Friday, May 13, 2011

Samsung Announces 10-Inch "Retina" Display for Tablets

Samsung Announces 10-Inch "Retina" Display for Tablets, article.

Way cool. Now we know it can be done at least. Samsung is presenting a ten-inch display at 300 PPI (Apple's Resina display has 336 I think, but that's well beyond the call of duty). And the Samsung screen uses an interesting four-pixel technology, "Pentile", where the fourth pixel, of all things, is white! There's a lot of white being used on web sites, and with a normal display you need all three sub-pixels (red, blue, green) turned on to show white, whereas with this one you may only need one, saving a lot of power. Didn't see that one coming.

Whether this will be used on iPad 3 or not, it seems it's coming soon, which pleases me. Some poeple ask: but it's way beyond even HD video, who needs it? Well, the issue is not video, which when playing looks a lot sharper than it is (try and freeze any video and see), the issue is text. My Dell Streak has a five-inch display, but my iPhone 4 is actually at least as good an e-reader despite the smaller 3.5 display, because of the high-resolution display. Text is very demanding of resolution, and for reading of any kind, this will made a difference. And for text incorporating crisp graphics, wow.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

New iMac Gains Thunderbolt

New iMac Gains Thunderbolt... article.

A tricked-out top iMac is now $3700! Holy cow, so much for the "entry level machine" the iMac was once!

It seems Apple has gone back to their habit of really over-charging for pre-installing memory or disks. For example they charge $600 for installing 16GB of RAM, about four times the going price of such memory. That's a big shame and a blot on their reputation, there's no reason for such profiteering, it's not like they are not earning money. It is simply taking advantage of the ignorance or laziness of your customers, and I think there's no good excuse for it. Buy via a good reseller, for example Jigsaw24 here in the UK, they have better service and much more reasonable prices.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

DVDs in my bedroom

A couple of months ago the DVD player I had in my bedroom died. And today I decided that for hyper-back-leaned entertainment, I just missed it too much, so I moved my MacBook Air with 27-inch screen into the bedroom for movie duty.

The 27-inch monitor is better quality than the 26-inch TV screen I had before, better contrast for one thing, and the built-in speakers are surprisingly good for built-in speakers, I don't find them lacking at all, surprisingly, in volume or space or anything.


And of course if the mood takes me, I can surf or watch web videos from the bed, or write or wha'ever, with a USB keyboard. Or watch the 199 movies and TV shows I have ripped to disk, as well as web- and Net-acquired videos/films. That's actually something I've been wanting a solution to for a long time, to watch such in comfort.

iPad, the machine Apple was born to build

Leo on iPad Today said something I've thought myself:
"... the iPad is the machine that Steve Jobs founded Apple to build, only it took 35 years for technology to catch up." 

BTW, on this lively show is also the doubly lively Sarah Lane:



... Don't hurt, does it? I'm a fan, man.

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I love their studio, by the way: big leather soft chairs, surrounded by more screens and technology than you can shake a memory stick at.