Posts by Richard Plinston 2608 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2009
> Our device only needs a full HD monitor and everyone walks around with one of those in their pockets or has access to one in foreign parts!
Interestingly most houses and hotel rooms have one, they usually have a built in receiver or cablebox too so they can provide entertainment when not being used to connect to the office.
> I think you'll find that it was Intel that was forcing OEMs to limit netbook specs, not Microsoft.
No. It was Microsoft.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-windows-netbook-hardware-limits,7889.html
> OEMs didn't have to put Win7 Starter on their netbooks,
They did if they wanted to retain their 'loyalty' discounts on _all_ products. Of course they could have put Win7 Home Premium or Ultimate on but that would have doubled the price (OK not double but certainly lots more$).
> There are many, many Android phone makers, but only Samsung make any money from them.
Do you have any _evidence_ that all the others are making a loss on Android ?
While Samsung may be gaining market share and making good profits that, it itself, does not mean that all the others are losing money.
> I do not understand why people think that Nokia would be the top Android manufacturer
Does _anyone_ think that ? Android, or some other OS, may stop the decay.
> Unfortunately just like the RX-100, none of these items is a phone so they don't make for a very good comparison.
If you want to take photographs buy a camera, if you want to talk to friends remotely then buy a phone. Any device that tries to be both will do poorly at one or both. The 920's camera may be good in comparison with most other phones but it is poor when compared to even a cheap compact.
> Or are you pissed off because you aren't getting their great reception and decent camera technology.
I am pissed off because I will never be able to get an N950, MS paid them to dump it and any follow on from that.
While the 606 camera is interesting, it and the 920's will never match a real camera. Even a cheap compact these days has real optical image stability (not just a bunch of springs), actual aperture, far better lenses, with zoom, and newer ones run Android and have WiFi.
> Nokia have provided a credible alternative to iOS and Android.
They provided it with Maemo/Meego, the N900/N950 and the N9 and also would have with Meltemi. It is for the dumping of these that MS paid them $1billion.
WP7 fell well short of being a viable alternative because it was an old design (single core, 800x480, no real multitasking) imposed by MS. This, and abandoning the WP7 users, just as they had previously with WM6.5, had poisoned the brand.
Perhaps Nokia will now produce a Tizen phone, or Ubuntu, or even FirefoxOS.
> But for office work? Not really.
How high a percentage of CPU idle do you want while it waits for key strokes ?
Linux machines typically run at single digit utilization running typical office tasks. But then they don't have Norton's chewing up every CPU cycle that it can grab.
> but not a similarly specified netbook
That is really simple: Microsoft would remove loyalty discounts on all machines if netbooks weren't installed with XP or 7, and to use those OSes the specifications were laid down by Microsoft.
Do you think that the OEMs are free to make what they want, or what their customers want ?
> unless it was a HUGE bribe from MS.
Or a huge threat. MS 'Loyalty' discounts and advertising 'partnerships' depend on the OEM being 'loyal'. Loyal means installing Windows on every machine that is capable of running Windows. When Netbooks first came out they had cheap 7inch DVD player screens, Flash 'Disks' and small RAM. There was no way that they would run the then current Vista.
MS brought XP back to life at a cheap licence fee (alleged $25) and speced out what Netbooks could, and could not, be. eg max 1024x600 10inch screens. 1Gbyte RAM etc. The price of netbooks went up to account for XP and the required resources (such as hard disk), meanwhile small laptops came down in price. This decimated the netbook market and then iPad killed it completely.
If the OEMs did not go to XP then they would have lost the discount across _all_ MS products costing them tens of millions.
It also seems likely that MS's WindowsOnARM - Windows RT - was also to kill off HP's WebOS in the same way: 'You not installing WOA on tablets is losing you your loyalty discount, here's an extra bill for $100million this month'.
> is like putting a car enging into a speedboat chasis and then trying to call it a car. It just makes no sense.
It is your analogy that makes no sense. It is not the engine that makes it a car, it is the chassis. 'Car' is short for 'carriage'. A 'car' is defined by having wheels (3 or 4 or infrequently more) and is for personal transport so it has seats and usually some form of weather protection.
A car can be powered by an engine: steam, electric or petrol; or by horses. Having one or the other does not stop it being a car. Boats also can be powered by these.
So to make an analogy: it is the chassis that is Linux; it is the engine that is the graphics engine (Qt, GTK, etc) and there are controls that are the UI (KDE, Gnome, etc).
A 'speedboat chassis' may analogized to being QNX and you could put a petrol engine (Android) in that and still call it a boat. A barge (SCOUnix) may be steam powered (GTK - Gnome) and would still be a barge.
So, if SCOUnix runs KDE it is not Linux. If Windows run KDE (which can be done) it is not Linux. If Android graphics engine/UI/App environment runs on Linux it _is_ a Linux distro.
> the hope that a version of Linux with a tablet GUI and access to most Linux applications might become easily available on tablets.
Linux/Maemo tablets were available for several years in the Nokia N770, N800, N810 and N900. These ran Linux software such as Gnumeric, Abiword and even OpenOffice. With Python/Glade/GTK+ I could write applications that ran unchanged on these and on Linux and Windows.
Android 2.3 is Gingerbread. Initially released at the end of 2010 with API level 9 it was upgraded to API level 10 on the third release (2.3.3) in early 2011. The current release is Gingerbread 7 (2.3.7) with 8 already available from some sites.
Android 3 is not applicable to phones. Android 4 may eventually replace most Gingerbread uses on tablets and phablets but 2.3.x is still being updated with new releases and new features, just like iOS is.
> Just maths, eh? Well, technically, a gearbox is just that, too
No. Wrong. A gearbox is lumps of metal. I don't know if there ever was a patent on 'a gearbox', but there certainly were patents on particular enhancements to it. For example on synchromesh. Gears are normally engaged by dogs. synchromesh ensures that the gear is 'spun up' to speed before attempting to engage the dog. It could be done by first engaging a spring loaded cone clutch. That isn't 'just maths'.
> everything but art is dictated by mathematics.
It may be dictated by natural laws, these laws may be described by mathematics, but that doesn't mean that 'everything _IS_ maths'.
> music, for instance - is bast on equations.
And that is _exactly_ why music cannot be patented (it can be copyrighted).
> It appears the mechanical stabilization of the Nokia 920 is better than the iPhone's digital stabilization:
Neither are stable. It may be that the 920 is worse than iPhone, but the Nokia shows that it is just springs because there are times when the phones are held steady, as shown by the iPhone steadying, and the Nokia bobbles around a bit. Compared to an actual stabilisation system (such as optical) rather than spring mounting these are both poor.
> It shows Nokia are still cutting edge, ... and now this.
You may not have noticed but the PCM was developed and manufactured by Micron. It just happens that Nokia pushed this out first.
> optical stabilised camera lenses
It isn't really 'optically stabilised'. This is normally used to mean a real stabilising system such as actively shifting a lens or the sensor based on a feedback mechanism. All the 920 does is mount it on springs. In real tests (unlike the faked ones that Nokia fed us) it is not so great. A comparison with the ancient N8 shows that it is slightly worse overall:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/16286_Camera_phone_head_to_head_Noki.php
> WP phone sales are steadily increasing
Being optimistic is one thing, but being blind to reality is what you are.
Try working out a 'steady increase' from the graph based on Nokia's actual results:
http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/10/nokia-q3-results-lumia-shipments-crash.html
> So current rate was 4 million a quarter - is ALREADY a rate of 16 million a year.
Which shows how little you know. Sales vary in each quarter for a variety of reasons. If the sales this year are 1,2,2,4 then next year the doubling could make them 2,4,4,8. These are rounded so the actuals may have been eg: 1.3,1.8,2.1,3.7 or so and total roughly 7 million.
The flaw in your argument is that 4m/Q = 16m/year. It isn't. For exactly the same reason that if they sold 1m snow shovels in December it won't mean that will sell 12m in a year.
> you can't do basic maths either - like the author.
2 x 7 still comes to 14 on this world.
But it is all academic anyway, they are unlikely to sell another WP7 phone.
> "The writer of the article cant count. ...
What the writer said was:
"""As for phones, Nokia is being credited with having sold seven million Lumias, with four million in the last quarter and two million in two quarters before that. It's almost a year since the first Lumia appeared, so even if Nokia doubles its sales a year from now, that would still just be 14 million."""
Double 7 million is 14 million. How hard is that ?
It was entirely your speculation that they could sustain one quarter's high shipments and then double that.
In other words they had _already_ doubled in going from 2 million a quarter to 4million in one quarter (actually it was 3.7 I think), and _your_ prediction was they could double that _again_.
You are not a maths genius.
> market share is NOW 4 times what it was at the same time last year....
You probably don't see why you are universally regarded as clueless. The article says:
"""the company claims that shipments of Windows Phone 8 smartphones in November ’12 were four times higher compared to sales of Windows Phone 7 phones in November ’11. """
It is about _shipments_ from the factory to the distributors. November 12 was the first month they shipped. There were probably almost no shipments in October having killed off WP7 and not yet got going with WP8. It may be that in October 11 they were shipping to meet the December sales and had fulfilled all the orders so not much shipped November 11.
It is _not_ about customer sales nor 'market share'. In fact in the article it highlights this with:
"""Actual sales of Windows Phone 8-based smartphones are still pretty low,"""
> However allegedly Nokia ALREADY sold 7 million WP handsets this quarter,
That figures appears to have come from Gartner, the group that claimed that WP7 would outsell iPhone by the end of 2012, and seems to be entirely based on multiplying Q4'11 sales by 4. The x4 figure being entirely about something else. This is the usual incompetent business puffery of paid consultants.
> WP has quadrupled it's market share in the last year
That may have been true if your fantasy prediction of Nokia selling 30million WP7 phones in 2012 had actually happened.
However, reality is different from what you have in your dreams:
"""For Q3 2011, Nielsen reported a US market share of 1.2% for WP7,[81] which rose to 1.3% in Q4 2011,[82] and to 1.7% in Q1 2012,[83] and then dropped back to 1.3% in Q2 2012.[84] Kantar released their report and found out that the US market share is at 3.3%. They also reported their key eight countries results that Wp is up from 3.5% to 4.8%.[85]
Worldwide, IDC pointed that Windows Phone had a 50% quarter-over-quarter decline in Q3 2012, thus having a total 2.0% global market share."""
Or perhaps you are still living in the past, like you were for the your claim that XBox division was making a profit, they did for a couple of quarters a couple of years ago.
WP7 may have quadrupled its market share in the first couple of quarters when first released, from nothing, but that was a couple of years ago.
> describes sales as phenomenal
One problem with your rant: he didn't describe _sales_ as phenomenal, his word was 'demand'.
"""Matt Leeser, ... claimed: "Demand for Windows 8 computers has been phenomenal with touchscreen models leading the way.""""
This may mean they demand to see them, it does not mean they buy them.
> Sell one Surface and I bet they get the profit level of 5 iPads.
I very much doubt that. Apple have a very efficient supply chain and have the economies of scale built up over several years. Surface is small scale (so far), has an expensive casing, and has, allegedly, been changing its production rate. Also it was priced to be sold over the internet on in MS stores. Now they have to split to profit with retail shops.
> Phenomenally overpriced I suspect real prices materialise next year.
Before the release of the pricing many MS fans were saying that it would be good to get cheap tablets. This seemed to be entirely based on a logic flaw that: 'Dell PC less than Apple Mac' therefore 'MS tablet less than iPad'.
Windows tablets (Intel) have always been much more expensive than iPads or equivalent, and Surface Pro (or similar) will always be Ultrabook level pricing.
Surface RT may well wind up in bargain bins at end of life HP WebOS pricing because they are not what users want in a Windows machine. But that would be at a huge loss. The current pricing _IS_ the 'real price'.
> About the same % who are disappointed iOS isn't OSX
There is a difference in the way they are branded:
Mac /= iPad
OSX /= iOS
Surface == Surface
Windows == Windows
You may argue that Surface RT uses Windows _RT_, but then all Windows have some code: XP, NT, 95, Home, Ultimate, Starter and they _all_ run every program (or almost).
This 'Windows' run none, just a bunch of jumped up phone apps.
> The general public doesn't want to install notepad++ on their tablet :)
What surveys have you done that have determined that they don't want to install <insert Windows program name here> ?
For example what proportion don't want to install PhotoShop/TurboCAD/etc and use the tablet like a laptop (as it is designed to be) ?
> How exactly is it unpopular? Every review of windows 8 on a phone/tablet I've seen has been positive.
Windows 8 may get some rave reviews, but it also gets negative reviews. Many users find Metro confusing and do not like it, so it is 'unpopular'.
What you may not know is that the Surface they are talking about is Surface RT. This is _not_ Windows 8 it is Windows RT, an ARM port of some of Windows. In particular it does not run Windows applications. _Nothing_ that runs on Windows 7 will run on Windows RT. There is not even the desktop of Windows 7 (except a cutdown version that only MS apps can access). All apps for RT can only be downloaded from MS.
You seem to have been confused about what the article was about. I suspect that the chief buyer may also have been confused and thought Surface RT was running Windows 8. Imagine the customer's confusion when they see what looks identical to all the Windows 8 laptops and desktops but when they get it home they can't install _anything_ that they are used to on their XP/7 desktop.
> I fail to see the point in buying something you dont like
The point being that they don't know they don't like it until after they buy it - how hard is that to understand ?
In many cases it is the _only_ option in the shops, because MS want to force it down everyone's throat, how hard is that to understand ?
> how can I avoid it when Unity and Gnome 3 are doing pretty much the same thing
By using Mint, Kbuntu, Xbuntu, or by 'apt-get install LXDE' (or yum) or similar for KDE, XFCE or several others. Or just install
Certainly Unity is going towards touch/tablet usage that is common to its desktop, but it is easy to avoid:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator
> I'm honestly baffled as to why Microsoft didn't do that to start with.
Microsoft had been told by consultants that WP7 didn't sell because the UI was unfamiliar. They were also told that desktop systems, and therefore Windows and Office revenues, would continue to decline and mobile devices, which MS had almost zero presence, would replace desktops.
The answer was to make Metro UI "the most familiar UI" and then users would _demand_ the same UI on their phones and tablets. Job done, world dominated, again.
Making Metro optional would not achieve those aims. Most would simply turn it off and use Win8 as a fractionally different Win7. MS would not sell apps, cloud services would not be used, desktops would decline, iPad and Android would continue to take over the world.
The question then is: will MS plan work or will desktop users grow to hate Metro and decide that WP8 and Surface has the UI that they don't want. Has iPad and Android have enough momentum to replace the desktop entirely. Will smart TVs (Android and iTV) replace even more desktop usage. Are the PCs bought over the last couple of years 'good enough' and will never be replaced by new ones (but by TVs and Androids).
> That's an interesting interpretation
It's not an 'interpretation', it is the plain meaning of the words that were used in the article (as distinct from what you wrongly thought the words were).
> and I pick one that's not the largest, it seems odd to say it's the most important criterion, rather than one of several criteria).
It is, according to the developers that responded to the article, 'the most important', they didn't say it was the _only_ criteria, which is what you also seem to (wrongly) think was said.
You seem confused that some developers write for iStuff, some for Android, some even for WP or BB. That just doesn't fit into your mindset.
> developers that claim the main reason for choosing a platform is going for the largest installbase (see a recent Register article),
Once again you perpetrate a myth that you created by your misreading the article. If you read the actual article the developers claim that they choose '_a_ large userbase'. No one said "the largest installbase" which is simply your own 'fake nonsense based on flawed reading'.
> Surface wipes the floor with all of them in the Sun Spider benchmark
It is noted that you pick out one graph from the page that have several tests. The other tests show Surface getting soundly beaten.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/surface-benchmarks-windows-rt,3335-4.html
> The Atoms CPUs are capable of running Linux distributions something the ARM CPU would struggle with.
Android _is_ a Linux distro, just with a different GUI, but then so are Gnome, KDE, LXDE, etc different GUIs.
There are several ARM Linux Distros such as:
Arch Linux
Canonical (Ubuntu on ARM)
Debian
Fedora
Linaro
OpenSUSE
Thundersoft
Tizen
These run on ARM netbooks and tablets, Raspberry Pi, and on several embedded systems without struggling.
> The best camera on a Smartphone
Did you not hear of the 808 ? While the 920 may use the name it has no other connection to that. Other phones have much better cameras, such as http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/29/android-phone-lumix-camera-panasonics-lumix-phone-101p-for-japan/
> The best Display for a Smartphone
Opinion
> The best looking Smartphone
Canary yellow plastic. I think not.
> Only phone with Wireless Charging
Palm Pre (from years ago), Galaxy 4.
"""The Nexus 4 has the circuitry to be charged by any Qi charging device. Google also has a charging orb available for sale.
But that’s not the only smartphone platform with Qi that’s come along in the last few weeks. Both HTC and Nokia have equipped their Windows Phone 8 handsets with Qi charging. If you pick up the HTC Windows Phone 8x on Verizon, then Qi will be part of the handset."""
> Windows Phone 8 which is currently the best mobile OS available with a nicely knit ecosystem.
It is knitted into a net to keep you in the walled garden.
> Brought to you by the pioneer in mobile telephony.
If you want the actual pioneers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
> Redmond is selling four times as many Windows Phone devices
That doesn't make sense. Redmond doesn't sell 'Windows Phone devices' does it? Is it just the OEM phones that are being sold out of Microsoft stores ?
They probably have 4 times as many shops this year, or maybe they didn't sell phones in their stores last year.
What Microsoft sells is licences, not devices. Perhaps they have sold 4 times the number of licences to OEMs than they did 12 months ago. That wouldn't be surprising as all the OEMs have to buy blocks of licences before they can attempt to sell any devices.
> 1) Run microsoft office.
Most tablet users will be happy with a simple text editor for memos and stuff. No one will run the corporate spreadsheet on a 10 inch screen. Not twice anyway.
> 2) Have a real usable physical keyboard.
Why do you think that is unique ? Keyboard/stand/covers, folding keyboards, flexible keyboards, even projected keyboards have been available for years.
> 3) Run Remote Desktop.
There are remote desktop like apps for the other tablets. Oh no, wait, that is what _you_ said.
> If they want to recover they can do so by say ...
I am not sure that would fit in at all with their 'secure boot' lockdown. It is probable that the USB only supports MTP so does not have access to the complete drive and it probably can't boot off the USB.
'Secure Boot' is not just to prevent Linux booting, it is also to prevent Windows XP and 7 as these are a bigger threat to the revenue growth that MS wants.
> Microsoft tablets are essentially touch-laptops. They're not desktop
One thing that Surface is not and that is laptop - you will not use one on your lap, not with the keyboard attached. The screen angle is wrong, the weight is in the wrong place, the keyboard attachment is floppy, the stand will dig in to your flesh. You may be able to balance it for a short time, but it will be awkward and any attempt at swiping the screen will result in disaster.
No, it requires a desk.
> the hardware specs of the best WP on the market just doesn't measure up
That is because of the MS culture that dictates how it operates. MS does very centralised development and dictates the hardware on which the systems run.
For example, for Netbooks to be sold with XP, MS dictated limits on RAM, screen resolution and size, CPU type and power. This was to ensure that real laptops, beyond the limits on Netbooks, had to buy the more expensive Vista or 7. The result was that netbooks became obsolete.
WP7 would only run on specific single core SoCs that were determined before it was released and were never updated and screen size (800x480) that seemed adequate at that time. So WP7 phones are now 3 years behind the leaders. The same will happen with WP8. The MS development cycle is too slow to keep up with modern hardware development rates.
> Up until 2006 or 2007 every tech company was banging on about how The Web will be the platform of the future.
That is what Netscape said around 1994. Miscrosoft, who hadn't noticed the internet at that point, realised that this was something they had to kill, and quickly. So they got Spyglass to write IE and set up MSN as an alternative to the internet, one they could control, and set off to destroy the unbeliever (in desktops forever).
Eventually, after MS has held back computing for a decade and a half with the same old desktop stuff, the web as a platform has been coming and MS are late and trying to run to the front of the movement and wave its 'follow me' flag - yet again.
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