Posts by Levente Szileszky

Re: "One million shipped..."

"I cant see anything suggesting WP or BB are creating any competitive pressure or driving innovation outside their own products... and for one of them that innovation seems headed in the wrong direction!"

I have no idea what are you talking about but I suspect neither do you - who's headed where?

I'd also bet you never played with a Z10 for 10-15 minutes, otherwise you'd know BB10's UI, while still needs some refinement, is nothing short of being brilliantly simple and effective, even with one-hand - and I'm a hardcore Android user. Z10's comm center (The Hub) is pretty far ahead of Android's disparate Messaging, Talk, Gmail, Email etc apps (and Android is already ahead of iOS' utter crap comm features), not to mention BB10's built-in project mgmgt/information/organizer/whatnot/manager (I think it's called Remember), working in tandem with calendar, emails, pics whatnot (yes, it can sync with Evernote)... none of them are perfect but they already show BB still got plenty of smart, innovative minds - conversely can you name ONE thing Apple "innovated' in the past few years (they never invented anything, let's generously stick with 'innovation' for now)...?

The only thing that might come close is probably Siri but even that was a usual 'lets-make-a-better-copycat' move from, Apple (voice control was already available on phones running as early as Windows CE or Palm OS as I recall)...

...as for WP I cannot really say much, to each his own - its home page as annoying as possible, the fact that every single new OS version requires a brand new handset is downright ridiculous, just shows how utterly broken MSFT is inside, all the way to the top.

Re: Finally - someone steps on these cockroaches aka "analysts"...

Guess what, THEY ARE SCUMBAGS as Reuters just unearthed several dirty stories from their past: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackberry-ask-regulators-probe-report-124314147.html

My fav part:

"While a number of brokerage firms have in recent weeks published reports saying Z10 sales in the U.S. market are slow, none of them have flagged any major concerns about returns.

Since 2007, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the industry body that oversees broker-dealers, has fined Detwiler over $250,000 and has cited it for several compliance violations over the past decade.

In December 2011, FINRA sanctioned Detwiler for failing to properly supervise its employees and for allowing its brokers to make more trades than necessary in clients' accounts to boost commissions during a period between 2006 and 2009.

In 2007, the firm, which was then called Detwiler Mitchell Fenton & Graves, settled administrative proceedings that the SEC brought against it for failing to supervise Bradford Bleidt, a former employee who had been simultaneously running a $30 million Ponzi scheme."

Ouch - thanks for confirming my suspicion, Yahoo.

Re: My Prediction

I never understood how FB Home should be the Holy Grail for most of the market... business people? Mom&Pop? Corporate world? IT folks? iDrones? They are all out, for sure.

What's left, millions of teens/frat boys? There, have at it, Sugarhill.

"A dying phone for a dying company"

...BlackBerry has 80 million users, out of which 18 million are Enterprise subscribers, just released a brand-new OS and handset and sold 1-2 million units in its first 2-3 weeks, with half of its new customers are reportedly converting from Android and iPhones - aye, a dying company...

...probably the most hilarious comment this week - and it's only Monday. :)

Re: Longevity

You're 1) blowing things out of proportions 2) ignoring the fact that this is pre-BB10/Z10 numbers for Blackberry.

As far as I can tell they had a pretty successful launch last month here in the US and a very good one beforehand - and I'm an Android guy,I always hated BBs for their idiotic, outdated OS and devices (I was very impressed with WebOS but only bought a Touchpad on firesale, Pres were always built on rather mediocre hardware...but. I had more than my fair share of the usual force-closed, crappy Android apps, their old WinMo-style slowdowns etc so I decided to keep an open mind and on one of my lunch break last week I went to a TMO store (Manhattan) and

1. first I had to get the guy to hook up a charger to their SINGLE display Z10 because it was fully discharged (yes, you read it right.)

2. go out and have a lunch because he said it is at least 10 minutes until I can use it (might be just he was clueless)

3. when I was back it was on in Retail Display Mode - which is the most annoying lick-based video demo crap I've ever seen

4. he didn't know the pass to deactivate it so we had to call another store person

5. she found the pass but it simply sent it into a reboot, ending up in the same mode (password was OK, I found it online in 30 seconds)

6. so eventually I had to hack my way out of this mode by pushing/holding the voice control and requesting a browser...

...and voila, I was out, running free.

I played about half an hour with the Z10 and I have to admit I was *VERY* impressed.

The BB10 OS, more precisely its swipe-based UI is simply *BRILLIANT*, way less clunky than my JB-based Xperia T, I am simply speechless when idiot reviewers claim it comes with "steep learning curve" - it's something that I picked up in about 10 minutes, without ever asking a question from store people or viewing any help, videos, nothing.

All I keep hearing about is 'missing Netflix in the app store' etc - but seriously, who cares? Besides as far as I know you can sideload most of your Android apps...

...although BB10 comes with its Map I'd still prefer sideloading Google Maps which, as I heard, works as long as you are using Maps and navigation but GPS is missing when you are using the look up feature (restaurants whatnot around you)... dunno but BB needs to beef up their Maps quickly.

Anyhow, I was so impressed I'd even give up my superior camera for that superior UI and unified communication Hub (email and IM are very heavy for me, both for work and personal) - and, again, I'm a pretty solid Android user. That being said I'll sit out until 10.1 comes out, in the meantime list up all my Android apps and take a look, how can I convert/sideload or simply switch to a BB10-based one... as long as BB can keep up the growth in the app store and keep bringing out new features in updates they will have a very worthy alternative on the table, I'm telling you (as I hard over half of their new customers are coming from Android and iOS already.)

Re: Nimbus is right

Read my prev posts about their past sales tactics (aka 'demo unit for testing'), if you think about it it's not that far away from anonymous trolling...

Re: CEO is holding the company back

I don't know about it but my dealings with him certainly left me thinking there might be something going on here, see my comment about the 'testing offer' (=tryout buy sales pitch) he gave us last year.

Re: ... roughly akin to an Office 265 for Creative Suite

Yeah, it's the name with the average annual service outages already accounted for... while still being generous to MS' service track record, of course. :)

Re: What...?

BINGO, finally someone mentions Imagination. :) OTOH aside of Virgin I admit I could only name 2-3 big recent (and competing in fair/real market conditions) UK success stories too, but first would be PowerVR/Imagination...

Re: As odd as it sounds

Nope,

as in 'NO hoPE' - at least not as long as it's being run as a one giant Ballmerian Chimera: it's made up of ~3 different animals (desktop/server/systems, services and apps, mobile & entertainment), resulting in a monster with more than one head, running amok due to the lack of utterly clueless leadership...

...which is the direct result of Gates throwing the reins at the horse, in this case at the angry, bald, chair-throwing one. Let's face it: MS' current CEO wasted a DECADE not doing anything meaningful and I'm being very generous here - he pretty much destroyed its soul - and now it's trying to force-feed us with a bunch of half-baked junk like Windows 8 and, apparently, following it up with trying to put even more lipstick on this pig, using the only (stupid) formula he knows, throwing more and more money at everything, disregarding the more and more diminishing returns...

...BALLMLER MUST GO, urgently, ASAP or it will be very painful for MS.

TL,DR: ut sementem feceris ita metes.

PS: Vanity Fair's excellent piece from last Fall is a mandatory read about Ballmer/MSFT:

"How Microsoft Lost Its Mojo: Steve Ballmer And Corporate America's Most Spectacular Decline"

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer#1

Err, no

First, Dell's servers are actually really nice and their ProSupport is usually much better than HP's myriad of higher level support/CarePacks/whatnot - while HP's support people regularly told me they cannot do/won't do this and that Dell's support staff always starts with a WebEx and have no problems even trying to fix non-Dell-branded gear.

(Best story about HP: ProCurve support, brand new ~$30k switch, something does not add up when we were trying to validate 10Gb modules... support contract personnel picks up the phone, we worked a bit without much success then I asked him to set up a remote session to make it quicker and look around in the unit/fix it if possible - the answer is "we do not do that"... I ask back something along the line of "Come again? You are the support I am paying for" he then basically told me they are not allowed to do anything in customer units (sic!) "because what if we make a mistake?" (sic!!!)... I couldn't believe what I just heard... upon request he repeated it again and again, then his supervisor repeated it again... I had to take it up to 2-3 steps higher in the food chain to finally have someone admit it is indeed utterly retarded, someone really did screw up something along the chain... took days, of course.)

That being said yes, price is a very important factor albeit not the single deciding one - support plays a huge role when it comes to server and network rooms.

Re: Errr, no...

Not only that but I was talking about x264 - something he didn't even understand. ;)

Re: Great move Elop

"Erm - but Nokia are back making a profit - largely thanks to Microsoft."

No, they are NOT, they are QUICKLY LOSING MARKET SHARE, and their most important segment, SMARTPHONE SALES ARE FALLING OFF A CLIFF.

Elop is a clueless corporate/MS shitkicker, nothing less, nothing more - cutting back on poeple, research and taking huge payoffs from MS will might turn the bottom line to black but it's KILLING OFF NOKIA, DELIBERATELY.

Lot of us suspected from the beginning: it's a win-win for MS, they give a chance to someone to try with WP but if didn't work (as expected) they will be able to pick up Nokia's excellent HW/design division and distrib channels for peanuts... great work, Elop, you clown.

Exactly. I'm already paying some low annual fee for extra ~20GB space on Google, they could throw this bone at least for us, paying customers.

Re: nothing new here

As far as Google goes they *never had* any world- and system-wide *full* outage, at least we've never experienced anything like that (we're in NYC) during the past ~3-4 years, since we switched to GA Business.