Bending Over Backwards

post from Daring Fireball on 10 March 2011 09:04:14 PM. © Daring Fireball

Walt Mossberg has a 500-word section on “Drawbacks” in his review today of the iPad 2. The whole thing is a crock, an example of trying to be fair/balanced/objective by bending over backwards to find negative things to say about the device. No one is arguing that the iPad 2 is beyond criticism. But almost nothing in Mossberg’s list of drawbacks is valid.

Its cameras take mediocre still photos and Apple won?t evenreveal their megapixel ratings. The company says they weredesigned for video, not still photography. They did capture decentvideo in my tests, including high-definition video from the rearcamera and video good enough from the front camera for satisfyingvideo calling. But, for a company known for quality, which bundlesa new still-photo app with the device, the cameras aredisappointing.

It’s true that the image quality is mediocre, at best, and it’s fair and makes sense to lead with that as the first drawback. But regarding the lack of megapixel specs from Apple — Mossberg has an iPad 2. All he needs to do is snap a picture, transfer it to his Mac, look at the size, then multiply the width by height. These are not secrets.

Also, the battery life, while very good, isn?t as strong as Ifound it to be on the first iPad. In my tough battery test, whereI played full-length movies until the battery died, with thescreen brightness at about 75% and both Wi-Fi and cellular radiosrunning, the iPad 2 just barely exceeded Apple?s claimed batterylife, dying after 10 hours and nine minutes. That?s 2.5 hoursbetter than the Xoom did on the same test, but more than an hourless than I got from the original iPad, which clocked in at 11hours, 28 minutes.

So Mossberg’s second “downside” is that battery life for movie playback — with the brightness set 25 percent higher than Apple’s factory default — exceeds Apple’s stated 10 hours by nine minutes. Apple says you can play video for 10 hours, Mossberg gets 10 hours and nine minutes, and it’s a downside?

You can argue that it should be a “downside” because he got over 11 hours on the same test with an original iPad, but none of the other reviewers seem to be seeing a 10 percent drop in battery life for video playback between the original and new iPads. I saw nearly identical results between the two. Josh Topolsky at Engadget saw better battery life from the iPad 2 than the original.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a review where a product that exceeds the manufacturer’s stated specs for battery life gets dinged for battery life.

The new Apple iPad 2 shown during its launch event in SanFrancisco. Another drawback I encountered was that the new, moretapered design makes it harder to plug cables and accessories —including the charging cable — into the main port on the bottomof the device, because it is now angled.

I thought it was a little hard to plug in a cable the first time. Not because of the angle, though, but because the iPad 2’s 30-pin port seemed a bit too tight. Subsequent plug-ins were much easier, though. In the grand competitive landscape of today’s tablet market, this a major drawback of the iPad 2?

Despite being slimmer and lighter, the iPad 2 still has roughlythe same length and width as the original, so it can?t competewith the Amazon Kindle, or the smaller seven-inch tablets, ifyou?re trying to juggle it while standing in a crowded subway.

OK.

Now we get to the good stuff:

Finally, there are two big omissions, one old and one new. The oldone is that, like Apple?s prior phones and tablets, the shinynew iPad 2 still won?t play Adobe?s Flash video in itsbuilt-in Web browser. This is a deliberate decision by Apple, andputs its devices at a disadvantage for some users when comparedwith Android tablets, which can play Flash, or say they will soon,albeit not always well.

So the Xoom doesn’t play Flash but promises to eventually, the Galaxy Tab does but often not well, and the iPad 2’s lack of Flash is a disadvantage? No mention that there are clearly trade-offs in play. Like that Flash Player might have some sort of effect on battery life. Or that the lack of Flash on the iPad is an impetus that motivates developers to write native iPad apps.

The other omission has to do with cellular data. The iPad 2can?t use, or be upgraded to use, the new, faster 4Gcellular-data networks being rolled out.
Apple says this is because the chips needed to do this are tooimmature, draining battery life. But the Xoom promises to beupgradeable to 4G later this year, though I have no idea how thatupgrade might affect its battery life or monthly fees.

There is no evidence that Apple’s explanation is wrong, and plenty of circumstantial evidence that they’re right (like, say, the fact that the Xoom, which Motorola promised to ship with 4G, was shipped without it), but accordingly to Mossberg, the lack of 4G is a drawback.

The iPad 2 is a real thing that you can go buy in a store tomorrow. What is Mossberg comparing the iPad to? An imaginary tablet, available today, that does have Flash Player and 4G networking, on which neither technology has an adverse effect on battery life? Why not list the lack of a quad-core processor, instead of the iPad 2’s actual dual-cure one, as a drawback, too?

Mossberg’s entire review is only 1,500 words; measured by the word, a full third of what he has to say about it are these “drawbacks”. By contrast, his 1,200-word review of the Motorola Xoom — a tablet nearly everyone, including Mossberg, agrees is inferior to the iPad 2 — contains one 62-word paragraph of “downsides”.

Stating the plain truth, that the iPad 2 has no serious competition as a mainstream consumer device, doesn’t make you biased. It makes you accurate.

Read The Full Article:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/bending_over_backwards

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Square Founder Jack Dorsey Responds to VeriFone

post from Daring Fireball on 10 March 2011 08:03:54 PM. © Daring Fireball

Jack Dorsey:

Any technology?an encrypted card reader, phone camera, or plainold pen and paper?can be used to ?skim? or copy numbers froma credit card. The waiter you hand your credit card to at arestaurant, for example, could easily steal your card details ifhe wanted to?no technology required. If you provide your creditcard to someone who intends to steal from you, they already haveeverything they need: the information on the front of your card. […]
Our partner bank, JPMorgan Chase, continually reviews, verifies,and stands behind every aspect of our service, including ourSquare card reader.

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Read The Full Article:
https://squareup.com/letters/security

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Thermal Vision Creates Thermal Visual Effects for
iOS

post from prMac on 10 March 2011 05:46:00 PM. © prMac

Vancouver based CobbySoft Media announces the release of Thermal Vision 1.0 for iOS. Thermal Vision is designed to interpret the luminance of the object and build an image with thermography effect. Traditional image processing technology is slow and demanding for the iPhone hardware. Thermal Vision overcame this by leveraging the latest OpenGL framework and applying post-processing pixel-shader to each frame of the camera feed and redisplaying the result on the screen using the built-in GPU.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-22798.htm

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iPad 2 Available for Order Online Starting at 1am
Pacific, 4am Eastern

post from Daring Fireball on 10 March 2011 05:04:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

Can’t help but think that pre-orders (such that they’d arrive in customers’ hands tomorrow) weren’t available because Apple wants to see lines outside Apple Stores around the country.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/03/10ipad.html

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MLB.com at Bat 11 for Android

post from Daring Fireball on 10 March 2011 05:04:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

MLB At Bat 11 is available for $15 (same as the iPhone and iPad apps) on Android Market:

Opening Day 2011 is March 31. Additional features andfunctionality for the award-winning At Bat 11, including mobileaccess to live streaming video on select Android devices forMLB.TV subscribers, will be released for Opening Day.

How does one find out which Android devices are “select”?

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Read The Full Article:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mobile/atbat/

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Josh Topolsky on the iPad 2

post from Daring Fireball on 10 March 2011 05:04:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

On the cameras:

Let’s just put this out there: the iPad 2 cameras are reallypretty bad. They’re not unusable, but it’s clear that the sensorsemployed are not top shelf by any measure. If you have a fourthgeneration iPod touch with cameras, you can expect the sameresults. In fact, it seems to us that these are the SAME camerasused in the iPod touch — there’s an “HD” lens around back (whichmeans it’s roughly a single megapixel shooter), and on the frontyou’ve got a lowly VGA cam. Neither one of these produces remotelysatisfying results for still shots, and in particular (whencompared with something like the Xoom), the back camera just seemsutterly second rate. For video duties and FaceTime calls, thecameras are reasonably useful — but we would never trade adedicated camera (or at least a smartphone with a 5+ megapixelshooter) for this.

On GarageBand (and, unlike me, Josh understands music):

Overall, this is a groundbreaking piece of software for tablets.It wasn’t without issues — in fact, we had some major,system-stalling crashes which required a reboot of the iPad. It’sclear that there are bugs to be worked out, and that despite thatA5 CPU and increased memory, a music tracking and arranging appremains a fairly heavy piece of code. Still, we found ourselvescompletely fascinated by GarageBand and unable to put it down.Whether you’re tinkering, writing, or recording, this software’svalue will be clear right from the start.

He includes two original songs created entirely on the iPad with GarageBand.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/09/ipad-2-review/

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Veenix, LLC Introduces ChromaTunes a
Chromatically Smart MP3 Player

post from prMac on 10 March 2011 03:34:00 PM. © prMac

Veenix, LLC, is pleased to introduce ChromaTunes, a smart and easy-to-use MP3 player for the Mac that organizes music by HPE energy-color. Hear exactly what you're in the mood to hear with a single click.ChromaTunes also features smart playlists for artist, album, and genre, plus Veenix's "Smart More Like This Tune" technology which allows you to select a tune and instantly create a playlist of similar tunes.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-22669.htm

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