One of the reasons why the the iphone OS is making inroads into all of these niche areas is the availability of cheap contract-free iPod touch devices.
Nokia started with non-phones, the Nokia 770 and 800, resulting in all manner of apps for Maemo.
...I find the iPad to be a perfect web surfing device. Great for e-mail and watching video. I am actually considering selling my Macbook Pro, as it is starting to get dusty. That said, I wouldn't want to write a novel on it.
Well I wouldn't want to write much on a netbook keyboard either, but I don't really see them as competing. I'm sure the iPad is great as a pick-up-and-go browser and so on (I use my iPod Touch all the time, it's easier and faster than using a PC), but if I had to take one device away on a road trip it would be a netbook. I've stayed at motels where the wireless was poor but there was ethernet provided too, for instance. I can use it to back up camera memory cards. And a real keyboard is useful for emails.
I suspect that if the world had only ever had iPad-style tablet PCs and Apple invented the netbook, people would be praising the brilliant design that cleverly combined the keyboard with a tilting stand, which also protected the screen when not in use.
Also gone: merry-go-rounds, see-saws, cargo nets etc and anything more than about 10 feet tall. And all the woodchips have been replaced by an unidentified foam-rubber sort of material covering the ground. It's terrible.
In Andrew Brown Park, in Coppell, TX there is "Kid Kountry" which is wooden equipment with woodchips on the ground. A great playground, with a tire suspended from a chain, climbing nets, etc.
But even that doesn't have a merry-go-round. Coincidentally, my wife commented on their absence from all the playgrounds we've seen, a few days ago. When did they disappear?
I used Palms for years and I'm sad that no modern smartphones or other gadgets can really replace them.
Even the old ones were pretty fast (they ran programs directly in-place, so you didn't have to wait for them to load from flash into RAM, I believe).
And so reliable (as long as you weren't running a crashy app on it). By that I mean the time between needing reset was MONTHS, not days like some smart phones.
But I moved to a Treo, and the newer OS had become unreliable (jt tried to keep old and new data files in sync causing both apps and PC-syncs to lock up).
I'm a big fan of my iPod touch, but my old 33Mhz Clie was much faster to use, but in response speed and reliability. For instance, to set a reminder, I'd press a hard-button set to launch diddlebug (http://diddlebug.sourceforge.net/) , scribble a note on screen (it was a "sticky-note" app, so I could just write directly on the screen), tap the alarm button and choose a time with two taps, from a UI full of buttons for hours and 5-minute intervals.
I could do that practically before you can even load up the iPod's clock app, let alone typing in the text and spinning the nice-looking but inconvenient time-spinners.
Oh, and I doubt that you can port diddlebug to the iPod Touch, due to lack of an alarm API, and you'd still have to wait for it to load to use it.
(While writing this, my iPod alarm went off, coincidentally reminding me that I get no choice about how to snooze alarms, either.)
I have since learned to set 'Airplane Mode' before I give my iPhone to my 3 year old.
I bought some iPod Touch games for my 2-year-old, which was great until he started deleting apps and changing settings (a backup isn't that useful because I either lose the app's data by reinstalling, or restore from the last backup and lose all recent changes).
A guest account would be ideal for him (although I'd never have thought to give him access to Minesweeper).
Nothing new. They've been at selling Star Trek branded USB Thumb drives with the movie on it in a DRMed format for a bit now. Showed up about 1-2 months ago at Fry's.
I got one of those as a gift a while ago. It was good quality (but not really high-res).
The DRM isn't too bad, as DRM goes - I could even play it on an old portable DVD player by playing a "registration" divx file. Having said that, the DivX player occasionally failed to play because it couldn't reconnect to the site.
It would have been tough if I didn't have a compatible DVD player or Windows XP.
Anyway, I now have a 4Gb USB drive in the shape of a Star Trek badge that seems to be made out of inch-thick steel.
Well the issue is that beachgoers in particular are disconnected from the net
Have you been to a beach recently?:)
Does anyone know if the GSM broadcast message ability is ever used for emergencies like this? It's possible to push messages directly to all GSM phones in a region.
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So your suggestion is to give in to peer pressure?
Well, everyone else was doing it....
One of the reasons why the the iphone OS is making inroads into all of these niche areas is the availability of cheap contract-free iPod touch devices.
Nokia started with non-phones, the Nokia 770 and 800, resulting in all manner of apps for Maemo.
2) head tilted 45 degrees to the right 3) tilt head 90 degrees to the left 4) tilt head another 90 degrees to the left
uh... pictures?
I realized that they were relative rotations, but forgot they were in degrees and tried to do radians.
Worse still, I originally assumed that the rotation axis was about the forwards horizontal....
...I find the iPad to be a perfect web surfing device. Great for e-mail and watching video. I am actually considering selling my Macbook Pro, as it is starting to get dusty. That said, I wouldn't want to write a novel on it.
Well I wouldn't want to write much on a netbook keyboard either, but I don't really see them as competing. I'm sure the iPad is great as a pick-up-and-go browser and so on (I use my iPod Touch all the time, it's easier and faster than using a PC), but if I had to take one device away on a road trip it would be a netbook. I've stayed at motels where the wireless was poor but there was ethernet provided too, for instance. I can use it to back up camera memory cards. And a real keyboard is useful for emails.
I suspect that if the world had only ever had iPad-style tablet PCs and Apple invented the netbook, people would be praising the brilliant design that cleverly combined the keyboard with a tilting stand, which also protected the screen when not in use.
Microsoft has decided that upon registering for any of their forums, you must complete and pass a turing test. Twice.
Surely, for the second one, any human will say: "I've just done this test!"
Also gone: merry-go-rounds, see-saws, cargo nets etc and anything more than about 10 feet tall. And all the woodchips have been replaced by an unidentified foam-rubber sort of material covering the ground. It's terrible.
In Andrew Brown Park, in Coppell, TX there is "Kid Kountry" which is wooden equipment with woodchips on the ground. A great playground, with a tire suspended from a chain, climbing nets, etc.
But even that doesn't have a merry-go-round. Coincidentally, my wife commented on their absence from all the playgrounds we've seen, a few days ago. When did they disappear?
The code on the site for
function nearlyEqual(a,b)
contains the line
if (a==0.0){
Clearly, this should be
if (nearlyEqual(a, 0.0)){
There. What could possibly go wrong now? :)
<big rant>
I used Palms for years and I'm sad that no modern smartphones or other gadgets can really replace them.
Even the old ones were pretty fast (they ran programs directly in-place, so you didn't have to wait for them to load from flash into RAM, I believe).
And so reliable (as long as you weren't running a crashy app on it). By that I mean the time between needing reset was MONTHS, not days like some smart phones.
But I moved to a Treo, and the newer OS had become unreliable (jt tried to keep old and new data files in sync causing both apps and PC-syncs to lock up).
I'm a big fan of my iPod touch, but my old 33Mhz Clie was much faster to use, but in response speed and reliability. For instance, to set a reminder, I'd press a hard-button set to launch diddlebug (http://diddlebug.sourceforge.net/) , scribble a note on screen (it was a "sticky-note" app, so I could just write directly on the screen), tap the alarm button and choose a time with two taps, from a UI full of buttons for hours and 5-minute intervals.
I could do that practically before you can even load up the iPod's clock app, let alone typing in the text and spinning the nice-looking but inconvenient time-spinners.
Oh, and I doubt that you can port diddlebug to the iPod Touch, due to lack of an alarm API, and you'd still have to wait for it to load to use it.
(While writing this, my iPod alarm went off, coincidentally reminding me that I get no choice about how to snooze alarms, either.)
My desk also happens to be right next to the break room where people religiously burn popcorn, microwave fish,
There could be another reason for that: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-11-02/
The next consoles will just be empty plastic boxes. But they come with a free circuit board, cables, psu and controllers!
It's like the motels that promise to a refund for anything you're not satisfied with, and the "Free" wifi had a poor signal.
Or the things you can buy online for 0.01c and $8 shipping - if you're not satisfied, return it for a full refund (minus shipping).
The Toshiba had a 129-MHz Toshiba TMPR3912U CPU which is something like 2 to 3 orders of magnitude slower than the 1Ghz A4
That doesn't mean what you think it means. It's actually almost 8 times faster. 2 or 3 orders of magnitude is 100 to 1000 times faster.
Wait, we use base 10 here? I assumed he meant orders of magnitude in base 2.
I have since learned to set 'Airplane Mode' before I give my iPhone to my 3 year old.
I bought some iPod Touch games for my 2-year-old, which was great until he started deleting apps and changing settings (a backup isn't that useful because I either lose the app's data by reinstalling, or restore from the last backup and lose all recent changes).
A guest account would be ideal for him (although I'd never have thought to give him access to Minesweeper).
Nothing new. They've been at selling Star Trek branded USB Thumb drives with the movie on it in a DRMed format for a bit now. Showed up about 1-2 months ago at Fry's.
I got one of those as a gift a while ago. It was good quality (but not really high-res).
The DRM isn't too bad, as DRM goes - I could even play it on an old portable DVD player by playing a "registration" divx file. Having said that, the DivX player occasionally failed to play because it couldn't reconnect to the site.
It would have been tough if I didn't have a compatible DVD player or Windows XP.
Anyway, I now have a 4Gb USB drive in the shape of a Star Trek badge that seems to be made out of inch-thick steel.
Well the issue is that beachgoers in particular are disconnected from the net
Have you been to a beach recently? :)
Does anyone know if the GSM broadcast message ability is ever used for emergencies like this? It's possible to push messages directly to all GSM phones in a region.
It's a joke, taking advantage of the fact that "resemble" and "resent" both start with the same 4 letters.
A.k.a. Malapropism