The author of this blog, James Robertson, passed away in April 2014. This blog is being maintained by David Buck (david@simberon.com).
Amazon takes the goves off in the video below:
There's an interesting unstated reality though: you're unlikely to take either a Kindle or an iPad to the pool or beach. Why? Say you want to read a bit, and then go swimming. With a regular paperback, you don't really have any qualms about leaving it on your towel. With a gadget? That's instant theft bait.
So yeah, it's a good ad - but I'm still not buying the idea that you would bring either one anywhere near the water...
TechCrunch explains the obstacles that stand between you and an iPhone on the Verizon network:
The past week, I’ve written a number of posts with the same basic refrain: the carriers suck. Each of those posts was in the context of Android, and specifically how the carriers are taking advantage of the openness of that mobile OS to take us back in time 5 years where they had complete control over the U.S. market — the time before the iPhone. Verizon is the worst perpetrator so far. Is there any doubt they want to do the same thing with the iPhone?
What it boils down to is this: Verizon and Apple both like to have control over the end phone experience. That makes a marriage between the two very, very hard to consummate....
I'm not sure why this happened now - pressure from Android, the continuing levels of bad PR, threatened legal action - but Apple has caved in on development tools for IOS:
All development tools - including Adobe Flash CS5 - are now allowed, as long as they do not download any code. Apple claims this will give developers the flexibility they need, while at the same time preserving the security of the iOS.
In the wider development space, this means Flash - Adobe can dust off whatever work they had for IOS, and ship it (whether it works any better than this remains an open question, of course). It's also good news for Smalltalkers. The work John McIntosh has done to get a Squeak port to IOS is alive again, and Scratch might have a chance at approval - although the ban on downloading executable code might still be a problem there.
It's like "Spy vs Spy", with the iPhone as the target:
The exploit in the boot ROM of iOS devices was first announced by iPhone Dev-Team member pod2g. It was soon confirmed by other hackers, who said that because the exploit targets such a low-level part of the operating system, Apple won't be able to stop jailbreakers without making significant hardware changes.
I wonder what Steve Jobs threw against the wall when he was told about this...
This is a cool sounding device, but while I was reading it, I was thinking about the old days of DOS hard drives a bazillion partitions:
After you've loaded the HyperDrive with your media, you connect it to your iPad with a USB cable and an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. While the Camera Connection Kit traditionally allows you to connect your iPad to SD cards and self-powered USB devices, it also has a disk-size limit of 32GB, which makes it impossible to connect standard USB hard drives. The HyperDrive works around this limit by turning its individual file folders into virtual 32GB drives that are each separately readable by the iPad.
Back to the future!
Technorati Tags: iPad
iPad sales are pretty impressive, and Apple is ramping up production to keep pace with demand:
Apple (AAPL) has ramped up production of the device to meet it, but there’s work left to do yet. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says Apple recently doubled its monthly iPad builds to two million.
I'm using mine quite a bit - it's a great reading device, and it's a good way to have internet access when I'm out and about.
I turned on a month of mobile data for my iPad, and - much to my surprise - I find I'm using it beyond my vacation last week. Now I'm pondering what to do about it going forward - and this story in PC World popped up:
To be clear, jumping on the portable hotspot bandwagon won't relieve you of the obligation to have a data plan for smartphones with the major wireless providers. However, rather than paying $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPhone, plus $20 for the privilege of tethering a laptop to that connection, and an additional $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPad, AT&T subscribers can opt for the minimal $15 data plan for 200Mb on the iPhone, and instead spend $40 per month with Virgin Mobile for unlimited data on a portable hotspot that can be shared among all three platforms--and then some.
Portable hotspots have been around for awhile, but I've never really felt the need for one. Now that I'm considering how I use the iPad, I have to start thinking about it. IT would be another thing to carry, but honestly - when I travel, I carry a lot of stuff anyway. Far from liberating me from my laptop, the iPad has simply become another thing I bring. It's not a laptop replacement - in device terms, it's kind of analogous to a "third place".
Anyway, I'm going to have to consider the whole data plan thing.
The iPad is no longer the only tablet in town - Samsung has launched the Galaxy. I have to admit, the ad (the link takes you to an auto-play video) looks pretty compelling. Tim Bray has some thoughts on the device as well. It looks like the entire mobile space is going to be pretty well defined without Microsoft - they aren't just playing catch up here, they're not even in the game...
Technorati Tags: tablets
Watching Apple's event today, and seeing the game demo on the iPhone (and then imagining how it would look on my iPad), it dawned on me that the DS (Nintendo) and PSP (Sony) are straight in the crosshairs of this new gaming platform. Serious gamers will stay with consoles or PCs, but the entire "I'm bored, I need to fill a half hour of dead time" market is where the DS and PSP live.
Except that Apple is moving in, with devices that you're more likely to carry around....
Technorati Tags: games, casual gaming
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