excellent start to the flame war!

not sure about 8, because I immediately updated to 8.1 from 8... There is a way to just use old school local accounts, not tied to MS account in any way. The only downside is that you can't download (even free) Apps on the Microsoft Store until you create/link an account, but you can run any of the Win7 and earlier "Desktop" apps.
(Unless you have Win 8 RT, in which case, sorry you're SOL because it has no Desktop mode)

counter-point: OS X Yosemite broke many things from Mavericks. I still run Mountain Lion on my main Mac though. I don't sync to iCloud either.

I suspect alot of the iphones I see in Beijing are sciphones.

Chinese and other emerging market consumers can get quite alot out of a regular phone; that has always amazed me.

>> ^Diogenes:

heh heh, nice vid...
here in china, the iphone is all the rage - but like the vid implies, people here buy it mostly for the name recognition and 'prestige' ... even when the features don't match up to the latest devices by samsung, htc, etc
although most of these phones and/or their components are made right here, the masses seem less tech savvy than westerners
case in point, i'll be sitting around with chinese friends and everybody's got their smartphones at hand... i'll start doing a comparison of the various handsets, and they'll just stare blankly... go silent for a minute or so, and then blurt out, 'but this is an iphone!' hahaha
right now they're all excited about the iphone 4s, and especially siri - i haven't yet had the heart to tell them that siri doesn't support chinese (in fact, most people don't seem to be aware that siri was available over a year ago, but apple snapped up the company, reworked the app, and launched it with the 4s as something new and revolutionary)
anyway, it's all funny - i'm pleased as pie with my htc... with better camera, vid resolution, memory, processor, screen size, and gps -- zero problems and more fun and free apps than i have time for... as well, my provider gave it to me for free (~us$700) after 10+ years of customer loyalty
only possible gripe would be battery life, but between the recharges i get while driving, sitting at the comp, or even with my portable recharger (us$28), it's never really been much of an issue

heh heh, nice vid...

here in china, the iphone is all the rage - but like the vid implies, people here buy it mostly for the name recognition and 'prestige' ... even when the features don't match up to the latest devices by samsung, htc, etc

although most of these phones and/or their components are made right here, the masses seem less tech savvy than westerners

case in point, i'll be sitting around with chinese friends and everybody's got their smartphones at hand... i'll start doing a comparison of the various handsets, and they'll just stare blankly... go silent for a minute or so, and then blurt out, 'but this is an iphone!' hahaha

right now they're all excited about the iphone 4s, and especially siri - i haven't yet had the heart to tell them that siri doesn't support chinese (in fact, most people don't seem to be aware that siri was available over a year ago, but apple snapped up the company, reworked the app, and launched it with the 4s as something new and revolutionary)

anyway, it's all funny - i'm pleased as pie with my htc... with better camera, vid resolution, memory, processor, screen size, and gps -- zero problems and more fun and free apps than i have time for... as well, my provider gave it to me for free (~us$700) after 10+ years of customer loyalty

only possible gripe would be battery life, but between the recharges i get while driving, sitting at the comp, or even with my portable recharger (us$28), it's never really been much of an issue

Sure. As far as I understand 'open' is that my Android phone has heaps of free apps developed by anyone to mimic a number of Apple ones, that I believe you would have to pay for through Apple and which need formal clearance from Apple before they become available.

I have no idea if that is true, though.

The Amazon Appstore has a free app of the day thing, and one of them was a cool cooking app from Jamie Oliver. He dices an onion like a REAL boss. This dude doesn't do it nearly as well. I wish I could show you guys that specific video but I can't find it online, it's just in the app for my Android phone.

I captured the stream from these two ip cameras ... I think it was 4 frames per second, originaly. don't know which software I used, downloaded some free app from the web

>> ^Raaagh:
I watched 95% and loved it - just the frame rate made me quesy. How did you get the footage from the CCTV?


*promote, cause you deserve another dose of boredom. thanks for not showing up for my roast, you bastards

Hmm, I hadn't thought about the copy/paste thing. On the Droid you can hold down the Shift key and drag your finger over any text you want to copy. It even copies automatically, so no menus are needed. I'm surprised he didn't even mention the built in navigation or voice-to-text features.

Eye Candy: Mostly pointless, but it's important to some people. The animations don't really get in the way, but they can be turned off if desired.

Pinch Zoom: Probably useful, but I mostly operate my phone with one thumb anyway, and the controls are intuitive enough. I don't think it is specifically a patent issue though. Other US phones have it, as does the European version of Droid. There are free apps that use it, and it can be enabled in the map with a little work.

Apps: The store could be better, but you can search it easily enough. I am curious what functionality he is missing from the iPhone apps though.

App Switcher: I could be wrong, but I think it shows the six most recently opened apps. I would like it to show more than six, but there are plenty of free apps that show more if needed.


I never owned an iPhone so I can't really comment on the differences. I hear that Apple isn't playing well with Adobe, so no Flash support for the iPhone. It should be available on just about everything else some time in 2010 (according to Adobe). On the upside, the iPhone does appear to have the most accurate finger tracking of the three phones.

The Nexus does have the fastest cpu so far (that I know of) at ~1Ghz. I wouldn't give up my keyboard for it though. Maybe they can put it to some good use with more support for voice commands and language translation (Droid and Nexus already have some translation... speak to it in english and it will audibly translate to other languages, but it is limited currently). Otherwise it's only good for animations and flash games.

I look forward to the current batch of phones being obsolete by the end of the year. Competition is always a good thing. =)


Notes: Google Goggles is great, and Verizon's network does let you use the 3G internet while talking on the phone, despite what AT&T's commercials state.