It’s A Bomb
Ratted out by seismographs:
There is a “high possibility” that North Korea has conducted a fifth nuclear test, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean Government source as saying.
The comments came after a magnitude-5.3 seismic event was detected near North Korea’s Pyunggye-ri nuclear test site as the country celebrated its foundation day.
“There is a high possibility that it was a nuclear test, given the location and the magnitude of the quake,” said the unidentified official, quoted by Yonhap.
There is also a lot of chatter about a new iPhone being a ‘bomb’, but no one will really know until Apple starts locating suckers willing to pay hundreds of dollars to be beta testers.
42 comments
I found Apple’s iPhone 7 presentation to be very convincing. It convinced me to buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 once they’re back on the market.
Talking about which, the Galaxy Note 7 really was *literally* a bomb. It got recalled because over thirty of them caught on fire while charging. A great match for my Arthur Brown Edition Jeep Wrangler, which has been recalled three times for things that could, well, make it catch on fire :).
– Badtux the Phoney Penguin
The FAA has a flight ban out on them as of yesterday. Sounds like a bad battery run. you really have to watch li-ion battery specs. The problem with out-sourcing is you have no guarantee as to who actually manufactures your parts. At least Samsung is taking it seriously.
I have a friend here that does Notebook, phone, tablet repairs (board level). He says since the iPhone 6 was released, he repairs over a dozen a week, usually with the same cheap faulty chip (and he says a better one is available that costs about 20c more in quantities!) he said he wouldn’t touch the 7 as it was rushed because of the (easy to fix) issue with the 6. He expects to be even busier and is thinking of hiring another tech (asked me if I’d be interested. I laughed & said “No chance!”) *shrug*
There are a string of law suits entering the US courts over the right to fix rather than replace equipment that you buy. I wouldn’t even consider an iPhone because the battery isn’t readily replaceable and they don’t accept SD cards. Spending hundreds on a device that is only as good as its battery is a bit silly.
Samsung will sell parts to any repair outlet, and most of them know how to replace the battery in the phones with the built-in batteries (which is most of the new ones due to the complexity of the connections needed in order to make the cordless charging work, which pretty much requires the battery to be glued into place). If you buy an Apple, buy an extended warranty at the same time — the motherboard just went out on my Macbook Pro and I would have been out $600 for the motehrboard replacement if not for the extended warranty. And consider that when the extended warranty runs out, you’re on borrowed time and have your migration strategy ready to move to a new one.
My Macbook Pro is a beautiful piece of hardware, but I have no delusions about Apple as a company. At this point two things keep me on Apple hardware — music (the best music software runs best on Apple), and backups (why, oh why, has Microsoft *still* failed to provide a useful Time-Machine-like backup product for its OS? Apple didn’t even originate the concept, I was almost hired to work on a backup product similar to Time Machine in 2003, four years before Apple introduced Time Machine!). I’m slowly moving away from Apple for everything else — I’ve even quit using my MBP for work, because a cheap Windows laptop does everything I need for work.
The problem with Apple (and I am speaking from experience here) is they went from a people company, to a profit company. The MBP should be good! I was svc manager when the first Intel based MBP’s came out. There were 6 engineering updates the first year to fix stupid issues that should never existed (such as the CPU cooking because there was no thermal paste or pad under the heatsink. The next release had way too much paste which is just as bad thermally). But Apple never admitted any problems and never changed the product ID’s, so nobody knew (unless you were an apple certified tech) which one you had! The suckers that got the first 6 models were truly screwed by Apple. And the first 3 gen’s of iPods… We literally had to repair 60%-42%-22% (G1-G3) of them before they could be sold! So people thinking they had a brand new toy, had a refurbished one!
Hell, I don’t trust any manufacturer! But that left a really bad taste in my mouth! I’m sure it’s partly why I had a breakdown a less than 2 years after I quit.
I worked for Apple in the early 90’s, and they really were a good company then. It’s why I decided to go back when an old friend asked me to. Now, they have the same attitude to their customers as M$. Morons that can easily be relieved of their money and no need to test anything! They’ll do that for them.
I bought a second battery for my Samsung slider 6 months after I bought the phone in case of hurricanes.It isn’t a ‘smartphone, but it does exactly what I what without any drama, and the battery lasts for days.
The lack of a decent back-up program shows the lack of professionalism at M$, something that Apple used to have, but got lost along the way.
There are some things that just aren’t equaled on Win boxes. They were written for Macs and the people that wrote them weren’t interested in dealing with Windows and the hardware issues. Apple gets away with its mark ups, and keeps their fan base.
People are really pissed that Apple removed the 3.5mm earphone jack from the iPhone 7. Apple say people can buy the iPhone Lightning Dock or AirPort Express if they want to charge & listen to music. So basically, this *feature* is to increase Apple sales. Told you! 😀
An article about it here, with a link to a humorous video spoof! LOL
CollegeHumor: ‘The New iPhone is Just Worse’
You can’t rely on wireless ear buds staying in your ears. I have a wireless headset for my phone and even with the ear hook, the damn thing falls out Are they going to sell singles for people who lose just the Left or Right bud? Of course not.
I have a wireless Bluetooth headset. Thing is, a) it has to be recharged every 6 hours or so, and b) it doesn’t sound as good as ye olde analogue headset.
Yeah, an iPhone 7 is *not* in my future.
The thing I like most about my Samsung is that the charger works for my phone, my headset, the Raspberry Pi and my rechargeable desk lamp. The stupid cord that came with the iPad was too damn short to reach from the wall socket to the kitchen table for charging.
One of the biggest problems I had with those micro-USB cables is that they are so cheaply made the insulation would break easily after a while and then the wiring would also. Then I discovered these wonderful cables! 😀
MICFLIP FULLY REVERSIBLE MICRO USB CABLE
They are covered in a tough nylon braid. I’ve had a pair over 9 Months now, and look as good as new! Being reversible is a bonus, especially in low light! LOL
I got them from the USA because they had 35% off with free shipping even to Aus! They arrived in a couple weeks. Cheaper than anything here.
If interested, there are a couple coupon discount codes that may still work (at checkout):
7FOREVER — 7% off any purchase @ WinnerGear forever.
socialcoupon — 10% off any purchase @ WinnerGear – SocialMedia promotion.
I think they are only US$9.99 anyway. Amazon sell them for $20!:D
Oops! That should be: US$19.99
Oh yeah, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has a USB-C connector. Which is more durable than a micro-USB connector, plus *reversible* — like Apple’s Lightning connector, impossible to insert upside down.
Agree about the cheapness of the micro-USB connectors. Either the wire breaks, or the prongs are made of compressed oatmeal and lose their ability to maintain a connection to the little “tongue” inside the phone. I go through those things like spaghetti because that’s what my tracker unit in my Jeep runs off of, and of course it’s a Jeep so the thing lives a tough life. Hoping that USB-C will be sturdier and that everybody will switch to it ASAP….
Yeah, those cheap plastic ones are garbage! I’ve thrown several out over the past couple years. One of the reasons I got this MoBo is it has a real USB 3.1 C connector (and a 3.1 A, which came with an A-to-C adapter). So, best of both as needed.
I love watching the ad for the MicFlip on that web site! LOL It’s too funny! 😀 Reminds me of the old Apple Mac ad’s. Ahhh… the good old days! *sigh* I would have bought it for that! (And I HATE ad’s!) But the cables really are good. And the free Worldwide shipping is a nice bonus. (Of course, it’ isn’t actually free! But the price is pretty good. So either they have low overheads or are betting on a LOT of sales! 😉 😀
Oh! I got the 4-bay thunderbolt box set up on the weekend. So far, so good! Haven’t decided what to do with the Seagate NAS. It was pretty good. Just Win 10 sucked! I can easily sell it for $260, which is a little more than I paid for it. And I could use the money. My Super is almost all gone. I’ll sleep on it, decided tomorrow.
Hmmm. Speaking of Samsung and the number 7… It seems the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is in trouble also!
“Just over a week ago, Samsung Electronics announced a global replacement program for the Galaxy Note7 as a precautionary measure due to a battery cell issue.”
Samsung may remotely kill all unreturned Galaxy Note 7’s
Ouch! That was one stupid & costly error! This is what happens when R&D & product testing budgets are cut “to save money”! I don’t think they saved a penny.
Kryten, it appears to be an issue with Samsung’s battery suppliers. There was one Chinese supplier who provided batteries that superficially met Samsung’s requirements, but internally didn’t. Batteries from their other suppliers don’t have the catch on fire problem. Still, you are correct that this is a major problem, it has caused the Note 7 to be withdrawn from the market here in the United States until all affected units are identified and recalled.
The prohibition against using the device on aircraft, however, makes zero sense. It only catches on fire when charging, which, if you look at the Android Fast Charging spec, makes sense — juice is put into the battery during Fast Charging much faster than juice is withdrawn during normal use. Chalk it up to another overreaction by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, akin to making us walk through airports in our bare feet because one dude a decade ago tried to light his shoe on fire in an airplane.
The last time this happened was about a decade ago when Sony had a bad run of laptop batteries for multiple manufacturers. Same symptom – they caught fire.
Of course TSA over-reacted. They have to justify their existence, so they piss people off and tell them it is to stop terrorists.
I know it was a supplier problem. That doesn’t excuse Samsung a bit! When I was in manufacturing, we NEVER had any supplier that didn’t 100% comply with our requirements! And we tested a sample from every batch before production! And we did indeed catch a few flawed batches (Motorola being the worst offender for this, and why we dumped them). Obviously, Samsung didn’t! So they deserve whatever crap they get out of this. Maybe it will be incentive to up their game and not be cheap bastards. They don’t even know which Note7’s actually got the bad batteries & have to replace the entire supply! Maybe they will even go back to *shock* 😮 user-replaceable batteries! Now there is a novel concept!
I have no sympathy for them at all, nor Apple for that matter.
Kryten, I’ve done manufacturing tests for batteries and charging circuits before. They’re not easy. Batteries that passed the tests at the factory can fail the tests elsewhere due to differences in temperature, humidity, etc. That then has to be factored into the next generation of the tests. For large production runs there’s the problem that there simply isn’t *space* for the test equipment to do a full multi-cycle charge – discharge – charge test on the batteries with tests of internal resistance at each stage. You have to do a quicker test that you hope is representative for the majority of the batteries, and do the full cycle test on what is hopefully a random sample of the batteries.
And that’s assuming that the supplier isn’t deliberately cheating by designing the batteries to pass your quick test rather than the full multi-cycle test then steering some known good batteries past your full multi-cycle test. Unfortunately some of these Chinese vendors are unscrupulous and will do such things.
As for the issue of not knowing which batteries went into which Note 7’s, now *that* is surprising to me. When our widgets came off the end of our supplier’s line, they were plugged into an assembly test harness that ran a quick assembly test to make sure they were assembled correctly then serialized them and stored the complete manifest associated with that serial number into a database. It also printed out a sticker sheet that got sent down the next line, the packaging line, with the device (said stickers got applied to the device and to the document that got placed into the box the device went into). We knew the serial number of every major component that went into the system. I know because I’m the guy who wrote that test harness and interfaced with the IT department to get the information sucked down to them so they could database it. Samsung has a lot more manpower than we had (I was the *entire* manufacturing quality engineer for our company, there was nobody else). Not having that information is sheer incompetence.
Finally, regarding user-replaceable batteries: Not happening. The problem is simple: there are no “finger” connectors that will take the full 40 watts that the charger can put into these batteries without being too bulky for the form factor. I’ve seen the teardown of these phones and the battery looks like a user-replaceable battery but has a card edge connector in order to get sufficient surface area to carry the wattage. We already know the hard way that users can’t deal with card edge connectors. Thus why Samsung didn’t add a battery door despite the fact that the battery itself is fairly easy to change for those of us willing to crack open our phone to do so.
Yeah, it’s the damn connectors. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I ranted about connectors when I was doing manufacturing qa. If it wasn’t connectors that didn’t have positive retention or simply couldn’t be plugged in on the line given the configuration of our machine, it was connectors that were all the same color and configuration. Half my manufacturing tests were to test whether the right connectors were plugged into the right places and we spent probably six months on nothing but frickin’ connectors trying to source enough connectors of the right design to be able to make our production goals. SIGH….
I have 5 design awards for products that were supposedly *impossible* to design! LOL
Quite simply & frankly, any company that trusts any supplier to deliver perfect product is only fooling themselves! At the price charged for these products, there is no excuse. There is no way anyone will convince me that loosing $10 billion of value was worth the risk. It would have cost a fraction of that to do things properly. JIT isn’t a good idea in every situation. We learned that the hard way. Some parts we just had to buy in bulk and warehouse, some because they did take time to test, including batteries. Others we could JIT. And we had several connector issues. We found companies that could overcome them. One was a company in Norway that made connectors for the military. They were the only one that said it would be an interesting challenge, and made it happen. All the US, Japanese, Aus. and Chinese companies just laughed! (Though, one Aus. company said it might be worth a try.) We had a problem with the plastic used for the control system. We discovered a wonderful plastic called Macrolon (sp?) that solved all the problems! The stuff was awesome. 😀
We designed the most expensive products of their type in the World! And we had over 400% per annum growth. Because we guaranteed them for 10 years and the ROI was a year or less. Over 20 years, the company had a less than 3% repair rate. So I damned well know it can be done! I never said it was easy or cheap. But loosing $10 billion certainly isn’t cheap! They may as well just write off the entire Note7 run, because they are not going to make a penny profit.
It’s Makrolon (a polycarbonate). Pretty common now, but not 25+ years ago! At that time, there was only one company making it, in Europe. One of the Scandinavian countries, I forget which. I made a lot of trips to companies there. They loved a challenge! And didn’t think anything was impossible! 🙂 Solved a lot of our problems. Including a flexible hose and connectors that could withstand up to 75,000 psi pressure. 🙂 And insulation for power cables that could handle 800V DC @ 800A, switched at 1 KHz. One of the problem areas we had for connectors, that weren’t as thick as an arm! 🙂
There’s a bit of a difference between building 20,000 of something, and building 20 million of something. That’s one reason I’m annoyed that the United States has ceded its mass production capabilities to China. We have literally lost the knowledge base needed to produce millions of widgets in an economical manner. I know enough to make sure that 20,000 of something can be delivered to paying customers in a timely manner with a very low DOA rate (and frankly, for our product DOA was pretty much “it”, if it wasn’t dead on arrival it’d run fine for the next 5 years until the hard drives hit their MTBF, at which point you’d need to start replacing hard drives for the next 5 years as they failed). 20 million. I can imagine it, but the actual logistical challenges of actually *doing* it are non-trivial.
In real money terms, Samsung built about 5 million of these widgets before stopping shipments. Each of them costs Samsung about $300 to build and distribute. Figure it’ll cost $100 apiece to recall the old ones and replace them with new ones. So that’s about $2 billion. Not $10 billion. Not pocket change, but for a product as profitable as this phone, they’ll probably end up breaking even overall even *with* this recall. Their profit margin on these things is *obscene*….
Somewhat true about the difference between 20k & 20m. But the systems we built were extremely complex with far more parts (electronic & mechanical) than a phone/tablet. And they had to work in some pretty harsh environments. Hence the $1m+ price tag (in the 80’s). And yet we still managed to get a very long life and the customers knew they were well worth the price. The machine had a complex multi-CPU control system that made it very tricky! Especially as the CPU’s came from different vendors. 🙂
In the late 80’s, I also designed an all digital Data Recorder that had to be extremely robust and work in harsh environments (from the frozen South to the middle of the Simpson Desert for a year or more unattended). It replaced several of the then current mechanical recorders (mostly chart recorder types) that needed regular visits. it also had to be able to survive being dropped from the top of a High Voltage power tower, which none of the mechanical ones could. LOL It had a modem that worked over phone or power lines (whichever was available/practical) and designed above MilSpec. The first of it’s kind in the World. 🙂 We sold over 6,000 of them and only had less than a dozen fail. We could have sold a hundred times that Worldwide, but it was a joint venture with Aus. Gov. and they decided to keep it local. They also decided that since they funded it, it was all theirs. *shrug* I decided that was the last time I’d ever get involved with a Gov. on anything!
The $10 bln was the estimated cost of their market/stock value loss. I don’t know if that even included actual financial loss. But the will no doubt recover. Most people are stupid and have short memories. *shrug*
And yes, we also used to be great at manufacturing. but that all but died in the 90’s. It’s why I stopped working in that area and got into IT. *shrug* It wasn’t really by choice.
BTW, I say “I” but both were excellent teams. I was the leader & I chose the team members (14 on the big machines, 4 on the recorder), but it was definitely a team effort! I even got in trouble when I refused the first Design Award unless all the team members names were on it. Usually, they just put the company and project manager. My boss nearly had a stroke! LOL Ahhh… fond memories. 😀
Now, if I had to design a data recorder today… Ohhh, how much simpler it would be! And a damned sight better than anything around now too! Finding very competent young engineers/programmers who have no concept of *impossible* would be tricky today I think. But not impossible! Heh… 😉 I’ve already found a couple for a future project I’ve had in mind for awhile. We’ll see.
*shrug*
Stock market loss is phony loss. What matters is profit and loss, and on that front Samsung is doing quite well even with this little hiccup. They went from making an obscene profit on the Note 7 to basically breaking even when all is said and done, but this is one product of literally thousands of products that they make, including some of the components of every single one of their competitors. Because of the nature of how they’re organized as basically an organized crime syndicate (“chaebol”), shareholder value is literally meaningless to them.
While I’m surprised they weren’t able to track the batteries to end user phones, I’m not surprised that they ended up having a supplier issue that supplied bad batteries. That has always been one of the issues of dealing with the Chinese, they don’t have any notion of honor when dealing with foreigners, they will cheat with a bald face if they think they can get away with it. An acquaintance sells camping gear that is made in China because there is literally one single company here in the United States that has the capability to manufacture camping gear domestically and they don’t have the ability to manufacture in the quantity he needs at the price he needs. Everybody he deals with over there tries to rip him off. He spends almost as much time in China as he does here in the United States trying to make sure that his 20,000 backpacks get manufactured correctly and in a timely manner. The stories he tells… and I wonder why he doesn’t just go into the manufacturing business himself, instead of contracting out the manufacture of his designs to other people. But apparently he can’t find the expertise here in the United States that know how he can manufacture even 20,000 textile products in a cost-effective manner…
Well, I can’t disagree with that (especially about the Chinese!) When i was dealing with the Japanese, they would try everything to gain the advantage in a deal. But once the contract was signed, they honored it. Negotiations with them was… frustrating, and also fun at times. 😀 They would give you a break if you at least took the time to understand the culture and be very respectful, and it helped if you spoke at least some Japanese. 😉
You may be interested in this (or anyone else with a Mac). I just got an email about a pretty good promotional giveaway of 10 OS-X App’s. Anyone is free to get them. via StackSocial.
Free: Mighty Mac App Bundle
They have some interesting Freebies, mainly online courses & product trials, but there may be something useful for someone. 🙂
StackSocial: Freebies
They have a bunch of other giveaways (mostly competitions) including a “Year of Wine Givaway”! LOL But most are USA only. So… *shrug*
StackSocial: Giveaways
And yes, about Samsung. I own a few Samsung products, including a Fridge/Freezer (that I must say has been brilliant! So much more energy efficient & silent compared to the previous one). It even has a 3 year full replacement onsite warranty, which I extended to 5. It’s been purring along happily for a year now. 🙂 It even has an excellent ice cube maker (just fill the reservoir with spring water) that is easy and nice for my occasional scotch! 😀 Great in summer of course. 😉
They are one of those strange companies… Either their products are excellent, or crap! I’ve had a couple disasters from them (one an expensive phone a a few years ago. I’ll never buy a Samsung phone/tablet).
Hey Bryan (back onto Win 10)… I was reading a new blog entry on Ashampoo about security threats, and there was this comment:
So, your theory above is probably correct! :\
It may also explain why I am having so much trouble with iSCSI and other hardware related issues.
Curiously, I’ve owned 4 Gigabyte MoBo’s over the past decade, and one thing they have never been fast with (unless a serious issue develops) is driver updates! Generally every 6 months or so (with Win7). On this MoBo, it’s been every 2-4 weeks! I am having trouble keeping up! And the Gfx card driver updates are almost weekly!
If interested:
Taping over your webcam – mere paranoia or reasonable action?
Yes, there have been a constant stream of driver updates since switching to Win 10. Every patch M$ makes breaks something else.
Badtux, they do know the serial numbers of the affected handsets and have a web site for people to check. Unfortunately the list covers almost all of the units sold in the US. The government recall is more about getting the carriers and retailers to start the exchange program.
I put Win 8.1 back on the tablet. All problems disappeared. The tablet originally came with 8.1, so I just had to d/l the image from Dell. I’m… amazed that even M$ could make something worse than Win 8! Guess I shouldn’t be. I’m looking at getting an 8 license for the PC.
Wonder when Win 11 or 12 (or whatever) will be announced. 😕 🙄
Talk about the never ending story! Geez.
Speaking of North Korea, I see they are begging the World to help them out with the recent disaster, now they have spent all their money on Nuclear weapons & trying to pretend Kim has a personality, or even a brain. *shrug*
Hahahahaha…
I just went to d/l an update of one of the s/w I need for my work (a popular, expensive and widely used product I might add), and in the notes it had this:
“Work on Windows 10 is POSSIBLE, BUT NOT GUARANTEED!”
This isn’t the first time I have seen something similar! Thank you M$ a’holes!
And people still say it’s fantastic?? WTF do they use it for? IE only? Because I know even M$ office doesn’t work properly on W10!
Bah!
I use Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, and LibreOffice on all of my machines – Windows XP to 10 & Linux. The Windows XP & 7 machines use the same version, but Windows 10 uses a different version of LibreOffice.
If I was the manager for M$ applications, I would be pushing for making everything usable on Linux, OSX, IOS, and Android, so I had a viable product line when Windows cratered. Windows 7 will probably get extended like XP did. I mean, come on, you’re giving something away and you have to trick people into accepting it?!? WTF?
Let’s see, what am I running on my little HP with Windows 10? Ah yes. Java JDK. IntelliJ for Java development. Visual Studio for NodeJS development. VNC to talk to my Linux desktop, XMobiTerm to talk to my Linux servers and run virt-manager remotely via X11. Chrome, Thunderbird, LibreOffice (I don’t run Microsoft Office). Fortinet SSL VPN to VPN into the office. GNU Emacs for Windows, mostly to look at JSON’s via its JSON mode which includes a reformatter. VirtualBox to run a Fedora 24 VM to do some Linux development. TortoiseHG and mercurial to do source control. The Android SDK for compiling our Android app. Oh yeah, VMware vSphere client to talk to my ESXi servers.
But hey, I don’t do any work on the machine, right? :).
I did have one bit of weirdness with my graphics adapter after their Anniversary Edition update, but removing the driver, rebooting it, and letting Windows re-find and re-initialize the driver fixed it. Windows has always been prone to stupid crud like that though.
The Anniversary Edition wouldn’t install at first, I just kept getting a blue screen with a never-ending circle. Finally, I hitched up on a website noting that any peripherals attached could cause a problem. Sure enough, removing my wireless mouse solved the problem. It still took a very looooong time to update. And, as usual, the update changed some of my personal settings to something that apparently pleased it better, just because…just because it can, I guess.
You guys would have picked up on that right away most likely, but all my other prior MS updates did just fine without having to remove my wireless mouse. Thank goodness for my Note 5 phone. If I had been without another internet source for clues, I would have been sunk. And I NEVER EVER go to the Microsoft site for a real answer either. Tried that once, and eight hours later, I ended up having to format/reinstall my machine that had been working perfectly before trying to install Office (which should have been a simple deal, for crying out loud). Those guys are useless to the general public.
It was delivered with Windows 10, not upgraded to it, which apparently makes all the difference, but it still screwed up on the graphics adapter. Juanita needed to remove a wireless mouse to get her machine to boot after an update. The thing is you could probably write an OS if you wanted to take the time, but most people are users and just want to use it, not rebuild it.
I have the Win 10 box running again, but it is the slowest booting machine in my collection – slower than my RP3 or Win XP, and it is on the box with the fastest CPU and the only Quadcore. At a price of $0 it was too expensive. Given the time I’ve had to expend to get it to work, not counting the time I need to spend to fix whatever they did that killed the ability of my Toshiba to update, it is a damn bloody expensive OS.
Hmmm. Yes, after the Annniversary update, I noticed that my PC takes twice as long to boot now. I enabled the startup notifications (shows what is loading as it boots) and it pauses now and then, but no idea why. There are several theories on various forums. *shrug*
I use several FOSS tools where I can. And some have been problematic. though kudos to the FOSS coders & user community, they usually have it fixed pretty fast. 🙂 The commercial app’s take longer. One of the gfx app’s I use has got their product kinda working, but have announced that they are working fast as possible on a complete rewrite to make it work on W10 and to ensure easier/faster updates in future. They plan to have it ready before year end. They were planning a new version anyway with requested new features, but were planning to leverage the existing code. I have had other companies say similar things. Another is Blender (a FOSS 3D tool I use). GIMP also had some erratic crashing issues earlier, they tracked it to a DLL issue win 10 had for whatever reason. A couple recent updates seems to have fixed it. Inkscape had a bug with W10 where previously created files lost some detail when opened with Inkscape on W10 but not earlier Windoze. *shrug*
Several bugs I’ve been tracking seem to be either related to DLL incompatibilities (even created by (mainly older) M$ “Studio” dev tools), or because M$ completely changed the way W10 authenticates app’s & DLL’s. It seems that if you use app’s that have nothing whatever in common, you should be OK. Maybe. Actually… it’s a crap shoot! Some people have no issues, others have some, others have nothing but trouble.
I think it must be related to exactly what choices were made when the machine was made, and what device drivers were are used. It is a crap shoot dependent on the exact combination of devices you have. How in the hell can a wireless mouse keep the sucker from booting. I don’t even bother to install drivers for the Logitech keyboards and mice I use. I plug in the receiver and they work in all flavors of Windows and both flavors of Linux I use.
FUBAR, even more than we normally get from M$. This is Windows ME level of FUBAR.
Yep. Sadly, whilst I was able to fix ME (by transplanting 98 SE code and essentially merging the bit’s that worked in either. (Eg. Memory leaks were much less of an issue in ME than 98.) The code base for W10 is just way too huge for any single person to even attempt to understand, assuming they get the code! It took me almost a year to do the 98SE/ME hybrid.
And Juanita… Welcome to the club! 😉 And yes, I do realise that is a very backhanded compliment! 😀 And I sure do understand your frustration & annoyance with M$! I hope you’ve found some help with our regular rants! 😀 Expect many more! I don’t see these problems getting better or being reduced any time soon! *SIGH*
They have allowed it to grow so large that no one can understand all of the interactions. They really need a clean rewrite using standardized coding methods and procedures so that the source is documented and people know where to go to fix things. There is entirely too much by guess and by gosh in Windows.
The big problem they have is all the legacy code. They had the opportunity to get rid of it with the tablet version of Windows that eventually became Windows 8, and gulped and flinched and put it back in. I’m not sure whether to praise them or curse them, I know I curse Apple plenty when they break my programs by removing old functions that have been superseded by new functions. Is it better to have an OS that’s (relatively) stable and fast but that regularly breaks older programs, or is it better to have an OS that doesn’t regularly break older programs, but has so much cruft in it that any patches or fixes tend to break as much stuff as they fix? SIGH. If this was an easy job, they wouldn’t be paying me so much money to do it….
– Badtux the Software Engineer Penguin
The one thing no one seem to consider possible is to warn people that the new version is going to break current versions, or to test against the most common applications in use to see what will happen, Issuing a new OS in March that ‘breaks’ Turbo TAX or in June that breaks Quickbooks would be a definite downer,