Tech Inertia

Mainstream tech has stagnated - let's think different, let's get tech moving again.

  • Apple goes all 'Deckard'...

    • 21 Oct 2011
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    • iPad Android Google Steve Jobs iPhone
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    Google-android-vs-apple-ios-350x286

    I'm going to destroy Android...

    An early sneak peek of Walter Isaacon's Steve Jobs biography, let's slip the reasoning behind Apple recent moves to sue Samsung and others.

    "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

    That 'wrong' clearly being allowing Eric Schmidt on the board at all.

    It's well documented that Google did a 90 degree turn when then first saw the iPhone. Their phones up until that point were Blackberry clones, after the iPhone shook up the industry, their phones discarded the keyboard, became multi-touch capable and basically, ripped off the iPhone.

    Now, lots of people argue that this 'ripping off' is hogwash and there are numerous viewpoints that support and go against that fact.

    One thing that seems to have been forgotten, is that whilst Eric Schmidt was on the board at Apple, they hid the iPad's development from him.

    This is very significant.

    Why? Well it's also well known that Google have had a lot of trouble in re-imagining the Android OS for a tablet form-factor - it just wasn't built from the start with a tablet in mind. It has had to be hacked to get it there - and it shows.

    To me, this points towards the fact that the Android OS was built to be a phone OS, not a mobile OS that could be re-scaled easily.

    The reason for this is because when Eric Schmidt took the iPhone to Google and said "this is the future - copy it", they copied what they saw - a phone, not understanding the underlying construction to be scaled at some point into a tablet.

    That's because Eric didn't know the tablet existed.

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  • They really don't know...

    • 15 Oct 2011
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    • Apple Mac RIM Shazam Steve Jobs iPhone
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    Rim-iphone

    A lot has been said about Steve's passing, and even more will be said about whether Apple will continue it's meteoric rise, and continue hitting the ball out of the park.

    To tell you the truth, nobody can predict the future, (although I'm sure there will be an app for that eventually), all we can do is observe and comment.

    I observed recently 2 friends who were exclusive Blackberry users. They didn't use them at work, they were their personal phones and chose them mainly for the hardware keyboard, with the comment that, "they could never use one of those touchscreens."

    Well I met them recently for a meal and guess what? they both pulled out iPhone 4's.

    I wasn't too surprised, but what did surprise me were the reasons why they chose one.

    Their contracts were up for renewal and they walked into their local phone shop, and were persuaded by the staff to get an iPhone.

    Their comment was, "we didn't go in wanting an iPhone, but they let us play with them for a while and we're hooked!"

    Since then, they have gone 'app crazy' showing me various cat apps, apps for Halloween, Christmas, joke apps, you get the idea.

    I showed them Shazam whilst in the restaurant - they were gobsmacked and downloaded it immediately.

    This isn't really unusual, as Apple's user experience is excellent, but the thing to take home here is this:
    • They don't know who Steve Jobs is
    • They don't know Apple's history
    • They don't know (yet) how the Mac differs from Windows
    • They just know what they like

    You could say that the reason why people choose a Blackberry over and iPhone and a PC over a Mac, is because of the legacy of opinion that surrounds both topics.

    It's going to be pretty easy to topple RIM, they haven't had a chance to get ingrained into people's habits.

    The reason why the Mac is finding harder to topple Windows, is because it's been around much longer, and has had a chance to get into people lives, habits and personalities.

    Just give us time.

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  • IT'S TIME TO BEGIN AGAIN...

    • 8 Oct 2011
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    • Apple Steve Jobs iPhone mac os ken macdailynews philip k dick the mac geek gab twitter
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    Screen_shot_2011-10-08_at_11
    My last post was almost a year ago, and I must admit, I thought I was done with blogging.

    Twitter had seemed to replace much of what I wanted - blogging is all about you, it's your personal spin on events, and what better (and quicker) way to do that, than to post short messages with a link to the event in question.

    The past 2-3 days have made me realise that I'm not done with blogging, and I have much more to say regarding all things Apple and tech in general.

    Of course, as you've probably realised, the event that has spurred me on, is the sad death of Steve Jobs.

    I'm based in the UK, and I learned of his death in the most abrupt and weird way possible. My iPhone awoke me at 5.45am with an alarm, and I had set up notifications on The Boy Genius Report app, and there, in a little sad blue box were the words, "Breaking: Steve Jobs dead at 56".

    Numbness and the day's working trawl followed. I quickly went to MacDailyNews to confirm, and then left it at that, not really wanting to confront it.

    I surfed Twitter occasionally through the day, looking at other's inevitable reaction, but I didn't want to react myself.

    The next day, I tried to listen to Mac OS Ken Live, but could only get through about ten minutes of it - too upsetting.

    The Mac Geek Gab is the first content I fully absorbed regarding Steve's death, and it was a great show - 2 ordinary guys talking about how Apple changed their lives. In many ways this was the final reason I was looking for to start commenting again.

    I'll post again as often as I can, I may comment about Steve in more detail, I may not, but I've tried to come up with a sound bite that sums up what Steve Jobs means to me, and I'll say this:

    PhilipKDick was once quoted as saying,

    "Eveything I see is plastic and glass, and gaudy colours and strangely made, and [therefore] human beings begin to take on the same sort of plastic oddness, and our eyeballs seem to take on a glassy look. The entire world seems to take on a fake, artificial 'made' quality. The natural question therefore comes to mind is - who made it? why is it so crummy? why is it so degraded and falling apart?"

    The unique technologies that Apple and Steve Jobs create, driven by innovation, passion and the desire to make devices that not only look beautful, but act beautifully as well, stop that statement from becoming true.

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  • The original Mac OS X...

    • 27 Jul 2010
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    • Apple Mouse Multitouch Next Steve Jobs
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    Next-logo-paul-rand

    The NEXT logo by Paul Rand (and Steve Jobs).

    From Logodesignlove:

    A great article giving an insight to the logo design of Steve Jobs' other company NEXT, the company (and technology) that he sold to Apple, which later formed the basis for Mac OS X and later still, the iOS.

    A wonderful quote from Steve Jobs is right here:

    “I asked him if he [Paul Rand] would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.’”

    You can see why Jobs chose him, you couldn't ask for a couple of guys who obviously were made for each other.

    That sentence in essence is exactly where we are with Apple today. Apple looks at a given problem, and solves it. Period.

    They may not do it as quickly as other companies, you may not fully like or appreciate the end result, but you will, in the long run realise that Apple (in the most part) is right, and your particular solution to the same problem (i.e. you desires), haven't really been thought through.

    Which brings me onto one of today's announcements,'The Magic Trackpad'.

    It is, at it's heart, the answer to a problem. Multi-touch on the desktop. Many other tech companies have gone for the obvious solution, simply touch the damn screen - but they haven't thought this through.

    Who wants to reach up with there arms for 8 hours a day to move around a tiny mouse pointer, or click on menus & buttons?

    No-one does, but they don't care, they just want to be first to market with the quick answer to the multi-touch problem.

    Apple's answer has been rumoured, and obviously in development for ages, and if you think it through, I mean really think it through, Apple's answer is the only one that would really work, and the only one that ordinary people would actually use.

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  • No more 1997's...

    • 2 May 2010
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    • Adobe Apple Flash Microsoft Steve Jobs
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    Mark Bernstein - Platform Control

    Very insightful piece concerning the motivation of the new Apple.

    Apple has vowed by their actions, that there will never be a day again where they have to rely on the 'goodwill' of another company for their existence.

    Microsoft screwed them and Adobe screwed them. This won't happen again.

    It may make them unpopular with certain 'partners', it may make their market share increase at a lesser rate, it may lose them some customers, but all this is worth it for the survival of the company.

    I hope that when Steve Jobs is sadly no longer with us, he makes sure that this doctrine is in Apple's DNA.

    There will be no more 1997's in Apple's future - that's guaranteed.

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  • Dan Lyons needs to go and see a shrink...

    • 3 Apr 2010
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    • Dan Lyons Steve Jobs
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    http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/04/an-open-letter-to-the-people-of-the-world.html

    I got to the bottom of the first paragraph and gave up.

    Dan Lyons either thinks he's funny or maybe he really thinks he's actually Steve Jobs.

    Either way I think that he's taking all this a bit too seriously.

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  • About

    At the company I work for, there's a person that does the photography, there's a person that does the photoshop work, there's a person who designs the artwork in InDesign and there's a person that handles the marketing, manages the advertising budget and oversees the PR, and all of those people ARE ME.

    I also run 3 websites, and try to post to this one...

    Yes, I'm tired...and a bit grumpy at times...

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