* Posts by Graham Triggs

114 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jun 2008

Page:

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

Graham Triggs

Flight Sim World

Interestingly, nobody has mentioned Flight Sim World when covering this.

Yes, it was a Dovetail game - but Train Simulator / TSW came out of the development of Microsoft's Train Simulator, and Dovetail had taken on Flight Sim X and out of the old Microsoft platform came Flight School and apparently FSW (the details of the engine were, iirc, a bit sketchy).

Is there a relationship between FSW being canned last year, and a new MS Flight Sim announced this?

Turn me up some: Smart speaker outfit Sonos blasted in complaint to UK privacy watchdog

Graham Triggs

It seems to be more a problem that Sonos is trying to simplify having a single set of terms and conditions.

In reality, the system probably doesn't collect any more information than necessary - if you get one of the smart speakers, and want to use the assistant functionality, then there is obviously voice recordings and data associated with that which needs to be collected. But a Sonos Connect or Amp isn't going to do that.

Similarly, they recently introduced functionality to present you with a recently played list. But in order to do that, they need to collect the information on what you have played. By default, this functionality is DISABLED, and you have to opt in to the data collection in order to use that functionality.

Which all leads me to believe that there is a gap between the overall consent that you are giving for the terms and conditions, and the data that is actually collected based on what you opt in to use.

Amazon exec tells UK peers: No, we don't want to be dominant. Also, we don't fancy being taxed on revenues

Graham Triggs

Re: Nowt to do with Amazon

Couple of things:

1) The EU stepped in to stop using low VAT rate administrations for distance selling - if you sell to the UK, VAT is due to the UK.

2) Tax on revenue vs VAT - anyone who realises that it is pushing up their prices is not going to be happy with an effective increase on VAT rate. But as you can see from these comments there are people that completely disassociate the revenue of a company from the price that we are paying for goods and services.

The business rates question is an interesting one though - you certainly want to avoid removing incentives that get distance business to build large warehouses in low land value / high unemployment areas. Because getting distance sellers into those locations is part of how we can address the regional divides in the country.

But at the same time, as it is displacing local revenue from businesses, there is a reason to want to get some money and redistribute it to where the sales are made.

Graham Triggs

Re: Death of the High St

We have fairly high levels of employmeent, and with sex equality it often means that all adult members of a household - and certainly amongst those with disposable income - are working Mon to Fri.

So footfall midweek is quite depressed anyway, and even at the weekend - are you going to spend half your day off going into town to buy a CD, when you could download it instantly and spend the day doing something more interesting?

We can lament the demise of the high street, but the reality is a lot of it has been supplanted by ways of doing things that are better for most people, and if those businesses hadn't previously existed we wouldn't be creating them now.

Graham Triggs

Re: Tax allowance for costs is a grace

There is already a tax on revenue - it's called VAT. Apart from books and a few other items, 20% of everything we pay to Amazon is handed over to HMRC. And it's paid regardless of whether Amazon makes a profit or not.

And then in addition to that, there is a tax on profit. A tax on profits isn't just a "grace" that recognises costs, it encourages businesses to invest in the business, to reward their employees, etc.

Adding another revenue based tax is really just increasing the effective VAT rate by stealth.

Whether the likes of Amazon are taking the piss by artificially offshoring profits is a matter of conjecture - we have to at least recognise that their is value to a UK business that is being added by activities in other jurisdictions / business units: overall brand awareness, development of shared technologies, etc. Sometimes it is hard to put a monetary value on that. I think one thing that is clear is that it should only be considered a legitimate business expense if it is transferred directly to the jurisdiction that is providing the value, and not via an intermediary / holding account.

But if we are going to get into discussions about taxation, there shouldn't just be screaming headlines about corporation tax compared to overall revenues. Every story should list, itemised, not just the corporation tax, but also VAT, the amounts paid via PAYE to the exchequer, etc. Lets see everything that a business is handing over to the exchequer in relation to it's revenue, before we decide whether to be hysterical about it or not.

Boeing 737 pilots battled confused safety system that plunged aircraft to their deaths – black box

Graham Triggs

Re: Hey software, get the fuck out of the way!

"Until this incident, I would have said that's why I like Boeing more than Airbus. Boeing's philosophy was supposed to be as you say... assist the pilot, but never usurp his authority. The Airbus philosophy is that since pilot error is a/the cause of most crashes, it's going to overrule the pilot if it thinks he is in error. This incident seems an example of the Airbus philosophy, not the supposed Boeing one."

I may be wrong here, but my impression is that even with Airbus, it is human part that causes virtually all failures. Admittedly, sometimes that is down to bad interface design, where the human thinks they are doing one thing, but are actually telling the software something else.

And whilst we could say that because this incident was caused by a faulty sensor, and that a faulty sensor should not be allowed to override a pilot's input, pilots are still depending on what the plane is telling them. If the software can get bad data, so can the pilot - and there are crashes where the pilot has been given the wrong altitude, airspeed, etc.

We have to be realistic here - the software is pretty reliable within its operating parameters. And some of the cases where a pilot might be able to react on instinct, e.g. flying in bad weather, maybe there could be better decisions to be made to not put a plane in that kind of risk.

Whilst we worry about the reliability of the software, think of the incidents that could be prevented. If you can (mostly) rely on a plane flying and landing itself, detecting and avoiding any obstructions, you can afford to lock the controls to the biometrics of the pilots prior to take-off, knowing that if anything happens to them - or simply there is a failure to read the biometrics - it is the plane that will get itself to safety It would significantly impact the possibilities for hijackers.

But however good the software can be, pilots are necessary. Maybe the unexpected situation is unavoidable. Maybe you are running low on fuel and need to land at an airport where guidance systems for an automated landing are malfunctioning. You need a human element to deal with passenger emergencies. With 100s of people on board, you need to cover these possibilities.

Graham Triggs

Re: Hey software, get the fuck out of the way!

Whilst I would agree that this is probably a system too far, maybe your anger is a little misplaced.

It's not the programmers who thought they were god.

It's not the programmers who decided to have this system.

The programmers have simply done their job to implement a protection routine based on the inputs that it is given. And in all likelihood it is the data rather than the algorithm that generated the problem.

That they did, that the system was installed in the aircraft is a management decision.

If you have inner peace, it's probably 'cos your broadband works: Zen Internet least whinged-about Brit ISP – survey

Graham Triggs

"As Whinge? noted, 81 per cent of those surveyed haven't switched in over two years"

Not to disregard switching as being a solution in some cases, how about we just get fair prices to being with, not all these good new customer deals and terrible treatment of long term customers which means we HAVE to keep switching every couple of years.

UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill

Graham Triggs

There is no point investing any money in looking at an alternative - not only would it be prohibitively expensive to create our own system, by the time Galileo is up and running we will likely be trying to get back into the EU anyway.

UK has rejected over 1,000 skilled IT bod visa applications this year

Graham Triggs

Re: @AC Use local

There are two ways of looking at it - you could view it as importing labour to subdue wages. Or, where there is a "local" skills shortage, that is artificially inflating wages. Which is good for the individual employee, but may not be so good for their colleagues.

For ROW immigration, you not only have skills requirements, but minimum salaries set on a sector / role basis. So as long as we are talking about VISA supported immigration, it can only "subdue" wages to the degree that the government has set.

If the role can be done remotely, then you don't use immigration to subdue wages - you outsource the position.

Intel outside: Apple 'prepping' non-Chipzilla Macs by 2020 (stop us if you're having deja vu)

Graham Triggs

Re: Makes a lot of sense

Microsoft's approach has every chance of success.

The main difference will be in the driving forces.

With Apple, the transition to Intel was complete because they forced it to be. And that's OK, because you are going from a rare desktop class chip to a common desktop class chip, which as well as being capable to run native software, gave you extra capabilities in running dual boot, etc.

The question with ARM chips is how many consumers want it. If enough users flock to Windows ARM, it will thrive. But then they will also keep the Intel side going as long as there is demand too.

Will Apple try to force everyone over to ARM? It's possible, and they'll certainly take some of their users with them. But they might just lose some.

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

Graham Triggs

More comfortable surrounds?

I've been on small MD-80s that offer lots of space, and huge 747s with absolutely none.

I've no idea where the suggestion that "twin aisle" planes are more comfortable - it all depends on how the plane has been fitted out.

But a 320 presents some challenges - smaller planes are more susceptible to turbulence. The longer the flight, the more catering you'll need. Cabin crew will need to take breaks. All of that will take out more seats, and fewer passengers put the fares up.

Virgin Media customers complain of outages across UK

Graham Triggs

If there was any kind of proper FTTP competition for Virgin, I would have left them a long time ago.

Over two years, and they've still done nothing about a fault ticket in my area, as well as continually postponing upgrades (whilst still happily charging existing customers top £££s for a lower service).

Why Firefox? Because not everybody is a web designer, silly

Graham Triggs

Rather silly article...

"vulnerable to the capricious whims of a single corporate entity"

Yep, that's why WebKit (on iOS), IE 6 and even Netscape before it, sucked. Because you have / had a rendering engine, with no competition, and *controlled by a single corporate entity and closed off to the world*.

It particularly sucks that you have a platform like iOS, where you are *forced* to use that closed off rendering engine.

But, do these arguments really apply to an open source rendering engine? One where a Google, a Mozilla, a Microsoft, an Apple, etc. can all contribute to the development?

"innovation" isn't so cool when it creates fragmentation, and you are seriously underestimating the cost of all these browser incompatibilities - even significant and relatively simple sites have problems. Try tracking a parcel delivery via Royal Mail, using Safari.

I'm not saying that the possibility of people creating alternative browser engines is bad. And I do think that a *closed source* corporate controlled monoculture IS a bad thing.

But you're not going to convince me that a single true open source rendering engine, contributed to and used by all the main players in a diversity of applications, is worse than the fragmentation and incompatibilities that we have now. And I'm saying that from my experience as a *user*, not from my web development.

EU turns screws on Android – report

Graham Triggs

Another EU competition joke

It might be a bit strong to say I love the EU, but I am a strong supporter of it. I voted remain.

However, it isn't perfect. No legislative body ever could be. However, the EU competition rulings are so often a joke.

Phones usually ship with their own launchers, or you can download one, that offers customisation.

Don't like the Google folder? Remove it. Don't like the Google search bar? Remove it.

If you want all Microsoft services, buy a Windows Phone. All Apple? Buy an iPhone.

Too many EU competition decisions are based on some abstract ideo of competition, and not based on a test of what will actually be in the best interest of consumers.

And that means consumers are often impacted by these decisions, regardless of whether they are in the EU or not.

UK's EE scores network reliability clean sweep, rival dwarves fume

Graham Triggs

Now, what could have given Three the size of network to compete with EE, and O2 the investment to move it out from the worst performing network?

Brexit: More cash for mobile operators or consumers? Pick one

Graham Triggs

Who will lose out? A bit of both - it's likely that under the new EU rules on roaming charges, mobile operators will be bring in small rises to the basic amount that everyone pays. That might be bad for people who never travel, and need the cheapest prices possible.

That's a relatively small amount of the market though. Personally, I switched to Three precisely to get a better roaming deal, and data allowances. Now that we've largely transitioned to smart phones, being connected - being able to use maps, check in for flights, etc. when we are travelling is so much more important and useful than it used to be. And there isn't really any good reason for the costs to be so high as to prevent that.

Safari 10 dumps Flash, Java, Silverlight, QuickTime in the trash

Graham Triggs

Re: That is all well and good but...

They already have a HTML 5 desktop beta of iPlayer, and they serve media to mobile devices without Flash.

Surely it can't take them much more than flipping a switch - the question is how many visitors are using old browsers that have to use Flash in order to work.

Bank in the UK? Plans afoot to make YOU liable for bank fraud

Graham Triggs

I want compensation...

For the costs I've incurred as a result of over-zealous anti-fraud detection systems incorrectly rejecting purchases that I have authorised.

Atlassian cuts Bamboo from the cloud, lays pipelines into Bitbucket

Graham Triggs

Alternatively...

Rather than struggling with Bamboo (although I'll admit setting up CI effectively isn't always a piece of cake), maybe Atlasssian have just realised that it isn't a competitive enough product against TeamCity, Travis, Jenkins, etc.

In addition, BitBucket really doesn't have the mindshare (and quite likely not market share either) of GitHub.

So instead of trying to compete head on, bring Bamboo and BitBucket together and try to define a new class of source hosting and integrated CI.

It might be a bold move that gives them a more powerful, more popular, and higher revenue product. Or people might just continue to ignore it. Time will tell.

Airbus to build plane that's even uglier than the A380

Graham Triggs

Re: The A380 is not ugly!

I agree that the A380 isn't "ugly". In reality, everything follows the lines of most planes today. It just looks unfeasibly large.

Other than the sheer size, the one thing that really stands out is the positioning and size of the cockpit windows - which looks so out of proportion in comparison to other planes.

It's a little odd, but mostly I'm just impressed by it's sheer size. I'm far more excited about seeing one, than any other plane. And if anything, it's made the 747 look ugly - because really, that always was a rather ugly plane, but you forgave it for it's sheer size compared to everything else.

Although the best way to see an A380 is when it is just starting it's final approach over London - is it a normal plane that is scarily close, or a very big plane that is still far away?

Catz: Google's Android hurt Oracle's Java business

Graham Triggs

Hurt... how?

By including Java in Android, they've driven up the number of JVM installations and Java IDEs for developers / helped consolidate the use of Java / JVM as a server technology.

Microsoft weren't going to go anywhere near the JVM for a mobile OS after having been slapped down by Sun, and Apple were going their own route anyway with Objective-C and Swift. Oracle never had - and likely never would have - a play in the mobile OS space.

So, I can only figure that Oracle have been hurt by keeping Java relevant, when they would rather leave it to fester.

EU commish: We smacked down O2/Three but we didn't take it 'lightly'

Graham Triggs

quote:

She said: "For many years, British mobile customers who felt they were getting a raw deal from the bigger players have been able to “cross the street” to Three. Its prices have been much lower. And on a number of occasions, it has kept them that way even when its rivals tried to raise prices.

"So taking Three out of the picture would have seriously hurt consumers' freedom to choose."

- end quote

Three were trying to acquire O2, not the other way round - it might change the market dynamics, but it is NOT taking Three "out of the picture".

In fact, many Three customers wanted the deal to go through. If Three's prices have always been much lower, and UK customers can "always cross the street", then why are they not already the largest network in the UK? Maybe it's because - and I say this as a generally happy Three customer - they don't have the best coverage or indoor reception. It's an option that simply doesn't exist for many UK customers, and many of the existing customers might actually be prepared to pay a slightly higher price for a more comprehensive service.

But, funnily enough, all these regulators only listen to the industry, and not survey the customers that will be affected.

Graham Triggs

Re: What about T-Mobile and Orange?

It can be hard to judge, as each provider has their own deals that can work out best if you fall into the right profile.

But I would say that in general Three is the most price competitive, and as they are the ones looking to purchase O2, we aren't "losing" them. Whether they remained as competitive might be another matter though.

BBC telly tax drops onto telly-free households. Cough up, iPlayer fans

Graham Triggs

Re: Jim'll fix it and you

"Everyone who watches broadcast TV has to pay it regardless of whether they watch much, or even any, of the BBC's output."

"It probably seemed sensible in 1955 when they operated one of just two British TV channels, but now they are responsible for less than 2% of the total number of channels."

Just like I don't have kids, but I still have to subsidise child benefit, education, etc.

The BBC may be a tiny percentage of the total number of channels, but the total number of channels cost about £100 per month. The BBC makes up a larger percentage of the free channels, and plays an even bigger role in radio broadcasting.

It also plays a very prominent role in educational programming. So if you think it is right to pay taxes for schools, etc. for the good of the future of the country, then there are very good reasons why you should be contributing to the BBC, whether you watch any of the programmes or not.

Donald Trump promises 'such trouble' for Jeff Bezos and Amazon

Graham Triggs

And people say Americans don't do irony.

Building a fanless PC is now realistic. But it still ain't cheap

Graham Triggs

The most practical solution...

Is to concentrate on making the CPU fan less (as well as case / PSU).

Historically, CPU fans have been quite loud - particularly stock ones. Nowadays, it's practical to get a large, passive radiator that can deal with decent CPUs for not that much money.

A decent graphics card - even with 2 / 3 monstrous fans - will actually run silently when it isn't under stress. A fan-laden GTX 970 outside of playing games, can be silent.

Do I care that it makes a noise when I'm playing a game? Not really. It's not that loud, I'm doing something where it doesn't matter that much. And it means not spending the large amount of money for a serious cooling solution.

Effectively silent computing for "normal" operations can be quite cost effective, whilst still having the grunt to really push some pixels (albeit at a cost of some noise only while under load).

Apple hasn't announced the new iPhone 5SE and pundits already hate it

Graham Triggs

It's not meant to be a review

"Pundit?" It's not a reviewer. Not a magazine, newspaper, nor blogger.

It's an analyst from an investment research firm. And yes, they are going to look at what a company is likely to announce as a future product. Because they aren't reviewing the product.

They are assessing the investment value of the company.

Even Google is abandoning Google+

Graham Triggs

Age requirements

Have you stopped to consider for a minute that Google+ has an age requirement of 13 years or older, and maybe the Android gaming platform should be open to younger users?

Eurovision Song Contest uncorks 1975 vote shocker: No 'Nul point'!

Graham Triggs

Re: Huh?

re: Runaway winner - it sounds like they are intending to "hold back" the votes to be added at the end, so you don't know how it might swing it.

An alternative might just be to hide the scores on the leaderboard until the end - have the positions updated according to the points as they are awarded, but don't show the totals to the public or commentators until the end.

If someone wants to go through adding them all up themselves, they'll see a runaway winner, but for everyone else, you would just know who is leading, but not by how much until it was over. Then you would have the perception that it might change.

Graham Triggs

Re: Somehow

Eurovision gets around 7 - 10million viewers in the UK (usually about half the TV audience for a Saturday), and 200 million viewers globally.

Guess what, supreme being - every single penny spent on TV productions doesn't have to be done so to please you.

Why Tim Cook is wrong: A privacy advocate's view

Graham Triggs

Re: except

Do you regularly send emails that would give the TSA a reason to consider you a risk to board a plane?

I have a really hard time with arguments about how bad it is for the FBI / TSA / etc. to have access to your personal details, because of what they might do - no law abiding citizen should have anything to fear from that.

However, that doesn't mean that the FBI / TSA / etc. should have access to this information, because

a) Any backdoor that allows the authorities in is immediately a vulnerability that could be exploited by *anyone*

b) Can you be certain that the authorities systems won't be breached?

It is *impossible* to protect the human rights of law abiding citizens (you know, the things like keeping them safe from being murdered), if you don't obtain information that "the bad guys" thought they were keeping private (whether that's because of their own deficiencies, or a deliberate breach).

But proportionality and accountability are important. What the FBI wants is not a consequence-free solution, it creates it's own problems and we have to be honest about that.

Three: We won't hike prices if you say yes to £10.5bn O2 merger

Graham Triggs

Re: Ha bloody ha ....

"Their Feel at home service is throttled to death for Youtube, Spotify, Google Play, Maps etc. as the traffic is fed back to the UK and monitored and feels nothing like at home at all"

Performance is an issue - sometimes it is fine, others it is impossible despite having good 3G receiption. It certainly isn't "throttled to death", but patchy, yes.

That said, the same can be said about the UK network - try hanging around Royal Festival Hall in the middle of the day and getting data.

However, for something that is essentially free (try beating £17 for unlimited data in the UK, never mind any roaming benefits), it's pretty good. I mean, what is the alternative? If I was on any other network, I would have data roaming turned off completely, and severely restricting use of phone.

RPI price increases is a bit shoddy - I'm not familiar with the full details, but if you entered a contract with a promise of no RPI increases, then they should be honouring that until the end of the contract minimum period at least.

Unfortunately, plans do change. People have been able to keep The One plan for a long time after it was withdrawn. Maybe they could do more to help transition people thouigh - for example, allow you to choose a lower price plan, but give you an extra perk. E.g. choose to have limited minutes / texts and unlimited data, but allowing tethering as an additional free perk.

Three will always do things we don't like from time to time. But go ahead and name another mobile network that hasn't.

Google UK coughs up £130m back taxes. Is it enough?

Graham Triggs

"To put this in context, the company paid paid £20.4m in taxes in 2013 on sales of £3.8bn"

And what context is this?

Remember, corporation tax is paid on *PROFIT*, not *SALES*.

Why is it every time tax is discussed, two numbers that are completely irrelevant to each other are entered as some kind of evidence?

Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack

Graham Triggs

Boozing definitely isn't safe if your pints are the colour shown in that photo

What did we learn today? Microsoft has patented the slider bar

Graham Triggs

*Design* Patent

Microsoft does not have a patent on the concept of a slider, they have a patent for a particular *appearance* of a slider.

The "stupidity" is in the crass reporting of the patent exhibited in a number of places.

Hapless Virgin Media customers face ongoing email block woes

Graham Triggs

If you haven't learnt already

NEVER USE AN ISP EMAIL ADDRESS

Certainly, not for anything that isn't related specifically to that ISP.

Help! What does 'personal conduct unrelated to operations or financials' mean?

Graham Triggs

Re: ???

Where does it say it had no relevance to the company?

"unrelated to the operations or financials" means that whatever happened has not - so far - had a detrimental effect to the bottom line of the company.

But "personal conduct" could mean anything - from sexual harrassment or bullying in the workplace (which clearly has relevance and would result in disciplinary action), to drugs or criminal activity outside of the workplace, which whilst not immediately impacting the company has the potential to do so.

What they are really trying to say is that whatever cause existed to sack the CEO, they want to reassure investors that the company itself is not on the brink of collapse.

I can turn Yahoo! around claims hedge fund manager

Graham Triggs

£5 says this is a sexist arsehole who thinks women shouldn't be running companies.

All hail Firefox Dev Edition 44 – animations, memory and all

Graham Triggs

It's not websites that are the memory problem, but Firefox itself.

O2 joins Virgin Media as member of weak crypto software club

Graham Triggs

It's a good job that no telco has been hacked....

Typical fucking shambles, and these companies ought to be hit heavily for not sufficiently protecting their customer data, regardless of whether they have actually lost any or not.

Ofcom chief warns that carrier aggregation may be bad for consumers

Graham Triggs

If you are concerned about prices, then you have a single PUBLICLY OWNED company providing the entire network infrastructure, and every mobile operator becomes an MVNO on that infrastructure.

That way you provide maximum capactiy amd coverage for the minimum cost, and competition between customer facing companies keeps end user prices down.

Flogging off slices of spectrum to the highest bidder, having them build their own networks and then passing that cost on to end users is expensive.

Shattered Skype slowly staggers to its feet after 15-HOUR outage outrage

Graham Triggs

And what's missing from the post and comments...

is that Skype wasn't actually down for 15 hours. I had a spinning status icon - which usually signifies that you aren't logged in - and everybody was showing as being offline. But at the same time I could send messages, and they would be delivered - providing the other person had Skype open.

Admittedly, in many cases if nobody can see that you are online, and you can't see other people are online, it might as well be completely down. But the reality was at least the messaging (I didn't try calls) was working, despite the problems with statuses.

Hutchison will float O2 … as soon as the Three merger is done

Graham Triggs

Curious...

... that Three isn't considered to be the brand in trouble. After all, it still has something of a troubled reputation, but more importantly it was called Three at a time when it's USP was that they were rolling out a 3G only network. Now they are moving into 4G, Three as a brand makes less sense.

Graham Triggs

Re: So

Who needs 2G fallback anyway? It's only value is in keeping the implementation costs down - there is no technical reason why you can't have 3G / 4G coverage in every area that you can get 2G, and from a user perspective no reason why you would want it over having 3G / 4G.

Three's main issue is that they mostly operate in high-frequency spectrum, so the indoor coverage is not as good. But it's possible to implement 3G over lower frequencies, if you have the spectrum.

Boffins promise file system that will NEVER lose data

Graham Triggs

Not losing data written to disk is relatively simple, providing you don't screw the hardware - you make sure all data is findable / retrievable before the data itself is committed.

Software crashes are a bit harder - you need to ensure that you don't overwrite when writing new data, and that you can roll back to previous versions, or roll forward to recover from the incomplete write in a crash.

Power outages would be much better handled with more resilient components - e.g. all DIMMs come with at least as much solid state as RAM, and backup power to ensure the data is flushed to solid state during a failure; a disk has battery power to flush it's cache; a CPU has it's state written out. Then, when power is restored, each component just needs to restore itself to the known state, and you are good to go.

Virtually no one is using Apple Music even though it is utterly free

Graham Triggs

Re: Virtually no one?

It's 11 million people out of 300 million iPhone users who theoretically ought to be trying it out immediately.

They could have just pushed out a free trial to everyone, with a warning at the end that they need to subscribe, and claimed the numbers game.

Or maybe it's very close to the number of people who are Apple users that already pay for streaming services, and they are all going to switch.

But everyone I know that has taken the Music trial does not subscribe to another streaming service, and intend to cancel before the end of the trial.

So it's somewhere between the two positions, and I personally suspect it's closer to the first, than the latter.

Graham Triggs

Apple Music isn't available on a lot of devices that have support for other services, and they don't offer lossless, even as a paid option (which Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz do).

Unless you are utterly devoted to all things Apple, there is absolutely no reason to sign up for it at this time.

Edge out rivals? No! Firefox boss BLASTS Microsoft's Windows 10 browser brouhaha

Graham Triggs

And when you've find your browser has changed...

...you run Firefox from the start menu, and it sets itself as the default again.

Anyone capable of installing their own browser on Windows is capable of resetting the default after it has changed. For users, it's a minor irritation.

Put the handbags away.

Page: