Posts by RichyS

Cops refuse to say if they secretly snarf cellphone data

@Jake

Want to help me smash up some looms?

ForeverMap 2.1

Astonishing

Only a few years ago we'd be paying hundreds of pounds for this sort of functionality (hey, Audi try and charge me about 200 quid for an updated satnav map DVD still!).

I find it amazing that we can now get all this for substantially less than the price of a swift half (beer icon, obviously).

Samsung threatens Apple in response to patent lawsuit

I think that's the point

I had a number of smartphones from Sony Ericsson, Handspring, and HTC (not branded HTC at the time). All of them looked very different to the iPhone. All of them were ergonomically a bit of a mess (vestigial keyboard on the SE P910i, I'm looking at you) with poor integration between hardware and software (anything HTC and WinMob).

Since the iPhone, pretty much every smartphone has looked like the iPhone.

Coincidence?

@Grease Monkey

"Remember there's nothing in law that says Samsung *have* to sell to Apple or their manufacturers."

You mean, other than existing contracts?

It's not like Apple go round to the nearest Samsung depot with a shopping trolley to pick up their parts. These guys have supply contracts. You can't break those for no good reason without serious repercussions.

Apple sues Samsung over Galaxy look-and-feel

@Rovindi

It would really help if you knew your history. It would make you less wrong...

@Norfolk 'n' Goode

Well, before the iPhone, none of the smartphones looked much like an iPhone. Now most of them do. Some (cough, Samsung, cough) more than others.

Lifted?

By lifted, do you mean sold? This myth that Apple stole the GUI from Xerox is tiresome...

Xerox were given preferential shares in Apple (100k shares for $1M -- within a year they were worth nearly $18M after share splits and Apple's IPO -- god knows what they'd be worth these days after several more splits).

So, Xerox did okay out of the deal. PARC were great inventors, but poor innovators. Pretty much all their good ideas were made successful in the market by someone else.

Finally, MS won the "look'n'feel" case because of a clause in the contract giving MS access to MacOS during development of Excel (which came out first on the Mac, not Windows). Basically the idiot management at Apple at the time gave away rights to the look and feel. Nothing to do with prior art.

Negotiating device

Apple spend nearly $8BN a year on Samsung parts and manufacturing. What's the betting that negotiations to reduce this weren't going to well. I think this lawsuit is just another negotiating tool... "knock 10% off what we already pay, and we'll make the lawsuit go away" sort of thing.

Pope says gravity proves technology can't supplant God

Maybe

Well, the Pope doesn't seem keen.

Palm Sunday

Hasn't 'Palm Sunday' now become 'HP Sunday'?

<-- Mine's the one with a Palm Pilot in the pocket...

Reviewers slam BlackBerry PlayBook software

Astonishing

RIM have been banging on for nearly a year now about how great the PlayBook is going to be, and how much time they've spent perfecting it.

And yet they /still/ manage to release something that's basically still in beta, and missing key features. This isn't a 'no cut and paste yet' type omission. This is email FFS. You know, the only service RIM are actually any good at. It's utterly astonishing.

Love them or hate them, you have to prefer Apple's approach of saying nothing until a device is ready to launch. All this preamble, and RIM come up with /this/?

LPF above is right. Apple must be finding all these tablet attempts hilarious.

Apple to dominate tablet biz through 2015

Boring

This argument is getting boring.

Just because /you/ can't see a need for tablets, doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot of buying (with a 'u') one.

Maybe you think everyone else is an idiot for not putting spaces in front of their punctuation too. Doesn't make you right...

HTC Android tablet priced up for Blighty's shoppers

@DrXym

The Xoom sucks /without/ a stylus.

How much?

If the only difference between this an a Galaxy Tab is the styles, then who makes the fecking stylus? Mont Blanc?

Air Video 2.4.6

@Philip Harvey

Hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good anti-Apple rant.

Get back in yer basement...

Use it, and it's okay.

"Apple’s control-freak tendencies mean that iOS devices only play Apple’s preferred MP4 video format"

So control freaky that you can download the free VLC app from the App Store and play pretty much any format you want -- even all those poor quality AVI and DivXs you 'aquired' somewhere!

I bought Air Video a year or so ago, and have found it moderately useful -- the good thing is you don't have to carry your video everywhere with you, the downside is you have to have your Mac on, and it only really works over a local network.

I haven't really bothered with the transcoding as all my video (mostly DVD rips) are already in .m4v H.264. Let's face it, H.264 is basically the best codec, and I see no reason to mess around with containers such as MKV (why it's so popular in certain torrenty parts of the Internets is beyond me). Maybe there's just something I don't get.

@Alex Walsh: I tried Orb before getting Air Video, and found it to be a little unreliable (I wasn't bothered about the music bit of it either). YMMV, however.

What I'd like to see is a NAS box that can offer AirPlay streaming as a source. At least AirPlay works, unlike the mess that is DNLA.

Swedish newlyweds enjoy lively honeymoon

Re. Hmmmm...

"Not that I'm doubting the Swedes but no-one "battles their way" by plane to anywhere these days."

You've not been to Heathrow recently, have you?

Apple pressures Toyota to kill jailbreaker ad

Taste

Surely it should be the laws of good taste that get that theme removed. Just vile.

Apple 'orders 12 petabytes of storage' from EMC

Re: What are they going to do...

Dogs. Because dogs > cats.

Apple Digital AV Adapter

Or...

Spend £200 on a crappy no brand Android tablet.

Realise it's crappy.

Spend £400 on an iPad and wish you hadn't wasted your time buying cheap crap.

@Glennys

Yeah, but you still end up with a shitty bloatware infested Vaio at the end of the day...

Handshake

Sounds like an issue with HDCP handshaking to me. HDCP handshaking is notoriously crappy (and annoys me each time I have to turn on my TV, Yamaha surround amp and Sky HD box on in the right order after the power to any one of them has been cut).

Don't blame Apple for this. It's not their DRM messing with you, it's the idiot Studios forcing HDCP on any digital video connection.

Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM's wasted R&D billions

Bought

I was under the pression that Microsoft bought the Kinect technology from an Israeli firm.

And I think the reason Apple is so good at R&D is that they have focus. They attempt to innovate (or borrow/buy and improve -- see Fingerworks) within a relatively small area. MS, Google and Nokia indulge in the 'throw shit at a wall' method.

Windows Home Server 2011 signed off

iTunes server

I think what the OP wants is essentially an iTunes server. A Mac Mini with SL Server is simply over kill.

I'd like one too. About £500 with a couple of internal 1TB RAID drives, and play nicely with an Apple TV without having to have a Mac on somewhere else.

Either that or some sort of cloud service that does the same job, and won't cost me more than £500 over 5-6 years (the probably life span of a home server thingy).

Google 'clamps down' on world of Android partners

Apologists

I can't believe how many Android Apologists there are reading El Reg.

Imagine the spleen being vented if this sort of thing was being done by Apple/MS/Sony. You lot are pathetic.

.gits

But the problem is that Google banged on about how 'open' Android was, and how this was such a good thing.

For the record, I think the approach Google are now taking is probably the correct one. However, it does rather make a mockery of their past assertions on the openness of the platform.

I don't particularly think Google are malicious, or tried to mislead anyone at the outset. I suspect that they did intend for Android to remain open (well, fairly open). But the fact remains, they've gone back on what they said. They've been called on it, and they look a little stupid.

Google is in the business of making profits. Therefore they only left Android open for as long as it suited Google, not the wider 'open source' community.

And it turns out that Steve Jobs was right. That must stick in the craw of Droidtards and Penguinistas everywhere!

Aye

I'm looking forward to this. Think I'll grab myself a coffee and settle in for the morning; lobbing in the odd grenade from time to time!

BBC-led RadioPlayer arrives at last

Flash

Requires Flash. Feck that.

I think I'll stick with TuneRadio on my iDevices...

Screwed up audio

"I guess that also explains the annoying echo and screwed up audio that kept coming in for a few minutes every now and then."

No, that's just Radio 1.

Digital player maker 'incited consumers to break the law', says ASA

Exactly what I was thinking.

I mean, what a complete arse.

Go Daddy CEO under fire for 'elephant snuff film'

And...

... I bet no one gets to eat the dead ones.

What a waste.

Elephant legs

Explains where the donner kebab meat comes from.

Acer boss quits after board disses his future strategy

JT Wang

Oh please let the 'JT' in JT Wang stand for John Thomas...

Dell, HP badmouth Apple's iPad

Really?

If most people had the choice, they'd buy a Mac. It's just that most people spend a few hundred quid on a computers -- where a Mac isn't a choice.

There was a report done a year or so ago (since when Apple's share has only grown) that stated that Apple took 90% of money on all computers over $1000. I can't be arsed to Google the report right now, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

So, it would appear that when people do have the choice, they buy Mac.

Mouse

The very fact that this idiot from Dell still thinks you need a mouse for a slate device just goes to show how little Dell get the post-PC era.

He's probably bitching that it doesn't come with a stylus, either.

Repair costs

Why do you think Dell's Streak of P*** be any cheaper to repair than an iPad?

Frankly with service contracts these days it seems cheaper to buy a few extra and throw out the old hardware (laptop, iPad, whatever) when it breaks. Let's face it, it's the people time to trouble-shoot and repair these things that costs.

HTC Incredible S Android smartphone

Product range

Is it just me, or is the entire HTC Android product line (god help us if you try and include WinPho too) utterly mystifying?

Does anyone actually understand where each phone sits in the range? My suspicion is that HTC have just rearranged their components into every possible unique combination, and given it a name.

Steve Jobs vindicated: Google Android is not open

@BorkedAgain

Chrome, like my browser! ;-)

Well...

... it does. A bit.

Umm, yes it does.

If it's not yet open, then it's not open.

'Open at some point in the future, maybe' does not make it open today.

You Phantards are hilarious!

It's brilliant, isn't it.

I'm going to need a new keyboard shortly.

<--- In the meantime, chuck a few of these in to keep things ticking over!!

@BiatcH: It's still in beta

So, you Phantards are now admitting Honeycomb is beta...

Look, we're poking fun at Google because they've been banging on about the 'but it's open' thing for so long (like it actually makes a difference to 90% of users). And now they've been called on it.

I don't really give a shit, but it's fun winding up little Android boys who've got their panties all bunched up...

@Stike Vomit

Cool your boots man.

The cut'n'paste argument is well over. Even WinPho7 has it now.

But Google seem to continue with their releasing beta software approach with the Windows XP/Tron mash-up abomination that is Honeycomb. I've not read a review yet that doesn't say it has rough edges. Maybe you know something different.

@DavCrav

<quote>but you probably don't want to release the source code out to people until it's cleaned up</quote>

You mean, until Google have removed all the license headers and Java source code comments!

Really

But if Android is so 'open' what's stopping them opening up Honeycomb now? After all, from the reviews I've read, they could do with a little help from the open source community in getting it finished.

Duke Nukem Forever DELAYED

Project

'Duke Nukem Forever' isn't so much a product name, more a software development plan.

Judge to music industry: 'Worth trillions? Forget it'

Ceci n'est pas une title.

You have 6 cars? You gloating bastard...

Re. Silly Judge

Paid in iTunes vouchers.

Totally agree

+1 for missing John Peel.

iPhone 4 SURVIVES plunge from plane

PARIS 2

I think we've just decided the payload for PARIS 2...