Posted on 08/23/2010 4:53:52 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Changing the definition to fit your needs? Opera Mini allows you to browse the web, thus the term web browser is fitting. The issue of Opera using a proxy is irrelevant. By this logic, most corporate Blackberry users don't have web browsers because they go through the BB Enterprise Server, which has a function called MDS Connection Service. That service can do much of what the Opera proxies do, including format conversion for the Blackberry Browser. That Opera can't faithfully live-render full standards such as HTML5 and CSS, interact using AJAX or pass the ACID test is irrelevant, since a lot of web browsers can't do that either. Opera Mini/Mobile isn't just a web browser, it's a web-browsing system that can speed up your low-bandwidth browsing immensely and help keep you under your data plan's cap.
I'll agree if you want to say the iPhone has no non-WebKit integrally standards-compliant web browser. That is a limitation. Then again, WebKit is by far the best standards-compliant platform for web browing on mobiles, so you aren't missing anything.
Just a suggestion, but you can download Apple's developer kit for iPhone/iPad for free, then you can create applications of your very own and can then install them on your very own iPhone, you just can't install them on my iPhone without Apples blessing.
You can be free at last.
That is absolutely true, except now, with the sophisticated hackers in play, your freedom is limited whether you want to admit or not. Personally I am satisfied with Apple's attempt to keep their platforms as free of malware/spyware/viri, as possible.
I have never had an Apple product down because someone else broke it.
At the risk of being flamed, there’s the massive cost of installing and maintaining the physical infrastructure of a network.
At this late date, no wireless provider has a total US footprint, let alone a total North American footprint.
This isn’t oil, where it was in the ground and all you really have to do is get it out, and where most of your infrastructure has been amortized over the last 40 or 50 years.
I’m not a Comcast customer, but I have had to analyze their company. To install the fiber, the modems, and the cabling necessary to meet the needs of a city of 100,000 people takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 600 miles of installation cabling of some sort. Cost = $1,000,000/mile and I can’t remember what the maintenance is on it (much lower, but still there).
Wireless has similar issues around number of nodes needed to handle exponential (not geometric) traffic increases.
You can’t do that and return a profit by giving it away.
Unfortunately, yes.
What? Did you know that there were over 80 MILLION smartphones sold in 2006?
By smartphone I meant more than a phone with some PDA functionality and a barely-functioning web browser. I bought my first one of those, Palm-based, in 2003. What an expensive hunk of junk. I'm talking about these mobile computers we're walking around with these days, the ones copying the iPhone. Most of what you used to call a smartphone has been downgraded. For example, the LG enV Touch has more features than that old Palm phone, even a better web browser and GPS navigation, and it's just considered a "multimedia phone" after the iPhone.
Also consider that we consider a modern smartphone to be a heavily Internet-enabled device. The iPhone, while having a small percent of the market, was responsible for 50% of the smartphone Internet traffic in 2009. People just weren't online as much before the iPhone.
Apple's NEVER been a leader in smartphones. Ever. And never exploded the market.
Apple will never be a leader by number of sales because Apple is one company on one carrier per market vs. many companies on all carriers. Added is the fact that Apple doesn't sell in the low-end smartphone market, which is where the volume is, especially considering much of the competition is available for free or with two-for-one deals. Apple is THE leader in pointing the direction phones needed to go. That's why Android, and soon Windows Phone 7, are copying.
That's why Nokia and RIM are wondering what to do as they see their marketshare eaten up by the iPhone and its copycat. Look at your own numbers and realize that Symbian had two-thirds of the worldwide market before the iPhone. Windows had a third of the US market before the iPhone, and now it's much less than the iPhone and continuing to slide, despite being available on more carriers and on much cheaper phones.
Am I really free - and are you really free - if we need Apple to approve a transaction between us?
Good time for you to be discussing those numbers, just after some relatively popular Android phones come out and just before the immensely popular iPhone 4 gets put into the calculations. Let's talk next Q.
Sorry, SPB Mobile Shell and HTC Touch UI both pre-date the iPhone UI. Apple was - at best - 3rd to market with a "touch only" metaphor.
Sucked and sucked. Until iOS, no phone (except the original IBM one) had a system designed up for touch, and it showed. Even WinMo's current touch is a half-hearted retrofit.
A very US-centric view! Overseas - especially in Asia - it's been commonplace for a decade to buy your phone from a phone market and then WALK A BLOCK DOWN THE STREET
Good point. BTW, that phone market, real or cheap copy phones?
This is the TYPICAL model, but because US consumers love to "pay lower prices", the US carriers always subsidized your price to lock you in to the phone and get you to buy it for lower price.
Same in Europe.
Sorry, that's not the way it is? Then I guess you're statement is a bit "zealous", isn't it?
Apple business model, best attempt to copy the Apple UI, copy of the Apple model of application distribution.
THAT is also the big market that is swallowing up Android like crazy. Hundreds of new Android-based devices are available in China alone...
That might just save Android then.
And it's not fragmenting like so many talk about - it's called freedom and innovation, trying new things to see what works.
The biggest thing holding desktop Linux back is the fragmentation. With freedom and innovation comes some downsides for the user in a well-researched, cohesive, universal interface and total experience. Funny you refer to Android as innovation when it's just Linux with a Java VM designed to copy the iPhone. I've been using it for a while, and I haven't found one innovative thing about it.
Oh yeah, forgot that didn't you, I am an Android user.
Can LEOS obtain information from Cell Phones independent of Carriers?
If they can , so can Google.
Given current pending issues with Google, I don’t trust anything google offers in products or software.
LEOs could issue a warrant to the carrier to get information on what was sent to and from your phone, and who called you. They can do that for any phone line, any time.
About accessing the phone, that’s an interesting question! If you own the phone, they would have to get a warrant to examine it. But if it’s a subsidized phone, the question is do you own it outright until the 2 year or whatever contract is up? If yes, then the LEO still has to get a warrant to access your cell phone. If no, then they could - I think - just get a warrant with your carrier and access your phone.
Interesting question!
I am not an Apple devotee.
My first PC was an 088 at work.
At Home I had a MAC 11ci. When I discovered how limited it was due to being a closed system, I switched to what was then known as IBM PC’s.
I just don’t trust Google.
It’s a Norcal liberal outfit.
Never said you were an Apple devotee, and I don’t think I even implied that... I was addressing the question of whether or not police could access your phones. That is what you asked, right?
If it’s your phone, then the LEO must get a warrant for YOUR phone, and cannot go through Google or Samsung or Verizon. If you don’t own the phone, then the LEO would need a warrant for the actual owner (typically the carrier, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) to access the phone.
But since Google doesn’t own the phone at all, nor the operating system (it’s been GPL’d - open sourced) I don’t think an LEO serving a warrant on Google to access your Android phone would do anything. They couldn’t access the data stream (that’s the carrier), and they could not access the phone (that’s the carrier or you, depending upon who owns it).
It would be like the LEO wanting to search your car, and issuing a warrant to Ford or Honda. They have nothing to do with it - the warrant either goes to you or the registered, legal owner. Not the maker of the vehicle.
As far as a NorCal liberal outfit, Apple fits that mold too...;) Of course, MOST companies in the Bay area fit that mold!
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