One Week With the iPad

May 10th, 2010

I’ve been using my iPad for a lit­tle over a week now, so it’s time for some impres­sions. Before read­ing onward, it might be a good idea to read a pre­vi­ous post of mine where I laid out my poten­tial use cases for an iPad. Much has been writ­ten con­cern­ing the pros and cons of the var­i­ous iPad con­fig­u­ra­tions. Ultimately I ended up pre-ordering a 32 GB WiFi+3G model.


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Adobe’s Messed Up Metaphors

May 5th, 2010

I ran across this arti­cle on TechCrunch by M.G. Seigler regard­ing a recent state­ment made by Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch. Regarding, what else, the iPhone and Apple’s refusal to allow appli­ca­tions built using Flash on the plat­form. Kevin’s full remarks are avail­able here, but here is the part that M.G. focuses on, and that I want to address:

M.G. does an ade­quate job of demon­strat­ing why Lynch is wrong by delv­ing into the his­tory of the U.S. rail­road sys­tem and by look­ing at the Japanese model, but he makes the mis­take of accept­ing the metaphor in the first place.

is stan­dard­ized. It’s the cel­lu­lar net­works that the phones oper­ate on (sort of, ignore CDMA vs. GSM for the moment) and the Internet that data is deliv­ered to the phones over.

The real issue here, though, isn’t the specifics of Lynch’s argu­ment. It’s the fact that Adobe con­stantly makes these sorts of metaphor­i­cal mis­takes. The sad thing is that they ulti­mately do noth­ing but weaken their argu­ment. Steve Jobs him­self stated exactly what Adobe needs to do to “win” in his let­ter about Flash: demon­strate Flash run­ning excel­lently on an actual ship­ping prod­uct. It won’t change Apple’s mind, but then at least the mar­ket can intel­li­gently decide.

Reasoned Commentary

May 5th, 2010

From the Christian Science Monitor.

It’s nice to see some­one “get it” in regards to the JizzmodoPhone saga.

H/T to John Gruber.

Atomic iPhone

April 21st, 2010

Amidst the generic sense of rage that the whole JizzmodoPhone deba­cle has engen­dered in me, I find myself amused by one thing. I find it hilar­i­ous that a large chunk of the tech media now uncrit­i­cally accepts that the phone that Jizzmodo has in it’s pos­ses­sion is com­pletely, and with­out any pos­si­bil­ity of change, the phone that Apple will intro­duce this summer.

Let’s ana­lyze this assump­tion in detail. First, let’s go ahead and assume that this phone isn’t some sort of nefar­i­ous Apple PR stunt (because it isn’t you rubes), and let’s fur­ther assume that it is a pro­to­type of a future Apple iPhone. Why is it, other than sheer igno­rance, that peo­ple assume that this phone, in it’s exact con­di­tion, is the next gen­er­a­tion iPhone?

Of course, the answer is actu­ally fairly sim­ple. Most “tech jour­nal­ists” have about as much under­stand­ing of actual tech­nol­ogy as my cocker spaniel. For the unini­ti­ated, there are three gen­eral areas that would need to be pro­to­typed for a new iPhone: the elec­tron­ics, the oper­at­ing sys­tem and the remain­ing hard­ware. In a nor­mal man­u­fac­tur­ing process all three of these items would be pro­to­typed sep­a­rately with a very small num­ber of final pro­to­types rep­re­sent­ing the

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Fuck Jizzmodo

April 20th, 2010

I’m not going to go into specifics about what hap­pened, or the time­line of events. If you fol­low Mac news you know what I’m talk­ing about, if you don’t then here is a quick run­down. Jizzmodo (I hereby refuse to ever type Gizmodo again) posted a story with details and pic­tures of a pur­ported pro­to­type next-generation iPhone. It was then revealed that Jizzmodo paid an unnamed party who had stolen (yes, stolen) the phone from an Apple engi­neer for the device. Jizzmodo then felt com­pelled to pub­licly humil­i­ate the poor bas­tard who had the phone stolen from him.

Jizzmodo’s behav­ior in this mat­ter has been rep­re­hen­si­ble, and through­out has been laden with the douchebag atti­tude that they seem to think passes for wit. And let’s be absolutely clear here. This isn’t an “Apple’s tyran­ni­cal secrecy” issue here. It could be any company’s prod­uct and I would feel the same way about the shit-smears at Jizz. Because, in the end, it’s not about the leak. I mean, whoop-ti-fucking-do, we now have “con­fir­ma­tion” of a fea­ture set that any­one with a halfway func­tion­ing pre-frontal cor­tex could have pre­dicted. And if you think that the case is some­thing that Jonny Ive would put

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Rumors

April 19th, 2010

I remem­ber the days when sites that posted unsub­stan­ti­ated rumors about Apple prod­ucts were a source of humor at best, and heaped with scorn and deri­sion at the worst. I also remem­ber when Apple would sue them into obliv­ion. I miss those days.

DRACONIAN CONTROL

April 14th, 2010
We believe that we need to own and con­trol the pri­mary tech­nolo­gies behind the prod­ucts we make, and par­tic­i­pâté only in mar­kets where we can make a sig­nif­i­cant contribution.

Tim Cook, Apple COO

Whenever you feel the need to ask why Apple does shit like fuck-banning Flash or Flash based apps, or when­ever you want to know why Apple doesn’t pro­duce a par­tic­u­lar model of com­puter, reflect upon the above quote from Tim Cook. This couldn’t be more obvi­ous if Apple wrote it in 360 pt. red type on their home page.

Update

Thoughts on iPhone OS 4.0

April 12th, 2010

As most peo­ple read­ing this site know, Apple held an event last Thursday to announce iPhone OS 4.0 and pre­view some of it’s fea­tures. Now that I’ve had some time to digest the announce­ment I’ll relay my thoughts. Keeping in mind that the mes­sage being deliv­ered last Thursday was meant as much for devel­op­ers as it was for end users; I thought that, over­all, iPhone OS 4.0 looks like a solid release. Much like OS 3.0 before it, iPhone OS 4.0 con­tains few, if any, ground­break­ing new inter­face metaphors or user fea­tures. Most of the new fea­tures will really only make their mark in the form of the appli­ca­tions that make use of them, but they will have a large impact on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad experience.


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Six Signs That the iPad Review You’re Reading Is Crap

April 5th, 2010

The fol­low­ing is a list of signs that the iPad review that you’re read­ing was writ­ten by a tool, or an igno­ra­mus, pos­si­bly both. I’m not refer­ring to any spe­cific reviews, but to gen­eral trends of ass­hat­tery. Disclaimer: I do not yet have an iPad to per­form my own crit­i­cal analy­sis. Mine is still wait­ing in FCC approval limbo.

2. Complaints that the iPad screen is a “smudge mag­net.” Piss off you greasy-fingered fuck. Name me one glass sur­faced dis­play that doesn’t gather smudges like Richard Stallman gath­ers toe-jam. Wash your hands and quit your bitchin’.

3. Complaints that the iPad is “heavy for an eReader.” Hey lack­wit, show me where Apple is mar­ket­ing the iPad as an “eReader.” You know what the iPad is light for? It’s light for a fuck­ing lap­top alter­na­tive. Do some curls and build up the strength in your arms you pansies.

4. Complaints about “glare.” I’m almost

5. Complaints that the iPad lacks fea­tures that were never announced in the first place. Review the prod­uct Apple built you tools, not the one that you invented in your head. Also, THERE IS NO CAMERA. THE CAMERA IS A LIE.

6. Complaints about the egre­gious price of iPad apps. Die in a fire you cheap fucks.

There you have it. Six signs that the iPad review that you’re read­ing is shit. Forewarned is foreskinned.

Watts Martin On “Open”

April 1st, 2010

I’m too hun­gover to write today, so instead I’ll pimp this piece by Watts Martin on the nerd-holy-grail of “open.” Watts nicely sum­ma­rizes my opin­ion on the matter.

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