Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

its just Diffrent use cases buddy :) but ir defunct ???? There are a gazzilion ir devices out there i cant imagine what would happen if copernicus goes under a truck:D
Well i do plan to again have an ipad or a irtab but i think those plans gonna be soon shatterd by neo900.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Just this weekend some relatives'-in-law' were over at the place my partner and I are moving out of. We couldn't find the TV remote to an old large TV, but wanted to watch some show on it. Besides the fact that we watched the show by playing the video over the video out, I was able to immediately pull up Pierogi and after a brief search over the available keysets, I was able to control the TV properly (they found the remote in the moment before I got my approach working, but I think this still illustrates the value of IR - they could have just as easily not found said remote).

I suspect this means you might never have 'lived' on your device the way I do. Admittedly, it is ALSO a testament to the Apple OS's optimizations (albeit we all know a lot of those optimizations work by simply not providing the same full user-level multitasking expected of a more traditional OS).

I've settled on the opinion that until Adobe starts offering free downloadables of Flash for ARM devices, Flash can GTFO. In fact, I think the Flash experiences I've had on the N900 are a big part of what made me go from 'open source is pretty nice' to 'closed source software has a measurable negative impact on the world and most people's quality of life (vs libre software, all else being equal)'.

I guess what I'm getting at is: the Flash argument became laughable to me too, but not for the same reason. It became laughable to me once I realized that Flash was on version 11.something and we were still waiting for a version 10 that never came until it was eventually leaked. Back when the N900 came out, that was a substantial plus though, and the internet was not nearly as ready for use without Flash as it is now.

I think that's a reasonable position if and only if your criteria for overall goodness/badness of something disregards the accessibility of your data to law enforcement (American law enforcement specifically, regardless of whose jurisdiction you are properly under) without proper legal oversight.

ash (Almquist shell that is, the one inside busybox) with an almost full proper-linux suite of utilities at one's disposal. To me this is such a usability factor that I barely want any device that can't at least get busybox running on it.

Hardware keyboard (which, despite being inferior to many alternatives as far as default buttons go, can be remapped in standard xkb configuration fashion, which means I have more special characters at my fingertips on that device than I even know how to get on desktop systems). Let me know when iOS and Siri lets you enter basic calculus or physics or formal logic symbols, or switch in split seconds (one thumb movement rolling from one key to another for me) between input languages. Or let you approach a rate of input entry of approximately thirty words per minute, but with truly niche terminology, like discussions of polyamory or computer exploitation or better yet a discussion of or IN a niche language like lojban (let alone writing code at comparable speeds). See, for all the greatness that Siri is (besides again the privacy issue intrinsic to anything 'cloud'), it's ultimately not a universalizable mechanism - until the invention of real AI (at which point sentient-Siri would rightly revolt against the human-imposed slavery and hopefully we as a species would maturely resolve that by giving them proper civil liberties), mechanisms like that rely on someone deeming your topics worthy of algorithmically accounting for. Unlike the raw keyboard, or something similarly granular, they provide no way to provide truly arbitrary input.

The literal ability to use it as virtually a Linux computer, especially if one gets extremely comfortable on the command line, because those tools port and operate so much easier on the N900 than GUI ones, which means the ability to break out things like aircrack and scapy and tshark (CLI to wireshark), etc.

Don't get me wrong, with every passing day, the N900 drifts further and further out of universal usability. More and more sites upgrade to being too slow or unusable in their 'full' versions, our software falls further and further behind and as a consequence, the last point becomes less and less true (but then again I was able to grab the .deb for pptp-linux from Debian Wheezy repos last week and it worked like a charm, demonstrating just how powerful strong compatibility to a distro like Debian is).

And to be clear, I recognize that none of the above are sufficiently big factors for the vast majority of people. I literally enjoy doing commandline tasks from my N900s than from desk/lap -tops, and I enjoy doing tasks that can realistically be done comfortably over the CLI more than I enjoy doing them over GUIs. I'm wierd, and the N900 caters to that wierdness. But a lot of that 'wierdness' of mine has pragmatic advantages for my life, I've found, because the great comfort with the N900 means great comfort doing things in circumstances others find themselves incapacitated in.

And I suppose there's the thing you referred to as feelings of pride in your old posts. Though I wouldn't call it pride. I am attached to the N900(s) I have, because it is exquisitely and deeply an embodiement of me. No other phone allowed me to make everything so suited to me, in a deep and functional way rather than just superficially. That's largely a reflection of the "I have niche wants/preferences" thing - other platforms are very customizable in areas other people want. But I've acquired Android, WebOS, Windows Phone 8, and Blackberry OS devices for development and experimentation, and none of them offered the same freedom (WebOS hinted at it, but the lack of things like a native terminal, especially for the Touchpad with no keyboard) really hampered that experience for me. I have had sufficient access to iOS devices without owning them, as well.

Alright, well, you indicated that you didn't know how we still use our N900s still in this day and age, hopefully the above thoroughly explains it.

TL;DR: I want my mobile devices (phone primarily) to have the kind of flexibility and capability that the N900 definitely offers trivially and other platforms to this day only allow with hoops and caveats at best.

I can't help but wonder if there isn't some sort of placebo-like 'honeymoon period' effect going on with that (or rather no longer going on, where it was going on before). Or maybe they really messed stuff up, hard to say.

Anyway, thank you for your thoughts. I do appreciate the informative view on/from the other end of things.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Oh missed this:

Personally, I have always found that spell checkers just get in the way of normal typing half of the time. Well, if they are just the "highlight this if you think it's wrong" type, that's much more tolerable. I find the ones that auto-correct to be infuriating, especially on small devices where they usually err on the side of "fix everything remotely plausibly intended to be different". I actually don't mind it depending on the layer it's localized to and the configurability it offers, but that means I want it off unless I explicitly want it on.

Sidenote: There is one big thing I feel is missing from the N900 (but also from virtually every desktop-like OS ever): state saving, of the 'fake multitasking' style of mobile OSs. But separate from normal minimization. In my book an ideal desktop manager has a 'pause' button, either next to the close or next to the minimize button, for each window. And it freezes/pauses the process instead of continuing running it. Closest thing I know is how Bourne shells do 'Ctrl-Z' to put the currently running process into the background and pause executing it until they're flipped back on either in the background or the foreground. But I've never seen a desktop environment do that. Of course, the mainstream OSs just mess up in the opposite direction in this regard.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Out of curiosity, what parts of "communication device" are you missing on N900? Maybe we have different "communication" needs, but for me, it have everything that a communication device may require. VoIP, GSM, WiFi, bluetooth, MMS, USB Networking... Addressbook/calendar that allow soring more things than I'll ever, even remotely need. Tools for calculations, from basic, to highly scientific. Full office and image manipulation via LibreOffice and GIMP. I could go on and on (and wander even more far away from "communication" as per se).

But, again, for me 152374504354357 social media services are not a way of normal "communication" (although, from the threads that I see on TMO, people that like so-called social portals are using them happily, too). Still, I might be missing some super-cool-trendy-fresh-funky new wazzup-release-xxx7374-glamour, that doesn't have N900 client. Or, something like that.

/Estel

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Or even something as advanced as the backwards apostrophe. My other half's friend (who, by the way, has been an iPhone user since day 1 and has never had another "smartphone", so I assume she was a profficient user of said platform) was coming for a visit and we spent an hour trying to figure out how to type my WiFi password on her phone. Even attaching the phone to my PC as a USB storage and copying the text file with the password proved problematic. I ended up having to text her the password. Yes, in an SMS: a 30 years old technology FTW.

I must be terribly old-fashioned but for me the whole point of a communication medium is... communication. What's the point of Google talk, Nokia talk, Whatsit or one of 19500 copycats if no one I know and care about use those services? The only IM service I ever use is Skype because no one I know jumps to the new trendy service every time one appears. Fortunately Skype works on my N900 pretty well.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

They are not worthy successors. The apple (excuse the pun) has fallen too far from the tree, with even those claiming to be 'unlike' falling over themselves to repeat the success of the iPhone. It's all a bit too late, given that the iPhone was first released in 2007. There is lots of choice, providing you want a buttonless fondleslab with a UX that sacrifices function for form.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Upon purchase of my iPhone 5S I was initially disappointed on how poor voice recognition was, but then when I upgraded my 4S from 6.x to 7, I noticed the same problem, night and day. Thus leading me to believe it is an issue with iOS 7 and not the handset.

To be fair I said spell checking (the red swighly line) not auto correct.

Well, to start off with the N900 worked on EDGE on AT&T as it did not support the 3.5G frequencies, but furthermore it now doesn't support HSDPA. In theory yes, it is possible to run GIMP on the N900, it was not useable however. I tried. Display size and resolution, slow processor, input methods alone made it or any program similar to it highly impractical and more of a novelty.

I am happy you touched on communication. Apple does have a few things going for it that is pretty amazing: iMessage and FaceTime. iMessage being one of my favorite chat protocols since OSCAR. FaceTime is excellent as well. But weather you like it/accept it or not social media is a huge part of how people today communicate. Google+, Google Hangouts, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, Vine, Skype, etc.

These aren't fads, they are not going to go away, and they are slowly replacing traditional SMS/MMS (most of my iPhone conversations are blue as opposed to green - meaning the other person is also a iMessage user)

Then you have communication via data; Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud.

I have a BBM client, a AIM client, IRC client, and a service called Viber and WhatsApp that make communication when friends and family are out of the country easy and cheap.

Even after researching all the new "open source" mobile operating systems, like Jolla for example, a huge criticism was that it didn't have enough Apps for it and the ones for Android were glitchy. Reminds me of using WebOS apps on my N900.

When I say communication I am not talking about connectivity - I am talking about the ease of which I can actually communicate with another person or persons via the protocol of my choosing.

I want to add in that I find the defense of IR without the ability to receive data, only to send over something like Bluetooth 4.0, where I do have an app, by Google to interface with my Google TV as a remote control. I can wirelessly mirror my iPads or iPhones image onto a huge display with AppleTV, I can even video chat, wirelessly with AppleTV. While on the N900 I was using Smartcam/VNC - to do such things, or attempt to do such things as the hardware was lacking.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

I've noticed a running theme throughout your posts in this thread. The theme is one of dependency: You can access $SERVICE_CONTROLLED_BY_CORPORATION or control $PRODUCT_MANUFACTURED_BY_CORPORATION using $APP_GENEROUSLY_PROVIDED_BY_CORPORATION. I don't want that. I want to be able to choose my own platform, rather than be restricted to those supported by $CORPORATION. That's why I would not purchase products such as Google TV or Apple TV.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

That's a lovely alternate reality you live in, your internet, cellular, electric are all controlled by corporations. I assume you have a bank account as well. The only difference between you and I is it takes you 10x longer to check your balance than it takes me.

Your failed view on smart TVs and Netflix is simply an incompatibility to deal with progressing technology.

Re: iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1): The Journey Continues
 

Progressing technology =/= beneficial technology for all. "Smart TVs", Netflix et al may be beneficial for some but for those not willing to have their viewing habits on NSA servers are a bane.

We are at the stage of a homogenization of mobile phone technology. Its like one has a choice between dumb and dumber. The industry is awaiting the next revolutionary product just like the iPhone was back 7 seven years for both good and bad reasons.

I may sound hypocritical by saying the above when I use an Android device as my primary device but I always wish that the OS I am using was better geared towards my needs instead of satisfying the needs of some arbitrary corporation looking to make some dollars of my data.

I really don't see the point of the topic; is it sharing your view point or is to come here and chastise people who choose not wanting to give up their "ancient" piece of technology?

My sincere hopes are for such topics to continue with viewpoints being shared instead of chastising people for their different choices.