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7 posts tagged tech
Holiday to the Algarve
Just some choice snaps from me and gf’s holiday to Portugal. This was my first time shooting with EOS 600D, and I really enjoyed it.
With my old Nikon I tended to stay in the same mode almost all the time, purely because changing the mode didn’t seem to really affect the end result. However, with the Canon, the difference is much more marked. Also the creative-auto mode is a fun addition, though probably not one for the purists, but certainly a nice feature for a mid-level entry DSLR.
The brilliance of the Better Touch Tool
And the joys of gesture controls
Prepare to be geeked out… just a warning.
I want to talk about gesture controls and multi-touch gestures.
A while ago I bought a Apple touchpad. I did so in part because I was no fan of Apple’s multi-touch magic mouse or whatever the shit it’s called, but partly because, and I know this sounds weird, I actually like controlling a computer with a touchpad.
So anywhichever, I was actually rather underwhelmed with it at first. I knew all the gesture it came with as standard but I was hoping that it’d come with a utility or options to input your own custom gestures. But no such luck. My dream of summoning up a new tweet with a three-finger left swipe and sending it with a right swipe were in the toilet.
Though they didn’t stay there for long.
Taken by a Englishman, Robert Harrison, from West Yorkshire, with nothing more than a compact digital camera and a balloon. This country — you still get me sometimes. Right there. In the heart bit. This is amazing. Read about more it here.
The battle of the oddly named tablet computers hots up. The WePad. If the iPad sounded vaguely like a women’s sanitary product, the WePad sounds a lot more like a crudely named incontinence thingamybob. Looks amazing though, Android-based 11 inch screen touchscreen, webcam, 2 USBs, card reader, Bluetooth, Flash and Air support. I want one.
So this is what I did at work today. Came up with this dope-ass equation.
Apple Tablet Making Mistakes
Mac a’making mistakes all over the place
If we are to believe Mac doyens, iLounge, the forthcoming Apple Tablet, or “iPad”, as they’ve inferred it will be called, will run the iPhone Mobile OS and “won’t be designed to challenge netbooks”? What the shit?
Most disappointing among their maelstrom of disappointing revelations is that the iPad will be pitched as a, “media-centric, Internet-lite communication device.” Pardon? And the iPhone is…what then?So essentially, it’s just a big iPhone? Are you joking? Is this some sort of sick joke. I was looking forward to this device so much. I had visions of 3D UIs and genuine functionality, not a big shitty iPhone.
I’ve had my iPhone 3G for about a year now, and frankly, it’s only okay. Once you become deeply acquainted with it, it becomes apparent that a lot of things could be improved, and if Apple would release their relentless grip on it perhaps it would be better by now.
Evidently, Apple have been caught iNapping, by who else? Stuffy old stupid Microsoft.
Okay, it’s not been a great PR fortnight for Microsoft, after their utterly brilliant, comedy masterpiece, “Windows-7-Party” video, was lambasted from here to kingdom come. I, like you I’m sure, didn’t believe it was real. I thought it was all a big joke leading up to one of them saying: “Right this is the part where you all take your clothes off, butter up and fuck like crazy crazy monkeys.”
But earlier this week, after that embarrassing catastrophe, details about a Microsoft’s booklet style touch screen tablet PC leaked, and a video showing a sumptuous UI that, if implemented properly, would grind any massive iPhone into dust.
Obviously we all know Microsoft doesn’t actually make PCs - but why shouldn’t they start now? It’s clearly worked for Mac - granted they haven’t sold their OS to every Tom, Dick and ‘Arry first - but surely the intimate understanding that Micrsoft have for their OS would give them an edge when welding together some hardware for it to run on.
And they do make some hardware: The actually surprisingly good Zune.
So Mac might have some competition, and as things stand I* (*macbook owner, ipod owner, iPhone owner) would go for the Micrsoft Courier without a Nano seconds hesitation.
Hopefully…hopefully, iLounge is way off the mark and Apple are being vastly more ambitious with their device than these upsetting predictions indicate.
Microsoft Courier
Apple tablet, Apple tablet, Apple tablet, blah blah blah - is the world not bored of speculating yet? Look at this - it’s real and it looks ace!
The rumours of an Apple Tablet have been wading around the blogosphere for donkeys now, and not gathering much momentum. Details remain thoroughly non-existent. And though I’m sure the Apple Tablet is coming, Apple having placed orders with a plethora of manufacturers in Taiwan for parts concurrent with a large touch-screen device, I’m not sure how good it’ll be, if, as is expected, it uses an out-of-the-box version of OSX.
And it seems, while we’ve all been leering at Apple, begging for any morsels to satiate our tablet cravings, Microsoft has secretly been coming up with its own tablet bad-lad: The Courier!
The snazzy booklet form-factor handily solves the problem of transportability, while providing a useful way to separate apps and work between them. Equally, and I think I’m first in pointing this out, turned on it’s side, that natty hinged booklet form-factor suddenly becomes a netbook - using one screen as a touch keyboard and another as the screen.
This would allow you to use more conventional programs such as word processors etc… The UI demo, although purely a computer gen one, looks very appealing, in fact, it looks Apple-unnervingly awesome.
The only worry being that Microsoft will basically, do a Microsoft, and lumber this UI on CE, then bung in bundles and bundles of counter intuitive under-developed software. Would it be too much to ask for it’s own OS? Or speccing it properly, getting it running on some decent chips so it doesn’t lag like a sloth looking for the football results on Teletext.
The UI demo shows a device based on “journals” taking memo style notes, a la the Mintpad, though these memos appear interactive when coupled with certain shapes and gestures.
And that’s the difference for me. From the mutterings percolating on the Internet, the reckoning is that whatever Apple come up with it’ll operate on a touch enabled version of OSX, pretty much running as is. And as lovely as I’m sure this would be I think to make the tablet form factor a genuine, ubiquitous success it needs it’s own dedicated OS, or at least a drastically altered OS, somewhere between a full desktop version and a mobile one.
It should be as nimble as Android, iPhone OS and Web OS, while bringing the multi-tasking and larger app capability of desktop units.It’s exciting whatever it is but for now all this is conjecture. The Courier is as much vapourware and the fabled Apple Tablet is - it doesn’t half look good mind.
