There are much better tablets out there for your money.

The problem with all the other non-Apple tablets is that they insist that 16:10 is the perfect aspect ratio because it means that there are no black bars when watching video.

Unfortunately it completely ignores the fact that doing anything in landscape at that aspect ratio means that whenever the keyboard pops up, you lose almost half of the screen. Given a choice between that and some black bars (which I already get on my TV), I'd rather deal with the black bars.

I'd love an Android tablet the size and aspect ratio of the iPad Mini, yet (like high specification handsets with a screen size below 4 inches) no-one in Android land wants to make it.

Very cheap almost to the point of being free.
Text messages are already free.

They may be for you, but they aren't for everyone. The USA != The World.

- 1:1 and group chat support.
Already do that with regular text messages

SMS doesn't support group chat. Messages to more than one person are sent individually, there is no way for the recipients to see all the people who were messaged and therefore there is no way for them to group reply.

- Picture and content sharing.
Already do that with regular text messages

You might want to read up on the specification for "regular text messages". SMS has no provision for much beyond simple plain text messages.

- No additional fees when you're roaming.
"Roaming" doesn't really happen in most of the modern world

Again, the USA != The World. If I go from France to the UK or USA then I'm roaming.

Like I said, it's a small niche, and it's shrinking rapidly as more and more people just get unlimited texts.

A one billion person niche that isn't solved just by a bunch of unlimited text messages.

It seems like the only point is to get around the few remaining billing plans on the planet that don't have unlimited text messaging.

This comes up every single time something is posted on Slashdot about WhatsApp.

Lots of people have packages with tonnes of text messages making them, essentially, free or very low cost - however SMS doesn't do anything beyond 1:1 communication in plain old text. So picture sharing and group chats are out.

MMS can do that, but it's often excluded from SMS packages - so after a few messages it can start to get rather expensive. Even more so when you are sending these things to different countries.

iMessage can do that too and it's nicely integrated into iOS. If your friends aren't using iOS though then it all falls down.

So, combining these all together gets you the following wish list:

  - Very cheap almost to the point of being free.
  - 1:1 and group chat support.
  - Picture and content sharing.
  - No additional fees for sending worldwide.
  - No additional fees when you're roaming.
  - Not tied to users of one operating system.

WhatsApp (and the like) fill this gap.

My favourite quote comes from Karl Bode of DSLReports:

Before you get too excited, you need to understand that this is a bluff of immense proportion. It's what I affectionately refer to as "fiber to the press release."

In other news, industries where command and use of the English language is the priority will state that it's better to be a 'B' English Grad than an 'A+' CS Grad.

Google's comments don't prove anything new about the value of the degrees of either course - short of the fact that it's generally better to have a degree in the industry you intend on working in.

And you would expect hundreds of QA engineers to be employed for this task? (lets not forget they already have everything in place to continue patching and testing)

Certainly not "hundreds", but slightly more than the zero that the OP currently thinks are required.

Every corporation and agency is independently paying millions and millions to have them continue to patch their computers. I would not wager a guess at how much it costs to continue producing patches, but I cannot imagine it is more than a handful of full time devs.

You appear to have overlooked a testing team in your planning! The regression testing on the various h/w, s/w and language variants won't be small either.

Unfortunately on large scale projects, it's not good enough to fix the bug, check if it seems to run okay on the developers own computer and then call it a day.

Because of their ignorance, governments have already paid Microsoft probably more than it costs to fix the few security defects found each year.

Correction, it wasn't ignorance that caused Governments and other organisations to end up running late on project with a fixed delivery date at least five years in advance.

It was incompetence.

Wasn't Gmail the first to introduce the conversational layout? I remember the first time I saw it I was blown away over how simple the idea was yet how much impact it made on UX.

Not quite, Microsoft Outlook had conversational layout in 2003. There are probably other programs that had it even earlier than that, but Outlook was probably one of the most mainstream.

The improvement that Google made was that the conversation included the emails you sent, not just the ones you received. Sadly, it took another 7 years before Microsoft got around to updating Outlook to include that feature.

Not that being Apple has done that much good for their computing platform. They are still the same marginal also-ran that they have been since before Linux ever started.

Last year, the Mac took 45% of all profits in the PC market and earnt an average 19% operating margin on its Mac sales.

In comparison, it was 4% for Dell and less than that for HP, Lenovo, and Acer.

Pretty good for a "marginal also-ran" if you ask me.

source

But that's hard to do with Microsoft dictating the software upgrade timetable.

Looking at the lifecycle fact sheet, Microsoft are currently giving 9 years notice on when 8.1 will end extended support.

How many years do they want? If they cannot manage with nine years notice, realistically how will a few extra years help?

Secondly, what makes them think that if they installed Linux that they wouldn't need to do any further upgrades?

It's Window 8 only, right?

To be fair to Microsoft, this is not a new strategy for them. Windows 7 SP1 can only go up to DirectX 11.1 and Windows Visa SP2 can only go up to DirectX 10.1.

Unless I've read the history of this chart incorrectly, then I would assume that both DirectX 12 and 12.1 would be compatible with Windows 8, but that you'll need to upgrade to Windows 8.1 if you want to get DirectX 12.2

Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college, and I don't think anybody would say he made a mistake.

True, but for every Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, there are probably hundreds of others who drop out of college and never make anything of it.

Just because a small few did well out of it, doesn't automatically mean that everyone will.

Don't think of this as an Android phone, it will never be marketed that way.

Think of it as a new operating system than just so happens to be easy enough to have Android apps ported to it.

If the changes to support maps, in-app billing and the Nokia store are as simple as Nokia makes out to be - then it's a bit of a no brainer for developers to do. Especially since it's far less effort than building a new app for a whole new platform (like, say, Tizen).

Finally, yes, Nokia could have just shoved out a pure Android phone with decent hardware - but, against the mighty Samsung's advertising budget and the fact that all the other OEMs are unable to turn a profile - how exactly do people think that Nokia will make enough money?

Not to mention that Nokia would be beholden to Google and where Google wants to take Android, which may not be in their best interests. It's a gutsy move, but if they didn't do something radically different then there is an extremely good chance that they'd just be another Android OEM making a loss.

Even the highly praised Moto X had a price cut in January - an immediate indication that it's not selling as well as hoped.

Lots of people have packages with tonnes of text messages making them, essentially, free or very low cost - however SMS doesn't do anything beyond 1:1 communication in plain old text. So picture sharing and group chats are out.

MMS can do that, but it's often excluded from SMS packages - so after a few messages it can start to get rather expensive. Even more so when you are sending these things to different countries.

iMessage can do that too and it's nicely integrated into iOS. If your friends aren't using iOS though then it all falls down.

So, combining these all together gets you the following wish list:

• Very cheap almost to the point of being free.
• 1:1 and group chat support.
• Picture and content sharing.
• No additional fees for sending worldwide.
• No additional fees when you're roaming.
• Not tied to users of one operating system.

WhatsApp (and the like) fill this gap.

In the future, I expect to see an update to WhatsApp on Android that allows it to take over as the main SMS application. That way it can work in the same way as iMessage on iOS - if you send a message and the recipient is on WhatsApp then it goes via them. If not, then it gets sent as a plain old text message.