larrya

Annual growth is 17% instead of 25%. While I agree that their long-term prospects could be bleak, I don't think this is the death knell. 

thinkman@chartermi.net said:

This is just one more example of a frivolous lawsuit. I don't know if this is a proposed bill, or just a suggestion from a legislator, but it says (paraphrasing) Frivolous lawsuits need to have financial consequences when they are found to be baseless. Of course this is baseless, but if it's tried in Texas - where patent trolls more often win than not - anything could happen.

Kind of hard to call a lawsuit that has a chance of winning, frivolous.  

Heard this one before.  Not buying it this time. 

radarthekat said:

Just to be clear on terms...

Face recognition is the term used to describe the process of identifying a specific person, such as from a database of known persons (no fly list, for example).  This is face recognition.

There's also face detection, which is the process of detecting the elements of a human face within a scene.  This is typically a precursor to application of face recognition algorithms, used to identify the owner of a face in a scene.

Then there's facial recognition, which is the process of detecting specific facial expressions (smiling, frowning, sadness, etc).  This term is often used in the medical world to characterize specific inabilities of patients to recognize meaning in human faces.  Or, I suppose, one could use the term facial recognition to mean the detection of someone who has recently come from a spa treatment appointment.  (Kidding.)

Folks who incorrectly use the term facial recognition will find themselves finally corrected once Apple introduces some form of face detection and face recognition on stage in a product introduction.  Until that day I'm afraid folks will continue to use the wrong term to describe face recognition.  Those who want to be certain of the correct term to use now should do a google search of the huge body of research on the topic, where they will find that all technical papers refer to face recognition as defined above.

for example:  http://www.face-rec.org/interesting-papers/

Interesting and informative (thank you), but the terms are so similar that I have absolutely no expectation that anyone will notice the differences or correct their usage. We can't even get basic grammar right in serious publications and journalism.  If I could go one day without hearing or reading, "different than" or abuses of "me" and "I", there might be some hope of differentiating "facial" and "face" recognition. 😀 

maciekskontakt said:

macxpress said:

I wonder if HTC will see the same whining Apple did? Its only a matter of time before most if not all of the popular smartphones follow Apple's lead with this. 

It is not in Apple hands, but in hands of headphone manufactirers. So far Apple earphones earpads are fashionable crap with no sound quality... welll at least comparable to high end headphones some of us use. Also explain to me why I would need to run and charge ther parts of equipment while I could do only one? WHo is going to replace batteries in headphones and why one would need that service? We are not there with technology yet. Smarter and long lived energy storage solutions need to be developed.

The arguments about wires being a thing of the past would hold more water if Apple itself hadn't included the jack on its latest two new macs.
The argument about waterproofing would hold more water (excuse the pun) if Samsung didn't have a water resistant phone with a headphone jack.
The argument about sales not being impacted would hold more water if sales of the iPhone 7 had been officially reported.
The argument that you're correct because of the deafening silence on this board would hold more water if it weren't the middle of a work day.

It's interesting to see the level of smugness based on the actions of an unprofitable, also-ran Android phone manufacturer.

For my part, BT is laggy as hell and I don't want another device to keep charged.  I think it was eliminated solely to fit the taptic engine; which, if given a choice, I would not have picked over the convenience of the jack.

It will be interesting to see Apple's level of commitment to this when the next iPod arrives.