RShiki · HackerTrans

No but they used to make 13" MBP with nvidia chipsets rather than intel's crappy ones. Even the 11" MBA used to have nvidia chipsets. It is a new trend with Apple to downgrade the integrated gpu (compared to the competition, and their own past products). The first incident began with the switch to MacIntels and people who liked the Mac Mini suddenly had to bear with the Intel GMA rather than ATI Radeon. Same thing happened during the switch to intel from iBook (radeon) vs Macbook (gma). TBH it feels like Apple always go for the highest margin components (low cost for Apple while still selling the laptop for a premium price) whenever they feel like they can get away with doing so.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

"Linux kills everything that cannot differentiate."

Yeah, and Windows differentiated by offering an insane level of backward compatibility which makes both developers happy (they don't have to maintain and patch their apps as much) and users who don't have to lose their favorite piece of software, which is why Linux has never overtaken the desktop. Windows runs the apps people want : MS Office, Photoshop... the mac also runs some of those but you can see how fickle backward compatibility is with Apple. You can install Windows 8 on the early macintels, you can't install Mac OS X Mountain Lion on those. MS offers better support for older Apple hardware than Apple themselves.

Apple is not going to survive android on the long term unless they truly manage to turn the iPhone into a fashion statement and multiply their effort to make it look like jewelry. Apple revenue depends entirely on the iPad and iPhone nowadays, Mac aren't making them any money. Unlike Windows, people don't have any sort of long term, or big in $ investment in mobile software. Transitioning from iOS to Android is not like going from Windows to Linux and losing Office, Photoshop, thousands of dollars worth of a game library built over a decade..

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

> If they have a feature/smart phone why would they want a 7 inch tablet?

Yeah you're right, why would someone want something that can achieve 9 hours screen-on battery life when they could just be content with killing the phone battery and taking the risk of not having enough juice left for an important/urgent phone call. There's also a huge difference between a 4" screen and a 7" screen, you don't really know how much until you've used both. The smartphone is good for quickly checking your mails and stuff like that, but the Nexus 7 is much nicer for browsing the web, gaming, reading ebooks.. reading books on a smartphone is not an enjoyable experience, but doing so on a Nexus 7 is. My experience with the Nexus 7 has also shown me that it's at the sweet point for a small comic/manga reading device. Any smaller and you can't really comfortably do that. Any bigger (like when I had the iPad 2) and it can be a bit too heavy depending on the way you hold it for prolonged use.

The smartphone can be a quick fix when you're not at home and not carrying your tablet (I don't carry my tablet all the time) but at home there is absolutely no way you'd chose to use the smartphone over any tablet, be it 7" or 10", when you're reading ebooks, browsing the web on the couch or watching movies in your bed.

Samsung did try to make a device that can be somewhat good at both, the Galaxy Note 2, but it's not really pocketable so it loses the appeal of a smartphone, and it's not as nice as a Nexus 7 for tablet use cases.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

I don't know when it has been introduced, or even if it was always there and I didn't notice, but iBooks also supports continuous vertical scrolling and it IS much faster than looking at an animation that shows a page turn or a slide. The default mode, "page turn" doesn't make any sense. When I scroll through an ebook through the continuous scrolling, the text appears INSTANTLY, without a perceptible delay and since it's continuous scrolling, you don't go from a page to another, but you're always "in between". The concept of a "page" 1, "page 2", "page" 3 itself is no more. It's not a physical book, it doesn't need pages.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

Point taken, and I'm not really hating on Apple either so I don't really think of you as "defending" them, I'm just stating my thoughts about their strategy.

Apple completely changed the way I look at mobile devices. My first smartphone and tablet were the iPhone and iPad. I just wish they'd be more reasonable on some points, but they're obviously too successful to change their strategy unless a strong competitor shows up (and I hope that Google's strategy with the Nexus pays off).

I also am part of those who switched to Android but think that Apple had some reasonable arguments against Samsung that made them go wild against them. When you go as far as to make the charger look like an Apple charger you know there's something wrong going on. Samsung clearly tried to ride on the popularity of Apple products by making it look as much as possible as the iPhone and iPad, be it in the packaging, included accessories, look, early TouchWiz releases... there's a reason why TouchWiz on the S3 isn't like TouchWiz on the first Galaxy phones.. The customization on early Samsung android devices went too far toward Apple's direction. Even the "hardware" buttons, making the home button prominent and the other two android buttons more invisible in the design, and still keeping the home button as fully hardware on the S3 rather than going onscreen or capacitive like the other android OEMs.

Apple makes great products, but I feel like they're trying too much to milk us as much as they can.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

"I also don't think the kind of people that buy Android devices are the same people that buy iOS devices."

Really ? I used to own an iPad 2 and an iPhone 3g. Because they were much, much better than the competition at the time. I sold my iPad 2, got a nexus 7. I'm going to buy a Nexus 4 as soon as it's released. I don't understand your point about laggy typing with the Nexus 7. Did you hit the bug on the 16gb that starts when you have your internal storage filled ? (yeah, I agree that this kind of bug shouldn't even exist, but if you've filled your N7's ssd and ignored this bug you don't really know how smooth the device can be) I've always been good at typing, I get a very high word-per-minute on a real keyboard and a satisfying wpm on touch keyboards with good prediction, I admit I use swiftkey rather than the built-in android keyboard but I haven't noticed a lag so far. The experience has been stellar for me, everything runs as smooth as my iPad 2 but I now get the functionality I have always desired, such as a real filesystem access, the ability to disable built in apps and use a third party app as the default (Android Intents) and so on.

I admit that android is lacking in tablet apps, but that's almost certainly going to be solved with the release of the Nexus 7 and now the Nexus 10, because past android tablets really sucked and you couldn't count on them to get OS upgrades. With the Nexus 7 and 10, developers will have a good reason to come to the platform. The Nexus 7 is already outselling all the other android tablets combined I think. JellyBean and ICS fixed a lot of what was wrong with the UI and smoothness. When it comes to the core OS itself, I now consider Android on par with iOS, which wasn't the case for me during the days of 2.x and honeycomb for tablets. Why do I like android better than iOS now that they're on par (IMHO) ? the ability to customize the OS, even without having to root the device. I didn't root my N7 nor did I install a custom rom. But I'm using a third party launcher, keyboard and lots of app that CAN'T exist under the iOS ecosystem. I've always wanted to use Android, but bought iOS devices in the past because they were objectively better and too good compared to the subpar android releases, my desire for a more free (as in freedom) ecosystem didn't outweigh the cons of early android. But in 2012, with Nexus devices ? iOS is dead to me.

I'm not saying iOS sucks. I still like it a lot, and think that Apple truly changed the market and I doubt the competition would've become as good if Apple didn't release those devices. But I absolutely can't stand the walled garden and only submitted to it because of the lack of real competition, until now. If Apple gave us the kind of freedom with expect on a computer, be it an OS X laptop or Windows 8 laptop, I would have no qualms in coming back to iOS, and buy the next iPhone or iPad. But with android getting much better than it used to be, and iOS being still as constraining as it was in the past, hell no! Waiting for the jailbreak when new devices are released, and waiting before installing os updates because they break the jailbreak is not for me. Android allows me to do things you'd need a jailbreak on iOS, but not something like rooting or unlocking the bootloader on Android. Btw I'm not a software pirate, I buy the apps that catch my interest, I don't need "full freedom" but android gives out far more freedom out of the box than iOS and some of those freedoms are truly useful. Swiftkey is the best virtual keyboard I've ever used, your mileage may vary. You can't replace the keyboard on iOS without jailbreaking. You can't have a keyboard with symbols for programming without jailbreaking. Why ? Why should we let ourselves be shackled by Apple so much ? Windows 8 (RT and Phone) is going the wrong direction too. Sideloading shouldn't even be a word. Installing apps outside of an app store shouldn't be considered a specific, niche use case.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

I don't see the point of a rear camera on a tablet. The kind of people who have enough spending income to afford a tablet usually own a smartphone, or even a feature phone, that has a rear camera. Why would you want a crappy rear camera on your tablet ? for a $200 price point like the Nexus 7, you'd never get anything better than what a cheap feature phone can do.

Any kid that has a parent that would buy them a Nexus 7 has at least a feature phone with a camera that'd be as good as what you could put on the N7, if not better.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

The entry level, 16gb iPhone has a profit margin that is bigger than average, but not huge. The 64gb iPhone on the other hand.. it's like printing money. The markup doesn't even begin to compare to what the bigger storage actually cost to Apple. Apple makes a LOOOOT of money out of the customers who have bigger needs than average.

That's been Apple's strategy forever, people who want more have to pay a lot more than what it's really worth. I can remember the entry level iBook (during the PPC days) being sold with goddamn combo DVD reader/CD writer drives in a time where EVERY SINGLE PC LAPTOP SOLD, even the cheapest crap, had a DVD writer. Just to push people onto the higher profit margin.

I love Apple products but they really know how to milk their customers dry. Hacker News's audience wouldn't fall for that, but I can remember the markup on ram, when they still sold devices with 1 or 2gb of ram when the competition had 4gb on their cheapest stuff, with huge markups on the online apple store if you ordered a laptop with more ram. People here know how to put more ram in their computers and know not to order a macbook with "Apple's ram" (... a traditional thing that is going to die with the retina mbp and its soldered ram), but the average joe just got ripped off hardcore.

If you only look at their entry products, like the 16gb iPhone, the 21" iMac, the 11" MBA, yeah, Apple seems reasonable. Any other Apple product ? the margins on those things is something no one else could pull off without getting lynched.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

It's not sold at a loss, but with a very low profit margin. At a loss would mean that they're actually bearing the cost of manufacturing the device even after they got your money, which is not true.

They also get a much higher profit margin on the 16gb (now the 32gb for the Nexus 7) than on the 8gb which is what a lot of people will buy. There isn't a $50 cost in manufacturing a device with 16gb more of storage but there is a $50 markup for the customers who want more local storage. Storage is much, much cheaper than what you're paying for when you buy a tablet or phone with bigger SSDs. The profit margins on the 64gb iPhones are INSANE compared to the profit margins on the 16gb.

The base, $300 Nexus 4 is going to have a paltry 8gb. Most of the heavy users are going to spend the $50 more for the 16gb, while the $300 will still be there to please those who have to be more careful with their money.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

LTE isn't even available yet in my country and it's not the third world, but France. 300 euros is cheap for a smartphone like the Nexus 4, in comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S3 is 500 euros on amazon.fr and it's the cheapest price you can get for it, it's more like 600 euros everywhere else.

The lack of LTE won't be a dealbreaker for most people, and probably even those who live in the USA. $300 hits the right price point for a flagship phone and the upside of owning a nexus and getting Google's support is huge. I'd rather get an iPhone than an android that is not a Nexus. Both OS are constantly evolving and getting better, waiting for the carriers and OEM to get their shit together is getting old.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

Laptops have gotten nicer but it's still rather hard to find a 19" desktop monitor with a nice DPI.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

> This is the first time I've seen that outside of dedicated chargers and Macs (I assume of course that some PCs do this as well but I haven't seen one yet).

My Asus motherboard can do that with the right software/driver installed and it seems that all products made by Asus these days support this. It's an optional install you can find in the Asus support website for your devices.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

> it sells premium products at premium prices, and it never discounts.

I fail to see what's premium in a tablet that has an inferior screen compared to the cheaper alternatives.

Apple won the 10" market by virtue of literally doing everything better than the competition. Better screen, better battery life and so on. The iPad mini isn't like that. The $200 Nexus 7 has a much higher pixel density which used to be Apple's own obsession until the mini (retina iPad, iPod Touch, Macbook Pro, iPhone) and they completely ignored the whole pixel density and screen quality angle when comparing the mini to the N7, just stating the obvious "ours is bigger!!!".

When you ask for premium prices, you should deliver premium quality. The iPad mini is not premium enough to warrant premium prices. I would have seriously considered buying one even at a higher price IF it was actually a premium device, but it's not. The N7 is just the better device here, and if there was no software issue with their shoddy fork of android, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 would've also been interesting with its full hd screen. 1920x1200 8.9 display for... $299, less than the crappy iPad Mini.

I've never felt so underwhelmed by an Apple product since a long time. The iPad Mini feels Meh rather than making me drool at the thought of getting one.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

Even if it's a nexus device it's pretty different from what we were used to with stock android : it's a blend of both the phone and tablet UI. Some apps are using the tablet UI, while others use the phone UI, and the launcher itself is based on the phone UI, rather than the tablet UI. What runs on the Nexus 7 is a form of Android that has never been seen before, and there isn't any other Android tablet that behaves in such a way, even those from Asus that are as close to stock android as an OEM can be.

Even with TouchWiz, the Tab 7.0 feels more like what we were used to than the N7.

I'm just stating facts though because I actually like the changes made for the N7 better, I think it fits a 7" screen more than the old tablet UI and I hope those changes will be copied by the others.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

> Its all over the Internet Explorer thing happening again. But with IE at least you could tell your users to download a better browser if they want to use your app. You can not tell your users, "Buy another phone to use our service!"

That's what I take from the article. People got up in arms in a way that was much stronger against Microsoft during IE's early years and whining for Netscape (who lost because they just made a shitty browser, it wasn't 100% because of bundling IE with windows. Netscape Navigator 4 was terrible and slow compared to IE.) much more than people do against Apple, even though we could install an alternative browser, which is something you can't even do on the iPhone and iPad (without a modern JS engine you might as well give up, there isn't a single browser on iOS that is not based on the internal webkit and a JIT-lacking javascript engine. There's the oddball, Opera, that does all the rendering in their server farms, but they don't allow anything that runs locally).

There were even talks of cutting Microsoft into multiple companies, one that makes office, one that makes windows etc. Only people who have been around during those years would know what I'm talking about, but MS was hated to a point you couldn't begin to imagine in 2012, for something that wasn't even a bit as bad as Apple post-iOS.

I can't believe the crap Apple gets away with, they are getting away with so much that even Microsoft is now following their lead, Windows Mobile had far less restrictions compared to Windows Phone and Windows 8 on ARM which are both reactions to iOS rather than something MS thought of doing before the tide that iOS (and Android) did to the smartphone market. Windows Mobile wasn't open source, but the user was as free to install and use apps as they are now with Android. It's not the case anymore, and there won't be anything like Chrome or Firefox or (locally rendering) Opera for Windows 8 tablets on ARM. Only on x86 and only because they know how much of an uproar it'd be with current x86 users, because if they could close everything down and get away with it, they would, which is why we should be as loud as possible to show that we don't want this kind of future for our computing devices.

RShiki

14 anni fadiscuss

Yeah. Kies is slow as hell (more than iTunes on windows.. it says a lot, because iTunes on windows is not a shiny example of good software.) and TouchWiz is slowing down Android, sometimes destroying the battery and is otherwise a design sin, it's far more uglier than the stock UI, it's got better recently (S3, Note 10.1 etc.) but it still has some badly copied parts from iOS that doesn't really match Android's aesthetics, like the custom keyboard. The Samsung keyboard has an identical color scheme to iOS's virtual keyboards, it looks good on iOS because the rest of the interface is similar but it feels like total shit on Android and really it just proves that Samsung actually deserved to get bitchslapped in the courts by Apple because even an Android fan like myself could find too many similarities between what Samsung did to Android (it was worse for past devices) and iOS. Stock Android doesn't look like iOS, but TouchzWiz used to, and some parts of TouchWiz still do to this day (like the keyboard I mentioned).

I love Android, and I like some of Samsung's hardware but I wish they'd shut their whole software division down and just put stock android on their phones and tablets. Stop writing code, and stop designing your custom UI, because you SUCK at this job.

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