Bez
Looks a bit more like Bez to me than Lurch.
Given he's from Manchester there may be some common DNA.
2536 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2006
It's memory and disk can be upgraded.
Are you oblivious to the fact that only 18% of computers sold are "upgradeable" these days. Only desktop machines can be upgraded with slot in cards and faster CPUs and these sell half as many as laptops. The rest of the market is tablets and netbooks (also not upgradeable).
In fact, these days an upgrade is largely a motherboard and CPU replacement anyway, so why bother? You're only keeping the case and discs.
I'm not happy with any of the deals.
I want a tariff with something like 60-100 minutes, unlimited texts and data. 600 or so minutes is overkill, I don't make many calls.
I actually found a 3 SIM only tariff for £5 a month that just gives you data, I'd sooner pay for what i use rather than what I don't use. I can't seem to find this tariff now, it must have been a limited offer.
Let's face it, which other handset maker would support their handset for near three years? the original iPhone has only just been omitted from the latest iOS version. So two major updates and many intermediate releases. I myself have installed 10 software updates since buying my iPhone 3G.
Sure, you can buy a handset with more hardware features than the new iPhone, but don't expect more than a couple of software updates to fix bugs or add new features. There's simply no money in it for the handset maker to spend lots of time doing so.
I could bear having a handset for 18-24 months without new features being added and bug fixes being done. This is why I couldn't ever have an Android phone on contract. I would end up installing DIY ROMs (and suffering the instability).
I switched to OSX from 64-bit Linux years ago. It's stupid how 6 years ago they were having problems with 64-bit Flash on Linux and they still can't get it right.
I'd love to know what it's like to work for Adobe. I suspect it's half as productive as Microsoft there and Microsoft aren't exactly efficient.
Honestly, why would end users care about this? the only people whining are lazy developers!
When you look at the quantity of software on the Mac it is generally better than Windows, less annoyances and more thought has been put into it.
Windows has quantity, but not quality. I think I'd sooner have quality on the iPhone.
Stop believing the megapixel myth.
I have 12MP on my SLR with a 35mm sensor there is no chance in hell that a 12MP camera phone can match my SLR. I would imagine the photos out of my SLR at ISO1600 are better than those of the 12MP camera phone in any conditions.
Apple is lagging behind in megapixels, but they're making a stand against lousy quality cameras. The backlight sensor is cutting edge.
Have a look at the awful cameras HTC include in their phones.
If OSX is just something like Linux dressed up then why does it perform so much better than Linux?
OSX is a Unix based OS. However the GUI frameworks and system libraries are mostly Apple's own.
You seriously need to look at the history of the OSX, it is derived from Nextstep which was Steve Job's company that was set up when he left Apple years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nextstep
Much of the OSX code technology was taken from Nextstep, display postscript, use of Objective C.
If you'd done any ObjectiveC on Mac OS using Cocoa (unlikely) then you'd know that many of the datatypes (like strings) start with NS, eg. NSString. The NS = Nextstep.
Video calls cost more than 3G calls. Who wants to 3G video call with it's low resolution? I don't know the specs for video calling (I can't find them) but I would imagine it is 320x240 to 640x480 at best.
Since this system is sent over the data connection it would be a little unfair of Jobs to allow that without letting the networks prepare for it.
As for the question about "can you make calls to other phones", not yet, but Apple will publish it as a standard and then anyone can use it. Which is a damn sight more than Microsoft ever did (MSN Messenger webcam standard has never been released, it had to be reverse engineered).
While 720p HD is pretty common now, the fact you can edit it on the phone, add transitions and then upload it somewhere is pretty impressive.
Those who might moan about the video calls working only on Wifi might actually think about why this is. Firstly this isn't your usual 3G video calling, that was designed when screens were quite low resolution and video compression wasn't hardware assisted. Apple have come up with a much better quality video call system, they're making it a standard and it will be available for others to implement.
Secondly, Wifi is more available than the reception required for 3G video calls. You can do it at home or at a hotspot. I for one haven't a chance in hell of ever using 3G video calling where I am, yet I have a nice fast cable connection to the internet.
Jailbreakers like to say it's so they have the freedom to do what they like with their phone, but it seems like they want the freedom to pirate all the apps.
One developer said his game could tell the difference between a jailbroken or non jailbroken phone, something like 73% of scores submitted to his online scorecard were from pirate copies. None of these went on to buy the app either, so try before you buy is a joke.
Most people buying a Windows Phone 7 phones or Android phones are just protesting against the way Apple do things. It's not because they find the hardware and software attractive or well designed.
HTC still can't made a nice looking phone, from what I've read their design team are more experienced in designing snowboards than mobile phones.
"One & Co., a 20-person San Francisco design studio HTC acquired in 2008. One & Co. designers still work on other products like snowboards to keep their ideas fresh."
The only times a decent photographer uses flash is:
1. Outdoor as a fill in flash (reduced power flash to reduce shadows).
2. In a studio, proper flash guns with umbrellas.
3. With a diffuser with the flash bounced off the ceiling when very desperate to get a photo.
All other uses typically give you a pretty poor result.
Paparazzi use flash, but they're not photographers, they don't care for quality or art, it's all about getting a photo of someone regardless.
Stand in front of a car headlight on full beam to see what flash style lighting does for you, then contrast that will outside in the sun.
Apple licenced Xerox Parcs software.
It was Microsoft that stole it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mac_OS
"The original Macintosh system software was partially based on the Lisa OS, previously released by Apple for the Lisa computer in 1983 and, as part of an agreement allowing Xerox to buy shares in Apple at a favorable rate, it also used concepts from the Xerox PARC Xerox Alto, which Steve Jobs and several other Macintosh team members had previewed."
He mentioned you can using the iWork suite which comes with the iPad.
It was completely redesigned for a touch user interface by Apple. If you use Word on a tablet PC then it will be awful to use since the head of the Office team at Microsoft refused to redesign the user interface for touchscreens as he "doesn't like them".
Needless to say if you want a touch screen device with a decent office suite the iPad is the best, the battery life is good and it will switch on instantly.
Have a read:
http://www.macworld.com/article/145941/2010/01/iwork_ipad.html
I think if you showed someone an iPad back in 1982/3 and asked which they preferred, a speccy or an iPad I think the iPad would win. Many households had one TV and you wouldn't be able to use the speccy all the time. Others had a portable, often black and white.
So if you showed someone back then a device with email, the web, 3D games, movies and music you can download (back in 1982/1983 it was all tape and vinyl, CD took much longer to become affordable) I think they would be astounded.
While you could program a spectrum, most people played games on them.
Any device is about the software, a Windows PC can't do much without installing some software. Same with the iPad. The pre-installed software does the basics, email, web, photo management etc..
I can tolerate the less than perfect Mac OS desktop thanks to the dock and nice things like Expose. But I hate Gnome!
So much dev time is wasted in Linux land, writing open source and proprietary drivers (NVidia are paranoid about fully open source drivers, thinking competitors will steal its technology).
Given only recent versions of Android have added multitouch I think Apple were ahead. Or do you think pressing little + and - buttons in a brower to zoom is advanced?
It's not all about features, if I wanted a phone with loads of features I would have stuck with Windows Mobile or some Symbian rubbish. But what use is features with a god awful UI?
The thing that grates me about Android is knowing the apps are basically coded in Java. The class format is different and it's their own JVM. But it's still Java, garbage collected, compiler/interpreter language. It's no match for Objective C which compiles to native ARM code.
Government agency buys computer hardware, so what?
I've often thought that if the devices supplied to employees were nice looking and good to use that they wouldn't get left in Taxis so much. I'm sure that's how some employees try to get an upgrade for their dull plasticy laptops.
Mind you my theory fails since Apple lost a pre-production iPhone 4.
Why would anyone bother with sound quality if they're playing compressed lossy files?
It seems pretty stupid that you get more advanced audio on bluray now than CD.
16-Bit 44.1Khz was just something possible in the early 80s. Why are we still constrained by such low standards?
24-bit 96Khz should be standard across the board now.
Linux is a jack of all trades, it can be used in phones, set top boxes, TVs, computers and therefore there will be loads of stuff in the kernel to support all these different devices.
I think the days of being able to roll your own sensible kernel are starting to end, there's just too many options!