Tag: apple

The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time.[…] These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

Steve Jobs, talking to Wired in 1996.

They’re Doing it Wrong

Jozsef Szajer, a Hungarian politician and member of the European Parliament, wrote an enthusiastic blog post last week detailing how he’s using Apple’s tablet device to flesh out Hungary’s new constitution, the country’s first since 1949. Not only is Szajer using the iPad to churn out new constitutional drafts, but he’s also using it to review new draft proposals. Apparently all aspects of the new Hungarian constitution are being vetted via the iPad in one form or another.

Don’t these people know that iPads are for consumption only? There is no creation on an iPad. Silly Hungarians.

They’re Doing it Wrong

Here we have the man who invented the personal computer, then the laptop. He’s now destroying them. That is an amazing life.

Rupert Murdoch on Steve Jobs. I’d quibble with the “invented” being more of a “popularized,” but otherwise spot on.
Equally amazing (to me, anyway) is that the transition from “let’s sell everyone personal computers” to “let’s sell everyone wireless things that people don’t really even realize are computers” took place within the span of one CEO’s lifetime, though not one continuous tenure with Apple (since we’re talking Jobs here).
Color me unimpressed with The Daily, though. Just the sort of crap magazine I avoid in print, much less on the iPad. Reeder is the really disruptive technology if you’re asking me. And I know you are.
Source: daringfireball.net

What can we do with the idea of a “book” if we eliminate the limitations of ink and paper, rather than mimic them?

John Gruber, asking a question that seems utterly obvious and yet is seldom if ever confronted. This Push Pop Press he’s talking about sounds like just the thing for a real magazine or deep-content newspaper experience on an iPad or similar device.
Well, except for the “content as app” design. I don’t want an app for each and every book/magazine/paper, and I don’t think anyone else does either. One app to rule them all, please.

In which TechCrunch tells us about their browser stats. It’s sort of moderately amazing that Chrome is (already) edging out Firefox, but what I find most astounding, the thing that 2003 me would not have believed at all, is that Safari is third. Even more amazing: the article notes that 10% of Safari’s score is coming from the Mobile Safari variant, meaning iOS devices like iPhone and iPad.

tl;dr: Mobile Safari is now within striking distance of IE, and Safari as a whole is cleaning its clock, at least within the obviously gadget-obsessed demographic that reads the source. Let’s all pause to reflect on that for a few moments, because it’s fairly incredible, especially when you count the number of sites (and tech-support scripts) out there still “optimized” for IE6.

The Leading i

2000

iMac

  • Operating System – Mac OS 9.0.4
  • Processor – 500 MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128MB Memory
  • Graphics – ATI Rage 128 Pro, 8MB of memory (8 million triangles)
  • Screen – 786K pixels
  • Data Transfer Speeds – 1.3-12.5 MB/s (DVD-ROM-1/100 Ethernet)
  • Storage – 30GB Hard Drive
  • Dimensions – 15.0 x 15.0 x 17.1 inches
  • Weight – 34.7 pounds
  • Inflation adjusted 2010 Price: $1479.05

    2010

    iPhone 4

  • Operating System – iOS 4.0
  • Processor – 1 Ghz ARM A4 CPU, 512MB Memory
  • Graphics – PowerVR SGX 535, uses system memory (28 million triangles)
  • Screen – 614K pixels
  • Data Transfer Speeds – .04-20MB/s (3G-WiFi)
  • Storage – 32GB Flash Drive
  • Dimensions – 4.5 x 2.31 x .31 inches
  • Weight – 4.8 ounces
  • Unsubsidized Price: $699

    Worth noting that, in the year 2000, I only had one pair of pants in which I could comfortably fit an iMac.

    • Just last week, we crossed five billion downloads [from the App Store]. This next thing is my favorite thing is my favorite stat of the whole show. As you know, 70% of revenue goes to the developer. How much have we paid you to date? Just a few days ago we crossed a billion dollars.

    Steve Jobs, today at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. That’s a staggering number for something that didn’t even exist on this day in 2008.

    Steve is showing a completely interactive ad here, almost like a sub-app inside the application. Embedded video, toys to play with. Really impressive as far as mobile advertising goes. If that kind of thing excites you.

    Joshua Topolsky, liveblogging the iPhone OS 4 event.
    He hits on the key point: advertising, no matter how great, only excites the advertiser, generally not the advertisee (though in narrow circumstances: of course, you’re glad to hear about something that interests you. 99.9% of all web-based advertising I’ve ever seen would interest no one). Nothing poses more of a hazard to the platform than opening this sort of floodgate for intrusive, platform-wide ads than does iAd.
    Which Apple itself introduced today.
    The examples shown seem tame enough, but then it always seems tame to start. Advertisers simply will not content themselves with opt-in advertising tucked away inside an app, and the new suspend/resume function means there’s no escape, the interrupting ad will still be waiting for you when you return; these are the people to whom you’ve just given the keys to the kingdom, and it has the capacity to make the crown jewels (the information-driven apps) totally unusable.
    Pundits keep thinking Apple is going to “closed” itself out of the mobile market just like they all have convinced themselves that Apple did in the PC market. They won’t. But if it’s not careful, Apple will ultimately advertise itself out of the market.