Posts by hazydave

Re: "screen alone is revolutionary"

Yeah, that screen is r^Hevolutionary. Not that it's a bad thing... given that my new cellphone has higher resolution than an iPad 2... as do most of the new Android tablets, even the 5" ones ... Apple pretty much had to do something here. And since they don't support true device independent graphics like Android does, it was pretty much a no-brainer to bet that Apple's next resolution upgrade would simply double the resolution of the iPad/iPad 2. Nice, indeed, but not revolution.

And think about it... 4x the resolution, 4x the graphics performance... in short, it's a higher resolution version of what you already have, if you have an iPad 2. Or is it even? They say "quad core graphics".. but the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S already have dual-core graphics. So is this really 4x faster, as they're claiming? And what about CPU, which they've been very quiet about so far. You'll need 4x as much CPU power as well to push that pretty display just as fast as the lower rez screens. For graphics on this slab, 4x increase in CPU and GPU is JUST the break-even point.

But the A5X is a dual-core CPU, not quad core as, well, Android tablets you can already buy. Samsung has been rumored to be releasing much higher resolution displays Real Soon Now (they showed off a 10.1" 300dpi display last May, though no product announced yet), and unlike Apple, they actually MAKE the display, so this is pretty likely. Particularly given the fall's orgy over 1280x720 screens as small as 4" diagonal on all those new smartphones. Again, not just evolution, but obvious evolution.

Revolution is something that catches you off-guard. The original iPhone was revolutionary... but not even the device itself, which didn't meet the hype and guesses that had been circulating for a year before the "all screen' device came out. But it's impact on the industry -- despite the claims of every smartphone maker at the time, consumers really did want smartphones.

Re: Re: Re: Cores

> Ok, if the issue is RAM, why my ol' single core 800MHz Pentium 3 with 384MB 133MHz SDRAM could handle a similar load you are describing here without a sweat?

The issue isn't just RAM. But your 800MHz Pentium 3 had virtual memory -- it could swap out data to disc, and it only had to load the parts of any program that it needed. Portable systems don't have swap space, everything has to be in RAM.

The other thing, of course, is that your Pentium system was built with early 1990s expectations. No one expected you to play high definition HD video... even AVC was too much for that kind of system. The modern expectation is 24-bit color on all data and even into the UI on some apps... particularly Apple's, which are all expected to have the UI mimic real-world items. And of course, no one expected your Pentium to do all this for 10 hours on a battery, and fit in a pocket.

Re: Maybe

Actually, the HDD makers are using IEC units... they spec in GB or MB... not really their problem if you are expecting them to actually mean GiB or MiB. The power-of-two units are a natural measure only for DRAM sizes, not HDD or communications speeds.

As for wireless speed caps, if you're on wireless, 3G or 4G, you have some kind of cap. I see 15-20Mb/s downloads on my LTE phone, but never more. Why not... the protocol supports better than twice that. If you're on HSPA, any old device should deliver 7Mb/s, twice that or better for HSPA+. Sure, you'll never see that on a busy workday, but when its just you and you phone at 3AM... there's probably still a throttle there.

I might believe a carrier who claims it's not 1Mb/s. But if they say none at all, they're not being honest. Which is the expectation anyway...

OM series

Don't know much about the cheap OM models (OM-10.. OM-40). But my OM-1 from the 70s, and the OM-4 I bought in Japan in 1986, are both alive and well. These cameras just keep going, even if film isn't a regular thing for me these days. I would be impressed if Olympus is building this new "OM" as well.

It's not just that...

Real cameras, photo and video, have settled on using standard mass storage access. They also have standards for video file storage, photo file storage, etc.

When your phone doesn't follow these standard, it becomes something weird and hard to deal with. When it does, all the regular photo and video software out there works with it, no questions asked. So, as you way, why would you want any phone-specific storage method? There's no possible reason; no single company, not even Apple, trumps the momentum of the whole consumer photo and video industries on this.

Of course, Apple's probably trying to sell you something. Anyone who's not Apple and still doing this, even more shame on your, because there's no chance this isn't going to hard on users.

Indeed.

Of course the original IBM PC was intended to be open. It was open in the sense that IBM published anything you would need to put your OS on the hardware. No, it wasn't intentionally cloneable... well, other than the fact that, unlike many other personal computers, every part of the IBM PC was off-the-shelf, TTL-Databook or Intel Catalog stuff.

I agree. No idea how Nokia runs its business. But I used to work for a little computer outfit called Commodore. We had all kinds of things said by our UK (and other regional) GMs that were pure scuence fiction from the international company's point of view. There is no reason to be sure anyone knows what Elop and Ballmer are agreeing to. I mean, common sense isn't even a factor.. Elop is the same guy who has basically "Osborned" Nokia by announcing in 2010 that every smartphone they sold then, or would sell for the next year+, was already obsolete. As were their OSs (SymbianOS and MeeGo).

Adding W7P "sometime in the future" is dandy, by why kill the current product lines. At all? All those lost jobs, all that lost business, layoffs, factories downsized....oh. You might imagine, if the plan was always for MS to buy out Nokia, it's much cheaper to bail out a failing Nokia. And save MS the bad PR from killing the other platforms or closing factories (MS would probably rather just use CMs, not own the factory, just like Apple),

Most of the C64 complaints

.,. were a product of the times. The cassette derived from the PET, the serial bus was compatible with the VICs, stuck with the low speed work-arounds that got the VIC-20 working. The development team and schedule, like most at Commodore, were able to do great things with a small team. But not everything.

The kernal did what it always did in Commodore machines -- basic I/O. There was no idea that a machine of this scale should provide software abstractions (eg, API) for higher level functions like graphics and animation.

We fixed most of the weaknesses on the C128, but after all, that was three hardware guys, three software guys, and three chip guys all on the same project (see SYS 32800,123,45,6 if you have a C128)... a big team, with some experienced together on the Plus/4.

Nokia and the pundits actually seem to agree...

While Nokia claimed the Lumia 800's first week was their best ever, even they lowered their estimated sales. Some pundits had estimated 2M sales before launch.. last week Forbes and one other dropped their estimates to about 500K. That can still mean a bunch of phones go out the door from specific vendors, but it's pretty weak sales. And it's not even clear if they're talking sell-though or just sales to vendors.

Keep in mind... Android's doing 700K per day these days. My new Samsung Galaxy Nexus was one of those, last week. This is the kind of smartphone you need for a top-of-the-line phone in the USA: 1280x720 SAMOLED screen (ok, most have qHD like the iPhone 4/4S, a few are even still successful at 800x600, like the SII), dual core CPU, fast GPU, 4G radio (unless you're Apple). Even mid-tier phones support 4G, probably still dual core, maybe a more moderate screen.

And sure, not everyone's a techie. But those who are not often ask the techies. Or just buy Apple. They can't really be counting on low-information buyers who have good feelings for Microsoft. Or.. hmmm... maybe that's precisely the market, and the problem.

They may not be entirely ignoring the issue. I can't imagine the Lumia 800 going anywhere in the USA for more than many $100 on-contract. Nokia is rumored to be readying the Lumia 900 for February introduction here. Apparently very much the same: 1.4GHz single-core CPU, weak GPU, only 512MB DRAM, but possibly with LTE/4G and a 4.3" OLED screen (same low resolution, though). Specs could change, and you can find five or six better options at any Verizon store today, unless you find you must have Windows 7 Phone at all costs. But definitely more competitive... the iPhone 4S is the only leading smartphone with less than 4" or so screen.

It's really pixel size, not sensor size

I think the author's point in mentioning sensor size in megapixels as well is pointing out there they're not pushing this too hard... the pixel sites aren't that much smaller.

Certainly micro-four-thirds is doing this mostly right. I own both a Canon 60D and an Olympus E-PM1... the 12Mpixel PM1 has ever-so-slightly larger pixel sites than the 60D. For the same level of technology and same aperture, the Canon would be the noisier of the two, per pixel. Certainly, that's smaller noise detail when the whole image is printed, but it does suggest that the smaller sensor isn't THAT much of a compromise.

Naturally, as they shrink, there are more issues. The Nikon models did shrink the sensor more than they dropped the MPixels, and I'm not sure you'd want many more pixels on one of these sensors.. but you know it's inevitable, just as the M43 cameras are starting to creep up to 16Mpixel.

The other point of this kind of camera is that's not a replacement for that DSLR necessarily. In my case, I use the Oly when I wouldn't have the Canon. The 60D just doesn't fit in a pocket, and it's pretty obvious to folks around you when you're using it. The smaller M43s, and probably these new Nikons, are nearly invisible on the street.. even if someone notices it, they probably think it's a P&S model (most of which sport 2/3" or thereabout sensors... tragically the size in the Pentax Q as well.. now there's the shrink taken way too far).

Indeed. Most radios use Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum, not frequency hopping (though I worked on a series radios that used both, the Nomadio Sensor and React R/C controllers). DSSS takes a bit or a few bits, runs that though a "spreading code", and produces a large number of parallel, low bandwidth channels.

The big advantage of DSSS is protocol gain... on the receiving side of things, each of those narrow channels adds up, so you can see a pretty nice gain, 6, 12, 24dB depending on the specifics, just based on the DSSS protocol in use. Another advantage of the DSSS protocol is that your specific pseudo-random spreading code sequence makes local interference from other radios less interfering.

Frequency hopping has a different set of advantages. In the case of my R/C controller, each controller ran on one 1MHz channel out of a possible 80 in the 2.4GHz ISM band (same as Wi-Fi and most microwave ovens). But there's always the possibility of interference with other radio sources. If you have fixed channels, you can technically fit more radios at once, but some will get stuck in the noisy channel, others get the clean channel. With frequency hopping, everyone shares the same set of channels (we hopped at 100Hz.. not Bluetooth rates, but fast enough that this really did make a difference). We were the only R/C company at the time to use FHSS.

The lack of scaling on iOS is fairly ironic, given that the same thing, back in the Mac days, was one of the main factors that kept Apple ahead of much of the competition. I was working on Amigas in the day, and we had so much in the OS that was superior to MacOS. But they had one big one: retargetable graphics -- you could run MacOS on any sized display, any reasonable kind of display hardware.

I got my Android phone, the O. G. Droid, in the era when most phones (and all iPhones) were something in the 480x360 pixel range... yet no problem with 854x480. I bought a tablet running Android 2.2 that was, by all naysayers' accounts, totally worthless, since nothing supported that resolution. I found two apps, so far, that didn't scale well to 1024x600.

You kind of wonder why the Android folks have learned from the example of the Mac (eg, the thing it did very well), while Apple seems to have forgotten.

Not to mention the total non-problem you get if your 4" screen is also 960x640, just like your 3.5" screen. No one will even notice.