I guess it's a bit of a crapshoot if you get a bad seller, but the fact that prices are 1/4rd of what you'd pay to buy something similar domestically is a pretty good lure.
I've ordered twice from Ali Express -- once for a RTL2832 tuner, and once for a mini-Gorillapod knockoff. Both times I received exactly what the page advertised, in perfect condition and they continue to work great today.
it wouldn't surprise me if we see a few more proprietary systems in the next few years.
It's already happening in the States. AT&T recently put its support behind Powermat, a competing and incompatible standard. They actually stripped Qi from a number of the phones they sell -- phones that on other carriers support it natively -- and instead offer Powermat charging cases for them.
You appear to be at least as knowledgable as me, so please correct me if my technical understanding is wrong here.
I doubt I'd even be able to perceive the lower amplitudes in a 96dB dynamic range. The reason for wanting 24-bit samples is that some music has low passages and high passages (HTTYD comes to mind) that allow your ears time to adjust to the volume. I'd like music to be able to do this and still have fine detail in each section.
I just want a proper DAC without audiophile markup!
Check out the ODAC. Built to be cheap, and objectively transparent at the jack, unlike most DACs which just quote the specs of a high-end DAC chip inside of them and ignore a mess of other crap on the PCB that degrades the signal.
FLAC has native support for gapless playback, but the player still needs to explicitly take advantage of it by not waiting until your current song finishes to start decoding the next one.
Gapless is more common among FLAC players, I guess simply because if you care enough to support FLAC you've probably got a higher chance of caring about the rest of the feature set, but it's far from guaranteed.
Caveat: self-identifying audiophile here, happy to admit I've spent way too much money for very little gain.
What's the output voltage and impedance? Crosstalk? Noise? THD? Dynamic range? If I plug to charge via USB while I'm playing it, will it isolate the noisy power line? You're trying to sell something "audiophile" without mentioning any of this? Really?
He makes a big deal about 192kHz audio. If you're targeting human ears, this is just a waste of space. I'd say the perfect format would be 48kHz/24bit. 48kHz to have plenty of room for a nice frequency cutoff, and 24-bit for music with a high dynamic range, like film scores and orchestral.
How about some features anyone can enjoy, like support for ReplayGain and gapless playback? Maybe make your store highlight music with a high dynamic range instead of offering a 24-bit copy of something with 8 bits of range and frequencies we can't hear?
I would absolutely love to have a compact, objectively transparent player that I can bring with me to the office or anywhere else. I just can't help feeling this won't be it. Too jaded?
Certainly not all of
Other legacy tech I'd love to get rid of: SSIS/SSRS -- terrible SQL Server drag-and-drop technologies that do a lot of stuff badly. 1D barcodes like Code 39 and Code 128 -- dead simple to implement but take up a lot of space and are prone to poor reads.
It's always been the applications that have driven users to a platform, and right now Microsoft doesn't have those.
You seem to have missed where I mentioned this in my post. I even put it there with the specific intent of stopping misinformed "there are no apps" replies.
Android has 20 apps that duplicate the same functionality, and Windows Phone has 5. But the functionality is there. It doesn't work to just compare a raw count. In terms of big-name apps, there are still a number of holdouts but for every one that's missing, there's something identical to replace it.
In the Windows Phone 7 times, I definitely felt limited in app selection. Not anymore.
My Windows phone (Lumia 920) runs faster and more fluid and it has significantly less power than my Android tablet (Nexus 7, 1st gen). Each update has added features without making it slower. There are less apps but I have yet to not find what I'm looking for and they generally feel more consistently designed. WP 8 brought native C++ programming. The only thing left is ditching their Direct3D stuff for OpenGL/OpenCL support to make porting games easier (which will admittedly probably never happen).
In terms of geek factor Android is of course far more customizable and rootable, but I and I'd assume the great majority of users are not interested in doing that.
There's so much focus on Microsoft forking Android, but I really don't see the point. They've got a long way to go to get to Android levels of market share, but it's by no means a failure that deserves to be trashed.
They'll work only if they aren't a sloppy, slapped together gimmick designed to rubber stamp "programmers" and install them in cubicles like spare parts.
I really can't imagine any good a 3 month crash course would accomplish. At best you'll get someone dangerous who thinks they know how to code, and a nightmareish scenario of either picking up the pieces or having someone in management now tell you your job is so easy they can do it.
Kids 2-3 years into college with no prior experience are just barely starting to write code that does anything interesting, let alone writing it properly. 3 months? Give me a break. The only proper way to increase the number of coders is to introduce kids to it early on and find/encourage the ones who show interest.
Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting against you.
