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Apple PowerBook with Goggle Display?
James Outlaw
writes "InfoWorld has a very short
article about Apple's new PowerBook- code named Lombard. It's slim and reportedly weights about 3.5 lbs. The most interesting feature is that the LCD panel is detachable and replaceable wth a set of goggles."
I've been lusting after a vaio for so long, but if this holds
true... yum. Might be time to try out LinuxPPC.
No no no, they would probably be released simultaneously at Mac World New York
Now, if someone could come out with something in a palmpilot or slightly larger form factor, VGA output, some of those LCD glasses, we might be talking.
Oh, wait, IBM has that.. Too bad they're not selling them!
I wonder if this thing runs with all that OpenGL, Java, OpenFirmware, SoundBuster codecs, CD-RW, Ultra Wide Fast SCSI-4, LaserDisc, UltraDMA, USB-2, FireWire2, BigiEthernet, Active Actual Action Virtual Reality software available and Linux
;)
So should I try it? I'm happy with C (and sometimes C++)... but Perl is more like a over-powered scripting language isn't it? Can it generate object-code or binaries? Or does it compile at run-time?
My feeling is that either Infoworld got burned by a prankster, or one of Apple's infamous detect-a-leak schemes just got someone fired.
It's true that the G3 appeared in a portable before the desktop- Thing I wonder is, why on Earth Doug would say that when he's the WM of pbzone.com ?? If anybody should have known this its him. Weird...
But I have to admit that you're probably right. Heheh, since Steve came back to Apple, he's been running this reign-of-terror campaign to clamp down on leaks. You'll always hear weird rumors popping out of apple, and many of these are fake rumors used to detect which dept the leaks are coming from. The apple employees don't even know what's going on in the company and have to go to sites like appleinsider.com and macosrumors.com to find out what's going on (but even those sites are wrong half of the time)!
nope
Only when i'm not familiar with the keyboard i'm typing on do i need to look down (i.e. for the slash and pipe keys, since those are used extensively on a unix machine). These include laptops and different ergonimic keyboards. Standard 104 AT requires no looking though :)
Yeah right.
That's the same thing as saying that when you buy a Compaq, they throw in Windows "for free".
How's aboout refund my A too?
The Vaio laptop really isn't very good at all. I used to be a technician at CompUSA (evil empire, but I'm young and needed a summer job) and the vaio mini laptop had the most returns and complaints for about as long as it's been out. And boy, what a bitch to repair... I would say the two most common problems I saw with it were screen failure (the casing around the screen breaks very easily, messing up the screen), faulty keyboards, and user stupidity. Honestly, what makes people think that these laptops are indestructable?
-rainfa1l@happypuppy.com
RICHMOND, Virginia -- Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) released a report Friday that equates the rising usage of Perl, a computer scripting language, to a drastic increase in highway deaths.
The report stated that there were "74.2% of accidents leading to a fatality in 1998 involved coding and driving. Of those, 82.2% involved scripting languages, such as Perl, python, and tcl. Perl was the worst offender, causing 80% of the coding fatalities. Python and tcl were involved in 1.07% and 0.7% of the fatalities, respectively. Other, less popular languages accounted for the rest."
According to the report, Perl alone cost 670 people their lives in Virginia last year. To put the magnitude of the crisis in perspective, 461 people lost their lives in non-Perl-related traffic accidents.
Jerry Tall, spokesman for VDOT, described the situation as a "problem waiting to happen". He specifically blamed the low usage of the "-w" flag, but could not provide any figures to back that up. He offered another factor: "analyzing regular expressions can incapacitate drivers, due to the fact that drivers simply fail to comment them properly."
"Responsible drivers do not code Perl when behind the wheel of a vehicle," Tall explained. "Other languages are a dangerous distraction in the car, but Perl severely impairs reaction time, increases aggressiveness, and leads to weak type checking."
Perl supporters argue otherwise. "What with Perl's growing popularity, there are bound to be more accidents where Perl was, um, involved," claimed Don Crispensen of the League for Rapid Enception of Perl (LREP). "Code-related accidents went up last year, as did non-code-related accidents. Trying to pin the blame on one segment of the coding community is ludicrous."
When asked why his group spells "inception" with an "e", Crispensen's only excuse was "we are exercising our right to use the English language under the terms of the artistic license; in short, it breaks the acronym if we spell it with an 'i'".
LREP had no official stance on other complaints about the language that VDOT listed in their report. "The Camel book is far too large for use in the car. It flops around at high speeds, due to its paperback binding. In addition, the larger boxed set of Perl books from O'Reilly should be considered 'death on wheels'" read the report's scathing criticism.
VDOT also had no comment on the effects of the speed limit increase passed by the Commonwealth of Virginia senate early last year. Dubbed "VDOT 90", the controversial bill increased speed limits from 33mph to 53mph, despite the claims of many that the roads are unfit for 53mph traffic. This failing is said to point squarely at the stagnation of VDOT's road improvement programs.
You know Doug - it's going to be incredibly funny if you are wrong about this too! News of the G4 processor is starting to show up in interesting places. For example, there is a German company that build accelerator cards for both PowerMac's and old Amiga computer systems that is taking preorders for an Amiga G4 card! It has been rumored for quite some time that Apple has been testing G4 prototype chips. Maybe it's the G4 chip itself that production is being ramped up on and Apple intends to announce all pro products running the G4 at MWNY! That would make a whole lot of sense - it would better differentiate the pro and consumer products.
The story was that Apple was showing the goggletop in a private suite at the NAB convention.
That means they were showing to the public.
If it is true, there would have been plenty of people outside Apple who could let the story out. This wouldn't be a leak from an internal source.
I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. The goggle angle is very cool; letting info out like this is a great way to build anticipation for the release.
Jobs is great at this kind of stuff.
I forgot does that support stereo vision?
No no, perl is for that rare breed of geek
that likes a to make things harder than they
need to be. For those folks that like to solve
a problem quickly and easily and then like to
be able to figure out how they solved the
problem by reading the code, Tcl is the best
show in town. Perl might be fun to write but
it is not fun to read or try to understand.
There is just too much syntax. That is what is
cool about Tcl, there is "almost" no syntax
to worry about.
Some video magazine recently tested Sony's Glasstron goggles, and what they found out was that they felt dizzy in a very short time. I don't know how it would be with text, and still images instead of video, but I'd rather be looking at the LCD of a notebook than a goggle.
Looks like Apple is again being cool, without being rational or intelligent.
BTW as far as I can say the G3 did appear in desktops first. I can't remember whether the laptops came out very closely after that or not, but they did not come out first.
We do not give any credits to Compaq for choosing to build PCs around Intel CPUs, even if they were great, why give credit to Apple for building around IBM chips?
I can't believe how Apple can get away with so much vaporware. Of course they don't do it themselves, they get all the "rumor" sites perform these dirty little deeds for them. As far as I can remember, the Lombard notebook was supposed to be coming out about the beginning of 1999, but of course it got pushed back. They taken what Bill Gates does to the next logical level: get someone else to do it. It's like some reporter discovers about Windows 2001, and writes how great it will be rather than Uncle Bill promising things himself. So Steve Jobs is indeed more highly skilled than Gates. Is it a relief? No, way.
and don't bother with YDL -- X doesn't work well, and there's no Netscape. besides, supporting linuxppc means that more developers get new hardware. they spend the money from the cds on that instead of spending it on making fancy packaging and pocketing the rest.
support the developers -- buy linuxppc!
and: MOSR last week reported that the g4 chip was ahead of schedule by months and that the only thing holding back its introduction before previously scheduled dates was apple marketing.
Indeed.
I love how people turn rumored Apple news quickly into anti-Apple.
Looks like Apple is again being cool, without being rational or intelligent.
So, are IBM, Sony, and MicroOptical are all without reason or "intelligent" too since they developed the technology? I hope not.
Who are you to determine what I or someone else might have good use for? Maybe I want to run MacOS X or LinuxPPC on one of these new PBs (small, not bulky and ideal for crowded areas) during surgery while removing, say, a cancerous or spinal lesion. Maybe I'll use the goggles as a way to overlay the MRI or CT output so I can be sure I'm removing all malignant or obtrusive tissue.
Who the hell are you to determine what is without reason or intelligence?
Apple is giving people a choice, and here it's the possibility of implementing something one step easier. That's nothing to sneer at. No one is saying Apple invented the goggles. What they are is possiblity making them a bit more mainstream, or at least an option.
We do not give any credits to Compaq for choosing to build PCs around Intel CPUs, even if they were great, why give credit to Apple for building around IBM chips?
Don't include me in that "we" bit. I give Compaq credit for using technology well. I even give MS credit for doing things well. And I'll give Apple credit for even thinking about the implementation.
Vaporware is only vaporware when you've decided that the public won't buy your product.
The rumor sites are simply a credit to the passion of the MacOS users. I'm really glad that sort of passion exists. It drives the whole industry, not just the Mac community. In case you haven't noticed, "parts is parts", and our buying them for whatever system makes the world go 'round.
Pushing products into the future is better than releasing a dud.
In my opinion you have a bad attitude. Why do you even think about this sort of stuff?
I don't know about the mini-notebooks, but Sony's line of regular sized systems are nice. I'm typing this on their pcg-748. It is light at 5.5 lbs and runs great. Runs linux wonderfully. Also, on the reg. notebooks, the 'vaio' is actually embossed across the cover. (ooooh!) =)
David
In no time in Apple's history have they been down for the count but then got up off the mat and came out swinging which is what they're doing now. Frankly the Powerbook line is their high-end where they can get higher margins and it also represents most of the penetration into the corporate market that they have.
I can actually see that it makes a LOT of sense to do this, esp if they are positioning themselves as producing an entire line of computers of varying portability.
Finally, if the G4 is much faster and that inturn translates to more kick per watt of battery, would you care about whether the desktop guys were ready to release yet if you could produce an ass kicking system? Apple's comeback didn't start with iMac. It started when they created what was dubbed by almost every reviewer the most powerful laptop in the world. Wintel notebooks are just now catching up to the Wallstreet systems, months and months later. A G4 PB is a good idea..
Agreed. The iMac may be a bit more than a fad, but I don't see it carrying Apple that much farther (sooner or later, Dell or someone will get into the game and start making similar cases and whatnot...I'm sure they've been frantically working on them for months now). Apple's laptops are the best in the industry, and Apple knows it. It's put a *lot* of resources into them, and has darn close CPU parity between laptops and desktops. Heck, I say Apple should go back to cloners making desktops, and focus on laptops. Apple laptops aren't winning because they're a portable Mac (well, that helps), but they're darn nice machines.
Why does it have to be heavy? LCDs aren't *that* heavy. Rip the LCD out of a Game Boy or something. It isn't exactly a neck-breaker. The backlighting isn't very heavy either. You aren't going to have all sorts of crud loading down the goggles...it'll be on the laptop.
My concern is this becoming a trend. Given the amount of time people will be using computers, I see human depth perception going to hell. It would be cool if goggles could do what they do in Snow Crash (nifty cyberpunk novel), and track eye movements and base view on that. Be a lot better for your visual development. Actually, Snow Crash gives a plethora of really great possibilities for goggles. HUD with outlines behind walls. Person identification. Video storage of what you're seeing. Being able to see in infrared/radar wavelengths. I mean, those are some really fun concepts! Maybe Apple will be the one to start the next wave of computers...goggle interface devices as a mainstream consumer choice.
MacOS X Server is vapor?
iMac is vapor?
OS update twice a year is vapor?
Quicktime 4 is vapor?
Apple Profitability is vapor?
Vapor my Azz.
They are all available.
Netscape is ancient. Roll your personal mozilla ;)
alpha laptops. ;-)
prepare to bring a 300 watt generator
Popularity of WallStreet notebooks? OK they're really popular and I believe probably quite nice but you see there isn't all that much in the channels, you cannot even custom configure them as they cannot keep up with production, or that's what they used to claim, they don't now. The thing is some of the stuff is vapor, the consumer portable is for example. It's been coming out real soon now for a long time.
I used to like Apple, when they had stuff like the Newton, which was indeed cool. They simply aren't now. It's sort of like SGI. They are still powerful, but they have lost their touch.
Obviously, you all aren't that hip to the whole wearables scene. They have superlight LCDs, and even LCD projection screens built into glasses that make a virtual image of a 640x480 15" display appear to float 3 feet away. Best of all, it is see through by simply refocusing your eyes on the outside. These things are pretty much invisible and undetectable. Recording video? IR? Face recognition? Maps? It's all already being done, and well, too. Check out
http://www.wearables.org
and some other sites, such as the big MIT site on wearable computers, for more information. For info on the V-HUD in the glasses, check out MicroOptical, at
http://www.microopticalcorp.com
have fun!
(sorry i didn't use hyperlinks - i'm incredibly lazy. Copy and paste, gosh darn it!)
Friends don't let friends drive and code Perl at the same time.
Correction: Wall Street with G3 processor came out BEFORE the desktop G3 systems.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
AFAIK the reason for the delay of LinuxPPC is that it is still beta for the b&w PowerMac G3 (It does work however).
sounds a lot closer to reality now. Let's see, small, portable, optionally battery-powered, devices that connect you to a worldwide network. You interact with this device by wearing a headset and using various navigation keys on the device. Some have flip-up displays. Hmmm...cyberspace deck from Neuromanucer et al. or Apple's next PowerBook?
Posted by Rahikainen:
I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited for LinuxPPC to come out. The new one. The one that runs Netscape.
I gave up and bought YellowDog Linux. Glad I did.
Posted by DonR:
Actually, the Lombard powerbook has been held up not by its design and engineering issues, but by the popularity of the current Wallstreet powerbook. There are too many of them in the retail sector, sitting in warehouses or whatever. Due to recent promotions, the backstock is mostly gone, and the new powerbooks are nearly ready to ship.
There was also a holdup because of MacOS 8.6. There are some features in that OS that the new Powerbooks (both Lombard and the new consumer laptop, the P1) require for proper operation. MacOS 8.6 went into Gold Master a week and a half ago, so its only a matter of time. (This version is also a Free upgrade from 8.5)
---
Donald Roeber
Rather use MacOS than Linux? Do you cut your steak with a tennis racket too?
Do your knives crash often too? Can you only use one implement at a time, or can Knife 8.5 now work with Fork 8.5 simultaneously for more efficient eating?
I'd be happy if I could quite simply find a single eye thing like the ones that the MIT Media Labs guys mess around with..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
My old typing teacher (The Evil Crone) would love this. "Don't look at your fingers, dammit!"
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Sorry, no EULA on Apple machines. Not that I mind - I'd rather use MacOS than Linux anyway.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I have high-quality Henkel knives that I use to cut my steak, and every other food I cook or eat at home. Using Linux is like using a chainsaw to cut your steak - instead of just cutting it, you need to start the motor, carefully place the chain on the plate hoping you won't destroy the table, and then when you're done you have to clean up all the meat fragments that the saw sprayed all over the place.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
From what I've read, the Lombard is supposed to replace the current line of Powerbooks and will be in the same price range. Like most new laptops that are for the professional market, they would still cost too much for me. I think I will wait until they start producing the Consumer Portable, which is rumored to be about the same price as the iMac. I might get one of those. More likely my wife will want one and I'll get to use her toshiba as a Linux laptop.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
You see, it isn't really free, since Compaq has to buy the OS from Microsoft. Apple, on the other hand, makes their own, which they put on the laptop.
At least, that's what Apple will tell you. Remember, they still consider themselves to be primarily a hardware company.
Yellow Dog has Netscape up and running? I thought that was only for the Gone Home edition, which hasn't come out yet (the problem with Netscape is the combination of PPC and glibc2, not the LinuxPPC kernel, which is identical to the one used in Yellow Dog).
Last I heard, this Netscape issue was the only reason LinuxPPC hasn't released R5 yet.
Actually, I think this will be more in the form of a head-up display than true VR goggles. In other words, the screen appears to float in the air in front of you, but you can still see around the screen (and even, if I'm not mistaken, through the screen if you wish). So you could still look down at the keyboard.
:)
Better yet, get some speech-dictation software and you won't even need the keyboard at all
Sony has a cool looking HMD that is shipping for 800x600 resolutions. The XGA 1024x768 version should be comming soon. Integrated sound...
Only drawback- nearly $3K (and no tracking, as far as I can tell)
I can "detatch" the LCD from my notebook with a few screws. It would be nice to have a smaller HUD viewer. Imagine the weight and massive power savings of such a small device. The image could be brighter and seen in full sunlight too... :)
When referring to a collective entity, one uses either the singular or the plural depending on what they mean. If the collective entity is acting like a single unit and undivided, it is singular. If the collective entity are divided in their opinions (like any political decision making congregation) then they are plural.
Examples:
NATO recognized its 50th birthday this past week.
NATO are trying to maintain peace in the world.
Okay, so that last one was just a bit snarky and cynical of me, but do you see the point now? I find this odd, because I was just explaining this to some students in the library the other day about why Mathematics is singular.
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far... -- Le P
The same thing has been perplexing me for years. When I were a lad learning German at school, the German's being logical refer to colelctive things like a company etc. as a single entity, as do the Americans in American English, but here in blighty we use the singular noun but use it as if it were plural. That's how it's done here, and as usual we're wrong and everyone lese is right.
American English is much more logical than UK English, and its spelling is much simpler and less baroque.
The only reason we deride the Americans for their language is out of purely ignorant self-righteous, snobby self-superior nationalistic jingoism.
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
i'm paying attention to you...
Somebody get our flag back!
I was drooling after this just like everybody else, but I hadn't thought of that. I chickenpeck, and though I don't really need to look at the keyboard any more, I still do out of habit.
Oh well, maybe this is just what I need to break me of this habit...
I just discovered my screwdriver won't cut a board. Must be worthless.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Stay away from perl. Use TCL instead.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Just a small point...
In GB, it is proper grammar to use the verb 'to be' in the plural. The poster said, "are Apple...?"
The company, Apple, is treated like more than one, presumably because it consists of many people. Yet, it is one corporation, a legal alter ego. It should only be treated as a logical singular thing. The most logical way to pose the question would be 'is Apple...?'
Hey, the Yankee concept of alter ego corporate status came from British common law. So your grammar ought to conform to its logical dictates. Perhaps this is just a colloquial usage.
I don't know why I care, but whenever I hear or read a Brit saying 'are' for company, a musical band, a government, or any organization I wonder who else they are going to talk about. I think, "Are Apple and SOMETHING ELSE going to do such and such," not "are Apple" and nothing else.
Most English usages are generally more refined and make sense to me (except for what I said already and the spelling differences). However, this one is baffling.
You English types sho is funny tho...PEACE OUT....
It's a test...
PEACE OUT!...
I don't know how awesome typists some of you are, but every once in a while i do need to look at the keyboard, especially when typing on of those cramped keyboards on laptops. That's my two cents.
S'funny, but in England LOMBARD is an acronym like YUPPIE that means "Lots Of Money But A Right D***head" - Are Apple trying to tell us something :-)
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
That's funny, but I think the name comes from the curviest street in the world (which is located in San Francisco) Lombard Street. Looking at apple's other latest designs, curvy seems to be their theme.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
How can it be vaporware if it hasn't been announced? I am sure those rumor sites blatantly make up the rumors just to have some content for the day. Apple doesn't give specific timelines for their products, so one enever really knows when a product was really meant to come out. I think pretty much every technology company delays major product releases...I can't think of one that has been consistently on time.
Also, don't even try to compares apple to Microsoft as far as OS releases go. Apple comes out with an update to the Mac OS twice a year, compared to Microsoft's once every 3 years.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Hope Linux works with it. Does anybody know a release-date?
Gery
The answer is yes, me.
Yeah, well, to bad its Apple crap.
I want Alpha laptops with this stuff.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
My boss got one and it's a piece of junk. You see how the word "vaio" is embossed across the cover? It's not embossed, it's painted to look embossed. The trackpad doesn't register my finger movement half of the time, and the screen is relatively disappointing. And attaching peripherals is a nightmare. They didn't think carefully about where cords and plugs should go, and they end up getting in your way. I haven't used one myself, but one of my coworkers used a Sharp Acticus (if I spelled it right) and said it was the best mini-laptop around.
Lombard is that curvy street in SF that you see in the Guiness Book of Records. It's also the British equivalent of Wall Street. Both references are plausible in connection to the new Powerbooks because 1) The current Powerbooks are codenamed "Wall Street" and 2) The new ones are supposed to be curvy as hell.
Not a bad idea, eh? Netwinder, Virtual I/O glasses and all. The power source would be a bitch to put together for an idiot like me...
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
Unlike certain other companies that we could name, Apple has never made any pretensions about offering refunds for the Mac OS if you want to use something else.
I'm typing this in Netscape 4.05, running Linux/PPC 4.1. Or am I misunderstaning something about your post?
I have been tempted to get YDL, or TurboLinux, just to test out the distros. How do you like YDL? I've seen no reviews of it.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Even funnier, in Russian the primary meaning of `Lombard'
is `a place one would go when in *real* need for money'
--AP
Don't need a license clause for that. When you buy hardware from Apple, they throw in the MacOS for free. You shouldn't have too much trouble getting a $0 refund out of Apple for the unused software.
Lots Of Money But A Right Dickhead.
Used to be applied to posers with mobile phones who ostentationsly make "important" calls in public places but could soon be applied to goggle wearing Apple users.
Who cares if you look daft though - I still want one.
--
starling
Well, I just hope they fit the Lombard with GPS and a local map (and maybe a proximity sensor) so the wearer doesn't bump into anything while absentmindedly reconfiguring the kernel.
Sort of reminds me of the series in Linux Jounal by that weird guy who's into wearable computers - only he seems to have a social agenda rather than a love of the technology for its own sake.
Seriously though, maybe the Lombard will finally make wearable computers a viable option for the masses and that's a Good Thing in my book.
--
starling
Wallstreet (curvy formfactor) came out on May 6th, 1998, more than six months after the G3 Desktop systems. if you're referring to the G3 portable based on the 3400, then you're right it actually came out a little before the desktop systems. This was because the G3 was hacked into the preexisting 3400 motherboard and was not a whole new design like the gossamer G3 motherboards for the desktops systems. nevertheless, if production problems would not have held gossamer up, the G3 would have been first in a desktop.
But that's not the point really. The point is that G4 is not ready for introduction in Lombard before the Sawtooth desktop systems expected around MWNY this July. Lombard is a done machine, its production is ramping up in Taiwan right now, but has had some setbacks, which has thus delayed its introduction. It runs on the g3 processor, there really is no doubt about that. The guy who wrote the infoworld article may have just been fed real bad information by a reader or fell victim to one of Apple's notorious leak-detecting far-out rumors. Much like the apple/disney/pixar merger rumors that AppleInsider fell for.
Also, by reading some of the other posts, the codenames of Apple's PowerBooks are of much interest and intrigue. Yes, The Powerbook G3 Series is codenamed Wallstreet (and there was a low end version codenamed Mainstreet). Then the next PowerBook codenamed Lombard is named after the street in San Francisco, but it also has the additional codename of 101. This is from the highway in California named 101, which is renamed Lombard street when it reaches downtown San Francisco. Neat, huh? The connection of Lombard with the street in Britain akin to America's financial district has been recognized as well.If you want to go way into the future, speculation on the next generation after Lombard/101 says the machine may be codenamed 102, but that's likely to change as we get closer to that product's timeframe.
Doug
It is *highly* unlikely that Apple will release a G4 notebook system before a G4 desktop system. At no point in Apple's history has a new generation of processor debuted on a portable system. The other assumptions in the article are unlikely. For more info on lombard, visit www.pbzone.com/lombard.shtml.
Doug
Well, speaking as someone with VirtualIO glasses and netwinders...
You need better resolution than VirtualIO to use a computer. You can crank the font size on the console enough to be legible (not clear, just legible enough to tell lowercase characters apart) you only get 53 characters across the screen.
Lots of programs are unhappy with that screen size.
Now, when I can get a REAL 640x480 for not a lot of money I'll be ready to use it, but VirtualIO isn't it.
Ditto this -- tcl is da shite, perl is for wienie boys.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I wonder how they detach the LCD. Might this be a departure from the usual clamshell design?
http://www.ryans.dhs.org
another big company trying to make it look like they invented wearable computing.. I wish that Steve Mann woud have patented the idea so that all manufacturers would have had to call it a Wearable computer invented by a bunch of geeks instead of some overpaid R&D team that steal's ideas anyways...
Look at IBM's wearable... and they act like they came up with the idea!
Simple... dont use an out-dated flat keyboard... everyone that is anyone uses a Twiddler keyboard!
Sheesh... use 2 hands for typing and mousing? what are we in the dark ages?
Ummm all us wearable users are cyborgs and we stand in public compiling kernels, writing code or just taking photos of everyone and putting them on the net for all to see in order to invade your privacy! we exist and we stand for " We have something you dont have so NYAHHHH!"
:-) Richard Head.
Actually a wearable isnt for everyone.. It's a specific use item. If you dont carry your laptop everywhere and have 3 batterys and drain them dead every day then you'd never use a wearable.
I need to be connected/computing every second of the day.
But then that is me
is there a clause in the macos license that allows us to get a refund for the macos on this laptop?
What a-bout dat ting dat Sony haz, don't dey hav som-fin like dis? Eye sawz it in uh advertizment dat day had. Eye guezz dat dat ting ain't portable dough..