timepilot84

@iPhone User

And I had to send my iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS back a total of 4 times because the case kept cracking. Is Apple a bunch of amateurs, too? AFAIK they never even fixed that issue, the simply abandoned the design, unlike Microsoft.

Pele

@Drago In the past, most IR on PDAs and Phones were primarily intended for communications, via IRDA. The IR transmitters were super weak, so you couldn't use them for remotes at any distance greater than about 5 feet. Sony put in amped up IR transmitters into some of their Clie PDAs for the express purpose of making the devices decent universal remotes. AFAIK, nobody else ever did anything like that. As I recall, the company that was making the universal remote software came out with a high power IR dongle like this one. It sold for about the same price.

@ExpectAFight If you heard that a paint program is being released in 7 months that doesn't include the color yellow, could you say for a fact that you wouldn't buy it? I could. Same difference. Even though the developer states that the color yellow isn't used by a lot of mobile users, and orange is sufficiently close to yellow for their test groups, I still wouldn't support a paint program lacking such a basic feature. It's indicative of a bad engineering or design trade off, and may portend even worse decisions by the developer.

@timotim I'm glad they're relenting on their original stance against C&P. Originally they stated at MIX10 that there would be no copy and paste on WP7S, and that was a conscious decision to omit the functionality. It was said during a presentation, then later confirmed with MS's PR people. Now, the story is that they're going to add it at a later date, which is acceptable. I'd like to think the nastygrams I sent them had something to do with their apparent change of heart...

@AlienSix Not at all. Conceptual Hotlinking is useful for the single use case of a user wanting to search for more information about a specific type of data, or using data in the limited fashion which the developer has foreseen and accomodated. It completely ignores the reality of the use case of online social networking, one of the use cases that is HUGE right now with smartphone users. How do you copy an URL to Twitter? How do you link a picture to a forum? How do you send an Ebay auction to your friend via SMS? This hotlink crap is neccessary but woefully insufficient. Microsoft can go on and on about how their phone OS is going to change how people use the web, but the web will not bow to a few million users with an inept phone OS. Even the tremendous ego of Steve Jobs had to capitulate and bow to the will of the internet as a whole, and add that "bag of hurt" that is copy & paste to his baby.

@eka I concur. It's like releasing a paint program without the color blue. You may never use it. The mass of people might not need it very often. When you do need it, you'll be pissed because it's not there. Whether you use the color blue or not, the program will be universally slammed for it's absence and the incompetence of the company that released it. It WILL lose sales because of this, and get a lot of bad press, and will be slammed by the nerds who people ask for tech recommendations.

@burnblue Well, that would be perfect for sharing data, say for instance RIGHT HERE IN THIS COMMENT. Oh, wait...

The cube was a piece of crap. The lucite cracked. The touch switches would stop working. You couldn't expand it in any way shape or form. Pure overhyped junk.

@cdf74dc9 You have to remember that the Nexus One doesn't have a piece of shit battery in it. If it had the lilliputian piece of crap that the iPhone 3GS, I'm sure it would do much worse than 3 hours of Flash video.