I don't know how many times it has to be said, people neither want nor need a tablet that can double as a desktop. That is not what tablets are for. That is why all the tablets that came before were niche products at best, landfill at worst.
Apple grasped it was not a desktop replacement, but a specialized appliance. You can't use a tablet like a PC, nor should you. It's a different feature set, a different interface, different everything. I thought perhaps MS had got the message but apparently this is not the case, esp. with the keyboard-case thingy they've got. They're still trying to shoehorn two disparate user experiences together into one, and this neither can nor should be done.
Frankly, as long as Ballmer is in charge, I fear MS is going to keep going down this primrose path, and before it gets better it's going to get a lot worse.
Actually, Mr Cook makes a valid point about vertical touchscreen interfaces. Back in the 80's when they first came out, you got a lot of them in, e.g., kiosks and whathaveyou. And while they work for short periods (e.g., look something up real quick), for any extended period of time over a few minutes the arms get very tired, very fast. They're not meant to be held out like that for any long time, so you wind up with arms sore and fatigued, and feel like, yes, gorilla arms when you're through.
Usually an ideal angle for touchscreens is at an angle, preferably one which has a sweet spot for viewing, and some sort of support for the touching arm.
(Fun fact: the 'gorilla arms' problem is considred one of the main examples of what happens when you don't take real-world user experience into account. It's why companies that do extensive end user testing put out products that work better, and companies that just follow along with the trappings fall by the wayside.)
I am primarily a mac user, and this was the way I was able to play certain games that didn't get ported over, like Arkham Asylum and such. And they looked a heck of a lot ebtter than if I'd just run them in a VM or something like that. I had occasional bandwidth issues, but that was generally down to my ISP in any case. Frankly, I thought they were the bee's knees, and I'm sorry to see they seem to be going the way of the dodo. It's still a good idea, to my mind. Maybe just needs a little tweaking to make it a viable proposition.
...getting a huge "Road Warrior" vibe offa this whole thing?
"To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the dark syrup. And the forest sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without syrup, they were nothing. Man began to feed on man, because who wants dry pancakes? The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a barrel of sap. And in this maelstrom of decay, came the warrior we called Mad Makenzie..."
Well, TW just mailed me a flyer for free TV service for one year if I buy into their Ultimate Internet package, but their connection is dodgy at best, so I don't see that happening. And AT&T fiber isn't even close to gigabit here. So at this point I'm just waiting.
Well, hopefully they'll have gotten their butts down here by then, but we'll have to see. Still, it is an interesting question, though I can't imagine too much of a real estate migration being driven by fiber, except by outlier geeks like us;)
I know what you mean. I'm south side, and *just* outside of the service area. I swear, I can smell the bandwidth from there. Hopefully they'll come around the other side of 71.
I first read his Stainless Steel Rat books in a small town in the bible belt, whre my stepfather was a minister. His were the first books I ever encountered that openly made the case for athiesm. It was so different form everything else I'd run into-of course I had head of it, but to come right out and openly advocate it in the books (and a bit after the story proper, IIRC) was definitely a bit of a first.
Tonight, I'm heading out to a sushi joint with the other members of my Skeptic/Freethinkers' singles group, and I'll raise a toast to Slippery Jim. For me, he was step one on a long, long journey, and I am grateful.
With me, it was a summer gifted class. I had a choice of acting or computer programming. I'd never played with computers all that much, and wanted to grow up to be an actress, but for some reason I cannot for the life of me went with the computer course. A room full of Model IIIs, learning about PRINT and INPUT and all that fancy stuff. Well, I was hooked. I've been a programmer ever since.
TRS-80's were still a damn pain, though. Sooooo slow.
*hee* it's been a few years. Writing workshop, actually. These days I mostly write nonfiction: articles, critical pieces, that sort of thing. Actually, I do have a couple stories in the fire...I should really pick 'em up, get back to it...
Re:The most human side of scifi...
on
Ray Bradbury Has Died
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Amen to that... more than his hard SF work, his stories of sheer damn everyday magic -- and I'm talking Dandelion Wine here, and Death is a Lonely Business, and so many others, captivated the hell out of me. He was the high water mark of what speculative fiction can accomplish, and taught me what SF is really about. When a reader told me my writing was alike a cross between Bradbury and Lovecraft, it was the best thing ever.
Tonight... well, tonight I have a jug of dandelion wine sitting in my fridge--liquid summer, my first attempt but no less sweet. Tonight I'll raise a glass to him, and remember the long ago summers and the magic they held and the man who taught me to see them. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
I know exactly what you mean! For years--YEARS--I'd remember the cantina scene in which the guy with the funnel for a head would pour a drink straight in, and every time I saw the movie I would watch carefully, trying to catch that bit and never able to. When I finally saw the SWHS again and saw that it was just Harvey Kormann, it was like a burden lifted off my shoulders: no wonder I'd never been able to catch that bit in the movie--it was never IN the movie!
But that was weird, watching it the first time, eh? I was 6 also at the time, and I forgot most of it, just from time to time having these weird little clips in my head: the four-armed chef (Kormann again!?) and the announcer at the beginning saying "And R2 D2, as R2 D2!" Strange how things stick in the mind.
We run a B2B site over here, and I've noticed a definite drop in IE use, though admittedly rather less pronounced than, say, the Spongebob site above. Just at the moment for July, my numbers are running:
IE: 77.88%
Firefox: 15.18%
Safari: 5.69%
Chrome: 1.16% (finally broke 1% for us)
Everyone else 1% of course. If I compare it to June, IE was at 79.04%, and June of last year was 90.58%, so a pretty good drop there over time.
Funnily enough, the big mover seems to be Safari, which was less than 4% not so long ago, and esp. considering that our desktop software is windows-only (mind you--mac-head that I am--I have re-engineered the site to be more safari-friendly, so I like to think that's a factor).
"Not dead yet? Too late, now..."
"Do you love me?" "No..........yes."
"Look out for the--never mind."
"I am the KING! Ack--! *thud*"
Where does it end? Right here.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how many times it has to be said, people neither want nor need a tablet that can double as a desktop. That is not what tablets are for. That is why all the tablets that came before were niche products at best, landfill at worst.
Apple grasped it was not a desktop replacement, but a specialized appliance. You can't use a tablet like a PC, nor should you. It's a different feature set, a different interface, different everything. I thought perhaps MS had got the message but apparently this is not the case, esp. with the keyboard-case thingy they've got. They're still trying to shoehorn two disparate user experiences together into one, and this neither can nor should be done.
Frankly, as long as Ballmer is in charge, I fear MS is going to keep going down this primrose path, and before it gets better it's going to get a lot worse.
Actually, Mr Cook makes a valid point about vertical touchscreen interfaces. Back in the 80's when they first came out, you got a lot of them in, e.g., kiosks and whathaveyou. And while they work for short periods (e.g., look something up real quick), for any extended period of time over a few minutes the arms get very tired, very fast. They're not meant to be held out like that for any long time, so you wind up with arms sore and fatigued, and feel like, yes, gorilla arms when you're through.
Usually an ideal angle for touchscreens is at an angle, preferably one which has a sweet spot for viewing, and some sort of support for the touching arm.
(Fun fact: the 'gorilla arms' problem is considred one of the main examples of what happens when you don't take real-world user experience into account. It's why companies that do extensive end user testing put out products that work better, and companies that just follow along with the trappings fall by the wayside.)
I am primarily a mac user, and this was the way I was able to play certain games that didn't get ported over, like Arkham Asylum and such. And they looked a heck of a lot ebtter than if I'd just run them in a VM or something like that. I had occasional bandwidth issues, but that was generally down to my ISP in any case. Frankly, I thought they were the bee's knees, and I'm sorry to see they seem to be going the way of the dodo. It's still a good idea, to my mind. Maybe just needs a little tweaking to make it a viable proposition.
...getting a huge "Road Warrior" vibe offa this whole thing?
"To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the dark syrup. And the forest sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without syrup, they were nothing. Man began to feed on man, because who wants dry pancakes? The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a barrel of sap. And in this maelstrom of decay, came the warrior we called Mad Makenzie..."
Well, TW just mailed me a flyer for free TV service for one year if I buy into their Ultimate Internet package, but their connection is dodgy at best, so I don't see that happening. And AT&T fiber isn't even close to gigabit here. So at this point I'm just waiting.
Well, hopefully they'll have gotten their butts down here by then, but we'll have to see. Still, it is an interesting question, though I can't imagine too much of a real estate migration being driven by fiber, except by outlier geeks like us ;)
I know what you mean. I'm south side, and *just* outside of the service area. I swear, I can smell the bandwidth from there. Hopefully they'll come around the other side of 71.
I first read his Stainless Steel Rat books in a small town in the bible belt, whre my stepfather was a minister. His were the first books I ever encountered that openly made the case for athiesm. It was so different form everything else I'd run into-of course I had head of it, but to come right out and openly advocate it in the books (and a bit after the story proper, IIRC) was definitely a bit of a first. Tonight, I'm heading out to a sushi joint with the other members of my Skeptic/Freethinkers' singles group, and I'll raise a toast to Slippery Jim. For me, he was step one on a long, long journey, and I am grateful.
With me, it was a summer gifted class. I had a choice of acting or computer programming. I'd never played with computers all that much, and wanted to grow up to be an actress, but for some reason I cannot for the life of me went with the computer course. A room full of Model IIIs, learning about PRINT and INPUT and all that fancy stuff. Well, I was hooked. I've been a programmer ever since. TRS-80's were still a damn pain, though. Sooooo slow.
*hee* it's been a few years. Writing workshop, actually. These days I mostly write nonfiction: articles, critical pieces, that sort of thing. Actually, I do have a couple stories in the fire...I should really pick 'em up, get back to it...
Amen to that... more than his hard SF work, his stories of sheer damn everyday magic -- and I'm talking Dandelion Wine here, and Death is a Lonely Business, and so many others, captivated the hell out of me. He was the high water mark of what speculative fiction can accomplish, and taught me what SF is really about. When a reader told me my writing was alike a cross between Bradbury and Lovecraft, it was the best thing ever. Tonight... well, tonight I have a jug of dandelion wine sitting in my fridge--liquid summer, my first attempt but no less sweet. Tonight I'll raise a glass to him, and remember the long ago summers and the magic they held and the man who taught me to see them. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Actually, some ladies wouldn't mind havin' a crack at it themselves. Got any leads for good getting-started websites, books, etc?
I understand that they're just taking four large playing cards, jamming them in the spokes of the wheels and leaving it at that.
I know exactly what you mean! For years--YEARS--I'd remember the cantina scene in which the guy with the funnel for a head would pour a drink straight in, and every time I saw the movie I would watch carefully, trying to catch that bit and never able to. When I finally saw the SWHS again and saw that it was just Harvey Kormann, it was like a burden lifted off my shoulders: no wonder I'd never been able to catch that bit in the movie--it was never IN the movie! But that was weird, watching it the first time, eh? I was 6 also at the time, and I forgot most of it, just from time to time having these weird little clips in my head: the four-armed chef (Kormann again!?) and the announcer at the beginning saying "And R2 D2, as R2 D2!" Strange how things stick in the mind.
We run a B2B site over here, and I've noticed a definite drop in IE use, though admittedly rather less pronounced than, say, the Spongebob site above. Just at the moment for July, my numbers are running: IE: 77.88% Firefox: 15.18% Safari: 5.69% Chrome: 1.16% (finally broke 1% for us) Everyone else 1% of course. If I compare it to June, IE was at 79.04%, and June of last year was 90.58%, so a pretty good drop there over time. Funnily enough, the big mover seems to be Safari, which was less than 4% not so long ago, and esp. considering that our desktop software is windows-only (mind you--mac-head that I am--I have re-engineered the site to be more safari-friendly, so I like to think that's a factor).
"Not dead yet? Too late, now..."
"Do you love me?" "No..........yes."
"Look out for the--never mind."
"I am the KING! Ack--! *thud*"
Where does it end? Right here.
Arrgh! You found the whole text of the thing! I couldn't dig it up while at work, so had to go by my (aging) memory.
Oh well. Still fits.
K
"In the morning, they noticed a change. The writing on the wall at company headquarters had been changed; it now read:
....to excess'."
'An Animal Shall Do No Evil