Android Army
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aapierce
On The Verge since Mar 31, 2012
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In which case, it’s super tax evasion.
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Perhaps the display itself consumes less power, but whatever chip is responsible for pushing those extra pixels is going to need more power.
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Recommended Russell Bell's comment in Samsung beats Chromebook Pixel and Retina MacBook with new high-res laptop display
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Recommended cdawg92's comment in iTunes security hole lets users download any pre-release album stream for free
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I will gladly give 20 to 30 dollars for privacy…
And advertisers would gladly pay 50 to 60 dollars for your personal information. This is the part that people keep forgetting. Businesses interested in your personal information are willing to pay way more than most people are willing to keep it private.
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Right, because ever since OS X launched in 2001, Apple has only released bugfixes and never introduced any new features.
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Perhaps I meant to say “no physiological reason”
Even if men tend to have more aggressive attitudes than women, it’s not impossible for men to be nurturing, or for women to be more assertive. These personality traits are typically easy to override, and until we start to settle foreign disputes by wrestling, physical fitness has no bearing on a person’s ability to lead.
So I stick with my stance. There’s no reason women in modern society can’t perform as well men in roles of leadership.
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aking an interesting technical article from Neal Caren which shows a novel way of using glob, nltk, and punctuation to parse sentences from public news sources is the real story here.
I don’t think Adi’s article was unfair. Exaggerated perhaps, but not unfair.
The source article very clearly states that it’s trying to figure out if the NYT writes about men and women differently. The title is Using Python to see how the Times writes about men and women. It gets very technical about how the python script works, but in the end, Neal Caren attempts to draw some conclusions about the data.
From the source article:
My quick interepretation: If your knowledge of men’s and women’s roles in society came just from reading last week’s New York Times, you would think that men play sports and run the government. Women do feminine and domestic things. To be honest, I was a little shocked at how stereotypical the words used in the women subject sentences were.
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I mostly agree with you on the athletes thing, but there are athletic females. The male-dominated sports tend to get way more coverage than more gender-balanced sports (compare coverage of football, basketball, baseball, or hockey to coverage of tennis for instance)
But what politicians and company executives? I can’t see any biological reason that women should not be in those roles (other than taking a few months of maternity leave). To me, this is really more of a holdover from the bad-old-days when women were expected to serve their husbands.
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This makes a bit of sense. Professional athletes, politicians, and major corporate executives are all groups with disproportionately male membership, and these groups are also the most likely to generate news.
I wouldn’t accuse the NYT of gender bias. This is a symptom of a bigger issue.
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Yes, but Apple isn’t really making a whole lot of money from that. Apple makes its massive profits from hardware.
Take a look at this breakdown of Apple’s revenue for 2012. Look how low iTunes is compared to iPhone, iPad, and “Portables” (e.g. iPods).
http://www.wingsofreason.com/2012/07/26/apple-revenue-breakdown-july-quarters-2012-edition/
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This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s paying attention. The only reason iTunes exists is to bolster its Mac, iPod, and iOS platforms. The only reason iTunes exists on Windows is so Apple can sell iPods, iPhones, and iPads to Windows users (which still make up the majority of the desktop PC market). iTunes by itself is not a very valuable product, and iTunes for Windows has always been more of an afterthought.
As long as the desktop environment exists in Windows, Apple has no reason to make a “Metro iTunes”.
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Rather than mandating his desired end result, McCain notes that his bill is completely voluntary
“My legislation would eliminate regulatory barriers to a la carte by freeing up multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) – like, cable, satellite and others offering video services – to offer any video programming service on an a la carte basis.”
I haven’t seen the bill yet, but I don’t see how this could hurt cable companies. It sound like cable companies have nothing to lose by staying with the status quo, but they do have something to gain by switching. It’s like offering tax credits to people who buy low-emission cars.
Don’t know why they would need to lobby against it.
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When touch screen phones started becoming mainstream, I was slightly worried the technology would be the same as on the Nintendo DS. It turns out that the Nintendo DS’s touch screen just sucks really bad.
I’m not ready to dismiss glasses-free 3D displays based on the 3DS. If Amazon is confident enough to put it’s “Kindle” brand on a smart phone with a 3D display, then I’d say it’s probably worth a shot.
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needs a /s
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Recommended Individualist_Conformity's comment in Good Deal: HTC First on sale for 99 cents with two-year contract at AT&T
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Is that sarcasm? I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm.
The phone has been available for less than a month, and they already put it on sale. If the phone was doing well, they would be able to continue selling it at $99 (on contract).
If anything, this is evidence that the phone is not doing well.
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I can see value in creating a widget-y system that can launch an app directly into a specific state. For example, imagine tapping a button and being taken directly into the “create a new reminder” view for Reminders, or immediately starting your “workout” playlist, or immediately start recording a Vine.
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expose-like multitasking
The nature of iOS multitasking is that apps stop updating the UI immediately when the app gets backgrounded, and they get suspended completely after a couple minutes of inactivity. The best you could realistically hope for here (without a huge hit to battery life) is a static screenshot of the app just before it went into the background, and that really isn’t any more useful than the app’s icon alone.
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The fact that it looks like a raised button should be enough to say “this thing is clickable”
Well, in today’s world it should be enough. Back then, people didn’t understand how to use a mouse, and the visual cues weren’t yet established.
Anyway, that button is still more intuitive than an unlabeled hot-corner, for sure.
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Smell the unsmellable, taste the untastable
ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH!
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“I have to click on ‘Start’ to turn my computer off? Why? I’m not starting anything, I am in fact doing the literal opposite.”
This!
In fact, I think they made that specific use case even worse in windows 8. Now, you have to shove your cursor up into the top-right corner of the screen to reveal the hidden “charms” menu, then move down the to the options charm (bet you didn’t know “shut down” was an option did you?), but BE CAREFUL because if you move too far to the left, your cursor will fall off the menu and you’ll have to start all over.
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Recommended TheFourteenthDoctor's comment in Windows chief hints at Start button return in Windows 8.1, says it 'might be helpful' for some
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Just because the code is on GitHub, doesn’t mean Downloadify will ever work again. If Spotify did a good job patching their player, that media stream shouldn’t be able to get intercepted by a Chrome extension.
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Yes, it’s just a button, but the visual cue is very important. People would never think to jam their cursor into the bottom left corner to bring up the start menu. If you have to give your users a tutorial on how to use their computer on such a basic level, then you’ve failed.
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the new consumers don’t even know what a yellow note pad is.
This is completely untrue. In my earliest memories, cassette tapes were the norm, yet I still know what a vinyl record is. Besides, you can still buy yellow notepads at pretty much any office supply store.
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but the text is entirely digital
For the record, the default font is something that looks more hand-written (Noteworthy). You can change the font in the system settings.
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I’m not talking about the elderly. The people in my example are in their 40s (except for the 50 year-old who was celebrating his birthday). That’s not old, that’s middle-aged. They should easily have 20 years left in their lifespan. There are more people over 40 than there are under 30. This demographic is still very relevant.
Gestures, widgets, tickers, and other UI elements drastically change how you use your phone.
Yes, but the appearance of the UI does not make a difference. If the buttons and gestures all work exactly the same, changing the skin from leather and linen textures to solid colors doesn’t really change anything.
I’m not arguing against widgets, tickers, popovers, or other new interactive UI elements, I’m talking specifically about the skeuomorphic aesthetic (the look and feel). Apple could very easily add new features without tossing out the felt and woodgrain. However, rumors are pointing to an overarching change in the visual style – which not everyone will like.
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Right, I understand that it’s not really going to function any differently, but some people prefer the look of “real” textures over the geometric look of Android or Windows 8, and right now Apple is really the only company that provides a UI like that.
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I strongly disagree. Apple is a profit-driven business just like any other, and the old folks are a pretty large demographic, whether you like it or not. Telling them to “get on board or get out of the way” is incredibly egotistic and selfish. How would you feel if Apple’s stance was “don’t mess with perfection”, and kept things largely the same?
Besides, I don’t think that a UI overhaul counts as “meaningful innovation”. It’s purely cosmetic and subjective.
