Shonzilla, a pattern-seeking animal

Tue Feb 2

The reality-distortion field of Steve Jobs & his aides strikes back. If you enjoyed the iPhone version you’re surely going to enjoy the iPad installment.

For the bookworms: this technique behind this brainwashing leading to side-effects like Apple fanboyism (fanboyedom?) is called NLP.

[via bodypainter99]

Thu Jan 28

The never-ending meme of putting words in Hitler’s mouth (from the movie “The Downfall”) has been puy to good use to lay down most things that are wrong with the new Apple iPad.

I’ve shortly commented previously on Hitler’s (and mine) biggest gripe about the new iPad.

It’s extra entertaining to write this from Germany. ;-)

German readers should put the volume down for better experience, although I’m sure that by now they know the original text by heart anyway.

Hitler responds to the iPad [via midnightblade]

“They didn’t build a smaller computer. They built a bigger iPod. I don’t need a bigger iPod.” - DeWitt Clinton

Fully agree!

Regarding this edited picture, no you cannot run 4 applications simultaneously. There’s still no possibility in iPhone OS (used for iPad as well) which sucks.

Does that fact alone prove it’s harder to add such core feature to a mature OS (while keeping the user experience standards) than it is to design and tweak hardware (which I doubt)? Or does it proves Apple doesn’t want yet the armies of its fans fans to share their attention among multiple beautiful apps?

[via Gawker]

Mon Oct 5

Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple

If you haven’t heard of Steve Jobs’ reality-distortion field you’re lucky cause this is the best and shortest introduction into the subject.

[via justanotherguy84]

Wed Apr 15

Taiwanese Elan Microelectronics claims to have patented multi-touch technology under the name “eFinger Transparent Touchpad” before Apple filed for that patent. They already had some issues with Synaptics, the company that has been supplying Apple, no more no less, with their own touch technology (e.g. touchpad for iPods).

Now, Elan Microelectronics is suing Apple over multi-touch (or was it multi-finger?) patents. In this video you can see their eFinger Transparent Touchpad technology being used in a device that runs Android OS. That also proves the flexibility and potential of open-source Android platform.

On a side note, it is evident that Elan’s technology is more powerful then the original T-Mobile G1’s capacitive screen has and as demonstrated by an Android deveoper, Rye Brye, several months ago.

[via phamoui]

Tue Mar 10

Watch Steve Wozniak, the creator of the Macintosh computer is dancing… and he’s not too bad. :-)

Gotta love the Woz!

[via jm9843]

Wed Feb 4

Is Apple being inspired by Braun’s product design from 60s for all Apple products in 90s in the new millenium?

Judge for yourself by looking at these Braun-Apple comparisons. One thing is sure for me - there won’t be anything resembling a pocket calculator coming from Apple.

[via Gizmodo]

Sun Oct 26

Apple iPhone sales predictions vs. information overflow and filtering

We’re in second half of October and Apple Inc. has already surpassed the goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008. Impressive!

Get your laughs at various analysts predicting a lame future for iPhone and Apple a while ago.

Here’s another failed prediction from January 2007:
“2. Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high

Jobs made the mistake of specifying Apple’s target of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. The goal sounded modest when Jobs said the goal represents just 1 percent of the global handset market”“.

As ever, analysts will give you predictions either way, pro et contra, buy vs. sell, good vs. bad, fame vs. lame. I’d say we’re all better off using our “trusted” sources and gut feeling when making decisions.

We’re living in the world of Web 2.0 littered with information sources but also technologies (feed readers, micro-blogging communities, podcasts, and the alphabet soup - RSS, APP, XMPP, ESP, etc.) Twitter that help us stay on top of the resulting information overflow. The whole idea of managing information overflow is perfecting our filters so that we are left with more time using our gut feeling,

Thu Sep 18

Hack that Phone - OpenSSH installation

A hacking interlude… this is something I would like to have handy when I start developing for iPhone and/or iPod touch.

Mon Jun 9

The new, 2nd gen Apple iPhone with 3G and GPS is finally here

Today at the WWDC 2008 at San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has responded to many woes as far as the iPhone software and hardware are concerned. Talk about timing in response to growing ~~excitement~~ hype.

Here’s the check list:

3G network support
Enterprise support
Third party application support
More countries
More affordable

Apart from 3G which allows almost triple the speed over EDGE networks, and it approaches WiFi speeds regardless of any accessible WiFi around you. Apple’s measurements indicate it’s 36% faster then competitor mobile phones Nokia N95 and Treo 750. The 2nd gen iPhone comes with GPS, or more precisely A-GPS which uses cell tower location info to improve precision while consuming less battery juice. GPS functionality has been nicely integrated into Google Maps where you can see where you are with an overlayed pulsating dot. That might make your childhood wet dreams related to action movies finally come true.

Enterprise support will be available out of the box (as a part of the upcoming iPhone 2.0 ~~firmware~~ software) and it will include push (instead of the usual information pull model) of email, contacts, calendars, auto-discovery, global address book, remote wipe. These push features will come as a part of MobileMe service. Enterprises will be able to distribute apps selectively within the enterprise, i.e. to their employees’ iPhones only. They authorize iPhones within their enterprise and then create applications that just run on those phones. The apps can be distributed just through their intranet.

Third party application support will be made though iPhone SDK. It has the following parts: Cocoa Touch, Media, Core Services, and Core OS. Core OS makes use of the same kernel as Mac OS X. Nice! Tapping core functionality of existing Mac OS X applications. Core Services includes everything from a complete database layer to core location, for easily building location-based functionality into applications. Also a very fast implementation of OpenGL. 3rd party application development will be possible using development tools like xCode, Interface Builder, the iPhone simulator, and Instruments. Some of the APIs that will be available are: Address Book API to access contacts, as the Core Location API for implementing location-based apps. Applications developed by 3rd party developer will be available to iPhone users via App Store, and Apple will take 30% off any purchase, where the rest will go to original developers.

The iPhone 3G will be available July 11th in 22 countries. Over the coming months, iPhone will be made available in 70 countries. Apple has responded to the viral expansion of iPhones beyond the countries where it was originally made available under 2-year contracts.

2nd gen iPhone 8GB

Lastly, new iPhone will be more affordable. It will come in two basic versions: 8GB and 16GB. They will cost $199 USD and $299 US, respectively, and that will be the maximum prices around the world.

When Apple products are concerned something needs to be said about design. The new iPhone is 1mm thicker and wider then the 1st generation iPhone, it has black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same display, camera, flush headphone jack. It will be also available in white color. Functionality-wse, audio has been dramatically improved and now it’s possible to record sounds (virtual piano, drums, 12-bar blues “instrument”, and a bass) that can be played on iPhone itself. BTW, a SIM ejector comes in the box too.

The new iPhone is a really nice device and it’s definitely something I will consider buying in the coming months. That is, unless some ~~appealing~~ sexy mobile phone based on Google Android hits the market in 3Q 2008.

Here’s the first ad for 2nd gen iPhone.