Looking forward to it

My N9 is doing fine but I might just preorder this. Been following Jolla for a while and watched the live stream. These folks deserve some success for their enthusiasm and BALLS to pull this thing through alone, even before seeing that the expandable hardware idea is pretty nifty in and by itself (check your facts, El Reg, the covers supposedly can do more than just be a memory card). Could not care less about specs with this OS running on the device.

Design?

So Samsung has the best design in Droidland? THAT is the best there is? I mean, you cannot deny their success, yet whenever I look at one of their phones … they are crammed full of the nicest things but they do not move or involve me at all. Soulless.

Good Stuff

Love to see glimpses of the N9 design in this little bugger. If I was the target, I'd get this over some low-spec droid in a heartbeat. Great design in quality hardware, fluid UI, designed to work on very little bandwidth (which is sugar on top of the price), great battery life … the only thing a cheap droid has to offer in return is the same price. And you have seen cheap droids, you know you don't want them. Admittedly, no 3G (I hear it will come to Asha soon) is a tough sell to 1st world powerusers but Asha a) is designed for emerging markets and b) not for powerusers in the first place.

I am still repulsed by the idea of a mobile OS that is so inefficient that it needs a high-end device to produce a pleasant experience.

yuck

Now you've made me watch what can only be described as a not a very professional beheading. Yuck. No like for that.

Suckers will be suckers

RE: Music quality goes down the drain – I used to be much more invested in the topic but once I noticed that I, me, myself am part of a significant market – listeners who care about how stuff sounds – I knew that I would always be catered to. There are more high quality music releases than I can find the time to listen to. Hell, MobileFidelity alone releases so many top notch SACDs on a regular basis that they could eat up the better part of my monthly music budget. If you are more of the download type, there are several places that offer a great variety of up to 192Hhz material.

RE: Quality gear is getting too expensive – Far from it! The co.uk area in particular is home to some of the best makers of audio gear on the planet. Linn, Naim, Exposure, you name it – and they all offer affordable systems with excellent bang-for-buck ratio. Sure, you can still shoot for the moon. That is a game of quickly diminishing returns. Plus quality gear is an excellent thing to buy second hand. It tends to last.

RE: Beats phones – who gives a toss? You know they are overpriced abominations for posers and fashion victims. Buy something else and educate your kids about the finer things in life. Stop worrying about how other people spend their money, have more time to enjoy your music.

Appalling waste of resources

8core? Does it really take that much to make Android a pleasant experience? Those features also sound as though they could provide plenty of opportunity for the device to fail and annoy in new and interesting ways. I am much more interested in what Jolla will put into their upcoming device. Sailfish appears quite nimble on the extremely outdated hardware they use for demos, so I guess we are in for a treat.

Writing this on an Apple Extended II from 1995

So in my book, the best keyboards are the big heavy ones from long ago that STILL LAST today. I thought about replacing the one in the office with the new quiet Tactile Pro as a nice gesture to my cos – but then again those things are bloody expensive and I am sure they are not as well made as the AEII.

All the cheap rubber stuff is simply not cutting it and the laptop-like models deserve a special place in hell (even the ones in laptops. My last lappy with a really decent keyboard was the PowerBook G3 Wallstreet) as they let me produce endless errors and feel flat out wrong.

Poweruser?

The reason why the new BBs will sell like hot cakes is that they bothered to come out with a product that "powerusers" crave: One with a physical keyboard.

A touch-only device can never keep up with that. I use Swype on my N9 (still the best touch phone in existence and possibly also one of the worst "political" fuckups ever) which makes for a very good crutch but it is still not the same and it makes for a completely different writing experince. Touch keyboards without Swype? No. Just no. You can still pick up the E6 and E72 for a reason. Running Symbian. Ha.

BB will likely also let people do all sorts of stuff they expect from a "powerusers" device such as proper BT file transfer and all the other nasty worky stuff. You know, the stuff you used to take for granted on Symbian and MeeGo devices and that nobody at MS botherted to implement since "hey, Apple doesn't do that".

Let's all hope for Jolla not to screw up.

Brings the LULZ

a) Can we patent it? Yeah, let's patent it.

b) How do you price used digital goods? If I buy a 2nd hand item, I expect and accept a possible degree of degradation. This is why a used item usually sells for less than a new one, unless the market forces imply that demand exeeds supply. But why would I re-sell my digital propert… my license to use a digital content at a price that is any lower than the current new-price? (And "scarcity management" or not, I doubt there will ever be something like a "rare download".)

Because otherwise, AMAZON won't let you sell it.

The whole thing is interesting in terms of being able to sell-off unwanted licenses. Yet it is clear that seller will make a loss, the used-buyer will only save very little and AMAZON's register will CA-CHING every time. CA-CHING CA-CHING CA-CHING…

The ridiculousness of it all tells me that my policy of "only buy phsyical" will not be replaced any time soon.

$1000 buy a lot of interesting things

Yet to me, an iPad is not one of them. Admittedly, I had a glimmer of hope the company would hand them out for XMAS as little productivity gifts. I guess they know just as well as I do that they are not really that productive.

Anyway, the iPad mini, with added handwriting recognition (3rd party of course, why the hell can't Apple integrate their own one?)… now that could finally do some of the things my Newton used to be good at … in 1998. Apple, always ahead of itself. Sigh. The Newton MP2100 features: 2 cardslots for up to 64MB (sic! A bitchin' lot and nigh impossible to use up back then) of memory or numerous expansions (WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, GSM, Faxmodem… ), a serial port and, lo and behold, a user replaceable NiHM-pack or optional AA-Battery operation. Which is why a Newton from 98 still works fine these days and will continue to do so for a good while, even if you threw it down a number of stairwells which it likely survived with hardly a scratch. Now that's a proper piece of computing equipment in my book.

Impressive

Many years ago I saw one of those while taking a walk at night. It's quite the impressive experience.

Good!

It was about time.

What's missing

Is fresh business class devices that people can be truly productive with. The E6 and E7 are both excellent devices in this regard but what are the current options? Cheapish Asha phones. Hello?

Worst demo ever

So much potential, so little delivery. It's for video goshdarn, don't show me near static content. And correct them colors! Bleh!

Here's to Science.

You gotta love it.

Tell me …

… why I am not interested? I have been a customer for over 15 years, yet all Apple turns out now are disposable SPOF devices that keep losing relevant features (like say a disc drive or ANY way of upgradeability) for pointless benefits (I guess all we ever wanted was a slimmer iMac). So even if they did come out with a screen (which would be pointless as people already pointed out) it would likely suffer from the same "qualities". Not that folks would not buy them by the boatload though.

They can keep it

I'm a big fan of the Mac Mini line but this one is a total turd. Too little, too late, too expensive, shitty graphics performance, glitchy, plus you have more clutter due to the external drive you will need unless you source all your content from the fruit itself. I know it is increasingly uncool to buy physical media but I do like it. It gives me more options at better prices. Unless that option is bluray of course – thank you oh so very much – which, being a bag of hurt, also commands a 3rd party external drive and pricy software on OS X.

The Newton was not a technology failure

It was a marketing failure. Apple overpromised and paid the price. That's all. Safe for the very first model, the devices were outstanding. Fast, convenient, incredibly ergonomic and versatile – and built like tanks. Today, they preserve the memory of a time when Apple still tried to push the world forward with visionary technology. If you have ever seen the Knowledge Navigator Clip "Parkbench" you know what I mean. Deeply inspiring stuff.

Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HntiqyNPtVc

Presently, Samsung will sell you a Galaxy Note which is basically a Newton Message Pad on steroids that does not need an extra cellular card. I don't know whether project Einstein brougth Newton OS to this phone already but it is sure worth a look.

I'm in TEARS

You brought back a time when I was only halfway through my single digits, yet I do remember my father proudly showing off his "state of the art" CAD system to me. It came with this newfangled thing called "a mouse" and everyone in the office had a hard time getting used to it.

Utilitarian and boxy?

You make it sound like it was bad thing!

Anyhow, as long as MS cannot get the Mac sync right (and we like to sync PIM data offline here) it is just no sale.

Cannot be unseen

I had to check all the older calendars for good measure … but I still cannot decide which one features the worst PS-desasters.

Yawn

To me, iPad mini is the first iPad that comes at a usable size, as in it is bigger than my phone but not so big that I could not just schlepp a Macbook Air instead which is a real computer that can get real work done. In fact, iPad mini would have been a great thing to replace my trusty Apple Newton MP2100 (which still runs like a charm on AA batteries, unlike certain other devices with built in obsolescence, thank you very much).

Like, three years ago, looking at the specs. So I'd rather buy a Galaxy Note II if I had to.

Face it: These days, Apple is being out-innovated by Nokia, out-featured by Samsung and now out-designed by Surface (no chance to play with it yet). When I saw the marketing video for the iPad mini I could not help but laugh. "Look, we worked really really hard… so that this thing could still be an iPad … but smaller!".

Regardless, they will sell loads and loads come XMAS and schools / students will pick them up by the boatload.

Yes, you need an APP for that. Don't have an iPhone? Well, fuck off, will you?

So I need an iPhone now in order to turn on the lights, yes?

So Philips, certainly not a company I associate with incompetent product design per se, cannot come out with a networked lightbulb that can be operated via a simple web interface – maybe in addition to a few apps for a FEW phones.

No, it has to be an iPhone and maybe, maybe later Android.

Sweet fancy Moses, whatever happened to open standards.

I've said it before and I will say it again: DO NOT tell your potential customers that you do not care to cater to them because they did not buy the phone you think to be the hot shit. It - is - a - bad - marketing - move. People also tend to remember companies who tell them to fuck off. And not in a good way. Is this really so hard to understand?

Never again

iMacs are nice machines overall but I sure as hell will not get another one if I have to pay for it. Too expensive for the single point of failure they have been designed to become. Also, I do live in the past and love to get stuff on shiny little discs. And I am not paying extra so that Apple can promote its own business model.