Technology Android

[dilla]

I don't care much for VR/AR, based on what I've seen so far. I've got a Gear VR, two actually, and I haven't really used it since the first month of owning it. Maybe three hours of use in total.

A lot of what I wish I could do with my phone is already in place in the Android OS, it's just about getting other companies to play along and make options a bit more cheaper. One that comes to mind is home automation. We need to upgrade our thermostat to a Nest in order to control it on the go. I've seen the Samsung lightbulbs that can be controlled with your phone, but not only do you need to buy a $20 Smart Bulb, you need to buy other hardware that annexes your bulb with your router with a middleman. Garage door control would be nice, but garage door opener makers require a hardwire connection to a separate peripheral you need to buy and connect to your router in order for that to work.

So I guess the OS has done its job in giving those options, but those options are expensive to implement as each thing requires its own, proprietary hardware in order to run.

 

[S O F I]

I've never had a case on any phone I ever had.

I broke my screen twice total. First time on a Nexus phone and I replaced it by buying a screen online and using Youtube for a tutorial. Second time, my buddy works at a phone repair shop and hooked it up for free. I walk around with a space grey iphone 6 with a white screen. Home button black lol so everyone asks questions.

 

[dilla]

I only broke the screen on my S3 and that was like 3 days into owning. Had insurance with a $150 deductible but still didn't use it because it felt so shitty. Basically dropped

that

on my phone when backing out the garage with my phone on my lap. It slipped of the visor on top and hit it just right to place a crack just above the home button. Worst part? With insurance, I even bought an Otterbox at the store for the S3 but didn't like so I had just taken it off.

Running my S7 naked. So far so good. I am retardedly careful with it, though. I will kill myself if I fuck up another screen.

 

[Pittsey]

I've never had a case. Never cracked a screen

 

[dilla]

An exploding Note 7 supposedly blew up a car it was left charging in. Still stinks a bit of insurance fraud but this is bad either way. Many people reading the article won't follow up on it and if it was indeed fraud, people will still associate the Note 7 with exploding cars.

After the iPhone 7 announcement yesterday, I really hope more OEMS don't take away the headphone jack. Moto has already done it. I feel like HTC might be next. I doubt Samsung does it any time soon, but who knows?

I read the dimensions of the phone were the same or slightly larger even, despite Apple justifying the headphone jack removal as a means to make the phone slimmer. But I also read the battery size was slightly increased so as to keep up with Samsung.

The big thing was the chipset performance. I think people were saying Apple has had the superior, more efficient chipsets and this new one was going to shit all over Qualcomm in the future. That it was already better than the SD 820 and the gap was going to widen further in the coming years.

I didn't hear it compared to the Exynos, though. Does that mean Samsung is still going pound for pound with Apple in that regard? Someone said Qualcomm focused more on radio band compatibility and not so much performance anymore. That sucks to hear, especially since I'm on Sprint. That means Qualcomm's focus was on compatibility for us which might have screwed them.

 

[masta247]

I'm glad someone finally got burned (not literally!) for using sealed batteries.

 

[masta247]

Also, Microsoft officially killed Nokia as we know it, while Lumia is already removed from their website:
http://www.gsmarena.com/microsofts_..._off_in_december_report_claims-news-20442.php

Put a Microsoft person to manage something, then make Microsoft run it, and within a few years you have the uncontested (smart)phone market leader dead. I hardly thought it's possible, yet all the wrong decisions were made, all opportunities were wasted and all critical moments to do something wrong were used. If it wasn't for all the legacy support and licensing, Microsoft would have been long dead itself. How can a tech company have such terrible judgement and management?

There's a growing Microsoft office (again, no pun intended) here in Vancouver, I managed to meet two guys who work there, and talking about their environment makes me feel like the company works in an alternative reality. I mean, I worked at IBM at the period when it was starting to grow a little out of touch with the markets and got that self-defense "the big IBM is too good for regular customer plebs" attitude when they went for business and government clients exclusively, which were sad days that to me felt like the beginning of the downfall of the legend, but Microsoft is whole another level of weird.
Makes me wonder, how perfectly normal companies that push boundaries for years grow so misguided in their later years, when things should be so simple, they complicate them for themselves. But give them good advice, and they will ignore and move to the bottom with their vision instead. That's how Microsoft acted with Nokia and Android, and that's how they seem to act about all of their operations these days.

 

[dilla]

Also, Microsoft officially killed Nokia as we know it, while Lumia is already removed from their website:
http://www.gsmarena.com/microsofts_..._off_in_december_report_claims-news-20442.php

Put a Microsoft person to manage something, then make Microsoft run it, and within a few years you have the uncontested (smart)phone market leader dead. I hardly thought it's possible, yet all the wrong decisions were made, all opportunities were wasted and all critical moments to do something wrong were used. If it wasn't for all the legacy support and licensing, Microsoft would have been long dead itself. How can a tech company have such terrible judgement and management?

There's a growing Microsoft office (again, no pun intended) here in Vancouver, I managed to meet two guys who work there, and talking about their environment makes me feel like the company works in an alternative reality. I mean, I worked at IBM at the period when it was starting to grow a little out of touch with the markets and got that self-defense "the big IBM is too good for regular customer plebs" attitude when they went for business and government clients exclusively, which were sad days that to me felt like the beginning of the downfall of the legend, but Microsoft is whole another level of weird.
Makes me wonder, how perfectly normal companies that push boundaries for years grow so misguided in their later years, when things should be so simple, they complicate them for themselves. But give them good advice, and they will ignore and move to the bottom with their vision instead. That's how Microsoft acted with Nokia and Android, and that's how they seem to act about all of their operations these days.

I feel like these companies are trying to cater to the younger crowd and the trends they're into. And as a result, you get wacky looking machines and colorful, cheery OSs that don't seem professional at the end of the day. Microsoft has the business sector on lock. No real company is switching en masse to OSX or anything else. Why not stick to what worked in the 90s and 2000s with XP and even Windows 7? What's this Windows 8 shit? Windows 10 seems fine to use but it's still much more intrusive than I remember XP being. I think it started with Win 7 when I'd be asked for permissions all the time for mundane things.

That being said, I think I'll be upgrading from my 6.5 year old MacBook Pro soon. I am fine with OSX but I am giving Windows a shot, especially when the Surface Book exists now. Masta, what do you recommend I look at? I stopped paying attention to the PC world after 2011 or so. Between ultrabooks and regular laptops, I don't know which one I want or need. I just have my eye on the Surface Book because it seems powerful and has the Pen, whatever it's called. I don't edit documents but when using it in tablet mode, I can see myself appreciating switching between tabs using that. That's not the only use I'd have for it; I'm sure I'd find more. I just think I would value having touch on a laptop/tablet hybrid especially since the tech has changed so much from the "tablet PCs" that were big in my school in 2006.

If I leave OSX/Mac, the only worry I will have is durability. Despite a HDD crashing 4.5 years after use (upgrade to an SSD) and replacing 4 GB with 8 GB of RAM, my Mac was solid in build quality. It handled being lugged around in a backpack for 3+ years in all types of weather. I'm sure there are "reliable" and well-built Windows machines. But are we talking 6+ years like my current MBP?

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I think it started with Win 7 when I'd be asked for permissions all the time for mundane things.

I think you mean Windows Vista. Everyone hated that for having too many dialogue popup screens. Windows 7 was an all-round major improvement.

 

[dilla]

Perhaps. I don't remember Vista having that many pop ups as much as it had compatibility issues with hardware simple as printers. But maybe.

7 was definitely solid and I liked it. I still remember the pop ups more from 7 than Vista and I ran Vista for 3 years or so.

 

[masta247]

I feel like these companies are trying to cater to the younger crowd and the trends they're into. And as a result, you get wacky looking machines and colorful, cheery OSs that don't seem professional at the end of the day. Microsoft has the business sector on lock. No real company is switching en masse to OSX or anything else. Why not stick to what worked in the 90s and 2000s with XP and even Windows 7? What's this Windows 8 shit? Windows 10 seems fine to use but it's still much more intrusive than I remember XP being. I think it started with Win 7 when I'd be asked for permissions all the time for mundane things.



That being said, I think I'll be upgrading from my 6.5 year old MacBook Pro soon. I am fine with OSX but I am giving Windows a shot, especially when the Surface Book exists now. Masta, what do you recommend I look at? I stopped paying attention to the PC world after 2011 or so. Between ultrabooks and regular laptops, I don't know which one I want or need. I just have my eye on the Surface Book because it seems powerful and has the Pen, whatever it's called. I don't edit documents but when using it in tablet mode, I can see myself appreciating switching between tabs using that. That's not the only use I'd have for it; I'm sure I'd find more. I just think I would value having touch on a laptop/tablet hybrid especially since the tech has changed so much from the "tablet PCs" that were big in my school in 2006.



If I leave OSX/Mac, the only worry I will have is durability. Despite a HDD crashing 4.5 years after use (upgrade to an SSD) and replacing 4 GB with 8 GB of RAM, my Mac was solid in build quality. It handled being lugged around in a backpack for 3+ years in all types of weather. I'm sure there are "reliable" and well-built Windows machines. But are we talking 6+ years like my current MBP?

There are Windows machines that are more reliable than Macs, the awesome thing but also the problem with Microsoft laptops and computers is that you are given a huge choice of devices from a lot of companies. And each of those companies cover the whole price range, so people are frequently tempted by the cheaper alternatives, which count for each companies reliability statistics. Believe it or not, my mom is still using a 11 year old Thinkpad laptop and nothing ever failed in it. It was also one of those cool devices where you could still add RAM and replace hard drives and batteries easily, so since about 2 years ago it's running 4gb of RAM, a supersized battery and an SSD and it works like new, lasts 6-7 hours and because it was one of those ahead of its time Pentium M devices, it's essentially like having an underclocked single core Intel Core processor, which isn't bad at all.
Heck, I'm using a PC, which technically is 12 years old now. I was just keeping it updated with processor replacements once in a few years, adding RAM and an SSD and replacing graphics cards once in a while and it's pretty much an enthusiast computer still. Didn't replace its motherboard, case or PSU yet, although I'll be making a new PC next year, and I'll be able to reuse many of its components.

The problem with Microsoft trying to be super business is the fact that business doesn't necessarily want professional looking UI, or cold and grey looks, and that's the biggest misconception in tech companies attitude when they design UIs. Especially with mobile devices. People don't like Windows 10 mobile UI at the end of the day, even if research made it seem like the tiles are so professional and awesome. People secretly like their UI to feel pleasant and fun to use. It doesn't prevent functionality and ease of use to be there. iOS is colorful, Google's UIs are colorful and realistically they look anything but "business". Yet, businesses love them.

Same with management attitudes and business decisions. You have IBM and Microsoft being super serious business, and it doesn't work for the customer market. The only thing that Microsoft has is legacy support, that's why businesses stick with them. Not because the new Windows looks more serious. Quite the opposite, people stick with Windows despite the fact that it looks more serious and gloomy, just because they can run their software on Windows.

Apple does 180 on Microsoft's strategy. Did you see the announcement of the iOS10? To me it was absolutely hilarious. The highlights were "we know you love emojis, so we made them 3 times bigger *crowds overjoyed clapping*" or "so you want to send a message but you noticed there's not enough emojis in in, so we made is possible to make it automatically emojified!".
Really, check it out. Maybe 2 minutes in total were spent on talking about actual technical improvements!

Regarding the Surface Book, it'd wait for the second generation, which is around the corner. I bough the Surface Pro 4 fairly recently, since it was on sale in the US. It's a great little device, super portable and yet packs a powerful i5 processor, although apparently it took Microsoft months to iron out the issues that were there earlier. I just feel like the battery life isn't quite there yet, although it's not terrible. Just expected more from such a portable device.

 

[dilla]

Yeah Apple has been stumbling on the software front from some time, but Google is not much better. I'd say Google's blunders with Android are just as awkward and cringeworthy. Duo and Lingo are not going to be successful, like many of Google's products in the past, and ultimately Hangouts might get scrapped in favor of D/L. And Hangouts is actually one of the more "successful" services Google has had in the past few years even though it's shit.

I've been spending more and more time with Windows 10 and it is incredible.....compared to Windows 8/8.1. All the computers at the clinic were on 8.1 and were absolute shit. Some of them were upgraded to Win 10 during the upgrade period but half a dozen were still on 8. One was even on 7 still. I brought those up to speed the past few days and it all seems to be running well now.

We have an XPS 12" ultrabook with the touch screen. It's nice and having it in tablet mode is pretty neat, but it is a 2014 or 15 model so stuff has probably gotten better since then.

OSX has become kind of boring for me. I guess the menus are still more organized and simple compared to Windows, but that might also be due to there being fewer options to mess with. I'm bored with OSX yet I still find it simple to use compared to Windows. Windows probably seems attractive now because 10 is different from 7 and both are book-ending OSX on my timeline of OS use. But I get the feeling I'll be irritated with it after some time and wish for OSX again.

I have to hand it to Apple for mastering the TrackPad and the touch gestures. It's incredibly smooth since my experience with it starting in 2010 and 6.5 years later, Windows still hasn't caught up. It's still an bumbling mess for me to use even when I change touch sensitivity. Two finger scrolling, especially.

What brand and model has a better reliability/durability rating than rMBPs or MBAs, etc.? Consumer Reports still reports Apple as the top in reliability and customer service. I know they've had their fair share of problems but I think the numbers say they inch out even the best of the Windows OEMs.

 

[masta247]

What brand and model has a better reliability/durability rating than rMBPs or MBAs, etc.? Consumer Reports still reports Apple as the top in reliability and customer service. I know they've had their fair share of problems but I think the numbers say they inch out even the best of the Windows OEMs.

Ha, that's because Apple doesn't have low end offerings. They just have a very premium ultrabooks and very premium more conventional laptop lines. Take Lenovo, for example. They have excellent high end laptops, but maybe 10% of people will buy those, while let's say at least 40% buys the budget models. It's not possible for such company to have a great reliability rating, even if their high end models are perfect.
Dell makes great Windows machines in the high end with their XPS 13 and XPS 15 series too. Microsoft's Surface line is very good too, putting aside imperfect software out of the box, but the updates fixed pretty much all the issues.

 

[dilla]

Ha, that's because Apple doesn't have low end offerings. They just have a very premium ultrabooks and very premium more conventional laptop lines. Take Lenovo, for example. They have excellent high end laptops, but maybe 10% of people will buy those, while let's say at least 40% buys the budget models. It's not possible for such company to have a great reliability rating, even if their high end models are perfect.
Dell makes great Windows machines in the high end with their XPS 13 and XPS 15 series too. Microsoft's Surface line is very good too, putting aside imperfect software out of the box, but the updates fixed pretty much all the issues.

Yeah I understand how many OEMs have a spectrum of quality because of the level of their offerings. But not all OEMs are created equal, right? A high-end Lenovo is probably better than a high end Acer or ASUS machine?

 

[masta247]

Yeah I understand how many OEMs have a spectrum of quality because of the level of their offerings. But not all OEMs are created equal, right? A high-end Lenovo is probably better than a high end Acer or ASUS machine?

Well, I'd say it's more about the product, not so much company. But yeah, Acer rarely makes super high quality products because that's not what they specialize in. Asus - it's a good company that's either a very huge hit or somewhat a miss. Anyway they're usually great value for money - at the same time you are still getting what you pay for, although with Asus it'll be slightly better value.

At the same time Lenovo's quality has been slowly but consistently degrading over the years since the IBM acquisition. Because Lenovo as the company is quite shitty, to be honest. They just got great quality base back then. I feel same thing might happen with Motorola under their wings.
Essentially it's a Chinese company very unfamiliar with high quality process, that made enough money on bulk sales of low quality devices that they could buy themselves top quality American companies or at least major parts of them along with their quality processes and knowledge, but eventually they merge into one culture and Lenovo are putting their paws on more and more elements of the companies that they buy.
For instance, they are pushing products for lower ends of the market, and those products are sometimes very bad. The Thinkpads were great, but Lenovo spawned the Ideapads and other lower end laptops, for instance, and their quality is frequently low.

In general I'm afraid that the world is giving so many opportunities to low quality makers in China, they amass enough money and we will be seeing more and more out of the blue acquisitions of great companies by the Chinese ones. Going by history of great companies that were purchased by China and saw their quality decline, it's not a good thing, even going by just a few giants like Motorola, IBM or the car industry where more and more legendary brands are now owned by chinese manufacturing companies and saw their quality decline.

Heck, even the legendary Japanese giant - Sharp got purchased by Foxconn this year. Yes, the Foxconn that is at the lowest end of mass manufacturing companies with constant money flow since Apple contracted them for assembling the iPhones and other Apple devices. Sharp was one of the most technologically advanced companies is Japan. Foxconn bought 100% of the company, and they're doing well enough to essentially bribe Japan into approve the sale. Now we have "Sharp of the Foxconn group". By company value, it could have as well been Panasonic, Subaru or one of the biggest divisions of Sony, and the only reason it wasn't was that it still wouldn't pass with the regulatory bodies, while Sharp was somewhat for lower profile but highly advanced markets, not too profitable in the mainstream markets.

 

[dilla]

This reminds me of the Office episode where Michael and Oscar debate the role of China and its threat to the global economy.

But going by your post, wouldn't it make people more wary of purchasing from these companies due to fear of quality control, and lack thereof? I know Apple did or still does use Foxconn built parts but their products don't seem to suffer from it like Lenovo or Acer's might. So as this practice of Chinese companies buying big name companies continues, doesn't that increase the chances of getting a poorly made Windows PC that's destined to fail much faster and harder than the industry average?

 

[masta247]

This reminds me of the Office episode where Michael and Oscar debate the role of China and its threat to the global economy.



But going by your post, wouldn't it make people more wary of purchasing from these companies due to fear of quality control, and lack thereof? I know Apple did or still does use Foxconn built parts but their products don't seem to suffer from it like Lenovo or Acer's might. So as this practice of Chinese companies buying big name companies continues, doesn't that increase the chances of getting a poorly made Windows PC that's destined to fail much faster and harder than the industry average?

The failures are mostly related to device design and hardware choice. Manufacturing quality mostly tells the likelihood of receiving a defective unit.
Since Apple also manufactures at Foxconn (the whole devices get assembled there, not just parts - all manufacturing for Apple happens at Foxconn) , I'd say it's about the same, and Foxconn has its quality control too for products they make for external clients. Otherwise everyone would ditch them, even despite low price for using them.

Well, the Chinese companies are not purchasing more PC makers so far, fortunately. So far Asus and others are fairly independent.

 

[masta247]

So.. the Google Pixel devices are REALLY ugly. I find it very disappointing, but people are having a lot of "laugh through despair" fun on the comment sections of tech websites since those leaks.

Actually, they both look like cheap iPhone clones, ignoring the fingerprint scanner on the back.. and they might've even beaten iPhones with bezel sizes - you could slice bread on them!
Also, Google is copying Apple not only in design, but also form factor/sizes, and worse of all, there are rumors that indeed the new brand will introduce a price hike. At least the gossip seems to be that people expecting a 299-399$ price for the smaller model will be very disappointed. Which is surprising, considering those devices look like they came straight from a Walmart "up to 100$" section.

 

[dilla]

Can you blame Google for bungling up the Nexus brand? It was only a matter of time before the novelty would wear off and things would get stale. Be it the design of the hardware or the software. Apple suffers from it too but a bit differently. I still Apple's UI and menus and just wish they employed an app drawer. And widgets.

It was only a matter of time when people associated Nexus with a positive thing and would blindly hold out on an upgrade to see what the Nexus would offer. It seemed like after the Nexus 4, people's quips with the Nexus line really began to take form. It seemed like people were happy with the Nexus One. The Nexus S, too. The GalNex was a flop but the 4 was a powerful device for the price. Customers saw the value in it. But then the N5 came and people had issues with it. I forget what but with the N5 and N6, there were always complaints of the screen, battery life, and camera or some combination of those things. I guess the 6P improved hardware-wise, but people had already been upset with the N6 pricing and the 6P only got more expensive, I think, especially for international customers.

I guess the honeymoon period wore off for the Nexus line. It was a rather long period, about 3-5 years, but expectations were high with each subsequent release and they were not met with recent releases.

Google Apps are amazing. There is so much innovation in services like Maps and its features and GMail's features. The Google App for Android is so useful with Now and On Tap. But those services, or most of them, can be enjoyed on iOS as well. It becomes a bit tough to stick with Android when some Google apps are actually better on iOS, like Hangouts.

So I stopped waiting for Nexus devices and idolizing them just because they "got updates faster." The updates haven't really been worth it, in my opinion. I couldn't tell you the difference between L and M on my phone. ICS and KK were similar too. So every two years, or so, there is a big change in the OS's UI, which is great, but getting the updates 3-6 months later is not a deal breaker. I value security of my device but my S7 has been getting security patches every month. Even if it it was every two or three months as well, I wouldn't mind.

Nexus/Pixel designs have just gone to shit. The 6P looked great but I'm not buying the phone outright upfront. Plus I don't think it was CDMA compatible anyway and I'm not leaving Sprint anytime soon.

Custom UIs used to be like AIDS for your phone. But at some point that changed and my S7 is just fine on TW and I actually value some of the features it has. Features I'm not sure stock Android has. There is no incentive to buy a Nexus/Pixel device, unless the hardware is the absolute best compared to all flagships at the time of its release. That includes battery life, screen res, camera, etc. Otherwise, I'll be happy to pay for a device that has some "fluff" from the OEM and get updates a bit later on a carrier that I use with a phone I didn't have to shell out $650 for upfront.

Google has to do a lot better with their phones. Right now, they're slapping their name on to a pile of slop and hoping the Nexus brand still gets them sales.

 

[dilla]

Google Home and the new Chromecast will be $129 and $69
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/0...-will-cost-129-chromecast-ultra-will-cost-69/

It's probably going to be some time before home automation from any company is widespread. I'm guessing lightbulbs and switches would need to be compatible with all OSs and that means Apple's home automation would likely get preference or priority over Google or Amazon's.