Digital Ruckus » apple

Tech Talk Guys

jtalaiver — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:29:17 +0000

I am excited to say that my friend Bill and I revived our podcast Tech Talk Guys. We have this unfortunate pattern of posting and then having to take a LONG hiatus before we post again. Funny enough I realize that it tends to create almost a time capsule of tech news. I remember when we first reported the hints of the iPhone in iTunes 7 back in 2006. Now we are on the 4th generation of the iPhone and it’s operating system. The iPad is fast trailing and entirely new sector of the computer industry. Either way that is the topic of our latest podcast and we will definitely visit it again and again. Check it out and all our previous ‘casts to get a view of where we have come from to where we are now.

iSlate = iPad

jtalaiver — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:02:01 +0000

The revolutionary internet device has been released and the better part of the tech world said “meh”. Unfortunately the hype surrounding the iPad made living up to said hype as improbable as Bigfoot actually speaking the queen’s english and inviting everyone over for scones. The reality is that Apple’s last few revolutionary devices were just that, revolutionary. The iPod was not the first harddrive based MP3 player on the market but the way one could interact with it (click wheel) was revolutionary. The iPhone with its iPod/phone integration was amazing. The apps made it groundbreaking, but even here iPhone wasn’t the first. Windows Mobile has had hundreds of thousands of apps available for its platform BUT it never had an easy way of finding all of them (i.e. App Store).

As for the iPad I am afraid it had some serious competition it had to face, its own family of products. Since the iPad was not on a custom OS and built using the same software as the iPhone/iPod touch it ended up seeming like a very large iPhone (that doesn’t make calls). The iPad offered users the ability to work on iWorks with Keynote and Pages but without the true power of a laptop some of the Keynote presentations could get laggy on the tiny 1 Ghz chip it is running. Even there the hardware though beautiful seems like it missed some key features.

If it was a true “pad” I should be able to just turn it on and just write onto it like a piece of paper and maybe do some handwriting recognition. That would have been revolutionary! Oh wait… no not really… that functionality was in Windows Mobile phones since the days of the HP Jornada and Windows CE. It was also in a previous Apple product, anyone remember the Newton, anyone, anyone? Plus a device like this would be awesome for video webconferencing and “couch computing” since it is more “intimate than a laptop” but Uncle Steve I guess decided he didn’t want to put the camera in. Maybe on version 2.0

I think the problem for the iPad was the enormous amount of speculation. People were researching patents that were submitted from a company called “Fingerworks” which was acquired by Apple. That company had some amazing gesture based patents in their filings, but Apple decided not to use it or decided to shelf it till they could work it in.

Now there are rumors of a second version of the iPad and there is no surprise there. I know that Jobs has a pattern of releasing something awesome and then soon after releasing an update that gives the proverbial kick to those early adopters.

Will I get an iPad… Maybe… Will I get in the boat and buy this 1.0 version? Probably not.

iSlate or iFake

jtalaiver — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:17:27 +0000

The upcoming rumors of the mythical Apple device has the whole internet a buzz. Research into patents, companies that were acquired, website registration, and even a HIGH bounty for pictures, video, or physical interaction. There is reason to believe that this could be Jobs last hurrah and a parting device for all of us to fall in love with. With netbooks becoming a massive growing market Apple has been quiet about what their plans were. People have made their own ways of dealing with it by hackintoshing some of the Intel based netbooks that seemingly work perfectly with OSX (even Snow Leopard). Of course this is a breach of the EULA that Apple has about installing on non-Apple hardware, but Apple had to realize that everyone wants a small, cheap, machine to just pop in a purse or bag. Especially with cloud-computing and more and more web based interaction than heavy application use people just need a way to get access to their online content. Apple has been silent through all this and only offering more innovation in the higher end mobile computing. Yes the iPhone and iPod Touch have been wonderful convergent devices but still not with enough horse power or screen estate for some applications.

Now the speculation might lead to some results when Apple has its event in California on January 27th. The word officially came from Apple when it sent out invites to “See their latest creation”.

In fact when I started this blog entry more information keeps coming out so I just want to post this article. The live blog hosted by gdgt will be my source of information as they do a great job with their impressions.

UPDATE: Analysts state now that the iSlate might take some time to release. Similar to the iPhone release when the announcement came out but the actual device took 6 months to release.