Posts by Snail 30 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jan 2008
Microsoft already write numerous apps for third parties (Facebook, twitter, youtube being well known examples).
They also throw money at developers for big name apps (Angry birds for instance).
The problem is, they can only write to public APIs. If a company doesn't have good APIs, or isn't willing to let Microsoft use internal APIs, theres not a lot Microsoft can do.
Some of the most requested apps people beg for, are banking apps, and no bank is going to let Microsoft write them an app.
Got to laugh.
If you actually look at the EE website, you'll see those prices are inclusive of handset subsidies. So they aren't true prices.
The actual prices (without handset) are....
ALREADY GOT A 4G READY PHONE?
OUR SIM ONLY PLANS GIVE YOU 4GEE TO GO WITH IT. All 4GEE SIM ONLY PLANS COME WITH UNLIMITED CALLS AND TEXTS.
500MB £21
1GB £26
3GB £31
5GB £36
Still bad, but nearly half the price of the headline grabbing figures above, and not that far off Oranges SIM only prices.
What will be interesting, is what the handset subsidies are like. If they are competitive for something like an iPhone, or SIII, then it could be a whole different game.
How is it difficult to update WP contacts on your PC? If you have a hotmail account, it takes like 2 seconds, 1 to open a hotmail browser window, another to switch to contacts.
Not tried a non-hotmail account, but surely its just a matter of logging in to Microsoft with a non-hotmail account.
WP8 looks like its going to cure a lot of the issues with WP7, but the biggest problem is always going to be the whole app eco-system. If the whole sharing of kernel between Windows8, Tablet, xbox and phone works, WP8 will quickly start to catch Android/iOS on app development, and WP8 stands a chance of being a 3rd eco-system candidate. If not, i'd imagine Microsoft will drop WP in a couple of years.
Surely this is pure common sense.
In one hit, you'll have a large number of types of users for the Phone/Tablet, so Microsoft can create an internal website for bugs/comments/requests, and get a wide range of feedback.
Not only that, but if the developers use the device they work on, they have more incentive to fix the bugs they find, they have more incentive to write apps they want, add the features they want, etc etc.
Many companies do this, i know that because the company i work for offers a similar scheme (although nowhere near the Microsoft scale)
Hardly supprising. Beats HTC phones looked awesome, until everyone realised it was just a sound profile, that improved the sound of most headphones.
Being Android, the profile was being loaded onto various other phones within a week, and all advantage of Beats was lost.
Had HTC actually put some great audio hardware into the phone, rather than just a cheap bodge, it may have been a very different story.
Why make it soo complicated.
Why can't iTunes or someone just sell me DRM free movies?
I have boxes of DVDs/Blurays. that i buy, convert to digital, and plonk in the back of the garage, and a NAS dull of digital movies.
If iTunes, or someone else would sell me digitial, 720p/1080p movies, of a similar quality to DVD/Bluray, with no DRM, in a decent format that plays on a decent range of devices, i'd never buy a DVD/Bluray again.
Even better, like itunes music, once they know what music i've got, and it becomes available in a better format 720p->1080p->1080p 3D->4K->whatever is next, they can offer to sell me the same thing again, at a discounted price. Then like iTunes Genius (or whatever its called), they can use my movie collection to sell me more movies i like.
The WP8 upgrade this is obvious.
WP7 only supports a couple of chipsets, so you can guarantee Microsoft have the ability to upgrade every single WP7 device.
The issue is down to manufacturers and telcos. I'd wager Microsoft have the manufacturers on contract, so every phone will be capable of upgrading to WP8.
The issue was always the telcos. The recent, high selling phones, like the new Nokia's will definitely get WP8. The older, less selling generation 1 devices are a different matter. I bet Microsoft are begging telco's to support W8, and hearing silence.
Its difficult, because Microsoft could provide a list tomorrow, saying all these phone/telco combinations will be updates to W8, but i bet they can't, as its the actual telcos that are their customer, and Microsoft have enough of a struggle with telcos as it is, annoying them, by exposing their laziness will just mean the telco will just show Microsoft the door.
Me, i'd happily pay a small fee (IIRC it was about £10 to upgrade iOS) to upgrade my HTC HD7 to W8. I'd be a bit annoyed if it didn't get W8, but then its 2 years old already, out of contract, and i'm waiting for the W8 hardware before upgrading, as at the moment, theres nothing drasticly different between my 2 year old hardware, and todays flagship devices.
I still don't get the issue with storage space.
I used to have this on my old iphone which was one of the 8gb ones. I was forever swapping content to stay under the limit.
Then i got soo fed up, i spent some time looking at my music collection, and found that large portions of it never got played, same with videos.
Since monitoring my listening/viewing patterns, i've found i generally don't need 90% of my collection, so it never makes it onto the phone.
These days, new music goes onto Skydrive, then if i find i'm listening/watching something reguarly, it gets uploaded to the phone. Thus i i've still not filled up the 16GB of my 2 year old phone.
Whats more annoying, is i didn't work this out, before upgrading HDDs of PC, PS3 and NAS, all of which are half empty most of the time nowadays.
I'm a WP7 owner, i love the OS, but am decidedly unimpressed by all the current WP7 range.
I've been with WP7 about 2 years now, so i'm due an upgrade (from HTC HD7)., and in 2 years the only real improvement from my phone to a Lumia 900 (or HTC Hitan) is 0.4mhz and a front facing camera.
There is absolutely no reason for me to upgrade my phone, my current phone works well, is fast (and the next WP7 update is tailored to low end handsets, so might make my phone even better), and theres very little difference to the current gen handsets. And thats annoying. I want to upgrade, i want something new and shiny, but theres nothing on the horizon for months, By which time, by which time WP8 will have iPhone 5 to deal with.
SD Cards are a well documented issue. And its not all MS's fault.
I think its the Samsung Focus that has a hidden SD card slot, that is "upgradable".
The OS uses all memory for the phone, and therefore the performance of the SD card is critical. Annoyingly its really easy to get the throughput figures for an SD Card, but theres never any mention of the random access times, and with the vast majority of SD Cards, its attrocious, and putting it in a WP7 absolutely kills performance.
Microsoft could insist on SD Cards in every phone tomorrow, but it would be the same situation as the USB Flash drive support for Xbox. Everyone just buys the cheapest one they can find, rather than checking supported lists, then bitches about the performance problems that follow.
Allowing AV products, is like admitting there are virus issues with your platform, which Apple do their very best to prevent.
Maybe Kaspersky should sell a iOS AV product for jailbroken devices, so those that chose to get their apps without using the app store, can have protection against all the dodgy apps that exist outside Apple's walled garden.
Lets be honest, they are the people that need it anyway.
Its a sad day, when we start needing AV software on a mobile!
@barry shitpeas "but it coincidences perfectly with their lost Android focus when Microsoft forced them to tinker with Windows Phone."
Have you looked at the HTC WP7 range? They are basically just Android devices with a couple extra buttons. So theres little or no time on hardware design for WP7, just writing drivers, hardly enough to be "losing focus on Android".
Apple can argue all they like that they like that they compete with PCs, but if you want a computer to run the Apple operating system, your pretty much stuck with Apple.
I think this case could be good for consumers. Apple are very good at what the do, but they always severly overcharge for their hardware.
Im sure he's missing a couple of things.
First AAC files sold by iTunes are better quality that most legal MP3 downloads. The iTunes Plus files are better than any MP3 downloads.
iTunes was the first of the major media players to support a lossless format out of the box (AAC Lossless), and the ipod was the first of MP3 players i know of to support a lossless format.
Even Bill knows Apple are good with multimedia
As a music lover, its essential that i can move my music between devices, and it will play on anything. As such all the DRM sh## was always in my way.
I jumped for joy when itunes plus was announced, and again when play, amazon, et al all jumped on the DRM free music bandwagon.
The issue being, i looked at the selection of music available, and it was shockingly bad. Expecting me to pay £5 for a couple of year album, i can get from the shops on CD cheaper? They are having a laugh.
The easiest way to combat piracy is to jump on the DRM free digitial music bandwagon properly (ie EVERYTHING, including back catalogue), and make it reasonably priced. So its cheaper to buy online than in the shops, at all times, so prices actually drop in line with the shops, rather than a CD being released at £8.99 in shops and online, and within six months, the price hasn't changed online, yet the CD is loads cheaper in the shops.
Paris, because she's stared on P2P.
Ebay are making money off all the items, so surely its their responsibility to make sure their customers are not being ripped off?
But no, instead, they expect everyone else (the 100's of thousands of companies with fake goods) to police the ebay website instead.
@Dave, i've seen the local fake Nike trainer person get nabbed by the Police at the local car boot sale, so they are watched!
Even Paris knows ebay are con artists!
I used to be a regular of ebay, but its turned rubbish. I've even had my paypal account hacked, and paypal were completely disinterested.
The recent changes in fees, feedback policys, mandating paypal, now this, its just pants.
I want to see one of the big players come up with a good alternative. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, someone must be able to see what a good business model ebay has, and how they could steal a slice of the pie.
I've had to stop using ebay, as its just a big con now.
Bills got plenty of time on his hands now, maybe he can help
@Adam Foxton
Paypal may tell you they are secure, but in the 20+ years i've had credit cards, i've had 2 problems with dodgy payments. One was dodgy Shell petrol payment, that was all to do with dodgy garages, the other was my paypal account getting hacked.
When my paypal account got hacked, paypal weren't very interested. They had all the details about what happened, but couldn't be bothered to investigate. I got my money back, but the hacker is still out and about hacking accounts, and im now unable to use ebay, because im not happy that paypal is secure enough to hold my bank details.
Microsoft and Yahoo joining forces could have actually created competition for Google.
Google is far and away the biggest search engine around, and thus them teaming up with their competition IS anti-competitive.
Competition always breeds innovation, once you get a monopoly, you get Lazy (Microsoft being a good example), whats to stop Google getting the same?
People can moan all they like, but the only company out there with the power to at least challenge Google are Microsoft.
A Yahoo! purchase by Microsoft would have at least given Google some decent competition. Now Yahoo! are getting in Googles pocket, which from an external point of view is seriously anti-competitive.
Microsoft may be evil, but when a market needs competition, they are very good at giving it. Look at the console market, this generation is fantastic for gamers, because of the competition between PS3 and 360.
Why do people always moan that Microsoft are evil, when they are just trying to cure problems with modern society?
All the DRM stuff is in place because people try and steal.
This is exactly the same thing. If people turned their gadget off, when they are told to, then Microsoft wouldn't need to propose this stuff.
Paris, because she'd welcome the ability to stop cameras on demand.....
Im still not convinced by this.
Firstly, anyone who's ever looked at upgrading a Sky+ (or any PVR) will know they use slightly different HDD firmware, thats more geared towards large file transfers, rather than small stuff (like PCs).
Secondly, almost everyone upgrading their PS3 is just getting the cheapest large drives they can. Which means they wont necessarily have the faster transfer rates, the best heat management, or the best reliability.
Couple those two together, and i'll lay odds the further into this console generation we go, the more "upgraded" HDDs start failing in PS3s.
Paris, because she knows a gimmick when she sees one
@ Alistair Millington
How can you dismiss the the PS3/360 as churning out the same rubbish over and over, yet suddenly the Wii isnt??
With the odd exception every game on the wii is the same old stuff we've seen year in year out from nintendo. Most games would map onto a normal controller with no effort at all (with very odd exceptions like the genius that is Wii Sports)
Everyone raves about Mario Kart, but that would map exactly onto a sixaxis controller, then you could have flashy controls, with HD, and a usable online system. Rather than a average looking racing game, with gimped online.
Paris, because she knows a gimmick when she sees one.
As one of the biggest music suppliers to the UK, this is a HUGE step in the right direction.
I made deliberate purchases at itunes when they launched the plus service, despite a dire offering of music in my chosen genres, purely to endorse the whole DRM free thing.
I'll buy some stuff that i want from Play too, as a gesture that they are doing things right.
But, i wont be completely happy till im getting a lossless, CD quality download, equivalent to what id be buying on a CD.
As a regular ebay user im fully aware how much of a con it really is.
Between listing fees, sold item fees, and paypal fees, ebay takes 10% of the cost of the item. And it really annoys me, because there isn't really a good alternative for either.
I wouldn't mind so much if paypal actually helped. I've been done over by both buyers and sellers, and paypal has screwed me in both cases.
Its got to the point, where i wont buy or sell anything worth more than about £10, as i have about a 5% chance of getting shafter :(
The iPhone is a gorgeous piece of kit, but its highly overrated.
The only really good thing about it is the UI, and the looks of it, theres a large number of phones on the market that do everything the iPhone does and more.
The whole Apple business model is seriously flawed, and in a couple of months when Nokia/Sony Ericsson have their next phones out, which have take a lesson from the iPhone on looks/UI, the Consumer will be the winner, and Apple the loser.
This is a far wider problem than just XBL. This is custom support services as a whole.
I've had all sorts of personal information about my fathers bank accounts, by mistake, because the bank staff didn't ask the right questions, and logged into the wrong account.
My father has also had all sorts of information about my credit card because a bank phoned asking for me by surname, then didnt bother with security questions.
Since customer support centres started going out to india, and other places this type of thing gets more and more common. Good quality customer support costs a lot, but is worth its weight in gold. Its just a pity 75% of customer facing places dont realise it!
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