How long?
Until we get the now standard "a small number of our customers were affected" press release.
482 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Mar 2007
@Ralph 5
Yes, there are other music programs available on the Mac, but come on, iTunes is what everyone uses and you know it. You may use it to store your free music, but that is not its purpose. Apple didn't invest so much time and effort on iTunes because they want to ensure you enjoy your free media, it's a sales portal. So my argument stands, if you buy media you are locked in and Apple can change the rules at any time.
@Frank Bough.
Well reasoned argument you got going there.
@AC. You are confusing DRM with proprietary software. If I have my bought all my music in iTunes and I decide I don't want to go the touchscreen route after my classic iPod, can I plug in my Creative Labs device and iTunes work with it? No, I'm stuffed.
The stunt Apple has pulled with the publishers is indefensible. I can't believe Apple die hards can even try to defend what they did. What do you think happens when you squeeze the publishers? They pass the cost on. So who is the loser here? It's you.
What makes you think I'm a fandroid? I'm a fan of true multi platform. Over the last 15 years or so I've owned Windows PC's, Linux PC's,Pocket PC's, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo, Archos, Sony eReaders, Android and even iPods. I can play all my music on all of these devices and read my eBooks on everything except the iPod. How have I achieved this? By avoiding proprietary software and platforms.
That old argument always pops up straight away.
1) The problem is most people are ignorant. They do not realise that they are getting locked in to the walled garden. Does the sales staff in John Lewis explain the long term consequences of storing and buying all your media in iTunes before they flog you an iMac? Of course not.
2) Apple often changes the rules AFTER you've bought your shiny iWhatever. Usually very cynically after they've sold a couple of million of whatever it is (changing the rules on how you are allowed to buy epublications 6 months after launching the iPad, for example). So whilst they don't hold a gun to your head when you purchase your shiny plastic, they sure as hell do later on.
Google books is way more expensive than Amazon.
An example. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Paper edition on Amazon - £4.05. Kindle edition - £3.41, Google Books £6.85. Almost exactly twice the price!
Another - Dava Soble's A More Perfect Heaven. Amazon paper edition - £8.39, Kindle edition - £7.97, Google Books £13.79. (I do love the way publishers are clinging to the hardback pricing model here - they'll ship exactly the same file in 6 months for half the price).
Seems to be pretty across the board. Not sure what Google expects to achieve here. It's not like they have exclusivity on the Android platform. Kindle for Android offers much greater value for money. Come on Google, strike the same deals Amazon are obviously achieving.
The NHS hospital on the Isle of Wight has just done a massive program to upgrade the browser on all machines from IE6 to (drum roll) IE7. Makes you weep how clueless public sector departments are.
IE7 is in some ways worse than 6. Kill it off now and make all our lives easier! Having to put loads of tweaks and hacks into the CSS to get sites working with these ancient browsers is an utter nightmare.
BTW, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6 the usage percentages are higher. Over 9% for IE6 and 6.25% for IE7. That's a lot of people who you simply can't write off.
I guess you are a coder. Developer guidelines is one thing. Real world application is another. This has left a lot of people unable to connect to their tablets. Why not support both USB disk and MTP and give the user the choice? Instead they just took USB disk away. Just saying "oh, it's a much better solution now" is an all to common purist attitude. This was an unnecessary and avoidable break.
Asus released 3.2 for their Transformer last Tuesday :)
It is also worth mentioning that the official Google SD functionality is read only. Yes folks, you heard it right - read only. You have to do all the writing via a PC or Mac. The reason Google gives is that tablets have big enough internal storage, so the external SD card should be only for music/video collections etc that you maintain via your desktop machine.
WTF are Google on? They seem to be making completely random decisions at the moment.
Luckily the Transformer retains it's full read/write Asus patch for SD support.
The problem here is for some bizarre unfathomable reason, Google have ditched bog standard works with anything USB disk support in favour of Media Transfer Protocol. Very Windows oriented now :( MTP is very much in it's infancy on Linux.
Why not support both MTP and USB disk modes, or better still give the user the choice? Having a Linux based OS that can't easily talk to Linux boxes is utter madness.
"Why don't you look at HP's fabulous new ipad clone; it can do all that the ipad can, looks a bit worse and is chunkier and less sturdy (innovative combination), but it has this fantastically low price of ... exactly the same as the ipad."
Not in the UK at least for comparable models when I looked last week. The Apple UK store is down today. Perhaps they are dropping their iPad 2 prices, but I suspect they will in fact be going the other way in light of recent increases elsewhere.
Secondly, unfortunately it's not just the concepts other manufacturers are copying. They are copying the prices like sheep as well. Everyone sees Apple charging these kind of sums, so they would be mad not to do it. The price of these types of devices has steadily increased due to the Apple skew that you are happily paying for. Smart phones shot up dramatically after the iPhone came out as everyone went "hang on a minute" and got their noses in the trough. You paid, we all pay.
One thing Apple has done well is secure their own supply chain. So their overheads are much lower. So once they got all this in place they could ramp up their margins.
So consider this. Apple could easily sell their stuff for less and make, say 25%. They choose not too. In fact they put are putting their prices up.
"Apple is making a fucking shitload of cash"
"Their financial results reflect the fact that they are doing fucking, extremely well."
Yeah, fleecing their customers extremely well with a 42% mark up when other companies typically only squeeze 15%.
I'm always amazed when posters like the above crow like this. You are paying for this! Don't you get it?
But with the keyboard the Asus is a netbook replacement. 7" would be too small. The necessary reduction in keyboard size would make it a pain to use. Smaller batteries as well. I bought my Asus primarily for it's huge runtime.
I guess you could have a 7" tablet and then some fancy folding bluetooth keyboard, but it would not as slick or usable as the Asus.
I do wonder why there are not many pure 7" tablets. Surely it can't be simply down to following Apple like mindless sheep. At least Asus have done some real innovation here.
The HTC looks nice, but the Flyer won't be flying off the shelves at that utterly ridiculous price.
3G requires network operators deal. As soon as you start dealing with those sharks the price gets hiked as the Xoom and HTC demonstrate.
I just tether mine to my phone (which I always have with me) and it works a treat. Or you could buy a dongle or get a BT Openzone account.
Mobile internet is an expensive farce in the UK with no sign of improvement in the short term.
Mine took about 5 hours to charge both the keyboard and tablet battery from 15% with the charger. In normal use it never gets this low of course.
I think the review is saying it would take 16 hours if using USB charging. Or perhaps they are taking this from the manual which recommends an 8 hour first charge, which is pretty standard practice.
Honeycomb 3.1 has been out for over 10 days which fixes the HD video capture issue. The stills quality is also greatly improved. I guess El Reg either reviewed this two weeks ago or didn't check for an update.
Not sure why this scored lower than the Acer when it has a much better IPS panel and the keyboard/battery option.
The only thing for me that is letting down the Transformer is Android itself. You simply would not have got away with shipping such a buggy OS 5 years ago. Version 3.0.1 that it shipped with was diabolical. I had to hard reset the device 3 times losing everything. Upgrading to 3.1 seems to have cured this, but it still buggy and lacks polish. I guess we'll get there in the end.
Just about sums Dabs up these days. I used to use these guys all the time, but after many years of faithful custom they started messing me about so I went elsewhere.
The final straw was when I returned a faulty item and the posting label I printed off from their RMA system had the wrong postcode on it. So the item went missing (well, it went to their admin building). Dabs swore blind they hadn't received it and refused the refund (over £400). When they eventually found the package 5 weeks later, after I suggested they check the postcode, they had the damn cheek to accuse me of getting the postcode wrong. The postcode was still wrong on their label printer weeks later. They hadn't done anything about it.
It all went downhill after BT bought them. The number of products dropped significantly. Items were often out of stock for weeks on end (basic stuff live hard disks and RAM) and prices went up.
Worst of all was the Customer Service. BT tried switching over to a fully automated system so all you got was auto generated emails for all enquiries. No phone number to call. An utter disgrace. It has improved a bit now, but you know when they have problems when the live chat facility goes offline. You're then down to 3-5 days response time on email.
All in all, you can get everything from Amazon or Play these days at a lower price. Dabs has been overtaken through complacency.
"except on a smaller screen."
There is the crux of the problem. You simply can't edit docs (or even view them comfortably) on a phone sized screen. Ditto eBooks and even browsing is a pain compared to a large screen device.
I've just got an Asus Transformer and my HTC Desire HD now seems really clunky in comparison. Constant scrolling, mistyping and screen flipping. Certainly better than nothing when out and about, but the tablet has it beat. I still use my HTC as an iPod type device though, which it excels at.
The best thing about the Transformer is the detachable keyboard. Best of both the tablet and netbook worlds!
I guess Motorola (and now Asus) are touting these dockable phone devices. As you say, the latest phones have the power. The trouble is the Atrix dock is just silly money. Then there is the issue of battery life. You can only cram so much battery into a phone sized case.
>>Your response to a request for a more professional product is to suggest the beta version of an >>open source project? Seriously??
If it does the job then why not? Sounds like it based on an established product that's been widely used by studios. Certainly not a FAIL.
Sounds like typical anti Open Source snobbery to me. Give it a go, you never know it might actually be quite good. If it's crap then you've only lost a couple of hours. That's what OS is all about.
So Nokia are currently running a glossy big money ad campaign saying how the N8 is the best phone in the world and yet they are dropping the Symbian platform. Shameless hypocrisy.
This jump to Microsoft is typical of Nokia's floundering. Here's news for you Nokia - there are no quick fixes. Stick to your guns for once and see something through properly instead of knee jerking when things get tough. It never works, as you keep proving.
"It is Business, spelled with Big B. That is why it has DisplayPort."
I've worked in some pretty big businesses over the years and I can tell you now that none that I have worked for have had DisplayPort monitors or projectors. Try turning up at a client meeting without your dongle. Even my wife's Mac centric design company finds this a pain.
Big business is very conservative. Most still use VGA connectors on their projectors for goodness sake. The more adventurous have gone HDMI.
I just knew someone would say they could get cheap coffee. Must be pretty ghastly stuff if a large one costs you just 80p
Look, I'm not saying there is no room for expensive apps, but I think you'll find they are pretty niche. I'm saying that the mobile app markets have cheapened expectations and led to a dramatic drop in quality.
For goodness sake, £1.83 is nothing! What else can you get for £1.83? You can't buy a large coffee for £1.83.
£1.83 for a full fledged game is peanuts.
This is the trouble, people have got used to seeing a lot of crappy apps for pence and this has turned us into cheapskates.
This works both ways as well. I recently had a problem with an app. The developer told me (in typical geek fashion) "tough, if you don't like it, here's your money back". 69p. He just didn't give a monkeys about fixing the problem and 69p is no incentive. When I asked why he sold such a good app so cheaply he said "anything over a dollar just won't sell".
It's just not sustainable. We've cheapened mobile apps so much now that the words "software" and "quality" are becoming mutually exclusive. I'd rather pay $5 and have apps that don't crash and stuff my phone.
The Amazon kindle forum has literally hundreds of requests for this. Amazon seems particularly stubborn with the Kindle software.
It was the same for page numbers. Again, hundreds of people asked for it and only recently did Amazon cave in and provide a half arsed solution (you have to press Menu to see the page number). Showing read position as a percentage is absolutely meaningless for books of varying length. Does 92% mean you have 20 or 200 pages left to go? Do you give the book another 30 minutes reading time based on that? You just can't make the call.