Archive: January 30, 2020

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iPad turns 10

Thursday,  01/30/20  10:33 PM

Wow, so the iPad is now ten years old! So interesting to go back and read what I wrote about it at the time, and the day after pundit reactions.  I don't think anyone was wrong exactly, but the value of a device like this halfway between a phone and a laptop was not clearly understood.  I myself thought that it would be "a computer for the rest of us", but since I already had a laptop, I would never use one.  Heh.  I use mine all the time, and very often - with a keyboard (thank you Brydge) - instead of a laptop.  And my prediction that it would replace the Kindle came true. The one thing that has gone way off script is the value of iPad applications.  As John Gruber notes, "Apple set the standard that highly complex, innovative software that was only possible on the iPad could only ever earn 5 bucks from a customer forever."  You would not have predicted that 10 years ago, and it seems so weird.  I remember not too long ago desktop software cost hundreds of dollars, and people happily paid it.  Now seems like everything has to be "free". Parenthetically Gruber has been writing about multitasking on the iPad and boy is that a mess.  Truly horrible UI design.  Even after you successfully get two apps side-by-side, it doesn't work the way you wish it did.  It's impossible to believe Steve Jobs would have let this ship.

 

Thursday,  01/30/20  10:53 PM

Filter pass ... I'm sick, so calibrate accordingly (*cough*) ... This is pretty great: AR takes over a person's life in 'hyper-reality'.  It could be a glimpse into the not-to-distant future.  Yikes. xkcd considers upgrading: What's the worst that could happen?  I love Dropbox but they just auto-updated the Windows client and now it runs at 50% CPU all the time.  I lowered the priority but it makes the fan run.  C'mon people let's get us some QA, hmmm? Jason Kottke: the greatest chess game ever played.  I don't know about greatest, but the explanation from MatoJelic is most entertaining.  It's so weird that there is so much drama possible from such an apparently simple or perhaps I should say constrained game.  Good news!  Flatland is non-contextual.  Whew.  Ever wonder: What exactly does a product manager do all day, anyway?  It's hard to define but you know it when you see it ... or when you don't.  Seth Godin: beware the gulf of disapproval.  "As your new idea spreads, most people who hear about it will dislike it."  If you're okay with that, you might be a product manager.  another from xkcd: code quality 3.  Another attempt to one-up my code reviews.  But actually it just gives me some good ammunition :)  John Gruber: the gambler who cracked the horse racing code.  TL;DR: improve pari-mutual betting odds by applying a large database of results based on about 20 factors, such as rest days since last race.  Whoa: Boring company's first Las Vegas tunnel poised for February completion.  That's not boring at all :)  Maybe they should be recruited to save the high-speed rail line between San Francisco and LA, which now turns out to be a low speed line between Merced and Bakersfield. Here we have the PFM-A5, a 3D-printed paper airplane gun that fires 120 planes per minute.  Some would say "why?", but I would say "awesome!"  SpaceX report: liftoff!  That's another 60 StarLink satellites in orbit, ho hum.  And the first stage landed successfully on the drone ship again, ho hum.  This is starting to be like watching 747s take off and land, isn't it?  One thing that's not ho hum, they caught half of the nosecone.  No doubt they'll figure out this part also; those fairings cost $6M, so it's worth the effort. Okay, off to a medicated sleep, wish me luck...!

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