Posts by Dan 55

Just how good is Nokia's PureView 41Mp camera tech?

Nokia can't and/or won't support Symbian properly, thanks to Flop.

I've suffered e-mail on Symbian 3 since I bought the N8 and here we are two years later with Belle Refresh and Belle FP2 and e-mail support still doesn't work. IMAP IDLE support was dropped with Belle Refresh instead of fixed, POP3/IMAP polling is unreliable and still doesn't work properly in Belle Refresh, the only thing that works reliably is ActiveSync but you can have a maximum of 1 (one) account. E-mail notification is non-existent; just a beep and if you didn't hear it then you've missed it, there's no e-mail icon on the notification bar or screensaver and no flashing indicator light either which is a step back from Symbian 1. The phone also had Ovi Push Notification support for applications but Nokia's just knocked it on the head with the latest update too.

Meanwhile the Belle FP2 rollout for the newer Symbian phones has been stopped because it bricked phones.

I was a Symbian fanboy for technical reasons but Nokia's just butchered the OS. Nokia are have shown they're incapable of supporting it, and my next phone will probably be a Samsung.

Mozilla floats fondleslab-ready Firefox for Win 8

Unfortunately they've got to do it as Windows 8 is bipolar and Firefox wouldn't appear when the user moves from manic (desktop) to depressive (Modern UI) and it'll cut them out of the x86 tablet market.

Maybe it'll even be able to share bookmarks between desktop and Modern UI and allow plug-ins to work on Modern UI. There's a reason right there for using it instead of IE10.

Microsoft sets date for Windows Phone 8 unveiling

Re: "although Microsoft will release an upgrade to make Phone 7 handsets look like Phone 8 system"

Are you sure that's lipstick?

Nokia pumps up Lumia browsing with Xpress

Re: Why aren't others doing this?

Meanwhile on the Symbian 3 side of things e-mail gets worse, not better, with every update. That's a fairly useful app which should at least work, but one gets the feeling they don't really give a toss.

Cash in the asset: Nokia may flog global headquarters in Espoo

Re: They are turning into a US company anyway

Oh good, we can watch Nokia implode in a blaze of Microsoft and RIM-style management styles.

A minute's silence for what Nokia once was.

The Register iPhone and Android apps: Maintenance update

Re: Windows Phone still works

Are you sure that crapness isn't the base class which this OS provides from which all other classes are inherited?

Re: In the meantime...

All you need to do is add icons for posts, fix the thing where images and embedded youtube content sometimes make the page cut off there (if it's not been fixed already, haven't seen it in a while), and make the cookie message not scroll but just appear as at the top as part of the page and make it instantly disappear with a click/tap.

Firefox's birthday present to us: Teaching tech titans about DIY upstarts

Re: This is how it should be done

Going back to ProfiMail, it works just as well for QWERTY keypad, T9 keypad, and touch phones.

This is how it should be done

Lonely Cat Games who do ProfIMail for Symbian phones allow you to change devices up to 20 times. Now that ProfiMail has come out for Android that includes Android devices so you can switch from Symbian to Android and bring your configuration and mail with you.

Then there's Steam where SteamPlay games work on both Windows and Mac as mentioned above.

Mozilla's Persona single sign-on service enters beta

Mozilla Persona vs. Mozilla Personas

Oops.

Fuming fanbois flood 'flimsy iPhone 5 Wi-Fi' forum

Re: weird

It wouldn't be an Apple OS if you didn't have to wait till MacOS X 10.x.2 or iOS x.1 to get stable wifi, even if it worked perfectly the previous release.

Google spikes old MS file formats

Re: Download =/= upload

18 downvotes, must be a new record.

I didn't say I agree with it, but that's the reality. I'm sure that some people do send it in a 'locked' PDF format, but if that format's not acceptable to the agency or company they'll get asked to send it in .doc format. Therefore pulling export in .doc support on Google Docs makes things that little bit more annoying for a real-world use case.

Re: Download =/= upload

No it doesn't make sense. Anyone who sends their CV in anything other than doc format doesn't really want it to be read.

Apple MacBook Air 13in review

Re: Missing the point slightly

Apple's amazing, beautiful, and marvellous Screen Sharing feature which will transform the way you work, otherwise known as VNC.

Info-flinging service Nokia Life gets webby, gains a plus

Re: @author: a feature of the Symbian-based Asha handsets

I have no idea why Reg authors continually think Asha phones run on Symbian. If we're confusing operating systems over similar graphic designs, I don't see why Asha phones can't be MeeGo based...

iPhone 5 'jailbroken' ... before most fanbois even have it

Scientific experiment

Fanbois are dicks.

Last remaining reason to order an iPhone 5 disappears

Re: Sigh

Strip away the sarcasm and the story was that there were shipping delays in certain regions.

Come on Auntie Reg... Which regions? How long? Etc...

Eric Schmidt: Ha ha, NO Google maps app for iPhone 5

There's a difference between Google putting a free maps app in the store and picking up ad revenue and Apple paying Google to put a free maps app on their phones and additionally picking up ad revenue.

Apple should have waited a year to perfect it before release, it's not as if they needed to scrimp and save like Nokia do. The damage to Apple's reputation by not having a usable maps app on the phone is probably far more monetarily than what Apple were paying Google, especially when there was a usable maps app until recently.

This is the kind of thing which drives people away from a competitor's platform and onto yours. If Apple don't want to pay Google for the app, Google certainly aren't going to provide it for free out of the goodness of their hearts just to fix Apple's damaged reputation.

Apple Maps to the rescue in China/Japan conflict

How the mighty have fallen

I thought being Apple they'd detect what country you're in and apply the appropriate name changes/border lines/censorship to the map on the fly.

Steve wouldn't have allowed this product to ship.

Myspace mutates Windows 8 with new look

Who are they advertising it to?

Switches from beautiful people updating their profile from the bathroom to marketing (demographics, so-and-so is your most influential fan). Like most people I'm neither beautiful nor in marketing and as I type this I'm mildly traumatised by watching Justin Timberlake for longer than is healthy.

Maybe I'm now officially an old curmudgeon.

Sky gripe grounded Freeview EPG facelift

LCNs FTW

I think LCNs are used in France but I'm not sure. But trust me, spending 15-30 minutes re-ordering your channels every time you retune as you do in other countries is time better spent doing something else.

Apple begs ex-Google bods to fix crap maps app

Apple shafted itself

The POIs didn't come from Tom Tom, a Routers report says it combines POI data from 20 different providers. There is also the 3D view which magics up contour data from out of nowhere (looks at the surface texture and altitude data and guesses).

Apple shafted itself, by trying to do a GPS program in record time.

Icon is what you'll be doing when following the turn-by-turn data.

'Apple's iOS 6 maps app is SHOCKING, rushed and half-baked'

Re: ACTIVATING REALITY DISTORTION FIELD...

... until they re-map the area.

Apple's brilliant plan to fix iOS Maps: Get YOU to do it

Re: OMG They are talking to el'reg?

It seems Apple only talk to El Reg when they're at PR Defcon 1. At least I hope it's that, and not return for favourable coverage of the newest version of the world's most shiniest toy.

See Apple will only reinstate mute kids' app if makers win patent case.

Apple scrambled to hire iOS 6 maps engineers DAYS before launch

Re: maybe

Apple do like to bring in open source solutions then put their bling on top using relatively small teams, this time it bit them on the arse though. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, you need development time to fix something which is fundamentally broken.

I wouldn't expect Google to willingly bail them out, maybe we'll see Apple sue them for anti-competitive behaviour (not supplying Google Maps for iOS 6).

Apple iPhone 5 review

Re: Get a Room

Try the video review instead...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIWKytq_q4

Single NFC bonk subjugated Samsung Galaxy SIII and slurped it out

Cyanogen

That is all.

Swiss railways ticked off at iOS clock knock-off

Re: ElReg

Then you click on 'Screensaver SBB clock Mac OS X Widget' and you find...

'New in v1.9: Recrafted the design of the clock with the valued help of Kevin to more closely resemble the iPhone iApp.'

Oops.

Re: Not on my iPhone

If you read the Google translation apparently it's iOS 6 for iPad.

Microsoft, RIM ink new licensing agreement

Re: $300K, idiots

Interop doesn't mean paying the MS tax, you don't need to licence FAT if you use don't use long filenames, which is good enough for cameras. Also good enough for music players if you read the song name from the MP3 tags.

There are also some that maintain that you don't need to licence FAT if you don't read AND write long filenames, i.e. you could just write them or just read them (probably more useful from the users' point of view) but that's probably riskier.

As for licensing exFAT, that's only necessary if the device accepts SDXC cards.

Obligatory UDF reference, it works on all modern OSes, the card/memory stick can be dual-partitioned into a small FAT partition to include drivers for those OSes that don't support a high enough version of UDF and and the rest of the card/memory stick as UDF.

All you need to know about nano SIMs - before they are EXTERMINATED

Re: I can see why Nano, but let's keep the SIM

When micro came out there was a one-way conversion process from mini to micro in the form of a sharp knife. Now we have a divide between full/mini/micro SIM connectors and nano SIM connectors, which throws another spanner in the works, they're not DIY convertible.

The solution proposed by Apple, of course, is SOC.

Funny how it was Apple who originally proposed micro and nano... Throw enough standards and something and eventually you'll break it.

Dropbox drops JavaScript, brews CoffeeScript

Re: Here's why

Try FireBug with AceBug and keep an eye on Mozilla/Google's SourceMap project.

Here's why

The translation process from CoffeeScript to JavaScript generates browser neutral code and they can spend more time writing code in a language similar to one which they all know instead of testing everything in 10 different browsers.

Motorola outs Razr phone with Intel Inside

Re: You had me at...

Get a Razr Maxx instead which has a Kevlar case, an ARM processor and a 3000mAh battery.

Users told: Get rid of Internet Explorer (again)

Unfortunately many browser sniffers that are copied and pasted into code can't parse browser versions greater than 9 properly (10 is read as 1).

The problem will fix itself when we're up to Chrome and Firefox 70 or thereabouts, probably by the end of the year.

Yahoo! ditches! BlackBerry! for! 'smart! fun!' phones!

Yahoo knocks RIM

Sort of like two drunks flailing about trying to hit each other.

Smack your phones up, says Microsoft

Re: That's actually pretty clever.

Nokia's also got flip the phone over to silence calls and alarms. I don't see how this can be patented unless they really want to differentiate a smack from flipping, all they're detecting is a change in acceleration/orientation.

Reg hack uncovers perfect antidote to internet

ESP

Many moons ago I offended a Greek taxi driver by putting my seat belt on, probably questioning his manliness and that of his father and his father before him. The trip itself was sort of like one of those car chase scenes in a Bourne film and re-assured me of his driving capabilities. I'm sure if there were any chance of a crash he would have insisted that I wear the seat belt.

Re: Building regs!

That'd be why in Spain your tax return is automatically calculated for you from data they get straight from banks, employers, etc... and changing any of it automatically gets you put under the microscope. That said, the tax return isn't always calculated right. Who said Big Brother was perfect?

Haynes Build Your Own Computer book review

Re: Books

Blood fingerprints, surely?

Windows Phone 8 stands a chance as Apple, Android dither

Re: Yet another fart app.

Dunno how many Live Tiles Apple and Android have, but Android (and Symbian with one foot in the grave) have got widgets. Live Tile sounds cooler though.

Apple time is now world time

This doesn't bode well

It's nice to see Apple eating their own dogfood with their systems but it looks like they still haven't sorted out annoying timezone problems that rear their ugly heads in spring and autumn.

Ding dong, the Ping is dead! Apple brings in Facebook for iTunes

The first step is admitting you have a problem

All they need to do now is outsource e-mail to Yahoo and that might work as well.

Apple Lightning adaptors reveal limitations

Re: Apple Tax

Yes, terrible. The poor chap would just have to struggle along with Bluetooth (a non-gimped version at that) and USB Mass Storage. What on earth uses those?

iPhone 5: skinny li'l fella with better display, camera, software

This is not the phone you're looking for

Surely some mistake, the elegant phone for the more civilised age was the Nokia 6310i.

Rumour has it it could go for more than a day without a charge.

One more try: Metro apps are now 'Windows Store' apps

Re: " one of the worst branding and marketing disasters in the history of computing"

One wonders why they bother. It doesn't matter if something does escape into the wild with the in-house codename or they spend ages listening to whalesong thinking up an a remotely interesting name, it's soon bludgeoned into the "Microsoft/Windows" <whatever> "Software/Server" formula by version 2.0. The only exception is Silverlight but then again that's being quietly forgotten.

New guide: Bake your own Raspberry Pi Lego-crust cluster

Re: Or...

If anyone wants to rack-mount Mac Minis for their enterprise applications, Lego seems perfectly suited to the task. Only black, white, and grey pieces mind.

Microsoft preparing for diskless Windows 8 PCs

Re: You can partition USB sticks

I've partitioned one with Disk Utility on the Mac and Windows read it.

After checking Google maybe Disk Utility flipped the "removable disk" bit when setting up a partitioned USB stick. Lexar's BootIt seems to be often quoted as a Windows tool which can do the same thing.