ipad

apple / cool / ipad / iphone / tv — No Comments
1
Sep 10

Apple TV: Should you ditch your cable / satellite?

So…the question is should i cancel my TV service? What’s the tradeoff?

Downsides (some temporary):

1. No more CNN, FOX, MSNBC, Live sports or anything live for that matter. Maybe losing cable news is a good thing anyways.

2. The only networks participating at launch are Fox & ABC (surely the others will follow though). No HBO, Showtime, NBC etc – YET.

3. Presumably you will have to wait a day or 2 after the episode airs before you can watch it. Spoiler alert!

4. Lifestyle networks that my wife loves (i.e HGTV, Food Network etc – are they ever going to get on board with this stuff?)

5. Is the remote bluetooth? If not you won’t be able to hide it. If it is, it won’t work with your universal remote. (update – it’s an IR remote)

6. Download caps with your ISP. Be aware of them and keep in mind a feature length movie in 720p HD will probably be 3-4GB.

At $0.99/episode that’s about $4/mo per show. For the price of my existing cable bill i could watch about 20 shows a month, every episode.

So it seems like for people who have larger cable bills (like me), and watch less than 20 shows this becomes pretty attractive. Really attractive.

annoying / apple / flash / ipad / iphone — 1 Comment
28
Jan 10

Who gives a fuck if it doesn’t have flash?

Need video? HTML5. Want to make a game for the iphone OS? Learn objective C. I’m not defending Apple (i’m not buying the iPad), but Flash is really on the way out. People who are annoyed at the lack of Flash need to think about what exactly they must have flash for that can’t be done on the iphone OS. Flash intro’s? Band & restaurant websites? Puhhhlease.

Loved this quote i read on Analog Industries:

“No Flash? Who gives a flying fuck? Flash is an improvement over Java only inasmuch as you don’t have to learn a computer language in order to have a gaping wound of a security hole on your system or kill your CPU. HTML5 gives that tragedy the death it so richly deserves anyhow. All the big video sites have HTML5 proof-of-concept players up now; by this time next year, Flash will be a bad memory.”

apple / ipad / iphone / observations — 1 Comment
27
Jan 10

Why i’m not buying the Apple iPad…yet

Update 04.19.10: I totally bought one last night.

The $499 price point is solid. It’s pretty & definitely well designed. But i’m not buying version 1.0 of the iPad (at least). Here’s why:

1. Nobody seems to be talking about this but i’m worried about how resilient the screen is. If i drop an iphone, it weighs a few hundred grams. The iPad weighs 1.5lbs. What does it take to shatter the screen?

2. No front facing camera.

3. No multi-tasking.

4. What’s the use case? When would i use the iPad vs my iPhone/Macbook Pro?

5. Don’t buy 1st gen.