These blogs were started as they held two of the main themes on this blog which were intertwined with a lot of posts of a fairly random nature. I’ll continue to post to this blog, but both of the aforementioned blogs will likely bet getting more and more attention as time goes on.
Multi-touch devices seem to be popping up everywhere. Don’t be the last kid on your block to get yours. Don’t worry about the price—there’s something for everyone.
The Two Dollar Multi-touch Pad: $2.00 *
Manufacturer: You
Target Market: Subscribers to Make magazine
Pros: Icebreaker with huge nerds
Cons: It’s a Ziplock bag full of water and dye
Yes, for the lowest priced multi-touch device you have to roll up your sleeves. The $2 variant is cheap, but it’s not ready for prime time-nor is that the intention of its (far more clever than myself) creator Erling Ellingsen.
$2 Multi-Touch
* OK, the price is misleading, but even if you add the price of a Mac laptop, it still comes in as the second cheapest solution out there.
iPhone: $399
Manufacturer: Apple
Target Market: Everyone but people who use Microsoft Exchange
Pros: Portability, Price
Cons: Depends on your perspective
Let’s just not describe the iPhone. I’m pretty sure Apple has beat into your head what it is.
To clarify on the cons for Apple’s iPhone: there might be no cons whatsoever (ask anyone who would sit in front of an Apple store overnight to get a $79 OS X upgrade), it might have a few stumbling blocks (these people are referred to as ‘the general public’), or, it flat out sucks (Steve Ballmer).
Surface: $5,000 to $10,000
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Target Market: Consumer and Commercial (Everyone)
Pros: Leverages Microsoft’s developer ecosystem
Cons: It’s a big ass table
The Surface multi-touch computer is the product of years of R&D at Microsoft. Pricing is said to be between $5,000 and $10,000 - which, on the low end, doesn’t price it that much higher than a high-performance PC and monitor combination.
Surface’s form factor returns memories of the original sit-down Pac Man machines which have established beachheads in homes across America. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn’t envisioning Surface in your basement (whether you are or not). Combine the price with Microsoft’s developer community and expect to see Surface pop-up (I couldn’t say ’surface’) in a variety of venues. Hospitality industry first.
If you haven’t seen the Big Ass Table Surface parody, view Microsoft’s videos first and then get a laugh out of it (both are below).
Microsoft Surface: Imagine the Possibilities
Microsoft Surface Parody
Interactive Media Wall: Starting at $100,000
Manufacturer: Perceptive Pixel
Target Market: Affluent people like Steve Jobs (but not Steve Jobs)
Pros: Looks incredibly fluid Cons: Prices Starting at $100,000
Perceptive Pixel is Jeff Han’s company which launched after the oooohs and aaaahs wound down following his NYU experiments and TED appearances hit the ‘net. The company’s first product, the Interactive Media Wall, is an 8 foot by 3 foot screened computing device. The single-page Perceptive Pixel site is curiously quiet about its first product. It does, however, have a great video showing more recent experimentations.
Definitely cool. Curiously being sold at Neiman Marcus. That’s right, it’s at Neiman’s. Details are less than inspiring. Could we get some indication of what kind of software it comes with? Are companies developing software for it? OS? And, I hate to ask, but can I step back a few paces and just watch a HD movie on it from the couch?
The popularity of my posts regarding the Mac, Apple, Parallels Desktop and the iPhone kept me blogging on those topics. That chatter has in turn been diluting the conversation that should be taking place here.
So, I’ve carved out another space on this big series of tubes, and this time it is just for those Apple topics. Please visit On a Mac for a continuation of the conversations which started here as well as new Apple-related content altogether.
There are a lot of iPhone rants, reviews, and revelations out there already, so I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about every little thing the iPhone does. Here’s my early experience and perspective thus far:
Setup via. iTunes was a snap; I had no authorization lag whatsoever (within 2 minutes and the phone had authorized).
Straight-up as a telephone and nothing else, I’d give it a B-. The form factor isn’t great for a phone. I find myself using my phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder a lot, and this phone doesn’t ‘feel’ natural when held in that way. To be fair, plenty of the phones I have owned have failed that test for me, including my RAZR. And, it isn’t built with the telephone as the front-and-center attraction. So, I concur with other reviews that ‘getting to the phone’ doesn’t seem as immediate as with the other cellphones on the market, where pressing a ‘down’ button pushes you right into the phone book. On the iPhone you do need to click one or two times more to get there. I’ll trade those two clicks for everything else the phone does. With my early usage, call quality hasn’t been an issue at all.
Using the phone with the included ear bud/microphone was fine, although I’d really like it if you could get rid of one of the ear buds temporarily (by ‘unplugging’ one of the buds and its wire at the ‘Y’ connector). Speaker phone is great. I haven’t tried a Bluetooth headset (not a fan of these, but I might give it a try though just for the car).
Simply stated, the Edge network sucks for connectivity when using Safari, Google Maps, YouTube… basically anything that is going top pull a reasonable amount of data from the web feels painfully 56k. Internet browsing suffers the worst. Disappointing. The device is so slick in how it functions, you just expect the it to download like a banshee.
Connectivity when using wireless networks is decent in what I’ve seen so far. The WiFi at my home, which is B/G/Pre-N was easy to connect to. Speed-wise, it did make me look up the tech specs to see if the phone supported only B. The specs say it is B/G. Maybe the whiz-bang effect of how great the rest of the UX is amplifies connectivity’s shortcomings.
All the iPod features are great; Cover Flow is meant for this form factor.
Maybe there are great things in the works for the YouTube equation later, but in its current state, it’s not of interest to me.
I found the touch screen to be fine for typing, but I can see how someone who text messages a lot would be able to move faster with a tactile keyboard. It is surprisingly accurate and highly responsive.
The overall user experience is better than I’ve personally experienced on another phone, PDA or media player. Very fluid and intuitive to use. I like how there isn’t a ‘quit’ button for applications, but, instead, when you move away from, then back to, an application you pick up where you left off.
There will undoubtedly be people who hate this phone. There are plenty of people that won’t like anything that Apple (or Microsoft, for that matter) puts on a shelf simply because of the shipping address it comes from. Regardless, there is something that everyone should like about the iPhone—it will likely serve as a change agent. The user experience offered by cellphones, PDAs and SmartPhones has floundered around at a mediocre level for years. The iPhone puts a unique, well thought out, user-centered solution on the table for the mobile industry to contemplate.
