February 16th, 2011 — James
This is completely based on information available on the internet. My knowledge about the matter is only as good as how much I heard it on the Internet.
I don’t know about the legality of the whole model but it sounds good for the consumer. If I have an Apple device, I can get the best deal from any publisher right there because they are not allowed to give out deals elsewhere that is not available in the app store. Now I don’t need to worry about not getting the best deal, at least from that publisher. I don’t care how much the publisher or Apple makes out of sale as long as I am getting the best price.
I cannot take food and drinks to a movie theater. I have to buy them in there if I want to have them. So, why not Apple?
Publishers will go where the customers are, right? If not, they just miss the business opportunity. How much are these publishers making anyway? How much is the artist or the writer gets? May be writers are artists can directly start publishing on the Apple platform and get a bigger cut.
March 11th, 2010 — James
Here is another case against iPhone and Apple controlling the ecosystem. This is message pops up as of today on Grooveshark web site for iPhone.
Grooveshark Is Not Supported On The iPhone
Right now there is not a Grooveshark application for iPhones through Apple’s iPhone App Store. Unfortunately at this time, Apple is unwilling to work with Grooveshark to approve our application. This means that iPhones are unable to download Grooveshark for iPhone unless they are jailbroken. We are sincerely sorry to be unable to offer Grooveshark to all iPhones, as we’ve done everything in our power to have it included in Apple’s App Store.
If your iPhone is jailbroken, you are able to download the Grooveshark app. Read our blog post to find out more.
That is lame. I don’t know the reasons why the app is not approved. This is what holds me back from buying more Apple products. I definitely have plans to buy an iPad but whenever I see something like this, I really wish there was a good alternative.
January 27th, 2010 — James
It is a big iPhone. Really big one. If you love your iPhone, you are going to love this one. I am looking at the iPad home page at Apple. Steve Jobs proved himself wrong by creating a computing device that starts at $500. Sometimes proving yourself wrong is a good thing.
This is going to be the best YouTube player on the go for a while. Clam shell designs are outdated. They may have the same overall size but using them is uncomfortable in many situations. Nobody took that clue from cell phones, until now. Also an inch thick tablets are not comfortable for many uses, like reading books and magazines. The user interface on iPad is made for multi touch. Not just adjusted to multi touch. Touching on text to get things done is lame. Text should be there to assist when needed.
It is very thin. Thin enough to hold while lying down to read a book or using while traveling.
There is no clam shell to flip open. That is a no no for bed time, travel and such. I would rather carry a phone to do my computing than to carry a flip open computer while traveling.
No convoluted navigation to launch applications. iPhone already has a reasonably intuitive way to list applications.
App store. All your apps you purchased for your iPhone will download and work on iPad. There will be apps specifically designed for iPad as well.
iBooks. This is a huge improvement over what exists out there. The format is ePub. Now you don’t need to carry two devices for computing and reading. Let’s not go to the argument “you could always read on PC”. Since the format is ePub, you should be able to read books from multiple providers, technically. I see my Sony e-book reader going away. It is black and white and its battery doesn’t last this long.
Maps. There is definitely a big advantage to having a bigger screen for maps than on a phone. If Google can get the turn by turn navigation on to this one, it is an instant winner.
The iPad Case is has an amazing design. It allows you to use iPad in various positions to watch video and type.
The WiFi only models may appeal to some but in my opinion you may miss out on great apps that will require GPS. From what I understand only the WiFi+3G have the GPS.
I am an audio/video nut and the specs for iPad video specs doesn’t appeal much to me. It should have been 1080p. I know that would have meant lower battery life and higher price. May be a future version will have that.
The biggest gripe I have is same for all Apple products. No standard output connectors. Only the proprietary Apple connector. It solves the problem of having too many ports though. May be when we get to streaming everything, it wouldn’t matter. For now it means more accessories and cables.
Other OS vendors and their “partners” can start working on tablets now that everyone knows how a tablet should look and work. All they have to remember is what is important is not what is on the surface.
September 24th, 2008 — James
May not be the first version. But I have it on 2 computers now. I installed it only after SP1. Actually I had Vista even before the public beta. But then something changed and it became slower. Vista with SP1 is actually pretty good. I also like my OpenSuse Linux servers. What I don’t have is OSX. It is an annoying product. I am sorry, the OSX users are an annoying group, mostly. Also, Apple doesn’t care about openness, not even as much as Microsoft does.
I do have an iPhone, which is the only Apple product and I hate the fact I have to install and use iTunes for syncing the phone. The whole iTunes bundle is a hog on the system. My friends disable the services installed by Apple and run them only when they want.
Why I am writing this now? Well, I was reading some comments in a blog about the new Vista ads. Comments like Vista is a productivity killer, never works, completely broken.
In my experience the only thing that is broken on my Vista PC is the iTunes. It is a piece of crap. It messed up my music folders. Why does it have to physically move around the files to organize? Also, any time I sync my iPhone with iTunes, I cannot use anything else. It holds the whole computer hostage. Will I evere buy a Mac? Don’t know. Definitely not now. Not with the limited experience I have so far with iTunes and iPhone.
If Microsoft wrote Vista for one single set of hardware, it would have performed way better than any OSX crap. Apple fan boys are glotting over an OS that only runs on an extremely limited hardware set. A friend of mine recently sold his only Apple Macbook on ebay. He was fed up with OSX. All along he was running Vista with bootcamp. What a waste of money to get a Macbook to run Vista. That was about $2400? Now he has a Shuttle box in his living room that costed about $1000 including Vista.
Do I like Microsoft. I used to. Even today I don’t hate them but I am not a fanboy. But I like the Microsoft users. They are the most polite users you will see on any message board or blog comments. No matter what the other OS fanboys say, that is where I like to belong.
September 17th, 2008 — James
I have never installed iTunes on my work computer based on my experience with it on my home computers. It installs stuff that runs in background and now it installs a device driver for iPhone etc. My colleague who also has an iPhone installed the iTunes 8 today and it bricked the computer. It was the device driver that caused the trouble. It blue screens while booting. All afternoon he was trying to get it back to working. The last I saw him doing was trying to use system recovery. Not sure if it will work. While loading drivers, it is faults in KERNEL32.EXE.
For the past few days I have been postponing the update message from Apple Software Updater on my home computer. I think I will wait until the issues are completely resolved. I only recently rebuilt my computer to Vista. I do have completely PC backup though.