Posts by Neill Mitchell325 posts • joined Friday 23rd March 2007 11:13 GMT
Having to juice up your phone once a day is not popular in China. Symbian based smartphones like the E series will run for a week. S40 ones even longer. A big advantage over Android and iPhones. That's a major deal out there.
Plus they are not such a fashion oriented gimme gimme gimme the latest gadget type society.
A good start.
Why an AC?
I'm not an Apple troll, I dislike any company that makes indecent levels of profit at the expense of the consumer.
I guess it's all got to end sometime. This current level of corporate greed is unsustainable and it's driving a culture of want over need that is just utterly depressing.
You are over simplifying the walled garden argument. Who cares less about paying pence for Angry Birds? An entire games collection would cost pretty small beer money to buy the ones you really care about on another platform. A lot more people will care about discovering their entire purchased media collection is locked. An awful lot of people are not tech savvy enough to realise that their shiny gadget purchase will result in single vendor lock in. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just saying this about Apple, but their garden has the highest and thickest walls. I know a number of people who now regret ever installing iTunes. Even Mac fans. Luckily I bit the bullet and decided to cut my losses to a dozen or so albums a number of years ago when I realised what was going to happen if I stayed with it. It seemed like such a great idea when it first was launched. It was Steve's greatest move and we all fell for it.
Yes, if you buy Adobe for the PC you do not expect to get a free Mac copy. But again, there is a world of difference between top end desktop apps and your media library containing thousands of items. How often do you buy Adobe? Once every couple of years? You know it is a major investment and you choose carefully accordingly. How often do you buy an album or eBook?
If you have an 8-track music collection, you can buy a bit of inexpensive kit to transfer it to CD or mp3. Ditto vinyl (not that a vinyl aficionado would ever consider such a move!).
You kinda lost me on the chainsaws I'm afraid, but that's probably just me :)
>>Greedy would be if they held a gun to people's head,
Ah, the old gun to the head argument.
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 gadget, they sure as hell do later on.
>>(I'd love a new Maserati, but around here I can get rental property for that.)
The inevitable meaningless Apple car analogy in the same post as well. Well done sir!
Niche market, hand built sports cars are not a comparable product. You could, like most people, with a bit of saving buy an iPad. That is what Apple is relying on. Exotic sports cars are beyond the reach of anyone but the super rich and Maserati sure as hell aren't making 47.4% on each car.
What does Apple think it is going to do with all this money? What's the big plan? It can't simply be about share price surely. If it is, then it's even more cynically greedy than I thought. Fleecing your customers to make more billions you don't really need simply so you can say you're #1 is plain wrong. It's just egotistical.
Yeah, we'll hear the old "it's their legal duty to their shareholders to make money" etc, but 47.4% is taking the piss no matter what excuses are made by the loyal. You can be a healthy profitable company without screwing your customer base and you wouldn't be reading thousands of posts like this all over the place. I know I'd sleep better at night if I was the boss.
I guess it's just as well they have 47.4% mark up, if these things were cheaper then it would be game over for everyone else. I wonder why Apple aren't choosing to go down that route? Discuss :)
No, gross margin at 47.4% is obscenely greedy. You, the consumer, are paying this remember.
This download race is a lesson in spin. Virgin say they have the best broadband and Ofcom agrees, but avoid the entire issue of upload speed. It is not mentioned anywhere on their "Hooray, were the fastest" page. Nor is it shown in the T&C's.
Worse still, even their call centre staff can't tell you the upload speed you are going to get. They just tried to upsell me to 60Mbit, but when I asked what the upload speed was, the operative didn't have a clue. She said the information "was not coming up on her screen".
The only place it is mentioned is their traffic page in a confusing table listing upload speeds. There are two speeds listed. A 10:1 figure for each package and a 2nd default lower one. Again, the call centre person didn't know what the 10:1 option was or how to get it. I suspect you only get offered the 10:1 upload speed if you are tech savvy enough to cajole them for it. It is certainly not the speed you get by default, even on the expensive high bitrate packages.
Upload speed is increasingly important in this hyped cloud era. Yet even the 60Mb Virgin offering is only 3Mbit upload as standard. That's only 384KBytes/sec. Quite how you are supposed to put you life in the cloud at those kind of speeds is beyond me. It would take weeks just to upload all my 18MP photos.
What is particularly annoying is Virgin is fibre, not copper ADSL, so these pathetic upload speeds are achieved through artificial throttling.
So, if upload is important to you then BT Infinity 2 may give you a much better overall experience. Trouble is their TV offering is a joke and Virgin know it. I threatened to switch to BT Infinity and was told that if I dropped my Virgin broadband and phone, then my TV package would double in price taking the combined cost to 10p greater than I'm paying now. They have this all worked out and had all the numbers to hand.
Let's also not forget that Virgin's "We're doubling everyone's broadband, aren't we great" campaign is masking a 10% hike in every customers package price. I just don't need 60Mbit, and I also certainly don't need a 3rd price hike in a year (hence my call to them). By the way, they have obviously been trained up to handle complaints about the price hike and are clearly under strict instructions not to haggle as they normally do. Bottom line was "fine, go with BT then".
I think you'll find it's goddamn. Keep your profanities British please ;)
Luxury! All I had was a bag of diodes and a torch battery.
Tell kids today and they won't believe you...
to piss off.
EEEPad. Oh, wait a second...
Christ I so hate the "That is all" that now appears in all forums.
You should patent that idea quick :D
I agree. Seems like an example of form over function to me. That's going to take up more room in your bag and also looks much easier to drop. The hand model's fingers are at full stretch.
Those marketing people at work again.
Marketeer: "Hey, we need to make our drive stand out from the crowd. Let's make it nearly square"
Engineer: "But that will make it bigger surely?"
Marketeer:"Yeah, but don't worry it will look cool and we'll get a model with big hands"
Two months later:
Marketeer: "I said get a model with hands like a goalkeeper you idiot!
I thought we were running out quickly due to the big increase in touch screens which use it. Now the manufacturing of these new displays is going to burn thorough what's left even faster. If nothing else this is going to drive the price up.
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm
Now I like Gnome and I also like Shell, but which is better? There's only one way to find out...
FIIIIIGHT!!
Was your most regrettable decision the one about posting 140 character text messages (let's call them tweets) out to the world? :)
Johnny: I want to watch Spongebob!!
TV:Flick
Sophie: No, I want Peppa Pig!!
TV:Flick
Parent 1: Johnny, Let Sophie watch Peppa Pig.
TV:Flick
Johnny. Nooo! I want Spongebob
TV: Flick
Parent 2: No Johnny, it's Peppa Pig or the TV is going off
TV:Flick,switch off
:)
Did you try registering it with an existing BT or Panasonic DECT setup? This is important information. DECT is supposed to be a standard, but there are a lot of compatibility issues between manufacturers.
It renders the page instantly at a viewable resolution and then takes about a second to render the text at full resolution. Images are the same. They're very nearly full res instantly and them go full res along with the text after a second. Perfectly good enough for page flicking.
I would image it would be even faster on a Prime. PDF's are fine as well.
The killer app part of the Prime is that it has the keyboard. The value of which can't be under rated. So comparing the Prime to the Tosh is a bit apples and oranges.
The Prime HD will be months away. Like the Transformer dock drain issue, this is very bad PR for Asus. I expect the Prime will get a hardware fix as well.
Like the original Transformer, it looks like the Prime has a hardware issue. The GPS reception is weak due to the metal casing. A bit of a "Doh!" moment there Asus.They have released a new driver which improves it, but Asus will no doubt release a new hardware revision to fix the problem properly.
It is a shame they've tried to cover this up again (pulling the listing of GPS from the online specification is really rubbish Asus). They should have learnt from their experience trying to hush up Transformer issues. I guess the usual fear of ridiculous a class action is the cause.
The pre B5OK hardware Transformers had a problem whereby the battery drained to zero in 3 days even when the unit was switched right off. Asus sneaked out new hardware revision which sorted the problem. They tried to keep it quiet, but luckily a very public Facebook campaign forced them to offer to RMA the older affected units. Facebook does have it's uses then ;)
Keep an eye on the XDA Developers Prime forum to see if a new hardware revision is quietly released that properly fixes the GPS issue.
Apart from this problem though, I've had a play with a Prime though it really does deserve the rating given by El Reg. Asus should sell them by the bucket load.
Another router firmware upgrade that went wrong. Spin doctors will ensure we never know.
Now that is an old school reference if ever I saw one. Like a cobra ready to strike.
"But how long before the battery loses its zip and that becomes a maximum 3h flat-out, 24h real-world?"
Well, just as well it's removable then.
FIIIIIIGHT!
MI6 sure are cunning at hiding their address.
Anyway, what's more likely here?
a) MI6 can remotely force your camera phone (running gawd knows what variant of firmware) to delete and resequence the shot numbers to cover its tracks.
or
b) You didn't hold down the shutter button long enough.
If they let their building be filmed in goodness knows how many Hollywood blockbusers, I hardly doubt a tourist with a camera phone is going to bother them.
FFS.
Story sounds like a real nail biter Dickens :D
The Sky-Watcher Skyliner 250PX 10" (25cm) Dobsonians are very highly regarded. Yours for around £470.
http://www.opticalvision.co.uk/astronomical_telescopes/sky-watcher/dobsonians/skyliner-250px
"nobody uses your bloatware."
Adobe is more than just Flash you know. Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign etc. I think you'll find Adobe apps are the de-facto standard in a large number of vertical markets.
Let's not even get into how widespread Flash is, but nothing lasts forever and Adobe has acknowledged this. Guess who sells the most web content creation software? So whether Flash or HTMML5, Adobe will be there making a lot of money.
I mean really AC, engage at least one brain cell before posting :D
The coders and testers have all caught Googleitus. This increasingly common condition causes the sufferer to believe that it's okay to release beta grade code for consumers to test for you and the inevitable problems can be simply solved by pushing out patches every few days and nobody will mind.
I had 3 apps last week update every day for a week (one updated 3 times in one day!) to fix bugs. Most of the updates were simply to fix new bugs introduced in the previous update. The time spent fixing bugs caused by rushing to issue updates would be better spent doing a bit of QA surely? This patch and update mentality is killing software quality.
One upside, old school coders in their 40's are in very high demand now ;)
"http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox
That is all."
Unfortunately it is not all. Like the article clearly states, 4OD content on YouTube is DRMed and the downloader mentioned above cannot download.
"Well, I'm using the ultra-nifty YouTube video sucker available at
http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox"
It doesn't work with 4OD content. Like the article clearly says, it's DRMed.
"...and while I haven't tried to download any current TV shows "
Perhaps you should next time before posting?
The Voyagers are not running millions of lines of software.
"But to put it in perspective, lots of people have cars - a proportion don't use them every day."
The inevitable meaningless Apple car analogy in it's usual first page slot. Well done sir!
The inevitable Apple car analogy in it's usual first page slot :)
"thanks for the info, RTFM I guess..."
No probs. Happens to the best of us :)
"no-one is going to compete with the iPad until they make a 3G-capable tablet. I wish they would because then I'd buy one."
The Asus Transformer TF101G?
With all the fuss about the desktop you failed to mention that the kernel is version 3.0.
What a great milestone :)
"If you hate Unity, but want to stick with Ubuntu you can of course use GNOME 3 instead."
Or KDE.
Oh, and before the inevitable KDE 4 bashers kick off, an awful lot has changed since the 4.0 fiasco. That was like, you know, 3 years ago now. Get over it and give it a go. KDE 4.6 is very nice. In fact, dare I say it, I find it much easier and more intuitive to use than OS X.
Until we get the now standard "a small number of our customers were affected" press release.
Is that it's not Honeycomb friendly - portrait only :(
All these phrases can probably be found in the app ;)
@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.
Then buy an Asus Transformer :)
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.
"Nokia barely came out ahead, with a one-off payment of €430m."
It just goes to show how blasé private equity buyouts and the banking crisis has made us about huge numbers when €430m is considered "barely ahead". How depressing.
