If you watch the video at the end, the "emboss filter" is really a rendering effect, because the bubbles are actually 3D rendered pucks, not just 2D images. That's why I mentioned in another post that it's not near as bad in motion as it looks in the screenshots. That at least gives it the feel of a little design…

They probably did focus test, but only in Japan, where the interface fits right it with all the wacky, random, and loud phone interfaces. In the west, especially in europe, we tend to expect things much more clean and understated, and designed to fit our left-to-right, regular grid reading and image arrangement habits.

Because from a visual design perspective, the bubbly circular icons and hexagonal layout is a dated, simplistic, amateurish design. It's usually the type of thing you see on prototype and KIRF products out of China. If you're experienced with UI design in the west, that's just how it looks - though I admit it's *much*…

As others said, no stock on hardware - also, the launch games won't all be localized and ready to go for other markets yet (mostly japan developed games).

I've known a lot of families that share portable gaming systems, including mine when I was kid with a gameboy. Many families can't afford one for every child. In fact, almost everyone I know with children and an iPhone let their children play games on it unless they are old enough to buy their own. It's also becoming…

T-mobile also has GSM and better customer service. CDMA chipsets/antennas are cheap and readily available, and would not be an issue to install for north american markets (and possibly south korea). The decision here is purely based on financial arrangements. AT&T is willing to give the most of any of the US carriers…

It's not the same policy - on the PSP you can remove an account and add another without wiping all content. It's not as convenient as switching, but it's better than starting from scratch.

I seem to remember this moment a while back when sony apologized for doing asinine things with their products that blatantly screwed customers and massively damaged sales outside of japan, and promised to knock it off. Now we get a product with proprietary, overpriced, and completely unnecessary memory standards, a…

"There's finally some downloadable content out for Assassin's Creed Revelations"

It's also a different, new manufacture, higher resolution screen. The S II HD would be the true comparison.

Because they are costly to produce and test, and half the parts for these phones were being made in plants that went through various disasters over the past couple years. High end smartphones aren't cheap, on any carrier. As others have pointed out elsewhere, this is right in line for pricing for a 32GB top of the…

I did, but the 4 uses the same crappy qhd pentile (non-amoled) display as the 3. I really want a keyboard, but I'm not willing to get a screen that's practically a downgrade from my 1st gen droid to do it. I can't believe they didn't even go with the slightly better display the razr has.

My second point was more that it's at least worth looking into. There is some indication that bromine exposure could be cumulative, and the FDA, especially from that era, has a very bad track record of approving things for food use with more interest in stimulating US business advances (in a government subsidized…

I liked Spotify Premium at first for offline music and good audio quality but quit after a couple months, not mainly because of the lack of popular music, but because of the lack of anything slightly less popular. Discographies of major artists had some glaring holes too, but I want online music to give me some…

- "But BVO is also added to polystyrene foam cushions in furniture and plastics in electronics because BVO can slow down the chemical reactions that cause a fire. Yuck."

Apparently, that particular companion cube was not weighted properly.

Bah, not as entertaining as the explosions on mythbusters. Movie explosions just don't do it for me any more, I need true destruction, not just fire. :)

That's for the browser though, not the plugin. The plugin itself has it's own execution environment, and in the case of flash and java (not javascript, which is handled by the browser) that includes caching and executable code running through a different engine that is exposing these other vulnerabilities. Until those…

I'm curious why so many people think the ads are new. They were in NXE as well, and I hated how you could see them moving in the background of channels, and how the audio kicked on as you rolled over them. It was distracting. Oddly I find this easier to ignore because it's just like a normal ad instead of something…

Apple's design was not unique or new when it was released, there were several devices including slate and convertible tablet PCs that had similar front profiles to the ipad. The key design differences for the ipad where the thinness (not patentable, regardless of the bs in this case, and a direct result of…