Re: So...
Don't be daft Dave, the 'rounded corners' joke is still totally ROFL so why miss an opportunity to prolong it.
6847 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2010
I do love every time we have a story on auto-cars we get comments along the lines of "it won't handle a junction or something unexpected".
Really, you seriously don't think they thought of those things? You think they're pushing to put these into mass production but didn't do any testing apart from on quiet dual carriageways? Come on get serious, they are already legal in a couple of states.
You massively underestimate the state of modern computing.
Firstly, does Google make ads money from maps if you search for "restaurants" and then click on one? Do maps use adwords, etc - I thought it displayed everything relevant in the vicinity you were searching based on distance? I never thought about how they monetise maps before, I figured they did it for free to build the brand but am happy to be corrected how it works.
>>No one is going to move away from Apple just because there isn't a Google Maps app on iPhone
I don't think that's a safe assumption. To many people, maps are a must-have tool and for others, using your phone as a sat-nav is indispensable. So I could certainly see people due an upgrade thinking harder about whether they stick with Apple.
Also, there are always new customers looking for their first phone. If they can be headed away from getting into Apple in the first place, they quite likely will end up stuck in whichever ecosystem they go for.
Either way, Nokia have a wonderful opportunity here to sit on the edge and pick up the scraps.
Releasing a free Maps app on their competitor's phone is not going to get them revenue. Deliberately not releasing one so Apple get lots of bad publicity for crap maps could drive people away from Apple.
This could actually be good for MS/Nokia too - people upset with Apple just as WP8 comes out, and Nokia already give their free maps and GPS/satnav away on their handsets (which seems pretty decent from my tests). So Google/Android could get a lot of good press by hurting Apple, while also giving WP8 some more users and opening things up in the market more.
Maybe.
It's all very well being all idealistic and saying we should only use standards but any fool can see the HTML5 standard doesn't cover enough of the areas of functionality needed to do all the things HTML5 is promised for. Therefore we HAVE to have non-standard extensions, all we can hope is that different browsers copy each other rather than all making their own.
FireFox and Chrome are massively non-standard with all the extra extensions they support, this is no different.
However you can/used to be able to hook VS up against other compilers and toolchains anyway. I remember using VS 2003 (I think) as our IDE and compiler for Playstation 2 development when I worked in the games industry; presumably you could hook in Android tools and such?
Well it's a LOT faster and a better battery.
But otherwise... I guess they already have all the features in the 4S so they don't NEED to innovate. Most of the new features on other phones are just gimmicks, all top smartphones already do all the key things required of a computer which does phone+camera.
>>and yet to an outsider, it appears they do have a clear monopoly
A monopoly of what? They certainly don't have an effective monopoly on mobile phones or mobile devices in general. Even regarding tablets they may have the biggest market share but it is nowhere near a monopoly the same way Windows was/is.
a)The media player option might attract a new customer base
b)kids are always being born so every year there is a new wave
I think the 12Gb one should come bundled with a remote control if it's aimed at media consumption. It's really good and makes it seem much more a real media system to non-teenagers!
Apart from the visible stuff like formatting (Open/Libre has NEVER managed not to screw this up for me) Office does a hell of a lot more than you might realise, that OSS doesn't.
For one thing all the macro support is very powerful. For another integration between the different apps (Word, Excel, Access). Thirdly, the ability to call into Office from your own code and generate documents automatically (or to use libs to create Office docs without using Office directly).
To a normal user none of this means much but it's why Office is unrivaled in the techy world. Libre like FireFox is targeting the general home user.
If you normally upgrade to the newest Office, subscription (at those prices) seems a no-brainer assuming your sub lets you automatically get newer versions.
Note if you're setting up a business, paying a sub also reduces your startup costs.
I've never used 365/OnDemand though so whether they're any good I can't say. But if the sub lets you install proper local versions too, I don't think it's too bad. $99 for a whole household to use Office legally is a steal really compared to the old way (even though everyone just installed the same copy on all their PCs).
Tossing in a Skype plan and SkyDrive is a nice touch for both sides although isn't that using a monopoly in Office software to get a dominant position in Cloud storage and web-telephony?