If Samsung wants to sell me another phone

they will have to reinstate expandable memory as a part of their handset. It looks like they might just do that:

Android Circuit: Samsung Galaxy S7 U-Turn, Apple Suffocates Android, Galaxy Note 5 Defeated

Samsung Revives Memory Card Support

One of the big omissions in Samsung’s high-end devices in 2015 has been the loss of expandable memory. The removal of microSD card support saw a huge backlash from fans of the Galaxy devices – especially Galaxy Note users. Reports from HDBlog.it suggest that those complaints have been heard and microSD is on the way back in 2016. Forbes’ Jay McGregor:

Samsung of late has more a pragmatism to it. It’s willing to shun convention in order to secure sales, which it showed by bringing forward the release of the Note 5 and the (rumoured) early release of the S7. It’s likely that Samsung has had serious discussions about a possible return of the microSD slot in its flagship line. Even the notorious leakster, Evan Blass, predicted back in August that the Korean company could make an about-face for a future Samsung flagship.

I also thought this was a fun quote about Apple vs. Samsung:

Unlike the early days of the smartphone era, the current crop of smartphones have a relatively fixed hardware platform. Your flagship devices are going to offer a broadly similar feature set, from camera output and screen displays, to chipset benchmarks and battery performance. There will naturally be areas where phone ‘A’ is slightly better than phone ‘B’ but for everyday use the sweet spot of current smartphone technology covers the vast majority of manufacturers’ main devices.

The catch is not in building a cutting-edge smartphone, it’s making a cutting-edge smartphone that people believe is a cutting-edge smartphone that they want to buy. This is Apple’s core strength. Samsung can parade the technology for the Galaxy range, but the knee-jerk reaction is that it has all been seen before in the iPhone… even if the technology itself debuted in a Samsung handset.

UPDATE, 12/5/15: According to new rumours, the microSD capability of an S7 may be in doubt.

I liked this, both in terms of Tim Cook himself and the author of this article

Tim Cook Is Important Because Firsts Are Important

In 2014, it is still news when Tim Cook of Apple becomes the first chief executive of a Fortune 1000 company to publicly say that he is gay. Some day, an announcement like that probably will not be newsworthy, and when that happens, it will largely be because it was news today.

Hahahahahaha

I saw it at Forbes--Siri Fails to Understand Scottish Accent in Hilarious Video

Thanks to Bill Hart for sharing it on Facebook. Oh, and there is a generous use of the 'f' word should you be easily offended (or watching this at work, assuming you can get Facebook at work. Use headphones. Then invite the ones who will love this to see.)

Of course, there are Android applications that do this sort of thing, too, and I suspect, they, too, would find the accent an impediment. But still....

Where to begin?

I have never owned an Apple product. That being said, I recognise that Steve Jobs was a visionary who changed my world, and I was very sorry to hear that he had died at the relatively young age of 56. The first computers I learned in school on were Apple IIcs and TRS-80s (the latter came from Radio Shack).

Over the years, as he revolutionised the tech industry with products whose features everyone tried to imitate, he made being a tech geek actually seem cool, a far cry from when I was programming on an Atari in high school.

He did so with a characteristic sense of humour. You can see that in this timeline produced by CNN:



World reacts to the death of Steve Jobs

Then there's the lovely tribute to him using a very simple redesign of the Apple logo.

So thank you, to the man who brought us Pixar movies and portable tech, who put an entire music library in our pockets and made our phones smart. RIP.

PS Just so things don't get too grim, I found this on a tribute to Jobs. It's the first Pixar film, the one that is the reason for the hopping lamp logo. It's deceptively simple in design, like many Apple products (with a lot of work on the back end to make it so).

Why is it a big surprise

that Apple and Google can track you on a GPS phone? What did they think GPS was for, just so they could play FourSquare? Hello, people, that was a no-brainer, as is the fact that once you have data, the police and other law enforcement authorities can get a warrant for the records. What do people think all those little applications do, and if the applications can keep track of where you are, surely the big honchos can, too, right?

Gee. Having just purchased a GPS phone, I knew this going in, before the wave of stories and righteous indignation of users started. I bought it knowing my location could be pinpointed and tracked. It's a no-brainer, and I don't know why people think it needs a big disclosure statement from the companies. Oh. Right. We have to put warnings that coffee may be hot on cups for stupid people, too. Don't get me wrong, disclosure is great. But these are companies who make money by amassing information, and I don't see how people can be so naïve as to believe that they won't do anything with it. Do people trust corporate America more than their government?

Okay, I'm obviously cranky. I'm going to go nap.

Can you tell I'm a little biased?

Here's a MacIntosh rant that is hilarious. Favourite line: 'Mac killed my inner child.'



Thanks to YKWIA for showing it to me.