The Apple iPad

Let me preface this by saying I’m not an Apple fan.  I own exactly one Apple device — an old iPod Photo — that I rarely use.  I tend to skip Apple products altogether mainly because of their DRM and the infamous Apple tax… higher prices for prestige.

However, I was excited when I first heard about their new upcoming event.  Many thought Apple would be cutting the iPhone loose from the ailing AT&T network and opening the door for Verizon.  Many others speculated the time was right for Apple to release a tablet PC… especially after seeing domains like iSlate.com being bought by shell companies to Apple’s name.  And the people who guessed tablet PC were right… but how right were they?

Is it fair to call the iPad a tablet PC?  It is certainly a touch screen device, but out of the box it’s a single user, single program machine.  Apple boasts that the iPad can get up to 10 hours of battery life, but that should not be difficult to accomplish if only one program can be run at a time.

The iPad should be great for watching video on the go.  Does it have an HDMI output?  No.  Does it have a DVI output?  No.  It can use an adapter to output VGA/D-SUB so you can connect it to a projector though.  You have to use an adapter?  What happened to simplicity and ease of use?

Does the iPad screen have an aspect ratio of 16:9 or 16:10 so movies will look great?  No, the iPad’s screen has an aspect ratio of 4:3… just like owning an old fullscreen TV.

But how much storage does it have?  For $499 you can get a 16 GB version and for $699 you can get a version that tops out at 64 GB.  Only 64 GB?  It’s a portable device, so that’s probably OK.  I can hook up an external drive to it when I need more storage.  Wrong.  The iPad has no USB ports, FireWire ports, or eSATA ports… not even any card readers.

Apple’s video iChat works great to connect people around the globe.  At least the iPad will have that.  Sorry, the iPad doesn’t have a camera on the front.  Or back.

So what’s the up-side to this device?  Does it do 3G?  It will in fact do 3G, but you’ll have to throw in another $130 for the 3G capability.  The capability… not the service.  If you want an iPad with a 64 GB SSD with 3G capability, you’re looking at coughing up $829.  Indeed a hefty price tag for features that netbooks at half the price can do better.

In all fairness, the iPad could work well as an e-reader, but reading from a bright, glossy screen isn’t likely to be easy on the eyes compared to the competition’s electronic ink.

It seems like the iPad could be good at so many things, but the it makes concessions on every front and does nothing well.  Is this all part of Apple’s plan?  It’s easier to make a better device when the device can be improved upon easily.  Has Apple set it up so the 2nd and 3rd generation iPads will rock our socks?  I sure hope so, because the 1st generation iPad is clearly an oversized iPod Touch (or  a limited iPhone if you have $130 to burn on data only 3G capability) that suffers from very obvious ailments.

AMD’s chance to gain power

I know I’m a little late on news here but I just read this(IEEE Spectrum) and I thought it was kind of interesting. Apparently Intel is paying AMD 1.25 billion united states dollars!

Can you say “give me a raise”…if you work for AMD that is.

They say that 1.25B was “a small multiple” of what they may have had to pay in court.  Now my question is, what kind of position does this put AMD in for the future? Their stock jumped 16% on the news and their market cap is only 4.38B, so 1.25B is over 25% of what they may be worth.  The down side is that AMD hasn’t posted a profit in a while.

The interesting part is that AMD doesn’t just make desktop processors anymore right? They also have ATI and a few other irons in the fire. So my question is “what is AMD going to do with their 1.25 billion?”

AMD’s processors have kind of let people down in the last few years but they’re starting to turn things around by doing things like making a processor that is capable of breaking the 7Ghz barrier(Gizmodo).

We’ve heard a lot in the past of AMD’s grand plans for new processor platforms and their crazy modular ideas but what is really feasible and what would be generally accepted and bought by people?

I think it could be time to start watching AMD again because there should be some crazy stuff coming down the pipes from them.  I mean heck what could you do with 1.25 billion?

The 5S methodology(Programming Style)

What is the 5S methodology?

5S is the name of a workplace organization methodology that uses a list of five Japanese words which, transliterated and translated into English, start with the letter S. This list is a mnemonic for a methodology that is often incorrectly characterized as “standardized cleanup”, however it is much more than cleanup. 5S is a philosophy and a way of organizing and managing the workspace and work flow with the intent to improve efficiency by eliminating waste, improving flow and reducing process unevenness.

– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)

Shall we dive a little deeper?

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Google account of Twitter employee hacked

Ok, so this is a “retweet” of PCWorlds article aboout how the google account of a Twitter employee(s) was hacked a while ago. Since you can access nearly all of your google accounts with a single login this caused quite a chain of events.  Not only was some of the individuals gmail accounts compromised but also google docs and The Business Insider has screenshots of some of the information that was compromised.   Now in the article they mention that no twitter accounts were compromised due to this breach only some twitter employees personal accounts.

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Final Thoughts on Google

The firestorm around Google seems to be dying down quite a bit. Here’s an article written a couple weeks ago during the frenzy about Google and their big ideas. The author has some interesting points about what constitutes a big idea and what does not. Whether or not Google will continue to succeed is an open question, but suffice it to say, the ‘me-too’ style of business growth is usually not overwhelmingly successful.

The Future of Google

For those of you who want to argue that Google is doing just fine (ahem), I refer you to some new articles on the subject. Google may not be in the trouble I originally blogged about, but this article generalizes the difficulties it faces in terms of past internet giants like AOL, and this article reiterates the Twitter Threat discussed in the first article. As I recall, somebody and somebody else have been writing Ubiquity scripts to let them search specific sites from any webpage. Dare I say it, but I think people are finding alternatives to searching with the Old Ways.

Tom’s remarks about One Login to Rule Them All, however, is still valid. I won’t take that away from him.