Totally irrelevant until operators actually start selling and subsidizing the devices. Operators will support all OS's, it's in their interest to make sure there is competition at the device and OS level. True commitment comes when they start putting marketing dollars behind the real products.
To do business in a country other than your own requires yo to comply with the laws of that country even if they are incongruent to your own beliefs. Your alternative option is to not do business there. The main issue we have is that the values of the company (in this case, Google) is mostly an American cultural ideal, which will not necessarily flow smoothly with all the differences in culture from the many countries out there.
For some people, they argue that cultural imperialism is spread using this method rather than the old methods of colonization.
Seems to me this is a test. Push the updated terms of service out, if no-one complains, or if there is only minimal response then cool, it's acceptable by the users. If complainst come around, mitigate that risk by issuing an apology afterwards. As the phrase goes - " Do What You Think Is Right & Apologize Later "
Congrats! However, one thing that these type of articles don't report on is when it doesn't work or not quite as plain sailing. The 'success stories' are rare hence why they make better stories. An article I would like to see would be a compare and contrast, 2 similar products using similar 'lean' strategies, one is successful, and one is not. The compare and contrast narrative would be great for learning.
Sounds cool, I used to play an PBM (Play By Mail) game called It's a crime... been waiting for a modern version of this since forever.. (http://www.kjcgames.com/crime/index.php)
Yeah, profits is what I meant. That;s what they are doing using the competitive tax structure of Ireland and recognizing all EU revenue in Ireland instead of the repective countries in which the product is bought. My assumption is that these loopholes will eventually close because they are being reported about and taxpayers in those countries will be disgruntled that a company only pays 2.5% of its profits in tax because it's recognizing the revenues in a different jurisdiction to which the product was bought.
With the UK tax figures for several companies including apple, where they only paid approx 2.5% in tax because most of the revenue recognition occurs in Ireland where they pay cheaper corporation tax, I guess this will have an impact for revenues for several companies going forward. Google are already in a dispute with France over this, and I would expect these tax loopholes to close int he future as Austerity hits the EU and each country looking for ways to boost tax income.
I got this on the ZX Spectrum, and it came with one of those plastic converters. There would be a code on the screen and you had to put the plastic thing in front of it to decode the image and type in the letters. To stop people from pirating the game by making a tape to tape copy of it.
Yep, it works, but not easily usable because for non chinese readers, you would have to type the search in English, and then leave the app to switch it to chinese for the taxi driver (and switch it back to English to do your next search).
The fault isn;t tomtom's map data, it's all the layers on top that Apple have to add to it. Tom Tom's data (they acquired Teleatlas) is one of the two best resources (the other being Navteq) for map data. How you use the map data is the problem and Apple haven't got it right this time, I would guess most of the testing was completed in the USA, so I would expect most major cities to be fairly fine. It's once you go internationally it gets bad.
I used to work on these types of issue half a decade ago (2007), and one way of testing the accuracy is to stream GPS data in and test that it worked ok. We did this by -
a)Test programme that could load and play GPS commutes. Connect to the phone as a bluetooth GPS device. PLay the commute (from multiple countries.
b) on the phone - intercept the screen signal, using another programme, check the screen automatically to make sure the map was on the road (reading for road names and POI for more robust testing) We could run mapping/navi tests around the world without having to leave our desks.
(This testing was done for the Nokia N95/N82.. I left in 2008)
They made another mistake for Hong Kong.. The maps are in English only... many Taxi drivers won't be able to take you where you want because they only know it in Chinese and pointing it out on an English only map doesn't help.
Sure, for this guy, who is supposedly a tech guy. But if we consider the 'mass market' we're at the point where we have millions of 'dumb' smartphone users. The people who are used to feature phones are migrating to smartphones, and it's this 'mass' demographic that usability issues need to address.
If they move to the smartphone market they also have to reconfigure their distribution channels. PCs and Printers utilise different sales channels. In the western world, carriers hold the key to sales through subsidies, they can kill products by not offering them (Kin, original Nexus). In developing world countries, they need to get deals with the mobile retailer channel. Making a great product is only 1 part of the equation.
Maybe they are but they can't get the distribution to hardware or ecosystem to develop apps for it. Most PCs are sold with the OS pre-installed. As for mobile... there is still hopes for plenty of competition. Jolla Mobile being one of the future hopes created out of the remnants of the Nokia Meego team.
The thing is, you are beginning to 'blame the user' because they 'don't get it'. Isn't the purpose is that there isn't anything to get? It should 'just work' with minimal thinking, with no frustration. It doesn;t matter that Kanji is enabled... maybe it was enabled by accident? But it doesn;t resolve his problem? Maybe he doesn;t know how to easily enable/disable languages because he finds it hard to configure? If anything, this is useful data for Apple (and any UX designers) to look at to resolve potential usability problems.
There isn't an easy way to assess unless you put values on it. What's it worth?
What's the difference in job satisfaction worth?
What is the value of the extra time from not commuting worth? This can be broken down into the likely activities you would be doing e.g working on own projects, spending time with famlly, leisure activities such as cinema or bar)
What are the values of any other work differences? (flexi-time, provided lunch, health insurance cover, pension, time off etc.)
Sometimes attaching a monetary value to these things are difficult, but it's a good exercise to do so that you understand what you value more and what you are and willing to sacrifice for more $$$ (or less $$$ depending on the opportunity).
Is it a case of HTML5 is a future disruptor, providing platforms don't try to subdue it in preference to Native? A good example is in mobile tech where a lot of apps that used data pre 3G performed poorly because the underlying technological dependencies (the data pipes, memory limitations and processing power) were not ready. Secondarily, the business models were not ready either (pay per MB).
Maybe HTML5 is in a similar position, may work well for web, but mobile app eocsystems are not yet technologically ready for it to be disrupted. We see it time and time again in history where a new tech takes a while before it becomes good enough to break through (CMOS vs CCD), (HDD vs Floppy vs Tape). (Mainframe -> PC -> Cloud)
Usually a founder steps back when there's either disagreements about the roadmap/path or if they realize that the product/company will not become as successful as they though it would be.
No real surprise, the 2 map data giants are Nokia(Navteq) and TomTom(TeleAtlas). Even google maps uses teleatlas data outside of the USA. Apple went with TeleAtlas, Microsoft are with Navteq.
We had a similar new and noteworthy experience with our app (labelbox) in spring 2011. We were asked a couple of days before to provide artwork and assets. The app got featured and we got similar results. We peaked out at 100K downloads in one of those days, enough to get us just inside the top 25 in the US charts.
We've also had an experience were we were asked to provide assets and graphics 'incase' we were featured that week, but ended up not being featured at all (phototreats). The process is a mystery, but one thing that seems common is that almost all apps that are featured have great beautiful, easy to use design.
This isn't isolated to google, bing is far worse because it's difficult to switch languages. Then there are a gazillion company product support sites which also default the language for you, particularly tricky when you are looking for a specific driver update.
decent reviews is a small sample subset of reviewers. A better metric would be returns to the store and loyalty.
Likewise sales is also capped by distribution and sales channels. Otherwise you could argue that the original iPhone was much more inferior to its competitors in 2007.
Still doesn't address the key issue which was noone at United cared enough or had the initiative to deal with the problem of a missing child / missed flight situation and left the children unattended.
Generically speaking, people are easily distracted by the human voice. Therefore anything that has no vocals should lead to less distraction and more focus. This doesn't affect ability, only focus.
Personally, I go for breakbeat, old skool trance (Germanic Trance circa 1990-96), Experimental Techno.
Let me know if you think I've missed out any 'groundbreaking' camera phones. Yes, I know there isn't an iPhone there, because from a Camera-Phone perspective, the camera has not been anything special.... the Apps have, but the camera itself hasn't
That happened later, Symbian spun out of Psion. The first Symbian based phone was the Ericsson R380. The biggest difference between all the members were that the ones who took control of a UI built up more control. These were effectively Nokia and Docomo, hence why Symbian was used so much in Japan on their "feature phones" and S60 became strong.
UIQ used by many of the other manufacturers was never developed by any of them and was effectively an orphaned UI company.
Yep exactly, and that was why the Symbian Alliance formed. It was to prevent microsoft from doing what they did to the PC world. This is also one of the reasons ARM thrived instead of Intel.
The other lesson that is still being battled is patents, Internet protocol is essentially free. Wireless is not.
The other main difference is carriers, they are the gatekeepers to the valuable, yet resource limited spectrum that mobile phones need and therefore have a much larger control over the value chain than ISPs do for the Wired Internet.