Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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Winnow
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Winnow »

Only a complete moron would fail to operate an iPhone.

Give me a list of these things that aren't working on the iPhone.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by miir »

Winnow wrote:Only a complete moron would fail to operate an iPhone.

Give me a list of these things that aren't working on the iPhone.
When she comes out of the underground, her iphone has a difficult time reconnecting to the cellular network without doing a soft reset. This issue has been chronic over 3 different iphones. The same thing happened on mine on a different carrier.

Also, dropped calls, poor call quality.

Corrupt databases requiring a OS reload.

Frequent app freezes/crashes.


My wife loved her iphone.
She thought it was the greatest device ever made.
At the beginning of the summer she had decided that she was going to get an iphone 5 when it comes out.
That was until she checked out other high-end android and windows phone devices.
Iphone5 is not even on her list now.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Winnow »

miir wrote:
When she comes out of the underground, her iphone has a difficult time reconnecting to the cellular network without doing a soft reset. This issue has been chronic over 3 different iphones. The same thing happened on mine on a different carrier.

Also, dropped calls, poor call quality.

Corrupt databases requiring a OS reload.

Frequent app freezes/crashes.


My wife loved her iphone.
She thought it was the greatest device ever made.
At the beginning of the summer she had decided that she was going to get an iphone 5 when it comes out.
That was until she checked out other high-end android and windows phone devices.
Iphone5 is not even on her list now.
All those appear to be carrier related. I was talking about something in the iOS that didn't work. My iPhone switches between wifi and the carrier with no issues and no dropped calls. I can see not wanting the iPhone if your service provider sucks in your area for it.

App freezes and crashes I would blame on the sub zero temperatures that the phone must endure up there.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Canelek »

:lol:

There should be caribou fur iPhone cozies available from amazon.ca. :)
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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"Carrier related" is the same excuse they tried to use twice at the Apple store.
When they swapped her 3S the first time, it worked great for about 8 months. It still took close to a minute for the signal to re-establish but she rarely had to do a soft reset. When she upgraded to a 4, the exact same thing started happening again. So after 3 trips to the Apple Store, they finally swapped it for a new one. It was fine for about 10 months but now the same shit is happening again.
I use a different carrier than her (she's on Telus, I'm on Rogers) and pretty much the same shit would happen with mine... albeit with less frequency.

There should be caribou fur iPhone cozies available from amazon.ca
The average temp (day/night) last month in Toronto was 26° .
There were a number of days over 35°.

That's 79 and 95 in american degrees.
Unlike Arizona, Toronto can get quite humid. When factoring in the humidex, those hot days felt like the low to mid 40s... that's 110+ in american
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Boogahz »

Carriers can share towers and such. I can't even use a mobile at my home because the towers are set up high and I am at the bottom of the valley.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Winnow »

miir wrote:
That's 79 and 95 in american degrees.
Unlike Arizona, Toronto can get quite humid.
That's chilly.

Here's the next two day forecast for Phoenix metro area:

112/89 (44.4ºC)
112/88 (sometimes it never drops below 90 even at night)

Toronto

23 (that's 73 real degrees which is a cool day in the middle of winter here)...so your humidity is worth almost +40 F?)
26

While Arizona's humidity isn't zero, it's humid this time of year which is Monsoon season (late July through August) Do I get to add some degrees to the 112 due to humidity too? Humidity sucks. We definitely don't get as sweaty as you (and most of the East coast and Florida) I prefer not having my clothes drenched in sweat while being outside.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Aslanna »

Monsoon in Arizona? Pull the other one!
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by miir »

Today was actually quite cool...
Humidity plays a huge factor in how hot it feels... When I go to Vegas, I don't find the 40+ degree heat uncomfortable at all... But trying to do anything that's slightly physical (like mowing the lawn) in 30 degree heat with 40-60% humidity is just brutal.



And Boog, its not a problem of just losing signal. Its a problem with the phone antenna not initializing properly after it loses signal. it happens frequently with Blackberries at a few of our sites
Last edited by miir on August 10, 2012, 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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Aslanna wrote:Monsoon in Arizona? Pull the other one!
Here's the scoop!
In Arizona, as in other regions of the world including India and Thailand, we experience a monsoon, a season of high temperatures, high winds, and high moisture, resulting in potentially deadly weather.
Arizona is exotic like India and Thailand!
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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Aside from Arkansas, I had never seen such gnarly weather until I was driving to Flagstaff, AZ. Truly impressive rainfall and hail volume and rate!
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Animalor »

I have an iPhone on Telus from work that I brought with me on vacation (if I'm going to be supporting them, might as well learn it inside and out). I too get the occasional problem where it will just stop communicating with any network (WiFi or Cellular) and I have to flip airplane mode on and off again for it to start responding again.

Nothing to the extent that Miir's wife has encountered but still annoying.

I'm going to be supporting a lot of people soon (~40) and some (30-40%) of them have never used an iOS device before and getting their first experience with it using iOS 5. Let's see how truly intuitive it is..
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Winnow »

I spent 4+ hours watching NASA Mars Curiosity new conference coverage this past week.

The panels included:

Allen Chen, Flight Dynamics & Operations Lead, JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Gavin Mendeck, EDL (Entry Descent and Landing), Johnson Space Center
Devin Kipp, EDL, JPL
Steve Sell, EDL, JPL
Jody Davis, EDL, Langley Research Center
Ben Cichy, Senior Software Engineer, NASA
Mike Watkins, Mission Manager, MSL (Mars Science Laboratory)
Mike Malin, Principal Investigator for MARDI and Mastcam, Malin Space Science Systems
Dawn Sumner, Long-Term Planning Lead, UC Davis
Andy Mishkin, Integrated Planning & Execution Team Chief, JPL
Doug Ellison, Visualization Producer, JPL
Jennifer Trosper, Mission Manager, JPL
Justin Maki, Imaging Scientist, JPL
John Grotzinger, Project Scientist, Caltech
Don Hassler, Principal Investigator, Radiation Assessment Detector, Southwest Research Institute
Joy Crisp, MSL Deputy Project Scientist, JPL

It's a very intelligent group of people. They aren't afraid of any OS. They are using some ancient OS on Mars Curiosity. They are responsible for communications, software updates, etc. After 4 hours of listening in awe as they explained various details of the mission, I saw about eight iPhones and zero Android phones. It wasn't hard to spot them, they waved them in the air, mentioned them by name, and used them as examples when comparing processor power, memory capacities, image resolutions, etc to the equipment on Curiosity. Considering how critical staying in contact is for team members, I doubt they'd put up with constant lost signals.

If these absolute nerdbags of awesomeness are using iPhones, it kind of tells you something. Be it genius or moron, iOS is the overall best solution.

edit

Image
A dust storm blowing across parts of the Valley should last for another hour, according to the National Weather Service in Phoenix. The blowing dust closed down State Route 347 at Riggs Road, west of Sun Lakes, the Arizona Department of Transportation reported.
Speaking of Monsoons, this picture was taken in Chandler today, the city I reside in.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by miir »

I saw about eight iPhones and zero Android phones. It wasn't hard to spot them, they waved them in the air, mentioned them by name, and used them as examples when comparing processor power, memory capacities, image resolutions, etc to the equipment on Curiosity.

If these absolute nerdbags of awesomeness are using iPhones, it kind of tells you something.
It tells me that Apple is paying NASA $70m+ for product placement.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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miir wrote:
I saw about eight iPhones and zero Android phones. It wasn't hard to spot them, they waved them in the air, mentioned them by name, and used them as examples when comparing processor power, memory capacities, image resolutions, etc to the equipment on Curiosity.

If these absolute nerdbags of awesomeness are using iPhones, it kind of tells you something.
It tells me that Apple is paying NASA $70m+ for product placement.
Also tells me product placement is way more effective on the defective.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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miir wrote:
I saw about eight iPhones and zero Android phones. It wasn't hard to spot them, they waved them in the air, mentioned them by name, and used them as examples when comparing processor power, memory capacities, image resolutions, etc to the equipment on Curiosity.

If these absolute nerdbags of awesomeness are using iPhones, it kind of tells you something.
It tells me that Apple is paying NASA $70m+ for product placement.
That, or they are all ad-drones, like folks here in USAdia.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Winnow »

There is no ad placement on government funded NASA missions. Look around any of the press conferences. Zero ads. United States Citizens pay for them. Something any American should be proud of even though our Obama lead government chooses to continue to reduce funding through 2017.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Siji »

"It just works." is reflective of my confidence that any app I use isn't going to crash. That any app I find on the app store is going to be legit and not crash my phone. I'm not sure what people expect from their cell phones, but everything I use mine for (exercising, gps/driving, games, video, web, skype, etc) "just works". That seems a pretty good thing to me. I'm constantly finding new ways to use it, and they always work. I don't have that confidence in Android apps.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had no problems with my iPhones. There's not much it can't do, and what it does do it does well. I can't really ask for more.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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Siji wrote:"It just works." is reflective of my confidence that any app I use isn't going to crash. That any app I find on the app store is going to be legit and not crash my phone. I'm not sure what people expect from their cell phones, but everything I use mine for (exercising, gps/driving, games, video, web, skype, etc) "just works". That seems a pretty good thing to me. I'm constantly finding new ways to use it, and they always work. I don't have that confidence in Android apps.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had no problems with my iPhones. There's not much it can't do, and what it does do it does well. I can't really ask for more.
Can you wifi tether for free?

But seriously, I would say the same as above for my Android. And for the same kinda reasons that I have been able to use Windows 95 through 7 w/o much in the way of hassles...

But I still think iPhones are shit as phones, either that or everyone in Australia with one just has really really bad luck with reception.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by miir »

Siji wrote:"It just works." is reflective of my confidence that any app I use isn't going to crash. That any app I find on the app store is going to be legit and not crash my phone. I'm not sure what people expect from their cell phones, but everything I use mine for (exercising, gps/driving, games, video, web, skype, etc) "just works". That seems a pretty good thing to me. I'm constantly finding new ways to use it, and they always work. I don't have that confidence in Android apps.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had no problems with my iPhones. There's not much it can't do, and what it does do it does well. I can't really ask for more.
Hey check this out!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/ ... data-dive/
http://gizmodo.com/5923545/ios-and-mac- ... re-updates


In my experience, iOS app crashes were slightly more frequent than WP7 app crashes. Not by a large margin, but definitely noticeable. And it's usually with super common apps like twitter, imdb, facebook and cbc.
Most of the guys I work with use android device (Galaxy 3, Note, One X) and when I asked them about app crashes they siad they were pretty uncommon.

Out of curiosity, which Android phone(s) have you used?
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by miir »

Zaelath wrote: And for the same kinda reasons that I have been able to use Windows 95 through 7 w/o much in the way of hassles...
A guy I work with was singing the praises of his macbook... trying to justify the price he overpaid for it.
His best justification was that "It just works... it doesn't crash". Then I tried to remember the last time my home PC crashed...
I couldn't.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Boogahz »

One of my home PC's crashed over the weekend, and it was due to a kitten switching off a power strip behind the desk. Doesn't Apple use all feline related names for their OS's? hmmm
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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my iMac never crashes. I don't use it much but it never crashes. My PC crashes very seldom but does crash like once every 3-4 weeks.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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I don't think I've had a single crash with my new system yet and that's been a few months. I can't remember the last time my computer at work running with XP crashed. Most crashes usually are due to hardware going bad, bad software and/or drivers, or user error and not really the OSs fault other than perhaps it could handle some of those a bit more gracefully.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Funkmasterr »

miir wrote:
Siji wrote:"It just works." is reflective of my confidence that any app I use isn't going to crash. That any app I find on the app store is going to be legit and not crash my phone. I'm not sure what people expect from their cell phones, but everything I use mine for (exercising, gps/driving, games, video, web, skype, etc) "just works". That seems a pretty good thing to me. I'm constantly finding new ways to use it, and they always work. I don't have that confidence in Android apps.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had no problems with my iPhones. There's not much it can't do, and what it does do it does well. I can't really ask for more.
Hey check this out!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/ ... data-dive/
http://gizmodo.com/5923545/ios-and-mac- ... re-updates


In my experience, iOS app crashes were slightly more frequent than WP7 app crashes. Not by a large margin, but definitely noticeable. And it's usually with super common apps like twitter, imdb, facebook and cbc.
Most of the guys I work with use android device (Galaxy 3, Note, One X) and when I asked them about app crashes they siad they were pretty uncommon.

Out of curiosity, which Android phone(s) have you used?
I very rarely have a app crash on my iPhone, and when I do it restarts the app and opens it so fast again I hardly even notice. And I've never had reception issues, I actually get better reception than a lot of people I've talked to about it. shrug.
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

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http://gizmodo.com/5933636/an-openly-bi ... hone-lover
An Openly Biased Review of Android Jelly Bean by an iPhone Lover

I've never liked Android. It's an opinion born out of ignorance and bias: The iPhone is the only smartphone I've ever owned. I love it, and I think Android is generally an inferior mess. I'm OK with that. But wow, Jelly Bean: the greatest version of Android ever, cold-blooded Apple-killa. Thousands upon thousands of man-hours from one of the largest collections of smart people on the planet, explicitly devoted to winning over jerks like me. Shouldn't that be enough? I gave Jelly Bean an open channel into my heart, using it as my only phone for nearly a month. How'd it do?

Android 4.1, otherwise known as Jelly Bean, is meant to (finally) sweeten Google's mobile software so that it better resembles the grace of iOS. Better resembles, and maybe even beats entirely. The update's two most important features—Project Butter and Google Now—overhaul the way you talk to and feel your Android. They're clear attempts to slay Siri and play catch up with the absolutely flawless touchscreen fluidity of an iPhone. And that's perfect, on paper, because the two worst things about Android are its relative sloppiness and the expertise needed to use it. It's been a first versus third world divide.
Project Butter

As much as Android diehards are loathe to admit it, superficial matters. Superficial is why Apple continues to make the best smartphone in the history of the cold little things. Superficial is what you're looking at, with your eyes, almost every single day of your life. Superficial is what's going to stimulate the important sensitive zapping parts of your brain. Superficial is why Apple put so much weight (and reaped so much triumph) from something called Retina Display. Looks matter when you're constantly looking, and Android's ugly duckling software has been a fundamental hindrance since its inception. Superficial is why the iPhone is more enjoyable, on a both a gut-level and the more cerebral planes. It's been a sad gap for Google.

Not anymore. For years now, Android phones and tablets have tended toward being jittery, laggy, and jumbled. Swiping between cluttered screens earned you stutters and slips; even the simplest Google Map pinch made many phones cough. This was awful, and given the state of the art, bizarre. From its birth, the iPhone was able to slide things around on its screen like butter. It required of Google an entire aesthetic Manhattan Project, Project Butter, to get Android to where the iPhone has been all along. Google engineers labored to put a phone's guts in perfect sync with its screen, and ramp up the way a handset's processors render the menus we finger.

The bottom line is this: I can say, for the first time in my life, Android isn't ugly. In fact, it's rather pretty. Android is smooth—incredibly smooth. As smooth as, yes, my iPhone. The work Google has put into unclogging the interfaces and making pixels move at the exact same rate you touch them—a perfect 60 frames per second—is profound. It's as if there are actual little rainbow gems and buttons under your fingertips.

This is a superficial boost, but it's not cosmetic. Building a phone that responds the instant you touch it makes it exponentially more functional—it makes you want to use it. And given that our phones are tiny pedestrian pocket computer tools, being happy while we use them is a great thing. Tools shouldn't feel like tools. With Jelly Bean and Project Butter, Android feels less like a wrench and more like a conductor's wand.

Making everything buttery and luscious pays off, because Android has never given you so many worthwhile things to prod and rub. The beautification efforts that started with Ice Cream Sandwich are consummated with Jelly Bean—Android's base no longer looks like the drunken hookup impregnation of GeoCities by Tron, but has taken on an aesthetic of panels, lights, and three dimensionality that's almost as uniquely Google as Metro is Microsoft's and iOS is Apple's. Almost: There's still a whiff of generic computing as you poke around—particularly when it comes to 3rd party apps, which still tend to be ugly thanks to Google's lax software policies. It's jarring when you're used to Apple's fascistically enforced aesthetics. If you are acclimated to an iPhone, apps for Android can still make your head feel like splitting. But the daily grind is at long last more than palatable.

Google Now

Within the OS itself, Android makes clear functional leaps. Pull-down notifications are more informative than ever before, giving you an instant look at which apps have updated, how far along your Facebook photo uploads are, and that your GPS is currently looking for a satellite lock. Each notification can be swiped away, frictionless-ly, to make room for what you'd like to hold onto. My iPhone's notification pane seems bare by comparison, merely a list. But touches like new notifications are a garnish. Google Now is the most philosophically important shift in the history of Android.

On the face of it, Google wants to make Siri out to be a plain Jane. Google Now whirls natural language speech queries and general search into one beautifully designed, ostensibly powerful hub—and it is beautiful, the perfect exemplar of Jelly Bean chic. Instead of a series of searches—thai food menu, dark knight tickets, etc—resulting in a big text vomit, you get wonderfully graphic, highly readable, thoroughly helpful cards, which pull together your location and habits. It thinks for you, providing information cues even when you haven't ask for them. Google Now is supposed to be as smart as you—maybe even smarter. This isn't search, it's tell.

What's the weather in Kazakhstan?"

But in practice it just doesn't work out. Google Now trumps Siri in terms of speech recognition and presentation, sure, but that's not much of a fight: Siri is shit. Google Now is shit with a ribbon. When Google Now works—Who's the President of Israel?, followed by a voice answer and portrait with more information—it's truly impressive. But aside from these unlikely test scenarios, these fun demos, Now never shines as a life-changer. Where's all the creepy-smart magic Google showed off this summer? Google promised that Now would give you "just the right information at just the right time, and all of it happens automatically." Ambitious. But absent.

At very, very few points did my Galaxy Nexus perk up of its own volition and tell me to avoid traffic. At no point did it show me the menu of a restaurant I searched for. At no point did it ever warn me it was going to rain, or prompt me with better directions to a meeting. It never felt smarter than me, better than me, or in any way intelligent. It just doesn't do anything as advertised, and unless you're a daily jetsetter with a sports score addiction, you probably won't know it's there. That's either broken or deceptive on Google's part, depending which way your sympathy swings. The search results are more beautiful than ever, sure, in terms of formatting. But asking the names of presidents and canyon depth with my voice and getting a formatted card in return isn't significantly better than just looking the damn stuff up with any number of better-designed iPhone apps.

And so Android, despite its newest polish, is profoundly confused. Google poured money and effort into matching the iPhone's grace and surpassing its intelligence, but it still feeds into the same dubious Android ethos of the past half-decade: your phone should be messed around with. And that's still a giant appy pain in the ass: Why, in the name of Sergey Brin's cyborg face, does Android not give you a screen alert when you receive a text? And what is the solution to this gaping functional crevasse? Downloading a third-party app. How could that possibly be construed as better than a phone working well out of the box? Android zealots beam about not being spoon-fed tech like iPhone holders; they cherish the ability to tinker with their phones, to swap ROMs, to splatter apps and widgets. And with Jelly Bean, they'll be able to do it better than they ever have before. They'll be able to do it with the software responsiveness and an attention to design detail everyone deserves. But Jelly Bean is a simultaneous declaration that users don't know best, and that a top-down makeover and information IV is a good thing. Project Butter intervened to make Android look and feel good. Google Now serves you data about your life without you asking for it. Jelly Bean tacitly admits you should be fed a diet of technology.

"Give me directions to Mexico City."

The entire conceit of Jelly Bean is a phone that's better without you messing with it. And this is dead on, aligned with an iPhone. A phone should be beautiful when you turn it on for the first time. A phone shouldn't just be intuitive on its own, it should have intuition of its own—it should know what's best and right for you without you having to decide. This is antithetical to the DIY/hacker/dimly-lit workbench mentality Android has used to attract tech's most virulent nerds, who think the solution to bad software is using more software. Jelly Bean steers toward an awkward and tenuous inbetween, and if Google's going to slowly shift toward a Phone-Knows-Best attitude, I'll continue to reside in the iPhone's perfect, topiary-filled dictatorship. Because my phone should know best. It should be a tool that makes me smarter than I could ever be on my own, not some pixel erector set. Apple demands this, Google laments it.

And that's just not enough to jump ship if you've been spoiled by Apple. Jelly Bean applied a powder coat of loveliness, overdue speed, and helpful tech mothering to the user experience, but doesn't change it fundamentally. The sprawl of unruly widgets, of over-information, of inexplicably absent features—that's all there. It just looks nice and moves better. Google Now is a quiet failure, Project Butter is a lush success, and so Jelly Bean is a strained schizoid: Google knows Apple's spoon-fed model is virtuous. Jelly Bean didn't make it work yet. The iPhone's been boasting it since 2007. And so Google is posing a massive dilemma to both itself and its zealots: will Android be the rough platform of free-thinking hackers and customization hawks, or a verdant valley of other people's good idea? It can't be both, and harms itself in the process. Jelly Bean, the best Android ever, is still an operating system in crisis.
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Aslanna
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Re: Microsoft 7/8 best alternative to IOS

Post by Aslanna »

Canelek wrote:I can get Win8 via my MSDN subscription, but I am fine with Win7. No need to dumb an OS down any more than 7 is.
Question on the MSDN keys. I too apparently have a MSDN subscription through work (not sure why!) so I finally went "Genuine" on my version of Windows 7 recently. My MSDN expires the end of 2016 will the OS continue being Genuine or will it revert back to not activated at that point?

Even with being able to get 5 free Windows 8 keys I have no desire to install it!
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