Tag Archives: apple

Tech

Will Palm survive?

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Image source: Engadget

After Palm announced terrible quartery results, the press is doubting their survival as a company. This is a shame, because in today’s smartphone world, it seems to me that Palm’s WebOS/Pre is the best product in the market after the iPhone.

Blackberries feel like Windows 3.1: ugly, outdated, unusable. I don’t understand why people love them so much. Windows Mobile attempts to cram a desktop UI into a 3 inch screen. My friend Luis had one and it took him 20 minutes to look anything up in the web. Android phones are like Linux: powerful, but only a techie could use it, if he wants to deal with the pain. I haven’t used a Nokia smartphone in years so I don’t know.

It’s just sad: A really nice product, only too little, too late. I’ll be surprised if they are still around a year from now. Some reading for those who care:

Reality Distortion Field

iPad announcement summary

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Apparently Apple has announced a new product called iPad. It’s like a big iPod touch. Having owned all three iPhone models  I must admit I would probably enjoy owning an iPad, limitations and all.

As it is, I already use my iPhone more than I use my laptop anyway:  when I wake up, I check my email on my iPhone, not on my laptop. When I want to see the weather, I check it on the iPhone, not on my laptop… The list goes on.

When I use my laptop, most of the time I use it to watch video or browse the internet in bed or in the living room couch. The iPad should do all these things more comfortably than my laptop. The only thing it’s really missing for me is a webcam for videoconferencing. I’m not saying that it will replace my laptop… but it may end up being an additional toy.

Reality Distortion Field

Operation Chokehold

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Fake Steve Jobs is angry at AT&T‘s poor network performance and all their excuses. Dropped calls, falling back to EDGE, slow data rates, poor voice quality, etc. So he called for Operation Chokehold through his blog:

Subject: Operation Chokehold
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. THe idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!

Since this post, there has been a lot of discussion about it: on the blog, on the web in general, even on Twitter. Everyone is all over it.

This all started as a joke and now sort of took a life on its own. The Facebook page has about 2000 fans. The Facebook page against it only 22 as of this writing.

According to latest estimates by The MKX® Department of Cyber-Risk Assessment, nothing will come out of this. But following all the commotion is kind of fun. Will you join Operation Chokehold?

Reality Distortion Field

John Siracusa reviews Mac OS X 10.6

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snow_leopard_ars-thumb-640xauto-8029Every time there is a new major Mac OS X release, John Siracusa of the excellent technology website Ars Technica releases a long and detailed review. And the one for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard one has arrived. I post about it here because I think a del.icio.us link on the sidebar is not enough.

John Siracusa has been writing these reviews since Mac OS X DP2 (December 1999) and they are excellent, offering a well written detailed view into the internals and externals of Mac OS X. For me it’s a fascinating read. For you, I don’t know… this is probably attractive only for the technical mind. Mom, don’t read this.

Reality Distortion Field

No longer missing iPhone features

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In June of 2007 I wrote a post titled “Seemingly obvious software features missing from the iPhone“.

Today, iPhone OS 3.0 will be available and the iPhone 3G S is shipping, so I thought it’d be interesting to see how things stand now.

Below is the original list, with the items that are now covered striked through:

  • Video recording
  • Voice-note recording
  • VoIP (like Skype) functionality
  • .Mac syncing
  • Copy/Paste
  • Ringtones from your music
  • Synchronization thrugh WiFi or Bluetooth (done through MobileMe)
  • Keychain (password storing)
  • Objective C/ Cocoa SDK
  • Dashboard/Widget support (outside of Safari)
  • iChat (through 3rd party applications)
  • A2DP
  • Voice dialing
  • Games
  • Slot for memory cards
  • Spotlight
  • Java
  • Flash
  • MMS
  • Geolocation
  • eBooks
  • Built in RSS Reader (through 3rd party applications)
  • SSH ((through 3rd party applications – client only)
  • Bonjour iTunes sharing
  • Printing support (through 3rd party applications)
  • Video teleconferencing
Almost everything is covered now. What do you think the new list should contain? Here’s a recent article with 25 still-missing features.
Democracy, Reality Distortion Field, Tech

Browser comparison

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Safari 4 just came out of beta. I gave it a try at my work computer (a Windows XP machine) just to go back to Chrome shortly after. Now I’m back with Safari. The main reason? Text rendering. See, in Safari you can configure the browser to render its text like Mac OS X does. In my opinion, text looks a lot better in Mac OS X than it does in Windows. Sure, it’s a matter of taste; my excellent taste versus other people’s terrible taste.

To illustrate my point, I took a screenshot of the Facebook homepage. Why? Because it shows text in the English, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabet. You’ll see how Safari’s text looks much better. From left to right: Apple Safari 4, Google Chrome 2.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.0,and MS Internet Explorer 7.0:

browser-comparison
Web browser comparison on Windows XP: Safari 4, Google Chrome 2.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, and MS Internet Explorer 7.0 (click to zoom)

What do you think? Which one do you like better?

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Reality Distortion Field, Today's quote

Today’s quote: Steve Wozniak

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After hearing that judge Bruno Tonioli of Dancing with the Stars said: “It was like watching a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade”.

 

I think it should be noted that Teletubbies aired for 5 years, had 365 episodes, and a #1 music single! I’d take that as a compliment.

You can watch Woz dancing like a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade in out previous post. Or just go vote for him.