Sam

Member since: Feb 4th, 2007

Sam's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
TUAW.com	62 Comments
Engadget	2 Comments
Download Squad	2 Comments

Recent Comments:

Wall Street Journal backs up "iPhone nano" rumor (TUAW.com)

Feb 13th 2011 11:18PM I'm sorry, but does the idea of a half sized iPhone not strike anyone else as *bloody stupid*? The display would be far too small to run existing iPhone apps on, so it would either launch with a tiny number of apps, or not be able to run apps at all.

Honestly, has anyone actually thought about that? An iPhone without apps is such a preposterous concept that I'm struggling to find the words to argue my point! Sure, the iPhone is an excellent iPod, and a pretty decent phone, but to take the apps out would leave what? A dumbphone, that's what. So let's take that idea outside and shoot it.

So, a half sized iPhone with apps. Great. But what about the form factor. The recently announced HP (Palm) Veer is apparently about the size of a credit card. Well, I've put my card on top of my iPhone and a half sized iPhone would have to be even smaller than that. I struggle to see, even with a non 2:3 aspect ratio display, how that could work, especially without a hardware keyboard. You'd get a very short iPhone with a keyboard that, when up, covers the vast majority of the display.

Put in a sliding hardware keyboard and a squarish display, though, and I can see it working quite well. There's enough space above and below the display to actually make the display a fair bit taller than square while retaining most of the width, so apps could probably be redesigned reasonably quickly. The status bar goes double height when on a call, and many apps adjust properly to the slight reduction in height, so assuming that the current API allows for a more dramatic reduction, thousands of apps would only need to be *tested* for the new height, and that could be done in the simulator.

Hmm. I seem to have convinced myself that a half sized iPhone isn't such a stupid idea after all! I'm standing by my opinion that it would be a bit silly not to have a sliding keyboard, though. I think it would make for a merely satisfactory user experience, and that's not what we expect from Apple.

Sam

SlingPlayer Mobile finally works on 3G (TUAW.com)

Feb 15th 2010 12:31PM Works on O2 UK! Yay!!

Sam

Snow Leopard 101: Application Switcher Exposé (TUAW.com)

Sep 4th 2009 5:16PM At first it seemed like keyboarding through windows wasn't working at all, then I found that it'll only work if one of the windows in the app I'm "exposing" comes up on my MacBook's built in display. That's not quite the same as *being* on the built in display - my Safari downloads window is on the built in display, but Exposé thinks it's on the external (primary) one.

It's the same with "normal" Exposé, too - I can't use the cursor keys unless there's a window showing on the internal display.

Even when they do work, it's not quite right. Even though I have the external display to the right of my MacBook - and Mac OS X knows this - I have to go left (or, oddly, up) to get to the external display's windows.

Does anyone know if 10.6.1 fixes this?

Thanks,
Sam

International iPhone pricing guide (TUAW.com)

Jul 4th 2008 12:31AM Indeed, although the £30 plan is perhaps the biggest rip-off I've ever seen - 75 minutes and 150 texts, whereas the £35 plan is 600/500!

Also remember that, since O2 stores are opening at 0702 here, we get the iPhone 3G at least 6 hours earlier than the US.

Only a week to go! I *really* can't wait - in the past month, my N73 has refused to charge twice, on top of all the other problems I have with the bloody thing. Tethering is the only thing I'm majorly going to miss (it works really well over Bluetooth on the N73, but probably only because I don't actually have to touch the thing), since I don't have fixed line internet at the moment, but hopefully we'll see something like JoikuSpot in the App Store.

Christina, thanks for the table. Could I suggest that you add two columns - one for local launch time, and another for the same in GMT/UTC? That way we could easily see which country is gonna get it first!

Thanks,
Sam

iPhone 3G to be shipped in eco-friendly packaging: spuds (TUAW.com)

Jun 30th 2008 8:53PM While I am, in theory, for any technology that reduces our reliance on oil, I have a problem with using basic foodstuffs to do it. Businesses wanting to use the produce for manufacturing are usually able to pay more than to the farmers than businesses and individuals wanting to use the food as food.

I hate to be the one "just think of the poor starving little kiddies in Africa" person, I'm not generally like that since there are usually more than enough other people getting vocal about it, but this sort of thing can have a huge impact on the availability of food to impoverished communities.

Biofuels are obviously the best example of this, and this PaperFoam stuff just gives me further cause for concern.

Sam

Tevanian: Does Microsoft have the guts to slim down Windows? (TUAW.com)

Jun 30th 2008 7:25AM Well I like Vista as well, but probably only because it's more Mac like than XP. Plus, I don't actually ever *need* to use it - it's part playground, part support tool (so I can see something broadly similar to what my family are seeing). There's just too much that annoys me though, and those annoyances usually stem from bad implementations of things Mac OS X does better - for example the Vista Start menu integrates search which I find very useful, but the way the traditional Start menu items are handled is a UI/UX disaster! Leopard is usually faster, too.

You say that Microsoft literally can't give the Windows platform a major overhaul, that too many systems rely on it, but Vista in itself presents a huge problem for enterprises - Microsoft desperately wants them to upgrade, but it appears that they really don't want to! Large corporation after large corporation are announcing that they're going to stick with XP, so really Microsoft should've overhauled Windows after XP, and stuck with it instead of abandoning it when the going got tough, since no-one important was going to use it anyway - although as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

The only portion of the market that is switching to Vista in any significant numbers are hardcore gamers, since Direct3D 10 is built on top of Vista's updated driver model - and it's probably the only area of Vista where actual major changes for the better have been made. Unfortunately for Microsoft, hardcore gamers are taken about as seriously in the serious tech community as boy racers are in the motoring world. A penchant for quad core processors, graphics cards more powerful than many computers and as much memory as your average database server only furthers the impression that Vista is a resource hog. The oh-so misguided belief that nightclub lighting systems should be compressed to the size where they fit in the average oversized, clear sided case (and for some inexplicable reason, made blue) does nothing for their credibility either. Besides, most will openly admit that they're only using Vista for DX10.

It's actually rather sad. Microsoft had the opportunity, with Vista, to overhaul Windows, but they abandoned it. Windows 7 will perhaps be Microsoft's last chance to prove they are still capable of that kind of thinking, as a company, but it looks like they've just given up now.

I wonder who, in the tech community, actually trusts Microsoft to deliver even the modest changes that they have promised for Seven. They've used bait-and-switch too many times.

Sam

Tevanian: Does Microsoft have the guts to slim down Windows? (TUAW.com)

Jun 29th 2008 6:19PM Tech writers like to throw around terms like core architecture and microkernel, but given how well Mac OS X is doing with a core architecture that's about as old as the NT architecture, I'd say the problem is higher up - closer to low level APIs than it is to the kernel itself. You can run many programs designed with Windows 95 in mind on Vista thanks to API (and ABI) compatibility, but the kernel of Vista is dramatically different to DOS-based Windows. In terms of backwards compatibility, that's actually a Very Good Thing.

However, the problem is that programs written with the Win32 APIs are *still* treated as first class citizens, because there isn't anything dramatically different. Well, there's .NET which is more technically advanced than Win32 in a number of ways, but AIUI it still relies on Win32 and is VM based which is inappropriate for some things - Microsoft tried and failed to build the post-XP Windows on top of it and failed. They've also failed to sufficiently inspire the largest developers to start using it - as long as Win32 is still a first class citizen on Windows companies like Adobe will continue to use it.

The way I see it, Microsoft are going to have to again emulate Apple, and introduce a whole new set of APIs while relegating each and every program that uses the old ones to second class citizens. This is what Microsoft probably doesn't have the "intestinal fortitude" (or rather, the balls) to actually do. As it happens, Apple lacked that as well and struggled for years making the sort of incremental changes to its OS that Microsoft has been doing recently - the decision to refocus on an OS that was entirely new to Apple was only taken at the utmost end of need, when Apple was not only failing technologically but also as a business.

So the real issue here is that Microsoft, as a company, is not yet failing. While Microsoft is entirely failing to keep up with Apple in terms of technology, their dominant status as a monopoly ensures that they will be able to continue like this for years.

I think I ought to touch on developer loyalty. I'm not a developer myself (I'm mildly proficient in VB and VB.NET, but that's only because I've been taught them and lack the patience to learn anything else), but I read a lot and it's fairly obvious that very few Windows developers are actually loyal to Microsoft. They use Windows as a development platform because they know it and because lots of people use it but *not* because they're loyal. If Microsoft tried to force a whole new set of APIs on them they'd probably jump ship, or force Microsoft to stop.

Apple on the other hand, have managed to force their developers through no less than three multi-year transitions, and still have most of their developers.

So, in my eyes, it all boils down to one question: can Microsoft successfully force developers through a massive transition, without major losses in market share? Taking into account Apple's phenomenal gains in market share, and growing exasperation with Microsoft within the tech community, my answer is No.

All roads lead to Microsoft losing its dominance of the computer industry, and I suspect that the only interesting thing about future Windows releases will be seeing just how many ways tech writers have to express disappointment.

Sam

iTunes 7.7 to include remote control capabilities? (TUAW.com)

Jun 27th 2008 4:22AM I don't know about you, but my phone is *always* closer to me than my Mac is, and I can't imagine this will change when I get an iPhone (would anyone complain if the UK jumps oh, say 10 days into the future? Seriously, this is worse than waiting for Christmas!).

Besides, many people have more music than would fit on an iPhone. Not only that, but I wouldn't really want my phone to be tethered to speakers or a dock. If this is capable of pausing iTunes when a phone call comes in, then it'll be just as useful to me as Salling Clicker, without having to deal with the general crappiness of S60 (although Clicker itself is brilliant).

If this can also have the host Mac play videos, then it'll be a nice alternative to Front Row.

I wonder whether Apple will be writing any more of their own apps for the App Store...

Sam

iTunes 7.7 to include remote control capabilities? (TUAW.com)

Jun 27th 2008 12:15AM Hear, hear!

O2 pay-as-you-go iPhone plans announced, un-announced (TUAW.com)

Jun 25th 2008 7:42PM This sounds about right to me, too.

Incidentally, the linked article is wrong about how PAYG works in the UK - it doesn't allow "users to eschew a contract for a monthly “top-up” fee that provides a specified number of prepaid minutes and text messages." You prepay the money, only, so you have a certain amount of credit on the account. This is expressed in monetary terms - e.g. £4.67 - and you can "top-up" by certain amounts, usually between £10 and £50. Then you'd pay something like 20p per minute for a phone call, and 10p for a text. You also see tariffs where you'd pay 25p/min for the first 3 minutes of outbound calls of the day, then after that it drops to 5p/min for the rest of the day. Remember that in the US, you're very much in the minority having to pay to receive mobile calls under normal circumstances. We can go months (years perhaps, although I've never been unpopular for long enough to have tested that out :-P) without topping up, although usually you would have to have a chargeable event every so often for the account to remain active, otherwise you'd probably lose your number. This can include receiving a call, as although mobile users don't pay to receive calls, we have entirely separate non-geographic area codes for mobiles which the calling party usually pays more per minute to call than a landline.

So, if one could conceivably have a mobile phone which they never top up, how does the network try to have their customers top up regularly? The answer, to a European at least, is very simple - offer extras which are paid out of the pre-paid balance every month, or incentives which require a minimum top-up every month but don't come out of the balance.

O2 call paid extras Bolt Ons™, and the £10 browsing and WiFi is an example of this. Incidentally, O2 offer a Web Bolt On for £7.50/month, but this doesn't include WiFi.

Incentive based extras are usually separate tariffs, so you can't have more than one active at a time, and the size of the allowance is based on how much you top up (although as noted earlier, you're not charged for the allowance and the full balance remains available for out of allowance services). O2 have a number of these, such as a tariff which offers a certain amount of free off-peak calls, and one which offers a certain amount of free texts.

Despite the fact that PAYG these days is fairly good value, many users will find a pay monthly contract better for them - not least because you get a free or heavily subsidised phone in exchange for signing your soul over to them for 18 months!

Sam