I saw that particular trick when someone at my office ran into it about a year and a half ago. I realized what it was (they thought it was real) so I decided to try an experiment...
I pulled up the address on my iPhone and got the same thing. It looks really neat to see an iPhone show Windows Explorer and run a fake virus scan.
I was very impressed though. It's a quite convincing simulation, much better than the old generic "Your computer has a virus" image pop-ups with flashing text.
Apple said they would release FaceTime as a standard that others could implement, does anyone know if there is any non-Apple FaceTime software out there?
I've used FaceTime between my iPhone and a Mac, and it's quite nice, but it seems like it could be a big boon to someone to start selling FaceTime enabled video chat on the Android market.
Right. The battery cost would be priced into the electricity 'fill up' cost, and it would be up to the stations to maintain the batteries and replace them as necessary, not unlike they have to maintain their underground tanks and pumps.
This would be a much bigger problem for a home or perhaps a business that wants to have an EV charging station. Just putting one in would be a large expense for a home or say a small local co-op that wants to do something green. Having an EV charging station should help with your home's value (assuming EVs start to take off), but if it's the wrong kind it's just a hassle. It's something that you'd have to replace at a large cost. Or what if I have a Ford EV and my friend comes over and asks if he could charge his VW EV? He can't, because of a standard issue. No quick charge, just the 6 hour trickle from a standard outlet. That won't do him much good, he's not going to be here very long.
If there was one dominant standard, it would be more reassuring and easier for drivers. It's just one more thing drivers have to think about.
That was my thought too. It would be so easy to use this to get a model of some small toy like a hot wheels car, or even just something like a few keys on a keyboard.
Even without the iPad, iOS has a huge installed base thanks to the iPod touch. This app is limited since it needs the front facing camera (limiting it to the iPhone 4, newest iPod, and iPad 2), but it's still a massive number of potential customers.
There is also the fact that the iPhone is easy to develop for, and has a huge development community. Android is supposed to be pretty good (and certainly head-and-shoulders above Symbian), but if you have a question about how to do something on iOS, it's pretty easy to find the answer and lots of sample code.
I still thought it was kind of neat, and I wanted to use it with my Thing-o-Matic, and at $0.99 I'd happily buy it. But then I start reading the description of the last update: STL and point cloud export available with an in-app purchase. In app purchase cost? $5.
I'm not interested enough to pay $6. I really dislike in-app purchases that are so much more than the app was. If the app included the functionality and cost $3, I'd happily buy it. The app has to generate the same set of triangles whether it's just displaying it on the screen or it's going to be output to STL or a point cloud. I'm sure there is a little more work involved, but I have a hard time believing the export function took 5x the work of the initial version.
Since an update just after the iPhone 4 was released, Holotoy has a similar mode where it can use the front camera to do face tracking, simulating 3D the same way this program does.
So it's the same thing as Holotoy, which has been out since slightly after the iPhone 4 release? This isn't new, the only story here is that it's on the iPad.
Now Holotoy's effect isn't perfect, and the larger screen may help. I would be interested in seeing this in person, but it's not unique.
That's the argument I've seen. People are doing all sorts of things like modding the Nook Color to get a cheap tablet. There is clearly demand for something at £200 or £250, but all the companies are trying to be Apple and put out the most amazing thing they can at prices that many people can't afford (or won't spend on a device they aren't sure of). If some company made a nice 8 GB tablet with WiFi and 7" screen and had the cost down low (due to not having dual-dual core processors and the best 3D graphic on the market) they could probably sell a ton.
Instead companies are chasing Apples profit margin.
Microsoft tried making their own stores just a few years ago, didn't they? I remember some fanfare when it first happened ("Now we'll cream Apple because we're awesome"), and I haven't heard anything since (implying total failure).
PDFs honestly aren't that bad, and for some things (longer documents, like papers) they are quite good. The problem is Adobe. It's slow, bloated, insecure, a resource hog, and crashy.
Preview on OS X is fantastic. When I had a Windows computer at work I used Foxit. I've never had a problem with either one not being able to open something. On Linux, whatever the default installed on my computer is (some KDE application, I think) works fine.
My guess is that most people hate PDFs because they are associated with Adobe Reader. That's not necessary. There is a world where PDFs aren't bad.
But USB 3 isn't in a ton of systems. Thunderbolt will stop being Apple exclusive next year (IIRC), so why should I bother? At this point a hard drive is the only thing I'm likely to use that would stress USB3, I mean I can already record HD video over USB2.
I already have FireWire 800, and have for a few years, and it's very fast, and extremely low overhead. Since I don't go around copying multiple gigs of files between drives, the speed benefit of USB3 isn't really going to matter much to me. Given the average level drive attached, if FW is a bottleneck, I'm probably close to 80-90% of the drive speed. I have FW since I'm on a Mac, but many people on Windows boxes have eSATA ports. They're faster than USB3 (since it's the HD's native interface) and lower overhead (again, the native interface of the drive). I know they were supposed to make the CPU overhead of USB3 better than 2, but my guess is it's still noticeably higher than FireWire or eSATA.
Basically, I think USB3 took too long. It's out, but it's third party chips on motherboards. That means the situation where some of your ports are v2 and some are v3. When space is at a premium (like laptops), it's more likely you'll only get v2 ports until Intel embeds a controller. But FW800 is available in add in cards and has a higher adoption rate (right now). eSATA cards are common and available in add in cards. USB2 is fast enough for many people.
By the time USB3 becomes more common, Thunderbolt will already have a decent market. Apple putting it in their high-end computers (at least the MBPs) means that drive enclosures and such will be released in the next few months.
For the average consumer, I don't think they need USB3 or will for a while. By the time they do, there is a good chance Thunderbolt will start looking really attractive (one cable and your monitor, scanner, hard drive and whatever else are plugged in). And since Thunderbolt easily has the bandwidth to have adapters to plug SATA or USB2/3 devices into Thunderbolt ports... it's a safe choice.
I'm sure USB3 will be everywhere in a year or two, but only because it's a backwards compatible drop in replacement. I don't think it will be out of any real necessity. Only people copying large amounts of data (video editing, large media libraries, etc) would get the benefit, and at that point you might as well go eSATA.
Right. It's a little odd for web apps saved to springboard (where you just save the link from Mobile Safari, so there is no 3rd party code involved), but it makes sense for a game or other app that may use a UIWebView to display news or such. It probably doesn't need the extra performance, but it would be a big security risk.
John Gruber had a good analysis of all this. Basically, the embedded UIWebView didn't change in speed between 4.2 and 4.3, but Safari did. The fact that outside apps didn't speed up has been called "Apple slowing down" other apps.
The new JS engine (Nitro) uses JIT, which needs writable, executable pages in memory. In iOS 4.2 and before, this didn't exist because of security concerns. In 4.3, it exists, but only for MobileSafari. Because of this, UIWebView in other applications can't use JIT, which is where the performance gains came from.
So it's a security thing. Apple has decided to error on the side of security here. That's the executive order, that they won't reduce the security (my speculation/interpretation). Android isn't being as pedantic about it. Gruber suggest it could be possible (in a future update) to run the JIT in a separate process, so the main process doesn't need the wrire/execute pages to keep security. It's a good idea, it'd be nice if Apple did it. I'm not sure it matters that much.
So the problem with this comparison is that instead of MobileSafari, they used something using UIWebView, which doesn't have the permissions to do JIT. Thus it's an unfair comparison, in that users will see faster speeds than they are reporting (since users will use Safari, they have no choice).
I think that's a version of the problem. I don't see much in it for Apple. In the US contactless payments are not very common. There are a few systems (SpeedPay?) but I've never seen anyone use them. Carrying around a credit card is not exactly a hardship. The place where I think it would make the most sense is vending machines.
I know contactless stuff is much more common in Japan and Europe. Do they use the same system, or would Apple have to build multiple versions? I do think that if they wanted to Apple could probably pick the winning standard in the US (if there are multiple contenders, I honestly don't know).
I think it would be smarter to make a full near field communication system so that not only could you pay, but it could read tags embedded in things (ads, products, etc). Wouldn't it be nice to be able to "swipe" your phone with something (say your printer) to be able to easily pull up ink/toner options, the manual, support, etc? Why limit yourself to just paying for things?
Either way, I'm not terribly surprised by this. No one else has it (in the US), so it's not like it's costing them anything (here).
I remember NPR mentioning a few months ago how training new NFL and (especially) college players has changed because of Madden.
It used to be that kids would come in knowing the basic rules, and maybe a few plays. They had to be taught lots of strategy, as their experience was really playing with friends or in high school and most kids didn't get to QB. Those who did only got to play in a handful of games, so they didn't have a lot of experience.
Now, kids come in often having played hundreds or thousands of games thanks to Madden (and other games). They know quite a bit of strategy, tactics, etc. They aren't the blank slate they used to be.
No kidding. My iPhone 4 is more powerful in every way (CPU, RAM, storage, 3D) than the first computer I ran Linux on, and that would have been a PII 300 in '97 or '98. I've run linux down on 386es with a few MB of RAM. If all you're doing is running a copy of FireFox, you shouldn't need a whole new shadow computer. Just some extra RAM hung off a bus to hold extra cached data (downloaded images, pages, etc) should be more than enough.
So I was reading the article and thinking "$400 for the laptop module? $200 + peripherals for the dock? Those are the equivalent of a cheap laptop/PC" Then I got to this tidbit:
"When you dock the Atrix, the Firefox browser and other dock-provided services aren't running from the Atrix but instead from a stripped-down Linux PC inside the dock. A real post-PC device would run everything from the smartphone or tablet, and it would use the dock to add more processing or take advantage of peripherals."
What? Why the heck am I buying this thing? All you're selling is an ultra-underpowered, crippled Linux computer that only works when a weird phone is plugged in for no particular reason. Syncing open tabs in FireFox is nice, but that's not enough. A simple app could do that. At home, I can keep a computer no problem. On the go, I still have to keep your laptop dock thing, so no space savings there.
Then there are other downsides. I'm guessing it drains the battery faster to use the laptop dock thing. The pictures of the laptop dock make it look really easy to snap the phone off the back accidentally and break the phone/dock. It's nice to know the reviewer doesn't think the thing feels secure in the dock.
This seems to be where computers will go for most people, but this first implementation clearly sounds more like a beta product than a first generation.
The G5s were nice, but they weren't going to keep up with Intel for long. The G4s in the laptops were very power efficient, but dog slow at the end.
Apple HAD to move off PPC, it was unsustainable. x86 was the only option. Cheap, easily sourced, constantly speeding up.
If Apple went to something else, they'd still have to keep up with Intel. Only the x86 has enough volume that the processor makers can afford to keep doing that.
The problem is that as smart phones get cheaper and cheaper, the low end of the market is going to get eaten away. Sure you can get a basic phone for $15 and a feature phone for $50. But within two years you may be able to get a feature phone for $20 and a smart phone for $60 it's going to be much harder to sell those low ends phones.
Low end phones aren't going to disappear overnight, but their days are numbered. If Nokia doesn't have a good plan to transition off them or at least keep good market share somewhere, they're in deep trouble in the next 10 years.
Re:This is way over the top
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's been called the Paradox of Choice (TED video link). The problem is that when you are spending a large amount of money (such as on a cell phone), the costs of getting it wrong can be large (since, unlike a box of cookies, replacement isn't cheap). Having to choose between dozens of nearly identical models can be confusing or at least taxing.
Steve Jobs gets this. When he came back to Apple he got rid of the dozens of similar products that were just slightly different (Performa 600, 610, 700, 720, 720CD, 730AV, 590HSBCPDBA, 617BBQFTW) and replaced them all with a handful of models. Things may not have matched your exact criteria as closely, but it was much easier to find something close to your criteria than it was before. Car companies can be quite guilty of this too. Mercedes sells 5 sedans/coupes, each in 4 or 5 trim levels. After that you get to options, and other companies are the same. So if you want buy a car, and price isn't a big object, and you want to look at Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, and Audio you could be looking at comparing 80-100 cars just to get a sedan, and thats without the individual option packages.
There was a great picture on a gadget site a year or two ago. It was a picture of Sony's lineup of earbuds. Between different styles, ear loops, colors, etc there were over 100 combinations of products they were selling. There were just too many choices.
This has always been a bit of a problem for Sony. Right now, their site lists 13 point and shoot cameras, 23 handycam camcorders, and 11 clock radios. They have at least seven different 46" TVs.
Do you know why Flip video succeeded? They made a simple little video camera, but they made ONE. Right now they have 3. One with a touch strip, one with HD, and a smaller one with HD and a rechargeable battery. Easy to pick. With sony, you need to decide form factor, 3D, resolution, pop-out screen....
Slashdot Mirror
I saw that particular trick when someone at my office ran into it about a year and a half ago. I realized what it was (they thought it was real) so I decided to try an experiment...
I pulled up the address on my iPhone and got the same thing. It looks really neat to see an iPhone show Windows Explorer and run a fake virus scan.
I was very impressed though. It's a quite convincing simulation, much better than the old generic "Your computer has a virus" image pop-ups with flashing text.
Apple said they would release FaceTime as a standard that others could implement, does anyone know if there is any non-Apple FaceTime software out there?
I've used FaceTime between my iPhone and a Mac, and it's quite nice, but it seems like it could be a big boon to someone to start selling FaceTime enabled video chat on the Android market.
Right. The battery cost would be priced into the electricity 'fill up' cost, and it would be up to the stations to maintain the batteries and replace them as necessary, not unlike they have to maintain their underground tanks and pumps.
This would be a much bigger problem for a home or perhaps a business that wants to have an EV charging station. Just putting one in would be a large expense for a home or say a small local co-op that wants to do something green. Having an EV charging station should help with your home's value (assuming EVs start to take off), but if it's the wrong kind it's just a hassle. It's something that you'd have to replace at a large cost. Or what if I have a Ford EV and my friend comes over and asks if he could charge his VW EV? He can't, because of a standard issue. No quick charge, just the 6 hour trickle from a standard outlet. That won't do him much good, he's not going to be here very long.
If there was one dominant standard, it would be more reassuring and easier for drivers. It's just one more thing drivers have to think about.
That was my thought too. It would be so easy to use this to get a model of some small toy like a hot wheels car, or even just something like a few keys on a keyboard.
Even without the iPad, iOS has a huge installed base thanks to the iPod touch. This app is limited since it needs the front facing camera (limiting it to the iPhone 4, newest iPod, and iPad 2), but it's still a massive number of potential customers.
There is also the fact that the iPhone is easy to develop for, and has a huge development community. Android is supposed to be pretty good (and certainly head-and-shoulders above Symbian), but if you have a question about how to do something on iOS, it's pretty easy to find the answer and lots of sample code.
I still thought it was kind of neat, and I wanted to use it with my Thing-o-Matic, and at $0.99 I'd happily buy it. But then I start reading the description of the last update: STL and point cloud export available with an in-app purchase. In app purchase cost? $5.
I'm not interested enough to pay $6. I really dislike in-app purchases that are so much more than the app was. If the app included the functionality and cost $3, I'd happily buy it. The app has to generate the same set of triangles whether it's just displaying it on the screen or it's going to be output to STL or a point cloud. I'm sure there is a little more work involved, but I have a hard time believing the export function took 5x the work of the initial version.
Since an update just after the iPhone 4 was released, Holotoy has a similar mode where it can use the front camera to do face tracking, simulating 3D the same way this program does.
So it's the same thing as Holotoy, which has been out since slightly after the iPhone 4 release? This isn't new, the only story here is that it's on the iPad.
Now Holotoy's effect isn't perfect, and the larger screen may help. I would be interested in seeing this in person, but it's not unique.
I was about to mod you insightful for your first paragraph. Then I read the rest. Way to prevent any chance of a good mod.
That's the argument I've seen. People are doing all sorts of things like modding the Nook Color to get a cheap tablet. There is clearly demand for something at £200 or £250, but all the companies are trying to be Apple and put out the most amazing thing they can at prices that many people can't afford (or won't spend on a device they aren't sure of). If some company made a nice 8 GB tablet with WiFi and 7" screen and had the cost down low (due to not having dual-dual core processors and the best 3D graphic on the market) they could probably sell a ton.
Instead companies are chasing Apples profit margin.
Microsoft tried making their own stores just a few years ago, didn't they? I remember some fanfare when it first happened ("Now we'll cream Apple because we're awesome"), and I haven't heard anything since (implying total failure).
PDFs honestly aren't that bad, and for some things (longer documents, like papers) they are quite good. The problem is Adobe. It's slow, bloated, insecure, a resource hog, and crashy.
Preview on OS X is fantastic. When I had a Windows computer at work I used Foxit. I've never had a problem with either one not being able to open something. On Linux, whatever the default installed on my computer is (some KDE application, I think) works fine.
My guess is that most people hate PDFs because they are associated with Adobe Reader. That's not necessary. There is a world where PDFs aren't bad.
It's a quantum E.
But USB 3 isn't in a ton of systems. Thunderbolt will stop being Apple exclusive next year (IIRC), so why should I bother? At this point a hard drive is the only thing I'm likely to use that would stress USB3, I mean I can already record HD video over USB2.
I already have FireWire 800, and have for a few years, and it's very fast, and extremely low overhead. Since I don't go around copying multiple gigs of files between drives, the speed benefit of USB3 isn't really going to matter much to me. Given the average level drive attached, if FW is a bottleneck, I'm probably close to 80-90% of the drive speed. I have FW since I'm on a Mac, but many people on Windows boxes have eSATA ports. They're faster than USB3 (since it's the HD's native interface) and lower overhead (again, the native interface of the drive). I know they were supposed to make the CPU overhead of USB3 better than 2, but my guess is it's still noticeably higher than FireWire or eSATA.
Basically, I think USB3 took too long. It's out, but it's third party chips on motherboards. That means the situation where some of your ports are v2 and some are v3. When space is at a premium (like laptops), it's more likely you'll only get v2 ports until Intel embeds a controller. But FW800 is available in add in cards and has a higher adoption rate (right now). eSATA cards are common and available in add in cards. USB2 is fast enough for many people.
By the time USB3 becomes more common, Thunderbolt will already have a decent market. Apple putting it in their high-end computers (at least the MBPs) means that drive enclosures and such will be released in the next few months.
For the average consumer, I don't think they need USB3 or will for a while. By the time they do, there is a good chance Thunderbolt will start looking really attractive (one cable and your monitor, scanner, hard drive and whatever else are plugged in). And since Thunderbolt easily has the bandwidth to have adapters to plug SATA or USB2/3 devices into Thunderbolt ports... it's a safe choice.
I'm sure USB3 will be everywhere in a year or two, but only because it's a backwards compatible drop in replacement. I don't think it will be out of any real necessity. Only people copying large amounts of data (video editing, large media libraries, etc) would get the benefit, and at that point you might as well go eSATA.
Right. It's a little odd for web apps saved to springboard (where you just save the link from Mobile Safari, so there is no 3rd party code involved), but it makes sense for a game or other app that may use a UIWebView to display news or such. It probably doesn't need the extra performance, but it would be a big security risk.
John Gruber had a good analysis of all this. Basically, the embedded UIWebView didn't change in speed between 4.2 and 4.3, but Safari did. The fact that outside apps didn't speed up has been called "Apple slowing down" other apps.
The new JS engine (Nitro) uses JIT, which needs writable, executable pages in memory. In iOS 4.2 and before, this didn't exist because of security concerns. In 4.3, it exists, but only for MobileSafari. Because of this, UIWebView in other applications can't use JIT, which is where the performance gains came from.
So it's a security thing. Apple has decided to error on the side of security here. That's the executive order, that they won't reduce the security (my speculation/interpretation). Android isn't being as pedantic about it. Gruber suggest it could be possible (in a future update) to run the JIT in a separate process, so the main process doesn't need the wrire/execute pages to keep security. It's a good idea, it'd be nice if Apple did it. I'm not sure it matters that much.
So the problem with this comparison is that instead of MobileSafari, they used something using UIWebView, which doesn't have the permissions to do JIT. Thus it's an unfair comparison, in that users will see faster speeds than they are reporting (since users will use Safari, they have no choice).
I think that's a version of the problem. I don't see much in it for Apple. In the US contactless payments are not very common. There are a few systems (SpeedPay?) but I've never seen anyone use them. Carrying around a credit card is not exactly a hardship. The place where I think it would make the most sense is vending machines.
I know contactless stuff is much more common in Japan and Europe. Do they use the same system, or would Apple have to build multiple versions? I do think that if they wanted to Apple could probably pick the winning standard in the US (if there are multiple contenders, I honestly don't know).
I think it would be smarter to make a full near field communication system so that not only could you pay, but it could read tags embedded in things (ads, products, etc). Wouldn't it be nice to be able to "swipe" your phone with something (say your printer) to be able to easily pull up ink/toner options, the manual, support, etc? Why limit yourself to just paying for things?
Either way, I'm not terribly surprised by this. No one else has it (in the US), so it's not like it's costing them anything (here).
I remember NPR mentioning a few months ago how training new NFL and (especially) college players has changed because of Madden.
It used to be that kids would come in knowing the basic rules, and maybe a few plays. They had to be taught lots of strategy, as their experience was really playing with friends or in high school and most kids didn't get to QB. Those who did only got to play in a handful of games, so they didn't have a lot of experience.
Now, kids come in often having played hundreds or thousands of games thanks to Madden (and other games). They know quite a bit of strategy, tactics, etc. They aren't the blank slate they used to be.
No, the phone is $200 (on contract). The non-functional laptop dock is $400.
No kidding. My iPhone 4 is more powerful in every way (CPU, RAM, storage, 3D) than the first computer I ran Linux on, and that would have been a PII 300 in '97 or '98. I've run linux down on 386es with a few MB of RAM. If all you're doing is running a copy of FireFox, you shouldn't need a whole new shadow computer. Just some extra RAM hung off a bus to hold extra cached data (downloaded images, pages, etc) should be more than enough.
So I was reading the article and thinking "$400 for the laptop module? $200 + peripherals for the dock? Those are the equivalent of a cheap laptop/PC" Then I got to this tidbit:
What? Why the heck am I buying this thing? All you're selling is an ultra-underpowered, crippled Linux computer that only works when a weird phone is plugged in for no particular reason. Syncing open tabs in FireFox is nice, but that's not enough. A simple app could do that. At home, I can keep a computer no problem. On the go, I still have to keep your laptop dock thing, so no space savings there.
Then there are other downsides. I'm guessing it drains the battery faster to use the laptop dock thing. The pictures of the laptop dock make it look really easy to snap the phone off the back accidentally and break the phone/dock. It's nice to know the reviewer doesn't think the thing feels secure in the dock.
This seems to be where computers will go for most people, but this first implementation clearly sounds more like a beta product than a first generation.
The G5s were nice, but they weren't going to keep up with Intel for long. The G4s in the laptops were very power efficient, but dog slow at the end.
Apple HAD to move off PPC, it was unsustainable. x86 was the only option. Cheap, easily sourced, constantly speeding up.
If Apple went to something else, they'd still have to keep up with Intel. Only the x86 has enough volume that the processor makers can afford to keep doing that.
The problem is that as smart phones get cheaper and cheaper, the low end of the market is going to get eaten away. Sure you can get a basic phone for $15 and a feature phone for $50. But within two years you may be able to get a feature phone for $20 and a smart phone for $60 it's going to be much harder to sell those low ends phones.
Low end phones aren't going to disappear overnight, but their days are numbered. If Nokia doesn't have a good plan to transition off them or at least keep good market share somewhere, they're in deep trouble in the next 10 years.
It's been called the Paradox of Choice (TED video link). The problem is that when you are spending a large amount of money (such as on a cell phone), the costs of getting it wrong can be large (since, unlike a box of cookies, replacement isn't cheap). Having to choose between dozens of nearly identical models can be confusing or at least taxing.
Steve Jobs gets this. When he came back to Apple he got rid of the dozens of similar products that were just slightly different (Performa 600, 610, 700, 720, 720CD, 730AV, 590HSBCPDBA, 617BBQFTW) and replaced them all with a handful of models. Things may not have matched your exact criteria as closely, but it was much easier to find something close to your criteria than it was before. Car companies can be quite guilty of this too. Mercedes sells 5 sedans/coupes, each in 4 or 5 trim levels. After that you get to options, and other companies are the same. So if you want buy a car, and price isn't a big object, and you want to look at Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, and Audio you could be looking at comparing 80-100 cars just to get a sedan, and thats without the individual option packages.
There was a great picture on a gadget site a year or two ago. It was a picture of Sony's lineup of earbuds. Between different styles, ear loops, colors, etc there were over 100 combinations of products they were selling. There were just too many choices.
This has always been a bit of a problem for Sony. Right now, their site lists 13 point and shoot cameras, 23 handycam camcorders, and 11 clock radios. They have at least seven different 46" TVs.
Do you know why Flip video succeeded? They made a simple little video camera, but they made ONE. Right now they have 3. One with a touch strip, one with HD, and a smaller one with HD and a rechargeable battery. Easy to pick. With sony, you need to decide form factor, 3D, resolution, pop-out screen....