money on the App store and this tired old theory that flash is not implemented because Apple would lose out on vast amounts of cash.

1. The apps that flash would replace are nearly all free on the app store.

2. Free apps on the app store cost Apple as much money to review and host as paid apps.

3. Apple loses money for hosting free apps on the app store.

4. There are a zillion free apps on the app store (go figure the economics)

5. Web apps have always been available on the iPhone... just not java or Flash based.

6. Overall the app store makes a profit, but not the vast riches you guys seem to think

7. If the app store was so profitable then Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Blackberry etc would have had a proper competitor to it by now.

CS3000

The real reason?

"Is that 90% (or whatever) of the iPhone Apps can be done with free Flash Apps."

Yes... but those 90% of iphone apps that could be done in Flash are probably free anyway.

Your understanding of app store economics seem to be based on what other ill informed Apple hating bigots are saying.

Get this... Free apps on the app store LOSE money for Apple. They cost the same to review and host as paid apps and there are zillions of them.

Newsflash... Apple turn a small profit on the app store.

CS3000
Jobs Halo

A few home truths

I am so tired of hearing (and replying to) Apple hating bigots... Here are some facts:

The vast majority of apps that Flash could replace are free on the App Store.

Free apps on the App Store cost Apple as much to review and host as paid apps.

Apple LOSE money by hosting free apps on the app store.

There are way more downloads of free apps than paid apps.

The app store turns a small profit for Apple not the vast riches some people think it does.

Apple make their money by selling the Phone and the App Store is a major selling point.

A developer gets 75% of what is charged for his app which is a huge return.

There are now 160,000 apps on the app store.

A vast majority of those 160,000 apps are pretty crap and are free.

Free Flash apps are in general also pretty crap... and its hard for a developer to make money except by making Flash adverts.

If not having Flash on the iPhone was such a huge deal breaker then the iPhone would be a complete financial failure.

If not having Flash on the iPhone was such a huge deal breaker then iPhone users would be totally dissatisfied with what they have bought and would not be considering replacing their iPhones with another iPhone.

The only people that really care about having Flash on their phone are free to buy some other companies product.

CS3000

Real world tests

I dont need a very complicated test to see how poor Flash is on a mac and here it is:

Start Activity monitor.

Start a YouTube video.

Note how the CPU performance goes nuts and the bottom of your laptop glows red hot.

Quit YouTube.

Browse over to the Apple web site and watch a video there i.e. http://www.apple.com/ipad/#video

Watch with amazement how beautifull the quality is and how the CPU performance barely hits 5%

Thats it. And thats all your average user is ever going to do to evaluate performance.

CS3000

Translation

Bollocks.

The only apps that flash would replace are ones that are free on the app store anyway.

Free apps LOSE Apple money as they cost the same to review and host as paid apps.

The app store turns a small profit, not the vast wealth you think it brings in.

Apple iPad on sale 26 March, says staffer

CS3000

Inane

Go on then... Let us all know why you hope the iPad is not coming to the UK.

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

CS3000

What are you talking about?

Plug ins? IE 6? Company Offices? What on earth has this to do with the WSJ dropping flash?

CS3000

ADB

Apple Desktop Bus was a terrific way of hooking up keyboards, mice, tablets, midi keyboards etc back in the early days. Way ahead of the game.

It was however, purely Apple... not licensable to any other computer maker and thats why it probably died eventually.

USB was an Intel development and believe it or not Apple was the first company to adopt it.

I think you will find that there are no other proprietary ports on Apple computers since the introduction of the first iMacs.

CS3000

"As buggy and resource hungry as Flash!"

Buggy? Are you sure about that? Cant think of when its crashed on me.

If I monitor my CPU load when running flash content each processor runs at 75% load. Battery life nosedives. Fans kick in within seconds of playing a flash encoded movie.

Quicktime? 15% per processor.

CS3000

Poor Adobe?

If people bothered to find out what Jobs has actually said about Flash and Adobe I am sure they would agree with him.

Jobs is a man that admires well designed hardware and software no matter where it comes from. He is on record at being upset with Adobe for having such great potential with flash as a product but then putting so little effort into developing it or polishing its code so it runs efficiently... especially on mobile devices.

He is no less critical of the developers that have worked for him... One of my favourite quotes from him was after a programmer showed him a new version of a product he was working on that did not have a great user interface:

"You baked a really great cake... too bad you used dog shit for icing".

CS3000

3G iPhone

Sorry to pull you up on this but what he actually said was that at the time of the first iPhone the 3G chips available were too power hungry - which was true.

Sure enough, when more power efficient chips became available they launched the iPhone 3G

Somehow including this in your post seems irrelevant.

Putting an iPad through the Motions

CS3000

Hermetically sealed...

...My arse!

Dont get me wrong, I will definitely be getting one, but the bollocks some people talk about it is sometimes unbelievable.

Where did Apple ever say this device was for anything other than light use in the home? I think the whole Hospital idea came out of some web sites rumour that they had been seen before release in hospitals undergoing evaluation...

Apart from the difficulty in cleaning the iPad the major disadvantage it has is that there is nowhere to easily carry it. If you look at the industrial design machines they have a handle built in to the case making it easy to grip with one hand.

CS3000

Fanboi

Why is it that some people seem incapable of not using the term fanboi and Apple or iPad in the same sentence?

The reason the Microsoft concept did not catch on with joe public has nothing to do with it coming from Bill Gates... otherwise linux would be the dominant platform in billions of homes right now.

Nobody knows if the iPad will succeed or not yet... the way people talk about it with such authority you would think they have had one for months!

CS3000

Projector

First off you would need a wifi enabled projector. Both wifi devices would have to have sufficient bandwidth for video streaming.

Seeing as you are unlikely to find both of the above at venues you visit to give presentations your next option would be to carry around a laptop that has the presentation on it connected to the projector and you control it from a remote device you carry around with you.

Oh wait... you can do that already.

Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already

CS3000

Overhaul or shift in focus

Maybe I am missing something here - please correct me if I am wrong; but Win Mobile 7 seems to be a completely new OS that is aimed at the consumer phone market...

Could it be that Redmond have realised that the business market has stagnated and that the next big market is the one that Apple kick started with the iPhone (thats the consumer smartphone if you haven't guessed and an n900 does not count)

CS3000

Battery

Just out of interest what sort of battery life are you getting on your HTC?

Apple ambushed in Barcelona

CS3000

Hit the nail...

@Grumpytom

I love it mate! Hit the nail cleanly on the head. Sure there were smartphones before the iPhone... but apart from business users and geeks NOBODY wanted them.

Apple do not care one jot about "enterprise deployment"... a stagnating market if ever there was one. I cant recall Apple trying to promote anything they have ever built since the Apple II / III as a business machine.

Look at the new Win Mobile 7 system... if ever there was evidence that geeks and enterprise markets are dead in the water its Microsoft's complete turn around from Win Mobile 6...

Mind you IMHO the user interface on WM7 is a joke.. but thats just personal taste

CS3000

What?

Surely you aren't suggesting we have some sort of approval process are you?

LOL

And believe me... when they all do the maths and find out what it will cost to run an app store that works seamlessly, and filters out all the trojans and unsavoury content just waiting to be unleashed on their networks and the damage it will do to customer relations they will all think again.

Anyway... you could always buy apps for your phones before... its just that they were pretty crap or only worked with the model you had from them at that time.

CS3000

Huh?

You are probably right about Apple not inventing any of the things you mention.

But then again.... they must have done something right to get from zero to where they are now in the smartphone market in just three years... or is that just because of their marketing?

Sure all those things have been around on smartphones way before Apple launched theirs... but which one of them integrated all of those inventions into a single smooth user experience that anyone could just pick up and use or even have fun with. Yes fun. Its a commodity very much overlooked by business centric geeks that think a smartphone must be capable of running MS office to be a valid platform.

No doubt about it... Others phone OS's such as Android will catch up and one day Apple could possibly be forced out of the game all together, but one thing is really clear... Apple redefined what the general public should expect from a phone and without that we would still have phone UI's and OS's designed by geeks in finland.

CS3000

App Store Restrictions

"Apple has dominated mobile applications thanks to its App Store, which has a less than transparent process for approving apps. If developers don't fit Apple's unspoken laws, they can forget tapping into the lucrative iPhone (and iPad?) market, except for those customers foolhardy enough to jailbreak their handsets."

Oh really? 140,000 apps approved does not sound like much of a restriction to me. What are these hot apps we are all missing out on anyway?

How many apps fail to get approval then? Why do apps fail to get approval? These are the questions rarely addressed by those that like to trumpet crap like "less than transparent process for approving apps" or "developers don't fit Apple's unspoken laws"

I am not saying there should no competition for the app store, but to succeed it will need a similar approval process or it will fail the minute the first trojan app surfaces and either wipes out a network, wipes out a users phone or gives away that users bank details...

If the Apple App store only just turns a profit (the vast majority of apps downloaded are free and they need to go through approval, need hosting etc just like a paid app) how on earth do the phone companies think they will turn this venture into a "revenue stream"?

Best comment so far is that this will give sales dorks at CrapPhone Whorehouse something new to hoodwink their customers with.