on Apple's iPad launch : the Aftermath
The iPad was launched yesterday. What was, perhaps, the most hyped and anticipated product of this eon, finally became known as Steve Jobs held it proudly in his hands. These kind of products usually wind up being the recipients of all kinds of crazy expectations. Everyone wants the next-big-thing to do everything, better, in new radical ways and, if that is not enough, they expect even more in the end (in the case of Apple, that comes after Job's "one more thing" statement). All in all, most people are not pleased with the iPad. I am not one of those people. Here is my take on (some of) the 'issues' raised so far.
The name
'iPad' indeed feels wrong. I was expecting it to be called 'tablet' or 'Applet tablet' or something along those lines. Of course, I failed to consider the fact that this would not be a tablet, according to Apple at least. This is not a netbook either. In fact, this is a product that carves a new niche and defines it. So Apple didn't use tablet in the title. I remember when the first Macbook came out. People didn't like the name. They don't mind about it now - in fact they may even come to like it.
Multitasking
The iPad does not allow multiple apps to run at the same time. This made much sense on the iPhone, but would make little to no sense to a laptop or netbook. Well, again, this is neither of those. My gut feeling tells me the reason Apple chose to go with this is threefold.
- The existing iPhone apps are built and executed in a way that just doesn't translate well to a multitasking environment. It is not impossible of course. Apple decided to play safe with this one.
- The RAM on this thing would not allow for a multiple applications to run in parallel efficiently. Lets just say that Apple, again, decided to play safe with this one too.
- Apple's vision for the iPad is very specific. A consumption device that does some things extremely well, one thing at a time.
Cameras
I would have loved it if iPad had a front-facing camera so that I could video chat with my brother. Well, actually, I never use video chat, but that need is valid for enough folks to make it an important omission. Apple has been keen on adding an iSight camera on just about every Mac product it has released. iMacs, Macbooks, the cinema displays, you name it. They love it when people video chat over iChat, use PhotoBooth to go silly and whatnot. What became apparent with the iPhone and even more apparent with the iPad is that Apple, presumably, has a very good set of reasons that led it to (at least for now) make it impossible (one way or another) to do so on this class of devices. It is likely that AT&T and other carriers are to blame here. Apple is giving up some features in exchange for others(better deals with the carriers?). Win some, lose some.
Adobe Flash support
Apple doesn't like Flash. It can't be more obvious than that. They could list a number of technical and semi-valid reasons as to why this is a bad thing, but none of that would matter. I personally couldn't care less about Flash support on Safari, but the vast majority of potential users would, especially the folks in the US where, I hear, Hulu has become the go-to site for all things entertainment there. Unless things go way south for Apple, I don't see it changing its stance on the subject.
On screen keyboard
When the iPhone came out, naysayers and pessimists sure had lots to say about the onscreen virtual keyboard. Nowadays though, people seem to actually prefer those kind of keyboards to the traditional physical ones, me included. Why waste device physical space, weight and looks for a 'real' keyboard, which is there even if you don't want it, when this new virtual keyboard works for you? I have been trying to type using both hands for the past few days. I can type now at least x2 many words/minute than I was able to do so in the past, when I was using just my thumb and I hope, expect, to get better at it. On the iPad, which features even bigger keys, things should be even better for me.
Books and magazines
I wanted an ebooks reader for quite some time now. I was hoping for an ebooks store tightly integrated to iTunes and the iTunes store, the ability to subscribe to magazines (Wired, Edge, ..) and have them delivered to my 'subscriptions inbox' ( with a nice badge indicating new subscriptions count; me and Stelios would sure love that ) and a reader that would provide all benefits PDF readers come with, but with even more thrown in. Well, it won't really work like that on the iPad, at least for now, but this iBooks application sure looks sweet and well done. Apparently, each magazine, newspaper or other content provider will come up with its own solution to the digital content challenge ( NYTimes app demoed was pretty impressive ), which is one way to do it. Apple is playing safe there, again. There is no subscriptions aggregation place/app, or anything like that. Wired will need to build its own app and same will be true for everyone else. I can't wait to see what they will come up with.
All in all, this is v1.0 of a new product that, again, occupies and defines a new category on its own. Recall v1.0 of OS X, the iMac, the iPod, or any other product, produced by any company. Most v1.0 products are there to establish a baseline. Evolution bless them with more feature in later releases. This will certainly be the case with the iPad too. I never needed a tablet device ( my MBP 17" is everything I would 'ever' need ), but I am so buying one for me and Dora ( and for my brother and Dimitris if they themselves wont get one ). Exciting times (ahead).
Thursday, 28 January 2010 8:14 pm
Ideas for iPhone applications
I thought of two ideas for iPhone applications yesterday and I thought I would share it with anyone interested in pursuing the tasks. I may do it myself if time and motivation allows it, but do feel free to try your luck with them. So here goes nothing.
Life-tracker
The main principle idea is that you could use your iphone to keep track of your life through time, specifically where you have been, what have you been doing and what your thoughts on any given date. The said application would be really simple to use. You launch it, two buttons will make it possible to record your existing location (geolocation coordinates) and/or record thoughts or, say, what it is that you are doing at the moment. You can do that as many times as you wish, whenever you wish. Sometime later, you can sync all that with a web-based service. You could access your life activities through that service ( what have been thinking a year ago this very day? where have I been last week when I was on vacation in London? you want that on a google map - there you go) and so on, so forth. A more or less trivial application to build.
Javascript driven native iPhone applications
This is a no brainer, in fact I wonder why someone ( Apple even ) hasn't thought of it yet. One can expose the iPhone functionality(framework facilities) through Javascript (Javascript objects), have a simple runtime application that 'all' it does is act as the VM/runtime for javascript code. 'Everyone' knows Javascript, everyone(?) likes Javascript, why not make it possible to build real (i.e not hosted on Safari, web-apps ), native applications using the language? A developer would still submit an iPhone application ( the Javascript VM/runtime, with the javascript files and resources in the bundle ) to Apple, Apple, nor the users, would be able to tell the difference. Hey presto, a gazillion apps flood the App store - most will be crappy ( the nature of things ) some will turn out to be gems. If I could make it possible for my brother and my fellow javascript gurus at work to build any app they want as easy as they build our web-apps, that would be kinda cool. Here is what it could look like:
var myButton = new UButton();
myButton.text = "Hello World";
myButton.addListener('click', function(event)
{
alert('Your geolocation is:"+(new ULocation()).toString();
}));
thisWindow.containerView.addView(myButton);
or something.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 10:30 pm
Filtering information flow
Like all most of the people I know, I too find myself struggling to keep up with the increasing information flow and the need to come up with means to filter that information stream as to spend as little time as possible evaluating and putting it into good use, and focus on the kind of information that matters to me the most.
Naturally, it would have been best to store/collect/accumulate every bit of information that comes your way. However, unless you be able to identify the usefulness of that information in timely fashion since the acquisition, you are merely storing what you coul/should most probably be able to acquire/lookup later on anyway ( Google, usenet, etc ).
There are various tools and services that make it possible to throw everything at them ( textual content, multimedia, URLs, .. ) which they will happily store away, optionally encrypt them, make them searchable, place them in 'smart lists', you name it. Examples of such applications on Mac OS X are Together, Soho Notes, Yojimbo. I have tried over a dozen of those applications but nothing really worked for me ( pun intended ). They are mostly fine applications, mind you, and may very well turn out to be the perfect tool for your needs so you should try them. ( Sugar is apparently a happy 'Together' user ).
I am relying on NetNewsWire for acquiring information. My subscription list is rather short. I keep track of my friends, some 'interesting folks', various dedicated technical sites and a couple sources providing me with gaming and other entertainment news/meterial. It turns out that having a like minded (sub)network of friends is more valuable than having access to a highly comprehensive list of sources.
Your friends will filter the information for you. They know what you are interested in. They will happily forward you stuff they consider cool/interesting/useful. Thus, its not really that useful to subscribe to popular information sources, for your friends and other sources even, are monitoring them anyway.
I usually check for subscription updates once day, when I get back home from work. I quickly go through the list of items and the ones that seem interesting/worthy I open in a NNW tab for later. Sometime that list of tabs grows to over 100. I go through the opened tabs list whenever I have available time to do so; ones deemed really interesting/useful end up in my Safari bookmarks ( more on that later ) list. Eventually all tabs/pages are consulted and closed. This two-phase process helps me make the most out of the information that reaches me via NNW.
Safari is my web browser of choice for various reasons. I maintain a hierarchical list of bookmarks folders which help me keep references to URLs, obtained mostly via NNW, organized. Most of the bookmarks are tagged by means of adding a list of keywords describing the content within [] in the title. For example, I bookmarked http://www.pragprog.com/ as 'The Pragmatic Bookshelf [store, books, technology]'.
I also maintain text files that hold content specific to a given information domain. For instance, there is a file entitled 'Syntax compilation hints' which I use to store useful, interesting phrases and writing techniques I can refer to in the future. There is another file named 'Quotations', a folder 'Studying Src' which contains files such as 'Algorithms', 'x86 Assembly', 'Cocoa', 'Interesting Findings' etc. In fact, whenever I am studying the implementation details of an application ( say, Lua or Quake III ) I create a text file where I document my findings and thoughts on those. There are over a dozen of folders holding over 100 or so 'notes files', ranging from 'personal rules to follow', to 'ways to deal with stress' to 'ideas about work projects' and 'My Books'.
It all comes down to the fact that thanks to Spotlight ( one of my favorite features of Mac OS X ) I can locate the information stored away as text files ( of course, you can locate anything on your system using Spotlight anyway ) and bookmarks instantly, consult them and update them with little effort. In addition to that, you can easily synchronize and backup that information to locally attached media ( external disks, CDS, etc ) or over the Net (.Mac, online storage services, rsync to a server you have access to you, .. ).
The rules of evolution, thankfully, apply to most systems and processes. What that basically means in this context is that I will eventually figure out a better way to approach the problem. Until that time comes though, I am sufficiently pleased by the benefits the existing solution is providing me with.
Saturday, 5 July 2008 8:35 pm
