Microsoft did the same, they used to offer free smartphone dev tools and then withdrew them only to re-instate them later on.
Building dev tools costs money and takes time. It's always going to be a bit of a tricky decision for any company to give them away. On the one hand it can limit developer access to the tools, on the other hand it can bring in revenue to improve the tools. You can argue only serious developers would bother with the tools anyway?
Has Apple or Microsoft even claimed to write 100% bug free software that is absent of design flaws?
Nope. The difference is in how many flaws are there due to backward compatibility or ease of use. Windows was the king of backward compatibility and ease of use and they've moved back from that position with Windows Vista and 7. But there's still a lot to do.
You have to remember that these hackers are pretty exceptional at what they do. Now imagine how long it would take them to work out an exploit if they swapped places, the OSX guy tried to hack Windows and the Windows guy tried to hack OSX. It would take them a long time to get up to speed.
The fact is Windows is the platform that gets exploited the most and those people wanting to exploit the Mac would need to either buy one or use a hackintosh. Then get up to speed with it.
The sort of people who buy Macs don't intend to exploit it and ruin the experience.
The exploit on the Mac was run while the user was logged in as an administrator. Apple don't recommend this and you certainly wouldn't run your desktop as root on Linux.
Not to mention that by installing the custom firmware with the Google marketplace you're effectively installing unlicenced or pirated software.
Google marketplace is only available to devices made by manufacturers that have licenced it. The Advent does not have a licence to use it, hence it isn't there. The custom firmware has obviously had a copy of the Google marketplace application copied into it and that software has been lifted from a licenced device.
So not only do you need to be a techie to use this thing properly you also need to infringe on a software licence to get it to run decent software.
Why on earth should the WWW be reliant on a piece of software from Adobe? If it was Silverlight I'm sure everyone would be up in arms at Microsoft controlling the web. Adobe want to sell their very overpriced software tools, so aren't really any better.
Standards are what made the Internet usable and decent, relying on proprietary plugins, patented technology and so on just ruins things.
Cost cutting. It's cheapo plastic, it has a cheaper screen (not IPS that's for sure), cheapest camera. Probably won't matter to the sort of people who buy £250 worth of tablet but some people want to view photos on a tablet with fairly decent colour reproduction.
Also some people want official firmware from the company who designed it, they want to plug it in and have the update done with no fuss.
Like anything you can build up a device with the lowest price parts and it will still do the job. I build and ride bicycles as a hobby and I'm sure I could build a very cheap one that would roll along, change gears and stop when the brakes are applied. But it would be lacking in performance and reliability, plus spare parts or technical support would be impossible to find.
You could say why buy a £1500 carbon road bike when you can get a bike from Halfords for £80. If you don't know why someone spends more than you probably don't know much about what people look for in one. I'll give you a clue, less hassle making it work!
The problem is nobody apart from the tablet team really gave a toss about tablets. The guy in charge of Office development didn't like tablets and said he preferred mouse and keyboard, so Office wasn't adapted for the tablet OS.
It's that sort of petty internal conflict that makes Microsoft dysfunctional when it comes to moving their offerings along. Only when something similar is out in the wild and raking in megabucks can such people at Microsoft see the merit in something.
When producing something new and ground breaking there is no precedent in the market that says "this will work, this will make money", so nobody at Microsoft will want to cooperate with the team producing it.
The US make aircraft for themselves, they a number of companies to show off prototypes and then they choose one. One company designs and builds them, simple and effective.
In the EU the aircraft is designed made by a group of EU companies, the work has to be spread out to be fair and the language barriers combined with distance just make it expensive, slow and bureaucratic. You have the issue of specification accuracy and integration, i.e. will the darn thing fit together when assembly is attempted.
You also have the requirement that the plane documentation and interface be translated into all possible languages in the EU.
The UK either needs to build its own planes or just buy US planes. Also, if buying US planes don't gasp when given a high cost of software to go with it, just pay it as it will work out cheaper!
An app can choose to carry on running in the background, playing audio, using network or it can choose to remain in the background paused (useful for games).
If you don't call that multitasking then what is? do you really want something uncontrollably running in the background making noise or using up CPU cycles (and battery life)?
Erm what is this "proper" multitasking you speak of? Perhaps you don't know what multitasking is? multitasking is nothing to do with the interface, it is at the kernel level and iOS and Android both have it since they are based upon fully capable kernels.
I suspect you're referring to the user interface, just because you can't see two applications at the same time does not mean there's no multitasking going on.
What have you tried to do and found that you couldn't? Oh you don't own one, so you have no licence to comment on how well it works. As for Android's multitasking, the way iOS does it is very similar actually.
The iOS multitasking has templates for various scenarios, music in background, networking in background and games. These templates determine what to do in the event the application becomes idle. So a music player would carry on playing, a game would pause and a network enabled application would carry on downloading.
What isn't multitasking about that? do you really want a game to carry on playing when you change applications?
That said, I'm not impressed with the iPad 2, despite the fact that the hardware hasn't really improved much (although I'm sure it now has more RAM) it is the software I wanted to see improved. iOS5 should have been previewed and iOS4.3 doesn't add anything I really want.
Nobody has said such things aren't possible on a Mac. But any dialog designed to popup and ask for user credentials is going to fool some people.
The fact that they have had to resort to this sort of trick shows that they require privilege escalation to do bad things on the OS.
OSX and Windows do the escalation thing differently. On OSX it asks for a password, on Vista, 2008 and 7 it is a simple Yes or No answer.
Both methods have merits and weaknesses. I'm sure you can simulate both, but on Windows you wouldn't gain any information like a password. But on the other hand, the security model on OSX can't be deactivated like it can on Windows (UAC can be disabled).
Most Linux desktops also ask for a password, but some are using sudo instead of su.
To understand what Apple have decided you need to know the problem that prompted it.
If you were to go into a shop and pick up a free blank magazine and then you bought all the contents from the publisher direct for a fee then how would the shop benefit? not at all!
This is what the magazines are trying to do, cut out the App Store from the revenue stream. Provide a free application but then charge for content directly. Apple gets nothing other than minuscule annual developer fees.
Put yourself in their shoes, they are employing lots of staff to handle app submissions and they have built a huge expensive data centre recently. Hosting apps, music and films is a costly business.
It must show that the iPad isn't all that overpriced as the competitors come in at around the same price. Competitors are either profiting from the hype or that is how much it costs to design and build one plus make a worthwhile profit.
The main problem with the iPad competition is quality or lack of it. Each one seems to have a downside in the design or software.
Some might say that laptops are cheaper and more complex but laptops are different, few have touch screen, they can weight more as they're not hand held much. Laptop batteries don't run to 7-10 hours usually. There's more room in a laptop for everything.
If they don't want to use the App Store they can avoid it.
What they are annoyed about is having a chunk of the market unavailable at a price they wish to pay.
Apple virtually invented the whole App Store on a mobile concept (Nintendo's Wii channels was there first), so naturally their platform will cost more.
All console-like platforms have royalty fees, if the publishing world was so brilliant why didn't they invent their own store for mobiles?
Nokia failed to grasp the emerging market of touch screen phones.
Nokia's iPhone killer should have been out in 2008. It should have been 3G, high res modern touch screen OS and 5MP camera.
Instead they released the N96 with 320x240 screen, non-touch screen, 5MP camera. Basically a N95 mk2.
Sure, at that time there will still many people not buying or using touch screen phones, but it was obviously where smartphones were going since mobile web browsing is incredibly unusable without a touch screen.
R&D departments are supposed to be developing and seeing what the consumer will want in 12 months or more time. You can even get away with seeing what they are buying now and make a better/cheaper version of it if your name is Microsoft.
Once touch screen Nokia phones started to arrive they were comparable to Windows Mobile and its stop gap GUI hacks.
8GB is paltry these days. If they really want to show up Apple they would be using 32GB now.
£440 for a phone with 8GB storage is just a joke. I'm guessing that the screen and keyboard cost so much that they didn't have money or space left for more storage inside?
"Mobile operators feel very threatened by Google and Apple, and they also pretty much control the phones we buy. They like how WP7 plans to do things."
Go Google and Apple!
You think the mobile operators love you? they are doing the utmost to extract as much cash out of you as possible, even if that means crippling your phones feature set to do so.
So you're basically saying buy a WP7 phone as they bend over and take it from the mobile operators? not going to cut it with the consumer is it.
You can just see it now, someone buys one of these, hates it and then dismisses all tablet computers as rubbish.
These cheapo tablets are just oversized PDAs since PDAs had resistive screens as well. Nobody wants to have to push down on a screen and then move their finger.
A capacitive screen just requires you to touch the screen, not press it down as well.
These are cheap not because the parts are cheap, not because they are a bargain.
Good old Microsoft, wowing audiences with up and coming technology that you can already buy elsewhere.
Except that the up and coming Microsoft version will be cheaper and more accessible. Except it won't be because Microsoft has uncharacteristically prevented any low end handsets by setting minimum requirements very high. It is less accessible in that you have to buy a phone to get it and there are less models.
So compared to their strengths in the desktop market it's clear to see that there's an uphill struggle for Microsoft ahead.
It's not that it's a bad OS, it's just about three years too late.
You think that, I think that also, but there seems to be a few people who think every piece of tech they own must have a camera. Mp3 player, phone, games console and so on.
It is convenient to not need to transfer images to it, but given the poor camera in the last Samsung it just appears to be an afterthought.
Imagine holding a 10 inch tablet up at a concert blocking the view of the concert for those behind. I somehow think you would be taking home a broken tablet.
It's not how things work these days. Companies expect the OS to do all the hardware acceleration and let them write portable C++ code. Then all they need to do is write some sort of glue code for their application that lets it work in a particular OS.
Since when have games been optimised for a particular 3D chip? erm, not since DirectX appeared I expect.
I don't think consumers complain enough, if they did then there would be better planning.
Can you imagine a computer market where there wasn't USB, PCI express, SATA and so on?
I do all my viewing via a Mac Mini with a mini bluetooth keyboard. The TV remote does two things, switches on/off the TV and changes the volume.
Going back to boxes, many people buy an integrated TV as they don't want external boxes. If the boxes are out of sight and integrate well then they would go for Freeview HD in no time.
Problem was they weren't touchscreen phones. It's pretty obvious that navigation on a screen is a lot easier if you use a pointing device (ie. finger) instead of cursor keys. Why use keys to move towards something when you can just touch it.
Using a phone without a touch screen these days is like using old DOS applications with menus.
Was the hardware that good? if so why so many screen failures?
If it was great engineering why are they screwed now?
Nokia's biggest failure was ignoring the touch screen market for way too long. Even recent flagship phones like the N95 weren't touch screen.
Sony Ericsson had the P800 and P990 which was a touch screen version of Symbian. P800 was around about 2002, some five years before the iPhone showed up. Did Nokia respond to the P800 and others? did they hell. Too busy sticking to their stuck record of traditional keypad phones.
I had a Nokia before I got an iPhone 3G and it was pretty dire in terms of usability. Lots of features but ultimately none of them got any use due to terrible usability. An example being that the phone could read out text messages, but if you didn't hear it first time you couldn't replay it again.
So combined with the lack of firmware updates it wasn't a brilliant phone. I got one update, they released another for a different country but never in the UK, even that never fixed all the bugs people were complaining about.
Aren't Nokia also famous for good hardware? if so then why do so many screen backlights go on their slider phones?
When using the GPS software on my Nokia Navigator with a car charger it would display "charging" then about 15 minutes later "charging complete" and then 15 minutes later "charging" and so on. Just sloppy hardware design and very distracting when driving.
Rather than companies all producing stupid external boxes, can't they agree a standard connector so at the back of a TV you can attach a box to your flatscreen?
Imagine this, you buy a module that slides into a connector in your flatscreen that provides power and audio/video connections, as well as control signals. You then secure the box into the TV using some thumbscrews (like on DVI/VGA connectors). You then switch on the TV and the box is controlled with the existing remote your TV has.
Why can't this be a reality? it would make life easier! It would also mean you could upgrade your TV tuner without needing an external box (something I'm sure those with non-HD capable freeview TVs will appreciate).
I suppose you live next door to an Apple store then? you can just take the box off the shelf and install it?
If you order software mail order you're going to wait 24 hours before you can install it. If you buy from a retail store it may take a few hours to get there, buy and then get home.
A download is going to be a fair bit faster and if anything it will mean less bloaty software.
In two maybe three years time there will be a Windows tablet that will be somewhere between iPad 1 and iPad 2 in functionality.
You can see what the problem with Microsoft is right now, following the leaders but way behind.
Microsoft used to let the competition shoot first, take their innovative but flawed product idea, fix the flaws, add a few of their own and release their own product much cheaper.
These days it seems Microsoft just clones the competition and makes the product look like their own, adds links to their Live services then release for the same price.
I think it's going a bit far to call him an idiot. He's a numbers droid, all he is interested in is if the money is rolling in, who cares how they achieve that.
Bill Gates was a geek, he cared about products, computers and software. Which is probably why there appeared to be a bit more innovation and leadership back then. Ballmer just reacts to the competition and does what they do as there's a few bucks in it.
He's not in the correct role, he should be their chief financial guy (CFO). They need someone like Jobs or Gates in the CEO role again, someone who has some vision.
It's a failure in that it is too late to the market. Microsoft need to have world beating product to make any impact on the market at this stage. It has promise but it's a few years behind the competition.
It took Microsoft three years to produce a modern replacement for Windows Mobile when it could have taken just one year.
They wasted time producing small tweaks to Windows Mobile 6.x and wasted time on the Kin. Two products nobody wanted.
It's more about vendors giving away apps and then charging money via their own payment system. It's hardly in the interests of Apple to let this happen.
Would Sony let a game vendor charge nothing for a PS3 game (Sony get a royalty for each game sold) only for the game to need to activated online for a fee? (and not via Sony's online services). Of course not.
If you think of the app approval process as similar to the cool wall on Top Gear but with Jobs instead of Clarkson then you'll probably realise how it works :)
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2264 posts • joined Wednesday 13th December 2006 15:36 GMT
Page:
ex-Paid developers only?
Just log in and it is there under iOS. Perhaps it only appears to those who have paid for developer access in the past?
Wrong
You can develop and test on the simulator for free. It is only when you want to test on the target device that you need a full blown account.
Not the first time
Microsoft did the same, they used to offer free smartphone dev tools and then withdrew them only to re-instate them later on.
Building dev tools costs money and takes time. It's always going to be a bit of a tricky decision for any company to give them away. On the one hand it can limit developer access to the tools, on the other hand it can bring in revenue to improve the tools. You can argue only serious developers would bother with the tools anyway?
Nobody is perfect
Has Apple or Microsoft even claimed to write 100% bug free software that is absent of design flaws?
Nope. The difference is in how many flaws are there due to backward compatibility or ease of use. Windows was the king of backward compatibility and ease of use and they've moved back from that position with Windows Vista and 7. But there's still a lot to do.
You have to remember that these hackers are pretty exceptional at what they do. Now imagine how long it would take them to work out an exploit if they swapped places, the OSX guy tried to hack Windows and the Windows guy tried to hack OSX. It would take them a long time to get up to speed.
The fact is Windows is the platform that gets exploited the most and those people wanting to exploit the Mac would need to either buy one or use a hackintosh. Then get up to speed with it.
The sort of people who buy Macs don't intend to exploit it and ruin the experience.
Read the article, it has the facts in it
Did you even read the article?
Windows exploit time to develop: 6 weeks.
Mac exploit time to develop: 9 months.
The exploit on the Mac was run while the user was logged in as an administrator. Apple don't recommend this and you certainly wouldn't run your desktop as root on Linux.
Slightly dodgy
Not to mention that by installing the custom firmware with the Google marketplace you're effectively installing unlicenced or pirated software.
Google marketplace is only available to devices made by manufacturers that have licenced it. The Advent does not have a licence to use it, hence it isn't there. The custom firmware has obviously had a copy of the Google marketplace application copied into it and that software has been lifted from a licenced device.
So not only do you need to be a techie to use this thing properly you also need to infringe on a software licence to get it to run decent software.
There's another reason why it is £250.
Flash is proprietary
Don't you get it yet?
Why on earth should the WWW be reliant on a piece of software from Adobe? If it was Silverlight I'm sure everyone would be up in arms at Microsoft controlling the web. Adobe want to sell their very overpriced software tools, so aren't really any better.
Standards are what made the Internet usable and decent, relying on proprietary plugins, patented technology and so on just ruins things.
Subsidised pricing
The pricing on contract is nothing to do with Apple. The network sets the price.
*sigh*
So basically the CBI wants the government to weaken employee rights and get rid of some green legislation to cut energy costs?
Hardly good for the people and the planet is it.
Probably because
ARM don't produce any products. They licence out a CPU core design and instruction set.
The fact they exist is something, every other UK computer pioneer has ended up bust or moved into another market.
Simples
Cost cutting. It's cheapo plastic, it has a cheaper screen (not IPS that's for sure), cheapest camera. Probably won't matter to the sort of people who buy £250 worth of tablet but some people want to view photos on a tablet with fairly decent colour reproduction.
Also some people want official firmware from the company who designed it, they want to plug it in and have the update done with no fuss.
Like anything you can build up a device with the lowest price parts and it will still do the job. I build and ride bicycles as a hobby and I'm sure I could build a very cheap one that would roll along, change gears and stop when the brakes are applied. But it would be lacking in performance and reliability, plus spare parts or technical support would be impossible to find.
You could say why buy a £1500 carbon road bike when you can get a bike from Halfords for £80. If you don't know why someone spends more than you probably don't know much about what people look for in one. I'll give you a clue, less hassle making it work!
Internal conflict
The problem is nobody apart from the tablet team really gave a toss about tablets. The guy in charge of Office development didn't like tablets and said he preferred mouse and keyboard, so Office wasn't adapted for the tablet OS.
It's that sort of petty internal conflict that makes Microsoft dysfunctional when it comes to moving their offerings along. Only when something similar is out in the wild and raking in megabucks can such people at Microsoft see the merit in something.
When producing something new and ground breaking there is no precedent in the market that says "this will work, this will make money", so nobody at Microsoft will want to cooperate with the team producing it.
Hawk the slayer?
No mindsword from Hawk the Slayer? :)
Simple reason why
The US make aircraft for themselves, they a number of companies to show off prototypes and then they choose one. One company designs and builds them, simple and effective.
In the EU the aircraft is designed made by a group of EU companies, the work has to be spread out to be fair and the language barriers combined with distance just make it expensive, slow and bureaucratic. You have the issue of specification accuracy and integration, i.e. will the darn thing fit together when assembly is attempted.
You also have the requirement that the plane documentation and interface be translated into all possible languages in the EU.
The UK either needs to build its own planes or just buy US planes. Also, if buying US planes don't gasp when given a high cost of software to go with it, just pay it as it will work out cheaper!
Multitasking
That's because it has done that since 4.2.1.
An app can choose to carry on running in the background, playing audio, using network or it can choose to remain in the background paused (useful for games).
If you don't call that multitasking then what is? do you really want something uncontrollably running in the background making noise or using up CPU cycles (and battery life)?
Grow up
You're obviously an unimaginative person then.
Just look for TouchOSC and see how it can be used to control lighting rigs, music software and even mixing desks.
Look at software like NanoStudio which can be used to write music.
An iPad (3G version) makes a really great Sat Nav, it has long battery life and a huge screen.
Who needs USB? there's Wifi and Bluetooth for many purposes like keyboards.
The camera kit provides a USB port for cameras and the USB port also works with some MIDI keyboards and music gear.
Erm
Since when did the 'premium' product on the market only cost up to a third more than the cheapo?
Sometimes the difference is twice or more.
Multitasking
Erm what is this "proper" multitasking you speak of? Perhaps you don't know what multitasking is? multitasking is nothing to do with the interface, it is at the kernel level and iOS and Android both have it since they are based upon fully capable kernels.
I suspect you're referring to the user interface, just because you can't see two applications at the same time does not mean there's no multitasking going on.
What have you tried to do and found that you couldn't? Oh you don't own one, so you have no licence to comment on how well it works. As for Android's multitasking, the way iOS does it is very similar actually.
The iOS multitasking has templates for various scenarios, music in background, networking in background and games. These templates determine what to do in the event the application becomes idle. So a music player would carry on playing, a game would pause and a network enabled application would carry on downloading.
What isn't multitasking about that? do you really want a game to carry on playing when you change applications?
That said, I'm not impressed with the iPad 2, despite the fact that the hardware hasn't really improved much (although I'm sure it now has more RAM) it is the software I wanted to see improved. iOS5 should have been previewed and iOS4.3 doesn't add anything I really want.
How to estimate the price
If you want to know the real price find a US price in dollars and replace the $ with £.
Anything is possible as 'root'.
Nobody has said such things aren't possible on a Mac. But any dialog designed to popup and ask for user credentials is going to fool some people.
The fact that they have had to resort to this sort of trick shows that they require privilege escalation to do bad things on the OS.
OSX and Windows do the escalation thing differently. On OSX it asks for a password, on Vista, 2008 and 7 it is a simple Yes or No answer.
Both methods have merits and weaknesses. I'm sure you can simulate both, but on Windows you wouldn't gain any information like a password. But on the other hand, the security model on OSX can't be deactivated like it can on Windows (UAC can be disabled).
Most Linux desktops also ask for a password, but some are using sudo instead of su.
MP3
There were MP3 players before the iPod too. But guess which one is the most popular still?
The iPod had the most easy to use interface compared to all the other players.
Think about it
To understand what Apple have decided you need to know the problem that prompted it.
If you were to go into a shop and pick up a free blank magazine and then you bought all the contents from the publisher direct for a fee then how would the shop benefit? not at all!
This is what the magazines are trying to do, cut out the App Store from the revenue stream. Provide a free application but then charge for content directly. Apple gets nothing other than minuscule annual developer fees.
Put yourself in their shoes, they are employing lots of staff to handle app submissions and they have built a huge expensive data centre recently. Hosting apps, music and films is a costly business.
LOL
Android, the freedom to do what you want with your phone, so long as Google approve.
Sound familiar?
Prices
It must show that the iPad isn't all that overpriced as the competitors come in at around the same price. Competitors are either profiting from the hype or that is how much it costs to design and build one plus make a worthwhile profit.
The main problem with the iPad competition is quality or lack of it. Each one seems to have a downside in the design or software.
Some might say that laptops are cheaper and more complex but laptops are different, few have touch screen, they can weight more as they're not hand held much. Laptop batteries don't run to 7-10 hours usually. There's more room in a laptop for everything.
Old software is fast
"Symbian, even though it looks like the back end of a bus, is fairly undemanding regarding CPU usage and battery power"
So would Windows 95 if you ran it on a laptop, but you just wouldn't want to use it.
Simple
If they don't want to use the App Store they can avoid it.
What they are annoyed about is having a chunk of the market unavailable at a price they wish to pay.
Apple virtually invented the whole App Store on a mobile concept (Nintendo's Wii channels was there first), so naturally their platform will cost more.
All console-like platforms have royalty fees, if the publishing world was so brilliant why didn't they invent their own store for mobiles?
Nokia had no vision
Nokia failed to grasp the emerging market of touch screen phones.
Nokia's iPhone killer should have been out in 2008. It should have been 3G, high res modern touch screen OS and 5MP camera.
Instead they released the N96 with 320x240 screen, non-touch screen, 5MP camera. Basically a N95 mk2.
Sure, at that time there will still many people not buying or using touch screen phones, but it was obviously where smartphones were going since mobile web browsing is incredibly unusable without a touch screen.
R&D departments are supposed to be developing and seeing what the consumer will want in 12 months or more time. You can even get away with seeing what they are buying now and make a better/cheaper version of it if your name is Microsoft.
Once touch screen Nokia phones started to arrive they were comparable to Windows Mobile and its stop gap GUI hacks.
Compromises I guess
8GB is paltry these days. If they really want to show up Apple they would be using 32GB now.
£440 for a phone with 8GB storage is just a joke. I'm guessing that the screen and keyboard cost so much that they didn't have money or space left for more storage inside?
Networks only love your money
"Mobile operators feel very threatened by Google and Apple, and they also pretty much control the phones we buy. They like how WP7 plans to do things."
Go Google and Apple!
You think the mobile operators love you? they are doing the utmost to extract as much cash out of you as possible, even if that means crippling your phones feature set to do so.
So you're basically saying buy a WP7 phone as they bend over and take it from the mobile operators? not going to cut it with the consumer is it.
Tarnishing the tablet market
You can just see it now, someone buys one of these, hates it and then dismisses all tablet computers as rubbish.
These cheapo tablets are just oversized PDAs since PDAs had resistive screens as well. Nobody wants to have to push down on a screen and then move their finger.
A capacitive screen just requires you to touch the screen, not press it down as well.
These are cheap not because the parts are cheap, not because they are a bargain.
You have to laugh
Good old Microsoft, wowing audiences with up and coming technology that you can already buy elsewhere.
Except that the up and coming Microsoft version will be cheaper and more accessible. Except it won't be because Microsoft has uncharacteristically prevented any low end handsets by setting minimum requirements very high. It is less accessible in that you have to buy a phone to get it and there are less models.
So compared to their strengths in the desktop market it's clear to see that there's an uphill struggle for Microsoft ahead.
It's not that it's a bad OS, it's just about three years too late.
Agreed
You think that, I think that also, but there seems to be a few people who think every piece of tech they own must have a camera. Mp3 player, phone, games console and so on.
It is convenient to not need to transfer images to it, but given the poor camera in the last Samsung it just appears to be an afterthought.
Imagine holding a 10 inch tablet up at a concert blocking the view of the concert for those behind. I somehow think you would be taking home a broken tablet.
Flash is desktop orientated
It's not so much that, it is that Flash is designed for point and click desktops not multitouch devices.
If lack of flash means less people create awful unusable Flash websites with custom interfaces then I'm grateful.
Google manage to create all manner of web applications without Flash, the only time they use Flash is for Street View.
Portability
It's not how things work these days. Companies expect the OS to do all the hardware acceleration and let them write portable C++ code. Then all they need to do is write some sort of glue code for their application that lets it work in a particular OS.
Since when have games been optimised for a particular 3D chip? erm, not since DirectX appeared I expect.
Better standards required
I don't think consumers complain enough, if they did then there would be better planning.
Can you imagine a computer market where there wasn't USB, PCI express, SATA and so on?
I do all my viewing via a Mac Mini with a mini bluetooth keyboard. The TV remote does two things, switches on/off the TV and changes the volume.
Going back to boxes, many people buy an integrated TV as they don't want external boxes. If the boxes are out of sight and integrate well then they would go for Freeview HD in no time.
N series weren't that good
Problem was they weren't touchscreen phones. It's pretty obvious that navigation on a screen is a lot easier if you use a pointing device (ie. finger) instead of cursor keys. Why use keys to move towards something when you can just touch it.
Using a phone without a touch screen these days is like using old DOS applications with menus.
Was the hardware that good? if so why so many screen failures?
Well...
If it was great engineering why are they screwed now?
Nokia's biggest failure was ignoring the touch screen market for way too long. Even recent flagship phones like the N95 weren't touch screen.
Sony Ericsson had the P800 and P990 which was a touch screen version of Symbian. P800 was around about 2002, some five years before the iPhone showed up. Did Nokia respond to the P800 and others? did they hell. Too busy sticking to their stuck record of traditional keypad phones.
I had a Nokia before I got an iPhone 3G and it was pretty dire in terms of usability. Lots of features but ultimately none of them got any use due to terrible usability. An example being that the phone could read out text messages, but if you didn't hear it first time you couldn't replay it again.
So combined with the lack of firmware updates it wasn't a brilliant phone. I got one update, they released another for a different country but never in the UK, even that never fixed all the bugs people were complaining about.
Aren't Nokia also famous for good hardware? if so then why do so many screen backlights go on their slider phones?
When using the GPS software on my Nokia Navigator with a car charger it would display "charging" then about 15 minutes later "charging complete" and then 15 minutes later "charging" and so on. Just sloppy hardware design and very distracting when driving.
What we need is this
Rather than companies all producing stupid external boxes, can't they agree a standard connector so at the back of a TV you can attach a box to your flatscreen?
Imagine this, you buy a module that slides into a connector in your flatscreen that provides power and audio/video connections, as well as control signals. You then secure the box into the TV using some thumbscrews (like on DVI/VGA connectors). You then switch on the TV and the box is controlled with the existing remote your TV has.
Why can't this be a reality? it would make life easier! It would also mean you could upgrade your TV tuner without needing an external box (something I'm sure those with non-HD capable freeview TVs will appreciate).
Doubful
Why would it fail in Android?
The failure is in Java runtime classes which Android doesn't use, if it did use them then it would offer some sort of JDK compatibility.
WebOS is Linux based
WebOS is Linux based. It is an OS running the Linux kernel, but with some other unspecified system components.
If Linux works on your hardware then WebOS stands a good chance.
Hurray!
Finally some competition for Apple iPad. A tablet with decent specs and a decent amount of storage built in.
Downloads are slower?
I suppose you live next door to an Apple store then? you can just take the box off the shelf and install it?
If you order software mail order you're going to wait 24 hours before you can install it. If you buy from a retail store it may take a few hours to get there, buy and then get home.
A download is going to be a fair bit faster and if anything it will mean less bloaty software.
Custom hardware
So name me a few companies who's computers contain fully custom hardware?
The day of custom chips ended long ago. Even the PPC Macs were using off the shelf parts.
Wow
In two maybe three years time there will be a Windows tablet that will be somewhere between iPad 1 and iPad 2 in functionality.
You can see what the problem with Microsoft is right now, following the leaders but way behind.
Microsoft used to let the competition shoot first, take their innovative but flawed product idea, fix the flaws, add a few of their own and release their own product much cheaper.
These days it seems Microsoft just clones the competition and makes the product look like their own, adds links to their Live services then release for the same price.
Hmmm
I think it's going a bit far to call him an idiot. He's a numbers droid, all he is interested in is if the money is rolling in, who cares how they achieve that.
Bill Gates was a geek, he cared about products, computers and software. Which is probably why there appeared to be a bit more innovation and leadership back then. Ballmer just reacts to the competition and does what they do as there's a few bucks in it.
He's not in the correct role, he should be their chief financial guy (CFO). They need someone like Jobs or Gates in the CEO role again, someone who has some vision.
Too late
It's a failure in that it is too late to the market. Microsoft need to have world beating product to make any impact on the market at this stage. It has promise but it's a few years behind the competition.
It took Microsoft three years to produce a modern replacement for Windows Mobile when it could have taken just one year.
They wasted time producing small tweaks to Windows Mobile 6.x and wasted time on the Kin. Two products nobody wanted.
Ultimately it shows poor leadership.
Cloudy
Cloud storage has the potential to make life easier but not if it is administered by idiots.
Looks like Yahoo and Microsoft are a good fit, both seem utterly useless at keeping your data safe.
In app purchases
It's more about vendors giving away apps and then charging money via their own payment system. It's hardly in the interests of Apple to let this happen.
Would Sony let a game vendor charge nothing for a PS3 game (Sony get a royalty for each game sold) only for the game to need to activated online for a fee? (and not via Sony's online services). Of course not.
Erm
Sony Ericsson X10? Sony already produce Android phones. They tend to prefer Linux over Microsoft and Apple where possible.
App cool wall
If you think of the app approval process as similar to the cool wall on Top Gear but with Jobs instead of Clarkson then you'll probably realise how it works :)
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