Smalltalk with James Robertson

My wife asked me to get the A/V output cables for her iPad - and it looks like this was timed to coincide :)

If you've used the Netflix iPad app, you've probably thought how cool it would be if you could connect your iPad to a TV to watch what's streaming to the app. Someone at Netflix must have read your mind, because the company on Wednesday updated its iPad app to support video output via Apple's optional VGA, component, or composite dock connector cables.

When she has to rest her knees, this will be nice thing for her to have.

Technorati Tags: netflix, iPad, tv

This news about iPad sales doesn't surprise me:

Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week. Which means, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, that sales of the company’s new device have outpaced those of the Mac in the United States and are closing in on those of the iPhone 3GS.

While PCs (which includes Macs) are common household devices now, they aren't really consumer gadgets - they take work. The iPad moves away from that space, and into the general "easy to use" gadget space - like a TV, you turn it on and you're ready to go. Any such device, if successful, will outsell a tech gadget like a PC or Mac.

Technorati Tags: apple, iPad, mac

Ed Driscoll explains how easy it is to get decent green screen effects with inexpensive equipment.

Technorati Tags: special effects

Gizmodo reports that the latest iPhone OS 4 beta has... tethering!

That will be nice. Now if only ATT would have enabled that a year ago...

Technorati Tags: iPhone, tethering

While I haven't been paying much attention, battery life for notebooks and netbooks has been creeping up:

The 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo refresh with NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics and longer 10-hour battery life (up from 7 hours) is sitting up, nice and pretty on Apple's very own store in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, and a few other sites.

Whenever I go to a conference, I hunt for the seat with power access - my 2007 era MBP chews through battery like nobody's business. It looks like things have been improving on that front...

Technorati Tags: battery, macintosh

A lot of people think that the Apple vs. Adobe thing (Flash) will end up costing Apple the platform battle for the mobile space - Mark Cooper sums it up with the most common argument:

And since developers — as a general rule, and matter of history — don’t like to be told how to do things, my guess is that more open platforms will win

That sounds reasonable, but... then there are the usage stats for Flash over the last year or so. The numbers don't look good for Adobe; I'd say they look bad enough that Apple has won this particular battle already, regardless of what else happens. Why? Those kinds of usage numbers feed on each other.

Back in the late 90's, after the ParcPlace-Digitalk merger had reached a real point of badness, PPD announced the VSE was being obsoleted. The last forward looking work on that product was done sometime around 1996/1997. With that announcement, the number of paying customers halved in about 12 months.

Now, this isn't a straight analogy; Adobe isn't cancelling Flash. However, with the fact that it doesn't work on one of the main mobile platforms, it's cancelling itself, and the numbers linked above demonstrate that. With Flash dropping so fast, I see the same dynamic in action. Unless the Android platform compteley swamps Apple (and absent a tablet for a few months, I don't see that happening) - Flash is just doomed to second tier status.

Now, long term, Apple could still lose this, the same way they lost the desktop space to Microsoft years ago. However, it sure doesn't look like that to me now, and - in the meantime - they are reshaping a lot of what happens on the web.

Technorati Tags: web, web development

This is second hand - my wife uses the iPad, not me. Having siad that, she really likes it. One of the problems she's had with books of late has to do with her eyes, and the presbyopia thing. The iPad deals with that two ways:

• The backlit screen helps, as low light conditions are especially troublesome
• The ability to easily change the text size

An ancillary benefit is that the growing pile of books on the shelf behind the bed has stopped growing; we were starting to worry about an avalanche :)

We just ordered a cable from Apple to drive output from the iPad to the TV - given the various video options available, it would be nice to toss the output across the room. We'll have those cables in a day or two; I'll post once we see how well that works.

Technorati Tags: iPad, apple, reading

With video game revenues down, Nintendo has to shift focus:

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata is understood to have told his senior executives recently to regard the battle with Sony as a victory already won and to treat Apple, and its iPhone and iPad devices, as the 'enemy of the future.

Apple has also driven margins down. DS games tend to run in the tens of dollars; games for the iPhone and Touch are usually in the 99 cent range. If Nintendo wants to compete, they'll have to create their own ecosystem, as Apple has...

Technorati Tags: apple, nontendo, games

What do you do if you have the audio for a cassette used to load code onto an Apple IIe? Why, you use your iPad to push it across, that's what. The video is pretty cool :)

Technorati Tags: apple, iie, iPad

John Gruber writes about a possible Verizon iPhone, and says in the middle of the piece:

If Verizon had the iPhone, surely many current AT&T customers would switch.

Well, not so much. At least not immediately. Why? The current iPhone won't work on the Verizon network. Then, unless Apple shipped a tri-band phone (2g, CDMA, and GSM), the Verizon iPhone - like most Verizon phones - would be a brick if you traveled overseas.

This is one of those "grass is always greener" things. Personally, I wouldn't switch unless it was a tri-band phone, and even then, I'd have to be convinced by better plans. Unlike so many other people, I simply haven't run into the supposedly lousy ATT network. For me, it's been as reliable as Verizon was.

Now, I'm not everyone, and certainly verizon would sell a bunch of iPhones. However, most of that would be to new people, at least initially. There would be some loud switchers to be sure, but in numbers? Hard to say.

Hat tip Rob Fahrni

Technorati Tags: apple, iPhone, verizon, att