Posts by fireman

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touchphone

S60 is not for touch

The whole point of the iphone is that you DON'T have to unlearn and relearn anything!! Their interface is something called 'intuitive'. New word.

Okay, I'm being an idiot and confrontational.

But my point is this, S60 has _mainly_ been used for non-touch phones over the years. Not only that, but S60 is not as user friendly as it might be. It's not bad, but it's not amazing either. It's just what we've all gotten used to over the years because it's all we've really had for smart phones. Other than winmo of course and lets not talk about that.

Your points above seem to suggest that somehow MS and other companies don't change because they are scared their users won't be able to use their new interfaces....I don't think that is the case at all. There are many reasons they don't change stuff too much (see vista) but they always want to improve user experience as much as possible. Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 anyone?

When folks bought the iphone did you hear anyone complaining about how it didn't look or behave like their previous phone OS? Because all I heard was people saying how much easier to use it is and what a relief it was that someone had made such a decent job of it.

Surely then if Nokia released an updated OS designed specifically for touch that was AS good or....wait for it....even BETTER that Apples attempt then surely people would be shouting about how brilliant it is - not how it's familiar it is. Familiar is only normally quoted as an advantage when people move to an OS that is even worse than the one they're currently using. For instance, when users moved from a Nokia to Samsung or Motorola (Samsung/Motorola being unfamiliar but not better and possibly harder to use than Nokia).

Yes S60 (the front end to Symbian?) is good but its nowhere near as good as it could be. Don't stay in the past, innovate and improve things even if it means users have to be happier with their new 'difficult to learn' OS. Which wouldn't be the case actually would it because if it was difficult to learn it would be any good, would it.

Yes Nokia is a big ship that turns like an Oil Tanker which is why I'm so grateful to apple (as much as I dislike the way they do business) because it it wasn't for them we'd all still be using 6310i's or K810i. Funnily enough Apple is also a very large company (at least in terms of revenue) but still manage to produce great _new_ (in every sense of the word) products.

2008's top three touchscreen phones

HTC really isn't very good

I have an HTC HD and the interface is one of those where the lag is so great (sometimes) that I'm not sure if I've actually 'pressed' the screen or not. Unfortunately the windows mobile OS 'surfaces' quite a lot and although it's not all bad it really wasn't designed with touch in mind. Stylus anyone?

It has the specs alright (which was what I was seduced by) but the implementation is not all that great. And it's get a chunkster, although as smart phones go quite slim I suppose.

A work colleague has an iphone and the things he always shows off is the apps he downloads (often for free, or so he tells me). To us, at work, it seems the apps are certainly one of the strongest points of the iphone but no mention in the article?

The trouble with the iphone is apple. It's not the device that divides people, its the company and the people who own iphones. I think it annoys the techies in us that a device that isn't as feature rich as others still manages to lay waste to everyone else's sales figures. In the Geek world it is fashionable to dislike apple because they don't let you play mpeg2 encoded files in an AVI container natively. And this is perhaps because Apple like to give users a consistently good experience....or so they say....and these sorts of 'fibs', or lies, do wind people up.

But really, it's not Apples' devices or Apple, it's what happens to people after they buy them....they become terribly self righteous.

Still, El Reg should rise above this.

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iPhone squares up to Android

arse and elbow

"Apple is aiming to get off the back foot"

Why do you think Apple are on the back foot? Because they don't have street view? Is this one of those jokey posts...?

"Google...made great play of the ability of the G1....to display Street View" What does this tell you? Maybe they didn't have much else to show off? I don't know....I mean the phone looked pretty good (for geeks! did you see the differences between screens??!) but I guess google have invested quite some time and money in street view so want to push it out there.

The forum post you mention talks about IMAP. IMAP is not push. The device polls the imap enabled mailserver every 15, 30 60 mins, or never (i..e manually). For the record my iphone works perfectly well. Obviously some users will have problems various features, there are always bugs. This doesn't mean to say apple have removed the fetch functionality used to retrieve email from IMAP servers.

"iPhone, and Android, are forced to use standard protocols over TCP/IP connections"

OK, most stuff works over TCP/IP (or maybe UDP/IP). And anyway, I'm not sure if mobileme uses a standard app level protocol or not but the system does use technology that sends a 'wake-up' packet(s) to the device (over IP) in order to inform it of changes (i.e. new email or contacts update). I doubt this is a standard app level protocol but I don't know for sure.

"owners lording it over their iPhone-touting mates with a cool...feature"

I don't think that the G1 will impact Iphone feel good factor much. I don't really think they attract the same kind of buyer. G1 is much more of a techie device, open; quirky, rough around the edges. It may be able to demonstrate some cool things but then so can an N82. Nokia maps and QIK work on N82. Nothing like nokia maps or QIK on iphone but I don't see the N82 boys lording it over the iPhone crowd. Obviously the G1 is a different kettle of fish to N82 but have you seen the user interface? Someone shows me google streetview? I show them London Cam, and that's before I get started on the user interface, which apple make top priority and with good reason.

Eurofighter at last able to drop bombs, but only 'austerely'

@Jeff Rowse

I am mistaken on the origin of the F-35. Sorry about that and thanks for pointing it out.

With regards to my Boeing comments, the MOD has rightly taken a roasting for it's part in the infamous Chinook cock-up but Boeing has been let off lightly and once again the disadvantages of 'out-sourcing' for kit seems to have been glossed over.

From this issue of Private Eye (on why there are 8 mark 3 chinooks mothballed in bournemouth):

In the original purchase of the Mark 3 Chinooks, the NAO notes: "Although Boeing met its contractual obligations, the avionics software could not be shown to meet UK standards."

The MOD forgot to write access to the Boeing computers source code in the contract, and so could not test the avionics.

Boeing was in no hurry to help and "resisted the department's (MOD) requests for access to the source code", the NAO then goes on to say that the MOD had no "leverage with Boeing". But Why not? Boeing is on of the worlds biggest arms firms and part of the international security establishment. In the UK its boss is Sir Roger Bone, a former private secretary to the Foreign Secretary; and it has partnering contracts worth £1bn looking after other Chinooks. none of this could persuade Boeing to help the MOD even in the middle of two wars....

My point isn't who is to blame so much as that this is the kind of thing that can happen, and at the worst possible time, when we give such work and orders to a foreign company....even a US company. There may be some advantages to doing so, such as cost, but they must be viewed as short term gain for middle to long term loss. Like farming, it's important to try hard to keep our industries working, even if it does cost more in the short term.

Dealing with the United States is madness. They simply do not take the UK seriously and they don't like Europe at all. The French split from America...we should have done the same some time ago. Oh, and by the way, as an aside, the Americans GAVE Germany a lot of money after the war and invested heavily. Because we voted in a labour government, they decided to delay any loans and then charged us through the teeth for them - and decided to call in the war debt as well. We've only got ourselves to blame though haven't we? I mean it was us (Europe) that shipped off all the nutters to Australia and the US in the last couple of centuries wasn't it? And now look what they're doing....but I digress.

F-22 export restrictions

The F-22 has cost the US taxpayer is about £200 million per aircraft including development costs. Considering the reported capabilities of the F-22, this makes the Euorfighter look like a rip-off. Some one has been taking the EU taxpayers to the cleaners, there can be little doubt about that.

Nevertheless, even though the RAF is due to buy/take delivery of the F-35 (the VSTOL version of the F-22), the RAF and anyone else for that matter can forget about buying a 'fully loaded' F-22.

The US will NOT be exporting the full F-22 avionics suite in the near future. To note, the US aren't exporting the F-22 at all at the moment and when they do it will be an export version. The countries that do eventually buy the F-22 will be dependent on the US for maintenance and spares. A very important point.A bit like Argentina were dependent on the French for their exocet missiles in the falklands...remember that?

My point is that we can't be buying F-22 because even if the US would let us purchase them we'd be dependent on them for the life cycle of the aircraft. I don't trust the United States. See Boeing Chinhook debacle. To be fair, I wouldn't trust Britain if I was another country.

If we're to buy arms at all we need to be independent so that in times of conflict we can supply ourselves and not be dependent of the whims of a nation that might not like/agree with what we're doing. Otherwise we really are a 52nd state (or whatever). The French have done it without North Sea oil (see their rather independent nuclear strike capabilities). Why haven't we?

Therefore using eurofighter as an example, although obviously far too expensive for what it is, it is still the right direction to take. Divorce from the US and anyone else frankly. Did I mention the Boeing Chinook example? Oh dear. If it wasn't for that US arms manufacturer boeing being allowed to take the UK MOD for a ride and then some, that paratrooper leader would have had his 4 chinhooks.

Steve job because he's a complete ****