Free education

This is another of those amazing benefits of the Internet I hadn't seen coming: free education, and in quality too! Here's a new example. It's a wondrous world.

The linked article is about the iPad app Khan Academy. Lots of free educational videos on many levels and subjects.  So far what I've viewed in it was very nice, interesting and seemed knowledgable. And probably the number of videos and subjects will expand rapidly. I don't know who pays for it, but it's very kewl. Just found their web site.

Amazon’s Electronics Trade-In Program: Goodbye, iPad 2!

Amazon’s Electronics Trade-In Program: Goodbye, iPad 2!, article.

Apparently Amazon will pay $380 for a mint iPad 2 (including original packaging etc). I don't know how the heck they make any money on that, since Apple now sells that product from new at $400! (OK, it helps that payment is in gift cards, but if you're a regular customer that's all the same.)

So beyond eBay, there are now some other interesting options for selling used gear. Amazon US trade-in, Amazon UK trade-in (so far limited to books and video games), and Gazelle.

Hitchcock would have been so pleased

Hitchcock would have been so pleased: Angry Birds are taking over the world.
They are just everywhere now.

I generally don't get games, they bore me. But if I'd have to guess at the world's most popular game, I really doubt Angry Birds would have come up. To me it's as interesting as a game of hammering a nail into a board would be. I don't get it. I simply don't get it.
I have tried  it. It held my interest for about 90 seconds, and that was it.

Chinese iOS & Android Activations Now Greater than U.S.

Chinese iOS & Android Activations Now Greater than U.S., article.

Be afraid, be very afraid.
Alternatively: be delighted, be very delighted. The future of the global economy no longer depends on a handful of blindered and sociopathically  greedy suits on Wall Street, NYC, USA.

iPad file management *stil* sucks

So the author of the book mentioned in the last post was kind enough to send me an ePub copy.
I remembered that if you plugged in the iPad, and dragged the file into the Library area on iTunes, it would turn up in ebooks automatically. Except it didn't.
So I tried via Dropbox. Then I downloaded it in GoodReader on iPad. Well, GR could not read the file. Sigh.
So I tried the Dropbox app on the iPad. It could not open the file nor suggest an app to open it with (a normal ePub). But I was offered to copy the link.
So I tried Safari. And downloaded the file. And Safari downloaded it, and suggested that iBooks may open it. I clicked OK, and lo, it opened in iBooks! Zippidy doodah. I don't know what I did right. This is ridiculous, which non-geek would know to try all those options?

Short of the long: after two years I still think iPad file management really sucks.

And this is not even taken into consideration that after last big software updare, several important app have had all their local files wiped! GoodReader, Kindle App, DC Comics...
I know there's been changes in where app are allowed to keep their files, but seriously, Apple, this kind of thing is really *not* okay. In most cases I can re-download the files, but that's a waste of my time. And what if I got the file from a place which no longer exists, one way or another? (And no, the files are not in the backups. It seems that if they're gone from the iPad, backup assumes they should be gone. (Not that I have any clue how to look at the backups directly).)

Sooo many reading apps!

There's a book which has mysteriously disappeared from my iPad (and the Internet, apparently) (Why Is This Hill So Steep, a book about the history of ebooks by Steven Jordan), so I looked through various apps trying to find it. And it struck me how many apps I have for reading. It seems to indicate some of the complexity still current in e-reading, since I have basically only the apps I needed in order to read something specific, plus a couple of ones which seemed to have something special.
Here's what I have:

For ebooks: 

• Amazon Kindle app
• iBooks (Apple)
• Google Books
• GoodReader
• Kobo app
• MegaReader
• BlueFire Reader
• eBookMobi
• Kindle Cloud Reader
• Ibis Reader

For comics: 

• Comix
• Marvel
• DC
• Image
• Dark Horse

For web RSS reading and such: 

• Zite
• Safari
• Instapaper
• Readability
• Zinio
• Flipboard
• Web Comics Du Jour (great selection)
• Pulse 
• Reeder
• TapTalk

And those I haven't used in a while:

• Atomic Web
• NewsRack 
• ReadleDocs 
• StumbleUpon
• VoiceReaderWeb
• eBookSearch
• Currents
• vBooks
• NetNewsWire
• Mr Reader 

Wow! Exhausting just to think about. I don't even keep apps I'm pretty sure I won't need anymore. And I had none of it two years ago before I got the iPad 1!

Comics on iPad 3

I still think we need a bigger tablet for art-rich books, but doubtlessly the high-res screen of iPad 3 (sic) has made it less urgent, 'cuz you can see more detail.

All of the views below are of about 1/4 of the screen, area-wise, 1/2 length-wise.

iPad 2, photograph:

iPad 3, photograph:

(Click for bigger pics, on all.)

iPad 2, screenshot:

iPad 3, screenshot:

(In the screenshots, the higher resolution translates to size on the computer screen. You'll have to click on them to compare the size.)

One can easily live with the iPad 2's screen, for sure. But equally sure, the screen of the iPad 3 is the future, it's like being there.

Got it today

I got my iPad 3, woo-hoo.

A cool little change is that you can use the iPad while it's being sync'ed. Very good.

Here's an interesting thing: I can read better (for fine text) on my iPad two if I change my regular glasses for my reading glasses. So you would think that with my regular glasses, the higher resolution of the iPad 3 wouldn't look any different, no?

But this is not so, even without the reading glasses, I can easily see that the screen is better. (How much it benefits me I'd not like to speculate yet.)

This fits with a datum I got from photography expert Ctein (K-tein): unless a lens is hopelesly out-matched, you will get higher resolution (more detail) if you get more megapixels in a camera, even if the lens has less resolution.

Or in other words, you would think that either the lens or the sensor has the highest resolution, and only improving the other one would improve the results. But that is not so, improving either one will improve detail, unless the gap is really huge.
I find this very interesting.

Alternative uses

Tommy found this funny video, How Do You Like The iPad We Got You, Dad? 

iPad camera sample

Thanks to TMO. 

Sample from the camera in iPad 3 (naming dictatorship be durned). I'd say that's very good for a camera which fit in the very tight space in the thin iPad. Fully good enough for  almost any online purposes (for normal people, not photo freaks.    :-)

And here are some screenshots from the iPad Retina Display. Dang nice. (Save an open to see at full size.)

Pressure sensitivity, Galaxy Note 10.1

I was just talking a couple of days ago with my old artist friend Umbra (our read Ganesha Games) about pressure sensitivity on tablets. We ended up not being very optimistic about seeing it soon.
But lo and behold: Samsung has announced that the upcoming Galaxy Note (not Tab) 10.1 will include Wacom's pressure sensitivity technology!

I honestly don't know if it means anything to the average user, but for artists this might be a big deal, if it works well for a reasonable price. Wacom's screen tablets are wonderful but costly, and have to be plugged into a computer with monitor connection and USB, making them quite clumsy.

Admittedly we also need good art software which works with that pressure sensitivity, let's hope that comes. (It's Android of course.)

The Note 10.1 will also support side-by-side apps, for apps optimised for it.

Lawsuit: Apple’s Siri Advertising “Misleading & Deceptive”

Lawsuit: Apple’s Siri Advertising “Misleading & Deceptive”, article.
From a purely technical perspective, most of the suit’s complaints could be understandably forgiven due to Siri’s continued status as a beta service that is a work-in-progress. Mr. Fazio claims, however, that Apple crossed the line when it began to advertise the incomplete Siri as a major reason to purchase the iPhone 4S and that such a campaign for a service that is known by Apple to be incomplete amounts to misleading and deceptive advertising. 

Well, I can't say I disagree with that. For many, including me, Siri is a very embryonic technology, and to present it as a miracle of artificial intelligence crosses a line, and upgrading to iPhone 4S is not an insignificant investment for most people to base on the shining hope of such technology. I myself may well not have bought it if the only differences had been a slightly better camera and processor, the iPhone 4 worked fine for me.

From the ad: "Text my wife I'll be thirty minutes late"... does that really work for anybody, even native English speakers?

Bigger article about the disappointments of Siri.

A long time ago, I made a compact with Apple. "You can control my entire technological life, from my computer to my phone to my stereo. I'll pay premium prices. I'll dive into your product ecosystem, and buy books and music and movies and apps from you. Even though they won't work on devices made by anybody else."

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Spec Comparisons

Spec Comparison: New iPad vs. Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs. Kindle Fire, article.

I haven't actually read the article. I just mention it because it made me think of this: spec comparisons, as Apple computer well knows, are pretty meaningless. What matters is the experience. And at the very least, for direct hardware comparisons to make much sense ("double core" vs "quad core" etc), the two devices really have to run the same OS and apps.
Really well done software, as we saw on the original iPad, can make a relatively weak device seem dang fast (for instance it avoided any multitasking), and vice versa, as many people saw for instance when they updated to Windows Vista, and it turned out it needed not only new, but pretty muscular machines to run decently. And sometimes a system extension or even just a bad app can slow down a whole machine dramatically.

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By the way, in a new twist, I find myself, after just one day's study, to be uninterested in reading much more about the New iPad. I researched it intensely the day it came out, I made my decision, I wanted it, I ordered it, I feel pretty certain about that it will work well for me and my purposes, I don't think there are any more data I'm missing about it, and so I'm not so interested in gathering them, or in reading up on anybody else's opinions about it. (Well, in friendly talk here, sure, but I'm not looking up any columnists or such.)

It has been that way for a few years with Macs. I guess the main turning point was when the Intel Macs came out, and for the first time it became possible to get a machine which had the speed I wanted, at the same time as it was quiet enough to not frazzle my nerves. (the G5 tower could get real dang noisy when it got hot.) Before that, I used two machines, a Power Mac tower for production (image processing etc), and a laptop or iMac for web and email. But since then it has pretty much just worked the way I wanted (since my first computer), and a lot of my interest in Mac sites faded.

7 March new iPad

Apple has made the same odd choice as Amazon did with the latest Kindle, not calling the new model "iPad 3", but simply "iPad". They continue to sell the iPad 2, at $100 less.  So right now Apple is selling "iPad" and "iPad 2", and the first one is the latest one! (In a pinch, call it "iPad (third generation)" like the Apple store.) What is it with large companies and naming products? I had an Apple laptop once called the Powerbook G3 (bronze keyboard). Seriously.

It would have been cool with haptics (a screen where you can feel ridges and such), but nope, not this time. What we get is basically: 

• A better screen, 2048-by-1536 resolution, 4x the pixels
• More power (if only to drive the display)
• A better camera, 5MP
• 4G mobile speed (for the models with mobile connection beyond wifi)
• Dictation

And new software to get, like iPhoto for iPad for the first time, with power and ability to handle up to 19MP images, which is way, way higher than the just-announced, otherwise great Photoshop Touch (which will surely soon be updated). Watch the keynote, iPhoto for iPad is amazingly powerful and quick, very impressive. And the price is symbolic: five bucks!

It's 50 grams heavier, which should be around "just noticeable". It's the same size, except for just 0.6mm thicker, so the iPad 2 cases should fit.
It's about the perfect form and size for the purposes, but I wish one day they'll make one at half the weight, because you really need support for this thing when using it for more than a few minutes. 

I use the iPad mostly for video and reading, and I suspect that the Retina Display, as it does on the iPhone, will make a significant difference, especially with reading. I think it may minimise eye stress quite a lot, I'm looking forward to getting one myself.

(I think I'll wait this time for the UK version to come out, hoping that the time difference will be rather less than the over two months it was with the first model.) [Update: well, times they are a-changing, it seems that in the UK it will come out about the same time as in the US! In a week or two, nice.]

Apple is also strongly stressing the powers of content-creation of this iPad, hitting the "post-PC" button many times. I am not sure how fast and for how many tasks we can get used to going without keyboard and mouse, time will tell.

The 4G networks are just starting to appear around the world, but the connection speeds should be quite a leap up, if one chooses to connect via iPad directly. I prefer to save a contract by connecting via my iPhone in the instances I need to connect outside of a wifi hotspot. The iPhone 4S is not 4G-enabled, sadly, but one supposes that the next one in the fall will be. (Whether that will be an "iPhone 5" or simply "iPhone" is a matter of tense anticipation.)

The dictation sounds wonderful, given the clumsiness of typing on a screen, but I'm not so optimistic about how well it will work for people like me, who are not native English speakers, previous systems have been less than great for many of us. It's very frustrating, you think you have said a perfectly clear English sentence, and still 95% of the time a couple of words are messed up.

Apple again decided not to stream the keynote speech live (I wonder if they have given up that), but amazingly they posted the video less than half an hour after the end. That's some fast editing there!

Sadly, despite all the HD video capabilities (creating or consuming), 64GB is still the largest memory size. I think that's a bit lame. I think the three sizes should all have been bumped up to double. Memory is dirt cheap these days.

Buying on the Apple online store is not easy after a big announcement. After trying to even get in for a couple of hours, it seemed to work, but then I was thrown out a couple of times in the middle of ordering. I did finally get the whole thing done though, in the middle of the night.

Update: Here's a mainstream media commentary, some of it is interesting, thanks to TCGirl.
The new iPad "looks the same as the old one [but] you're getting a considerably improved screen, improved camera and processor," he says. "I don't think they passed the 'wow' factor but I don't think they have to. They improved the iPad considerably over what it used to be and I think that's your 'wow' factor. If you're not happy with that, you might be a little jaded."
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Within history

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

           -- John W. Gardner

I am thankful to have lived through what I think will be seen as the most important development for humankind since the industrial revolution itself, the birth and insanely rapid growth of the Internet. 

Like David Bowie said all the way back in the nineties: It will change everything, absolutely everything.