Posts by mrd 16 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2010
They're not the same case, not for the same reasons, not to the same extents, and finally because they managed to avoid court.
A company can't go to court, lose, have a large penalty to pay and then after all that demand the same treatment as a company that avoided court and negotiated a settlement, for a different set of circumstances.
I had an iPhone 3G, then got the 4 which I've had for 2 years. Love it but thought "I really should try out Android again". I used it on and off years ago and did not like it. Felt kludgy and thrown together with a UI that did not know what it wanted to be. Also the opposite of slick or smooth. But lots of people swear by it so, I had to find out what I'm missing.
Well the S3 came out - way too big but with enough grunt that I assumed Android would be smoother by now and I got one about 5 weeks ago.
Biggest mistake ever. Android is still a kludgy mess of mismatched UI paradigms and sluggish even on that top spec hardware compared to my 3 generation old iPhone 4. Watching rubber banding on the S3 just by scrolling a simple webpage up and down quickly compared to the 4 being relatively smooth... it hurt.
Having totally disconnected thinking where the experience of using the device is a set of discrete process steps as hurdles rather than one smooth 'work'flow... it hurt.
And having a device that was too big to use one handed (I would have bought a 4" screen device with the same faster hardware much more readily) which is slippery as a fish... it hurt.
So yes, I'm one of the increasing number that looked elsewhere and jumped to the theoretical "flagship" Android phone device (at the time) but I don't think I'm the only one who is now looking to flog his S3 on eBay and going back to my old iPhone 4 until I can afford the 5 outright or wait for the 5S/6.
What is arrogant about having a size you believe is right and shipping products at that/those sizes and selling shedloads? Competitors are free to (and do) meet any market requirement for people who want larger phones.
Plus having come from an iPhone 4 to an S3... Apple were bloody right. I can not use this thing with one hand at all due to the screen (and hence phone) width.
But it seems pretty obvious that no one has done this before: hidden controls behind a state change material so they are 'invisible' until required. Having a physical camera shutter is not the same thing at all because you know where the camera is because its physically still apparent.
Seems like a neat way of doing things if they can get around the technical problems that would no doubt come around due to having a layer between some of those interfaces and the user.
But that's not the right song to be singing these days. I believe that one goes something like this *clearing throat*
iSheeple will love this because Apple invented a rectangle with rounded shutters and they'll stroke their goatees into their latte while they queue because my screen is bigger and yeah!
I thought the EAW wouldn't let someone be re-extradited *for the same offence*?
If he is extradited to Sweden, I can see the questioning going thusly:
"Oh, we've decided you have no case to answer so there will be no rape charges, you're free to g- *ring ring* Hello Mr US embassy. What's that? You want to extradite Mr Assange on the entirely different charge of <insert>? Why certainly"
Something is up when Apple can sell a product - actually sell it, get people's money - advertised as 4G which didn't work as 4G and be fined only $300k more than an advertisement that you could not sign up for and not got what you expected. (Go and sign up for TPG and you saw the prices, bundled and non-bundled.)
It was surely obvious to most that him going to Nokia was only going to end in tears, unemployment and a cheap set of patents and production and design capability in house for Microsoft no?
Sure, we're still waiting for the outright buyout but I can't see it not coming, in some form.
I think the only question is will the new phones they produce be called Nokia phones, Nokia Microsoft phones or just Microsoft phones with the Nokia name snuffed out?
Honestly I can't get over how MS have managed to mangle useability in the KB+Mouse (or worse, trackpad) world for the sake of the touch world.
It's not even as if they have come up with a brilliant touch interface because to do anything serious you still get stuck onto the decidedly non touch friendly desktop. It's the exact same mistakes they were making back in Windows Mobile 6 era back on my iMate Jam.
If - and right now it's a big one - I move to Win8 for my main machine it will be if the "Classic Shell" (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/) does actually work on it. It's fine on the CP release and actually restores usability significantly as far as I'm concerned but I'd need to check before jumping.
And honestly, hand on heart this has made me strongly consider an iMac for my next PC. I've always been tempted by them but never owned an Apple desktop/laptop product and this could push me that way. Freaky... what an incredibly dropped ball from Microsoft.
In the last few weeks my Opera (only ever use it) install on W7x64 has been failing when attempting to visit NetBank. It stalls attempting to load the login screen most of the time and if I can get it past that then it stalls attempting to login.
This was fine until some weeks ago, and the Tablet version (which you can log into on desktop) has no issue with it at all.
Wonder if this is the same issue..?
People getting hung up on what "yet" means as if that somehow negates that right now, currently, the time up until "yet" there is no source code published.
That means that right now, it is not open source because right now the source isn't open. It's so simple it's almost genius.
A nice simple everyday example. If your comfortable home where you're sitting typing these comments from hasn't burned down yet, do you say that it is a burned out husk? Woe is you for living in a burned out husk of a house?
...whether it is open source or not. That is so 100% irrelevant to fitness for purpose. I've not tried honeycomb tablets but have never liked any of the Android phones I've tried because it always feels barely finished and only semi-coherent.
The hardware on some of the Android phones is the best on the market but the usability of the OS feels lacking. Features to the max. Usability, not so much.
I really love that line that gets brought out to play by certain FOSS advocates about being able to go into the source and fix things if you don't like how they work.
Really I guess they *are* tailoring their message to their userbase with that comment because I would bet that no more than maybe a few tens of thousands - if that - of computer users around the planet would ever - because something isn't working the way they want and not because its something they're involved with - go and open the code to try and fix and recompile an errant program.
Seriously. That comment and argument should be buried until people forget it rather than trotted out repeatedly. It's awful.
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