Posts by Craigness 1498 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Mar 2010
And you can't use the old thumb icons if you're not logged in. Youtube uses handles instead of real names, even for G+ users, and a G+ profile does not have to be searchable. So really there's no change here except that you apparently can't downvote a video any more. Oh, and the buttons which previously existed to let you...errr FORCE YOU...to share on Facebook and Twitter after thumbing something on Youtube were not shown in the screengrab the ageing Ensign posted.
If you don't have a Dropbox account then you need to sign up for one before you can use the app. Some developers which no clue at all about creating a beautiful user experience have been linking directly from the app to a Dropbox account-creation page (or the SDK does it for them) where users may be conned into paying money to a company other than Apple. To improve the experience for its livestock, Apple has decided that it would be better if they leave the app, navigate to the appropriate page in Safari, create an account and return to the app. Nobody else in the world employs designers, so they didn't think of doing it that way.
Your hotmail account also syncs with all your devices (though you can also set one or more devices not to sync with the others). Google drive has a phone app too.
But the bigger point of Google Drive, which is unique AFAIK, is that web apps can use your gdrive to store data you create and edit on other websites. It's all sandboxed, naturally.
Doesn't it make more sense to describe someone as a patent troll if their only use of their patent is in extracting rents from other inventors? If he was using it then it's reasonable to grant him a temporary monopoly for the work he's done, but if he's not using it and someone else invents something similar with no reference to his designs then it would be reasonable for them to be allowed to continue with their own product.
In Apple's "bounceback" patent (when you scroll to the top of a list and keep scrolling, the list initially moves with your finger but bounces back) they came within a gnat's tadger of saying that it was obvious something like this was needed to show the user they were at the top of a list, and that bounceback was the most obvious way of doing it. They still got a patent on it though.
Omega's been using it for a while on its Planet Ocean range. If the advert is anything to go by, the iphone will retain its striking appearance indefinitely and you'll need an 8000 Watt laser ray to engrave your name on the back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZcsWVqLC5I
But it also suggests the next iphone ads will be even worse than the last ones, and note that Omega hiked its prices a heck of a lot in the last few years!
He should have released it months ago, he DID release it months ago.
Try contributing upstream to any project. In any open source project they don't have to make their code public at the end of every day, they don't have to accept your changes, you are not allowed to release branched software under the same name as the main branch. Android is open source.
What made their company work was being able to index the most important/relevant data on the web and present users with the more relevant result. Today they improve relevance by giving us the option of "social searches" but more of the important data is being kept out of the open access web.
If Apple's current bank balance means they don't need to give a toss about selling more phones than they already do (and the apps, music and other content that follows), then at what point will they decide they've got enough money and just stop selling phones all together? I suspect Apple very much does care about selling as many phones as it can. If someone else is selling phones then Apple is not.
The new registration letters were issued in August. People bought cars at the end of July because the "old" registration letter was worth less than the "new" one would be a few days later and the cars were therefore cheaper. People buying every new iproduct at launch are like those who bought a car every August. The only value you get for the extra price is a moment's exclusivity.
@ChrisMiller
Do you really think 1 person constitutes a Grand Inquisition?
The fact is, there are known facts about relationships between atmospheric content and climate. Some people deny those facts and they should be called Deniers, just like those who deny known facts about the spherical nature of the planet.
Holocaust Denier means Holocaust Denier. Denier does not mean Holocaust Denier, unless used in the context of a discussion about a holocaust. Under no circumstances should anyone labelled a Denier be considered a Holocaust Denier in a conversation about climate change where the word Holocaust is used in not conjunction with the word Denier.
We NEED a word to describe a denier and Denier is what we use. Deniers of any particular fact are not tarred with the same brush as anyone who denies anything else, except that they are both Deniers of facts.
@the other one.
I never said there are no skeptics.But deniers also exist, and they are called deniers. Claiming not to be anti-semitic does not excuse people their denial of climate facts.
The earth's orbit is not a perfect circle, or even a perfect ellipse. The axis of rotation of the earth is not fixed with respect to the sun. The albedo of the earth is not constant across its surface.
Put these together and you get variations in the amount of sunlight hitting the planet and variations in the proportion of heat being retained. You don't need anything to alter the planet's motion, just the natural variances.
The earth is not flat. Anyone who denies that the earth is not flat is a denier. We don't have to redefine or stop using a word just because there are people who deny things which are politically sensitive. CO2-led global warming is a fact which deniers deny; that would be the same even if Hitler never existed.
I've heard that scientists think ice ages are ended ONLY by plant food emitted by conservatives driving too-big cars, and from economic growth. They think we had those things thousands of years ago on Earth and they think those things currently exist on Mars. Their politically correct "solution" (being forced on us by the NWO) is to tax economic growth out of existence and abort all conservatives' babies.
"Presumably the app has some function for sending photos by email or MMS"
If they'd hired an Android developer then they'd know to use Intents to send pictures by email or MMS. They could also use the same method to send to Facebook, Twitter, G+ and anything else you can think of, instead of limiting their users to just a few networks (and, as I've seen on other iOS ports, asking them to enter their passwords into the app).
I get the impression that Android programmers are considered obsolete by big brands in the app development world. Any Android programmer would indeed know that, but companies give their code to an intern and ask them to translate it into Android for the other 60% of their userbase.
Seen the offering from Instagram?
They don't come loaded on the homescreen when you buy the phone - he configured it that way for the competition. I have a weather widget which came with my HTC phone so I'd have to touch the widget and swipe upwards. You don't get much faster than that but I'd have "lost".
MS basically cheated by setting their phone so that all they had to do was turn it on. In other "contests" where they upload a photo to facebook, what's the betting that the guy who decides on the challenge has his camera set to the lowest picture size and has a facebook tile right where his thumb ends up when he finishes sliding the unlock? The "smoked" android phone, on the other hand, is just some guy who turns up.
Have you seen Overskreen, a browser which floats in its own window in Android? I think Galaxy Note (Tab?) has something similar too, where you can have 2 apps open next to each other. Liberating us from full-screen apps is a prerequisite for liberating us from our PCs.
Even if everyone liked every film they started watching, there would still be more downloads than dvd rentals simply because of the time it takes for an old dvd to go to lovefilm and a new one to get sent back to the customer. Also, with TV shows you can do more than one episode in a single sitting. There might be more than 1 episode on a DVD but it's only 1 rental.
If "the designers often don't know that there's more than one screen-size on Android" then get some proper designers.
To support different screen sizes use fragments. Yes, sizes. It's not just about ratios. On a large screen you might want to display a menu and content next to each other. On a small screen you can display one at a time. If the Size-Ratio combination doesn't allow a menu and content to sit side by side then just show one at a time.
http://www.developer.com/ws/create-flexible-android-uis-with-fragments.html
Check out the images at the bottom of page 2 to get an idea of what's available.
"you have to maintain multiple versions (for each class of devices you want to support)..."
No. One version suits all devices
--
"...of the same app (in each app store) to access the whole of the Android market."
No. One version can be uploaded to all app stores and 2 of them pretty much cover the whole market.
--
" I don't develop mobile apps myself"
I'd never have guessed!
--
Having to upload to as many as 2 different markets definitely kills android. Do you remember the days before online content delivery? And the period when CD-ROM was taking over from floppy disk? Back in that time people had to provide software through myriad bricks and mortar shops in 2 different physical formats. Even magazines had to offer 2 different versions to provide free software to their readers. It's no wonder absolutely nobody on the planet wrote a single line of code or published a computer magazine back then. Oh, wait...
6 thumbs up for this tosh shows the level of ignorance and hatred of Android here. It might be a paid survey, but the bigger complaint is that the conclusion is wrong.
"Fragmentation" in terms of CPU is about as relevant as fragmentation in terms of the cases people put on their iphones. You don't HAVE to support every android device! If you want to write an app which would need quad-core then you are able to distribute it to those devices and restrict it from others. You can design for one screen size if you want, but you're not forced to, and the tools available make it easy to support multiple sizes.
Can anyone add an OS name to this sentence which will result in a true statement about fragmentation making app development a pain in the ass? Android certainly doesn't fit this sentence.
"There *is* fragmentation in <OS> - not all <OS machines> have the same class of CPU, the same size of screen or the same OS release."
As a rule of thumb in flame wars like this one, if someone uses the word "Fragment" then they know what they're talking about. If someone uses the word "Fragmented" then they don't.
Thomas,
The tools google makes available for Android developers mean the problem of fragmentation really is in their heads. You don't have to support all screen resolutions or sizes, and you don't have to support all hardware or OS versions. You make the app you want, list the resources it requires, and the Play Shop will only allow it to be downloaded onto devices (or countries) for which it is compatible.
There is no particular difficulty in making a single version of an app work on both tablets and phones (and TVs) either. Developers just need to associate UI "fragments" with different resource specifications and the market and the OS will do the rest. Unfortunately devs sometimes don't bother to do this. Hence you have the Android Twitter app held up at an Apple keynote as an example of why android is bad. It's not android which is bad, it's the developer of that particular app.
Think of how a website looks on a 4:3 screen and on a 16:9 screen. That's the sort of "problem" android developers have. Now consider how the same website looks on mobile. El Reg is an exception but many sites use different UI on their mobile versions and desktop versions whilst the code behind it remains the same. Android allows devs to do this.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
