Catfight! Get out your mobile phones and start filming, because two important personalities in the mobile world just got into a catfight. After the presentation of Apple's (once again) stellar quarterly results (what's with the low iPad sales, though?), Apple's CEO Steve Jobs went on a bit of a tangent regarding Android (among other things). Google's Andy Rubin, the father of Android, responded in a pretty fun way via Twitter.
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Member since:2010-01-12
I am not sure you can compare size of virtual and physical keyboards this way. On a physical keyboard you can feel the edges with your fingers and can therefore hit the buttons far more precisely. You also get much better feedback.
On the other hand, I believe touchscreens are superior to mouses in many situations 
Member since:2005-06-29
And kangaroos make for great electricity spaghetti whoop whoop diggidity jam joomba.
Classic Jobsian statement there - true, but entirely besides the point, so you can deflect from the obviousness of the argument. Apple claims that both a 3.5" as well as a 9.7" touch interface is possible - but then Jobs says you cannot do a touch interface on 7" because it's too small? Lolwut?
That was an idiotic statement, and a major fail on his part - like the TweetDeck comments which aren't sitting well with TweetDeck's CEO.
Member since:2005-09-10
The GalaxyTab hasn't hit the majors market yet (will launch in the US in November for instance). I saw a few unboxing videos however (one from Germany if I remember). No in depth review, but the first thing that was praised ... wait for it... was the screen! And the lightness of the device of course. Seeing the thing in hand gave me the impression that 7" is just perfect. Hell, 3.7 is not so bad actually for browsing (but never do it if anywhere near a PC of course).
I think this is one thing that Jobs will regret in the future. I do expect the GalaxyTab to be a success, there is a lot of excitement/expectation around it, and at least the build quality does not disappoint (I'm sure the UI won't either, I'm really really happy with Froyo and the GalaxyS is rather popular). Expect that remark to live on as people will quote Jobs every time the device passes a sales milestone.
Member since:2007-08-07
He's not saying you can't to a 7" touch interface. He's saying that They WON'T!!!
H'e said it before, success comes not in the products or ideas that you make/fulfil but the ones that you don't.
The 3.5" device is a smartphone, it's a very mobile device and you have to pay a price and make compromises for that mobility.
Considering that most people buying an iPad already have such a smartphone with them, it's pretty damn stupid to make a tablet that's only slightly larger in screen estate.
Making such a big compromise for a device that you're not carrying in your pocket all the time is nonsense. I've used both types of devices and the difference is massive.
It's good that people like you, people with boundaries in terms of imagination, could never work at a company like Apple.
It's why they keep on coming out with great and revolutionary products, because they don't employ people like you.
Edited 2010-10-19 17:16 UTC
Member since:2009-02-25
Member since:2009-05-19
Then 9.7" is too small for a touch keyboard. iPad is horrible for text input.
The fact is, that he has to paint anything not sold/developed by Apple as a bad thing, so that the stock price rises.
His job is just that - make sure that the stock price rises or if it stays the same then produce good dividends.
Member since:2010-03-08
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2006-04-03
In a car the standard UI components are the steering wheel, accelerator, brake (and clutch if manual), gear / transmission selector, indicators, headlights and wipers. Everything else is like add-on apps that have their own UI. All of the car's standard UI components have been standardised on nearly everything the average user will ever buy - with the only exception being the indicator and wiper selectors which can be on alternate sides of the steering column depending on the origin of the vehicle, and in a few cases the location of the headlight switches. Similarly the common UI components on TV's have been standardised - channel selectors (+/-), volume selector (+/-), power button with the red power symbol on it, etc.
The reason for this is that car-brand-switching and TV-brand-switching group are the same category of people who had a perpetual 12:00 flashing on their video recorder, and that is what is at the heart of Job's comment. Anyone who has spent any reasonable amount of time in IT support dealing with the general public will understand just how important it is, and it's the very reason the likes of Samsung are putting their own custom UI on Android - to get users used to their device's UI so when they buy their next one they look for something exactly the same.
You mean the tiny keyboard that's still got bigger "buttons" than most portrait format mechanical keyboard our there?