Re: Donald...
The war ended 11/11/1918. Of the 381,019, the majority may well have died during the war and not during peace time.
196 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Feb 2012
But where do you download those apps from? I assume the App Store. Apple have a full history of what you download. Not that long ago they used that data to sell targeted advertising slots.
If I sideload an app on to to a Windows or Android device, AFAIK, the only possible data slurping will be on a per app basis and not on an OS app provision basis.
There was a time when if you didn't pay for a product, you were the product. Now you can spend a grand on a new phone and still be the product.
Apple are no different to MS or Google. All of them want to extract as much money from you as possible.
Pay for the product, become the product. Repeat and rinse.
"Have you even actually read Apple's privacy policy ? Read it properly ?"
Erm, Apple do data sniff and use that data to flog targeted adverts from third parties via the news app, the stocks app and the App Store.
And it's no that long ago that Apple used to brag to advertisers about the fact that they knew more about Apple customers than anyone else. Their iAD platform used to allow punters to be targeted by gender/age/location/income/MUSIC PLAYED/apps owned and how and when those apps are used.
From
https://asciiwwdc.com/2014/sessions/510
"So if you were to promote a health and fitness app, wouldn't it be great if you could choose the audience who like to download health and fitness apps, or who like to download fitness and workout music."
Apple may be less intrusive than the likes of Google but the whole "what takes place on your iphone" is marketing bollocks.
"But they fucked it up by trying to keep it all secret because they were so frightened about the publicity"
Or maybe they were worried that owners might ask why they can't have batteries that they can remove without needing a pentalope screw driver. Personally i suspect it was Apple simply trying to save themselves from legions of fans complaining about the fact that their 13 month old phone kept crashing when it showed less than 30% battery life. Additionally, I suspect that Apple had a few batches of shitty batteries and didn't want to have to pay to have them replaced.
In and of its self, the power management makes sense- IF the owner is given the option to activate it of their own volition. However we end up back at the desperate attempt to convince owners that Apple products "just work".
"In the GSM days, when GPRS was created to allow phones to do data,"
In 2002 Nokia released their first GPRS phone, the 7650. I downloaded the rather oddly named HTML browser (Doris by Anygraff).
By 2003 3G phones were available in the UK.
2007, Apple release a GPRS phone. A fool and his money...
" There wouldn't be Android if Apple hadn't invented the smartphone."
Strange... when the iPhone was released I had been using a Windows mobile T-Mobile Ameo for months. It made the iphone look like an under powered toy. I had a 5" touchscreen (vs 3.5"), the same amount of local storage (plus the option of using a Mini SD card), more RAM, a faster processor, 3.5G (vs GPRS), GPS (vs erm, nothing), stereo speakers, a removable battery, a "smart cover", a higher resolution camera (that was also capable of recording video), a front facing camera (also capable of video recording), a camera flash, Adobe flash, a desktop class browser (opera). touch gestures (eg double tap to zoom). Oh and I could download apps, either from apps stores or via my PC (vs erm, nothing).
Shortly after releasing the Ameo, HTC released the fat finger friendly HTC Touch which supported swiping etc. before the iphone.
IMO the only thing impressive about the iphone was multitouch- it wasn't however the first consumer based multi touch device- AFAIK that was the 2006 JazzMutant Lemur music controller. And hey, whilst kool, how often do users actually use multitouch?
I know that apple claim to have invented the touchscreen smartphone and even told the courts that they did in the first Apple Vs Samsung case, but to suggest that Android would not exist without iOS would only make sense if you deny the existence of other OSes such as Windows Mobile (which was pretty much a PDA with phone capabilities).
BTW Windows Mobile continued to out sell iOS(/iPhoneOS) for nearly 2 years.
Oh, so when trying to push their iAd advertising platform, what exactly did Apple mean when it said it knows what apps users own and how and when they use them?
Apple then went on to brag that they knew more about their customers than anyone else (read:Google) and told advertisers that they could target them by age, gender, location, choice of music and income.
Apple don't need to sniff their customers' data but they are happy to in the pursuit of profits.
When promoting their iAD advertising platform, they bragged that they knew what apps customers use, how and when they use them.
Advertisers were able to target punters based on age, gender, location, income, previous advert engagement.
Erm, apple do data harvest.
They used to brag to prospective advertisers that-
"iAd is part of Apple, and we know Apple users, all 800 million of them.
We know what apps and other items content they downloaded and we know how and when they use it."
Apple and Google seem to forget that it was third party apps that made their devices desirable in the first place.
Ever noticed that the pre-release reviews are always more positive than those written when the products have arrived in the shops.
Apple only dole out pre-release products to news outlets on the understanding that they will be wasted 5 out of 5 stars.
The Guardian made the mistake of honestly reviewing an iPad, giving it 3.5 stars and have been blacklisted by Apple ever since.
AFAIK, they will only repair Macs that are less than 4 years old and I imagine that they will find some way of weaseling out of many repairs- citing 3rd screen replacements or scratches on the lid, insisting that keyboard faults are constant rather than intermittent, etc.
You don't get to be the richest firm in the world by being good guys.
Actually Apple said that Macs couldn't get PC viruses. You are correct though, they have a history of telling porkies and intentionally misleading people. They continued the virus BS until the ASA slapped them down for saying that Gatekeeper kept users safe from harm. The ASA pointed out that it had falled to protect some 600,000 Mac users from the Flashback drive by.
Apple promptly replaced the word safe with safer.
"There is still an elegance in the offerings from the Church of Jobs but having ascended to meet his own maker, the money-lenders entered the temple and now there is no one to cast them out."
Jesus wept- are you really blaming it on a Zionist conspiracy? Personally I see it as little more than the Reality Distortion field being weaker since Jobs kicked the bucket.
"Apple makes much of the fact that its business model doesn't require it to aggregate personal data as Google does"
Or- Apple makes healthy enough profits to negate the need to sniff customers' data but is so fecking greedy that they do it for fun.
What was iAds? Apple bragged that they knew what apps punters used, when they used them and how they used them. They even let advertisers target ifans based upon the muzak that they listened to.
Apple might not be as intrusive as Google or MS but they are the kings of sleight of hand and mass bullshit.
I am waiting for them to release the iSofa. A 2.252 person seater that syphons away the lose change that falls out of your pockets each night.
Qualcomm r bias.
Apple invented the touchscreen smartphone, hell, they even told the courts that when they first sued Samesung for stealing their revolutionary rectangle with rounded corners.
"Apple revolutionized the telecommunications industry in 2007 when it introduced
the wildly popular iPhone... Before the iPhone, cell phones were utilitarian devices with key pads for dialing and small, passive display screens that did not allow for touch control. The iPhone was radically different."
Page 2 line 8 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/373840-apple-v-samsung-complaint.html
And NO I don't want anyone to tell me that the firm that repeatedly tells us that pay every cent of tax owed and only set up shop in Jersey because they love the potatoes would tell porkies.
"Poor journalism supported by bad editorship. Brings El Reg down to the level of The Sun, The Star, or The Daily Mail."
I think that you will find that the Sun, Star and Mail would never mock Apple for fear of being blacklisted by Cupertino.
The Guardian have been blacklisted ever since they gave the ipad mini 3 out of 5 stars.
Computer Bild since they showed how easy it was to fold the bendy iPhone in half.
The Reg? It was suggested that their crime was taking the piss out of Jobs' receding hairline.
Perhaps some of the memes are tired but at least this organ is consistent in their refusal to treat any tech firm as a cult.
Oh, so "patent trolls" are bad, firms with very deep pockets that patent the obvious are good?
Patents have a value, why shouldn't they be sold by the holder to third parties, regardless of whether those third parties are trolls or not? In the case of patent trolls, they are simply trying to grab a slice of someone else's profit. Isn't that preferable to firms that try to use patents as an excuse to prevent other firms from actually selling products.
Surely the crux of the problem is the ease with which firms can gain patents when they are obvious or where the applicant decides to ignore prior art?
An example that springs to mind is "slide to unlock". Apple persisted to use it as a stick to beat competitors with even though they would have been aware that the Neonode NM1 had it years before.
It is difficult to sympathise with apple given their frequent and repeated abuses of the patent system. Lets not forget that they are currently using Qualcomm's IP and refusing to pay a single bean even though they had previously agreed the terms.
"Targeted advertising should be banned and the advertising industry can go to hell"
Erm ever heard of iAd, Apple used to brag to advertisers that only knew what apps users had, how they used them, what music they listen to, their ages, gender, and so on.
They have now given up on iAd but they still sniff your data to sell App Store advertising.
Whilst I applaud Apple for tackling the cookie issue, they are being hypocritical. You can only take the higher moral ground once you stop spying on your own customers, refusing to let other people make money out of your cash cows is far from being virtuous.
And yes, Google and MS are just as bad.
Apple have been storing Chinese customers' data in China for years. In an effort to appease the Chinese government they migrated customer data over to state owned China Telecom long before it was a legal requirement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-data-china-idUSKBN0GF0N720140815
spot the difference-
"The addition of this data centre will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services" Apple 2017
"We have added China Telecom to our list of data center providers to increase bandwidth and improve performance for our customers" Apple 2014
Oh, so they introduced the iAD platform just because they wanted to make sure that their customers received a better class of targeted adverts?
In an effort to monetize their customers, Apple bragged to advertisers that they knew more about their customers than anyone else, knowing what apps they have, how and when they used them and allowed them to be targeted by age, gender, income and even the music that they listen to.
Google's business model is dependant on spying on customers. Google provide free services and make their customers the product. Apple charge their customers a premium, and then make them the product.
Sure, Apple have given up on iAd but they are now focusing on app store advertising.
"The vast majority of cracks flag false positives on anti-virus softwares. I've never had a single issue with cracks, and each one triggered the anti virus."
Agreed.
I suspect that Adobe/MS/whoever pay the AV firms to flag crack and serial number generators as being malware.
Much like they refused to flag and remove the porn/gambling related Micro Bill System hi-jackware. In the early days, the AV vendors were worried that flagging it would result in them being sued by MBS (AKA Platte Media).
From memory, the only off the shelf AV package that would remove MBS was the paid for version of Prevx.
Other than pinch to zoom, what could you do on an iphone that you couldn't already do on something like the 5" HTC Athena?
Nothing. In fact you could do far more on the HTC.
And seriously.. Karta Sutanto's post is bollocks.
"The iphone was the first phone with a big screen?"- It had a 3.5" screen, I had a 3.5" HTC Blue Angel in 2004, in Feb 2007 I had a 5" screen.
"It was the first phone with bundled data"- my 5" HTC had unlimited 3.5G data. The iPhone was GPRS.
All Karta is right about is multi-touch, but how often do people actually rotate images. I suspect that swiping and double tap to zoom are the most frequently used gestures, and both of those existed before tha iphone.
Sure, no one had ever used a grid'o'icons before Apple...
It is true that the iPhone was the first to use multitouch, however it was not the first to support finger gestures such as swiping and double tapping.
Multitouch, pinch to zoom, etc had been demonstrated by Jeff Han a year earlier and Jazz Mutant were selling their Lemur multitouch music controller two or three years before the iphone was released.
Other than mutlitouch iOS the iphone wasn't all that different to the other touchscreen phones back in 2007.
Sorry but the rounded corners also applied to the shape of the device.
"The iPhone is radically different from the devices that preceded it. It has a
distinctive shape and appearance—a flat rectangular shape with rounded corners, a metallic edge,
a large display screen bordered at the top and bottom with substantial black segments, and a
selection of colorful square icons with rounded corners that mirror the rounded corners of the
iPhone itself, and which are the embodiment of Apple’s innovative iPhone user interface"
https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/110415samsungcomplaint.pdf
It is true that Samsung used rounded corners on their icons but those corners were much less rounded. Apple argued that many of the samsung icons looked like Apple's, eg the use of a handset at a 45 degree angle for the phone app and the use of a cog for the settings app. IIRC they also complained about the boxes that Samsung sold their devices in and the use of "rubber banding" when you scroll to the end of a page.
I suspect that Apple fell for their own marketing, they even told the court that they had invented touchscreen smartphones.
"Before the iPhone, cell phones were utilitarian devices with key pads for dialing and
small, passive display screens that did not allow for touch control."
"Interestingly, the subway booth attendants in NY could and would reject attempts to pay in large numbers of coins back in '84. Not sure how that worked, and private businesses always have the right to reject payment when the payee is buggering about"
Here in the Uk the ticket machines on the tube will reject your payment if you try to use more than 20(?) coins. I believe that it is a function of the escrow hopper tray being inadequately small.
"Fentem created the multitouch technology essential to modern touchscreen interfaces"
Did he?
Fentem tells us that the was working on multi-touch back in 2002. He provides a link to a video from 2007 in which he demonstrates his 2003/2004 multi-touch prototype music controller.
Although I have no reason to doubt Mr Fentem, according to other pioneers, such as Bill Buxton, Fentem failed to publish anything that demonstrated his early work.
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
If Buxton is correct, then how can Fentem have influenced the development of early multi-touch devices?
AFAIK the first commercial product to offer 10 point multi-touch support was the 2003/4 JazzMutant Lemur music controller.
https://web.archive.org/web/20041016212747/http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_features.php
Did Fentem work with JazzMutant, did JazzMutant have access to Fentem's work?
Contrary to the tone of the article. Here in the UK, if you go to someone like the CarPhone Warehouse and purchase a handset, more often than not, it will network independent, even if you purchased it as a contract phone. The iPhone will lock itself to the first SIM card that is inserted.
Yeah, Apple really stuck two fingers up to the networks.
And how long did it take apple to allow the iPhone to tether?
I had tethering back in 2002- on a Nokia
"I think the biggest single point is that Apple saw the "phone" as a computer that made calls, while most others saw it as a phone that could do the odd bit of computer work. As Andrew pointed out, the main "customers" of Nokia, etc, were the mobile networks and they were adverse to anything that would *use* those networks to any useful degree and with poor bit rates we had WAP to make it usable, but that was really a misery to use."
The iPhone was yet another in a line of PDAs with phone functions.
Vodafone sold VDA touchscreen smartphones.
O2 sold XDA touchscreen smartphones.
Orange sold SPV touchscreen smartphones.
T-Mobile sold MDA touchscreen smartphones.
Everyone of those Windows Mobile devices had (data hungry) HTML browsers (WM never had a native WAP browser)...
And let's not forget that iOS did not start outselling Windows Mobile until late 2009 (and within a year Android was outselling iOS).
Orlowski- have you been possessed by Charles Arthur?
I recall him writing a similar article when he was the Vicar and Defender of the Faith at the Guardian.
He too tried to argue that the iphone was a democratising force for good. And he too decided to overlook the contribution of the likes of Windows Mobile and Palm. I guess that it is difficult to acknowledge their existence when trying to argue that the iPhone was unique and super high spec.
The uncomfortable truth was that it wasn't as simple as the iPhone Vs WAP devices. Windows Mobile never even had a WAP browser, it shipped with Internet Explorer and by the time the iphone was released, there were 5" phones with Opera's tabbed HTML browser and much higher specifications than the iphone. HTC had already developed TouchFlo which allowed users to scroll, tap and swipe with their fingers.
We are asked to believe that the Telcos didn't want people using data greedy devices but here in the UK, O2 offered the XDA range, Orange the SPV and T-Mobile the MDA.. 4 months before the iPhone was released T-Mobile offered the 5" T-Mobile Ameo for £118 on a £45pm contract that included unlimited 3G access (with tethering). IIRC the only firm that didn't offer unlimited access was O2 who introduced their service in Oct 2007.
However within a couple of years, about the same time as the iphone was becoming popular, all of the networks (bar 3) dropped unlimited access.I, for one, could now no longer stream Hulu (Flash) to my phone with impunity.
I get that you like the iPhone but please stop with the revisionism.