Apple Tablet Predictions: After the Announcement

Okay, the Apple iPad has been announced. How did my predictions fare?

• Screen of 10–11" — big enough for reading or viewing video, but not any bigger than a regular sized magazine.
  — I hoped for a larger screen, more toward 10.5"
• Very minimal hardware interface, just an on button and a headphone jack.  No power jack, no USB ports, nothing much to mar the feel of it being an encapsulated item.  Definitely no battery access.
  — Nailed this, but it’s easy to nail: look at the iPhone and extrapolate.  I failed to note the volume buttons from the iPhone, but they were obvious as items to include.
• Bluetooth and WiFi.  Duh.
  — Duh, but correct.  3G is also an option, for extra cost and extra monthly fee.  Hmm, I wonder if the reason AT&T hasn’t yet turned on tethering is that it was aimed at this device, so you can create a mini-WiFi zone with your iPhone and use its 3G.  That would be cool.
• Runs a variant of iPhone OS that is geared for the larger screen but still works with the same UI mechanisms familiar to iPhone users.
  — Yup.
• Apps for the tablet can be obtained from a version of the AppStore.
  — Remains to be seen just how this will work.  I expect the iPad and the iPhone will each connect top the AppStore, and will only see content appropriate to their hardware.
• Existing iPhone apps will work on the tablet, in iPhone sized windows.
  — Yup.
• Has all the features of an iPhone: multi-touch, accelerometer, etc.
  — Yup.

And then some more interesting predictions:

• Induction charging and synching.  As I said, no power jack.
  — Darn.  But understandable: if the existing power/synch attachment hardware is working fine, no need to reinvent the wheel.
• A netbook-type base which provides the induction charger base and a MacBook keyboard, a la the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid.  Tablet body can be inserted into the docking base in each of the four directions (but not backwards!).
  — Sort of yup, although I was expecting something quite a bit more like a laptop base than the keyboard dock they have announced.  But I note that the third-party company could provide exactly what I was anticipating, which would also serve as a protective cover.
• When docked, can switch from the iPhone-style UI to a Mac OS X-style UI.
  — Darn.  Partially defused due to the creation of iWork for the iPad, but there are certainly major things you won’t be able to do without a full OS.  In particular, no mouse (which is better than finger pointing for some things).
• The docking base has additional solid-state memory, plus the various ports and such.  Comes with iWork and iLife software pre-installed, and other apps are available via the cloud.
  — Nope for the additional memory, but that was tied into the OS X item above.  Yup on iWork, nope on iLife (although it will be interesting to see if a Brushes app makes its way into the next desktop version of either suite, targeting Adobe apps as well as Microsoft).
• Has two cameras: decent quality video/still camera on the back (a la iPhone 3GS) and webcam on the front.
  — Darn, and a major puzzling lapse.  Presumably some third-party will make a rotating camera that plugs in to the headphone jack to fill this niche.

Again, this, I would so buy.  Will buy.  It will make a nice birthday present to myself in seven months, don’t you think?  Especially after reviews are in and maybe some OS patches are done to correct early problems.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the pricing structure.  Some will still complain that it’s too expensive, but they are mostly serial complainers ("free" would probably still be too expensive) or Apple haters (anything Apple producers is over-priced because Steve Jobs is a money-grubbing bastard).
 

What Were They Thinking? — Drag Cows

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

The local Safeway had a display of three different stuffed animals, starting in mid/late-January.  I think the other two were a horse (in cowboy gear) and a pig.  But this is the one that really attracted my eye.

It is supposed to be a cow.

But you’ll notice that it isn’t one.  It’s missing something.  An udder.  Cow tits.  Which means that this isn’t a cow, it’s a bull dressed as a cow.  It’s in drag.  Look at those exaggerated Renée Zellweger lips and the eye makeup and tell me isn’t not in drag.

(Then again, maybe it’s a steer — castrated male cattle — and thus is a trans cow.  An MTF, er, make that a BTC [bull-to-cow].)
 

What Were They Thinking? — A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside Two Slices of Pineapple Gum

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

It bothers me a bit when the advertising and the product don’t match up.  In this case, the sliced fruit image indicates the pineapple is between layers of apple, but the image of the gum indicates the apple is between layers of pineapple.

Make up your mind.

(Blog post title is from a 1939 radio broadcast by Winston Churchill, concerning Russia.)
 

Stupid, Stupid Ads! — Where am I?

“Stupid, Stupid Ads!” dissects ads that try to do something underhanded or just plain stupid.

This ad showed up on the Seattle Times website today.

Note that it advertises auto insurance rates in Seattle (and has the zip code where I’m at), but the animated traffic map in the background — Oakland Army Base, Fruitvale Ave. — is of Oakland and Alameda, California.
 

Dream Journal: January 23, 2010

Tiniest dream yet:

I dreamed I was making banana-peanut butter chip muffins, and to prepare the bananas, I took a fork and punctured the peel a few times, then put them in the oven to “roast” for a few minutes.

That’s the entire dream.  Obviously informed by my plans to make banana-peanut butter chip muffins for breakfast (which I did, although I merely microwaved the chunked bananas for 30 seconds rather than roasting them).
 

Mid-Atlantic Leather 2010

Moved this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/01/mid-atlantic-leather-2010.html
 

What is a “Bear”?

Moved this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-is-bear.html
 

Dream Journal: January 19, 2010

Tiny little dream this time:

I was riding my scooter along a country road — one lane each way, gravel siding, untrimmed grass beyond that, telephone poles, etc.  I came upon my friends Roger and David walking along the siding, so I stopped to give them a ride.

My scooter was now a motorcycle built for three — three complete seats.  I didn’t have spare helmets for them, and in fact didn’t have one for myself.  I pulled the hood of a black rain coat over my head to disguise the lack of a helmet and we rode along, hoping to not encounter any cops.

Eventually the land beyond the road sloped away down to the ocean or a big lake.  We pulled over to stop — I don’t know if it was to let them off or to look at the body of water — and the bike skidded and threatened to tip over in the gravel.

That’s pretty much it.  Roger, David, and I were all in Washington DC last weekend for Mid-Atlantic Leather, and we were on the same flight coming back.  They offered me a ride home (since they live nearby), but my boyfriend was coming to pick me up, so I passed.

In June 2009, I had a small spill on my scooter, pulling into a gravel parking lot.
 

Apple Tablet Predictions

Assuming that an tablet-like thing is actually announced on January 27, of course.  (And what would the reaction be if one were not?  Apple would need to be announcing some other fantabulous game-changing device instead, just to distract people from what they didn’t announce.)

So given the idea of something tablet-y being announced, what will it be like?

I think people are putting a lot more stock in the idea of it being a Kindle competitor than it’s worth.  I think that eBooks will be a secondary focus, but not a top tier one.  (Think of the iPhone announcement, where they touted Phone, Web, and iPod as the top items.  Stuff like texting and calendar and e-mail were second tier, important and even the things that really interested some people, but not the primary focus.

I think a lot of people are fascinated by the form factor idea of the walk-around tablet without much consideration of how that will actually be used.  If you’ve got an iPhone and you’ve got a desktop or laptop system, do you need a tablet?  The answer is “No… except when you do need one.”  This is what people are missing, in my opinion: when do you need a tablet (vs. those other devices) and what do you do with it when you don’t need it.

So here are some predictions, none of them surprising:

• Screen of 10–11" — big enough for reading or viewing video, but not any bigger than a regular sized magazine.
• Very minimal hardware interface, just an on button and a headphone jack.  No power jack, no USB ports, nothing much to mar the feel of it being an encapsulated item.  Definitely no battery access.
• Bluetooth and WiFi.  Duh
• Runs a variant of iPhone OS that is geared for the larger screen but still works with the same UI mechanisms familiar to iPhone users.
• Apps for the tablet can be obtained from a version of the AppStore.
• Existing iPhone apps will work on the tablet, in iPhone sized windows.
• Has all the features of an iPhone: multi-touch, accelerometer, etc.
• OLED screen

And then some more interesting predictions:

• Induction charging and synching.  As I said, no power jack.
• A netbook-type base which provides the induction charger base and a MacBook keyboard, a la the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid.  Tablet body can be inserted into the docking base in each of the four directions (but not backwards!).
• When docked, can switch from the iPhone-style UI to a Mac OS X-style UI.
• The docking base has additional solid-state memory, plus the various ports and such.  Comes with iWork and iLife software pre-installed, and other apps are available via the cloud.
• Has two cameras: decent quality video/still camera on the back (a la iPhone 3GS) and webcam on the front.

In other words, two questions answered:

• When do you need it?  When the walk-around nature of the iPhone isn’t enough.  For reading, for browsing the web better, for watching video larger, for apps that haven’t been invented yet which take advantage of the tablet nature.
• What do you do with it when you you don’t need a tablet?  You turn it into something you do need (if you need one), a netbook/laptop.  Something that you can write on, edit photos with, do web designs with, etc. — all the things that the iPhone isn’t really geared for.

This, I would so buy.

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Updated on January 19, 2010

Updated on March 1, 2010
 

Suport XXX ribbons are over

Officially over, I think.  Because “gamers” are so put upon, marginalized, and targeted by their affliction that they need public awareness and “support”.

(“Targeted”.  Heh.  That’s good.)

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Updated on March 1, 2010
 

Tongue Twister #3

Pan panned the paladin’s pangolin palanquin.
 

Movie Review — Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes was better than I expected it to be.  And I suspect that is at the heart of most of the reasonably positive reviews the movies has received.  Because frankly (at least until the reviews started breaking), I was expecting something along the lines of Van Helsing — vaguely period trappings, but reeking of anachronism, and filled with quick cut editing, too clean sets, and perverted steampunk gadgets.

This one… well…

• It did feel a little anchronisticly self-aware, but not so much that loads of modern quips fell from the characters’ lips.  (And thankfully, neither did much in the way of “Bloody fair cop, guv’nor, wot?”, that shite that brands something as trying too hard to show it is Victorian low-class London, like Eliza Doolittle on a bad day.)
• The quick cut editing that I so expected was refreshingly suppressed.  Oh, it was there, but there was also obvious real fight choreography, where the action lasts more than 1/2 second per shot.  And probably the previsioning of fights that Holmes did in a couple places helped to make the quick cut editing attached to those bits more acceptable, more able to be followed.
• The CGI setpieces used in distance shots were too clean for my tastes — London didn’t feel dirty enough — but the real or closer sets felt much better.
• The steampunk gadgetry was kept to both a minimum and had a level of realism.  When I want unreal steampunk (and I do!), I read Girl Genius.

A couple other thoughts:

• I was moderately surprised that, in the midst of the threat against Parliament, there was no threat against Queen Victoria.  How restrained!
• Also restrained: nary a mention of Leather Apron.  (Unless that was behind the comment about other women having also been killed by Lord Blackwood.  And in fact, Blackwood’s victims number does match that of the “canonical five”.)
• Curious that they didn’t try to blow up Parliament.  Oh, wait, that was Guy Fawkes, not Guy Ritchie!  Wrong movie.
• I forgot about the comment that Holmes and Watson had been partners only 7 months, so I didn’t expect that the hidden villain reveal would be who it was.
• Of course, having read way too much Alan Moore reimagining of turn-of-the-century Britain fictionality, I had the fact that the villain was so totally hidden that all we ever saw were his gloves (not even his hands) pegged as being Hawley Griffin.  And thus that Griffin, derobed, was behind the final defeat of Blackwood.  (Of course, that’s still a possibility, no?)

I am definitely looking forward to Iron Man 2, though, so we can see Robert Downey Jr. continue playing this same character into another film.
 

Not Recommended #1

Moved this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2010/01/not-recommended-1.html