Posts by Steve Ballantyne
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@ Recordari:
I was being ironic. Couldn't you tell?
I assumed you were but preferred to ignore it to reiterate my loathing and contempt for that video clip. And, um, you weren't a Mac user in 1981, because they weren't invented until 1984, when I started using them. I expect you meant Apple user.
The point of my little anecdotes was that I strongly suspect the iPad's concealment of the gory details of the file system will contribute to making the iPad and its sequels the prevalent device for lightweight day-to-day computing. Like, everyone will use them for reasons that will be so obvious that only dickheads will ignore them. The form factor and the touch screen will help too.
Frankly, the number of reasonably smart people I've met over the years who don't understand the difference between memory and storage, or who've lost their work somewhere on their hard disks and want me to help find it, is disgraceful. As somebody said a couple of weeks ago, for years the public has been asking the computer industry for elevators and the industry has given them aeroplanes instead -- and then sneered at them for being crappy pilots.
That said, I won't be buying an iPad myself this year. I've recently finished Hackintoshing my PC (it was that or Windows 7 and really, I've had enough of Windows) which has freed up my BlackBook for casual couch computing and the like. My personal IT budget this year will probably go on replacing my iPhone 3G with the HD model around the middle of the year.
My Hackintosh, by the way, goes like a rocket powered freight train. Yeeha!
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Yeah. Anyone else wants to smash an iPad, let me know. I'll relieve you of the burden. We could make a video of you giving it to me and put it on YouTube.
@ recordari: What a very peculiar attitude. Like I said, that's dickhead talk -- and (Simon Grigg) I hardly think it makes me into George bloody Bush for saying so.
@ Simon Grigg: This is the sort of thing I think is going to happen in the next few years:
A: "I downloaded Kick-Ass IV onto my iPad the other night -- what a dag!
B: "Apple sux, you dopey fanboi"
A: "Okay, be a dickhead if you want to."
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A: "What'd you think of Jonathan's new novella? Isn't it perfect?"
B: "I heard it's only out as an e-book, and you know I never go near those awful things. Paper or nothing, darling."
A: "Jeez, what a dickhead."
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A: "Doctor Smith never gets his patient notes in on time -- he gets registrars to key them in from his unreadable hand-written notes instead."
B: "Christ, what'd they give him an iPad for? What a dickhead."
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And
A: "Hey, what about this -- the complete works of Tommy Cooper in H264 for the iPad Pro II. Fantastic!"
B: "Apple is a filthy closed system that wants to control what you read, see and listen to and prevent you from expressing yourself through the mediums of C#, .Net, Flash, Lua and Visual BASIC. They'll never get a cent out of me!"
A: "Lord, isn't it bad enough you're a dickhead? Why be a f*ckwit as well?"
And so on ad infinitum, judging by recent rants from assorted Windroids and Penguin shaggers.
I like this, from PatrickWeb:
the iPad will change the model of personal computing -- not immediately and not for everyone, but for many millions of people the PC will begin to look like a dinosaur. One of my reasons for such a bullish view is the number of skeptics coming forward to say that the iPad is not what it is cracked up to be. Skeptics have been a reliable predictor of the next big thing...
That's from a 38-year IBM veteran who used to be their VP for internet technology, among other things.
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@ Recordari: That video you posted -- that's one of several reasons why I think the collective noun for iPad haters will be "dickheads" in a couple of years' time, if not sooner.
@ Steve Withers: Since I'm a user rather than a Cory Doctorow-style f*ckwit (which you're not either, no doubt) I'm completely happy with Apple's policy about reserving access to their platform. When you look at what went down between Apple and Microsoft from the time of the original release of the Macintosh to the release of Windows 95 it's little wonder that Apple's attitude is somewhat hard-nosed.
I'm sure Steve Jobs feels this particularly strongly -- that permanent frown he wears isn't entirely the result of years of Veganism, I'm sure. Google's early palling up with Apple, followed by its swiping of iPhone concepts for its own use, echos Microsoft's appropriation of Macintosh innovations so closely that it must give Jobs the here-we-go-again shudders.
Indeed it is annoying that WiFi tracking software is gone from the App Store; luckily I happened to download a few of these before the ban was announced. But the ban is a consequence of Apple quite reasonably denying third party developers use of its private APIs. One of the reasons why they're private is that they're provisional and may change; so I'm not confident my WiFi apps will necessarily work with iPhone OS4.
Anyway, it's not as if Apple has actively moved to stop you from jailbreaking your iPhone or your iPad -- do that and you'll be able to run anything you care to write.
Although -- correct me if I'm wrong -- you won't be able to open an account with the App Store. So there's your choice -- software mostly written by Linux nerds or you, or the App Store, which has so much stuff in it that there's a good chance whatever you want has already been developed and is going for $1.99?
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Precisely zero workplaces I've worked in have had any Apples.
That's interesting. Every place I've worked at except one has at least started off with Macintoshes, or else didn't use little computers because they hadn't been invented yet. Ah, galley pulls, Grant Projectors, non-print pencils. I miss you all. Even SnoPake and Cow Gum.
And the places that have dropped Macs (usually at the behest of accounts) have always shown a subsequent decline in the quality of their product, although Adobe's PC version of InDesign is mitigating that now, I think -- it simply disregards Microsoft's text and colour management routines.
It's not all magazines, newspapers and books, though. At The Meeting I attended in Santa Monica in July everyone brought their own MacBook, except for the physics guy there -- the only person in the room older than me, and the only one with a Dell.
Thanks, Xerox
It's amusing that some of the features of modern GUIs invented by Apple, such as dropdown menus, overlapping windows, spatial file organisation and even keyboard shortcuts are missing from the iPad. You could say it's the most Xeroxy computer since 1980.
Have a look at this and this, which discuss some of the things we take for granted that weren't invented at Xerox PARC, as well as the ones that were.
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The best part about the iPad is that it completely hides the filing system from the user. This doesn’t exactly suit me, because I like faffing about making up schemes for storing my data, but I can see that once word of this gets around it will be hugely popular. You want to write something? Just click on Pages and off you go.
The cheapest version of Microsoft Office on Amazon is over $US100. IWork -- the Pages word processor, the spreadsheet and the presentation software -- $US30 the lot. The iPad starts at $US499, including web browser and email, which altogether makes a pretty competitive productivity package.
It’s not as if hiding the filing system isn’t something other systems haven’t done before. For example: Suppose you’re using Office 2007 and you’ve just made and saved a Word template. Where is it? Within Word 2007 it’s under New, under the Office-logo-menu, but where it really is in the file system is a secret. Word 2007 won’t tell you, and when you try to ask Word help, as I’ve just done on my PC, it gives the answer to “Why do you check to see if my software is genuine when I download a template?” instead. Typical, is my Mac user’s response.
Anyway, even knowing where the Mac version of Word keeps my templates doesn’t help much; and even if you know where Word 2007 keeps them on your PC, it doesn’t matter because Microsoft doesn’t think you or other users should know.
That would be okay if there weren’t times when I want to find stuff like templates and can’t, and other times when saving a file just about any old where would be fine.
Apple’s non-half-arsed approach is better; the iPad doesn’t hide some of the filing system, it hides all of it and expects software developers to keep that in mind. Remember what the reaction was when the iMac was the first computer to -- horrors! -- leave out the floppy disk drive? Leaving out access to the filing system will be even more disruptive and ultimately popular.
Besides, the Mac has Spotlight, or relatively good disk search. If that’s a part of the iPad operating system all should be sweet (it’ll need to be better than Spotlight on my iPhone, though, which I’m dismayed to find hasn’t indexed my Bento database.)
Like everyone else I won’t be buying an iPad this year, but I almost certainly will buy the improved model.
@BenWilson: Ohhh, that Ben Wilson! Sorry, the connection didn’t click. Young Dave was never much good with Apple stuff – in retrospect I think buying him an Atari 800 that long-ago Christmas was a bad idea, what with its damn command line and all; but what alternative was there back then? How was I to know it would lead to bloody Amigas, and eventually to PCs?
Sorry I bracketed you with Hopeful and Barnes – it was unjust. Feel free to swap out “Wilson” for “Semmens”. When did The Cult of Anti-Mac replace The Cult of Mac for virulence and rabid irrationality? Was it when the iMac showed that Apple wasn’t going to die after all? Or when the Cult of Linux brought its own special flavour of whiney resentment to the game?
Anyway, your wait for a print sequel is probably in vain – Bob the Illustrator is now Bob the Fine Artist, which makes much more money for him than comics. You wouldn’t be surprised if you saw the work he’s doing now. Although we may collaborate on an entirely different project I’ve discussed with him. Faint glimmer: I have a bunch of Terry episode outlines left over from an earlier go-round, and late last year somebody was asking after option rights.
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For the most part, the iPad sounds like a device I want for purely functional reasons; since being tossed from the NBR I've spent plenty of time on the sofa watching the TV, and reading commentary such as televisionwithoutpity.com or Wikipedia's episode guides isn't easy on an iPhone or even a clumsy, fold-up notebook.
But there are some bits that need clarification for me -- will this thing tether to my iPhone? If so, I won't need the 3G version. If it tethers, will that include feeding GPS data?
Making a USB slot and an SD card reader optional extras strikes me as being pretty cheeky. Leaving out a front-facing camera suggests that Apple wants the information flow to be predominantly in, rather than out. Or perhaps it's another remnant of Steve Jobs' desire to differentiate Apple products by including or excluding features -- if you want people to see you when you Skype you'll have to buy a MacBook.
I may wait until next years' model comes out.
And what's this about the iBooks app not being available down here? That really dismays me.
Back in the 1980s I turned out three kids' books, for which, because I had a co-author, I was paid half of the industry standard 10% royalty based on the retail price, which meant each book made me somewhat less than a week of my day job. I was looking forward to the 70% royalty apple pays content creators such as app developers; it might be enough to motivate me to write more.
If it turns out that some grouping of the New Zealand publishing industry has anything to do with stopping Apple from including iBook on the iPad I'd be angry but not at all surprised. This weeks' Listener has an extract from Kate De Goldi's excellent introduction to the new edition of my Dad's "great, unread New Zealand novel,' Sydney Bridge Upside Down, which is being republished by some Australians who know the marvelous when they see it. When he was alive, though, being a great novelist never made much money for my Dad; luckily he was a great journalist as well. The book trade in New Zealand is long overdue its enema.
I mention all this in part because of Steve Jobs' remarks about Apple always trying to be "at the intersection of technology and liberal arts". Wilson, Hopeful, Barnes and others -- has it occurred to you that such considerations are more valuable to many of us than your emotional investment in hardware and software systems that are irrelevant to our needs? Say what you like about Apple, but its products address issues that apparently are simply not on your maps.
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Old folks were taught the proper use of the apostrophe, so they know it's not at all ambiguous.
From a pedant's point of view that is so, so wrong.
Starting with the word "folks" itself. Remember, I write as a pedant.
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Am I correct in thinking you still need special glasses to see these 3D films, and the only advance is they are polarised instead of different colours.
Actually the Avatar screening in Auckland didn't have a silver screen or polarised glasses – instead it used the Dolby 3D process, which (I think I may have mentioned this before) uses expensive dichroic filters to separate the left and right images.
The glasses were good, but a little like welding goggles and less suitable for spectacle wearers than bigger, cheaper polarising filters. Also, the picture would have been better on a silver screen because you need all the brightness you can get when you're watching a movie through glasses that cut the overall brightness by a minimum of 50%.
One lesson from the screenings on Saturday and Sunday: Cinema 6 at St Lukes presumably has a big expensive digital projector and therefore may be the best place to see shot-on-digital films. Or should I say 'films'?
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Oh right.
Most American films come now in one size only: XXL. Dragged down by their own size, they're monster productions, buried under the weight of cast and crew, whose end credits last longer than a short story
Not that size has anything to do with merit in an absolute sense, of course. And we're not pre-judging or anything, are we?
Although I have to say I never cared for Chris Petit's stuff in Time Out much. I bet there's more people on the end credits of some of James Cameron's movies than turned up to form the audience for most of Petit's glum films.
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Some thoughts about 3D and Avatar:
I like to think my hero Raymond Durgnat, who never let critical rigour come between him and a good time at the movies, would have greatly appreciated the impending crop of 3D movies. Especially James Cameron's Avatar.
I spent the best part of the last fortnight in Los Angeles, where I learned a few things: one was that Dolby has a 3D system that uses very narrow-cutting dichroic filters to encode 3D information into red and blue channels in such a way that the rest of the colour image on the film is undisturbed. You can read about it on Dolby's site.
People who've seen it (not me) say it's preferable to even RealD, currently the best polarizing system on offer. Despite what some say, I still think that with most polarizing systems you can get cross-talk between the left and right images if you don't have your eyes and the glasses properly aligned to the horizontal. This doesn't happen with the Dolby system.
The disadvantage of Dolby's high-tech anaglyph glasses is they cost about $US40 a pair, although I bet that's cheaper than the LCD shutter glasses IMax originally used for its 3D experiments.
Another advantage of the Dolby technology is that if you slipped a couple of the dichroic filters into the colour wheel of a Texas Instruments-based DLP projector you could show proper 3D movies on the wall of your living room. Bugger – I was hoping my 42in LCD panel would see me out....
I also happened to see the Avatar footage shown at Comic Con and reported on by Quint at Ain't it Cool News. Quint is far too cautious about this material – the thing that struck me about what was shown was that, apart from being a terrific return to the dynamism of Cameron's earlier films, it is also a fantastically beautiful film to watch.
It really is much more than just another gimmick. Even the interior sequences had a unique texture and atmosphere – but the exterior sequences were astonishingly lovely, almost entirely alien (except for the odd NZ-style fern) and completely convincing, and it's mostly shot and rendered down in Wellington.
I used to be a film reviewer a long time ago, so my professional-ish opinion is that crowds will line up to see Avatar, then come out and join the queues to see it again – three times. And that's just the general audience – the real fans will be even more enthusiastic.