Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 26th Apr 2012 22:09 UTC
As I already said yesterday - a bit colourful to get me point across - this older article of mine has proven not to be as accurate as I thought it was, in light of a heap of new information. I want to offer some more background to all this.
Thread beginning with comment 515835
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by Thom_Holwerda on Thu 26th Apr 2012 22:27
in reply to "Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2005-06-29
RE: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by LeeZH on Thu 26th Apr 2012 23:42
in reply to "Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2010-10-21
RE[2]: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by WorknMan on Fri 27th Apr 2012 03:37
in reply to "RE: Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2005-11-13
The problem here is that this stupid patent war going is fuelling this absolutely stupid flamewar. Kill the patents, that's how to stop it.
Well, that's more about money than anything else, so let the lawyers fight that shit out in court. Of course, Thom is going to post at least 5 articles a week on the subject (even though I wish he wouldn't), but that doesn't mean people have to fight about 'who copied who' in the comments.
RE: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by Morgan on Fri 27th Apr 2012 01:01
in reply to "Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2005-06-29
I surprised myself yesterday when I decided on the spot to bid on a refurbished Motorola Admiral on eBay. I've always felt the BlackBerry Curve/Bold form factor was the superior one for smartphones, though I've never loved the software on RIM's devices.
I've since been outbid and it's now out of my budget range, but I am really considering an early switch to that phone if I can find one third-party at an affordable price. I don't particularly care for MotoBlur based on my experience with it on the Cliq, but from what I've read it is much improved on modern devices, to the point of actually being usable.
There's just something about the marriage of a Qwerty keyboard with a touch screen on a candybar form factor that just feels right. No more having to slide out the keyboard, and the Admiral is rugged enough to withstand the typical hard life I condemn my phones to.
So yes, I'm glad Android experimented with all the different form factors back in the day! It leaves us with even more choice when we decide on that software platform.
RE[2]: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by l3v1 on Fri 27th Apr 2012 10:36
in reply to "RE: Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2005-07-06
RE: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by kwan_e on Fri 27th Apr 2012 04:24
in reply to "Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2007-02-18
Now, can we stop the pointless flame wars about who copied what from who, and who did/didn't innovate? These types of conversations always degenerate to Apple copying the GUI concept from Xerox, and it just goes 'round and 'round.
Did you know you didn't actually save any characters by typing "'round" instead of "around"?
RE: Well, you're right about one thing ...
by dsmogor on Fri 27th Apr 2012 16:28
in reply to "Well, you're right about one thing ..."
Member since:2005-09-01
The Apple side proponents state is that GUI and interaction patterns are genuine intellectual property that a company can own. From that point of view these are Apple major inventions and contributions to the sate of art (more important than core OS technology) and any producers that featured big buttons, kinetic scrolling, pinch to zoom and swipe after Apple have simply stolen them. The fact they didn't share any core technologies, algorithms is irrelevant. So the crux of argument is that Android deprived Apple of design IP more that any classical computer related stuff. The fact that apple has created the first successfully touch only hand-held device (asserting it's true) is thought to prove their ingenuity.
Edited 2012-04-27 16:31 UTC
News
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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2005-11-13
The topic is definitely getting stale. Obviously, the iPhone had a big influence on Android development. And no doubt, the iPhone took inspiration from devices that had gone before it, and has itself 'borrowed' features introduced in Android. Basically, everybody is copying everybody. And that's all cool.
Now, can we stop the pointless flame wars about who copied what from who, and who did/didn't innovate? These types of conversations always degenerate to Apple copying the GUI concept from Xerox, and it just goes 'round and 'round.
Enough already.
Edited 2012-04-26 22:21 UTC