Posts by Cthonus

iPhone apps - the 10 smartest and the 10 stupidest

Region-centric

It's a shame Pandora and Kindle are US-only apps (not mentioned in article). I was hoping for a more universally accessible list.

Amazon eats open ebook reader

And now for the missing information

You seem to have missed out the disclaimer next to the iPhone Kindle link which says it's not available outside of the USA.

Or did you not know that??

iPhone beta OS cracks before release

WTF?

"... won't support a community whose primary motivation is the use of stolen software."

Eh? Is that a deliberate attempt to incite a vehement response or is that just poor unsubstaniated journalism?

The majority of developers working for the Cydia installer aren't there to create bootlegs of existing software. They're there to provide functionality not available through the App Store. If you take a look at the list of third party stuff for jailbroken iPhones you won't see a lot of hacked apps: instead there are theme-packages, GPS utlities and applications which you can happily run in the background and don't shut off the moment you close the program. Added to which the majority of these are FREE.

Do some proper research and don't just crib off Apple's PR handouts.

Brits find accommodation a little uncomfortable

A propos the apostrophe

I'd swear there were people in my office actively breeding apostrophes. The little blighters are everywhere these day's [sic].

Apple massages iPhone code

USentricity

@colin

Bugger. That was probably the one fix I was most looking forward to.

Surely there has to be some coder on the iPhone/Google team who's actually been outside of the US and to the UK specifically.

Me. I'm waiting from a nod from the Dev team before I go anywhere near 2.2.1

Paris - because even she knows to go the extra mile for Britain.

Open source anti-Semitic as well as communist shock

19thC

@Charles Palmer.

I *always* go back to the 19th C or earlier for word derivations. It's so much more fun.

Now, anyone fancy a ride on my thelul or a play with my vuz peg?

Mass ignorance

@RW

"@ Pete re "anti-semitism". What you say is true about Arabs being Semites, but the phrase "anti-semite" means "anti-Jew". Don't try to apply strict logic to the meanings of idioms, in English or any other language."

Don't confuse the ignorance of the masses with genuine knowledge. Just because a mistake is oft-repeated doesn't make it true.

Stop'n'search gets touchy-feely

PC or not PC. That is the question.

1. Previous stop-and-search campaigns have drawn the accusation of being racist and targeting one ethnic group more than any other.

2. Demographically speaking the majority of contemporary terrorists have come from a few ethnic groups.

3. In order not to be accused of racism they'll need to therefore stop and search more white people.

4. As 'Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells' is usually white there's bound to be a middle-class backlash.

5. Repeat ad nauseam.

MS kills off OneCare to introduce free security software

I virus, She viruses. They do not virii

The pural of virus is viruses. Virii is a made-up word.

To quote the Urban Dictionary: "Virii is in fact an INCORRECT pluralization of "virus", however, some retard keeps resubmitting it as the plural form."

Two major spelling errors today. Good show.

Windows 7 borrows from OS X, avoids Vista

Does anyone proof read any more?

"The company is scaling down the code base [...] to run on netbooks and existing PCs - so you need to buy a replacement machine."

I think the word 'not' is missing.

"In a nod to OS X, you will be able to drag and drop icons for your most-used apps into the doc[k] to access them quickly."

My faith in articles is inversely proportional to the quantity of typos and spelling errors.

iPhone toolkit goes graphical

Inside out

The annoying thing is if I did jailbreak my iPhone I'd have the ability to ssh into it and find out more about why it's been crashing regularly.

Without that, I'm at the mercy of Apple's whimsical 'bug fix' release dates.

Apple's AppStore closes in on $500m in software sales

One hand clapping

It's one-sided as far as regionalisation of the App Store goes - not only is the UK store flooded with hundreds of apps virtually unuseable outside of the good US of A but any item which offends the US market/partners is immediately pulled from the UK store regardless of whether it breaks rules here. The prime example of this is the Nullriver applet you mentioned - it may break the Ts&Cs of the AT&T US but there's not reason to assume it automatically breaks agreements elsewhere in the iPhone world yet once our friends Stateside complained it dropped off all the other app stores too.

iPhone apps selling like hot cakes

Pump 'n' dump

Another problem with the App Store is the flood of US-relevant crap there which is of no earthly use to anyone eg someone tried to sell a 'Universal Sign Language' program which is purely American Sign Language and exhorted the viewer to 'go and learn about other cultures'. Developer, educate thyself.

It's a complete con. If you examine the 'What's Hot' list you'll see a number of apps with very bad reviews and the corresponding low number of stars.

Apple iPhone 3G

Two legs short of a donkey

Got the iPhone on day one - no thanks to DHL who couldn't be bothered leaving a card to say they'd called - and instantly discovered how flaky downloaded apps could be. Wasn't until I'd been hunting on the web for fixes that I discovered the firmware on the released units wasn't the final firmware - it was merely a late beta pushed out to allow Apple to stick to production deadlines. Once upgraded to the iTunes firmware it was far more stable.

The UK app store however is still chock full of US-centric apps that have no practical use whatsoever outside of N America and I suspect they're only there to bulk up the numbers. And taking pictures with the camera is like shooting motion shots through clear jelly: if you're not absolutely still the screen distorts badly.

All in all what could have been a killer unit has been executed in a half-assed fashion.

iPhone 3G to be in 'very short supply for weeks' - carrier

The Indie goes independant on facts

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/apples-new-iphone-3g-sells-out-within-hours-of-going-online-863053.html

According to the above article the iPhone is *this very moment* on sale in the high street. Methinks the O2 staff could get pretty cheesed off if punters come in brandishing a copy of this piece.

Paris - because even she couldn't get as many facts wrong in a couple of paragraphs. Or could she? :p