About this thing Apple calls iPad

About this thing Apple calls iPad, article.
Suddenly there was a group of six or seven medical personnel around her, they were passing it around, one had the map function going, another brought up You Tube.
"Any of your folks have an iPhone, or an iPod touch?" I asked. No one did. "Any Mac folks here?" was my next question. Not a one. Yet everyone who touched it knew what to do.
-

I got mine

OK, just got iPad.
I've noticed that Steve Jobs and Apple don't call it "the iPad", they call it "iPad" as if it's a name. As in, "when you turn iPad, the screen will turn also".

So far so good. Only oddity so far is that when plugged into my Mac, the little note by the battery says "not charging". I wonder why.

It's true it's responsive. It's not just "fast for a mobile device", it is fast for anything. Well done, Apple.

These fit me

A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis

Only the shallow know themselves.
-- Oscar Wilde

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?
-- George Price

Night Stand

I still get amazed at the unexpected, innovative, and wonderful apps people come up with for the padform. For example Night Stand, a simple collection of luminous clock interfaces! Now I can see what time it is at night, in an aesthetic way, without turning on the light, and without anything ticking.
It also has alarms (including music), screen dimming, snooze button...)


-----
I have browsed several "hit lists" of padform apps recently. TC Gal found this good one.

Twittwittwittwittwit

I'm using twitter still, to promote my sites when I remember so, and to pick up some links when I'm out. But I don't think I'll ever love it.

It makes me stressed and jittery. Like running around at a party and trying to follow 30 conversations at once... what if somebody says something interesting while I'm not there!!... OMG, must move on, must move on, must move on... With the result that I never have the time to process anything and actually get the benefit from it.

BW photo set

Top Cat chick found this collection of BW photos.


Some of them are a bit too flashy for my taste, I prefer simple. But pictures like the two above remind me why I love photography.

All Tomorrow's parties

William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties and Neuromancer have now also been released on audiobook. Huzzah! This makes the lineup virtually complete. I think missing still are just Virtual Light and Idoru. And maybe The Difference Engine, his oddball collaboration with Bruce Sterling.

I've noticed he has a new one coming in fall, Zero History. I hope it's better than Spook Country, which is the only one of his books I found a bit blah. Like Pattern Recognition it's a technologically-oriented novel rather than Science Fiction, but I liked Pattern Recognition lots, lots better.

Wind Turbines Could Power Atlantic Seaboard

Chain of Offshore Wind Turbines Could Power Atlantic Seaboard, article.

health sales

I've noticed something: when a thing is being sold in a health/medical setting, it's much more expensive than when the same thing is sold to the general public. Great ethics there...

Philocalist said:

Its endemic to anything that is sold to a specialist market, not just the medical industry.

Look at the price you pay for a camera bag, compared to something very similar sold as a 'utility' bag to Joe Public, or a waterproof camouflaged 'fishing' jacket compared to the same type of article bought new at an Army surplus store.

Bottom line is, we public are way too easily led my manufacturers and their marketing people who create that 'perceived' need that makes us buy, often at a price far in excess of what is rational!

Back in the nineties, before HD, there was Digital Video, and one of the first affordable very good cameras, was like $3000. Then the company, one of the big Japanese giants, heard that pros was flocking to this camera and using it for serious projects, and they hiked the price over 3X!

A "blank slate" (updated)

Why the iPad Is a Blank Slate, and Why That's Important, TidBITS article.
So what's the difference between a Mac and an iPad? It's that blank slate thing. No matter what you do on a Mac, the keyboard and mouse and window-based operating system make it impossible to ignore the fact that you're using a Mac, and it's often equally as impossible to ignore the fact that you're using a particular program.
In contrast, the iPad becomes the app you're using. That's part of the magic. The hardware is so understated - it's just a screen, really - and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you're using an iPad falls away.

Now even I am getting sceptical... Adam Engst actually also uses the word "magical" about using an iPad (as differentiated from using it about the device itself). Adam is one of the most down-to-Earth people I know. This is spooky. :-)

Further:
... the iPod touch, cool as it is, doesn't become the current app in the same way because of its small size. The apps are so small and so many user interface compromises must be made that it's hard to forget you're using the iPod touch as a device. As our friend Ken Case of The Omni Group has said, size matters, which is why a swimming pool is not just a big bathtub.

Good metaphor.

Ronald said:

I have to commend you on sponsoring iPads for the TidBITS editorial team - great move, and very generous of you.

Thank you. I actually gave an iPad not just to the editors, but to everybody at TidBITS. Partly as a thanks for all their great work, and partly because, as you will be aware by now, I regard it as an important new platform, and I wanted to do my bit to the world getting first class reporting on it.

P.S.: Hm, I almost didn't post - "Type the characters you see in the picture above.", but no picture. Turns out one needs to enable scripts for google-analytics.com first before it appears - how very sneaky of them.

Odd, first time I hear of this. I wonder if it's my "fault", since I have a Google Analytics counter on the home page?

Onion headlines

A pretty durn sharp The Onion piece about the Catholic Church's little, um, problem. And in other "news", Chimp In Cocaine Study Starts Lying To Friends. And further, U.S. Government To Save Billions By Cutting Wasteful Senator Program.

Woofferine

I'm watching Wolverine. I like it, entertaining.

Interesting to notice though, how it's a "family" type action movie. Perhaps because it's Marvel Comics, I don't know. But here you have a fight between two men both of whom has big nasty claws as main power, and they're trying to kill each other. And yet you barely see a drop of blood. If that was real, there'd be blood flying all over the place. They would be soaked in it and slipping in it.