Skyscript Astrology Forum

EPurdue wrote:No that's not how pixel counts work. A higher pixel count means the image is higher quality.

It's like if you make a sculpture out of .5 inch Lego blocks, it will look different than if you used blocks half that size. The sculpture is the same size.

Apple's site has some side by side examples showing this.

Hi EPurdue

Apple have a higher resolution tablet (for example) than others on the market. However if you put two of them side by side you would not know this necessarily by their size. This is what I was trying to demonstrate. For example if you browse a website on a tablet device of the same dimensions, one of which is retina display and one which is not, you will find that text is sharp on the retina display, but images may be very blurry compared to the non-retina display image.

This is because fonts are vectors (not pixel based) and so can scale with ease. However images cannot, and as the retina display requires twice as many pixels per square centimeter (for example), images will be forced to stretch to attain a certain dimension.

My point was that it can be confusing to gel both of these two concepts sometimes when working with retina display devices. So although you have twice as many pixels this doesn't necessarily imply it is twice as easy to see the content on the screen. So it can be sometimes a bit illusory to just examine the pixel count.

EDIT
Basically what I mean is that if you require something to be fairly large, and an image, you will need it to be twice as large (in pixels) for retina as you would for other devices. The effect of packing more pixels in is that sharpness is improved, but this effectively means that something 100 pixels high will look half as high in retina display as in other devices. So although pixel counts are important, they can be illusory in terms of what exactly they are conveying to a user.
As an example imagine I fill the area the size of my thumbnail with thousands of pixels - the area you have to view what I have put there will still only be the size of my thumbnail, so at first glance saying my 'device' is 4000px x 3000px sounds a lot, it's still only the size of my thumbnail.

Good day,

Since my PC died recently, i have replaced it with a Windows 8 tablet, albeit one with a 128 GB SSD and a HDMI port for the screen. Devices are attached via USB. After a bit of tinkering to get it set up, the tablet is running like a charm, comes up and goes down in a few seconds. It saves me 20 kg, room, can be unplugged and is much less bulky than even a notebook to carry. No regrets.

However, most Android (Google) smart telephone applications are usually not available for Windows and vice versa. Each big corporation tries to lock its customers into IT-slavery.

Best regards,

lihin

lihin wrote:Good day,

Since my PC died recently, i have replaced it with a Windows 8 tablet, albeit one with a 128 GB SSD and a HDMI port for the screen. Devices are attached via USB. After a bit of tinkering to get it set up, the tablet is running like a charm, comes up and goes down in a few seconds. It saves me 20 kg, room, can be unplugged and is much less bulky than even a notebook to carry. No regrets.

However, most Android (Google) smart telephone applications are usually not available for Windows and vice versa. Each big corporation tries to lock its customers into IT-slavery.

Best regards,

lihin

Hi Lihin,

I use Linux, so I'm not sure, but doesn't everything which ran in the previous Windows versions still run on Windows 8?

Good morning,

Until now, without exception all applications that ran in Windows 7 also do so in Windows 8 (not RT!) on the tablet, mostly in desktop mode only. Until acquisition of some astrology programmes i used Linux but do not wish to be bothered by more than one operating system, tweaking 'Wine', and the like. Me plug and play, lazy. The reason i migrated to Windows was to run some astrology software.

Getting back to telephones, Mozilla have announced that they will release a complete 'free' operating system for smart telephones late this year or early next, an event i am eagerly awaiting. As a Google slave with Android, i configure the Firefox web browser to block all Google tracking functions and have installed ex. gr. an alternate application 'shop'. If Google founders and others become milliardaires by obtaining and selling my and others' private data, i should at least like to get paid for the raw material.

Alas, i must wait two years to root my telephone unless i accept to void the guarantee i paid for.

Best regards,

lihin

lihin wrote:If Google founders and others become milliardaires by obtaining and selling my and others' private data, i should at least like to get paid for the raw material.

That's a good point, however the other way of looking at it is that Google has created the best browsing experience with their Chrome browser - easily faster and more compliant than its competitors. Most of us are not willing to pay for that. It is an accepted norm that we will not pay for the hours of exhausting work that went into creating that browser, and most of us know that a free lunch is seldom free. By marketing your personal data they can pay to provide you with things like Youtube, Gmail, Chrome etc. that most of us recognise have changed the internet landscape. Personal data is still a very big concern of course but it's worth being aware of what you're getting in return.

You mention using Mozilla, but in fact the vast majority of money that Mozilla makes (which it needs in order to create the very browser you're using) actually comes from Google, mostly from making Google the default search engine (a hugely profitable thing for Google).

There's no denying Google make huge money from your personal data, but directly or indirectly so too do Mozilla profit from this.

However, most Android (Google) smart telephone applications are usually not available for Windows and vice versa. Each big corporation tries to lock its customers into IT-slavery.

It can seem that way, and at times it really is that way, but often the real reason for this is for much more pragmatic reasons. Each company has worked on, or researched, what they feel would be the best code to create their app. Apple spent years working on their coding paradigms and obviously feel that Objective C is the best coding language for their purpose - it is object oriented and based on the C language (potentially allowing easier porting of software from C). Android chose Java instead for their own purposes, both Objective C and Java aim to do something similar with regard making something C-like, or based on C to be object oriented. But each one works differently and there are arguments with regards which is the better one for the task. Android have chosen their preference and Apple has a long history working with their own. Their choices here are less to do with trying to tie people into some IT slavery and more about what they feel provides the best user experience (does one handle memory better, have better support, quicker etc) as well as which one is financially sensible for them.

Of course everyone wants you to just use their variant, but this is true of every business and not unique to the smartphone/tablet market, or to IT.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both Android's choice and Apple's. I do not know so much about Windows based apps, but my experience with Microsoft tends to be that their work is often sloppy or does not conform to the same high standards as companies like Android and Apple tend to demand, though this is certainly changing now they are no longer the market leaders.

I just wondered what happened to the pocket Win AstroWin software I used to have on my PDA. Which became obselete as soonas the first Apple i-phone came out. The PDA not astrology software.

As the magyar taxman takes all my dough I look for freebies if at all possible, though I would welcome knowledge of a paid software that would work nicely on my Galaxy S2.

I did find two good little apps in the Android store: the first is Aquarius2go, it does natals, solar returns and synastries, gives Chiron and Lilith positions too. Chiron was a welcome new additon to the pantheon that shows up on the old astrowin, though wish they could have included less hypothetical new bodies. The other works on transits and offers transits based on natal data, not sure if you can customise the orbs though - they seem to ignore some transits and over-emphasise others to my mind. Much better than a sun-sign horoscope though.

Hello,
Someone alerted me to this thread.
I developed something which qualifies as 'serious astrology app for android' and I'm looking for betatesters.
Please checkout http://android.jcremers.com for info and screenshots and there's also a demo on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PljC206Q ... e=youtu.be

This app will be free (Gpl license).

Please help me betatest or tell me where I might find betatesters. I already asked serveral places and I am finding it hard to find people who are interested in such an app.

Hi Jean

I cannot understand the lack of interest in an app like this, I wou
ld be deligjted to have something like this on my phone!!!!

Please keep us posted....

Thanks for the heads up.
Why don't you help me and become betatester? It has already been tested by 2 friends of mine and I don't expect many bugs to show up, I just want to hear from more people/devices before I publish it on google play.
You have to sign up for google+, that's the mechanism google uses for betatestesters, then if you mail me the email address I can add you to the test group and you can download the app.

OK I will become a betatester. I have a google plus account though I di not really use it much - but it is active.

Btw thanks to this thread I now have betatesters, something I considered essential before publishing my app. A friend of mine did a search for 'serious astrology app android' when I was complaining again about lack of interest, and found this thread and forum, and voila.

I am lookung at all its features now, noth on my laptop and on my phobe. Still not really sure what betatesting involves, but will be able to comment on it soon