Linked by gsyoungblood on Tue 20th Jul 2010 18:01 UTC
On July 15th the latest Android super-phone was released by Motorola and Verizon Wireless. All hail the Droid X. The release was not without controversy though. The Droid X, while greatly raising the bar for Android phones in general, does so at the expense of the very power users and community that made the original Droid the gotta-have phone it became. Alienating this group may have far reaching consequences for Motorola.
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RE[4]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then
by sc3252 on Wed 21st Jul 2010 12:37
in reply to "RE[3]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then"
Member since:2005-09-06
I am sure that is a great selling point for buyers... The only thing is that they don't usually update after the first year, so you have to deal with it for another year until you can upgrade. While I do understand your point that people like to buy new "shinny" shit, it still isn't pleasant to hear that your hand held computer is not going to be updated because they want you to buy the new version next year.
RE[4]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then
by David on Wed 21st Jul 2010 15:00
in reply to "RE[3]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then"
Member since:1997-10-01
A consumer also wants to buy something that has some value on ebay when they upgrade. A phone that can't have its software upgraded when it's a couple years old is worth a lot less than a phone that can. Which makes it a bad deal.
I have never failed to sell my old iPhone for at least the $200 I paid for it when I upgraded to the new one. That's an important consideration.
RE[4]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then
by phoenix on Thu 22nd Jul 2010 16:28
in reply to "RE[3]: Don't freakin buy the damned thing then"
Member since:2005-07-11
Are you sure the consumer wouldn't be happy if they heard about planned obsolescence?
Hard to parse that grammatically, but I get the gist.
A (regular) consumer only wants a phone that will last them until their next upgrade cycle.
Define "regular consumer". Everyone I talk to at work, home, and play wants devices that will last more than 2 years, and continously lament the whole "planned obsolescence" thing. Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about yesteryear when even simple appliances like a toaster would last for 10 years or more. Now, everything is "throw-away after 10 months of use".
Perhaps you are talking about pre-teens/teens/early-20-somethings who don't know any better as they've grown up with the "throw-away tech"?
If TDMA towers were still operational, I'd still be using my original cell phone, Panasonic TX-220. A nice ruggedised phone that's survived 2-storey drops onto concrete. Compare that to the crap being pumped out now that can rarely survice a 3 foot drop onto carpet.
Oh, for the days when quality mattered, and longevity was king. :stares wistfully into the distance:
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.More News »
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Member since:
2009-06-18
Are you sure the consumer wouldn't be happy if they heard about planned obsolescence?
A (regular) consumer only wants a phone that will last them until their next upgrade cycle. Would the consumer really care if their phone they upgraded from broke after they upgraded? Why should Motorola over-engineer a phone that will last 15 years when it'll be used heavily for 2?
Further, most people (at least the ones I know) don't upgrade phones out of cycle and pay $400 to do so, they wait until their carrier heavily subsidizes their new one on a contract renewal period. If the phone breaks beforehand and must buy a new one, they'll buy the cheapest one so they can still use the service (and be soured on the carrier that charges them money), not the Droid Y.