Posts by Nadjau 31 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2009
I feel your pain. The Indy app is ok, but not a replacement for a newsPAPER.
I'm taking the 'i' at the moment, but it's a bit thin.
Looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and go back to The Guardian, which has gone seriously downhill, but is still better than the Times and, particularly, the Telegraph.
"apple should REIGN in its ambitions, it's just pushing too hard"
<pedantry>
This may be a "loosing" battle, but you mean "rein", not "reign"
"reign" = to possess or exercise sovereign power or authority e.g. The Queen reigns over her subjects.
"rein" = to curb; restrain; control
Ergo ...
"rein in" - exercise tighter control or restraint
</pedantry>
I've owned a top spec C5 with hydro-pneumatic suspension since 2008 - funded by a car allowance. It was bought new for about the same money as a well-specced Golf. The C5 is a hugely underrated car and is extremely comfortable. Nothing major has fallen off, apart from the condenser being punctured by a stone, and it doesn't rattle. Of course its second-hand value is peanuts now.
As Citroen/DS have canned the idea of producing any new models with this suspension set-up I'll just have to continue enjoying the ride in the C5 until it's ready for the scrapyard!
Three's T&Cs are pretty clear on tethering here and in Oz:-
Want to use your data allowance as a personal hotspot?
If you are on The One Plan contract (handset and SIM) we’re happy for you to use your data allowance as a personal hotspot (we used to call this tethering). This means you can connect your phone to other devices via USB or WiFi to connect to the internet. If you’re not on The One Plan, you can get a Mobile Internet Add-on or a Personal Hotspot Add-on. See page5 on how to get one. If you have a Personal Hotspot Add-on, this will not work in a Feel At Home country.
The French download store Qobuz has had these on sale for a while. I've tried a couple - on promo for the same price as CD quality - and they sound very nice when fed into the main amp via an Audiolab M-DAC.
How much of that is down to the higher bit-rate and sampling frequency and how much is down to sympathetic remastering of the original recordings I wouldn't like to say.
"While Apple's iPhone sales may have passed that 50 per cent milestone in the US, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech's stats show that Cupertino is losing the smartphone war in hefty chunks of the world."
I come in peace - Apple computer and Android phone and tablet user.
In Apple's postion I wouldn't be losing too much sleep over "losing" the smartphone wars. Share isn't everything. The margin on every iPhone sold is fine, thank you, and only Samsung out of the Android camp is making any money. Meanwhile Nokia and RIM's choices have put them on a fast track to oblivion. :(
It's just the same as PCs. Apple's total market share is diddlysquat compared with with the massed rank of Windows OEMs. But who is making the returns?
The "BMW niche strategy" for keeping shareholders happy has a lot going for it. Just ask Ford, GM, FIAT, Renault, and Peugeot-Citroën, all of whom are struggling to make the sums add up in their European operations.
@Bodhi
Agreed about the 1st gen. Tablet S. A very good first effort from Sony and I also use mine every day.
I suspect its sales were impacted by the lack of an oleophobic coating on the screen, which meant the screens of demo units in Currys etc looked greasy and dirty compared with the Samsungs and iPads.
A classic penny-pinching cock-up that I assume Sony will have fixed in the new iteration.
I had a good experience with an Xperia Arc and so, being in the market for a mobile for non-work use, I went for the Xperia P.
The Reg's review is pretty much spot on. It's a sold mid-range phone that improves on the Arc in several areas and I particularly like the understated design.
It's not for those who want to carry their entire video and music collections around with them, but Sony do other Xperias that have SD card slots.
The Xperia P is unspectacular in that it just does what I want it to do without fuss - primarily a data device that can make phone calls. The screen, call quality, build quality etc are fine.
My only gripe is the flimsy microSIM slot cover, which is fiddly. Also battery life wasn't great at first, until I discovered that bluetooth was switched on by default. Replacing the live wallpaper with a static background helped too.
All in all a nice phone.
Hmm...
Strategy analytics "calculate" that 4M Apple TV's are shipped WW in a year. I'll be generous and assume Europe soaks up 30% = 1.2M units per year.
In 2001, the EEA reported there were 151M households in Europe.
Strategy Analytics reckon 7% have Apple TVs = 10.5M households.
Assuming Apple sales are reasonably constant and that no units ever break or are discarded and that only one unit is acquired by each household, then Apple has taken nearly 9 years to build up this share.
Apple TV was launched in March 2007. Erm ....
The "ordinary" Xperia Arc is excellent too. It's the best phone I've owned by a country mile, but is undeservedly in the shadows due to the massive hype surrounding anything marketed by Samsung or HTC.
SE's initial foray into the Android world certainly wasn't a smooth ride for the early adopters, but much the same could be said of Samsung's behaviour too.
I own several Apple products, including a 3GS, and they (mostly) do what I want them to do, which is what it's all about.They deliver value. But I've not been tempted by an iPhone 4, as it's a nice screen that does the same stuff as before. Which is not enough.
I may go for an iPhone 5 or 6 if it delivers a significant improvement on what I have now. But I'm not so married to Apple's ecosystem to not to evaluate the alternatives.
Android is very good, and will get better, but I do question an ecosystem where the proponent charges $0, betting it can maximise subsequent advertising $$$, while the HW manufacturers are reduced to "me too" offerings.
Android strips away their ability to take the initiative and lead the market, as they're always following whatever Google comes up with on the software side of things, just like all their competitors.
Nokia has got it right by stepping out of this zero sum game. Whether their alliance with Microsoft can deliver an ecosystem that is more compelling than Apple's is another question ...
Apple is getting increasing attention from competition authorities. If you bar one recompilation tool, then you have to be totally pure and bar the lot, without exception.
I suspect a Reality Inspector has pointed this out to His Steveness and has also mentioned the amount of $$$$ that Adobe could suck out of Apple's coffers if he continues with his one rule for Flash and another for everyone else.
I have a works-allocated Blackberry sitting in its box at home, whilst the works SIM card is in a nice little Nokia phone that does the job. Hilariously, work didn't include a data contract so the Blackberry - an 8080 or something? - is consigned to the darkness that its rubbish design so thoroughly deserves.
Yes. A dish is just a dish and this one will be pointing in the right direction to pick up FreeSat channels. Suggest you check the FreeSat channel listing though; just because the likes of Five announce an HD channel via Sky that doesn't necessarily mean the channel can be viewed on a FreeSat box, as many are encrypted using the Videogard system.
Full marks for optimism.
DAB sound quality is knocked sideways by the latest iPlayer radio streams. They demonstrate what the digital dividend ought to be delivering - high quality programming and sound.
On DAB, the mess of nondescript commercial pop channels using an ancient codec at barrel-scraping bit rates = low quality programming and dismal sound quality.
To pretend that the commercial sector is going to start putting out high quality programming with great sound quality necessary to grab the audience away from cozy ol' FM, particularly when their major source of revenue is migrating to the web, is risible.
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