Posts by hodma727

Ouch, Apple! Plenty of iPhones stuck in tech channel. How many? That's a 'wild card'

Re: Apple boredom

There are still plenty of new car technologies creeping in. We got rid of our 2017 Jeep Cherokee, and our replacement this week has:

Both seats electric (old one only drivers side was)

Heated AND vented seats (wife no longer has to complain that I put on a blast of aircon when we get into the car, and I no longer have to feel like I'll be sweaty otherwise)

Automatic dimming of the mirrors when bright lights (eg., highbeam) shine on us from behind

Cruise control that actually works - eg., set the speed and it sticks to it, both up and down hill, unlike the old model that sped up past the limit you set on downward slopes

Adaptive cruise control - can also set the distance to keep from the car in front and the car automatically speeds up and slows down (to a stop) as necessary

Automatic parking

Automatic dimming of high beam when there is a car coming towards you

Lane control - automatically steer you back into the lane if you drift (could be improved on)

Crash alert - warns you if you are looking like you are about to hit a car in front

Much better detection of objects around the car when moving at slow speed

A boot that opens and closes through a simple foot gesture

Warning on the mirrors (orange triangle) that lights up when there is something in your blind spot, to warn you to be careful if you want to change lane (eg., car creeping up from either side)

Probably quite a few less obvious others - the engine seems a lot more responsive, stereo has improved, etc etc.

Next lot of big changes will be around self driving and electric driving distance. Pure electric range for local conditions is not quite there yet (needs to be at least 500km on open highway before we bite).

Meet Asteroid, a drop-in Linux upgrade for your unloved smartwatch

Apple Watch apps

Until my birthday earlier this year I was using a Mi Band 2 and found it wonderful for the battery life, notifications and alarms, and sleep + exercise tracking. I still think it is bloody good bang-for-buck value.

I'd seen the pain friends had with fitbits and their crap app support, especially how useless they become with older phones, so thought I'd made a good choice, and thought the Apple watch seemed pointless.

Then my girlfriend bought me an Apple watch and I actually started to use it.

I have to say it's damn useful.

Little things like having my upcoming calendar entries on my wrist, being able to say "Hey Siri, remind me when I get to work to do whatever" or "when I leave the office to pick up milk", Hey Siri, play playlist "never skipped" to play songs I've not skipped before, or "text John Winters I'll be 10 minutes late" "pause music" - Siri is awsome and so much better than the voice recognition build into my new Jeep that I leave that off. And having it on my wrist? Pure gold.

Being able to easily find my phone by swipping up and clicking on the phone icon to make my phone make a find me noise, having a nightlight on my wrist (swipe up, click torch icon), Shazam to recognise music for me, answer phone calls without having to drag out my phone, seeing where friends are on my watch, recording voice reminders, replying to texts by voice to text, seeing how charged my phone currently is on my watch, travel logging, voice recordings, notification of what my Xiao Mi Vaccum is up to, sleep tracking with AutoSleep, etc etc.

I have hundreds of apps on my iPhone and use a good 50 of them regularly, I have 16 on my Apple Watch that I use regularly, and I guess I use about half of the built-in apps on a regular basis too.

That's not bad going considering I've only had this watch a few months now.

If you have an Apple watch and don't use apps you're missing a lot.

New Zealand joins the Space Race

Re: Splash down target - Canberra

No need to, they will just claim it as an "Aussie" milestone anyway. Wouldn't even be unusual for Australia to do that.

Silicon Valley gets its first 1Gbps home bro– oh, there's a big catch

Really?

Quite suprising, we have gigabit home broadband here in Dunedin, New Zealand, a town of about 120,000 and home to Otago University (contractors are now only one block away from my place :-)). I would have thought it would be ubiquitous in Silicon Valley!

So this Saudi Prince calls and asks why he can't watch movies ...

Re: Users...

You'll be happy to know Microsoft Word and Excel are both free via the App Store now...

So long, 'invincible dreamers': Google+ daddy Gundotra resigns

Love the claim of that many "active" users. LOL.

Moist iPhone fanbois tempted with golden Apple shower offer

Indeed they do. When they find a fault with manufacturing they have been known to give a 7 year extended warranty. Happened to me with an old Apple powerbook - they replaced the screen on my by then 5 or so year old laptop and gave me a new trackpad at the same time because they'd discovered a flaw with the plastic surround on that model, and some users had had trackpads fail (mine was fine but I guess easier to replace at the same time, just in case).

Google fine-tuning iOS mapping app for Apple submission

Re: This is so funny

Quite foolish of Google I think. As an iPhone user, I can confirm the maps are now good enough where I live to mean I have zero interest in Googles offerings any more.

Cook's 'values' memo shows Apple has lost its soul

Re: Tablets?

"Eveyone seems to have overlooked the fact that Microsoft had initiated the true GUI tablet, with pen-sensitive touch-screen some 10 or 12 years ago. For some reason much of the world was not enthusiastic enough about these, but nonetheless they were out there long before the first ipad appeared. So there could be an argument that Apple simply copied the concept from Microsoft."

Go back over a decade before that and you'll see Apple's "true GUI tablet with pen-sensitive touch screen". They started development in 1987 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_%28platform%29). That's not long after they produced the first GUI based computers outside of a research lab.

I owned several Microsoft based phones and they were garbage compared to Apple's very first offering.

Those of us that have been around and seen the technology evolve have a somewhat less willfully biased or ignorant understanding of Apple's impact on computing.

Apple, Samsung whip out mobe sales in patent trial showdown

The high end phones from Samsung are pretty expensive too. I wonder if the "profit" of each handset includes the cost of operating system development. Apple does their own, Samsung leaches off Google.

Re: Awww bless

Shhhh Steve! It makes it really easy to identify the retards,don't discourage them!

Bargain-hunting Chinese make life tough for iOS devs

Beijings firewall

Downloading apps was so damn slow on my iPhone and iPad in China I got use to waiting overnight for new Apps and updates to apply. That can't be helping. I'm assuming Apple doesn't have App servers sitting inside the crappy Firewall of China. Perhaps they should.

Study: Users prefer Google+ over Facebook

"That's because there aren't nearly as many annoying prats on Google+ to poke you with self-absorbed updates."

The content on Facebook is mostly social updates, the content on Google+ is mostly self absorbed blathering about boring technical details that are of interest to a lot less people than the author thinks.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

Re: Korea

"I've certainly seen a big uptake of Android phones here in China too, whereas last year there seemed to be iphones everywhere."

I've seen both. On the subways in Beijing it's all sorts of crap - the occasional Blackberry, lots of iPhones, lots of ugly as sin cheap looking Android crap you and I wouldn't want to be seen dead with (imagine, phones that are at least 2cm thick!), and shock horror, lots of dumb phones :-)

Amongst people that can afford cars it's mostly iPhones and a reasonable percentage with high end korean phones.

The thing is, most normal people don't care about what the inept socially retards on The Register think. They buy whatever they think is best or whatever their local phone seller convinces them to buy. Which usually means whatever cheap POS they make the most margin on.

iOS was SO much more valuable to Google than Android - until Maps

Re: Licensing payments for search

Yes, all those people able to afford a decent smartphone (ie., having a good income) must be of low IQ.

Seriously get a life, go practice talking to normal people, and see a shrink to help with your alexithymia.

'Apple will coast, and then decelerate' says Forrester CEO

Re: Huh?

"They need to get off their high horse and stop telling people whats good for them and instead let the consumer make the decision for themselves."

They have. That is why Apple is the most successful IT company on the planet. Chin up lad, I'm sure there will be some other successful company you can whine about ;-)

Despite Android lead, iOS devs slurp scads more mazuma

One quite obvious factor here - the bulk of android devices are low quality cheap under-spec'ed devices aimed at a low budget buyers and unsupported by the manufacturers once they are sold.

Apple doesn't release low quality kit so the market for any android app that requires decent specs is quite limited compared to the iOS market.

And having played with Samsung's tablets, even some of the "premium" android gear can be pretty low quality.

Now Barracuda bitten by Thai disk drought disaster

I had a chuckle this week - it was half the price to buy an 1TB external hard disk, remove the disk and put it into one of my PC's than to buy a bare hard disk (yes, I wanted it to be internal for decent throughput).

China to take women to heaven and back

Good to see a country serious about space. Hopefully this will give the US some incentive to invest in space technologies again too.

Apple wins for now: no Galaxy 10.1 in Oz

Why?

Why should anyone care about Samsung? They are historically well known to steal ideas from everyone else - right down to dismantling color television sets from the United States, Europe and Japan in the 70's in order to copy them. No changes here besides stealing IP from a customer that has deep enough pockets to actually fight back.

Win 8 haters are just scared of change, say MS bosses

Change, Office 2007 ribbons

Microsoft have shown they are very good at shooting themselves in the foot - we have licenses for MS Office at work and yet most people have given up on it and shifted to Libreoffice or Openoffice (depends on how computer literate they are and which they happen to have heard of).

I suspect Metro will end up like Windows Vista and me, as a mostly despised and avoided waste of Microsoft developers time.

Samsung offers Apple TOP-SECRET peace deal in Australia

It's almost as if Apple and Sumsung know a few things the average clueless register poster don't...

Samsung threatens Apple in response to patent lawsuit

Why would anyone defend Samsung in this apart from blind fanbois?

If someone copies any other design - be it clothing, Mickey Mouse, or someone's art work, they get in trouble.

No difference here - Samsung should be creating their own UI designs, tablet designs, and phone designs, not stealing from Apple, who actually invest a considerable sum in their design work.

I hope they get hit hard in the wallet over this and instead diversify the market with their own designs, not by ripping off their main competitor who also happens to be a large customer. Taking advantage of that relationship in this way is really quite appalling.

It's not as if Korean designers can't do a good design job if they're given an opportunity (though software might be another matter going by the crap on my Samsung TV's).

Antennagate Redux: Consumer Reports condemns Verizon iPhone 4

Pre-iPhone smartphones

True - there WERE "smartphones" before the iPhone - unfortunately they were garbage.

iPhone makes many Aussies late/early for work

Apple - years of imperfection

People have been complaining about the latest fiasco for months now - see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2469993

I enjoy having birthday reminders on the wrong date, and alarms going off at the wrong time, really I do.

Judging from the deafening silence from Apple on these ongoing issues they're never heard of customer service or PR...

Alleged Jobsian email promises iPad printing

Ummm... isn't there a FREE App for that?

I have PrinterShare installed on my iPod Touch so that I can print from the iPad if I ever want to (never have so far). I would assume this works on the iPhone and iPad too?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/printershare-print-from-iphone/id317215292?mt=8