Methinks he doth protest too much...

This couldn't possibly be an attempt to boost his AV business, could it?

Frankly, as a Mac user I have utterly given up using AV software - in practice it causes far more problems (slowing down machines, causing incompatibilities) than it is ever likely to solve. In all my 25 years of MAc computing I have never had a major virus, and only a couple of times had any malware at all. Unlike my ex, who was often reduced to tears by the logjam of viruses and (mostly) AV warnings that popped up all the time on her Windows machine.

That said, Apple is extremely slow at responding to genuine problems - but to assert that Apple's inaccurately-labelled Walled Garden* approach makes it less secure than the "install what the heck you like" approach of Android is disingenuous to say the least.

* It's a pretty rubbish walled garden that is open to the internet, surely?

Amazon /= Android

Amazon's Fire uses a forked version of Android, as the author bloody well should know. So the idea that Android's openness is unifying is downright wrong - it's actually potentially its Achilles Heel (from Google's point of view).

Never, ever forget that Google is not a benevolent servant of mankind, but an advertising company, selling data about everyone who uses it. They are not "open" about that data, which is why even their faithful partners Samsung keep alternative OSs going...

Nice - but still fugly compared to similar iPad apps

Have a look at Flipboard or Zite on the iPad, and then at Currents - there really is no comparison.

Currents has some nice features - the translation one, certainly - but in terms of polish and attention to detail it is merely workmanlike to me.

God knows how Piper Jaffray make their money, because so far they have been - like most so-called analysts - utterly useless at accurately predicting what Apple will or will not do.

My bold, high-value prediction: at some stage in 2012 Apple will release a new iPhone, which will be called "The New iPhone", and will be better in lots of ways than the one before it. The blogosphere will shriek that it isn't as innovative as they predicted it should be, and marks the End of Apple. Lots of people will buy it.

Teach thinking, not facts.

Gradgrind was wrong: facts can now be summoned from the vasty deeps of the interweb without us having to store them permanently in our heads.

Indeed, the whole business of learning a specialised set of facts was just part of the barrier to entry that the Professions instigated. As the Professions become less and less relevant, so the emerging careers require less pure retaining of facts and more ability to reshape and rethink ways of doing things. This doesn't mean that no knowledge is required - in many ways more knowledge, of more things, is needed. However, introducing children to tools which can fundamentally reshape the stuff they experience digitally can only be a good idea.

More link bait...

Ooh - so brave, so counter-cultural: "I am going to speak an unspeakable truth."

Except so much of it isn't true. I, too, cleared put loads of apps and content when upgrading to the new iPad, expecting the larger photos and apps would take up way more room. And guess what? Yes, you lose a bit of space, but it's minimal (about 1gb). Hardly the apocalypse.

And then there's the dismissal of the obvious advantages of the new display in order to moan that his crappy workflow will have to be adapted. Boo hoo.

As always with these sorts of mock-contentious articles, the question should always be asked: "What would YOU have done"? What iPad was he expecting, which would have satisfied him? There wasn't one - he just wanted to write an article to counter all the "new iPad is a success" pieces, as so many other saddoes have done.

Yay to the aspect ratio point

Android screens are a different aspect ratio, which makes them longer and thinner in portrait position. Therefore a 4" diagonal Android phone will have a smaller screen real estate than a 4" iPhone.

Apples and oranges.

What will they think of to complain about next?

Already Consumer Reports is backing off from its apocalyptic "burning iPad" claims. How nice to know that the next storm in a teacup has already been manufactured.

Out of the 3 million devices that were sold just last weekend (the total now must be significantly higher than that) statistics would expect there to be quite a few that aren't performing correctly. Now if Apple refused to exchange those for working ones, or claimed that massively reduced WiFi performance was "within normal parameters", then I would accept that there was a story.

For the record, mine works just fine on WiFi, and doesn't get even noticeably warm.

"Crushed by reality"??

You are assuming that Gartner's anal-ysis (ie. numbers pulled out of their ass) has anything to do with reality. The reality is that people aren't particularly fond of sitting in front of a PC, especially one running Windows, and the fact that they can increasingly avoid doing so via their phone or iPad is a blessed relief.

Latency/slowness is a big problem, methinks

Even when linked up to ethernet, the lack of responsiveness is a big part of making people feel out of control. It gets a bit like using WAP sometimes - terrified of clicking on the wrong button, because you know you'll be stuck for ages waiting for the page to appear before you can press the Back button again.

"It just shows that branding is key"?

Er... only in the sense that producing a demonstratively better user experience - and then showing it to people in adverts - is key.

2% of the sale price?

Well, Android phones already pay 5% to Microsoft, so it may just be that this is the rate that Samsung negotiated. Seems unlikely, somehow.

Yes, it's expensive - but you get a lot back when you sell it.

32Gb iPhone 4S = £319 + £36 per month (Vodafone) for a one year contract. 32Gb iPhone 4 sold for £320. Previous SIM-only Vodafone monthly bill was £20, with no WiFi hotspots. Also, the warranty had expired. So cost of upgrading = £180 over the year, plus WiFi hotspots and a warranty.

For that I get much faster web access (it may be a combination of the A5 processor and the new antenna, but it makes a huge difference when out of WiFi range), a far better camera (though I miss the slightly wider angle of the 4) and Siri - which is amazing for a few things (being read and dictating text messages in the car, doing a quick response to emails, and - a small thing, but incredibly useful - making reminders, calendar events and setting alarms).

Samsung doth protest too much, methinks...

The standards-based patents HAVE to be accessible under FRAND, and Samsung knows that. They can go to court about exactly how much Apple needs to pay, but they can't use their patents as a basis for banning a mobile phone until that process has been exhausted.

Meanwhile, Apple's patents relate to stuff they actually, y'know, invented and designed. For all the "You started it, Apple, now how do you like them bananas?" comments, the fact remains that there are very few other companies defending patents for stuff they developed themselves.

Not trying to defend the patent system, but Apple are at least using the original principles behind it.

Er... where are the 10 phones that outshine the iPhone 4GS?

Not trying to be an Apple apologist, but that was a pretty crappy list. Quite a few of them aren't even vaguely iPhone competitors, and many are referred to in the list as being "underpowered" or "makes the text look blurry"...

Personally, I think that Apple could have done a lot more to temper the loony expectations of the media and tecchies, as the media reactions have been entirely predictable. Had - for no particularly good reason - Apple introduced exactly the same phone, but with more iPad 2-like tapered sides and somehow-different back, and called it the iPhone 5, then most of the pundits would have been pretty happy with that.

The fact that they followed the pattern of the 3GS, kept a perfectly good form factor (as they do in all their products when they get to it) - which means you don't need to buy new sets of accessories, docks, etc. - and produced a phone that won't alienate people who've bought the iPhone 4 recently (but will be a huge step up for the 3GS owners coming to the end of their 2-year contracts) seems to have been taken as a sign of weakness.

As more considered voices have been saying for a long time now, it's the ecosystem that matters, not the individual devices. In the past, handset makers didn't upgrade the SW on their existing products - they wanted you to buy a new device every year. Apple is happy for you to buy a new device every 2 years, and keeps updating it as they go along.

So why aren't Samsung suing everyone?

Is this teally good news?

If they really have patents that are intrinsic to the use of any mobile phone (which is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that they are threatening the iPhone 5 before it even appears), then Windows 8 phones, LG phones, BlackBerrys and all others must be infringing the patents.

Are we going to end up with a vast circle-jerk where everyone pays royalties to everyone else (as in MS getting $15 for every Android phone), thus jacking up the cost for no benefit whatsoever?

Portrait mode?

I've seen absolutely nothing about how the W8 tablet behaves in portrait mode - which is how I generally use my iPad...

Having said that, W8 does look impressive - it already has plenty of fans*.

* Getting rid of all that excess heat from the CPU, ha ha ha. I'm sure it won't be an issue when it launches in a year's time. Almost certainly.

Yup - where's the need to upgrade?

I don't play high-resolution role-playing games or shot 'em ups. I don't do HD video editing or 3D modelling. On my 4-year old Mac Pro I have enough RAM to run quite a few programs at the same time, and I can run the latest versions of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator quit happily. Yes, it would be nice if it were a bit faster, but it's not an issue. Why should I upgrade?

The same apples to my iPhone 4 - I see no compelling reason to buy the iPhone 5 (let's see if Tim Cook can project enough of an RDF field to open my wallet). I could be tempted by a high-resolution screen iPad, but only if I can sell my old one for enough to make the final cost relatively trivial.

But the new MacBook Air... oh, that is very tempting... :)

Wow

An interesting, intelligent and thought-provoking article in the Reg. Reminds me how it used to be. Keep it up, guys.

T'was an iOS app first...

Just in case anyone was thinking of switching to get it...

Motorola is a dog.

Google has been dealing with Motorola on Android-related stuff way before the puchase idea, so they must have noticed that Moto is the worst cultural fit you could imagine. Process-bound to the point of paralysis, Moto is the antithesis of Google's instinctive, let's-wing-it culture.

"It's going to be run as a separate company," says Google. How's that going to work? Will Moto be able to run Windows Phone OS as well? Will they be able to make their own tweaks to Android (OK, given Blur, not such loss)? Will they get to keep the $3bn in cash they have in the cupboard?

Not holding my breath for this one to work.

Who the heck are they aiming this at?

Any Harry Potter fans already have all the books. Anyone who's not ready any of them is less likely to start reading them now, as the films series has ended. Even fans who like to re-read the books continually would have to be wealthy indeed to regard this as a tipping point towards a Sony reader.

Lame.

Desperately spinning...

Gotta love the argument that because Android tablets aren't selling, this will force their manufacturers to sell them at a loss - and suddenly they will become incredibly popular! Of course - Apple are doooomed! Let's all sell everything at a loss, and we'll all become rich.

Seriously, why does this Google shill get a column here? He might as well be saying "We welcome today's news, which demonstrates Googles commitment etc."...

Catch-22

Since I can't seem to upgrade from 1.6 to 2.1, this all feels rather pointless. I welcome our benign dictatorial iOS overlords...

Apple vs Android?

This "research" (it was conducted by Adobe, who have a vested interest in promoting web-based content) is hard to analyse without knowing what the breakdown of the mobile phone platforms used was.

If it was all iOS phones, then it might be useful - but if there were a lot of Android/Win7/WebOS/Symbian phones as well (lacking as many dedicated apps), then the web-based stuff may well get a greater boost. We're not even told how may are smartphones, for heck's sake.

Until we're told more, I tend to mistrust research like this. And so should El Reg.

A totally unbiased viewpoint!

Hmm... We get the same story from the Strobe folk every time - Open Source will win! And what is it that Strobe do...?

Surely the reality is that just because something is Open Source, it doesn't mean that it's "better". Linux isn't better than Win7 or OS X for most people. Android hasn't been successful because it's Open Source - it's because Google has put billions of dollars behind its development - and then given it away...

Poor old Jonny Ive

There he is, trying to make Apple distinctive and different - and every laptop, mobile and tablet maker in the world is apparently unable to resist ripping him off.

This Asus, for example, is not merely MacBookAir-esque. It's virtually identical. And the latest Dell XPS-15 is a MacBook Pro rip-off, too.

Or is this a cunning plan to destroy Apple by making it impossible to distinguish MacBooks/iPhones/iPads from the competition?

If everyone needs to be online, then this needs education.

Does anyone really think that everything won't need to be accessed online at some stage in the future?

It makes much more sense - but first you need a massive education process to prepare people for it. A bit like the digital TV switchover. Set a deadline (June 1st, 2015, say) after which all government and local council communication/forms will only be online. Give everyone their own official citizen's email address and secure web space. Have a staggered process of moving different regions online. Subsidise PCs for pensioners (as they did with digital TV).

It would also make sense to use the existing cheap and cheerful devices that are designed for simple operation, like the OLPC or the Vodafone Webbox - using Android would be far more user friendly, cheaper and robust than the overkill of Windows.

Cellebrite UFED suggests iPhone has more data than others

From their website: http://www.cellebrite.com/forensic-products/ufed-physical-analyzer-2.html

ENHANCED DECODING UFED Physical Analyzer 2.0 introduces enhanced decoding, enabling support for multiple data types such as: chat, email, web bookmarks (favorites), web history, SIM data, cookies, notes, MMS, instant messages, Bluetooth devices, locations, journeys, GPS Fixes, call logs, text messages, contacts and more. The enhanced decoding allows much more data to be analyzed and displayed per mobile device.

iPHONE DECODING ENHANCEMENTS iPhone decoding includes call logs, contacts, text messages, email, locations (Wi-Fi and Cell Tower), web bookmarks Skype (contacts, calls and chat) and Facebook contacts. UFED Physical Analyzer 2.0 is also capable of parsing an iPhone backup as well as an iPhone encrypted backup with known password.

"Always With You" beats "Best In Class"...

The crucial advantage of the smartphone is that it's always with you. How often do you have a dedicated camera with you (unless you're Cartier-Bresson)? I have a Nikon D3 and a Panasonic LX-3, but increasingly the photos of my kids are taken with my iPhone. Because I always have it with me.

There's another wrinkle, as well - you can do far more with your photos on a smartphone than you can on pretty much any dedicated camera. You can crop, adjust, add fairly sophisticated effects - and then upload to Flikr, send as an email, etc. Snapper Thom Hogan has been arguing for some years now that camera makers haven't adapted to the connected, add-an-app world - and they still haven't. You can read some of his thoughts here: [http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/4/looking-ahead.-future-of-camera-world.-part-1.]

The Baroque Trilogy

by Neal Stephenson would be awesome (and rather long)... And you'd want to have Cryptonomicon as a prequel as well...

How many times have we heard this?

"At last, [re. the new larger-screen Tabs] a real challenge to the iPad"...

How many iPad challengers have the media announced since it was introduced? And how may have actually shipped, let alone had any traction with the buying public? The iPads (1 + 2) are be no means perfect, but the competition has been lacklustre.

Retina display observations

First, the term Retina Display has no real meaning, so it can mean whatever Apple says it means (cf. Humpty Dumpty). And iPad will be held significantly further away from one's eyes that a smaller iPhone, so in practice doubling the resolution both ways will result in an effectively pixel-less display.

Second, I suspect that Apple will be redefining this term to mean "double the number of pixels from a standard display", as this seems to be the way they are going for future displays, rather than full vector resolution-independence (far trickier for developers).

Poor voice signal

Is usually the reason for installing a femto. It makes much more sense for operators to use femtos rather than built new stations in remote areas.

So what?

No-one actually likes Flash - they put up with it as a necessary evil, just so they can watch the odd video clip. They install complicated programs to try to suppress it wherever they can, to avoid the intrusiveness of Flash ads. They curse it as their browsers beachball or crash - Chrome is even designed to limit the damage Flash can do by restricting its influence just to the page it's on.

How sadly typical, then, that El Reg appears to be championing Flash - where in any other circumstances they would be howling for it to be destroyed - merely because Steve Jobs, El Reg's bête noir, has banned it from iOS.

If a common, agreed web video format were magically agreed on today, would anyone (apart from advertisers) give a toss about Flash tomorrow?

Not sure you grok Google...

Surely what Google groks is advertising.

Advertising makes things appear to be free to the consumer, while Google rakes in its cut. This is why Android is "free", and why Android apps tend to be far more ad-based than iOS ones.

So where do you see Google's embracing of subscriptions? Or did it sound good when you wrote it?

No SIM card slot because Version CDMA doesn't use a SIM

Duh. I though you guys should know stuff like that?

Resistive screen? WTF?

It was capacitive screens that made touch screen devices not just usable but enjoyable. I can't imagine anyone going back there just to save a few bucks.

It's wildly different

Looks like the MS version supports using the sides for thumb actions as well. Unfortunately, there's a very good reason that Apple didn't do this on the Magic Mouse, as you need a reasonable grip on the mouse to use the finger swipes...

Not as well laid out as the Asus, I'd say...

Having the screen set so far back when the keyboard is exposed is going to make it pretty unbalanced - anything but the lightest of touches on the screen and it will topple backwards (assuming the keyboard base isn't incredibly heavy).

The Asus chucks the touchpad (for obvious reasons) so that the screen is much more centred, which makes much more sense.

Not exactly impartial...

Given that the author is part of a company helping to make open source mobile apps.

I don't disagree that Android will carry on growing - it's effectively free for phone and other device manfacturers, so why wouldn't they use it? And it's true that Apple has done nothing explicitly to counter that growth - though what that could be is not obvious.

However - despite links to dodgy surveys - there's no evidence of a huge gold rush towards Android development. The ground-breaking, news-making (and profit-making) apps are pretty much all starting off in iOS.

Angry Birds is an interesting case - making lots of direct sales in iOS, but starting to make significant money as an ad-supported Android app. This may be the direction that it goes - Android = Advertising-led, downmarket; iOS = direct sales, upmarket. This looks like a win for Google, but a loss for most of the manufacturers as smartphones plummet towards the lowest common denominator.

I predict paid Android apps moving to even lower price points that the 59p (99c) baseline to try and get volume, and in-app advertising to become even more intrusive. I also predict that Google will try and set up its own app store focusing on upmarket/well-designed apps in an attempt to stop Android looking too downmarket.

Or you could just buy from the US

Just get yourself an amazon.com account, and buy your Kindle ebooks from there - despite what Amazon says, it's significantly cheaper.

This also allows you to do the sort of impulse buys that (a) have sold so many Apps in the iTunes Store etc., and (b) thus provides more income for the publisher/author.

How often do these dumb industries need to have evidence that their pricing policies are counterproductive rubbed in their face before they admit they're wrong? Stupid question I know.

Either/Or

Either weighs a ton due to needing twice as much battery power / Or will only last a few hours before recharging.

Either way it's a dud.

Light + Rigid = Tricky

This is always going to be a problem if you have an outer shell.

A more Apple-like solution would be to make the case out of the battery - since it's not removable, what's the downside? This would require some techniques worth patenting, however...

Yer what?

You can't have it both ways, freetards.

Who the heck is online all the time?

There may be some places in the US where WiMax is all-pervasive, but here in the UK I don't think there's anywhere where you can be online all the time with a mobile device like a netbook (or a tablet, despite what Zuckerberg thinks).

Chrome OS at the moment seems far more appropriate for things like TV boxes and fixed-location web devices (refridgerators, etc.).