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If you’re interested, please make the move over to blog.jehanalvani.com for new posts - some technical, some not - and hopefully a lot more regular writing. If you don’t feel like coming, it’s cool. I understand. I’ve appreciated your being here this long. Take care guys.
]]>I downloaded it at work, yesterday afternoon. I read a couple articles between working on various projects, and a couple more yesterday evening and on my commute in to the office this morning. It’s really fun. So I started to think about what, exactly, made reading the Wired app so much more fun than other magazines on the iPad, and I kept thinking about an article I read a while back – a couple weeks before the iPad came out.
(Incidentally, linking to Craig Mod’s website seems like saying “Oh yeah, you should totally go read Dumas. That “Count of Monte Cristo” is a really neat story.” You can play it up, but no matter what you do, you’re not doing it justice. His site, stories, illustrations, everything, is just incredible.)
In Books in the age of the iPad, Craig lays out how the the prevalence of digital media means that the stuff that eventually does get printed is the stuff that’s really worth printing. Texts whose value is increased by being in a physical medium, something you can hold in your hands.
He divides content into two categories. “Definite content,” is as described above. “Formless content” does not require a specific context or display to retain its value. The overwhelming majority of novels, blogs, and newspaper articles are formless. (Again, his article explains this much better, and in greater detail).
It’s clear that Wired spent a lot of time thinking about this. Taking Criag’s suggestion for “[placing] chapters on the horizontal plane with content on a fluid vertical plane” very literally, they designed movement between articles as a horizontal swipe, and pagination in articles as a vertical swipe. It’s surprisingly natural and takes only moments to get used to.
Additionally, the Wired team built multimedia additions into the app, allowing for videos or audio to play right in the article. It’s a great addition, and really adds to the experience as a whole. Reading about Trent Reznor’s methods for creating and mixing tracks while listening to each sample, sequence, and loop was a blast.
It’s clear that this is only a framework, there’s a lot of potential for great content to be built into digital magazines in the future. So far, though, this is the only print magazine that really gets it. That we don’t need to just re-package the print version of the magazine, but actually designing to take advantage of a new medium will add a lot of value in readers eyes. I doubt I’m alone in really being excited about where this takes us.
]]>Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications.
Basically, Gruber repeatedly hit the nail on the head.
]]>I could only make it a halfway through the second dancer. One more forced pelvic-thrust followed by an exaggerated checking of his watch, and I would have lost my lunch. RIM is capable of making good things, but based on their seeming lack of focus around touchscreen devices - not to mention the miserable failure that is the BlackBerry Storm - I don’t have much confidence they understand where the market is heading.
]]>(via Daring Fireball)
]]>The hardware itself is $150, and from what I can make out of the site, you’ll need a “MicroCell Plan” to go along with it. That’s $150+monthly charges to make up for problems with their service. For a company that’s spent millions on marketing themselves as having “More bars in more places,” and for a company that is having trouble keeping up with the demand being placed on its network, AT&T sure is keen to pass the cost of their growth on to their customers.
(It’s confusing that they called it MicroCell; the industry term for it is “femtocell,” “microcell” being provider-built)
]]>Strikes me that their sample size is a little small (99 people, 110 ordered iPads). There isn’t a lot of detail about how they sampled people, so I’ll assume that they sampled people throughout the day, and did some analysis on if the pre-order rate was sustained throughout the day. Regardless, the numbers are really big for a product that only a very few people have seen in person.
]]>I was debating - visibly agonizing - over the decision for most of the morning. I knew I was going to get the 16 GB WiFi-only model, and I was sold on the easel case. But Apple threw me for a loop. Did I want to pick it up form the Apple Store, or have it delivered to me? I was not prepared for the option.
It was a small, light grey sentence on the pre-order page that did sold me on the 20 minute drive to the Towson Apple store. The emphasis is mine:
*Wi-Fi models available on April 3. If Saturday delivery is not available in your area, iPad will be delivered on April 5.
I don’t want to regret making a decision that could delay my having iPad in hand by two days. Especially considering the sheer number of iPads being ordered. @chockenberry hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. I’m too excited to take that risk.
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I’ve had very similar experiences to the three he listed, but I’d add one more: Geeks.
So far, the only people who have been talking smack about the iPad have been those who are so familiar with technology that we take hierarchical file systems for absolute granted, who expect and (to some degree) want the ability to delete an important system file thereby fucking the whole thing up. I can’t disagree, I want that too.
I know that the iPad will not, in its early state, be an acceptable replacement computer for me. However, I also know that it likely will be for my mom and my sister. Possibly for my fiancée. And certainly for countless other people out there.
]]>]]>It goes so far beyond simply shattering a paradigm that the word paradigm itself needs a shift.
And then Tim Van Damme came along with some rad illustrations and some ideas that I hadn’t seen put together before, and got me thinking. His article is thoughtful, and absolutely worth a read.
Tim suggests that it would be awesome if the 2006 patent application for an “iMac-like docking station” could be applied to the tablet. And that it could be extended to fit a notebook form-factor, as well.
Above: The original illustration. ©2010 Tim Van Damme. Used with permission.
I love the idea, but like him, I don’t think Apple would swing it. Too much risk for broken parts, and there’s a need for external connectors that could get worn or damaged. Of course, if anyone was going to overcome those issues, it would be Apple. But I don’t really think that’s the direction they’d take.
A while ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. We were discussing the Magic Mouse (it had just been announced) and the multitouch trackpad on newer Apple portables. I’d mentioned to him that I could see Apple taking the Optimus Maximus keyboard, and turning it up to 11.
Tim was gracious enough to let me hack up his image to illustrate my idea.
My big issue with the slide-in docking station is that it covers up the capitative touchscreen with a (potentially) standard display. We have this novel, new, awesome method of user input, and we’re going to cover it up and use a keyboard and mouse? That doesn’t sound right.
Essentially, I said that I thought Apple would come out with a user-interface device that was wholly a multitouch screen. It would be a keyboard, a trackpad, whatever. And it could be customized contextually such that developers could rewrite the interface being displayed.
In my head, it could be connected to a “real” computer either via bluetooth, or via WiFi (e.g. Air Mouse Pro), eliminating the need for connectors.
On top of that, it could easily function as a standalone tablet running a modified iPhone OS. Document storage could be on the device, or IN THE CLOUD (shoot me) or some syncing solution (in my opinion, an unlikely candidate). I’m not sure how that’s going to work out. But, it’s not like I know any of the other stuff I’ve been going on about. I just think it would be cool.
]]>What I think is most interesting is that Google intends to release many phones on their new http://www.google.com/phone/ site. And, while the phone is sold unlocked, T-Mobile is the only US GSM carrier you can get a subsidized phone from (though Verizon, apparently, will have a CDMA version “coming soon”).
Looking forward to seeing this develop. Google controlling the hardware and software, and making the “definitive” Android device is the closest thing to an iPhone competitor there is, yet. I love the hardware design, and it’s tempting to sign up for a contract with T-Mobile, now, just to get one. I just keep thinking about that UI, and that keeps my credit card firmly in my walllet.
]]>Let the giddy, batshit-insane, foaming-at-the-mouth rumormongering begin anew.
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