iPad one

I was just looking at my "old" iPad One, and I was struck by two things: 

1: How much I still like it, and how much it recalls to me the feeling of how immensely important a step it was in computing. I think very few people yet realize just how big tablets is, I think it's almost on par with the World Wide Web. 

2: How outdated it is. The screen is not even close to iPad 2's screen, despite having the same resolution. It is too slow for some of the new apps. It doesn't have a camera. It can't use the newest iOS (6), it can't use Siri or dictation, etc. (To be fair, iPad 2 can't use Siri either.)

3: So I looked it up on eBay UK, and was shocked at the high prices it is still fetching! Around £200/$300! That is not much less than a brand-new iPad 2 or iPad Mini! 

I am not sure what this means. Perhaps there is waiting to get a new iPad, though I have not heard of this. Or this is just another vote about how important the platform is, dripping down even to version one. I dunno. 

Apple defends smallness

An easy way to make ebooks?

Will we get an easy way to make ebooks? (I put this on my mail blog because it has a bigger readership and I think this cause deserves that.)

Apple Shows Signs a Major Interface Overhaul Is Coming

Apple Shows Signs a Major Interface Overhaul Is Coming, article.
The latest sign that changes are afoot is a job listing seeking senior software engineers for Apple’s iLife suite. The posting calls for “an enthusiastic Cocoa engineer to help us re-imagine how user interfaces should be built and work.” That doesn’t sound like a simple facelift. That sounds like the ground-up revamping of a core software suite — iLife, included in every new Mac, includes iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand.

I can't tell you how pleasing that is. I only hope they are doing something similar with the Mac's Graphical User Interface and the rest of the basics. Because I've been getting increasingly worried, with no essential improvements in the last two big OSX updates (Lion and Mountain Lion), only increasing deference and reference to the iPhone interface, which is really the last thing an professional user needs. And there has also been more and more bugs in recent releases, both iOS and OSX. So I'm worried that the Mac platform may be degrading into an amateur platform. For people who use the web and email and facebook (the lower case is intentional, due to lack of respect  :-), and perhaps create a family newsletter when the waves go high.

Our voices are gathering (updated)

The Note rocks. If
only it ran iOS...

[Update: more experts are weighing in, supporting this.]

Barclays Expects 5” iPhablet Late 2013, Early 2014, article

Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes told his clients on Monday to expect Apple to release a 5-inch iPhone—or iPhablet—in either the last quarter of 2013 or the first quarter of 2014. He said that the form factor is popular enough that Apple will not be able to ignore it.
[...] "Apple has stood firm that its iPhone is ideal for one-handed use, which is true in our opinion. However, one handed use is arguably less important as phone calls become less and less crucial - the larger form factor has caught on for navigation, texting, videos, books and web access."

Indeed. I am surprised it is taking Apple this long to realize this, I've said for over four years that the iPod Touch and the iPhone are simply too small to be very useful for anything but phone calls and the simplest of apps. (There are very few web sites which I'm able to read or use on an iPhone.) And the Samsung Galaxy Note, now well over a year old, made it abundantly clear to anybody who has tried it (has Apple?) that two more inches makes a world of difference (it's double the area).

Jobs of course said that 7-inch tablets are not useful, "unless you include a file to make your fingertips slimmer". Jobs had opinions, many of them, and very, very strong ones. And he never changed them, until suddenly he had, and then the new belief was his own, and he had always had it. And some of his beliefs, inevitably, were not well founded. I think this is a good example. If the iPhone is useful, and the 10-inch iPad is useful, by what kind of logic would sizes in between those two not be useful? Sorry, it makes no sense at all.

The near-8-inch iPad Mini, the 10-inch iPad, the 3.5(4)-inch iPhone regular, and a 5 or 5.5-inch iPhone Deluxe would together make for a strong line which covers about everything. (Until the day we really need large tablets, but I think that's a minority market for now.)

Catching the Catcher...

Catcher In The Rye is not available as ebook. Jeeeeeez, come ooooooooooooon!

I hear that Salinger is "protective" of his work. Well, he better wise up, we are quite a few now who, if we can't get a book as ebook, we just skip it. So he loses a reader and a sale.