editor

That's so funny. Almost exactly 24 hours before you were taking pictures of that sky crane in Houston, I was taking pictures of a sky crane at work in Chicago: I made a video for one of HAIF's remaining sister sites, the Chicago Architecture Blog: <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="281" data="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"> <param name="flashvars" value="intl_lang=en-us&photo_secret=46a2e7fd4c&photo_id=4319509532"></param> <param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377"></param> <param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377" bgcolor="#000000" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="intl_lang=en-us&photo_secret=46a2e7fd4c&photo_id=4319509532" height="281" width="500"></embed></object>

You're right -- Apple has demonstrated that it's pretty obsessed with battery life. That was one of the big things that made the original iPod a hit. A lot of people have speculated that the iPad won't get the promised 10 hours of video life, based on their experiences with tablet computers. But I think it might still work. Just like the way the new MacBook Pros get an extra 40% battery life by using those custom-shaped battery cells instead of the ordinary round ones that other computers use. I'd bet that the majority of the length and width of an iPad is one of those square-celled batteries. iPad would be great for long plane trips. You'd have to turn the screen brightness down anyway to compensate for the dark cabin on a trans-Pacific flight, so that would save even more battery. Maybe even enough to last the entire 13 hours to Tokyo.

From what I've read, this has already been done. Jobs talked about it to David Pogue of the New York Times. Pogue asked Jobs if he should write his iPad review in Pages in an iPad, then quickly changed his mind stating that it wouldn't work because his editors require Word formatted documents. Jobs told him that he'd be able to easily save his Pages review as a Word file on his iPad and e-mail or transfer it to Pogue's editors. From what I've read elsewhere, when the iPad is on a local network it looks like a standard file share, discovered through Bonjour. Just like when you stick a USB hard drive into the connector on your Airport. When someone browses to the iPad each application has its own folder for its documents. To get a document off the iPad, you just drag it to your desktop. To put a document into the iPad, you just drag it into the folder of the application you want to open it in. That stuff about the dragging, though is supposedly from people "inside" Apple who worked on it. I haven't seen any evidence of it yet, but I guess it's as plausible as anything else.

I suspect the iPad is "capable" of 1080 since the guts have similar components, but Apple chooses to only to deliver 720. Just like with the iPhone. I remember seeing somewhere on the web a demonstration video showing the iPhone (or was it an iPod?) outputting HD video to a television. The hardware can do it, but Apple tends to not push its hardware. I'm not sure why this is. In terms of HD, the only reason I can think of is bandwidth considerations. There was an article I read last night about all the craptastic tablet makers in Asia freaking out about the iPad. They'd designed and priced their tablets with the assumption that the iPad would start at $1,000. Now with the iPad actually starting at $500, they're scrambling to figure out how to cheapen their devices even further. A couple have hinted that they may simply choose not to compete at all. We'll find out in a few months. No reason to gripe about it. Apple already has a solution. Steve Jobs talked about it during the iPad's introduction: The one on the left is a USB port. The one on the right is an SD reader. Both are intended for use with digital cameras. I don't think pricing has been announced yet, but I suspect they'll come in around the same $30 that the camera adapter for the 5th generation iPod did.

Here's a PDF of the pamphlet the cops are handing out: http://www.houstontx.gov/police/pdfs/BurglaryPreventionforHomesFeb09.pdf And here's a story KTRK did about it: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7245290

Funny. My grandmother smoked Pall Malls and Kools. My dad was an unfiltered Lucky Strike guy. My mother is a Parliament 100's person. These days I understand that Kools and Parliaments are preferred in the black community. Does anyone still smoke Luckies? When I was five years old my parents would give me money to go down to the bar a couple of blocks away to buy them cigarettes. If parents did that today, they'd be put in jail.

I'd suspected that for a long time, but wasn't entirely sure until I went to Korea. Now I know for certain.

I was disappointed to learn that Apple's A4 chip is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Apparently it's built around ARM's Cortex-A9 core, if I'm reading things right. I don't understand as much about chips as I used to. After the 68040 era things got a little beyond me. I was hoping it would be completely original silicon. But I guess like a boss I once had always said, "There's no point reinventing the wheel." On the other hand, he was one of the worst bosses I ever had and his company went out of business.

Absolutely. It's called quality control. It's not perfect, but it's far superior to doing nothing. Compare to what's going on in the Android world where it's a free-for-all: As pointed out by PBS tech columist Bob Cringley, there are lots of applications that let you use your bank account on your Android phone. But guess what? They're not from your bank! They're by random strangers, sometimes in other countries, and no one knows what they're doing with your log-on, or personal financial information because there is no vetting of the software or the software authors. At least with the Apple method there is some culpability. With Android? You're on your own, kid. I don't understand how ensuring that software meets some basic functionality and doesn't wreck someone's device or other files on it is a bad thing. If every programmer out there was great, that would be one thing. But they're not. I don't see how it's infringing on anyone's "freedom" to require them to wait 48 hours (yes, it's only 48 hours now even on weekends) to have their program approved before it's unleashed on the masses. And the $99/year that Apple charges to be part of the developer program is a bargain when you know all of the support and documentation, video, and other help that is provided. I'm part of the program. I know. Apple bends over backwards to help people develop software for the iDevices. After all, when you make money, Apple makes money. I think that it shouldn't just be Apple doing this. All of the players, Nokia, Palm, MS, etc... should institute tough standards so we have higher quality software. It's like this every time a new breed of devices come out -- the first few waves of software are garbage. The term "hacker" was derogatory when it was coined back in the 1970's to refer to people who put out crapware like biorhythm calculators and shoddy bits of code that crashed systems. Apple has, for the most part, managed to avoid that first wave of garbage software by setting the bar higher to play in its sandlot. It should be applauded for instituting some form of quality control in a world where nobody gives a damn about doing things right. You're not going to charge your phone off of your iPad just like you don't charge your cell phone off another cell phone. And in case you're talking about connectivity, guess what's on the other end of the cable that comes with every iPad? A USB connector! (Though to be honest, I wish Apple had stuck with the superior Firewire interface. But sacrifices have to be made to bring the Windows people into the fold.) Do you similarly argue that Fords are proprietary because you can't use a Honda exhaust system in one? I still don't get what it is you think is proprietary about Apple products. I'm still waiting for you to point out what standard media format can't be played on a Mac. Looking at the MacBook Pro in my lap I see three standard USB connectors, two standard Firewire connectors, standard audio in and out jacks, a standard Ethernet port, a standard DVI port, a standard ExpressCard slot, and a standard DVD-ROM drive. The only non-standard part of the computer is the magsafe adapter, but it's not like every other laptop in the world doesn't have its own plug, too. Are you talking about Mac desktops, perhaps? The ones that have the most user-friendly design in the industry to allow the Average Joe to upgrade them without having to slice his hands open in a maze of wires and circuit boards? The Mac desktops that use standard upgradable hard drives, standard upgradable optical drives, standard upgradable RAM? The only thing that's non-standard is that you have to buy Mac versions of video cards because the Macintosh architecture is different than Wintel architecture. If it wasn't, then it would be a Wintel machine, not a Mac. I still don't see where you get "proprietary" from. If by "comprehensive" you mean "lame," then I agree with you -- that was a very lame list. They complain about the bezel? They complain that it doesn't have an HDMI port? Apple already said it has video out through the dock connector, how does Giz know there isn't an HDMI option? I'd wager there's at least a Mini DisplayPort (oops! There's another standard, and like Firewire and USB that Apple helped invent!) option. There's a pretty good chance that HDMI will be an option because DisplayPort was designed to complement HDMI. Most of the things on that list are things that Gizmodo assumes but doesn't know since the device hasn't even been released yet. I'll give you some room on this one. It would be nice to listen to my Sirius Radio app while surfing on my iPhone. I can understand why Apple doesn't trust the third-party programmers not to run down the way it happens on phones that do allow tasks to run in the background (like every Symbian phone I've ever owned). I'm not sure what the solution is to this. But I guess Apple would rather hear the nerds complain, "There's no multitasking!" than listen to regular users complain that their battery is always running out. This is a feature, not a bug. Flash is a scourge. Not sure what you're talking about here. Sounds like you're spreading more FUD. The iDevices use the same plug that they've been using since 2003. I have a bunch of them. I use the one from the Nano I bought in 2005 to charge my wife's 2009 iPhone. The only iDevice that doesn't use the standard cable is the first and second generation iPod, which use standard Firewire connectors. And in case you haven't been keeping up with things, Apple was one of the first mobile phone companies (along with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, RIM, and Samsung) that agreed to put the new micro-USB plugs on its phones in 2010 so that chargers could be used between them. Addressed above. I'd rather not have random Yuri von Sleazeball impersonating my bank and stealing my information. Quality control is a good thing, not a bad thing. What about it? It's someone who made a petition based on a bunch of assumed things that no one knows since the device isn't out yet. How is the iPad's DRM "unprecedented" as he claims? How does he know that the iPad has an "always on" wireless signal? How does he know that Apple has the ability to reach into your iPad and erase your personal documents? The answer is simple -- he doesn't. He's making stuff up in order to attract attention. Especially considering that the eBooks are going to be in the open ePub format. I hate to break it to you, but you got suckered in by someone inventing controversy to pump up the number of visitors to his web site. It's the tech equivalent of Quannel-X. You've been p0wned, dude. Furthermore, Steve Jobs is on the record as being against DRM. Remember that it was he who pushed the record companies into dropping it on iTunes. He did more than one interview about that. But the bottom line is that it's not really up to him, or Apple. It's up to the people who own the content. You're picking the wrong fight here. If you don't like DRM, then go after the content producers who require it, not the distributors who are required to play by their game in order to make it available to you. Or just use open files. Like ePub, and MP3, and MP4, PDF, WAV, AIFF, ALE, H.264, and the dozens of other free, open, unencumbered DRM-less file formats that every Apple device all the way back to the original iPod support. If you don't like DRM, then don't buy any. Where do you live that the police are forcing you to do so?

I just looked at my bill and did the math. I used 161MB of data last month. If I drop my iPhone and get an iPad with the $15 data plan (250 MB), then even the highest-end iPad pays for itself in 13 months. If I get the cheapest 3G model, it pays for itself in ten months. Hmmm....

Sadly, I don't think it works the way you and I want. I think you have to get the separate $15.00 or $25.00 data plan. I think that blows. I think the reason the much larger iPad uses microSIMs is so people with the $14.99 plan don't pop them out and stick them into their iPhones. For me, I think the balance between price and capability will come from having an iPad with the $24.99 data plan and a pre-paid cell phone. My iPhone's off contract anyway, and I'm probably going to move outside the AT&T wireline footprint so I won't get my DSL discount anymore for combining that bill. I rarely use my phone and have over 4,500 rollover minutes. I'm all about the data, so an iPad works for me. Of course, I can always make VOIP calls on the iPad, so that's an option. Especially now that the VOIP-over-3G restriction has been lifted and there are apps that take advantage of that.

I'm not sure what your point is here. We're talking about iPads and mobile devices, not desktops. But if you want to play that game, what's fine. The problem is that different companies define success in different ways. You may think that market share is the most important factor. I like to look at it this way: AAPL: $192.12 HP: $41.83 MSFT: $28.18 DELL: $12.91 Apple can buy Dell with just half of the cash it has in the bank. Or you could look at it by company size: MSFT $250.21 billion AAPL: $174.21 billion DELL: $25.24 billion HP: $4.42 billion We can play the game all day, but to dismiss Apple as a non-player because of its desktop penetration is delusional. If Apple is such a non-factor, then why does the world go nuts whenever a new Apple product comes out? Why is it being discussed in every newspaper, TV station, and radio station around the world? Why are you even motivated to participate in this thread? I don't seem to remember months of anxious speculation over the release of the Zune HD. What proprietary content are Apple users locked into exactly? Music? Video? Ebooks? Apple uses open industry standards on all of them. Tell me which media format a Windows machine can play that an Apple machine can't. I can't think of any. USB ports? Exactly what for? Demonstrate a need and I'll consider it. Otherwise it's just like the Dell people five years ago who couldn't believe it when Apple dropped floppy drives from its notebooks. When was the last time you saw someone with a floppy disk? Can you even buy those anymore? You're going to have to come up with a better gripe than that. I hate to break it to you, but the future is wireless, not yet another cable running to the rats nest behind your Wintel tower. So, what you're saying is that once again Apple leads in technology and innovation and everyone else follows. Well, at least that's one thing we can agree on. Just like there were a number of MP3 players around before the iPod, there are a number of tablet computers and netbooks out right now. But for the majority of people, they all suck. And just like with the iPod, Apple will come in and reinvent the market niche and the other companies will copy it. I don't mind people being critical of Apple. I'm not entirely pleased with the iPad, and I'm pretty fed up with the paint scratching off of the keyboards of two laptops now. But if you're going to try to be critical, at least come up with some substantial argument. Something that makes sense. Something better than saying Apple isn't a good company because its latest product doesn't have a USB port.

My happiest day this month was when I learned how to turn off Farmville and Mafia Wars updates from all of my Facebook friends.

HPD is stepping up its public safety campaign. Officers are going door to door in some neighborhoods warning people about burglaries. Photos from HPD:

If you've ever been to Japan you know it has one of the highest smoking rates in the world (and also one of the longest lifespans... hmmm....). Those people are fiends for smoking, I think in part because Japan Tobacco is owned by the government, so there isn't a lot of pressure from politicians to ban tobacco. Anyway, I noticed that in some of the skyscrapers they have entire floors that are set aside for smoking. And I don't mean they're office floors where people smoke. I mean nothing else happens on those floors but smoking. Even Tokyo's city hall has one of these. It's all kitted out with high-speed fans and air filters and negative pressure rooms, but the floors still smell awful when you have to walk down the hallways between the smoking chambers and the windows through which you can watch the smokers like monkeys in a zoo are all yellowed. From a Western perspective, it's pretty gross. I've seen smoking chambers in many Asian airports, right on the concourses. Glass boxes where eight or ten people can gather and puff their lungs out without bothering anyone else around. I don't understand why Asian smokers don't smell awful, though. American smokers, especially men over 30, smell like nastyness to me after they've been smoking. Like mucus and burning tires. Ugh. And they smell like it all day walking down the streets and through offices and don't even realize they reek. But there's something about those Asian smoking chambers that let people smoke, but they don't stink up the plane when they get on. I'm not sure what it is.

I didn't realize it was a tax on grocery bags only. Yeah, that's pretty dumb. Tax all the plastic bags or don't. Or better -- just ban them and make Houston a nicer looking place to live.

You say that like it's a bad thing. If you don't have an iPhone, then an iPad is a great tool instead (and cheaper!). Or if you like your iPhone and use it a lot, you might want a bigger screen. If I had the spare money, I'd get this for my elderly mother. Right now she's using my old Powerbook. But an iPad with the keyboard dock is exactly what someone like her needs, not a whole computer. So I guess in addition to killing the netbook market, the iPad just aborted what little there is of the thin client market, too. It's the fulfillment of everything that the networking companies have been talking about since the 90's. The network is the application.

For people who have regular downtime, it will be good. Commuters and the like. My wife will likely use it to watch TV shows and movies and read books during her lunch. That's actually what we got the netbook for, but video on Linux is a nightmare, and netbooks don't make it any easier because they're so under-powered processor-wise that they have to slurp up all their battery to compensate. When we were able to get videos to play on her netbook, it ended up reducing the battery life to 90 minutes. iPad is supposed to have 10 hours, even with video; and 140 hours of just music. I'm not excited to use it for games, but I can understand the appeal. There are some great games on the iPhone, but I find my fingers usually getting in the way. The bezel of the iPad would probably make the gaming experience more enjoyable. Jobs told the New York Times yesterday that the iBooks will cost the same as Amazon. What I wish, though, is that more out-of-print books would become e-books. I don't mean worthless out-of-copyright crap. I mean stuff that was good 20 years ago and is still good, but you can't buy it anywhere. I think it's a little big to really use as a music player. I think that's just a nice feature to have, not necessarily a selling point.

No. Public property belongs to all of us, not just you. And if you deface it, then the rest of us have to pay to have it cleaned up through our taxes. Your property is your property. Everything else is someone else's.

I know that's an Onion link, but people who compare the iPad to a laptop don't get it. They're the same people who complained that the iPod didn't have a rewind button. There are masses of people out there who don't need a full computer, but need occasional computing power. My wife and all of her friends are in this group, as I suspect pretty much every netbook owner is. My wife has a MacBook that she used to use every day. Since she got her iPhone she only uses the MacBook once or twice every other week. Everything she needs to do, she can do on her iPhone. She is very eager to get an iPad. For people like her, they don't need a full computer. They just want to occasionally look stuff up on Wikipedia or make restaurant reservations and do Facebook and e-mail. The iPad is a general purpose computing device that provides enough power to do the simple common tasks that people want, but in a size and with an ease that doesn't get in the way. It's the next step (the iPhone was the first) toward the long-predicted ubiquity of technology. Computing becomes something you pick up and do and put down and don't think about again, rather than an event where you sit down in front of a machine and turn it on and wait for it to boot and log in and open a browser and so on just to look up a simple recipe. I was fairly skeptical of the iPad until the information came out about the data connections. They're cheap and best of all -- no contract. A carrier contract would have been a deal-breaker for me. At first I was surprised that there's not a camera, but then I thought about holding up this pad, which is a monster compared to a regular digital camera, and taking a picture and it just seems like an silly and awkward picture in my head. That said, I think there still should be a forward-facing web cam. But then again -- how often have I used the one in my laptop? The only time I ever use it is when I'm traveling without my wife and we iChat while I'm in the hotel. So, it's something nice to have but not necessarily necessary. I don't have much use for the Photo app, but it's a nice display of technology. I love the idea that the iWork apps have been broken up so instead of paying $75 for the suite, I can pay $20 for the two portions of it that I use. If I had one, I'd primarily use it for e-mail, surfing, and iWork stuff. I love the notepad. The biggest problem I have with the iPhone version of that app is that half of the screen real estate is lost to the keyboard. The iPad version is much more useful, and I'd likely use it a lot. A whiteboard app would be great. There are plenty for the iPhone, and if they modify them to take advantage of the iPad's increased screen real estate, they would be great for a lot of businesses. If the iPad had a PHP editor, an FTP client, and Quickbooks then I could leave my laptop at home. But those are kind of a specialized set of requirements so I don't ever expect them to materialize. I think the big losers here are the netbook manufacturers and Amazon. Not because of e-books. I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon and Apple pair up on the books. But the Kindle is dead in the water. The Kindle DX has the same size screen and is the same price, but looks like a black-and-white silent film compared to the Avatar that is iPad. Why would anyone buy a Kindle now? I would love to see a graph of Kindle sales over the last year, and then watch the line take a massive dive right when the iPad price was announced. The criticism I've heard so far is pretty weak. Mostly complaints from Slashdot-type geeks complaining that there's no Flash support. Funny, considering these same people have been complaining for the last six years that Flash is a bloated hog that they don't want on their PC's. They're just looking for a nit to pick, and can't find anything better. The only thing Flash is useful for is pushing video, but HTML5 makes Flash obsolete. Safari and Chrome already support HTML video. Firefox I think either has it close to ready, or it's already deployed. HTML5 video uses 1/10th the battery and processing power as Flash. For portable units like the iPad, this is key. And the last thing I want on a mobile device is to sit there waiting for some web site's massive and unnecessary Flash interface to load over a 3G connection. Some day Flash will go the way of Geocities, the dancing baby, and the Hamster Dance.

It is possible to print e-books, depending on the format it is in. The iPad's e-book are in E-Pub format, which is an open format. For the most part e-pub books can be printed just like PDF books can. Though, I don't expect this to happen with books purchased through the iBooks store. The e-pub specification does not have any DRM in it, but it allows third parties to add DRM, just like the MP4 format that iTunes uses for songs is also an open standard, but allowed Apple to wrap the songs in DRM for a while, though that is no longer the case. Still, I don't see people printing out their books as a backup. Even printing just a few bestsellers would run through thousands and thousands of pages of paper and ink and probably wear out a printer pretty quickly, since most home printers aren't designed to handle that kind of load all at once. I wish there was a service that would scan your books into e-books, like those companies that will rip all of your CDs for you.

Considering that Apple sold 3,360,000 Macs in October-November-December, 2009 and Mac sales are up 71% compared with the Wintel sector being up 17% year-to-year, I think the answer is "yes."

I don't mind public art. What I do mind is trespassing and vandalism. Feel free to paint your own property with whatever "art" you think is valid. But when you start defacing someone else's property, then the line has been crossed.

So... it's OK to throw garbage in the bayou since there's a boom to catch it? Great! Where can I back up this BFI dumpster?

Merging this with the topic from January 15th.