__sr__

While the article is written as a rant, which hurts the author's credibility, the points, IMO, are valid.

Did you actually try doing the math? $11 billion divided over 650k employees is roughly $17k which amounts to $75 per day assuming the employee works around 225 days a year which in turn amounts to less than $10 an hour assuming the employee works for 8 hours a day.

On an unrelated note, I am pretty upset that my Samsung ~$1200 TV has ads built into it.

On a lighter note, don’t TVs have ads anyway?

I was burnt by a third party application using mmap over NFS recently. Definitely not fun by any definition of it.

And it gets a SIGSEGV and segfaults.

Those services being tied RIGHT INTO the OS is a huge advantage.

That is a disadvantage to me. I prefer not to keep all my eggs in one basket.

Sorry, reading on a phone. Really didn’t see the responses before responding. It was not my intention to pile on.

Maybe that will kill the trend? I certainly hope so! :-)

You might want to check the reason for the limitation before making such comments. A display can be stretched to the three edges of the phone —- it is the fourth edge that is the problem — as Xiaomi demonstrated with Mi Mix 2. At least some space is needed to house the display driver, camera, sensors etc.

Xiaomi got rid of the forehead entirely by moving everything to the (relatively small) chin on Mi Mix 2. While that is not great for the front facing camera usage since many (most?) apps don’t support 180 degree rotation, I don’t see why the design can’t be flipped. Just build a phone with a reasonable sized forehead. Although I don’t particularly mind the design choice for Galaxy Note 9 or Nokia 7 Plus — a narrow forehead and chin.

Hedging their bets? Since iPhone XS devices are are a rather large risk and they need something to fall back on in case they don’t do well. If they do, we may not see a successor.

iPhone SE was probably a similar bet since a lot of people were complaining about the large iPhone 6/6S — not to mention the Plus variants.

No, you can’t. It doesn’t have Widevine L1.

https://m.gsmarena.com/the_pocophone_f1_cant_stream_hd_video...

The phones work fine out of the box.

Do they? Is there a one touch full device backup solution for Android that doesn’t involve rooting the phone or flashing custom ROM? Is there a way to easily sync my sessages to other devices[1]?

The two billion people do no flash custom ROMs or root their devices. They do not even get sucurity patches on time. But they try to use their device just the way one would use an iPhone — with almost zero customisation. So they end up with a phone which doesn’t do everything it should straight out of the box and is vulnerable for most of its lifetime, for the sake of choices/cusomizability they would never use.

I you are talking about the choice of OEMs, I agree. It is not ideal that Apple is the only iOS vendor[2]. But the benefits, IMO, outweigh the problems.

[1] Messages for web is a recent advancement.

[2] While we are on the subject of multiple OEMs, I’d prefer if OEMs followed the Windows model where they can install a few apps and tweak things a bit, but can’t (do not?) make drastic changes to the OS. I’d prefer to live in a world where I don’t have to worry about whether the Android Phone I am looking at is more vulnerable than the others.

It does — the Pixel 2 XL screen that is. The Samsung manufactured Pixel 2 screen, on the other hand, is pretty good.

You are not the only one.

Can the $320 Pocofone F1 let me watch Netflix in HD? I consider that to be an everyday task.

That is perfectly fine. It always boils down to what you prefer and what fits your workflow. I have no problem with Android in general. It is the grandstanding claims like Androids are better than iPhones at everything that I object to. It is preferable to have more choices than less. I wish the likes of Windows Phone, Ubuntu Touch and BB 10 had survived.

Maybe, but the iPhone camera has never lagged terribly behind the top of the line Androids. But the same time, the so called “top of the line” Androids had other compromises that iPhone usually did not.

An iPhone is usually a well balanced phone. It may not have the best of anything, but is usually right there at the top. And if you want a great camera so badly that you are willing to compromise on everything else, by all means, buy a dedicated digital camera. Similarly, if you want your phone to be so good at playing music that you are fine with the other compromises, you might want to look into a dedicated music player. Smartphones are meant to to generally purpose jack-of-all-trades sort of devices and the iPhone excels at that. If I want a device specialised for a purpose, I’ll buy the just that — not a smartphone.

Android phones have better cameras and match apple in most other hardware metrics

I am sure there is an Android phone out there which has got a better camera, another one that has got better speakers, yet another one with better display and yet another which had got a better build than iPhone. The thing that most people forget is that almost all Android phones have some USPs and in exchange they compromise a lot on something else. Why do you thing the entire Android ecosystem should be treated as a single entity against the iPhone? Show me an Android that does every single thing better (or on par) with iPhone.

My experience has been that iPhones are usually not the absolute best at pretty much anything, but they are usually right up there at the top. Maybe it doesn’t have the absolute best camera, but it certainly has one of the best, and so on. And let’s not even compare the longevity of devices.

And before someone talks about prices, Androids that compete in the same arena as the iPhone cost about the same.

Then there is the app ecosystem. Sure, you have all the big names available on Android. But there are lot of smaller developers with great apps which are missing from Android — simply because of the crappy ecosystem which takes a village to build and support apps for. There are no apps which come close to the likes of OmniFocus, Things etc. And while Google does come up with cutting edge tech like AR, a lot of it is not adopted immediately — if ever — by the third party developers who have to wait for the shiny new version of Android to gain some momentum — something that takes forever in Android land.

So no, it is not just the processor that the iPhone has a clear lead on — it’s the overall experience. I couldn’t care less about the specs as long as the experience is maintained.

Full disclaimer: I am someone who usually carries two phones. This means that given the lack of alternatives, I end up with an Android in addition to my iPhone. And while I like some of the features offered by the individual Android OEMs, I do not consider the ecosystem as a whole to be anywhere near comparable to that of iOS.

if you know what you're doing

That is the key difference. What if I don’t want to be the sysadmin for my phone? What if I don’t want to root my phone? What if I prefer things to just work out of box?

https://youtu.be/0eEG5LVXdKo (start at 2:37)

Because financial sector is run be people who consider engineers a liability[1]. Instead of evolving with time in 80s and 90s as the world moved to modern systems, they clung to their increasingly legacy systems. After all, why would an MBA toting executive from a big bank bother with something as menial as technology? At financial sector firms, Engineers are not meant to be seen or heard. Try proposing a new idea — or a move to a newer system — you’ll be shot down faster than you can say technology — by the same people who have led us from one financial crisis to another in their infinite wisdom.

Most big banks have a bunch of security people whose sole job is to make people’s life hell by spreading as much FUD as possible[2] — that’s what keeps their jobs secure, after all. And they are the only “engineers” who are heard. They make sure that anything new is not adopted till the rest of the world has already started abandoning it.

The primary focus in the technology departments of big banks is to maintain the status quo. New development is rare. New ideas are crushed before they can see the light of the day. As a result, good engineers leave as son as they can and the only ones left behind are the ones who are content living a life of mediocrity — maintaining the status quo.

[1] I know someone who was told something along those lines when they joined a big financial institution as an engineering manager. And not all financial companies work that way. Those who embraced technology reaped the benefits and continue to do so.

[2] I am not suggesting that security is not important. But security people at these institutions take it to a whole different level — to the point where things that should not take more thane a few days end up taking months — if they allow it, that is. Funny how all their objections vanish when someone from upper management asks for the same thing.

And in some cases, the source code is lost.

All Android phones (with notches) have notches in addition to an ugly chin. The lack of other bezels is what made the notch on iPhone X acceptable (to me, at least). The thought of a notch with a chin (or worse, a forehead, or both) is frankly irritating. Xiaomi probably did the best job building a near bezel less phone with their Mix lineup — except for the front camera. If Android phone vendors can’t work an iPhone X like display (no chin), why not just build phones with a narrow forehead and no chin? The forehead could be used for display connections and camera, sensors, speaker etc. Even a Galaxy Note 8 like design (narrow chin and forehead) would be preferable to this madness. Alternatively, they could do what Xiaomi did with Mix lineup.

What version of Android is it running? You probably mean the apps from the Play Store keep getting upgrades. I know for a fact that Samsung tablets from 2013 are not getting new Android updates — haven’t got them in a long time. I know this because I have one in my family. IIRC, the last time it was upgraded was back in 2015 (or maybe 2014, not sure).

Well, there are alternatives like TripCase, Kayak and many others. TripIt just happens to be the one I’ve used for actual trips.

It works well enough for regular IMAP or Exchange accounts, but there is something messed up with Google’s implementation of IMAP which causes the experience to be sub-par. Also, Mail.app doessn’t have anywhere near feature parity with Inbox.

I like the way Inbox handles certain kind emails differently —- e.g. it extracts relevant data from newsletters, tickets, receipts, order confirmations, package tracking emails etc. so they are available at a quick glance. A quick glance tells me that is not the case with Gmail — correct me if I am mistaken.

WorldMate was nice. Another nice alternative — at least as far as apps go — is TripCase.

See my comment about Tripit — and there are other alternatives I haven’t tried.

Yet, sadly, accidental sarcasm occurs alarmingly often... :-)

In all honesty, feel free to use something like Tripit — see my response to the parent.

Alternatively, you can try Tripit[1] which has more features, but there is definitely more friction involved as you either need to grant access to your email account or manually forward emails.

[1] https://www.tripit.com