Posts by E Haines

iPhone and Mac boost Apple by 94%

Market share

You may have noticed that Apple produces other things besides computers, some of which have substantially more market share than Microsoft equivalents.

Adobe man to Apple: 'Go screw yourself'

Why wait?

Opera for Mac has been out since, like, forever. What are you waiting for? It's a few revisions behind Opera for Windows, but so are the Linux etc. versions.

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

...to H.264

Duh. Which isn't limited to Quicktime. Although Quicktime isn't anywhere near as buggy or resource hungry as Flash...doesn't crash, doesn't use half as much CPU.

Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you

Stupid

This is stupid, because clearly ships powered by warp drives aren't operating in normal space; otherwise the Enterprise wouldn't be able to exceed the speed of light as handily as it does, as well as being able to avoid time dilation and other effects of near-lightspeed travel. If you are going to buy into the concept of warp drive to begin with, you'd have to acknowledge that it's not actually travel in any conventional sense, so pesky things like hydrogen atoms are irrelevant. Rather poor attempt at a thought experiment here, I'm afraid....

Opera plays chicken with Apple iPhone police

@Market Shmarket

Somebody needs to explain to you what anti-trust legislation is, when it applies, and what the free market means. (It won't be me, because clearly you've made up your mind in disregard to such niceties as facts and reality, and trying to enlighten brick walls was never my strong point.) I swear, the only thing more illogical and wrong-headed than a fanboi is an anti-fanboi....

@Precisely because Opera is a small fry

By what bizarre stretch of logic would any government get involved in this? Apple is quite free to use whatever criteria they desire, and apply it as arbitrarily as they like. They don't have to approve a single app if they don't want to. Granted they wouldn't have any developers left if they did that, but it's their store, their rules, and if you don't like it, there are a bazillion other phones out there that you can develop for instead. Gotta love the free market, eh?

Inside Microsoft's innovation crisis

Re: 2 makes a habit

"How about the Newton, how'd that fare?"

Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton, aside from killing it off when he returned to Apple. Might want to more thoroughly think through your comments next time, eh?

NASA's Spirit rover stuck for good

Also...

Will you change "It's driving days" to "Its driving days" while you're at it?

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

Heavyweight

Why the constant digs at his weight? He's not THAT huge, and seems to be reasonably mobile, the aptitude of said mobility notwithstanding. And doesn't collapse into a bubbling blob of flop sweat at the slightest movement, unlike the other Steve. (No, the other other Steve. The Uncle Fester one.)

You and what Android? The Google iPhone killer that isn't

Er, no...

You've quite obviously never even used an iPhone. If you had, you'd likely know why people talk so good of it, instead of making embarrassingly incorrect statements probably based on hearsay and irrational hatred.

Paramount prepares to scale Dune

Miniseries = not good

I'm quite baffled by the folks who like the miniseries...I found it irredeemably dull and soulless, to the point where I didn't bother with the sequel. Being "more faithful" to the book doesn't help when it's done without any apparent interest, passion, or skill on the part of the producers. The 1984 version was indeed flawed, but at least it was interesting.

I did like God Emperor and thought it was rather fascinating, but I was maybe 12 when I read it, so I think it's best to leave it at that and not ever re-read it....

Samsung's Galaxy stuck in history

Not $10

The $10 update for the iPod touch is not $10, it's $5. Try to keep up, eh? It was $20, then it was $10, now it's $5. Any guesses as to the next price point?

Mozilla man sends Firefoxers to Microsoft Bing

How soon they forget

Microsoft doesn't exactly have a great track record on privacy. If you want to make a statement, do something less stupid than using Bing.

iPhone conquers half the (smartphone) world

Windows Mobile

According to the graph, Windows Mobile seems to be a rounding error. Hmm....

Apple iPad to get OLED screen

iPad

It seems people are trying to force the iPad into existence by sheer force of rumor. Wonder if that works.... (Of course, even if Apple does make it, people will only complain about it and make snide comments, so you have to wonder why the interest.)

Apple Magic Mouse

@Tony Smith

OS X recognizes any number of mouse buttons out of the box...it has no problems with the 8 buttons on my Logitech mouse. Even Mac OS pre-X recognized more than one button. As for not enabling the right-click by default, it's better that way--those who have some experience will enable it, and those who don't are better off with one, trust me.

Flash goes native on iPhone

Still need a Mac

>"Moreover, you can now build iPhone apps on Windows, previously you needed a Mac."

That hasn't changed; you still need a Mac to run the simulator and do all the code signing shenanigans. If this is referring to just the development process itself, other people have set up Windows development environments for iPhone development, using a Mac just for the final steps, so nothing new there.

4 in 10 Brits feel lonely without a daily texting

No LOL

I believe that part anyway, since those slack-jawed dweebs who use "lol" as punctuation should be permanently guffawing and earning many strange looks if their acronym usage was to be taken at face value.

USB supreme court backs Apple in Palm Pre kerfuffle

@Stephen Usher

>"Unfortunately, it seems that Apple change the library format with every major release of iTunes. Have you not noticed the "Updating Library" dialogue box?"

You're terribly confused. The iTunes library is used only by iTunes. If they do change it every release, so what? Nobody cares. The only people who have to deal with it are the iTunes programmers.

The XML file, on the other hand, is essentially a copy of the library in an open format for use by third parties. iTunes itself does not use this for anything. It does not get changed every release. It's there so everybody else can happily interoperate with iTunes in any ol' way they like.

Simple, no? Maybe Palm can use this, like--I dunno--RIM maybe? Works for them....

Doctor Who fans name best episode ever

McCoy

Definitely does not deserve any episodes in the top 10, or top 100 for that matter. I can't believe anyone actually paired up "decent script" with "McCoy era" using a straight face...that's just not on, even accounting for differences in taste. I saw a few of them this year for the first time in decades, and even the ones I remembered as "not bad for a McCoy episode" were deeply nonsensical. I think the only half-decent one of the lot was Remembrance of the Daleks (in which a Dalek happily levitated up the stairs, so the commentators you see wibbling on about "ooh, the Daleks can fly in the new Who, they could never get up the stairs before" can kindly stuff it, thank you). Maybe Fenric was OK; I haven't seen it lately, but I remember it as what should have been a 6-parter crammed not entirely successfully into a 4-part story.

Apple sends iPhones into 'Coma Mode'

No probs with iPod touch

I've found 3.1.1 to be an improvement over 3.0, actually. Nothing major, but nice enough and no complaints with syncing or anything else really.

Mono swings .NET development into iPhone

It's been done

People have been using Mono on the iPhone for at least a year now; that's what the Unity engine uses.

Apple gives Palm the boot - again

Why are people so stupid....

>"Apple makes a decent profit off its I-whatevers, yes, however, Majority of its cash flow comes from Itunes as a program, and not the devices."

That's exactly wrong. The majority of their cash flow does come from the devices. iTunes just about breaks even and is only there to sell iPods and iPhones.

Palm can do what RIM does with their BlackBerry Media Sync program. Namely, it makes use of the XML file of your library that iTunes generates expressly for the purposes of interoperability (this file is not used by iTunes itself). Apple is so obviously in the right in this case (it happens sometimes!) that even the idiots should be able to see it.

Most gamers fat and miserable, finds study

@Hollerith 1

Everything is a waste of time. Your wastes of time are no more and no less valid than anyone else's wastes of time. If you don't enjoy games, don't play them. If you do enjoy them, play them. I'm quite sure you have activities that I would consider boring and pointless, but I'm not going to tell you to do something "real", because it's your life and you can waste it any way you choose. The simple fact is, different people have different interests. I can't believe I had to waste my time explaining this....

Hackintosher to open US storefront

Labeled

Is for sure a word. We're talking Apple, which is a US company, and therefore US spelling would be appropriate.

Apple delays 17in MacBook Pro

Macbook + Firewire

@Mark W

"Agreed, the basic Macbook is probably £300 more expensive than it needs to be, and I wouldn't buy one because they've dropped Firewire and for me that is an essential evil."

The basic, $999 Macbook is the only model that HAS Firewire. Which seems backwards to me, but there you go.

Universal thaws out The Thing

Why another remake will fail

There was a decent reason to remake The Thing the first time (and as EvilGav points out, it works as much as a sequel as a remake): honestly, the original wasn't really very good. The remake, however, can't really be improved on in any significant way. Therefore another remake is 100% guaranteed pure fail.

Apple moves to unify its OS and interface

Says who?

"Is this going to be the same unified UI that they told us was coming with Leopard ?"

"They" never said that, assuming you mean "Apple"; it was a bunch of rumormongers who did. You can expect rumors to be frequently wrong. But no, OS X for PC is just as far away as it ever was, if not even farther due to the ever-increasing amount of devices Apple makes that run it. They would have to be completely moronic to even consider undercutting their own business. If you want more competition on generic x886 boxes, there's always Linux.

Prolific penis-pill pusher gets slap on the wrist

Harm?

You "can't see the harm"? Seriously? Not the significant resources needed to reduce the spam problem, the increasing flakiness of email as a result, the inconvenience to legit users? Really?

Apple anti-virus advice was nothing new

@Daniel B

Mac OS X != Mac Classic. They are different and incompatible operating systems. The old MacOS had very little security, and indeed had viruses. It's also completely dead and hardly anyone uses it anymore. So it has nothing to do with OS X, which is in fact inherently much more secure.

Did the width move for you, darling?

Gray bars?

Apparently those complaining about fixed width and huge gray bars are running their browsers full-screen. Who does that anymore? Time to leave the '90s, methinks....

As for "the font's too small"...how about using a real browser where you get to set a minimum font size? I don't go smaller than 14 points, and while a few bits and bobs overflow their intended space and therefore look bad, mostly it's fine.

Dallas man accidentally shoots self in head

@theotherone

"well I suppose a nation that voted for Bush TWICE has it's fair share of loonies..."

Er, we did not vote for Bush the first time. Remember? If the U.S. was a democracy, he would never have entered office. (And, quite possibly, we did not vote for him the second time either.)

P.S. I would never trust with a gun anyone who doesn't know the difference between it's and its, which sadly means you.

Now RIAA says copying your own CDs is illegal

O rly?

Have they not heard of the law called "fair use"? I'd love them to send me a letter like that, so I can sue them into oblivion. Someone has to.

Apple to roll out Mac OS X 10.5 next week

Not a point release

> but isn't £85 quid a hell of a lot for a point release/service pack?

It would be if it was a point release/service pack, but it's not. It's at least as much of a full OS upgrade as any Windows release (and more so than many of those). The point releases (such as the upcoming 10.4.11) are free, and typically released every few months.