The one thing that I really dislike about the forums
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It's the middle sentence that bothers me. As a long-term register reader, I refuse to believe for a second that any of the staff give a monkeys one way or another whether I like some commentards witty remarks. It's got that sheen of false politeness that just makes me squirm and an overly enthusiastic exclamation mark at the end... makes me shudder. Surely more accurate copy would be:
If it is a fake then it's a pretty elaborate one. He's been featured in the German FT, got videos, blogs etc going back over 6 months and really spent a lot of time creating content and documentation.
Exactly. I bought a decent 40" TV about 3 years ago. It does HD and digital and all that malarkey and I don't imagine I'll be buying another TV until I break this one. The only recent innovation seems to be 3D and that isn't going to sell me a new TV until the technology gets MUCH better and MUCH cheaper.
Re: Announcement now published - 10k chars are back
This new forum stuff looks pretty good in general, but I always use m.theregister.co.uk (mainly to avoid the annoying pagination in your longer articles) and the forums and comments sections are a bit rubbish on the mobile version. Shirley something that can be improved.
You must stick with commentard. As an expat, one of the reasons I come back to el reg on a daily basis is to get my dose of snarky, mildly-offensive British-English. The day you start to treat us lazy punters and commentards politely is the day I start worrying what you're plotting....
What kind of idiotic anti-MS bullshit is this? MS traditionally made operating systems. They helped to make computers cheap and widely available and didn't limit in any way what software people could run on the platform or what they could do with it after they had purchased it. Please explain how this damaged creativity?
@AC "Being open source does not preclude any piece of software from being easy to use."
I have to both agree and disagree with this statement. Being open source doesn't in any way force software to be harder to use, but unfortunately this is normally the case. I'm a big advocate of open source (because I'm a geek) but there's a reason why Windows and OSX dominate on laptop/desktop. They're simple, fairly idiot-proof, no set-up or technical knowledge is required and they have marketing support and advocacy. Personally, I love messing around with different versions of linux, but 90%+ of my friends outside of the tech world have never even heard of it.
In the mobile sphere, people love iOS because it just works and Android is rapidly taking the old MS position of strong brand, pretty good and plenty of marketing dollars to support it.
A true open source mobile OS is likely to end up with the same market share as linux does on the desktop and it's precisely because it will be harder to use and is unlikely to be supported by comprehensive marketing (so nobody will even hear about it).
used to see the same (3 or 4 years ago) when I looked at the web analytics for a large company. Mac/Safari was a tiny proportion of the user base but spent well above their share. Personally, I interpret that to mean that Apple users have more money than sense, but only 'cos I think it's fun to wind them up!
"With the clear success of the Kindle e-Reader over the past 3 years, and Kindle Fire possibly succeeding in the low-priced Tablet market, we view this as the next logical step for Amazon."
I'm not so sure. Phone users are likely to buy apps (which are relatively low-margin) but e-books and film/TV are a pretty poor experience on a phone. If the (statistically irrelevant) usage patterns of smartphones that I've observed amongst my friends and I is accurate then the most common activity is web browsing - and I don't see how Amazon can monetise that.
I recently moved to Barcelona, and a one month pass for the central zones (metro and bus) now costs me the same amount as 3 days on TFL. The tube in London is one of the most expensive public transport systems in any major European city.
.. on android, maybe not on whatever overlay your device manufacturer has put on top of it, but Android let's you delete those apps and every manufacturer flavour of it I have used does too.
Nice to hear that MS have made a good job of it. It'll be interesting to see some more competition in this area and I think the idea of an optional pen interface is inspired.
but the point of the article here is that many people do use their real identities online, especially older people (my dad doesn't hide his identity on skype). I actually don't have a great problem with MS trying to use the data from that to identify people. If you've chosen to not be anonymous on skype then so be it, similarly if you want to use a pseudonym on skype and link it to a random email address etc then you should be allowed to do so. As long as it's optional then it's ok, many people really are not that concerned about online anonymity and really most people have nothing to fear. Now, google trying to force people to use true names is something that I really don't agree with.
I signed up for the beta of google+ just to see what it was like - I already use other social networks to keep in touch with my friends (I live abroad and it's a very easy way to keep abreast of life at home). I honestly think that google+ is much, much better than Facebook (the main competition) BUT most of my friends have never even heard of it and so I find that there are very few active users in my streams. Facebook has the user base that means that I can keep in touch with all of my friends and know what they are up to. The only people posting on google+ are journalists and I already have RSS feeds and twitter for the people I am interested in, so I don't need google+ for that.
Facebook have managed to effectively create a monopolistic barrier to entry to prevent anyone else from getting into their market. 600 million users? Want to connect with your real world friends? Keep in touch with distant family? Use Facebook. Even if google+ is the best thing ever, it will be years before my mum, my sister and all my non-techy friends move over to it.
I remember spending hours and hours playing this as a kid, great fun. They don't make 'em like this anymore - in fact all the latest first person shooters are just too hard for me!
I'd love to believe Google's arguments against the software patent system (even though I know they're doing it out of self interest, I still believe it's a worthy cause) but when they go and do this sort of arsehattery it just makes them look like the 2-faced onanists they (and all large corporations) are. FAIL
"Oh well, it's the only machine I can afford that doesn't include a built in monitor.."
Really? 'Cos I can give you a list of hundreds of machines without built in monitors that are much, much cheaper. No fruit logos, but you can easily get the spec for less money elsewhere.
I think this is a great idea. I like the Atom N550 processor in my Samsung netbook. It's fast and the battery life is great, so no complaints from me.
As for the netbook being a defunct form factor, it really just depends on how much of a fashion victim you are. I was on a long train ride yesterday and used my netbook to surf the net and watch a film - both at the same time. It amused me greatly to see the person sat near to me with a fruity tablet having to switch between video and web (can't do them both at the same time) and also having to awkwardly prop his device in a position where he could see the screen clearly. So, he paid over twice the money for something that does less and is more awkward to use. Win for me.
Anecdotally, this figure would seem to be borne out by all the useless twats in my office that carry their iPads wherever they go.
(not Apple bashing, I just don't know anyone with another tablet. We did get a couple of the original Galaxy Tabs in to test but they were rubbish and nobody wanted to be seen with them)
... you could have read the article. And yes, it is US only. Hopefully us Brits will get access soon.
It never fails to amaze me that so many media companies still think it's perfectly reasonable to have different releases for different markets. I download quite a lot of TV shows for that reason, I want to watch them when all my friends in the States watch them, not 2-3 months later when they reach UK television.
wow, you clearly need to take it easy. Many, many, many, many news sites use the word "iPhone" as a generic term for smartphones. Ok, so maybe you expect better of the reg (being a tech site), but really, calm down, take some deep breaths and think "is this sub specifically designed to anger all iPhone users, or am I just over-reacting?"
It always amazes me how negative the comments are on this site to any articles discussing business practices or processes.
Pretty much all of us work in some sort of profit making business, it's important to understand how these work and how you can improve them because (this is the key bit) if my company isn't doing this and their competitors are doing it successfully then my company is going to take a hit. If my company takes a hit then (sooner or later) so do I.
Then there's the professionalism bit. I work on web projects, if I don't understand the business side of this then how on earth am I going to educate the business idiots I work with (because they mostly don't understand this stuff)? Just because you don't like something doesn't make it rubbish. I don't like being marketed at, but I can assure you that it works and as long as it does I'm going to need to understand these essential business techniques so that my company can make more money and I can demand a bigger share of it.
...but not always the right thing to do. Right now, MS are busy buying apps for their platform at a terrific rate- paying developers and companies to build versions of apps for their new platform. At the very least I can see this leading to WP7 taking a lead position in the business market. If they can get into the hands of the businessmen then they'll propagate from their to normal people.
Don't forget that MS was slow into the PC market (and not the best) but they eventually managed to dominate.
So how about you just sell a slightly different app on iOs? example:
News site subscription service for fancy iOs app costs $6.99 with Apple's 30% cut.
Same subscription service for web only or for Android, WP7 etc costs $5 (because you don't have to give a cut to Apple) BUT it's not the same product because this particular subscription service is blue and is called [insert name] Extra++ (or some other slight name variant) and has some extra shiny bits on it.
Hey presto, price your app however you like in any market 'cos it's not the same as the product in the App Store!
Whether you buy a book from a bookstore, clothes from a department store or groceries from Tesco.com you are paying a HELL of a lot more margin to those stores than 30%
But I think most grocery stores would like to know how they can get margins that high. In the world of commodity products (or fast moving consumer goods - FMCG) a 30% margin is exceptionally high.
The question is, are iOs apps commodities? Increasingly so. I can buy the same apps on Android (and maybe soon on WP7). As Apple loses its market share and their apps become ubiquitous commodities they can't justify the high margins. So it seems to me that this strategy is too late, 2 years ago developers would pay anything to be on iOs, now there are more shops out there and the owners are happy to take smaller margins.
I think this was a well written comment piece, even if I don't agree with it all. The big problem I have is with the Nimrod. Given the horrendous amount of money we've spent on them it seems a real shame not to get any use out of them now that they are payed for and ready for service. Of course the fact that my sister flies in them and is now looking at redundancy might colour my opinion a little.
Register
74 posts • joined Tuesday 13th January 2009 10:12 GMT
Page:
Re: Cutting their own throat?
re: "PS: Does anyone else thing the Amazon TV ads showing someone using a Kindle floating in a swimming pool is an attempt to sell more devices"
Isn't that the very definition of an advert?
mobile friendly?
Bit of a shame really that the competition site is such a mess on mobile...
Re: £100
Except it's 100 quid on PAYG. Read the article before you comment...
Re: The downfall begins
Seriously? You think that companies are more successful if managers don't care about their employees or whether they are liked?
There's no place for mr nice when dealing with the competition, but if you can't win over your own employees then you might as well give in.
The one thing that I really dislike about the forums
When I upvote a post (which I don't bother to do very often) I get the message:
Upvote post
We’re glad you liked this post!
Your vote will be recorded in a few moments.
It's the middle sentence that bothers me. As a long-term register reader, I refuse to believe for a second that any of the staff give a monkeys one way or another whether I like some commentards witty remarks. It's got that sheen of false politeness that just makes me squirm and an overly enthusiastic exclamation mark at the end... makes me shudder. Surely more accurate copy would be:
Upvote post
Now you feel like you've contributed, bravo.
Your vote will be recorded in a few moments.
... or something equally cynical?
You're a cynical bunch
If it is a fake then it's a pretty elaborate one. He's been featured in the German FT, got videos, blogs etc going back over 6 months and really spent a lot of time creating content and documentation.
Re: Hardly surprising...
Exactly. I bought a decent 40" TV about 3 years ago. It does HD and digital and all that malarkey and I don't imagine I'll be buying another TV until I break this one. The only recent innovation seems to be 3D and that isn't going to sell me a new TV until the technology gets MUCH better and MUCH cheaper.
Re: Announcement now published - 10k chars are back
This new forum stuff looks pretty good in general, but I always use m.theregister.co.uk (mainly to avoid the annoying pagination in your longer articles) and the forums and comments sections are a bit rubbish on the mobile version. Shirley something that can be improved.
Re: Re: Re: Commentard
You must stick with commentard. As an expat, one of the reasons I come back to el reg on a daily basis is to get my dose of snarky, mildly-offensive British-English. The day you start to treat us lazy punters and commentards politely is the day I start worrying what you're plotting....
Doesn't the move to Goodge Street..
leave open to the intra-connection omnibus rule?
Straight to Notting Hill Gate, and an extra bonus move.
I only drink coke...
with rum. Fat coke all the way!
Simyo all the way if you're in Spain
They're dirt cheap and in fact just emailed me last week to announce that they were going to increase my bandwidth limit for free.
Microsoft's damaging monoculture?
What kind of idiotic anti-MS bullshit is this? MS traditionally made operating systems. They helped to make computers cheap and widely available and didn't limit in any way what software people could run on the platform or what they could do with it after they had purchased it. Please explain how this damaged creativity?
@AC "Being open source does not preclude any piece of software from being easy to use."
I have to both agree and disagree with this statement. Being open source doesn't in any way force software to be harder to use, but unfortunately this is normally the case. I'm a big advocate of open source (because I'm a geek) but there's a reason why Windows and OSX dominate on laptop/desktop. They're simple, fairly idiot-proof, no set-up or technical knowledge is required and they have marketing support and advocacy. Personally, I love messing around with different versions of linux, but 90%+ of my friends outside of the tech world have never even heard of it.
In the mobile sphere, people love iOS because it just works and Android is rapidly taking the old MS position of strong brand, pretty good and plenty of marketing dollars to support it.
A true open source mobile OS is likely to end up with the same market share as linux does on the desktop and it's precisely because it will be harder to use and is unlikely to be supported by comprehensive marketing (so nobody will even hear about it).
very valid point
used to see the same (3 or 4 years ago) when I looked at the web analytics for a large company. Mac/Safari was a tiny proportion of the user base but spent well above their share. Personally, I interpret that to mean that Apple users have more money than sense, but only 'cos I think it's fun to wind them up!
The next logical step?
"With the clear success of the Kindle e-Reader over the past 3 years, and Kindle Fire possibly succeeding in the low-priced Tablet market, we view this as the next logical step for Amazon."
I'm not so sure. Phone users are likely to buy apps (which are relatively low-margin) but e-books and film/TV are a pretty poor experience on a phone. If the (statistically irrelevant) usage patterns of smartphones that I've observed amongst my friends and I is accurate then the most common activity is web browsing - and I don't see how Amazon can monetise that.
yes, the tube is expensive
I recently moved to Barcelona, and a one month pass for the central zones (metro and bus) now costs me the same amount as 3 days on TFL. The tube in London is one of the most expensive public transport systems in any major European city.
Pocketable?
Are you a giant? How big do your pockets need to be to fit a 7" tablet in them?
Rather disappointingly...
...I can't find a video of a monkey trying to hump an elephant. But now that you've brought it up I really want to see one.
Sometimes reg hacks do this thing called humour. I think you may have missed this.
Yes you can...
.. on android, maybe not on whatever overlay your device manufacturer has put on top of it, but Android let's you delete those apps and every manufacturer flavour of it I have used does too.
Port B
"Beijing, Brisbane, Brindisi and Birmingham, they're really all just nodes on the container shipping routes..."
Maybe Bristol would have been a better example than Birmingham. Still alliterative and it has a container port.
Let me...
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=efts
3rd result.
So...
So, why does that bother you?
Good stuff
Nice to hear that MS have made a good job of it. It'll be interesting to see some more competition in this area and I think the idea of an optional pen interface is inspired.
very interesting link
but the point of the article here is that many people do use their real identities online, especially older people (my dad doesn't hide his identity on skype). I actually don't have a great problem with MS trying to use the data from that to identify people. If you've chosen to not be anonymous on skype then so be it, similarly if you want to use a pseudonym on skype and link it to a random email address etc then you should be allowed to do so. As long as it's optional then it's ok, many people really are not that concerned about online anonymity and really most people have nothing to fear. Now, google trying to force people to use true names is something that I really don't agree with.
calm down, calm down
can't we just agree that all the political parties are shite and get back to the topic of apprenticeships?
good to see them try
I can imagine the Baidu response to a patent/copyright infringement lawsuit from Oracle would be along the lines of "so what?"
It's all about numbers
I signed up for the beta of google+ just to see what it was like - I already use other social networks to keep in touch with my friends (I live abroad and it's a very easy way to keep abreast of life at home). I honestly think that google+ is much, much better than Facebook (the main competition) BUT most of my friends have never even heard of it and so I find that there are very few active users in my streams. Facebook has the user base that means that I can keep in touch with all of my friends and know what they are up to. The only people posting on google+ are journalists and I already have RSS feeds and twitter for the people I am interested in, so I don't need google+ for that.
Facebook have managed to effectively create a monopolistic barrier to entry to prevent anyone else from getting into their market. 600 million users? Want to connect with your real world friends? Keep in touch with distant family? Use Facebook. Even if google+ is the best thing ever, it will be years before my mum, my sister and all my non-techy friends move over to it.
memories
I remember spending hours and hours playing this as a kid, great fun. They don't make 'em like this anymore - in fact all the latest first person shooters are just too hard for me!
Very disappointing G
I'd love to believe Google's arguments against the software patent system (even though I know they're doing it out of self interest, I still believe it's a worthy cause) but when they go and do this sort of arsehattery it just makes them look like the 2-faced onanists they (and all large corporations) are. FAIL
iPad only? F@#~€¬& B%&%$@#?s
That really, really, really, really, really, really, really, annoys me.
Guess I'll just have to keep downloading illegally until they decide to let people who live in Europe and don't have extremely expensive toys play.
"Oh well, it's the only machine I can afford that doesn't include a built in monitor.."
Really? 'Cos I can give you a list of hundreds of machines without built in monitors that are much, much cheaper. No fruit logos, but you can easily get the spec for less money elsewhere.
Rather reminds me of
http://thedailymailoncologicalontologyproject.wordpress.com/
the ongoing efforts of the Daily Mail to separate all items in the world into those which cause or cure cancer.
You would just have a correlation
which is not the same as causati... oh sod it, it's late and I'm past caring.
The price may drop on the old 7" Tab...
...but even if it's cheap it will still be crap. I "borrowed" one of them from work for a while and I would really not recommend it.
Just to disagree with all the other commentards
I think this is a great idea. I like the Atom N550 processor in my Samsung netbook. It's fast and the battery life is great, so no complaints from me.
As for the netbook being a defunct form factor, it really just depends on how much of a fashion victim you are. I was on a long train ride yesterday and used my netbook to surf the net and watch a film - both at the same time. It amused me greatly to see the person sat near to me with a fruity tablet having to switch between video and web (can't do them both at the same time) and also having to awkwardly prop his device in a position where he could see the screen clearly. So, he paid over twice the money for something that does less and is more awkward to use. Win for me.
"I just don't understand why the author takes such a sniping tone"
Do you normally read The Register????
Only 29 per cent use theirs for work ...
Anecdotally, this figure would seem to be borne out by all the useless twats in my office that carry their iPads wherever they go.
(not Apple bashing, I just don't know anyone with another tablet. We did get a couple of the original Galaxy Tabs in to test but they were rubbish and nobody wanted to be seen with them)
Rather than guessing...
... you could have read the article. And yes, it is US only. Hopefully us Brits will get access soon.
It never fails to amaze me that so many media companies still think it's perfectly reasonable to have different releases for different markets. I download quite a lot of TV shows for that reason, I want to watch them when all my friends in the States watch them, not 2-3 months later when they reach UK television.
relax...
wow, you clearly need to take it easy. Many, many, many, many news sites use the word "iPhone" as a generic term for smartphones. Ok, so maybe you expect better of the reg (being a tech site), but really, calm down, take some deep breaths and think "is this sub specifically designed to anger all iPhone users, or am I just over-reacting?"
So negative...
It always amazes me how negative the comments are on this site to any articles discussing business practices or processes.
Pretty much all of us work in some sort of profit making business, it's important to understand how these work and how you can improve them because (this is the key bit) if my company isn't doing this and their competitors are doing it successfully then my company is going to take a hit. If my company takes a hit then (sooner or later) so do I.
Then there's the professionalism bit. I work on web projects, if I don't understand the business side of this then how on earth am I going to educate the business idiots I work with (because they mostly don't understand this stuff)? Just because you don't like something doesn't make it rubbish. I don't like being marketed at, but I can assure you that it works and as long as it does I'm going to need to understand these essential business techniques so that my company can make more money and I can demand a bigger share of it.
a
I have the original Desire and double tap to zoom into a column of text works perfectly (in fact I virtually never use the 2-finger pinch thing).
Agree totally about the soft buttons, it's one of the things that puts me off most of the new Android phones.
free wifi on Niue
They probably just put a router in the middle of the island and left the network open...
It's always fun to knock MS...
...but not always the right thing to do. Right now, MS are busy buying apps for their platform at a terrific rate- paying developers and companies to build versions of apps for their new platform. At the very least I can see this leading to WP7 taking a lead position in the business market. If they can get into the hands of the businessmen then they'll propagate from their to normal people.
Don't forget that MS was slow into the PC market (and not the best) but they eventually managed to dominate.
a chance for distinctive apps?
So how about you just sell a slightly different app on iOs? example:
News site subscription service for fancy iOs app costs $6.99 with Apple's 30% cut.
Same subscription service for web only or for Android, WP7 etc costs $5 (because you don't have to give a cut to Apple) BUT it's not the same product because this particular subscription service is blue and is called [insert name] Extra++ (or some other slight name variant) and has some extra shiny bits on it.
Hey presto, price your app however you like in any market 'cos it's not the same as the product in the App Store!
30% margins?
I'm not sure where you got this idea:
Whether you buy a book from a bookstore, clothes from a department store or groceries from Tesco.com you are paying a HELL of a lot more margin to those stores than 30%
But I think most grocery stores would like to know how they can get margins that high. In the world of commodity products (or fast moving consumer goods - FMCG) a 30% margin is exceptionally high.
The question is, are iOs apps commodities? Increasingly so. I can buy the same apps on Android (and maybe soon on WP7). As Apple loses its market share and their apps become ubiquitous commodities they can't justify the high margins. So it seems to me that this strategy is too late, 2 years ago developers would pay anything to be on iOs, now there are more shops out there and the owners are happy to take smaller margins.
good timing
Some great ideas here, shame it's too late to buy any of them before Xmas now...
Nimrod?
I think this was a well written comment piece, even if I don't agree with it all. The big problem I have is with the Nimrod. Given the horrendous amount of money we've spent on them it seems a real shame not to get any use out of them now that they are payed for and ready for service. Of course the fact that my sister flies in them and is now looking at redundancy might colour my opinion a little.
Page: