Interesting, at .6" it takes the touchscreen prize! 50% thicker than the Moto Q, but not bad.
The touch screen is the most complexity, which is the point of my original post that you refuted with screen thickness. The wireless radio, battery, input knobs are a given.
What you are doing is exaggerating everything in your favor.
The touchscreen is not the most complex item in the phone. That's your totally unsupported assertion.
Now, it's up to you to prove that, with some links.
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?
These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.
I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.
Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.
This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.
Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.
And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
You are, again, making unsupported assertions.
It's up to you now, to show they are true ofr not. These are technical matters that can be proven. Go to the maunfacturers site and find the power draw required for various size and types of screens, resistive, and capacitive. Then get back to us.
Also remember than once a cpu is in the device, programs controll it functions. This adds no more complexity in the sense that you are claiming.
The tangent, as you call it, does not demonstrate that touch screen devices must be at least 36% thicker, though it is nice that you are using the correct figure for the units mentioned now. It simply shows that the devices that have been found, have those thicknesses. Not that the companies have tried to get them to be thinner. Most companies won't bother putting a touchscreen on a model that is too simple to make proper use of the screen. That is why they tend to be that much thicker. The thinnest one found is also thinner than a number of models without the screen. I'm not sure how you would like to explain that.
The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.
Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.
If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.
So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?
Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?
Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.
This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.
He said buy INTO it. Meaning becoming one of the partners.
So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?
No. You misunderstood. There's two falsehoods you've conflated.
1) 'Fair use' does not mean you can copy a whole DVD. That is not what 'Fair use' allows. Fair use allows you to copy non-substantial parts. 'Fair use' gets dropped in to these conversations all the time and it's totally irrelevant. Please look up the law before using it again.
2) When you're 'ripping a DVD' you aren't copying the DVD in it's entirety, ie. you're not creating an exact bit-by-bit copy. You're de-crypting the CSS and creating 'copy' in name alone. The process of doing so is against the law, not that you'll ever get pulled up on it.
Conflating a misunderstanding of what 'Fair use' allows you and a law that is unenforceable at the consumer level (DMCA/EUCD) does not mean that Apple has a viable business model. Far from it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.
It does not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?
I just picked one battle. There are many.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??
Come on, think it through.
Do you think Apple could rely on 3rd parties and illegal practices as a business model?
No. They'd want ripping direct in iTunes and for it to be legal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.
Digital downloads is currently the only legal way to get copyrighted material onto an iPod.
It's tiny. Compare the music download market to ripping from a CD. How many ripped songs have you on your iPod compared with those bought on iTMS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).
I am in the UK. The Fair Dealing law in the UK dates back to 1709. The US Fair Use law is essentially derivative of that.
The Sony VCR case in the US established a legal precedent for vcrs and TV. It did not establish a legal precedent for DVD ripping. That is the argument the studios are now having. DVD ripping software has only one purpose, that of infringement of copyright material. VCRs have other purposes.
Technology moves faster than the laws and that's why some things are still illegal an the law is an ass.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.
The law, convenience, space, time, lack of legal software to do it....
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.
The same wasn't true with MP3s as music has an established fair use and the ripping thereof is not against the law. It's also a whole order of magnitude smaller than video. Video is perhaps there for the early adopters and technologically savvy but it's not there for the mainstream. It's only just scratching the surface.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.
Sure, but he's not stupid and he's not bigger than Hollywood or beyond the law. He knows he can't ship DVD ripping software and he knows it's going to be a long time before it's anywhere near as viable as music is hence the quote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minderbinder
You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.
So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?
Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?
Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.
UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)
Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.
I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign
It does not.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.
Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.
UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)
Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.
I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.
That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.
If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.
I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.
I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.
Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.
I side with fair use.
Yes, it trumps fair use. Congress is allowed to write laws that modify copyright, trademark, and patent law almost any way they see fit. That's a good thing, and a bad thing.
The problem is that electronic, and computer technologies have gotten way ahead of the original concept of what copyright, trademark, and fair use originally meant.
It was never meant that people could make and distribute copies of works as they wanted to.
that was why the library system was established. To allow people who couldn't afford, or didn't want to spend money to see, and read, works that were under copyright. Libraries would aquire, or sometimes be given, a few copies of a work that they would then lend out, in a serial fashion, to these people.
But, even in libraries, most of the works were older, and out of copyright.
today's P2P distribution of copyrighted works would never have been dreamed of as being possible, so a strict sense of copyright protection as companies have developed would never have been understood, possible, or needed.
You can see the problem with people who don't understand that it is the underlying work that is copyrighted, and not the work as a whole, as in the actual physical expression of it in the media itself.
In talking to people I know in the industries, I have always found that they don't care much about people making a backup copy, though they would rather sell another different copy on different media, if people want that. It's their concern that people will make several copies for their friends and thus cut their sales that they worry about.
This is in addition to the vast P2P movement of files, that they understand DRM won't stop.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.
No, wrong. Your Fair Use rights are enshrined in the the 'Fair Use Act' in the USA. In the UK, it's in our Copyright Act which dates back to 1709 and was brought in with the invention of the printing press or something daft like that. That's the kind of stupidness we're up against in the UK.
The EUCD was meant to homogenise various member states' copyright acts, except if you're French. They took it to mean 'do their own thing'.
That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.
If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.
But PalmOS is one of the worst OS's going for running multiple apps on and has severe limitations. That's why Palm took to rewriting it and bought BeOS.
Symbian evolved from Psion EPOC OS, which got a complete rewrite back in the days of the Series 5 and a really terrible UI. They've been gradually bodging it since. The apps though were pretty good. Symbian OS9 and UIQ 3 is another rewrite and it's taking them ages. The 990 was announce almost 2 years ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.
I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.
They're all pretty useless IME which is why I use a ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard. I use QuickOffice. http://www.quickoffice.com/
Apple's phone OS would have to be fantastic for it to lure developers away from other mobile platforms and for them to port apps like QuickOffice or Route66. I think that's one reason why they will use someone else's OS with their own UI.
Comments
Interesting, at .6" it takes the touchscreen prize! 50% thicker than the Moto Q, but not bad.
The touch screen is the most complexity, which is the point of my original post that you refuted with screen thickness. The wireless radio, battery, input knobs are a given.
What you are doing is exaggerating everything in your favor.
The touchscreen is not the most complex item in the phone. That's your totally unsupported assertion.
Now, it's up to you to prove that, with some links.
Interesting
The Wikipedia entry for Symbian says that Symbian is the base OS on top of which various vendors create their user interface layer.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita (Panasonic), Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
I wonder if Apple will try to buy into Symbian?
These user interface platforms include Nokia's S60, which is also used by Lenovo, LG and Samsung.
UIQ Technology's UIQ user interface platform is used in more advanced pen based devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and BenQ.
I wonder if Apple will use one of these existing platforms or will roll their own interface layer on top of Symbian's OS?
Will we see QuickTime for Symbian OS? Quartz? Aqua?
Webkit has already been ported to Nokia's S60 platform.
However S60 also includes support for Real's Helix multimedia platform and Nokia has it's own plans for getting into the music business.
Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.
This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.
Oh yeah, no problem to slap a film onto the screen. You'd think all smartphones would have 'em. But drawing on a screen, the processor having to listen for touch drawings, and increased luminance required to shine through the scuff marks make the device more complex. How's the battery life on the M600i? Maybe they could've added a few more battery millimeters.
And when you write that it "reduces complexity", we are posting on two opposite ideas. It's easier to use a smart phone with a touch screen, yes. But it makes the internal operation of it more complex, more power, and hence, thicker.
This entire tangent demonstrates that touch screen devices are at least 36% thicker than non touch screen devices, and even that with reduced battery to achieve it.
You are, again, making unsupported assertions.
It's up to you now, to show they are true ofr not. These are technical matters that can be proven. Go to the maunfacturers site and find the power draw required for various size and types of screens, resistive, and capacitive. Then get back to us.
Also remember than once a cpu is in the device, programs controll it functions. This adds no more complexity in the sense that you are claiming.
The tangent, as you call it, does not demonstrate that touch screen devices must be at least 36% thicker, though it is nice that you are using the correct figure for the units mentioned now. It simply shows that the devices that have been found, have those thicknesses. Not that the companies have tried to get them to be thinner. Most companies won't bother putting a touchscreen on a model that is too simple to make proper use of the screen. That is why they tend to be that much thicker. The thinnest one found is also thinner than a number of models without the screen. I'm not sure how you would like to explain that.
What you are doing is exaggerating everything in your favor.
The touchscreen is not the most complex item in the phone. That's your totally unsupported assertion.
Now, it's up to you to prove that, with some links.
This all sounds like a really great debate .... in its own thread ... somewhere else.
The technology behind Safari has already been ported to Symbian and runs on Nokia phones so you could at least run the simpler dashboard widgets easily. Some of the widgets however are full OSX Cocoa apps and those would be an awful lot harder to transfer across.
Apple already has written Symbian apps too. On Nokia S60 and Sony Ericsson UIQ phones iSync copies across a Symbian app to handle syncing.
If these aren't clues enough as to what OS an Apple phone would run then I don't know what is.
So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?
Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?
Apple buying Symbian would certainly shake things up, but why would Nokia and friends EVER let that happen? That would be like Apple Records selling Apple Computer the rights to all of the Beatles' songs.
This all points to the fact that Apple probably needs more partnerships than just with Cingular and Moto to give the iPhone the real jump start it would need.
He said buy INTO it. Meaning becoming one of the partners.
This all sounds like a really great debate .... in its own thread ... somewhere else.
No, this debate is as relevant as any other going on here.
He said buy INTO it. Meaning becoming one of the partners.
Ooops, my bad.
No, this debate is as relevant as any other going on here.
Relevant, yes, but also confusing.
So which is it? Before you said "Fair use doesn't cover copying a whole DVD." Now you're saying ripping isn't copying a whole dvd?
No. You misunderstood. There's two falsehoods you've conflated.
1) 'Fair use' does not mean you can copy a whole DVD. That is not what 'Fair use' allows. Fair use allows you to copy non-substantial parts. 'Fair use' gets dropped in to these conversations all the time and it's totally irrelevant. Please look up the law before using it again.
2) When you're 'ripping a DVD' you aren't copying the DVD in it's entirety, ie. you're not creating an exact bit-by-bit copy. You're de-crypting the CSS and creating 'copy' in name alone. The process of doing so is against the law, not that you'll ever get pulled up on it.
Conflating a misunderstanding of what 'Fair use' allows you and a law that is unenforceable at the consumer level (DMCA/EUCD) does not mean that Apple has a viable business model. Far from it.
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.
It does not.
That article is from 2002. And the outcome seems to be the company going bankrupt from the lawsuits, not the studios winning. Has a studio won one of these cases? And if the law supports the studios, why is it an impossible battle? If they are truly breaking the law, shouldn't they be able to win fairly easily and shut down all companies doing this?
I just picked one battle. There are many.
What are you talking about? Third parties are making the ripping software, so how would Apple be flaunting the law??
Come on, think it through.
Do you think Apple could rely on 3rd parties and illegal practices as a business model?
No. They'd want ripping direct in iTunes and for it to be legal.
The entire portable video is tiny compared with those. We were talking about ways to get video onto an iPod, and in that context, digital downloading is hardly tiny.
Digital downloads is currently the only legal way to get copyrighted material onto an iPod.
It's tiny. Compare the music download market to ripping from a CD. How many ripped songs have you on your iPod compared with those bought on iTMS?
Are you in the UK? Might explain some of the discrepancies in this conversation about copyright laws. I'm talking about the USA, where it's completely legal to record broadcast TV. It was established a couple decades ago in the famous case against Sony in regard to vcr's (yep, fair use rears its pesky head again).
I am in the UK. The Fair Dealing law in the UK dates back to 1709. The US Fair Use law is essentially derivative of that.
The Sony VCR case in the US established a legal precedent for vcrs and TV. It did not establish a legal precedent for DVD ripping. That is the argument the studios are now having. DVD ripping software has only one purpose, that of infringement of copyright material. VCRs have other purposes.
Technology moves faster than the laws and that's why some things are still illegal an the law is an ass.
Yep. But they can still convert the video, it just takes longer. As pointed out before, just pop in the DVD before you go to bed. Problem solved. Nothing is stopping someone with a slow computer and small hard drives from putting video on an iPod.
The law, convenience, space, time, lack of legal software to do it....
Technology is never "quite there yet". Portable video is an emerging technology. It will get cheaper and smaller as time goes on, just like any other technology. The same was true with mp3's and with other files in the past, the scale keeps getting bigger. In the meantime, there are plenty of early adopters already digging in with their iPods and big hard drives.
The same wasn't true with MP3s as music has an established fair use and the ripping thereof is not against the law. It's also a whole order of magnitude smaller than video. Video is perhaps there for the early adopters and technologically savvy but it's not there for the mainstream. It's only just scratching the surface.
Which means that music is bigger. It doesn't say they're not going to get into video, just that it won't surpass music for a long time. Not to mention that Jobs also said there wouldn't be an ipod just months before releasing one. When it comes to future plans, the man is a liar.
Sure, but he's not stupid and he's not bigger than Hollywood or beyond the law. He knows he can't ship DVD ripping software and he knows it's going to be a long time before it's anywhere near as viable as music is hence the quote.
You mean that the iTunes store is limited and not there. Nothing is stopping you from buying an iPod and ripping all your DVD's to it. I have an iPod with video today, and I'm putting anything I want onto it. Sure looks like "here" to me.
'here' in an illegal sense, yes.
Relevant, yes, but also confusing.
Of course, would we have it any other way? Most arguments here are confusing.
So, you think that an Apple phone would run Symbian?
Straight Symbian, or do you think they would "Applise" it further to make it feel more comfortable to Mac users, as well as iPod users?
Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.
UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)
Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.
I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.
Originally Posted by minderbinder
Fair use does allow consumers to back up and shift media.
It does not.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.
Symbian is kind of like 'Linux' or 'Darwin' - the core OS. On top of it you run either Nokia's Series 60 UI (which doesn't support touch screens btw) or Sony Ericsson's UIQ UI like you'd run Aqua, KDE or Gnome on top of Linux or Darwin.
UIQ is probably the more Apple-like but still a bit inconsistent. UIQ 3.0 added lots of eye candy but they could do with Apple or Palm to look at usability. I'll see more Thursday when I get my p990. :-)
Symbian OS 9 was quite a change from previous versions with a completely new security layer, and dropping some things like the old ability to execute programs directly in place in the ROM like the old Psion OS it was based on.
I can't see Apple using ANY of the current phone UIs as they all suck but there's a lot to be said for them adopting an existing OS underneath. Symbian runs on lower end hardware as well as requiring less power at the high end. There's also a lot of software already written for Symbian and a lot of developers. It's not a dying platform like Palm or an immature one (in the mobile space) like Linux/QT or Access' PalmOS replacement. It would be my bet.
That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.
If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.
I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.
I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.
I side with fair use.
The DMCA certainly hasn't stopped tons of apps from being distributed, all of which are perfectly clear that they are for ripping DVD's
I guess you should look up why apps like CloneDVD are made by fake off-shore companies, or why MacTheRipper's website goes down every now and then.
Problem is, the DMCA is in conflict with the copyright laws that spell out fair use. Many feel that the DMCA is a violation of their fair use rights, and it doesn't look like there's a solid legal precedent ruling in favor of the DMCA over preceding fair use rights.
I side with fair use.
Yes, it trumps fair use. Congress is allowed to write laws that modify copyright, trademark, and patent law almost any way they see fit. That's a good thing, and a bad thing.
The problem is that electronic, and computer technologies have gotten way ahead of the original concept of what copyright, trademark, and fair use originally meant.
It was never meant that people could make and distribute copies of works as they wanted to.
that was why the library system was established. To allow people who couldn't afford, or didn't want to spend money to see, and read, works that were under copyright. Libraries would aquire, or sometimes be given, a few copies of a work that they would then lend out, in a serial fashion, to these people.
But, even in libraries, most of the works were older, and out of copyright.
today's P2P distribution of copyrighted works would never have been dreamed of as being possible, so a strict sense of copyright protection as companies have developed would never have been understood, possible, or needed.
You can see the problem with people who don't understand that it is the underlying work that is copyrighted, and not the work as a whole, as in the actual physical expression of it in the media itself.
In talking to people I know in the industries, I have always found that they don't care much about people making a backup copy, though they would rather sell another different copy on different media, if people want that. It's their concern that people will make several copies for their friends and thus cut their sales that they worry about.
This is in addition to the vast P2P movement of files, that they understand DRM won't stop.
Actually, the DMCA (I can't speak to the EUCD), does allow copying for media shifting and backup. The confusion comes from it being disallowed if it requires breaking DRM in order to do so. Most people can't seem to distinguish between those two statements.
So, you are allowed to do it with CD's, but not DVD's.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument.
No, wrong. Your Fair Use rights are enshrined in the the 'Fair Use Act' in the USA. In the UK, it's in our Copyright Act which dates back to 1709 and was brought in with the invention of the printing press or something daft like that. That's the kind of stupidness we're up against in the UK.
The EUCD was meant to homogenise various member states' copyright acts, except if you're French. They took it to mean 'do their own thing'.
That's what I found when comparing various Symbian phones with the Palm phones. It's why I have been so down on it.
If Apple could improve not only the interface, but somehow have it run programs as well as Palm, that would be great.
But PalmOS is one of the worst OS's going for running multiple apps on and has severe limitations. That's why Palm took to rewriting it and bought BeOS.
Symbian evolved from Psion EPOC OS, which got a complete rewrite back in the days of the Series 5 and a really terrible UI. They've been gradually bodging it since. The apps though were pretty good. Symbian OS9 and UIQ 3 is another rewrite and it's taking them ages. The 990 was announce almost 2 years ago.
I'm still hoping that Apple has has a phone OS based on X lurking somewhere in their labs that we will see. How likely that is, I don't know, but it does seem to me that if they do adopt the touchscreen some of us have been discussing, then Ink will finally have a real use.
I use Mobile Write on my 700p, and it's far better than an almost useless keyboard that's been poorly designed, though other manufacturers seems to be copying the type of keys they use.
They're all pretty useless IME which is why I use a ThinkOutside bluetooth keyboard. I use QuickOffice. http://www.quickoffice.com/
Apple's phone OS would have to be fantastic for it to lure developers away from other mobile platforms and for them to port apps like QuickOffice or Route66. I think that's one reason why they will use someone else's OS with their own UI.
Meep! DMCA violation.
Better call the Dpt of Hmlnd Scrty. (certain vowels removed in the interest of national security)