Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

At a secret event yesterday, a small but select group was given a first look at a new Apple Tablet at a secret Mountain View address. I have to say, it was so much more than I'd been expecting...

Here I am, hands-on with its amazing tactile touch interface.



Note the high resolution display, the innovative pastry casing, and the high-quality taste UI.

[many thanks to voidampersand for organising his "Special Apple Event"!]

Outside the Moscone Center, the night after the SteveNote, someone seemed to have decided to show what they thought of the MacBook Air...

Here's the Onyx, a concept device from industrial designers Pilotfish and Synaptics (who make the touch screen used by Apple for the iPhone).



I do like the idea of a phone that can send a kiss to the screen as an emoticon...

The Onyx concept acts as a remote for your life. And because life is activity based, not application based, the concept illustrates how applications such as phone, GPS, music, teleconference and calendar events can work simultaneously. The Onyx concept does not base its experience on treating applications as separate windows or entities that work in isolation. Rather, the Onyx concept seamlessly integrates functions into activity based experiences.

Elsewhere:

More intelligent than conventional touch screens, the ClearPad accurately recognizes not only points and taps, but also shapes, complex gestures, and proximity to the user’s finger or cheek. This creates new possibilities such as assigning functions to two-finger taps, closing tasks by swiping an “X” over them, sending messages by swiping them off the screen, or answering a phone by holding it up to your cheek. The prototype phone uses a dynamic UI, where applications are layered and opened simultaneously, allowing a seamless flow of information between applications.

Sound familiar? The concept PDF is rather interesting too...

Now note the date on the press release.

Thanks to marypcb for the link.

...seeing as he pretty much ended his Budget speech with "One more thing" in his income tax cut.

Well, it was "One further announcement", but there's not that much difference!

Joeffrey has taken to sleeping on top of my iBook. I have pointed out to him that the cat is meant to sit on the mat, not the Mac.

marypcb pointed out to me that cats can't spell.

Click along to Amazon UK's page for the Zune, and look at the "by" section...



"by Apple Computer"? Some one needs to check their proofreading!

Spotted by stevewpalmer in another place....

There's a crack in the metal frame around the keyboard of my TiBook. Right by the PCMIA slot...

Damn.

Let's hope for a glut of cheap G4 iBooks...

The Google Blog points at a new radio button on the Google Earth download page.

Yes, it's out for OS X 10.4. No word if it's a universal binary...

Time to get rid of your illicit copy of the beta!

Yesterday we went out and bought a new PC.

Nothing fancy, but something to eventually replace my current desktop, which is slowly failing after a PSU went "phut", let out the magic smoke, and took out a chunk of the motherboard. It still works, but there's going to be a day soon when it finally kicks the bit bucket.

We wandered down to PC World, where we picked up a small Athlon 64 machine. The specifications weren't too bad: 2GHz 64 bit processor, on-board ATI Radeon graphics card, and 512 MB of RAM, a dual layer DVD burner, 160GB of 7200RPM SATA hard disc, built-in gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 ports, firewire, and a whole pile of media readers. It's quiet and small, and in a reasonably attractive mirrored black case. The days of the beige box are long gone.

Not bad pricing, either. Including VAT it cost us around £360. We didn't need a monitor (they'd have sold us a 17" LCD for another £100).

That's over £130 cheaper than a Mac Mini, for a machine that's significantly more powerful - and with enough expansion capability to turn it into a nice little media box, too. (I have made one change, dropping in an extra half gig of RAM, but I'm currently using it to run a beta version of Windows Vista, with lots of debug code still in place, and it's performing comparably to a hyperthreaded Pentium 4 machine.)

With Apple rumoured to be announcing its Intel Mac Mini in a week or so, it's going to need to seriously consider its pricing structures. People are going to walk into PC World, look at the specifications of a hypothetical Intel Mini, and compare it with a generic Intel or AMD PC. It's going to be (as they say) Apples to apples - not G5 to P4. In which case, prices are going to need to come down some. Sure, Apple will be able to initially have some uplift thanks to the brand name, but the days of high margins on branded hardware will be behind them, and the market will force them to parity with the HPs and Dells of the world.

Interesting times.

...make your own classic Apple Mac by following the instructions here.

( Honest... )