Posts by Watashi

Apple's iOS 4 beams into unprepared world

Phoneys

@ Brian Morrison

"..what *is* it that makes the iPhone so popular?"

Same reason people buy Gucci handbags and Porshe cars.

Vodafone blocks World Cup, except for iPhone owners

Network not found

And at least you can get a decent 3.5G signal with Vodafone! Couldn't even get a reliable 2G signal in Edinburgh when I was on Orange.

And at least the website works

Oh, and don't get me started about Orange's website. I had to get them to reset my account four times in two years 'cause I couldn't log in. For one period I was locked out for about two months.

Journalism FAIL!

*Faceslap*

You can only watch iPlayer live streams on Vodafone and 3 networks in the UK. And iPhones can't live stream iPlayer at all.

Apple Mac Mini 2010

Not SFF!

You can't put low profile expansion cards in this machine, so it's USFF.

For the same price you could buy one of the new Dell 19" touchscreen all-in-one PCs.

Apple asks US gov to hide iPhone details

Strong-arm tactics

Why are Apple asking for the 45 day and the "indefinate" secrecy? To give the impression that Apple has power over the FCC, and that the FCC will bow to whatever stupid request they make.

iPad gouges netbook sales

Statistics FAIL

As the iPad is NOT a netbook replacement, but is supposed to be a revolutionary new device that sits between the netbook and the laptop, we really need to include laptop sales figures here. From Q1 to Q2:

Netbook sales: - 0.5 Million

iPad sales: + 2.4 Million

Laptop sales: + 8 Million

However, the figures that actually matter are the year-on-year ones. These are:

Netbook sales: + 2.1 Million

iPad sales: + 3.7 Million

Laptop sales: + 21 Million

So, really we need to look at the figures in 9 months time to see what's really going on. Apple have secured a chunk of the portable computer market, but the growth of this sector is high and the iPad will need to be selling around 6 million per quarter this time next year to be maintaining their new market share.

Satellite firm offers 4G network on back of 2G business model

I'll wait for 5G

"The plan is based on 40 million predicted connections within the next five years, which is a hell of a lot even if one is selling wholesale."

Over recent years we've seen the launching of several very expensive technological upgrades that have failed to take the world by storm. Vista, Blue-Ray and the PS3 are three good examples. By offering only a marginal improvement in quality (in the mind of the consumer) at a significant extra cost, most of the market simply said "thanks, but no thanks".

Will 4G be a similar flop? Harbinger is banking on a significant change in the way the market currently works. At the moment, most people don't have a data plan with any mobile device, and there are a lot of consumers who will never want to do more than check their emails, Facebook and Twitter accounts. For this 3.5G is adequate, especially as most smartphones come with wifi. 4G will only become a standard if the phone manufacturers and mobile networks decide to make it standard... and that will almost certainly mean having to subsidise both handsets and data costs for the first few years.

Considering the sleight-of-hand tactic being used by Harbinger, the big networks may just decide to refuse to stump up the extra cost, drive the Harbinger out of business and then buy up the infrastructure at a fraction of the cost it took to put it in place.

Fanboi's lament – falling out of love with the iPad

So what? It isn't for you.... or anyone

AC said:

"The iPad isn't for you, sorry fanbois, geeks and power users. The iPad is for those who do not have a computer yet, or have one but seldom use it because it is just "too hard"."

No, it isn't. Who has £500 to blow on a computer that doesn't work as a computer? Well-off people who already have a computer, that's who. I'd be amazed if more than 5% of iPad owners do not already have a PC, laptop or netbook in their household.

It's been obvious right from the start that the iPad doesn't really do anything very well, and I've been saying for years that the touch screen is a poor replacement for a keyboard and mouse interface. The iPad is not easier to use than a computer, because it's less practical to use than a computer - the type of people who find using a computer just "too hard" will find using a touch screen interface harder than the traditional interface. Who wants to have to bring up a virtual keyboard to enter text into a website when you could have the keyboard there all the time without obscuring the page? And a touch screen interface is inevitably going to be less precise and require more physical work than the wonderfully accurate and fluid cursor moving, clicking and scrolling technology already available (ie the mouse).

iPads in short supply as tablets take off

Keep the iPads flying

The main function of the iPad is for its owners to be able to demonstrate their financial superiority off to those less fortunate than themselves. How many iPad owners do you think there are who keep it a secret, who don't boast about how cutting-edge their latest gadget is (even though it isn't) and how much better it makes their life (even though it doesn't)?

That warm feeling owners get when they discuss what their iPad can do doesn't come from the sudden extra freedom or productivity or creativity the device gives them. It comes from smugness and self-satisfaction. You know that episode of South Park when the Prius owning middle-class families spend their time sniffing their own farts? That is what an iPad owner is doing when he uses his iPad - smelling his own gas and loving it. And I bet quite a few of them listen to Oasis, support Man City and wear Che Guevara t-shirts. F*cking hypocrites.

As Che said: I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation.

The iPad is the poster-boy for consumer-driven social alienation. THAT is why so many people hate Apple's latest spawning.

Apple said to order 24 million iPhone 4Gs

Better phones

The iPhone 3Gs wasn't the best phone on the market when it was released, and I doubt the 4G will be either. Of course, none of those superior phones will be branded Apple...

This witch-hunt will hurt Adobe more than Apple

Three sides to every story

1) Adobe's free software and plug-ins are buggy, often bloated and generally full of security holes.

2) A well-written OS or web browser can handle this buggyness, and Adobe isn't the only hacker route into Apple devices.

What we have here is two companies blaming each other for a problem both are responsible for.

As for Andrew's point, well, there are two sides to this argument. The first says that companies will only invest in innovation if they are allowed total control of the products they invent. The second side says that by giving too much control over the inventors of new ideas, industries become monopolistic, anti-competitive and spend more time wringing every last penny out of old ideas then developing new ideas.

A good case in point is the Big Pharm sector, where the development of new drugs has shrunken away over recent years and instead the industry tries to extend patents on existing drugs by sleight-of-hand tricks of tweeking them and then re-patenting them. A similar argument can be made against Apple. Despite it's tag as a significant innovator, Apple only actually comes up with around one good new idea every five years, and almost all of the technologies behind that innovation will have been invented by other companies.

The smartphone sector is a clear example of the dangers of Apple's locked down attitude. Despite Apple "inventing" the touchscreen smartphone, Nokia, HTC and Google have already overtaken Apple in terms of smartphone usability. All of the new features in iPhone OS 4 are already available on other phones; ie Apple are having to play catch-up. And there are things you will still be able to do on other phones that you won't be able to do on the iPhone (unless you jailbreak it). The iPhone looks old and tired, and it's all too easy for non-iPhone smartphone owners to make fun of their Apple fanboi pals by pointing out all the things you can't do on an iPhone.

This basic idea that big companies should have a vice-like grip on what they sell is a product of the US' love of mega-corps. In reality, the only ones who suffer from breaking down over-protective intellectual property rights law and opening up closed software / hardware platforms are the companies who are bad at generating new ideas.

Everybody loves monopolies

"By Adobe's logic, Sony should open the PlayStation to allow everyone to develop games for it."

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Google: Street View spycars did slurp your Wi-Fi

Ofcom

Telecoms regulation - you're doing it wrong.

iPad users are young, rich geeks

Inequality of wealth

@ Jared

"I'd guess most Reg readers could afford an iPad if they thought it'd suit their needs, but because it's made by Apple, it's deemed style over substance."

I guess that's the thing - nobody "needs" an iPad. The reason so many people hate Apple is because what it sells is social one-upmanship. It's the electronic equivalent of an Armani suit; an obvious way of showing people that you have a good job which gives you plenty of disposable income. You might as well wear a badge saying "look at how succesfull I am!"

If exactly the same product was available in a box with HP written on it for $100 less, how many Apple loyalists would still buy the Apple? I'd say that most of them would.

Nokia tops iPhone and BlackBerry (again)

Horses for courses

Nokia's profit for Q1 of 2010 is $465 million, Apple's was $3,370 million. However, Nokia sells only phones, whilst Apple sells computers and mp3 players as well, so it's impossible to say how the iPhone compares with Nokia phones for profitability.

As for sales not telling you much... perhaps if you're buying shares they don't, but for those of us living in the real world, sales numbers (and trends) are very important. When you buy a smartphone, you're buying into an ecosystem of apps, official and unofficial tech support (from friends and on message boards), cheap Chinese accessories, interconnectivity between hardware vendors, business support for email etc etc. If you buy a more popular brand, the ecosystem is larger and more sophisticated.

For example, if you want a mobile phone you want to work with your company's email system, you should go with Windows Mobile first, then Nokia and iPhone because these three offer the best Exchange support. If you want a broad range of apps, go with iPhone or Nokia. If you want continuity accross generations, go with iPhone, Nokia or Blackberry phones. If you want to hack your phone, go with Nokia or the iPhone.

In other words, people aren't going to stop posting solutions to problems for your device simply because they're not very profitable!

One note: this article blames Nokia for not promoting itself enough. One thing I would ask is this: who does the media serve - the big corporations or the consumers? It isn't up to Nokia to persuade the press to provide complimentary articles about Nokia phones, it's up to the press to get off their lazy arses and go out and do some research. Rather than engaging in an iPhone love-in, the population would be better served by magazines, newspapers, TV shows and websites providing articles that more closely related to the purchasing behaviour of smartphone users.

Netbook sales shrivel in face of Apple iPad

Statistics and lies

Is El Reg now the official sponsor of Apple products all of a sudden?

There are three types of portable computers: netbook, laptop, iPad. Without knowing what laptop sales growth is like, we have no idea what impact the iPad is having on netbook. For all we know, most of those deciding not to buy a netbook are buying a full Windows 7 laptop instead.

Microsoft releases Symbian Communicator

Nokia hate

Why does El Reg have such an anti-Nokia bias? Is it because Nokia is European while all El Reg journalists live in the US these days?

Mail for Exchange may be basic, but it actually does some stuff you can't do with iPhone's native Exchange email program, such as set seperate Peak and Off-Peak times so you can get continuous push email during working hours, but only get new emails once evey hour (or not at all) during non-working hours. You can also sync Outlook tasks, which you can't with the iPhone. Oh, and when you reply to an email on the Nokia phone, it actually shows up as such in Outlook. In fact, I'd say the extra stuff it does do is more useful than the extra stuff iPhone's more sophisticated client does. After all, how many of us need to manage our email folders through our phone?

As for Blackberry, you don't have to configure the Exchange server specifically for Nokia's Mail for Exchange, which you do with Blackberry (at an aditional cost).

Jobs: One million iPads sold

Apple logo

If you own a Symbian smartphone, you don't need an iPad with 3G because you can tether the Nokai and the iPad together through the Wi-Fi connection. You can then surf the web using 3.5G, which is faster than the 3G on the iPad, and you only need one mobile data contract.

Q: What kind of company provides lower comaptibility between its own products than between its products and its biggest mobile phone competitor?

A: A company whose products do NOT sell on the basis of functionality or value for money.

It's time we dispensed with the myth - most people who now buy Apple products buy them because of the Apple logo, not because of the hardware beneath the logo. All Apple need to is make sure their new gadget has a sufficient Wow! factor to "justify" its high cost and it will sell, even if it's pointless and cr*p.

The argument of "it's a better product" no longer matches the evidence. Apple PCs are not significantly faster (for the vast majority of daily tasks) or more reliable than Windows 7 PCs half the cost - I don't know a single long-term Mac user who's never had to take a Mac back to the store. iPhones do not have greater functionality than Nokias, Blackberries or HTCs. There are plenty of things that you can't do on an iPhone that you can do on other phones. iPods are less user-friendly and poorer quality than several of their competitors, and the benefits of an iPad over a netbook are extremely limited. Also, first releases of Apple products ALWAYS have common hardware issues.

Apple sold out years ago. Deal with it, fanbois!

Sales figures

The Wii sold over 1 million units in its first week.

Google promises what Jobs hates in next Android

Symbian blackspot

My Nokia 5800 smartphone allows me to play flash-based Facebook games through SkyFire. The upcoming Nokia N8 will play .flv files natively in its media player. OK, Symbian may have its faults, and Nokia is undergoing a minor crisis, but the fact is that in many ways it's is a much more mature smartphone OS than either Android or iPhone OS. Yet everyone seems to ignore it!

Multitasking: check

Themes & wallpaper: check

Folder structure for apps: check

Syncronise Exchange emails, contacts, calendar and tasks: check

Flash support: check

Windows Live and Skype apps: check

Video calls: check

Google maps with network assisted GPS and streetview: check

Free satnav software: check

Wi-fi to 3.5G tethering app: check

Augmented reality: check

Apple has the media in its pocket. It's a marketing company that does technology.

American Graffiti

I've just realised why there is always so little mention of Nokia and Symbian smartphones on The Register these days - most of the journalists are in the US! Nokia hasn't really got the hang of the US market, and so most of those who write for the US don't really know much about the day-to-day experience of using a recent release Nokia smartphone. These journalists probably don't know that all those things people complain about the iPhone not having are all already available on Nokia models. Oh, and the hardware is better - network supported gps, 2 and 3G signal quality and download speeds are all better on Nokia phones than the iPhone.

C'mon, El Reg - time to nail your colours to the mast. Are you essentially a US-based journal now?

Vodafone launches snooping service

FSA = Morons

Quote:

The new rules do allow for personally-owned phones not being recorded, but require companies "to take reasonable steps to prevent employees or contractors from using private communication equipment [for business calls]".

Hahahaha.

Just like finance companies were expected to take reasonable steps to prevent their employees clusterf*cking the global economy.

Typical New Labour - create a new set of ultra-authoritarian rules and then let the people at the very top piss all over the rules by relying on the Big Corporations to police themselves. I'd be willing to bet my life that the people working in the call centres will find it a lot harder to get away with using their personal mobiles than the big hitters and the CEOs at the top of the organisations.

Dodgy CEO: Oh, I'd better not use my personal mobile for making this dodgy business take-over deal because then I'd have to report myself to the FSA.

F*ckwits.

Ten free apps to install on every new PC

My Pick

Windows Live (I have 2 hotmail accounts)

Truecrypt

Photophiltre

Red Kawa (video convertor for mobile phones)

VirtualDub

KMPlayer

Xplorer2 Lite

Treecomp

System Control Windows Gadget

Recuva

UK almost tops international Google-snoop league

Pre-emptive strike

Waiting for people to commit crimes before you put them in prison is so 20th century.

Epic Fail: How the photographers won, while digital rights failed

Simples

Reasons why the BPI won:

1) The music industry is worth billions of pounds...

2) Err, that's it.

If you want to understand the motivation behind any New Labour decision regarding human rights vs big business, you just have to follow the money. It's as simple as that.

'iPhone 4G' found on floor of bar

Nokia or SE?

Does look like a Nokia, but my old SE mobile has a flash and a forward facing camera for video calls too, and that phone's nearly 4 years old.

I'm really getting tired of all the Apple hype. I think the best headline for the 4G on the basis of this phone is:

"iPhone finally catches up with competition."

You can bet your a**e that isn't how the Apple fanboi media will play it.

Apple backs down from Pulitzer putsch

New Censorship

It seems that dead Communist Party Leaders get reincarnated as advisors to Steve Jobs.

Mine's the one being used to put out those burning books.

Internet abuzz with BitTorrent bypass code

Civil offence - proportionate damages

The reason the BPI never got into sueing British downloaders is that in the UK (unlike in the US) damages are supposed to be proportionate to the harm done. If you download 100 albums, that's a £1,000 award - but the BPI would need to demonstrate you'd downloaded 100 albums. If you're busted for downloading 10 albums, they can only sue you for £100. To make sueing downloaders worth their while, they'd have to mount the kind of concerted spying effort that would quickly have them branded as dangerously intrusive nut-jobs.

So, here we are at the cutting-people-off stage. Presumably, it is felt in the House of Commons that this amounts to proportionate punishment. However, this is all a swizz - if downloading music illegaly is that bad, just make it a proper criminal offence and get people fined by Magistrates. Only that will never happen, because downloading music illegally really isn't that big a deal, and there are better ways of dealing with the situation... just ones that are not so pleasant for the Music Industry giants.

This new way of doing things is the best way to do the bidding of the Music Industry and other Big Corporations without attracting too much attention to what is actually being done. A stealth law, you could call it. Crime may not pay, but lobbying certainly does!

Anonymous proxy

All you need to do is to put a link in your data chain that is outside the legal jurisdiction of any country working to get rid of copyright infringement. This way, neither the police or the ISPs can link what you are downloading / uploading with where you are downloading from / uploading too. As far as I know, ISPs are not going to be allowed to cut you off just because there are music tracks in your data transfers.

At the moment, anonymising proxies cannot possibly handle all the P2P traffic - but I spy a good business opportunity for some little non-conformist country looking for a quick cash injection into their economy. Wouldn't it be ironic if we end up with a situation where millions of music consumers pay £5 a month to some far-off proxy server so they can have access to unlimited music. All that money that should be going to the music industry will get siphoned off by terrorists, international criminals and despotic leaders as a direct result of the attempts being made to stop illegal downloads!

Ten Essential... iPhone Accessories

Mark-up

Salesperson: You want a desk stand for your smartphone to watch films? How about this little plastic thing?

You: How much?

Salesperson: £2.00

You: Will it fit my iPhone?

Salesperson: iPhone! Why didn't you say! You'll be wanting this one. It was in some magazine. Only £25.

You: What about the plastic thing?

Salesperson: Oh, erm... it isn't iPhone compatible.

You: OK, I'll take that one then.

Apple bans Pulitzer Prize political cartoons from iPhone

pwned

You have been pwned.

Sent from my iPhone.

On April 15, 2010 at 8:30PM, [e-mail] wrote:

> Dear Steve,

> Why am I unable to view important cultural material on my iPhone?

> Cheers

> Sent from my iPhone

Steve Jobs: 'Pad? That's my word'

Jumping the shark

Steve Jobs thinks he's the Fonz - and he's just water skied over that nasty shark, iPad in hand.

Nokia announces Facetwittery-enabled phones

Symbian Apps

A list of (non-Java, not pre-installed) Symbian apps I run on my s60v5:

C64 emu

Scientific calculator emu

QuickOffice

Point and Find (augmented reality from nokia)

Skyfire / Opera Mini / Opera Mobile

Google Maps (which works with my network enhanced GPS)

File manager

OpenTable restraunt booker

YouTube & Daily Motion

MySpace & Facebook

Snaptu

Nightstand clock

Shopping list

Stylus write-on notepad

Wikipedia

IMDB

ESPN

Daily Dilbert

Shazam

Last FM scrobbler

Windows Live Messenger

Skype

Google Translator

Tourch app that switches on my flash

Phone locator software

Egg timer, counter & stopwatch

Mirror using front facing camera

Spirit level

App that allows me to use my phone screen as a bluetooth mouse

App that turns phone into Wi-Fi hotspot

App that enables me to lock / unlock my phone through tapping the screen, sliding on the screen or even waving my hand in front of the proximity sensor

App to stop my backlight switching off unless I lock the phone

Worms

Risk

Bubble Bobble

Backgammon / chess / bagatelle / card games

Resident Evil

Tetris

Virtual Rubiks cube

There are lots more and new ones coming along all the time.

Opera for iPhone: The review

SkyFire is better

I use SkyFire on my Nokia smartphone and find it to be a better browser than Opera Mobile. It's a bit more intuitive and gives an experience closer to full web browsing. I haven't noticed it being any slower than Opera Mobile either.

However, for browsing websites with a mobile version, Opera Mini is very good.

iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

iPhone is dull

I have a Nokia smartphone, and I know that in two or three years time I'll have a wide range of new phones to choose from as a replacement. As so many phones run Symbian, most of them will run the apps I've gotten used to on my Nokia... or I might go with Android to see what that's like. I may decide to go for a phone with a physical querty keyboard, or a phone with a high-end camera. However, I know I won't be buying an iPhone because as far as I can tell, the iPhone of three years will be pretty much identical to the iPhone of today.

I guess that's the point. If you decide to go down the Apple route, you'll get a high-end, reliable device that does lots of things well and is easy to use. However, it's very likely that you'll be doing pretty much the same thing you do now in the same way you do it now for the next ten years. Look at the last 10 years of changes in the non-Apple PC market: we've had Windows 98 > XP > Vista > Windows 7. We've had dual core PCs, quad core PCs, netbook laptops, netbook PCs and tablet PCs. We've had at least two major browser wars, Office ribbons, Facebook etc eBay, Amazon, Alta-vista vs Yahoo vs Google vs Bing etc. The only notable innovations Apple has done in the traditional computer market since the iMac back in 1998 is the poorly recieved Macbook Air, the Napster rip-off called iTunes and, several years after the competition, a tablet PC.

I think I've finally, finally got down to what really bothers me about Apple. For all the fanfare and hype and the mainstream media love-ins, once they become established Apple products are pretty dull. iPhone v3 is pretty much the same as iPhone v1 & v2, whilst iPad v2 & v3 will be pretty much the same as iPad v1. I like the up-and-down choppy waters of getting to grips with a new Windows OS. I like to chose from wide range of mp3 or mobile phone products, switch systems occasionally and try out new ways of doing things on the devices I already have. I want to buy cheap when I have no money, and expensive when I do have money. I want to encourage loads of different companies to exploit common technologies to a purpose they are specialists in. I don't want to be tied down to universal familiarity, and I certainly don't want a monochromatic technological environment where everything works in exactly the same way.

Apple's existence is fine by me - I may even buy an Apple product one day. However, the Utopian Jobsian world where Apple is the only technology company that anyone ever needs fills me with dread. Kinda reminds me a little of Communist Russia.

Apple patent shows iPhone ruling the home

Apple is your friend

From Orwell's 1984:

"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will."

Apple's iPad - the device for execs who create nothing

Blackberry

Maybe Blackberry should bring out a business tablet. They seem to be beating (off) Apple in the business smartphone category at the moment. And I bet they'd let you tether their tablet to their phone.

BlackBerry sees iPhone shrink in rear view mirror

Symbian open source

One noteworthy point is that Symbian is now also open source. Can't see how Symbian is not a smartphone OS - that's like saying linux isn't a computer OS because you can get versions that run on mobile phones as well. I'd suggest this is xenaphobia as no-one in the US wants to admit that nearly 50% of the global phone OS market is controlled by a Finnish company. Think of all the time they'd have to spend looking the country up in Wiki.

HP slides Slate into iPad slipstream

Revolutionary

So, do I want a large iPhone without the phone capability, or a small Windows laptop with the keyboard removed and a touchscreen instead?

Um - I'll stick to my widescreen, DVD writing laptop with a keyboard.

iPads sold out

iTards

"But we won't know for certain until next week, and it will probably be six months before we find out if iPad users are really willing to pay $10 per applications."

Anyone who buys the iPad has already demonstrated that they're either wealthy enough or stupid enough to spend $10 a shot on apps.

Net downloads cause 'millions of lost jobs'

one side of the coin

The other side of the coin is to ask how many jobs have been lost as a result of aggressive patent enforcement and restrictive copyright rules. By restricting innovation, copyright legislation restricts the growth of the sector. By encouraging cartels and monopolistic behaviour, overprotection of intellectual property rights leads to a stagnant industry where product quality drops, prices rise and everyone loses except the shareholders of the big corporations. Not only this, but because small companies find it hard to compete, innovators usually end up as employees, rather that company owners, and actually make LESS money from their ideas, the bulk of the profit going to the shareholders of the big companies. This is the big secret the corporations don't want us to think about - overly harsh intellectual property rights harm the consumer and the sector.

Apple details iPad's 'breakthrough' mobile contract

250Mb is pathetic

I recently accidentally connected to iPlayer through mobile WAP instead of WiFi and burned up 50Mb of download over the course of a football match. Fortunately, this is only 1/10th my monthly limit, which, from Vodafone, is only £5 (when priced as an add-on) a month.

The reason you use an iPad over an iPhone for surfing is because you can use the normal internet. But 250Mb is just nowhere near enough. Read ten web pages a day and you've used up your limit thanks to the ads. Basically, you're paying $15 a month to be able to get your emails and use network assisted positioning.

As for backing up iPad / iPhone. I can back up most of my phone's content without having to syncronise anything with anything because my Nokia touch phone can act like a mass storage drive.

Steve Jobs says 'No' to iPhone-to-iPad tether

Neophiliacs

@ Grumpytom

"sent from the iPhone, a product that a company I started has built and marketed with brilliance. However, we did NOT do this to piss you off; we did it to make money by giving users what they wanted"

Pissing normal people off is a fundamental part of Apple's marketing strategy. Take any Apple advert and you can read into the subtext this message: "Buy this Apple product because it will make you feel superior to people who don't own one." If you could convert smug into electricity, we could instantly solve Global Warming simply by hooking up all the Apple fanboys to the national Grid. Basically, Apple sells smugness.

Of course, I'm happy that Apple exists - cutting edge technology is disproportionately funded by those neophiles who happily pay twice the final mass-market cost of a product just to get it a year earlier than everyone else. The funny thing about Apple products is that they stay twice the price even when the rest of the market has caught up. The first couple of years of above-the-odds iPhone cost covers the cost of innovation, and the rest is pure profit.

Google 'personalizes' one in five searches

Zoo

I wonder what people who work at zoos and safaris get when searching for pr0n?

Brussels data watchdog cries foul over secret copyright talks

WTF?

"It showed plans to make ISPs liable under civil law for the content of traffic."

So, ISPs are going to become the privately owned police force of the internet, with the power to cut off anyone they don't like and take a better-safe-than-sorry attitude towards any data that may possibly contain illegal material. That's one hell of a slippery slope. Interested in anti-Western politics? Strike one. Want to look at art containing nudity? Strike two. Want to criticise the ISPs censoring the web? Strike three - no more internet for you. And you've not even done anyhthing illegal, just risked the ISP becoming liable for a possible future illegal activition.

So, who can British citizens rely upon to ensure we are not descriminated against? Those pathetic establishment toadies working at Ofcom!

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

Flash is crap... but not THAT crap

It's not WSJ's fault that Apple can't write a decent web browser.

Windows 7 'genuine' nagware winging its way to OS

Better than Apple

If it was Apple, the 'update' would be mandatory.

Microsoft tests show no Win 7 battery flaw

Coincidence

Laptop batteries often don't last more than a couple of years before they significantly lose capacity. Quite often, batteries die quite quickly. If several million people suddenly upgrade to Windows 7 there will be several thousand who find their battery life is reduced simply because the battery has coincinetally died at the same time. Not only this, but Vista's battery life measurement isn't that great anyway, so perhaps some of these are just cases of correcting problems.

Having said thet, a Microsoft OS with no problems at all would be a bit weird.

If people do find their battery life being sucked out faster than they like, there are a few options in the advanced section of power settings that can help. You can limit max CPU rate, for example.

MS hits Office 2010 upgrade program button prematurely

Office 2010 kicks ass

2003? OO?

Yeah, and next I'll be installing Windows 3.1 on my PC, ripping out my power shower, handing back my microwave oven and trading my car in for a horse.