and yet...
...across the gulfs of space, microbes superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.....
2310 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2007
i'll give you perfect example why apps like this are useful
yesterday i was traveling in to London, my overground train was taking me to St Pancress. I wanted to go to Regent St, and so checked the Tube map on the London Tube app on my iPhone.
This map allowed me to work out that when I reached St Pancress, I should take the Victoria Line.
As you say, I could have worked this out for myself once I reach St Pancress and made my way to the Underground station, but what I was also able to do was check the status of the Underground lines and I discovered that the Victoria line was suspended all day due to engineering works.
So i checked the map again and re-planned my route to use the Picadilly and Central lines instead - having confirmed that both of those were working with a good service.
the point is, O2 forced us into these 18 month subsidised contracts. there was no option to be an early adopter last year without buying into the subsidy contract.
personally, i'm going to get a PAYG 3GS if i can - that way I can detach the hardware from the mobile phone contract. leaves me free to upgrade to the 2010 iPhone next summer if i wish instead of being bound in another O2 contract until 2011.
that said - my 18 month contract means i'll have paid 790 quid for my 3G phone (including the subsidised cost)
so by comparison, the cost of a PAYG phone saves me at least 200 quid in the long run
i'm already getting too excited to sleep and there's still so long to go until the show
i'd assumed that Apple had found a way to synthesize the RDF and had got it running early, but now i realise, with 6 months out of action, He's obviously just flexing and exercising his RDF muscles, limbering up, ready for the WWDC
i quite like the styling of that
but why would the font on the menu be so big? even if it's a prototype build, it doesn't make sense that the font would be so large
and if it's a promotional, artists impression, you'd spend a few minutes in photoshop to fix that
and who has such text-orientated menus these days anyway? all main menus are large icons, small text, because that way people can see more options
if that is the main interface method, then you'd best hope there isn't any App Store equivalent as it'll take you all day to scroll through 30 apps, let alone the 80 apps i have on my iphone
the amount of people that i see, listening to music on their phone, while staring at the phone's screen the whole time is..... well, it's none actually
everyone starts playing the album or playlist, then shoves the phone in their pocket and either goes back to sleep on the train or carries on walking to work
if i'm listening to music while at my desk, the phone is face-up on the desk, i'm not holding it in front of me.
so i don't see how this device is ever going to get a chance to see what a person's face looks like apart from the 2 seconds when something rubbish gets played and i'm already reaching for the skip track button
when i were a wee lad in late 80s and early 90s, they had these VR arcades in the Trocadero at Leicester Sq (that's in London, England for you sceptics)
and during the summer holidays, we'd inevitably make the pilgramage to London a couple of times to see whatever the big blockbuster movie was, check out what was new on CD in HMV and play on the arcades. These VR machines looked awesome - took up the space of 4 arcades each, there were big queues for them, and each game cost 5 times what it would cost to play Street Fighter 2 or Bonanza Bros.
and we queued and we paid and we played
and we weren't terribly impressed - driving tanks around and shooting at each other, was different, sitting in a machine, but the game itself was a bit poor and a bit dull
the next year they had stand up ones, where you turned around and pushed on button on the 'gun' to move forward and the other to fire the weapon at the other players
graphics weren't much and again, the game was boring to play
i haven't seen any VR games since then. I'm sure in nearly 20 years they must have come on in leaps and bounds, after all, the quality of console games has. except, i don't see them anywhere.
who goes to arcades anymore? we're all playing our PS3s and Xbox360s instead. and if VR gaming really is the future, surely it'll start on consoles - so we should have them here now with VR peripherals
while i'm skeptical about the whole "thin-client" cloud gaming anyway - i can see that it is a possibility - although we'll be playing on our Playstation thin-client or our xBox thin-client, not a Speilberg one.
but VR gaming has died a well deserved death, hasn't it?
i'm going to stick with Stanza then until they get the Kindle app upto the same standard
but like OrsonX - it's going to be a while before i'll give up reading books in their traditional format - there's something about reading a book and turning the paper pages that the electronic versions are missing - it's like they've taken the soul out of reading and sterilized it
did you not read the article? Palm do not have a version of the Pre that'll work on the UK networks. It will only run on the US network. Therefore, no UK launch for the near future.
And if it is correct that they've only been able to manufacture so few, they they're going to have their hands full for the next 6 months or more just producing enough units to sell to US customers before they'll be able to start thinking about the rest of the world and setting up new production runs with GSM chips in them
but Fox do seem to get a lot of decent shows - and then they cancel them just as their fanbase really gets going
but is it Fox that is to blame? They are, afterall, just watching their ratings
surely the blame lies squarely with the american public for not knowing a good show when they see one - and then complaining AFTER it's axed instead of watching it when it's on telly
if less people were capping these shows and up'ing them to the interwebz then people would have to watch the shows as they broadcast and so the ratings would be higher
i recon you are quite correct sir
seems to film is available via the nefarious parts of teh interwebz and a look a thumbnail preview image of the film shows 20 still images taken spaced evenly throughout the film - only the 19th one shows a bit of shark - no sign of the octopus though
having to shake, flip and jerk your phone around doesn't make it easier to do. it's far quicker and easier to just use your thumb to press the cancel button to skip a call, or tap the screen to start an application
this is why no one likes motorolla phones anymore
whatever "innovative" ideas they have are stupid and useless - they don't add appeal to the phone, they take it away
surely this has fail written all over it, no?
as a game, it's going to fail, because it's going to be everything that a MMORPG should not be. if it'll be playable on the phone or in the office that suggests the gameplay will consist of "go meet agent, perform on casting couch, go do photoshoot, appear on Howard Stern show..." horribly linear step-by-step "quests" with sod-all form of character leveling and gaining exp.
as you correctly point out, the hoards of gaming freaks that are addicted to WoW and Eve etc will find nothing challenging here. this is pretty much going to end up like the Sims with hot birds. In fact, didn't they already do a Playboy Mansion game that was like the Sims in lingerie?
and for the one-handed fap brigade it's just going to be pointless. they'll be too frustrated at having to go through the games hoops to get their reward that they'll just give up and download some hardcore donkey action from the pirate bay instead
that said - it does present an awesome opportunity for plenty of jokes and innuendos by merging gaming and rpg terms with the world of Playboy bunnies
now if you'll excuse me, i'm off for a grind with Miss February before i ding to the next level up
agreed, that's an ugly mofo piece of hardware
i think i'd rather wait to see what piece of pure sex design Apple's engineers turn up instead
still - i do like the idea and I think OS X is the idea OS for a touch screen interface
that, and I'd love to play EveOnline on a tablet
yes - it's next month
@ Rik :
"Apple bars 2.0 code from App Store" and "iPhone 3.0 or nothing" are not actually true, are they? your being a tad tabloid and sensationalist here
all apps will need to be 3.0 compatible, yes, but there's nothing stopping them from being 2.0 compatible also
you're headlines make it sound like anyone who doesn't upgrade to 3.0 won't be able to download any apps going forward.
"Duke Nukem Forever, probably the best known example of vapourware in PC gaming, may now never be completed"
Last decade just called, they want their news back!
but if Take2 own the rights, perhaps they can give the franchise to Rockstar to complete. R* are certainly capable of the right humour
although, they haven't even gotten around to making the 50meg service available in my neck of hertfordshire yet, so gawd knows if they'll ever manage to give us this
but if they do, i want it
if it gives me some anti-lag advantage while playing Eve, then it's all worth it
and besides, if i don't have it, i'm gonna get pwned by some git who does have 200meg and blasts me when i lag
actually - does this make the whole dubious OneLive thing a little bit more plausable?
cannot adequately put into words how much i want to drive that thing
it's awesome
however, living in the UK, i'm concerned that when it rains here, it is very rarely vertical - even a small bit of wind and you're gonna end up wet driving that
still - by the time this goes into production, global warming will have evapourated the seas and chances of rain will be negligable
but obviously Microsoft haven't got a patent for it - if they developed this function for Vista before then, surely they'd have patented it first?
but also Apple thought of this in 2007
yet i do not see it in Safari yet - not even the betas for version4
so were they waiting for the patent to become public before implementing it? or more likely, it's just another Apple patent that's never going to be turned into anything the user gets to use
i'd be surprised if it was just 10%
i think Apple a well aware that there's a recession, but they're equally aware that some of us will make the cuts in our yearly spending elsewhere (like food and heating) before we're prepared to consider not getting the latest model of iphone
mines the one with the RDF glow
and microsoft - micro implies small, soft implies flexible - and how many gigabytes does it take to install windows?
or maybe the OP is a penguin abuser - because Linux (or SuSE or Fedora etc etc) are perfectly reasonable names aren't they?
it's a good job we're not all so xenophobic about strange sounding names, eh Mr Ettel?
rumours are that there'll be a new Zune coming soon, aimed at competing against the iPod Touch - big hd screen and.... that's about it
maybe they'll make it so you can run windows mobile apps on it as a way of compensating for the AppStore.
somehow, i can't really see it doing much to dent the Touch's marketshare either. but i'm sure M$ have a cunning plan, they'll probably roll out their ingenious Apple Tax theories (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/11/microsoft_flames_macs/) to convince people to get a Zune