Marvin Lee Dot Net

There have been much discussion about the Apple’s new Product – iPad.

Apple introduced its iPad as the most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.

In a sense, it is very honest and accurate as speculators expected their iPad would be somewhere around $999 but it’s officially announced to be selling from $499 only. Well, $499 is for the lowest specifications, and it’s priced between $499 to $829. So in some way, it’s pricing could be unbelievable.

And in case you did not know, the name iPad selection was also a popular joke in the cyberworld and among geeks once it was announced. News on that can be found on yahoo, msn and gizmodo as well.

To be fair, it’s like a notepad, so with products like iPhone, and iPod, the name iPad is actually quite suitable, probably better then iTablet.

I wasn’t particularly amazed by it’s features though. The slimness and design of it, as much as has been expected, is just like a bigger size of iPhone.

If you go through the iPad’s features page (and check out the Specs too, I wouldn’t need to reproduce them here), things like Safari, Mail, Photos, Video, YouTube, iPod, App Store, Notes, Calendar, Contacts, Home Screen and Spotlight Search are not something that surprises me.

It’s just the form factor, a larger screen for use, a bigger iPhone screen, without the phone capability.

A few things that I think would be fun and interesting, is playing games that uses accelerometer, which is small on the phone, now gets bigger and better on the iPad. Now that YouTube provides video in High Definition, watching HD videos on a bigger screen will definitely beat the 480-by-320-pixel on the phone too.

Have you seen the accessories yet? I am particularly interested with the Keyboard dock and the iPad case. They seems to make typing (that supports wireless keyboard) and watching video easier, and does it looked like it multifunction like a iMac too?

Which then brings me to the question: What is the target market of this device? Who would actually want to buy them?

Due to the fact that Apple has been very successful with products like iPhone, iPod, iMac etc, and now iPad (which is the most revolutionary product as introduced), I am a bit interested to know.

Of course, there are so many Apple fan boys and fan girls.

How about its usability?

Until I see an actual iPad, which probably would really amaze me, but from what I have seen and read up until now, I can’t help but wonder on these features:

Battery

Sure, the battery can last 10 hours, which is a good one, but why built-in battery again? Taking iPhone for an example is my best guess, but if it’s suppose to take the lead like a tablet computer, most, if not all tablet computers have removable batteries, like a laptop.

Flash Player

After the many years of iPhones without Flash Player, this revolutionary device also does not incorporate Flash Player support. It’s no more a 480-by-320-pixel screen, but still no Flash.

No multi-tasking

Again, just like iPhone, this iPad doesn’t multi-task, probably also the reason why the battery can last 10 hours because you can only run one task at a time. If you’re reading ebook means you can only read, no listening to songs, and while watching video, do not do anything else?

No HDMI output

Not a major problem that I see, but if you are selling it as HD device, it would be better to be able to output the device screen to a HD TV, right? Well, probably Apple leave this as room for improvement for the future generations of iPad.

Operating system

Now, I think this is the main problem that I see in this iPad. Why would Apple make a new OS for iPad, and not use Mac OS? Ok, maybe not exactly a new OS but iPhone OS, since currently iPhone developers can start to make apps with the iPhone SDK 3.2 beta today.

I mean all tablet PC are using Operating system that is the super set of their PC compatible OS. Like Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is actually the superset of Windows XP Professional, the difference being tablet functionality, including alternate text input (Tablet PC Input Panel) and basic drivers for support of tablet PC specific hardware.

But Apple chose to use iPhone OS. Fine… but?

No Phone capability

If you’re using iPhone OS or getting your developers to use iPhone SDK, why don’t Apple just make the iPad runs like a phone too?

I know, i know it’s sickening to start seeing people sticking their ears to the iPad screen to make phone calls.

iPad comes with 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack, built-in speaker and microphone, wouldn’t those work?

Now some iPhone developers might need to make two versions of their apps if they uses camera and phone. Why? Because iPad has got no camera and phone capability. Now you know why iPad will run almost 140,000 apps from the App Store. iPad will work with almost all of the apps designed for the iPhone.

I might be offending many Apple fans with this post. Somehow, I just couldn’t get pass it, why a bigger iPhone without phone functions and not a smaller iMac instead?

Just so you know, there already exists an iMac after-market device which is an iMac in tablet form. It’s called the Axiotron Modbook. The iPad with Mac OS.

Maybe it’s the pricing factor, but to me the Axiotron Modbook might be more appealing than the iPad now.

What do you think?

Gadgets, Hardware, Technology Apple, Apple App Store, HD, HDTV, High Definition, iMac, iPad, iPhone, iPhone SDK, iPod, Mac OS, Tablet PC, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

This is the second part of my personal evaluation on the past one year long of blogging.

I have previously revealed some statistics of this blog which was never before seen by anyone except me.

In this post, I am going to highlight some social activities which had happened due to the existence of this blog.

1) New acquaintances
Many bloggers say they get to know people via blogging and I half-heartedly believed it, and now I truly believe in it myself.
People go online to search for stuff and sometimes they drop by your blog and if it’s something good enough for them, they leave a comment and come back again.
Or they leave a link so that you know their blog and that’s where the relationship begins.
Although it’s in the online world, but we are still humans.
There are some people that I communicate with online (and only online) as we have never met before, but the things that worked out are more than leaving a comment, hi, bye and thank you.

2) New opportunities
Blogging presents new opportunities.
What are those that will interest you? Girls? Guys? Those fall into New Acquintances.. oh.. so i forgot to mention…
Other opportunities includes contest that requires you to blog about something, and they have cool prizes. Like DSLR and iPod.
Some opportunities include making money, like putting a link to some websites and receive cash. I had such once but I happily rejected it as it’s just a way to increase the rank of that targetted website for search engine and I rather keep my blog clean.
Some events or activities that are indirectly linked and I appreciated it much was the LG event, GTUG KL and Code Android Malaysia that I took part this year.
Well, just in case you don’t know, some bloggers get invites to super cool events and recently there’s a few selected to test drive BMWs with the company of police. How cool is that huh?
But I’m not aiming for that la, at least for the very moment…

3) Existing friends
This blog serves in a way for me to update some of my friends about technology stuff, and I try to put in in a way that is as simple as possible so that the most of my non-IT friends would understand. I received comment that it’s still kinda geeky from some, so I will try to improve on this, to make it as lay-man as possible but also not too boring for IT people.

By the way, I do not consider myself a blogger yet just because of my blogging, just like we do not say we are facebooker because we use facebook. It’s probably due to the frequency I’m coming out with my blogpost. I’d consider a blogger if they come out with blog post every 1 or 2 days and they make a lot of money out of it.
I’m still far from that and I have not decided to be a problogger. Don’t call me a blogger.

The third and last part of the first year review: Blogging One Year After – The Unseen Blogging Knowledge

Internet, Internet Marketing, blogging blogger, CodeAndroid, EOE, Exabytes, GTUG KL, iPod, LG, slr

Apple is definitely among the most innovative companies around.

Apple has just launched its new generation of iPod shuffle. “The new iPod shuffle. The first music player that talks to you”.

It’s small, almost smaller than it’s predecessor.

How small? Let the picture speaks for itself.

It’s smaller than your key, half the height of an iPod nano, thick enough for the ear-phone jack. I believe it’s just the size of a typical thumb drive nowadays. It comes in two colors, silver and black.

It has a stainless steel clip at the back that you can clip it to your clothes.

This new generation of iPod shuffle can store up to 1000 songs, and the control panel is placed at the cord of the ear-phone, hence having a smaller size for the iPod.

Besides having the volume up and down control, there is a single button functions depending on the number of times it’s being pressed:

1. once = play/pause
2. twice = next song
3. thrice = previous song
4. hold = announces title of track, yes… with voice
5. hold until beep = announce playlist

The uniqueness in this gadget is the VoiceOver feature. It’s able to announce the songs, artists, and playlists depending on the operating system of your computer with iTunes that you use to sync with the iPod. It is also supposedly able to speak in 14 languages!

This new 4-gigabyte shuffle costs $79 and Apple will continue to sell the second-generation version of the 1-gigabyte, 240-song Shuffle for $49. However, Apple is phasing out the 2-gigabyte Shuffle, which sells for $69.

Checkout the iPod shuffle Guided Tour. Interesting.

Gadgets, Hardware, Music Apple, iPod, iPod shuffle, VoiceOver