William Goodall's Blog Occasional mutterings

April 12, 2010

My iPad as a tool

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT,Microsoft — William_T_Goodall @ 14:35

Tech geeks love numbers. When discussing computers, they speak of gigabits and gigahertz, of RAM and ports. The more tech adept among them will even swap out the internals or write their own code. They are tinkerers extraordinaire, and are just as happy customizing their rigs as they are in using their machines for their intended purposes, be it work or pleasure.

Then there’s everyone else.

I became a Mac user because I got tired of cracking my machine open to deal with hardware, and I got tired of fighting my software to get any work done. My work needs are simple: a browser, a word processor, and sporadic use of office productivity software (covered by Microsoft Office and Apple iWorks). With Google Docs, I use less and less of my desktop apps. I love cloud-based computing.

I was a PC gamer, but the current generation of dedicated gaming consoles took care of that. My Xbox, despite being made by Microsoft, is stable, fast, and runs my games perfectly. How could a company that gave us Windows build such a great gaming platform?

Because it was a closed system.

[From My iPad as a tool]

Remind me how long this has been the year of Linux on the desktop 🙂

The best summary of the Apple/Adobe war

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 14:16

Want a a simple, single-paragraph on what the Apple/Adobe iPhone spat is all about? Jean Louis Gassee supplies it: “Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe and other cross-platform application development tools control his I mean the iPhone OS future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.” I think it really is that simple.

Related posts:Apple’s quest for massive market share
Adobe and Macromedia Thoughts
Adobe versus the world

[From The best summary of the Apple/Adobe war]

Microsoft wants Flash dead too, but they are more constrained in what they can say and do about it than Apple.

Energy saving light bulbs can effect television sets

Filed under: Trivia — William_T_Goodall @ 10:26

Energy saving light bulbs can interfere with televisions causing them to randomly change channel and switch on and off, a leading manufacturer has admitted. [From Energy saving light bulbs can effect television sets]

I observed this myself fifteen years ago or so.

April 9, 2010

Everything You Need To Know About iPhone OS 4.0

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 09:41

The iPhone OS 4.0 event just wrapped up and the faithful are filing out of the Apple venue with a slightly shell-shocked look. What happened? Oh nothing, just multi-tasking, iAd, a huge Mail update and a bunch of other stuff. Yes, the long-awaited OS update for the iPhone has just been run down and we’ve got all the details. Here, in handy bullet point form, are all the things you need to know about iPhone OS 4.0… Continue reading[From Everything You Need To Know About iPhone OS 4.0]

I suppose I’ll be downloading the beta on Sunday.

April 7, 2010

feature: Ars Technica reviews the iPad

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 13:42

The iPad isn’t a big iPod touch—an iPod touch is a miniature iPad that restricts the full multitouch experience in exchange for offering greater portability. With the iPad, in contrast, you get multitouch the way it was meant to be done.

That’s one of our many take-aways after having submerged ourselves in iPad land since launch. The larger screen doesn’t just offer more space to work with—it opens up a different and more immersive user experience. Because of this different experience, though, the closed nature of the platform can get under some users’ skin in ways the iPhone and iPod touch do not.

Still, the iPad is likely to just be a starting point for Apple and for multitouch computing in general. There are obvious downsides to the device—we’ll tell you what those are—but it’s clear that it does sit in its own category that floats somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, and it serves different purposes than either its smaller or bigger siblings. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

A large chunk of the Ars staff contributed to this review, either in the form of writing full sections or by offering feedback and insights based on their own experiences. Because the 3G + WiFi version is not yet on the market, we all tested a WiFi-only iPad. We think it’s worth noting up front that the WiFi-only version is probably best if you only plan to use it at home or at Starbucks—you’ll definitely miss not having an Internet connection while out and about, and the (non-contract) 3G data plans are not bad at all, so long as you can stomach the extra $130 you’ll have to fork over for the privilege.
It’s also the case that there are some parts of the iPad “experience” that we didn’t get to cover here, but we think the next several pages will convey more about what using the iPad is like than you ever thought you wanted to know. So let’s get on with it!

Read the comments on this post

[From feature: Ars Technica reviews the iPad]

Pretty comprehensive review. Clearly a hands-on is needed to ‘get’ this. Still not clear if it is going to break out of being a niche product though.

April 4, 2010

Apple’s A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 11:43

Up until now, a shroud of mystery has surrounded Apple’s custom engineered A4 system-on-chip; we know it’s clocked at 1GHz, likely tied to Apple’s prior acquisition of P.A. Semi and manufactured by Samsung. Outside of that, the only other knowledge we’ve gained has come not from the mouth of Cupertino, but from the extracting wizards over at iFixit. The A4 contains at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other, though it’s packaged just like the iPhone processor: microprocessor in one package and two memory modules in the other package. We also learned that the iPad RAM is actually inside of the A4 processor package, and we’re expecting to learn even more from those folks in the coming days. All that said, there’s still much debate on whether Apple’s own silicon can stand up to Qualcomm’s heralded 1GHz Snapdragon, the chip powering Google’s Nexus One among other things. AnandTech pitted their iPad against the iPhone 3GS (600MHz ARM Cortex A8) and the aforesaid Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250), using a number of website loads as the primary benchmark. Overall, the A4 proved to be around 10 to 30 percent faster, though it’s impossible to say what effect the operating system has on things. Have a gander at that source link for more — we get the feeling the competitions have just begun.Apple’s A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | AnandTech | Email this | Comments [From Apple’s A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test]

That’s very interesting. How custom is this chip? Apple does have an architecture license for ARM that allows them to tweak the chip design.

April 1, 2010

First iPad reviews appear, mostly thumbs up

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 10:33

As expected, Apple gave the New York Times’ David Pogue , USA Today’s Ed Baig and the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg an early crack at the iPad for reviews that just appeared. [From First iPad reviews appear, mostly thumbs up]

It only remains to be seen how well it actually sells.

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