Recent Comments:
Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups {Engadget}
Oct 12th 2009 9:29AM Why no backups? Easy answer: because it's cheaper that way in the short term.
Compensation? Nothing significant is my bet; consumers don't expect to be treated properly by corporations.
Apple pushes to change subscription accounting rules {Engadget}
Sep 15th 2009 6:16AM A couple of comments from an app developer:
- Apple don't let me charge for app updates. Does this mean that the feds will be coming after me for false accounting? No, it doesn't. Apple could make iPod Touch OS updates free if they wanted to.
- The fact that they are not free makes life more difficult for me. About 5% of my app's users have not updated to 3.0 (presumably mainly iPod touch owners). So I can either make apps that are backward compatible (which involves a lot of extra testing), or I can drop support for those 5%. It's a hard decision.
I find the $5 for 3.1 especially annoying, since it has so few new features.
Bluetooth headset use plummets in the US, humanity celebrates a small victory {Engadget}
Sep 6th 2009 7:34AM I read the research that was done before the UK laws were introduced. They calibrated everything against the level of driving impairment caused by alcohol, since there is already a well-defined legal limit for alcohol while driving and it seems like a good idea to set other limits such that they will have the same effect.
The conclusion was that using a hands-free phone (which probably means a phone in a holder on the dashboard, rather than a headset) was about equal to the legal alcohol limit. Using a hand-held phone is equivalent to being at about 1.6 times the alcohol limit. On that basis they decided to allow hands-free phone use but prohibit hand-held phones.
One difference in the U.S. is that very few cars have gears. So it's less likely that you will see someone with phone in hand trying to change gear with the other hand and steer with their knees. Or drive along in 2nd until they finish the call.
Purported Canon EOS 7D poster, lenses turn up online {Engadget}
Aug 28th 2009 5:52PM Very pleased to finally see a 15-something lens. I have the old 24-85 on my film EOS and it's a great focal range - 24mm is useful for buildings (e.g. inside a cathedral) and also mountainscapes. I can't think why they've taken so long to make an EF-S version. Hopefully the telephoto end (which I don't really need) will not make it too heavy.
How would you change Apple's iPhone 3GS? {Engadget}
Aug 1st 2009 8:24AM (Disclaimer, I am an app developer.)
1. Connect to USB devices like flash sticks and cameras to view the contents, without the devices having to be "Works With iPhone" approved at $x per sticker. Ditto for bluetooth.
2. Provide a filesystem for documents that is shared between apps.
3. Let apps run in some very limited way in the background. I don't want full multitasking because the memory used by background apps will cause trouble for foreground apps, but I would like that e.g. a GPS logger app could wake up every minute and save a location fix.
4. Eliminate 99% of the app review process. It's ridiculous that a developer who wants to push out a quick bug fix has to wait for a month in a queue, and the rejections are ridiculous [I had one update rejected for "inconsistent icons" that could "cause user confusion" - guess what, I get plenty of emails from users and how many had been confused by the icons? None.]
5. Get rid of the whole carrier exclusivity crap. I should be able to buy any phone and any sim and use them together. The current "market" is horribly distorted.
6. Add a flash.
7. Replace that bizarre Objective-C junk with C++.
Video: Nearest Tube iPhone app augments reality with directions {Engadget}
Jul 7th 2009 9:22AM Here's my iPhone app, which will benefit from this if/when Apple decide to let us do it "officially":
http://panoramascope.com/
It uses the NASA SRTM altitude data to compute the skyline and puts markers on the mountains and other features. This works well for long-distance things like mountains but not so well for urban applications at the moment.
Android 1.5 gets official SDK for native development {Engadget}
Jun 25th 2009 7:13PM With luck this might mean we see some iPhone apps being ported. Easiest will be those that don't use much Apple stuff, which most obviously means games that run with their own graphics over the whole screen and no Apple UI elements.
Panasonic starts locking out third-party batteries with new firmware {Engadget}
Jun 25th 2009 5:41PM I bought an FX-40 just a few weeks ago, and I'm (a) happy that I bought it with the old firmware that doesn't impose this restriction, but (b) unhappy that I've given money to a company that behaves in this way. (I've never bought a printer that IDs it toner or ink, for example.)
For my FX-40, the original Panasonic battery sells for about £50 while the 3rd party version sells for about £30. I'm pretty confident that my spare has protection circuitry inside it but of course I can't be sure without X-raying it. Maybe they should make the case transparent so that we can actually see what's inside? Both prices seem excessive to me: it's only a fricking battery!
The ideal solution would be for rechargeable lithium cells to have a standard manufacturer-independent form factor, like primary lithium cells and all nickel and zinc cells do. Then we would have competition between multiple respectable manufacturers.
BTW note that the Panasonic charger doesn't check what sort of battery is connected (i.e. it doesn't have the 'D' pin), which rather waters down any safety argument doesn't it? I would have thought that any fire danger would be much more likely to occur during charging than during use.
Always Innovating's Touch Book in production, finally pictured in non-render form {Engadget}
Jun 25th 2009 8:33AM And they've finally noticed that there is a world outside the USA and they're accepting (pre-)orders from a few hundred million more potential customers. Congratulations - the previous attitude made them look more than a bit insular. Guess what, some of those non-USA people might be more interested in a non-Intel non-Microsoft product than your typical American. Sadly no non-US keyboard layouts yet though.
ATP PhotoFinder Pro loses the base station, takes us to geotagging nirvana {Engadget}
May 28th 2009 12:41PM My other complaint about their first product was that the small print said it might corrupt your memory card and you should be sure to take a backup before using it. (Hmm, well I think it was their product; to be fair it could have been another product doing the same thing. But I think it was this one.) I wonder if that has gone away with this version?
I have the Sony GPS logger. It works well, though some other things have come out since I bought it that might be better. I can't see much advantage to doing the tagging before before it gets to your PC.
