cropr

About

Username
cropr
Joined
Visits
160
Last Active
Roles
member
Points
3,373
Badges
2
Posts
1,149

Reactions

804Like4Dislike350Informative

  • Apple TV offered as set-top cable box alternative in France

    croprcropr
    lukei said:
    sellerington said:
    Here in the UK companies like Sky, Virgin and TalkTalk provide smart tv boxes that are far more capable than  TV. I have difficulty justifying buying an  TV when I receive a free box that can record multiple channels at once as well as access Netflix and download or stream movies from the provider. I can’t see any UK provider offering  TV in place of their own tv boxes.
    I can. Would enable a lower cost of service and a lower box cost to subsidise. Catch up/on demand services are getting to the stage where recording programmes won’t be needed. The BBC/ITV etc have announced they are going to re-engage on a consolidated video on demand service. 

    Bear in mind that under 25s now watch more Netflix content than BBC. 


    Do you really think that an Apple TV has a lower cost that the traditional settopbox?   What a joke.
    williamlondon

  • App Store discovery improved after Apple's iOS 11 redesign, study claims

    croprcropr
    nunzy said:
    The App Store is not a monopoly. If they don't like Apples policies, there's the Google store.
    I own an app development company and the biggest revenue source is apps developed for 3rd parties (apps for banks, transport companies, shops, ....).  My customers always ask iOS and Android versions of their apps; there is no iOS or Android option. For my company the App store is definitely perceived as a monoploy 
    apres587

  • Dell XPS 13 9370 vs. Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, the ultimate comparison

    croprcropr
    People try too hard to give PC laptops credit for things that obviously aren't as good. Look at the XPS design: in order to get a superficial MacBook Pro appearance with a bit less weight, they've sandwiched carbon fiber in between aluminum. Is that really the same quality of build? No. Is it really an equivalent in terms of the looks or industrial design? No. Dell also cuts a number of corners with both the display and the trackpad, which are two critical components of daily use. That's a fairly strange choice, and it appears to have been done mainly to get the overall size of the laptop to look smaller vs. a MacBook Pro. Is it really worth it? Unlikely.
    Premium tennis rackets, which endure a lot of forces during the game, are made of carbon fiber and not of aluminium, so don't say that fiber leads to a lower build quality.  Aluminium has a much better heath dissipation and that is the reason why Apple is choosing it, not because of the higher strength. 

    The screen is about equal.  There are some differences in specs, but in practice there is not much difference.  I have both of them at my desk now, and I don't see any difference.  Maybe the graphical designers in my company will notice the difference, but I don't.

    About cutting corners, Apple cut the corners in the keyboard, a vital component of a laptop.  And that is bad because Apple did  have an excellent MBP in the past.  The Dell one is just superior. 

    The trackpad of Apple is indeed better, but not exceptionally better.  The trackpad might be important for you but not for everybody.  My graphical designers use Wacom tablets and the majority of my developers  use a simple mouse


    KITAavon b7cgWerksmuthuk_vanalingam

  • Dell XPS 13 9370 vs. Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, the ultimate comparison

    croprcropr
    I founded in 2012 a software development company and in the company we have both Macbook Pro (13" and 15") and Dell XPS (13" and 15") as standard machines for the developers, so I have a pretty good view on the pros and cons of both machines.   All Dell XPS 13" machines are Ubuntu pre-installed, Dell XPS 15" comes always pre-installed with Windows, but the first thing we do is to install Ubuntu on it.

    I think the article is pretty good written without a lot of bias (this is not always the case).

    In my experience Dell has a clearly better keyboard (like the old MBP) and is faster.  MBP has a clearly better trackpad and a better webcam.  About equal is screen, build quality and battery

    The same applies for the OS.  MacOS is on some aspects better than Ubuntu, but on some others it is the opposite.  Most tools my developers use, run on both platforms. The Adobe Creative Cloud and Sketch are essential apps for my designers and are not available on Ubuntu, so my graphical artists have a Mac.  My developers agree that Dolphin, the KDE based file manager on Ubuntu is significantly better that Finder on macOS.  Maybe it is time Apple spend some time on Finder.   The cloud services we develop run on Ubuntu servers and here Ubuntu on the Dell XPS has an advantage. On a Mac we could use solutions like Vagrant, but this results in a performance hit. 

    Some Dell XPS configurations can be upgraded, which is an asset.

    In terms of hardware failures the Dell XPS machines had less failures that the MBP  (the weak connector of the MagSafe adapter in the older MBP is the culprit for the difference).   However in case your laptop needs to be serviced by a technician, Apple has a much better support network that reacts faster.

    A starter configuration the Dell is about 20% cheaper.  This difference increases  to 35% if we opt for maxed out configurations.

    So is the price difference justified?  For graphical designers it is, for back end developers it isn't, for front end developers I am not sure.  And that's why I have both machines in my company.



    columbusavon b7bvzcgWerksmuthuk_vanalingam

  • iPhone, iOS 'dominant' over Android in English-speaking countries

    croprcropr
    maestro64 said:
    entropys said:
    It all comes down to money.

    edit: isn’t KAios for feature phones?

    Yes, other than Germany all the other countries on the list comes down to disposable income and how much they have. If you look at other consumer product you probably see similar trend. I bet many of these countries have motorcycles and bikes are primary transportation.

    I am not sure why surveiers want to treat all consumers equal, we are not and because one consumer does one thing does not may other follow suit. 
    The disposable income  in France, Spain and Italy is indeed very low.  Similar to your insight in the world economics (we are indeed not all equal on that point as well).  

    And similar to the smartphone offerings in non English languages.   Apple is very slow to offer it services in non English regions in the world.  I live in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, another of those "low income" countries, and I don't have Apple Pay, Apple News, no Apple Maps Transit, no contextual predicting or multilingual support for the keyboard, very crappy Siri (it is embarrassingly bad), no Siri on Apple TV, ...  In all those areas Google is providing a good to very good service.
    brisancetokyojimu