Posts by Giles Jones 2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006
There's really no need to run x86 unless you want to run some stupid Windows tablet. ARM processors are very capable and in standby the battery lasts for weeks.
As for Android running on it, it's even more fragmentation as the developer will now have to compile their application for ARM and x86.
It's the one way to differentiate your products in this day and age. Have something nobody else has.
Everyone tends to plump for the same display sizes and resolutions and Apple want something better. Hence retina display is higher resolution than most other phones. It might not be OLED but the resolution makes up for that.
The original Eeepc was made with low end components and had a paltry 4GB of storage. It was about £129 (yes, the price of a low end Android phone).
But for some people the specs were too low, screen was too small etc. These people were missing the point.
What Asus ended up doing is making a netbook with more expensive higher spec components when they really should have just waited for improved components to reduce in price.
In the end Microsoft must have bunged them some cash or threatened to hike their OEM fees for their Windows laptops as Asus stopped doing the Linux versions too.
It's not spying to be given data and then release it to everyone.
Spying is often deception, you are in an organisation but secretly passing information to someone else. It's all done secretly, not like Wikileaks who let the world know.
If anyone is the spy it is the person who leaked it in the first place. Journalists get leaked information at times and they aren't ever charged with spying.
We want decent bandwidth and good coverage for the huge amount money we pay you. We don't care who you are, we aren't loyal to your brand. You're just a service provider, you're not Apple or Microsoft, you don't create things.
So operators, if you have to cut back on lousy services nobody wants (eg. Vodaphone 360) and cut back on the perks a bit then so be it.
It's a competitive market and mobile data services are no longer a luxury, so you'll have to get with it and be more creative with your business ideas instead of looking for a big pot of cash somewhere.
But people don't buy things that do one thing well these days (unless the single function device does it exceptionally well, eg. SLR camera).
You don't see people carrying a phone, portable games console, mp3 player and digital camera around with them. A smartphone integrates these.
Why is it an Apple problem?
It looks more like a Sony problem to me. All the big brands issued recalls:
2006 Sony notebook computer batteries recall:
* August 2006: Dell recalls over four million notebook computer batteries, after a number of instances where the batteries, made by Sony, overheated or caught fire. Most of the defective notebooks were sold in the US, however some one million faulty batteries could be found elsewhere in the world.
* August 2006: Following Dell's battery recall Apple Computer also recalls 1.8 million Sony notebook computer batteries. Similar to Dell, most of the notebooks were sold in the United States. However some 700,000 units could be found overseas.
* September 2006: Matsushita (Panasonic) recalls 6,000 batteries.
* September 2006: Toshiba recalls 340,000 batteries.
* September 2006: IBM/Lenovo recalls 500,000 batteries.
* October 2006: Hitachi recalls 16,000 batteries.
* October 2006: Fujitsu recalls 338,000 batteries.
* October 2006: Sharp recalls 28,000 batteries.
* February 2007: Lenovo and Sanyo recalls 200,000 batteries.
If you follow links sent to you in email you're probably going to get suckered.
If people write scripts to flood the fake sites with false information then the phishers will have way too much information to get through, it may even crash their system when the disk gets full.
>but their innovation is always in bringing tech to those who want tech without the knowledge acquisition burden.
I'm pretty sure that being able to build a device that can be used with little or no reference to the manual is a good thing?
Computer and software products should not be exclusive to the IT community. You shouldn't need to be able to talk like someone from Star Trek to use computers and software.
Just because other OSes are confusing and geeky doesn't mean that is how it should be.
If Microsoft panders to the handset makers then WP7 loses a big advantage. The operators or handset makers should not restrict or withhold updates.
With Android you have the situation where the handset maker can decide not to give you an update, forcing you to get another handset or install community firmware.
One big advantage of the iPhone is you get updates a few times a year and a few big updates. WP7 appeared to be offering this as well.
I really don't understand the handset makers, their job is to produce hardware for the software. Perhaps if they spend more effort on the hardware then it would look better? this is the best way to innovate, not produce ugly hardware with confusing software front ends.
Think about why this has happened. Do you think Steve Jobs looks at ever app or gets involved in the App Store? I doubt it, only when something gets escalated to him.
I can imagine it's due to complaints from other developers about how long it is taking for some updates or new applications to appear in the store. After analysis someone at Apple has looked for something to "chop" or be given the blame and radio apps are it.
It is becoming really difficult to find decent apps amongst all the junk. If anything there hasn't been quite enough applications rejected IMHO.
They sold a product which was used to provide missing functionality in Windows. Once Windows has that missing functionality added there was no need for NetWare.
Novell couldn't see that coming, Novell didn't see that people would not want to continue buying their product.
Once the realised that NetWare was a lame duck they didn't have any clue on what else to produce. They flirted with Linux but there was no conviction there. Not to mention they got distracted by all the SCO court cases.
If Novell had produced a really decent version of Linux which would be a solid enterprise performer then they would have had some kind of life after Netware.
In some cases all you are going to see is more film grain. But if that means the picture quality is closer to the original film then will help on very big screens.
1080 HD is on only just over 2 megapixels and they do say that a digital image needs to be about 20 megapixels to capture the full resolution of a good film. Of course that figure varies depending on the quality of the film. So Blu-ray isn't there yet.
Of course TVs can't show more than their native resolution anyway.
I agree with what others are saying, why not pump some millions back into the OS? Even pay some money to volunteers?
He can take millions out of the company now and have Linux slowly growing or spend millions now improving Linux. Then in a few years you'll be able to take billions out of the company as it will be more widespread.
Ubuntu and some of it's own applications are too unstable to be mass market. The quality needs to improve massively!
Nobody is going to replace Windows with Linux if the pain is too great, investment is needed to reduce the pain. Things need to work better and if they fail a decent error message, not some cryptic message.
Not really Dell's fault if the capacitors were dodgy. There was a big scandal around that time, an employee of a component manufacturer had lifted the formula for one of the chemicals used in capacitors and sold it on. But the formula was flawed and the capacitors bulged and popped after a while.
I had a board which was good for about 2 years before I swapped it. Way past the warranty period.
I think the idea is for employees who are only really doing simple IT tasks. Accessing email, web based applications. Inputting figures, producing charts and statistics.
Or form filling, in the health sector there is a lot of form filling and if you can capture electronically then you can validate input before submitting the data and eliminate data entry.
Of course, a 7 inch tablet is inferior for displaying data and for forms.
Anything with "Play" in the name is going to sound like a toy. Playstation, playschool and so on. The fact that they've called it Playbook and it's aimed at business is an awful bit of branding.
But then RIM have a pretty awful name anyway. With Apple you can say you're an Appler, I'm not going to type what you are if you have a RIM device :)
Vapourware can always be priced competitively. Of course by then the cost will have crept up due to "component shortages" or some other excuse like "exchange rates".
I really don't get the "corporate" angle with this device. Sure, iPads have been trialled and bought for office use, but the consumer market is important too.
Creating a "corporate" device is probably an admission that it's no fun to use. Clunky, dull or just lacking in any software for the non-business customer.
Gauntlet, had many fun times with that on the Amiga. Okay it was probably Gauntlet 2 by then. On the Amiga you could plug in 4 joysticks using a parallel port adapter. I bought one for Ikari Warriors which wasn't wired right for Gauntlet, a bit of re-soldering later and it was.
Gauntlet was one of the first arcade games that I remember having speech.
Other games I remember well:
Q-Bert
Ghosts and Goblins
Moon Buggy
Scramble
Bombjack
Tron
Missile Command
Paperboy
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