Posts by Giles Jones

WP7 ain't bad

There's nothing wrong with the software, well other than some missing features. The failure seems to be the usual problem of having a good release process and keeping the customer updated.

Either that of the Eye of Sauron is currently focussed on some other cash raking opportunity that Microsoft is missing out on. They do seem to be rather poor at doing more than one thing at a time.

Dongles

But hardware dongles are no protection against exploits. You can still exploit bugs and security holes in an OS to gain access.

The RSA token is comparable to any other dongle designed to secure or prevent piracy, they work for casual users but proper hackers will get past them.

Can't do what you want with it?

Isn't that the point of open source, you can grab the code and do what you want with it?

Isn't that the whole argument against Apple, too much control freakery? so now that Google are doing similar where are all the fandroids criticising Google?

I suspect Google are slowly realising what Apple and Microsoft realised, that you need to think about the end user's experience and not let people grab unfinished code and stick it in a product and get lots of average phone reviews.

Use your loaf

Simple, don't buy one then. I don't buy things that I don't have a use for.

People are different, one size does not fit all.

Some shops are now using tablets for mobile tills. They cost a quarter of what a normal POS terminal costs.

Desktop machines and laptops simply aren't very mobile. A tablet it, it is instantly on when required and the battery life on standby is weeks.

Too slow

Yeah but compare it to a tablet. With a tablet you can open an app and it'll take 10 seconds tops, often it will appear instantly. On this thing 10-20 seconds? that's rather tedious to say the least.

LOL

One person moves on at Apple and it's the sign of something bad?

How about all the high profile resignations at Microsoft?

Ray Ozzie, Stephen Elop, Robbie Bach and J Allard leave and that's okay is it?

Motorists are subsidised

Cyclists and other non-drivers are subsidising you actually.

The costs brought in from taxes to do with motoring do not cover the cost to society, they only cover about a third.

http://www.basden.demon.co.uk/G/facts/road.costs.html

Not to mention things like scrappage schemes, subsidies for electric cars. The only cycling related perk is the cycle to work scheme, which doesn't really offer that much of a discount.

Maybe

But if Nintendo got it so wrong why do the Kinect and Playstation Go controllers exist?

It's no coincidence they appeared after the Wii. Without the Wii I doubt either would have been conceived and the future of gaming would still be joypad which have been around since the first generation of 8-bit consoles like the Master system and NES.

Reviews were fair

Its power as a device is overlooked simply because it was butt ugly, limited in availability and priced similar to Apple. Did it ever launch in the UK? it was always "coming soon".

Microsoft could have developed WP7 for Zune and phones Why on earth did they let Windows Mobile limp along while developing yet another interface sitting on top of WinCE for Zune? They could have put the Zune people on the phone platform and ended up with an OS for mobiles and media players.

Write once (OS), sell many should be the approach, not write many, sell few.

Erm...

Windows 7 is not Windows Phone 7, or am I missing something? don't tell me Nokia are doing some sort of phone/tablet based on Windows 7?

Doh

Making a profit on the hardware itself (chip and materials) does not equate to making a profit in total.

Things have to be designed, prototyped, refined and manufactured. Designers and engineers do not work for free. The device needs software to work, that has to be written.

A DVD costs a few pence to make, but the film on it cost millions to make. So while you think a DVD at £13 is massively overpriced you have to look at the bigger picture.

LOL

Three year old phone? good luck with that.

Manufacturers warranty only applies to the hardware, there is no warranty on software. There is no obligation to provide security fixes. It is a phone, not a bank vault.

What next? Windows 2000 and XP owners moaning they can't run the latest version of IE?

LOL

Windows Mobile proved that resistive screens and styluses were not the way to the mass market. The fact that Android and iOS have taken off big time since the stylus was dropped suggests that was the main obstacle to touch screens becoming mainstream.

Nobody wanted styluses, they were just a symptom of a poor design. Resistive touch screens do have their uses, like if you need the screen to respond when you are wearing gloves (outdoor GPS).

Apple late to grasp what features exactly? have a look at the Apple Newton, they had mobile touch screen devices years before Nokia had anything comparable. On iOS they were lacking features at first, but that's due to proper prioritisation of features.

Nope

A proper nuclear explosion isn't possible. It would be like a dirty bomb, an explosion that scatters radioactive material.

Get a keyboard

You can take notes on a tablet if you have a proper keyboard. You can get bluetooth keyboards that work with the iPad.

Why take notes if you can just record the audio?

LOL

But were they major updates? I doubt it. Nokia 6110 was too limited, unless a patch to the Snake game counts for something?

I think you're confusing software upgrades with carrier upgrades? carrier upgrades are just updates to configuration.

ex-Paid developers only?

Just log in and it is there under iOS. Perhaps it only appears to those who have paid for developer access in the past?

Nobody is perfect

Has Apple or Microsoft even claimed to write 100% bug free software that is absent of design flaws?

Nope. The difference is in how many flaws are there due to backward compatibility or ease of use. Windows was the king of backward compatibility and ease of use and they've moved back from that position with Windows Vista and 7. But there's still a lot to do.

You have to remember that these hackers are pretty exceptional at what they do. Now imagine how long it would take them to work out an exploit if they swapped places, the OSX guy tried to hack Windows and the Windows guy tried to hack OSX. It would take them a long time to get up to speed.

The fact is Windows is the platform that gets exploited the most and those people wanting to exploit the Mac would need to either buy one or use a hackintosh. Then get up to speed with it.

The sort of people who buy Macs don't intend to exploit it and ruin the experience.

Slightly dodgy

Not to mention that by installing the custom firmware with the Google marketplace you're effectively installing unlicenced or pirated software.

Google marketplace is only available to devices made by manufacturers that have licenced it. The Advent does not have a licence to use it, hence it isn't there. The custom firmware has obviously had a copy of the Google marketplace application copied into it and that software has been lifted from a licenced device.

So not only do you need to be a techie to use this thing properly you also need to infringe on a software licence to get it to run decent software.

There's another reason why it is £250.

Internal conflict

The problem is nobody apart from the tablet team really gave a toss about tablets. The guy in charge of Office development didn't like tablets and said he preferred mouse and keyboard, so Office wasn't adapted for the tablet OS.

It's that sort of petty internal conflict that makes Microsoft dysfunctional when it comes to moving their offerings along. Only when something similar is out in the wild and raking in megabucks can such people at Microsoft see the merit in something.

When producing something new and ground breaking there is no precedent in the market that says "this will work, this will make money", so nobody at Microsoft will want to cooperate with the team producing it.

Multitasking

That's because it has done that since 4.2.1.

An app can choose to carry on running in the background, playing audio, using network or it can choose to remain in the background paused (useful for games).

If you don't call that multitasking then what is? do you really want something uncontrollably running in the background making noise or using up CPU cycles (and battery life)?

Erm

Since when did the 'premium' product on the market only cost up to a third more than the cheapo?

Sometimes the difference is twice or more.

Multitasking

Erm what is this "proper" multitasking you speak of? Perhaps you don't know what multitasking is? multitasking is nothing to do with the interface, it is at the kernel level and iOS and Android both have it since they are based upon fully capable kernels.

I suspect you're referring to the user interface, just because you can't see two applications at the same time does not mean there's no multitasking going on.

What have you tried to do and found that you couldn't? Oh you don't own one, so you have no licence to comment on how well it works. As for Android's multitasking, the way iOS does it is very similar actually.

The iOS multitasking has templates for various scenarios, music in background, networking in background and games. These templates determine what to do in the event the application becomes idle. So a music player would carry on playing, a game would pause and a network enabled application would carry on downloading.

What isn't multitasking about that? do you really want a game to carry on playing when you change applications?

That said, I'm not impressed with the iPad 2, despite the fact that the hardware hasn't really improved much (although I'm sure it now has more RAM) it is the software I wanted to see improved. iOS5 should have been previewed and iOS4.3 doesn't add anything I really want.

MP3

There were MP3 players before the iPod too. But guess which one is the most popular still?

The iPod had the most easy to use interface compared to all the other players.

Think about it

To understand what Apple have decided you need to know the problem that prompted it.

If you were to go into a shop and pick up a free blank magazine and then you bought all the contents from the publisher direct for a fee then how would the shop benefit? not at all!

This is what the magazines are trying to do, cut out the App Store from the revenue stream. Provide a free application but then charge for content directly. Apple gets nothing other than minuscule annual developer fees.

Put yourself in their shoes, they are employing lots of staff to handle app submissions and they have built a huge expensive data centre recently. Hosting apps, music and films is a costly business.