Posts by Dave 126

Re: Charger: Don't need it. Headphones: Damned well Include them, cheapskates!

> the Apple precipice dive into ARM Macs. Considering that ill-considered move by Apple

What's your issue with ARM Macs? I note that you didn't comment under any articles about ARM Macs.

What difference does it make to you if you buy a [phone and charger] for 75 groats, or a [phone, 72 groats] and a [charger, 2 groats]? The total is the same, unless I've missed something in your arithmetic.

It costs you nothing, but benefits those people who have plenty of chargers already.

Re: Apple survey

Of course the Touch ID doesn't necessarily work if the user is wearing gloves. I'm sure it's technically possible to design a fingerprint sensor that does work with, at least, latex or nitrile inspection gloves, though possibly not optically, or as fast. Doing it ultrasonically would benefit from a liquid medium between gloves digit and sensor, e.g hand sanitiser gel.

Re: Or

Well, if some did buy an iPhone without a charger, and they had no existing charger (wow, in 2020?!), they would have to... go to the nearest petrol station or supermarket. I don't know of a single such outlet that doesn't sell chargers or iPhone cables.

Sheeit, as a Samsung owner, I notice that Lightening cables are easier and cheaper to find than USB C cables on the high street.

Such items are also the kind of thing that Amazon will deliver within a few hours, if you live in a bigger city.

Or borrow one from a friend or neighbor.

> I don't keep Lightning connectors - who the hell uses some mysterious third-party junk that adds nothing?

When Lightening came out it, it was clearly superior in some ways to any standard alternative. That was before USB C, however. The advantages of Lightening over USB C are more debatable.

> bundling "adaptors" rather than just putting a compliant USB-C port on things. That's where the whole Apple thing falls down and they get away with it year after year.

Apple just were never the big offenders here - see my above comment about Samsung et al back in the day (and that didn't even mention the following phases of mini usb, micro usb and eventually USB C). If reducing cable waste is your objective, I'm not sure how rendering an iPhone owner's existing collection of Lightening cables as e-waste helps. In terms of reducing e-waste, Apple at least sell phones that are supported for updates for several years

- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy

Re: Yes please

I'm not a fan of the Apple ear buds since they fall out if my left ear due to the shape of my ear, and I don't like the noise they leak when worn by teenagers on trains.

However, they don't block external noise in the way that in-ear buds do - which is a feature if you're walking along a road and need to be aware of your surroundings, or a bug if you're sat at your desk trying to concentrate on your work and not the noisy office around you.

Apparently the Apple In Ear Monitors were considered good value for Balanced Armature Drivers. But that was before 'Chi Fi' (high quality components assembled into a product with variable build quality as prices so low you can afford to take a lucky dip) became a thing.

Re: Gets my vote...

During the mid 2000s, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung seemed to never twice use the same proprietary connector - even across models in the same year! - and more often than not built the cable into the charger. Nor would they commonly use 3.5mm for headsets. Grr.

Re: To be fair...

> bundled chargers are weedy, best to buy a decent 2amp multiport

Depends if your phone shipped with a charger that supports one of the flavours of fast charging. Samsung use one type of fast charging, OnePlus use another - though they both default to 5v 2.1 A if they don't get a handshake from a compatible phone.

There's still good choice and value available in the dedicated camera market, with cameras becoming more capable every year.

I'm paying public, but my personal preference has been for a camera that can fit in my jacket pocket. But hey, during lockdown I've been more appreciative of our feathered friends - and I know that if I wished to photograph them I would need a bigger camera and lens system.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note

Information on the Quest Datapad is hard to find, most Google results being links to New Scientist books that mention the device. It's hard to tell how well it worked.

This annotated bibliography below suggests that Quest were not working in a vacuum - there were other handwriting recognition projects around the same time, a few from countries that don't use an alphabet as we Reg readers do and so for whom a keyboard is not an easy option.

http://www.ruetersward.com/pens/biblio80.html

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note

I always saw Wacom as the chief forebear of stylus support on the iPad (especially the company Modbook who would take your MacBook and modify it by adding a Wacom digitiser behind the screen and optionally removing the keyboard - aimed at artists), and the Newton as chief inspiration for handwriting recognition - in concept if not execution. The Galaxy Note line I'm sure is good kit (I'm tapping this on a Galaxy S), but I don't see how it has that much influence on the iPad.

Remember that relatively few people with an iPad also bought the Apple Pencil - the main use case was for graphics work. The number of people who might buy the pencil for note taking was likely lower still. So, handwriting support was a low priority for Apple, and something they must do well if they are to do it at all or else risk people making jokes about the Newton. Ipad Minis are more likely note taking devices than the original iPad Pros, and the Minis received Pencil support only much later.

Re: Why not give the choice to people?

Well, I'm glad you acknowledge the pros and cons of giving the user choice.

Some things are particular to me, and i know they are, and I modify my tools to suit.

However, there are tasks where I cannot know the best or most efficient way of completing them until I have done them many times and effectively done a time-and-motion study on myself - which is as practical as it sounds! So there is a lot to be said for having these studies done by the tool vendor.

I hope that designers spend longer thinking about a product than I do using it. So I expect the designer's understanding of the general principles to be superior to mine. Naturally, I'm best placed to understand the specifics of my situation.

Re: Good news for android?

No, there is no great hope for Android on tablets. :)

The reason isn't just Devs focusing on where the greatest paid-for app revenues are found (iOS), or even the cheep n cheerful kids n TV nature of most Android tablets. The reason is Google's own Chrome OS. Or possibly Google's Fuscia OS in the future (details of Google plans are scarce).

Regardless, Chrome OS receives its updates directly from Google, not device vendors. It can run Android apps. It's often found on laptop and convertable big screened devices, so is a better starting point for using keyboards than Android.

Re: Samsung Galaxy Note

I'm assuming he means transcribing handwriting to editable text or mathematical notation. This is a feature the Note range has always had, and is a feature new to iPads, as per the article.

He might have taken care to appear less trolly, but is point stands (albeit a moot point, since the question of who did what first is irrelevant to a user's experience).

Re: The image that it's just a large phone

Being either for consumption or production is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of uses iPads have been put to, such as live audio mixing. Unless you count 'Netflicks in bed', there never was a single 'killer application' for iPads, but there are hundreds of 'bloody useful applications' .

Some tasks are better done with a keyboard, some are better done with a mouse. Some tasks are very well suited to a large multi-touch screen, but these tasks tend to be found more in the realms of audio and visual, rather than coding or accountancy.

iOS is supported by governance tools, including some from Blackberry. I'm saying that they exist, I don't know enough to rate them in any way. I know that the UK Ministry of Defence issues iPhones with Blackberry governance software.

https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/solutions/mdm-mobile-device-management/ios-mdm

Re: Rosetta

I think the transition is that Intel Macs will continue to be available for a couple of years. If by the end of the year the ARM versions of your productivity apps are ready and well-tested, then why not MacBook Pro? It's also a statement - by releasing MacBook Pros and not MacBooks first, Apple is going against the messy image of Windows RT.

> Might have to get some [ear buds] in an attempt to eliminate feedback in zoom/whatsapp chats etc

It seems odd you're getting feedback when using those apps in 'loud speaker' mode, since modern phones use multiple microphones and other trickery minimise feedback and background noise. It might be worth making sure that your phone's secondary microphone (often looks like a small hole, akin to a hardware reset button one used to see on gadgets) isn't block by a case, a bit of dirt or your finger

Re: I expect that I will be downvoted...

I've had no need to repair my phone in two years - but its waterproofing has saved it on several occasions. Using the last couple of years as indicative of my use-case, I can't sensibly choose a Fairphone. One would have thought that a fair chunk of the folk who place an emphasis on the environment are also outdoors types.

Just because your phone is friendly to the environment doesn't mean the environment is friendly to your phone!

Re: Morrison

I'd been led to believe that his reputation, shredded by his reaction to the fires, had been revived a little due to Australia suffering roughly 100 times fewer Covid cases per head of population compared to the USA. Of course the geographical factors helped Australia largely dodge the Covid bullet, but Morrison is at least seen as not actively fucking it up - or so I'm told.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/05/scott-morrison-is-now-very-popular-australia-he-hasnt-earned-that/

There was an Australian PM, Harold Holt, who drowned whilst swimming in the sea - I can't imagine that could happen to a POTUS with secret service agents clustered around. The Australians didn't build their late PM any statues, but they did dedicate a memorial swimming pool in Melbourne to him.

If it were a hardware device- hidden in the Lightening socket - it might be possible to log the owner's passcode by 'listening' to electrical noise. Heck, if the phone is in a case, a small bug with two microphones inside said case could determine the X Ys of a user's taps.

If the cops had more time, then whipping the phone apart and logging data directly from the screen digitiser might be an option. I don't know how current iPhones are built.

None of the above would require the phone's software to be compromised. These are just guesses though. This is not my area.

Re: Some materials are see through in infrared

Would a case that is transparent to Infra-red help dissapate heat from the internal components in any significant way? Enough to make the vents a tiny bit smaller?

Re: Dear Elon ...

-The Schwarzenegger Presidential Library?!

-Yes. Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st Amendment...

Demolition Man, 1993.

Elon, like Arnie, wasn't born in the USA. You can be a governor of a state but not Potus.

Hmm, I wonder what Jessie Ventura is up to now... was in Predator, check, been a governor, check, born in the USA, check

Re: A possible explanation for sudden behaviour change.

Musk has been questioning the severity of the pandamic and the responses to it since the beginning, so again, it's not new enough to be attributable to new fatherhood - though I doubt it's helped.

Didn't he allude to his mental health in 2019, something about having taken too much on? I can't remember now.

As a businessman, his approach to the factory could perhaps be smarter - it's not good PR. Good PR would have been to go above and beyond reasonable precautions for staff - working distances, protective equipment etc - and then point it and request it be allowed to reopen in consultation with his staff.

Anyway, for a bit more context of his current state than can be gleaned from Tweets, he was on the Seth Rogan podcast last week.