Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 27th Sep 2010 22:17 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
Is Research In Motion still, well, in motion? Heck yeah they are. They just unveiled their long-awaited tablet, christened the BlackBerry PlayBook. It's got a dual-core 1Ghz ARM processor, and it runs... QNX! This alone already makes it the most awesome tablet ever.
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RE: Enterprise-ready toy??
by nt_jerkface on Tue 28th Sep 2010 01:17
in reply to "Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2009-08-26
RE[2]: Enterprise-ready toy??
by Fettarme H-Milch on Tue 28th Sep 2010 08:17
in reply to "RE: Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2010-02-16
Maybe it will have international marketing issues but in the US it is a much better name than iPad.
Aren't the reading pads in Star Trek TNG not called "pad" in the US?
Well, in the German dubbing of TNG they were always called like that and I'd guess the translators took the name from the original language.
25 years of free (= no cost for Apple) education what a pad is.
Member since:2009-03-19
At the end of the commercial RIM states that this tablet is "enterprise-ready and professional" but then they display the name PlayBook.
In the US 'playbook' is an euphemism for "a set of strategies." It is not childish, and often shows up in serious contexts, see: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2522883
RE[2]: Enterprise-ready toy??
by AaronD on Tue 28th Sep 2010 05:39
in reply to "RE: Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2009-08-19
RE[2]: Enterprise-ready toy??
by shotsman on Tue 28th Sep 2010 06:23
in reply to "RE: Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2005-07-22
Yeah, and how will that translate in the Rest of the World. You know that big bad place out there with a marker many time bigger that the USA or even if you add places that play US (almost) only sports like American Football?
As a European, the name 'playbook' means a toy and I lived in Boston for nigh on 10 years. Sort like 'PlayDough'.
I'm sure RIM have spent lots of money on gettingthe best name for their toy. Yes, that is what my bosses will see if the use that name and emphasise things like Twitter & Facebook. These are hardly key things for the Business which their current devices are aimed at and are much better than most alternatives.
Sorry RIM you fail here. It might be absolutely great as a tool but the name will kill it over here.
Remember the Edsel?
RE[2]: Enterprise-ready toy??
by Fettarme H-Milch on Tue 28th Sep 2010 08:24
in reply to "RE: Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2010-02-16
In the US 'playbook' is an euphemism for "a set of strategies." It is not childish, and often shows up in serious contexts
And what's the serious context of the racing game screenshot, application development using Flash, YouTube, and Twitter?
It's not only the name (PlayBook = PlayStation in book format) but also the rest of the advertising.
How can anybody believe in its professionalism and readiness for enterprise if RIM highlights toy features all the time?
RE: Enterprise-ready toy?? - PlayBook
by jabbotts on Tue 28th Sep 2010 12:31
in reply to "Enterprise-ready toy??"
Member since:2007-09-06
RE[2]: Enterprise-ready toy?? - PlayBook
by Carewolf on Wed 29th Sep 2010 17:35
in reply to "RE: Enterprise-ready toy?? - PlayBook"
Member since:2005-09-08
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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2010-02-16
At the end of the commercial RIM states that this tablet is "enterprise-ready and professional" but then they display the name PlayBook.
I'm usually not the kind of person who gives a lot about product names but seriously.... "Play" in an "enterprise-ready and professional" product name?? And then the first image you see when visiting the web site is some car racing game? And then you visit the developer page and it talks about Flash?
WTF?
Is RIM even sure what this tablet is?
To me the approach feels schizophrenic and I fear outside the QNX-frantic crowd, the people will react the same.
How is RIM's core audience -- the enterprise -- supposed to be interested in that thing if apparently Twitter, YouTube, and Flash gimmicks are the core tools?
How are gamers supposed to be interested in a product from a company that's hardly known for its entertainment packages and apparently thinks that Flash is a great gaming tool?
I mean... common, RIM. It's not that hard to make a tablet that appeals to your core audience.
Highlight networking features, real-time video conferencing, DocumentsToGo (gosh, you bought them for a reason), portability of existing BB apps, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc.
Oh and while you're at it, build in a frickin' projector for presentations on the go, possibly with laser pointer input support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_projector#Pointer-based_Compu...
And don't call it PlayBook.
Do all that and the enterprises will swarm to it.
With the current amount of information, it seems more like a blown up KIN.