It's one of those days again: Apple held a product announcement today, announcing several new products. The most important of which was rumoured about for a long time now: a smaller iPad. It's called the iPad mini, and has the potential to become the best-selling iPad - and thus, the best selling tablet.
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Member since:2006-07-04
Will you be splurging on the new 13-inch MacBook Pro for its "retina display"? I hope not, because resolution aside, that is a p.o.s. device considering its $1700 price tag.
One thing I don't get about "retina display" fanboys, if "retina display" is so great, how come you guys don't demand it on your 27-inch monitors, where it would REALLY shine? Seems a waste on a small screen, if you ask me. I admit that my aging eyes aren't sharp enough to see individual pixels on a phone or tablet at 720p so using a higher resolution would make no difference to me on such small screens. But you young-uns claim to be able to see individual pixels on those small screens, and therefore do back flips over "retina display"; but it seems that on a big 23-inch or 27-inch monitor, you'd be able to see individual pixels even more, yet you're satisfied with 1080p on those big monitors. It makes no sense, and seems to me to be a good bit of brainwashing by Apple's superb marketing machine, an outfit which could successfully convice folks that a new Apple-branded abacus is a newly invented revolutionary "game changing" computing device.
When I see "retina display" fanboys condemn Apple's retina-display-less laptops and iMacs for lack of such a display AND when I see those same "retina display" fanboys open their wallets for Apple's retina display $1700 dual-core laptops and $2200 quad-core laptops for the sole purpose of getting a "retina display", then I'll believe that they really do think that "retina display" is all that and a bag of chips. But until then, I'll continue to maintain that "retina display" serves only two purposes: as a talking point for Apple's marketing machine as they run out of ideas, and as ammo for Apple's fanboys to use in the fanboy wars. 
Member since:2006-08-02
Member since:2008-02-27
You probably already knew this, but technically those 27in screens are "retina" already, especially if they have the 27in iMac resolution. It's all determined by where your head is in relation to a screen and its size, not just the resolution. In simple terms - if you can't see the pixels from your normal position, its retina.
I also think it has to do with performance and diminishing returns. You can have a screen that is really close to retina, so you don't really see a need to spend more to bump it over the line into offical retina.
Member since:2009-08-18
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
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.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."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.
"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."
"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.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Now, when the iPad mini has an even lower resolution, 1024x768, "Resolution isn't everything". Very interesting in seeing how one changes its own opinions so quickly, isn't it?
7.9" vs 10"
$329 vs $499