Posts by Rupert Stubbs

It's incontrovertible...?

It seems that many of the posters here haven't read his letter, either.

I don't think it's reacting emotionally to protest about a scientific authority defining climate change as "incontrovertible". This is a word that scientists should avoid, as Prof Lewis points out. Thus anyone who even wants to debate the issue is labelled a "denier", with all the jolly associations that has.

Science does have a major problem, in that the general public - and the dumbed down media in particular - regard the inevitable equivocation of scientific statements as admissions of weakness of argument. Tough - you can't have it both ways. Once scientists start corrupting their conclusions in order to make them media-friendly, then they lose their scientific authority.

The question defines the answer

Sure - ask what OS is likely to power "a large number and variety" of connected devices in the future, and Android is the most sensible answer.

I don't think anyone doubts that there will soon be more Android devices than iOS ones - but that doesn't necessarily mean they will be the only ones worth coding for, or even the most profitable. If the question had been "What OS will generate the most profit for you in the future?", the answer would be rather different...

Form = Function

I don't get the outrage about the lack of video on a tiny screen.

The new Nano's function is to be a music player, designed to be as portable and forgettable as possible. For £30 more than the 16Gb Nano you can get an 8Gb iPod Touch, with a wildly better screen for video, plus you can add apps, web browsing, email, calendar, etc., etc.

Where is the rip-off here?

Limited jailbreaking suits Apple just fine.

I know it's impossible to talk about Apple without hysteria from one side or the other, but Apple/Steve Jobs have/has no interest in killing jailbreaking completely.

Making life just tricky enough for jailbreakers - and with just enough acceptance that what they are doing is off-piste - means that Apple isn't held accountable for problems with their phones as a result, and yet keeps a large number of paying customers within the Apple fold.

Bob Shaw will be happy...

... can't be long before we get slow glass...

Slowly, slowly...

Having watched the presentation, I'm not sure that Apple was really intending aTV to be a revolutionary, game-changing, paradigm-shift.

It looks to me more that they realised that most people either store loads of media on big hard drives attached to their computers or find the whole thing a faff. Either way, making the aTV a streaming device makes more sense.

They also realised that taking out the HD and the need for lots of power meant it could be small and (relatively) cheap. Being able to stream stuff from yer iPhone/iPad is nice, too - at the moment, trying to show photos and videos on my plasma is a pain in the butt.

Yes, TVs are now integrating YouTube/iPlayer widgets - but from what I've seen they are slow as buggery and not exatly spontaneous.

So - even without the streaming downloads from iTunes - I'm still tempted by the little box, and I suspect that quite a lot of people with iPhone 4s will be too (wanting to show off their iMovies). If they can make inroads in accessing rented media as well, that's a bonus - and at present the market (in the UK anyway) is too fragmented for any clear winner to emerge.

Pc world is your friend for these

They're half price in pc world (Uk) - I just got a 4gb one for less than a tenner. Seems to work.

Availability...

So this would be the sales period when the iPhone 4 came out? Meaning that 3GS sales naturally dropped, and yet there is - even now - not enough iPhone 4 stock to supply demand. I'm not going to argue that Android phones will inevitably overtake the iPhone (but not the iOS, for considerably longer) but next quarter will be more useful to see what's really happening...

And your point is...?

Yeah, Steve Jobs is putting the best spin on it he can. What a surprise. But does his case contain merit?

My own experience is that I can make my iPhone 3GS drop bars by holding it - I never realised that before. So is the 3GS suddenly a worse phone? Nope - if anything, the opposite. Because I now know about this behaviour, I can avoid holding it that way when the signal is weak.

It also looks as if this sort of behaviour happens to a lot of phones. This is supported not only by Apple's videos, but also by phone user manuals and anecdotes from other websites (including a forum thread about the Nexus 1 in February, which seems to have been ignored at the time). You'll find many of these on self-acknowleged Apple shill Gruber's Daring Fireball site.

So if, as it seems, most phones suffer attenuation when the antenna - hidden or not - is encased in a sack of blood and flesh, then Apple has a point.

However, the crux is whether the signal loss is (a) worse on the iPhone 4 than on other data-using phones and (b) whether the the "flaw" spot on the iPhone 4, where the line is, causes significant additional signal loss.

If (a) is inconclusive or marginal, the SJ's reality seems valid. If, as I guess most of us suspect, (b) is true, then SJ has tried to hide a specific weakness behind a general truth. Hence the bumper offer, which contradicts his general point that even internal-antenna'd phones suffer attenuation.

But where are the apps?

The reason the iPod Touch prevails over better-sounding PMPs is because it can access the vast Apps repository via iTunes. Without apps, PMPs are going nowehere.

Time for an apologia...

Is working just fine now - pre-ordered a black 32Gb no problem.

Agree with Joe R

There are only TWO pages of posts on the "Safari hanging a lot" thread, which is numerically trivial compared to any significant complaint threads.

Indeed, the original poster now posts: "Well. I started this thread, so it's only fair that I point out that, tonight, Safari 5 is working beautifully. No hanging, no troubles. I did add the DNS numbers that Andy Ball suggested, but I really have no idea if that makes a difference. I also think that the trouble might come from interference. It's late, and my router has no competition. These are my very un-professional thoughts. "

Nothing more to see here, I'd suggest.

Bring a thermos...

... there's sure to be a vast queue of people wanting yet another dev platform to code for. Or maybe not.

Why iPad?

It would be hard to argue that the iPad is possibly the most disabled-friendly device around - big touch screen, lots of Accessibility options. The RNIB has said as such recently. So why the focus on the iPad, Oh Reg? Not on a witch hunt, surely?

More balanced than most Reg pieces... Wot's going on?

I'll be interested to see if I go through the same waning of ardour. Hasn't happen after 24 hours - who said it wouldn't last?

I agree that Safari needs tabbed browsing, and I do hope it happens at some stage - most sw issues do get sorted eventually. Flash I don't miss, but I also agree that there's no reason not to make it an option - buy Click2Flash and make it so you only have Flash running when you need it.

As with the iPhone, it will be the software and apps that define it's utility, not the hardware - though it could do with more RAM. I can see some revolutionary apps coming out soon, so I wouldn't make judgements yet...

Try before you decry...

Got mine yesterday. Lovely to look at, fabulous battery life, could be great.

A lot depends, as with the iPhone on the apps and a few UI updates. Up-rezzing iPhone apps is barely tolerable - iPad or universal apps are a million times better: any developer not rushing out an iPad version of their apps deserves to lose their market to the competition. The UI needs some fine-tuning, but I'm assuming iPhone 4.0 will bring a lot of that - with multi-tasking, etc. Though I will be jailbreaking my iPad as soon as LockInfo is working.

The Good: The screen is fabulous, battery life awesome, UI snappy most of the time, built like a rock. Babe magnet. Even Granny downstairs (87) can use it.

The Meh: Having the Lock Screen switch at the top is a slight pain, since I find I'm using it in Portrait mode almost all the time, with fingers at the bottom. Onscreen keyboard surprising useable in Portrait mode, not so much in Landscape. Can't adjust the time to next image on the Picture Frame mode (yet). Fingerprints are more apparent than on iPhone - not sure why, but not a huge deal. More fonts needed in iBooks.

The Bad: Not enough internal RAM - Safari often needs to refresh a page when you back to it (may be solved in iPhone OS 4.0). Aluminium back looks great, but is heavy - a lighter carbon fibre or similar would be better, especially if it had a tough exterior that you'd feel happy throwing onto a table (like you would a book).

And the Biggie: it all needs to integrate better with your other stuff. The whole point about vertical integration is that Apple should be able to make all this seamless - yet Google seems to be doing a better job of it.

If I'm working on a doc in Pages (on my iPad), I want that to be automatically saved to MobileMe (or whatever cloud solution you want), so I can carry on working on it on my Mac or my iPhone. If I've looked through my RSS feeds on NewsRack on my iPad (works great), then those should be marked as read on NewsRack on my iPhone. Etc., etc.

Well, we'll see what comes on the 7th June, but long experience with Apple has larned me to keep my expectations low - certainly lower than the fevered pronouncements of the the bloggers. Steve Jobs really does need to move on from the whole Flash thingy, and concentrate on making everything in the Apple ecosystem work together - that would be a far better way of selling Apple stuff as "for the rest of us".

There's an app for that...

... Since what they've produced looks just like the Parrot iPhone drone. Which uses wifi.

Why queue?

Didn't have to - arrived at lunchtime. Is very nice. Suggest that anyone wanting to slag it off does so before they actually get their hands on one...

(Typed on my iPad)

Why do they all look so crap?

Not being an Apple fanboi, but these all look pretty crude compared to the good iPhone apps.

For example, Deep Green is a beautiful iPhone chess app. To me, it makes a difference playing with something that has had obvious love and care in the making.

The ones you showed just don't have it.

They can't be selling well...

Everyone who reads El Reg [b]knows[/b] that all Apple products are overpriced bits of bling that could only appeal to blinkered Apple fanbois. I mean, you can't even see the zappy Flash ads that enhance so many web pages.

So the only possible explanation is that Steve Jobs is deliberately restricting the number available to make it [b]appear[/b] that they're selling well. What a con artist!

Profits of doom...?

If you look at profit rather than just sales numbers, I suspect that Apple would turn out looking a lot rosier, don't you? Sales numbers in an increasingly commoditised market don't really tell you much these days...

Oh, Lordy...

Here The Reg goes again, with yet another "Apple FAIL" story, using - yet again - the very dodgiest of statistical justifications, which - yet again - when examined turn out to have the very opposite meaning of the oh-so-provovative headline.

I really thought that The Reg was better than this - I thought that you guys were the ones who were supposed to be exposing the dodgy stats and media bullshit that makes establishing some sort of truth so difficult these days. I'm all for deflating hype, but this sure as hell ain't it.

They do in the UK...

As far as I understand.

The Killer 3DTV App...

... as is so often the case, is obviously pr0n. And a hands-free remote.

I call Bullshytt

Go to the Mac Ach in Ars Technica, and see how many posts there are about 3.1 screwing up iPhones. Remember, this is the place that has numerous discussions on the minutest problems connected in any way to Apple. Find any?

There's the odd discussion of some issues, but they are sometimes due to iTunes 9 glitches, or are issues with the Home button that also occurred before 3.1. And almost all of the issues are sorted by resets or restores.

With The Reg, one needs to apply Diax's Rake on every article now, it seems.

What the Dickens?

I reckon Charles Dickens shows prior art by selling his stories by the chapter...

Bad laws

Much of the blame must be laid on the staggering ineptness of New Labour's haemorrhage of legistlation. For a party led by lawyers, they have shown themselves utterly incapable of drafting the simplest law, preferring to adopt a shotgun approach. Indeed, I'm not sure I can think of a single law they've passed (thanks to a huge majority) that hasn't had to be amended, repealed or generally ignored.

The nadir was the recent Religious Hatred act, which was objected to by comedians on the grounds that they wouldn't be able to make fun of people any more. "Oh, don't worry about that", said the politicians. "We know that's what it SAYS - we'll just tell the police not to apply it to you."

Bad laws are corrosive. They introduce doubt and ambiguity, and this distorts behaviour, both on side of the public, and on that of those enforcing it. We now no longer know whether we have freedom of speech, whether we can be extradited to another country for something that isn't a crime in this country, whether we can photograph a policeman beating someone up at a demonstration, whether our confidential details must be put on a government database, etc., etc.

It used to be the glory of the English legal system - compared to the Napoleonic (European) - that what isn't expressly against the law is legal. New Labour (and the EU, to be fair) have tried to correct this by legistlating about everything they can - not a sparrow falls but the government must pass a new law to stop it happening again. There are now so many new laws that ignorance of the law - even for lawyers and judges - is inevitable, yet the effect of all this is to make us feel less in control, not safer.

We can only hope that a new government realises that this is part of the contempt we feel for the authorities in whatever form. Both the Tories and Lib Dems have paid lip-service to restoring some of our freedoms and getting proper accountability - but we all know that these promises can be put off once they are in power...

Tax the poor...

If you vote, you should pay tax. Otherwise, non-taxpayers have no incentive to vote for tax-reducing parties (since it's someone else who'll be paying).

However, that doesn't mean that the mad tax system shouldn't be reformed. A flat rate tax would be a good start, so everyone can understand exactly how much tax they'll be paying, coupled with benefit reform to reward people who work.

Again, the puck has moved on...

So it sounds as if the Cowon is a fine audio and video player – marginally better than the iPod Touch. However, Apple has already moved the Touch way beyond that.

The crucial difference is that the Touch is part of a large and growing infrastructure that extends its usefulness in ways the Cowon could never do. WiFi (how did Cowon leave that out? Like the BB Storm...), email, web browsing, the App Store (including turning your Touch into a remote media controller), games, calendar, contacts, etc., etc., etc.

That said, I'm glad that someone is pressuring Apple in terms of sound and screen quality.

2.1 is good

No, it doesn't eliminate all the possible issues people might have with the iPhone - mostly caused by their own ludicrous expectations - but for me, anyway, it's a solid update that has fixed many of the niggling little annoyances.

It's precisely because Apple are undoubtedly going to keep improving/adapting the OS that I don't mind being a relatively early adopter. And my battery life has definitely gone down recently - but only because I'm using the damn thing so much, instead my desktop. And check out X-Plane 9 (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290619945&mt=8) in the App Store. Sodding unbelievable.

it's charming, but Microsoft isnt

I agree with those who think it's human, charming and gently funny. The problem is that Microsoft is none of these things. The point about brand advertising is that you can only change people's perceptions if you present them with an underlying truth about your brand. Apple's portrayal of MS seems closer to the reality than Jerry's...

How to dampen short-term profiteering

In the UK, the tax system encourages to think of their houses as a good "investment", since your main residence can be sold with no capital gains tax.

Far better to have tapered capital gains tax on all property sales, which would help dampen upward swings by giving less profit to short-term speculation. Rather than being a tax on sales, it becomes a tax on profit.

The other villain in the UK is Stamp Duty, which adds an artificial incentive for people to pump up asking prices to "get their money back", and distorts the free trade in property. Use the capital gains tax to massively reduce it.

Economics of Heathrow...

How on earth did we get to the acceptance of the idea that making money for BAA was part of our national interest, over and above the sanity of those hundreds of thousands of people living under their flightpaths?

Talking about the importance of Heathrow being an international "Hub" is just spin for "we're terrified that all our landing fees and shopping revenue will go somewhere else". Of what particular benefit to the UK are the people just using Heathrow as a hub, and taking other planes on elsewhere (except as very indirect taxation on revenues, which I bet are kept pretty small as BAA is Spanish-owned these days)?

Meanwhile, the effect of having a major airport so close to the over-populated capital city is profound to those that live there - I have been to weddings in Barnes where the service has had to halt every couple of minutes because of planes overhead. Read Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" for the effect that BAA are imposing on the thought processes of all too many people...

Why would anyone use the OXML format anyway?

The first thing that any sane person forced to use Office 2008 does is to switch on "Always use [Office 2004] Compatability Mode", which means all your docs are saved in good old .doc format, which everyone can read. Why would anyone do differently?

No good if it can't handle standard def

It's all very well testing a telly with DVDs and HD stuff, but in the real world that most of us poor sods are stuck in, it's how good it is for Sky+ and Freeview that matters.

This is where many flatscreens fall down. LCDs are the worst, unless they're so tiny you can't see the artifacts all over the place. In my experience, Panasonic plasmas are among the best for 'normal' telly - on my 37" Panny Sky looks great, even slightly zoomed in on non-widescreen stuff. Obviously, the larger you go, the more likely you are to see artifacts at the same sitting distance.

One benefit of HD for the rest of us: anything recorded in HD looks way better in SD (standard definition) as well.

The more confusion, the better for Apple

The more the studios and distributors muddy the water, with more and more incompatible DRMs and formats, the more people will go "Sod it, I'll switch to Apple - at least everything works together."

We're not talking mass migration here, just a steady increase in market share year on year.

Works on my BlackBerry 8700

Shows me about 300m away from where I really am, with a circle of confusion of 1700m. Not bad.

Won't work on the BejaysusPhone. Yet.

Taper Relief

How did Darling (ie. Gordon) manage to get rid of the only thing that makes CGT make sense - taper relief?

Taper relief rewards longer-term investment, and discourages fee-generating 'churn'. All taxes distort behaviour, but at least taper relief does it in the most constructive way for long-term business/investment planning.

Instead - by removing taper relief - Darling-Brown has sent a curious message: on one hand, people who have made a killing through buy-to-let capital growth are going to be given an extra 30% of these hardly productive gains when they sell (ooh - what do you think that will do for affordable housing, eh?).

On the other hand, there is now far less reason to build businesses for the future - or indeed, to make any long-term business/investment plans, since we now have no way of predicting what this inconsistent government will do next.

There's a huge difference between simplifying the tax system - the complexity of which Gordon himself is mostly responsible for - and producing a simplistic tax system.

A more logical government would extend taper relief to more areas. For example, it's crazy to have incremental tax (stamp duty) on selling a house: the next seller will simply add the 'lost' cost onto the new price (again, fuelling house price inflation).

Far simpler to abolish tax exemption for the house you live in, and have Capital Gains Tax on the increased value of your house - but with taper relief to make it negligible after a few years. This would have a stabilising effect on the housing market, and damp excessive price movement.

What about a top-level UK domain, eh?

The embarrassment of not having a .uk top-level domain causes needless work for pretty much everyone in .co.uk Britain. If we can't have .uk, can we at least have .gb or .eng?

Mine's nice...

I don't worship it at the dawning of the sun, or anything, but it seems to me to be a big advance on the previous model. The screen is bright and very detailed, moving around it feels snappy, photos look good, and above all the damn thing is outrageously tiny and thin.

I haven't watched movies on it - I can't imagine it would be an immersive experience, but for the odd TV show it should be fine. Photos look good.

Splorf...

"<SPLORF!!!!>

Tell you what, leave the waxing lyrical to Stephen Fry. He does it much better."

Given that no-one does it better than SF, that's hardly a crushing rejoinder...

However, as an earlier poster has noted, the iPhone is polarising. Those who love, actually do seem to have warm cuddly feelings for it. While those who hate it, hate it either technically (not enough features) or symbolically (we must be morons to fall for the RDF).

It's not a million miles away from the love/hate of the Wii. The hardcore gamers can't understand why more people are buying the Wii compared to the Xbox 360, and keep going on about frame rates and vertex shaders and all the technical reasons why the Xbox is better. Meanwhile more normal people pick up the Wiimote and a big smile comes over their face as they see what fun it is.

No-one says that using Windows Mobile is fun. No-one says that the Series 60 UI is charming. No-one says that using the Sony Ericsson M600 is effortless.

And the manufacturers' attempts to graft on an iPhone-like interface to their clunky UIs just demonstrate how little they get it: the latest touchscreens from HTC, Samsung and LG try so hard to be 'easy', but the moment you get below the first level or two you're back to the ghastly underpinning systems.

It's not going to get any easier for them in the short term, either. The battle for control of the user (which is really how they think of it) is now intensifying. Expect to see multiple competing music stores, web portals, photo upload sites, etc. on every handset, as the manufacturers test their uneasy truce with the phone networks to breaking point.

If they're not commenting, it must be true!

You could insert 'Apple' for 'Google' and it would have as much credibility. Maybe a tad more.

Simplicity is hard

The problem for Sony and Nokia is that they are institutionally engineer-focused. All their 'smart' handsets are fiendishly complicated, with every feature under the sun thrown in, and buttons everywhere.

This is their mindset, and just ripping off the iPhone will not work unless they are ruthless about cutting stuff out, not adding it in.

Both of them really ought to know better, but anyone who has used a Series 60 (give it to someone who's never used one and ask them where the Settings are) or - worse - the Sony Ericsson M600 (you mean I need to use a stylus on this touch-screen phone?) will find it hard to see them make such a cultural change without a lot of pressure.

Let me get this straight...

You thought something was worth the money when you bought it. Yup. Has it suddenly changed in functionality? Nope. You're on a 2-year contract: so are you going to be selling it in the near future? Nope. Is the price drop tiny as a percentage of your total costs over those 2 years? Yup.

The people who bought early to resell on eBay have long gone. No-one loses by this in reality - but perception, now that's a different thing...

Plasma no burn-in these days

You'd really have to be dumb to get burn in on a plasma these days - basically leaving a high contrast image up for many, many hours - and that would cause burn in on a CRT, too.

Where plasmas suffer in comparison to CRTs is they are just not as bright - which means day-time telly won't be as good unless you draw the curtains a bit. Otherwise, a decent Panny plasma will look great.

One other thing: don't go to large. If you're looking at normal SKY on a 50" screen from 10 feet away, you will see artifacts. 42" should be large enough for anyone at that distance. Otherwise you will really see a major difference between HD and SD stuff (though SKY and BBC stuff originally filmed in HD looks way better even in SD).

Not clear to me...

This article feels like a bit of a mess.

Yes, people would like video on demand, and no doubt in the future all content will be stored digitally and streamed out to us wherever we are, and whatever medium we want to watch it on or listen to it on.

However, at the moment most people are content to settle for what works. Like SKY+, Amazon DVD rentals, etc.

Yes, there are the odd souls who have hard drives full of (illegally?) downloaded movies, but frankly, most of can't be arsed, and don't care that much. For those that do, they can use Slingbox to watch it over the net, or just WiFi it to a Mac Mini or AppleTV (having a HD makes up for the slightly slower WiFi speed).

What we do care about is picture quality. Having ponied up for DVD players and large plasmas, we're not going to settle for anything less than good SD quality (SKY+): YouTube is unlikely to be a great option.

So I'm hard pressed to see what this article is arguing.