Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th Oct 2010 16:00 UTC
An interesting discussion is currently raging through the world of computing, or more accurately, through the world of bloggers and analysts. It basically comes down to this: should the iPad be included in laptop and desktop sales figures? If it is included - Apple becomes the largest PC manufacturer in the United States. But, if the iPad should be included - why not the modern smartphone?
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RE[5]: Special vs General
by WereCatf on Mon 18th Oct 2010 19:43
in reply to "RE[4]: Special vs General"
Member since:2006-02-15
Let's compare the Pre to my PC. Hmm, word processing... no, desktop publishing... no, spreadsheets... no, programming... no, database... no, programming... no, photo editing... no, video editing... no, printing... no, games... sort of
Let's compare Maemo to your PC. Hmm, word processing... yes, desktop publishing... yes, spreadsheets... yes, programming... yes, database... yes, programming... yes, photo editing... yes, video editing... yes, printing... yes, games... yes
To be a PC that would have to be "acceptably well" versus other PCs. Are you really saying your N900 does all of that as well as a PC?
I indeed do. It's about as powerful as any regular low-end laptop except for graphics hardware. It can be plugged into external display and input devices, too, so even that isn't a limiting factor.
RE[5]: Special vs General
by leech on Tue 19th Oct 2010 03:19
in reply to "RE[4]: Special vs General"
Member since:2006-01-10
My Pre runs webOS (ie, Linux), but it is far from a general purpose OS or computer. My friend's N900 is the same. webOS and Maemo have about as little resemblance to RHEL or Ubuntu as WM does to Windows.
Wow, apparently your friend doesn't know his N900 very well.
I can actually go to packages.debian.org and select almost any armel package and install it on my N900. Granted the screen size makes it annoying to use some applications and some of the larger unoptimized ones may run a bit on the slow side, but it would run any program just as well as a computer that is running with 256MB of ram.
To say that the N900 is a smart phone and not just a mini-PC that can make phone calls is really showing that someone hasn't used one.
By the way, I love my N900. I also love Debian, on which Maemo is based. And yes, even OpenOffice.org runs on it (although slowly).
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
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."More News »
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My Pre runs webOS (ie, Linux), but it is far from a general purpose OS or computer. My friend's N900 is the same. webOS and Maemo have about as little resemblance to RHEL or Ubuntu as WM does to Windows.
Let's compare the Pre to my PC. Hmm, word processing... no, desktop publishing... no, spreadsheets... no, programming... no, database... no, programming... no, photo editing... no, video editing... no, printing... no, games... sort of
I set out a standard that it should be able to do all of those things, "[A]cceptably well for its time period." That wouldn't mean "acceptably well" when compared to other phones. To be a PC that would have to be "acceptably well" versus other PCs. Are you really saying your N900 does all of that as well as a PC?
The Pre, as nice as it is, does nothing at a level that would be considered, "[A]cceptably well for its time period," when compared to other "PCs" as you are pretending I defined them.
It by no means fits the description I gave of a general purpose computer. HP obviously agreed; they didn't buy Palm to get "Linux", broadly writ as you do. They wanted Palm's specially crafted, special purpose Linux.
If a Pre can ever do all those things as well as a normal PC, I'd agree that the line has been blurred so much as to be indistinct, but we are a long way off, not least of which getting me to use a 3.7" screen and a 2.5" keyboard all day long.
I can imagine a day where our phones are our PCs though, with little docking stations. Someday, maybe, but not yet.
On one thing you are right, at least, that I do not think my friend's rackmount Mackie running D8B is a PC, even though it has PC hardware inside.