Posts by Thomas

@Anonymous Coward

If you'd actually used an iPhone, you'd be aware that it's browsing experience is substantially better than any device Nokia have put out to date. People who have adopted the iPhone are those that have been willing to sacrifice MMS and video recording in order to get a browser that is actually usable — with the advantage of the fixed price data tariff that was previously rare (yes, a fault of the carrier, not anyone else's hardware).

People like you might be obsessed with tick chart feature comparisons (oh no! The iPhone can't do WAP! It doesn't have replaceable covers!), most consumers care about functionality and are happy to trade a leap in functionality in one area they value for the absence of functionality in others.

You seem to be attempting to extend a dislike for Apple's laziness in skipping a few less interesting features to their entire customer base. I suggest you attempt to get some perspective.

"Apple-labeled"

For those who don't know much English, there are two types of noun. One is the common noun, which identifies a class of things, the other is a proper noun, which identifies a unique thing. Common nouns appear with a lowercase letter, as in "I'm going to the shop". Proper nouns appear with capitalisation, as in "I'm going to Shaftesbury Avenue".

This rule is taken to extreme in legal contracts, where they tend to apply the slightly different rule that anything that is unique for the purposes of that text is a proper noun.

According to either construction, "Apple-labeled" therefore means "labelled by the unique entity, Apple". If Apple change their logo but continue labelling their computers then you can continue to install that copy of OS X on them. If someone other than Apple labels a computer but happens to use a picture of an apple, then that doesn't mean you are within the licence rules.

Surprisingly enough, the 'I don't really know the language' defence is rarely a winner, in the same way that if I, sitting here in the UK, decided that I wasn't bound by any software licence because the document Apple gave to me is a 'license' and that's exclusively a verb, the ruling would be unlikely to be in my favour.

BlackBerries have probably been outselling the iPhone since Day 1

You know, if you add all the BlackBerries together. And maybe politely ignore the Storm. I expect it's all to do with business readiness. I quite like the iPhone on which I am typing this message, but I'm not enjoying typing it.

To be applauded

For further speeding the reform of software patents, I hope.

But that we could cut operators out of these decisions...

Maybe they didn't like the Dells because they don't do mobile television? That's something consumers really really want!

@ sleepy

Gosh, you're optimistic aren't you? I expect ARM/Linux will slowly erode the bottom end of the netbook market, but I'd be surprised if Microsoft are irrelevant by October 2010.

Kind of odd though

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Apple software is vulnerable, it just seems odd that the unit of measure used by this article is the number of people that another person thinks are likely to use vulnerabilities at a hacking conference.

Nobody wants mobile TV?

Are you crazy? Millions upon millions who bought WAP-enabled phones and routinely engage in video calls are clamouring for it! You speak as though TV audiences overall are in decline and mobile TV is merely an expensive way to deliver more of what people already have more than enough of in a very inconvenient format.

Not so much a rehash as a hash?

Better special effects make a better movie only if your main interest in movies is the special effects. In which case, the rest of the industry is now so adept at taking your money with week after week of films about superheroes that you're not likely to be especially interested in a film about a man that can't fly.

Would it be more forgivable if the handset was't substandard?

I'm inclined to say 'no'. But that may be because I'm older than 12 and, as a result, am not generally very impressed by schoolyard bickering.

He's probably right

You know, about not being too worried about losing money while they have so much of it and everyone is losing money, but to focus on positioning for when the market next goes up.

However, I can't help thinking that the Windows 7 for netbooks line explains why they've gone to so much effort to push Windows XP onto netbook producers now. Consumers already associate having Windows with having a 'proper computer', now let's see what netbook manufacturers will do in a couple of years when they can either add an extra £50 to the current Windows license cost or try to switch back to Linux. Why can't they see they're busy digging their own graves?

Quite nice

Riddle me this: what do you get if you take Safari 3, speed up the Javascript, throw in Opera's speed dial, Chrome's address-bar-in-the-tab and Firefox's awesome bar (without the user alienating, idiotic name)?

Conflating issues

What has the shape of the connector got to do with the power efficiency of the transformer? And why make no allowance for the fact that most iPhones and a significant chunk of all other phones (I'm singling the iPhone out because it is so closely connected with iTunes, take it as a slur if you must be childish about it) are charged nowadays by plugging into a computer, not the wall?

They spent millions developing that idea?

Someone said "what about if we did mip mapping, like on GPUs, but only generated the detail levels when they're needed?" and that cost millions?

The Apple store was borne out of necessity...

... in that circa 2001, before the iPod, nobody else really stocking Apple computers and Apple had negligible visibility on the high street. Maybe Microsoft's store is a similar tactical move - purely to reclaim consumer mindshare irrespective of potential profits and/or the ability to show much more than the Microsoft and Windows logos in their shops?

Yes, I think I've spoken to this person...

... the Apple fan with the ridiculously extreme views who won't tolerate dissent? I'm sure I've seen him around on the internet.

@Rob Beard

No, you're wrong. The 'Late 2008'/whatever additions are used by Apple on the service manuals and other support pages only, and are used there just because the various bits of hardware really do change. If you went into an Apple Store or used the electronic store then you'd just see that it is a white, plastic MacBook.

As I'm sure you noticed in the text of this article, "in January, with virtually no fanfare at all, Apple went and upgraded the white MacBook".

@AC

Nope, as Mage says, eInk displays make each and every pixel either a solid white or a solid black. So they reflect light just like real paper and don't let light through from behind just like real paper. The advantage over LCD — besides the massive power savings for static displays — is that the contrast ratio is very close to real ink on real paper. Quite probably a front light would work, albeit with the uneven distribution of light that they tend to have.

However, I'm not familiar with any eInk technology that involves physical rotation, I think most use electrophoresis.

I wish someone had done this for Brandon Lee

Has anyone else seen those Crow sequels? The original may have been a relatively light genre piece, but at least it was enjoyable!

@AWeirdoNamedPhil, others

Surely the four day battery life and the screen flashing on page turns is related to the eInk display? Those displays tend to update slowly and consume power to change state, but subsequently retain an image without power. While the user is just reading a page of text, the device could in theory power itself down completely.

It strikes me that you therefore get not only a much, much better reading surface than an Eee or iPhone or whatever, but also one that is thoroughly unsuitable for most normal desktop tasks.

I'm not usually a fan of Orlowski's articles...

... but I couldn't find a fault with his sole climate change article this week. Seemed like perfectly good journalism to me; we all know from previous op-ed pieces that he, ummm, doesn't agree with outlets such as the BBC on current climate change science but that piece was entirely neutral. Or maybe the flamer thinks Orlowski is some sort of witch and will melt if he comes into contact with water?

@Anonymous Coward "How will new users get onto the internet?"

Your argument is that Apple are a monopoly because they are the only people that make Apple computers? Some sort of satire perhaps?

The Zune 1 was tangibly worse than the competition

30gb might not be enough for some people's entire music libraries, but it is enough for several days of audio. Good luck trying to navigate that with the original Zune's discrete button controls, and try not to feel too ripped off that they're designed specifically to look like a click wheel, in an attempt to pull the wool over your eyes.

After that, it's the second generation Zune versus the iPod Touch. I think the various comments above mine are correct - the only people who would be likely to be swayed by Microsoft as a brand are significantly more likely to be swayed by Apple. People who feature hunt are no more likely to pick Microsoft than e.g. Sansa. In fact, they're probably more likely to pick Sansa because of the extremely negative press that Microsoft have bought themselves among the technically knowledgable with Internet Explorer, five separate editions of Vista, XPS, the killing of ISO, etc.

Since the Zune launched, the world (including even Apple) has ditched DRM for music. Surely there's now no way Microsoft can achieve what they want? The best they can hope for is a small chunk of a commodity market. They should either ditch the Zune or chuck it out to whatever departments makes the keyboards and the mice. And kill its requirement for it's own special synchronisation software and marketplace. Apple can get away with that because of their marketshare, Microsoft can't given that they also supply the synchronisation software that everyone else uses with their OS, that nearly everybody uses.

That all said, from a brand positioning point of view it might make sense for the shareholders to keep the XBox. If they kill that then will Microsoft have any meaningful quantity of fans? The whole world sitting every day through Windows, Office and Outlook simply because of a lack of alternatives isn't going to last forever and Microsoft are going to need to appear something other than stodgy and belligerent.

@Stu Reeves, sleepy

Stu: that's an example of using one product at a different scale. The Microsoft allegation concerns misleading advertising. They said simultaneously "this is Vista" and "this machine can run Vista". They did not make it clear to most consumers that the two references to Vista were not to the same set of software.

It is a matter of measure and degree and whether, on the specific evidence, the judge thinks that Microsoft made statements that were likely to be misleading. It's not about abstract arguments, in the same way that the EU's recent Internet Explorer decision is about the specific effect on the market as it was at the time of bundling that particular browser in the exact manner that Microsoft did so, not on the abstract notion of whether OSs may come with browsers.

sleepy: if that's true then Microsoft may be able to recover against Intel should they lose this case, or have Intel brought into the current case as a codefendant. The severity of Intel's actions would determine what proportion of any fine Microsoft could recover.

@Pierre

The default is to require the superuser password in order to install things like this trojan, which go in the StartupItems. However, by default the permissions are set up so that no password is required to read or write to /Applications, so for someone running a Mac with the default security, a trojan that presented itself as an ordinary drag install application* and, when run, modified something like Safari would have no problems. OS X v10.5 has a warning dialogue that pops up the very first time you run an application that has been drag installed to the effect that you should make sure you trust the source before you run it, but I doubt that purchasing a Mac instead of a Windows machine suddenly people more willing to read warning messages.

My /Applications requires a superuser password for write privileges, but I'm cautious.

* 99.9% of applications are drag and drop to install, iWork comes as a package, so runs through the built-in installer.

@Pierre

If you're having to buy a new laptop every year then I think you might be engaging of something of a false economy.

Surprised, anyone?

So, the Mac I use daily is not invulnerable to attack. That's not really news, is it? Apple were late to introduce address space randomisation, so it's no surprise that it isn't perfect yet. But like Microsoft, we should probably applaud them at least for acknowledging the problem (well, as much as Apple ever do, in that we can guess they've acknowledged it long after the fact from their subsequent actions) and beginning to tackle it?

@raving angry loony

You're happy with OpenOffice? I chucked it as soon as I observed that command+cursors skips back and forward words as expected, but the shortcut to highlight words is option+shift+cursors — which makes no logical sense and is extremely awkward to do physically.

A pure configuration problem?

I'm pretty sure Windows has a "notify me when updates are available, don't automatically download and install them". That said, if they can find the ecosystem to support it then the NHS really should switch to Linux for simple budgetary reasons.

The Atom... like the MSI Wind, etc?

I'm rubbish at this stuff - are we essentially being told that, at least per the rumour, the next Mac Mini will feature hardware similar to all those netbooks that some people with no regard for intelectual property laws have been installing OS X on, but with a separate GPU? If so, surely somebody already has a reasonably informed opinion on how well OS X runs on broadly that sort of hardware? It'd certainly be more helpful than an apparently entirely speculative op-ed piece.

@AC

I think most powerline ethernet thingies apply encryption - there's certainly a relevant standard and at least one of the major brands comes with the feature to automatically propagate an encryption key if you have physical access to the plugs.

Hopefully it's more secure than WEP was...

To add my thoughts to everyone above (except Aaron Holesgrove)

I don't wish suffering on anyone and I hope that Steve makes a full recovery.

@"Mactards"

Either that or they'll all be subjected to extreme bile and ignorance, irrespective of whether they consider a sealed-in battery to be acceptable. "Oh, guess what, you enjoy one or more products produced by a company that doesn't always launch the best-in-class solutions; ergo you must be a sheep". Definitely a logically rigorous argument, probably as defensible as "You bought Windows, therefore you must be in favour of talking paperclips and MP3 players that can't handle the final day of leap years".

To the original author: what does that final sentence about the warranty have to do with anything? Either it's a cheap shot or you neglected to mention something in the preceeding text; I prefer to believe the latter.

Hopefully a wake-up call?

I think other providers are going to have difficulty catching up with the AppStore in the short term, hopefully this prediction will shake a few companies out of inaction. I guess it's a further argument in favour of OS standardisation across handsets - though without a single company at the top controlling the whole thing we're unlikely to see a product as smooth as the AppStore. Probably the other players will just mess around with poor market strategies (the analogue of subscription music services as a rebut to iTunes) until someone hits on just doing the same thing with fewer end-user restrictions. Or worse, the networks will decide to set up their own handset agnostic application stores, so developers will need to work alongside 30 listing agencies rather than just 1 and have to deal with greatly increased support costs and users will be confused when handsets either aren't marketed clearly enough to make it obvious what they'll run or else by the marketing connected to handsets trying to make it obvious what they'll run.

So, it'll probably be like PCs - commoditised hardware, most of it running the exact same OS.

@Vladimir, Tom Cooke

Vladimir: I suppose you could always download the open source parts of OS X, such as the kernel and the HTML rendering code - that'd give you a pretty good insight into the bits that most people and applications are likely to touch irrespective of whether Jobs wants you to.

Tom Cooke: yeah, I noticed that. It's probably slightly misleading to say that the list has been formalised; the problems that are part of the list have been formalised, the list itself is written in parts in a broken 13-year old's blog English.

The iPhone seems to beat this one in only one area...

... WebOS applications seem to be explicitly limited to HTML+CSS+Javascript offerings, as per the original iPhone firmware. Apart from this, and without really being able to be too certain on just the video evidence, this really does look like someone beating Apple at their own game. Good work, Palm!

The BBC posting a barely researched article on climate change?

Gosh, next they'll be hiring Americans to write troll articles about climate change and referring to everyone as a 'tard or a member of some cult or another for cheap sensationalism. Thank goodness The Register is here to look out for us.

Download seems to work for Internet Explorer 7 users only?

Or maybe it's just me?

He's acting like an idiot

But I guess he's quite emotional right now. Hopefully the courts will slap him about over the kidney thing and give him access to his kids.

@Sarah Bee - housework starts with an 'h'. Can you say 'h'?