the tablet war is heating up

[Banshee16]

Just updated to Xoom ICS

I love the new boot up animation.
- I'm not sure about the new clock... the "tron" enspired one was ok.
- I like the new icons ALOT.... especially the click glow
- OMG the transitions are fast.
- Android apps also seem to respond quicker.
- App and widget menus.. are so much better. I like how they are now re like transparent cards that are shuffled.
- I wish I was able to keep my old stock wallpapers.... I love that little android listening to music. :< bad google!

Dislikes:
- What no face unlock?!?! I'm not going to use it but I at least want to play around with it (to see if it can lock using my garden gnome)
- I wish there were app groups in the app menu like in gingerbread. Those came in handy...

I haven't had much success with wallpapers....I'm using ADW Launcher on my Transformer, and I just can't figure out what size I need to get a wallpaper to display correctly. Everything that worked great before no longer works.

I might turn ADW Launcher off once I do the ICS upgrade, and see how the whole thing works, stock.

Banshee

 

[Janx]

Indeed, and patents are even being granted on gene sequences, as well has knowing what the sequence means, how to detect it, and how to alter it.

I can at least understand the arguments for the latter three: you did the work figuring out what a particular sequence does, figured out how to detect it, and figured out how to change it, so having some protected time to make money off of your work is at least fathomable.

But the sequence itself? Insane. Other scientists can't even research other ways to find it, etc. It's akin to the first guy who saw a horse getting protection that prevents other people from even talking about horses, much less doing anything with other horses they see.

One of Michael Crighton's last books was about the concept that a corporation can patent a gene sequence that they found in a donated sample and that thus they own the source (that is, the person who made the donation).

Discoveries should not be patentable.

creations should be.

 

[Banshee16]

Unfortunately this means only those with money can get certain genetic testing done. This often isn't covered by insurance or is excluded by companies explicitly which leaves the patient to have to pay the entire bill for the test. A bill that is far from affordable. And even more fortunate, it is sometimes the basis for what treatment to recommend.

So while companies have an interest to protect their R&D expenses, it is coming at a cost to people's health.

Not only that......but a company in the US that is profit oriented and focused on providing assistance only to those with money could use a patent on a gene sequence to prevent health providers in Canada, Mexico, and much of the EU that believe in universal health care from helping their own citizens.

Banshee

 

[falcarrion]

Looks like Apple scored big during the holiday season.
37.04 million iPhones, 15.4 million iPods and 15.43 million iPad during this busy holiday season.

 

[Banshee16]

Looks like Apple scored big during the holiday season.
37.04 million iPhones, 15.4 million iPods and 15.43 million iPad during this busy holiday season.

Yup, good numbers. Probably a few factors going on there...

1-People interested in the Siri idea buying the phone..

2-Sales in Q3 were down, possibly because customers were holding off on renewing until the new phone came up.....so you had Q3 sales getting pushed into Q4.

3-Lawsuits limiting access to some of the most popular Android devices in particular markets contributed on some level, I'm sure.

Good for Apple!

I'm curious whether Android, which was down Q4 in comparison, will have higher numbers for Q1, now that Ice Cream Sandwich is starting to appear on devices that are actually available?

Banshee

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'm curious whether Android, which was down Q4 in comparison, will have higher numbers for Q1, now that Ice Cream Sandwich is starting to appear on devices that are actually available?

Banshee

Also don't forget that people tend to wait until the big Conferences to see what new Android product is coming out. I knew a lot of people who are into Android who waited until CES before thinking about making an android purchase.

Sadly, because how badly Motorola is ran, everyone who got a Droid Razor during December was burned bad by the time CES was over.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Sadly, because how badly Motorola is ran, everyone who got a Droid Razor during December was burned bad by the time CES was over.

Isn't that the case with any Android phone, though? You know that whatever you buy this week will suddenly look bad compared to something that gets announced next week.

Sure, with Apple if you buy right after the product is released you know you'll have a year with the latest device, but on the flip side, if you want something cooler, you've got to wait a year. With Android, you just wait five minutes.

 

[Relique du Madde]

In the case of the Droid Razor it's you would have been burned since Motorola decided to re-release the Droid Razor with a larger battery as the Razor Maxx and Droid Razor with multiple colors one month later, or if you could wait till next month a Droid 4 which is the same as a Razr but with a keyboard.

As for the other phones, I look at it like this, you never know when your phone will die catastrophically. If I bought a phone in January and it fell off a boat in June, I'd rather buy a new current phone or wait one or two months (for a better one) then wait 6 months for the next model or by a 6 month old model like you would in the apple system.

The same thing applies to tablets and computers.

 

[Janx]

In the case of the Droid Razor it's you would have been burned since Motorola decided to re-release the Droid Razor with a larger battery as the Razor Maxx and Droid Razor with multiple colors one month later, or if you could wait till next month a Droid 4 which is the same as a Razr but with a keyboard.

As for the other phones, I look at it like this, you never know when your phone will die catastrophically. If I bought a phone in January and it fell off a boat in June, I'd rather buy a new current phone or wait one or two months (for a better one) then wait 6 months for the next model or by a 6 month old model like you would in the apple system.

The same thing applies to tablets and computers.

If you lost your new smartphone that you bought with a 2 year contract so the price was subsidized, you'd really pay $600-800 for a newest model phone to replace it out of contract?


Or would you find a cheaper deal, older model, or worst case, cheapest phone possible to wait out until your contract renews?

 

[Banshee16]

Isn't that the case with any Android phone, though? You know that whatever you buy this week will suddenly look bad compared to something that gets announced next week.

Sure, with Apple if you buy right after the product is released you know you'll have a year with the latest device, but on the flip side, if you want something cooler, you've got to wait a year. With Android, you just wait five minutes.

And good luck getting the Apple product when it's released. When I got my iPhone 4, I couldn't even *get* one until November of 2010.....even though it was released in....what...June? July?

Maybe that's part of the reason I've been so blasé about it. My expectations were so high based on how much the people around me talked it up, and the marketing, that maybe it didn't have a chance.

Android's a little more tricky. Seems like at least until recently, I didn't see much marketing for it, and had no idea how to tell what was a good phone vs. a bad phone. My brother got a Samsung Galaxy S II, and loves it, and after rooting it exclaims about how fantastic it is, and my father got a Samsung Defy, which has pretty much everything locked down, so it really doesn't seem very impressive at all. But is that really the phone's fault? There's such a range in the devices.....

Further, it seems sometimes that the hardware manufacturers are making hardware corrections for what are essentially software problems. My brother's Galaxy S II had terrible battery life when he first got it. It would last *maybe* 8 hours *if* he didn't use it. He was going to return it. Then we read about a battery bug in some older versions of Android, and he learned that between Samsung and his carrier, his phone was like 4 iterations of Android behind. He rooted it, thus getting the newest version of Android, and there was a dramatic change in battery life...night and day.

To me, that would appear to indicate that the device didn't need a bigger battery....it needed them to actually be timely with their updates.

The whole thing with releasing a product, then a new product right after to fix a perceived flaw happens with companies other than Motorola. ASUS is doing that with the Transformer Prime. The Prime is getting rave reviews *except* that WiFi/GPS is getting interference from the aluminum chassis......so they've already announced a new product that has a plastic strip along the top of the back, and 1080p resolution. Of course, that's not exactly making some people who bought the Prime very happy.

Banshee