IT « William Goodall's Blog

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!

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[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.

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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.

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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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March 30, 2010

‘Another Nail in Apple’s Coffin’

Filed under: Apple,IT,Microsoft — William_T_Goodall @ 14:11

Harry McCracken, looking back at Microsoft Bob, 15 years after its release:

Analyst Charles Finnie of Volpe, Welty & Co. called Microsoft’s product a threat to the very existence of Microsoft’s competitor in Cupertino. “Bob is going to be another nail in Apple’s coffin unless Apple can somehow raise the standard yet again on the ease-of-use front,” he told the AP.

★

[From ‘Another Nail in Apple’s Coffin’]

We know how that turned out 🙂

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March 28, 2010

Apple has run out of iPads

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 14:34

Shipping for pre-orders has been pushed back more than a week, to April 12 The demand curve for Apple’s (AAPL) new tablet computer crossed the supply curve sometime overnight Friday. By Saturday morning, the ship date for iPad pre-orders, originally set to guarantee delivery by April 3, had been pushed back to Tuesday April 12. Customers who had already pre-ordered are still scheduled to get their iPads next Saturday. Meanwhile, the option to reserve an iPad for pick-up at an Apple Store has disappeared from Apple.com entirely. That does not mean that there will no iPads available for sale next Saturday. Customers who reserved them over the past two weeks were told at the time that their iPads could be picked up between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday April 3. After 3 p.m., any iPads that haven’t been collected may be made available, while supplies last, on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s not clear whether the shortfall is due to strong demand, short supply or both. Published estimates of the number of iPads Apple was expected to have on hand by April 3 range from a high of 1 million to a low of 300,000. By Friday, according to the best available estimate, 240,000 iPads had been pre-ordered online. The only published report on reservations suggests that they’ve been coming in at roughly the same rate. Kudos to the folks at Planet iPad, who were the first to spot the change in ship dates. See also:

iPad week two: 240,000 pre-orders
iPad week one: 190,000 pre-orders
Day 1 estimate: 120,000 iPad sales
Apple sells 50,000 iPads in two hours
The wild iPad Ruckus begins
How many iPads will Apple sell?

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

[From Apple has run out of iPads]

I wonder how this affects the UK launch? No impulse buy for me I guess 🙂

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March 24, 2010

Palm’s failure to take on iPhone casts doubt on Nokia, Microsoft

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT,Microsoft,Nokia — William_T_Goodall @ 12:00

The high profile failure of Palm’s efforts to revitalize its flagging smartphone business with the Pre’s new webOS has analysts casting doubt over parallel phone platform reinvention efforts by others, including Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.[From Palm’s failure to take on iPhone casts doubt on Nokia, Microsoft]

They’re all doomed! Doomed I say!

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March 17, 2010

Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs

Filed under: Apple,IT,Microsoft — William_T_Goodall @ 01:39

Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.

The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which seeks to make it easier to integrate Macs in Windows-centric IT deployments, surveyed IT admins from companies that made large deployments, including universities and government agencies. Responses included in EDA’s analysis include those from environments with a mix of Macs and PCs that had a total of 50 servers or over 100 Macs.

A majority of respondents said that Macs cost less in terms of time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, and system configuration. Admins generally agreed that costs related to software licensing and supporting infrastructure were the same between the two platforms.

Two-thirds of those managing mixed environments plan to increase the number of Macs deployed in 2010. Twenty-nine percent cited lower TCO as a “key reason” for deploying Macs. Almost half cited lower TCO, ease of support, or a combination of the two as leading factors in Mac adoption. User preference and increased productivity were considered important factors as well.

“As a greater percentage of enterprise applications become OS-neutral, the cost to support a more diverse hardware and OS mix will decrease, making Macs a more viable choice for a greater number of users who continue to demand them,” noted Michael Silver, vice president and research director at Gartner, in a recent report on PC trends. Macs tend to be popular among C-level execs, as well as with those in creative departments and developers (especially cross-platform developers).

Apple has historically done little to actively develop a traditional strategy to target enterprise deployment. Instead, the company tends to focus on consumers first, and lets individuals drive enterprise demand for its computers and mobile devices. It does, though, make continual small improvements that make it easier to integrate Macs, iPhones, and soon iPads into many corporate environments.

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[From Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs]

That’s a no-brainer! Pretty much every IT person I know makes sure their family members buy Macs so they don’t have to deal with support hassles.

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March 11, 2010

iPad Could See 50 Tablet Rivals This Year

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 12:41

Microprocessor company ARM says there will be more than 50 new tablets launching worldwide to compete with the iPad. [From iPad Could See 50 Tablet Rivals This Year]

It seems quite a few companies think it is a good idea if they are copying it already.

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March 9, 2010

Mozilla borrows from WebKit to build fast new JS engine

Filed under: Apple,IT,www — William_T_Goodall @ 18:49

Mozilla’s high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which was first introduced in 2008, has lost a lot of its luster as competing browser vendors have stepped up their game to deliver superior performance. Firefox now lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Opera in common JavaScript benchmarks. In an effort to bring Firefox back to the front of the pack, Mozilla is building a new JavaScript engine called JägerMonkey.

The secret sauce that will drive Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine engine into the fast lane is some code borrowed from Apple’s WebKit project. Mozilla intends to bring together the powerful optimization techniques of TraceMonkey and the extremely efficient native code generator of Apple’s JSCore engine. The mashup will likely deliver a significant boost in Firefox’s JavaScript execution speed, making Mozilla’s browser a formidable contender in the ongoing JavaScript speed race.

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[From Mozilla borrows from WebKit to build fast new JS engine]

Another nail in the coffin of Flash.

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