pvidler

The rumoured iPad mini is supposed to have them same 1024x768 resolution as the iPad 1 & 2. Apparently, if you stuck to Apple's developer guidelines and used the same 44x44 point minimum size for both iPhone and iPad, then any touch controls on the new device will be the same size as they would be on the iPhone. So no effort required for developers.

There was an article about it on here the other day, but now it's probably lost in all the other rumours.

Yep, location-based alerts such as when you have reminders using 'geofencing' (e.g. remind me to xyz when I leave work) -- they could fire as you leave your actual office, instead of after you drive away (which is often not as helpful).

True, although I feel there is still plenty of room for as-yet-unseen ambition in projects that fit within the rules (for every app store). And it's worth pointing out that there is a significant benefit to the users for restricting what apps can do -- albeit at the risk of reducing the more 'ambitious' projects for the sake of the least common denominator of users.

Yeah, one that brings huge numbers of potential customers to your door, processes credit card transactions for you and may give you some free publicity (featured spots, etc.).

Except that the main app stores are fairly transparent about how much of the money you get and they generally let developers set their own prices.

True, but surely you can retain the ability to alert or otherwise communicate these things to your users without putting any of the main GUI in a web view? Minor bugs require only a little communication and major show-stoppers can be avoided with care.

Maybe I'm a little biased on this, but I hate that a web app I might be relying on can change completely (both in GUI and functionality) without my consent or involvement; at least with app updates I can get some warning and release notes -- a chance to extract my data before taking the plunge... but I guess I'm getting a bit off-topic.

One hour is appalling? Are your users that dependent on running the latest version of your app, or is it a concern about fixing show-stopping bugs in reasonable time?

> or even the iOS App Store that is almost indistinguishable from a native app

Are we using the same app store? It's awful! It's painfully slow and it frequently 'forgets' what I was doing when I press the back button after viewing an app's details (search filters and list positions, to name a few).

It won't help you with your phone, but isn't there a version of thunderbird on portableapps.com? These install and keep their data on a USB stick, so you can take it with you between desktop, laptop, work and friends' computers (no install needed).

Edit: might be windows only, though.

If the government gives up any and all control over the internet, then they simply cede it to the ISPs and carriers; they win by default simply because our access must go through them.

I don't want to be paying extra to access certain popular services, or to be rate-limited while accessing a service that my own ISP owns an alternative to. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

That said, I can benefit in some areas that would no longer exist with government-enforced net neutrality. For example, here in the UK BT offers an unlimited broadband deal with 'exclusions' -- without them I suspect there would have to be bandwidth caps:

"We want to give everyone the best possible speeds at all times, so we only manage speeds on P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing networks at peak times. All other broadband use isn't affected – and there's no limit to how much you can download." -- from the products and services page on BT.com.

Is it likely to be a $100 premium? The iPad 3 is $499 and the iPad 2 is $399, so I'd expect what amounts to a mini iPad 2 to be maybe $299... So based on that I assume you are comparing it to the new google tablet, except that this is being sold at cost -- I don't think we'll be seeing too many android tablets of comparable quality at that price.

Yes, but if i recall correctly, apple's patent claim is quite specific about dragging an on-screen picture across a visually represented path -- isn't that how google got around it in android? The neonode, on the other hand, doesn't look to have any visual indicator at all; it just uses a corner-to-corner swipe with nothing extra on the screen.

Also, it was the judge who said the neonode made it obvious, which seems wrong to me given the lack of mainstream implementations.

But none of this changes the fact that this patent is ludicrously trivial -- even if not obvious -- and should never have seen the light of day.

That is a fair question -- the neonode phone may count as prior art (although it looks a bit different to Apple's patent claims), but it's not exactly a well known phone. It's very unlikely that people at Apple would have been aware enough of that to make their own implementation 'obvious' based solely on that -- unless it was big in the US but never made it far here? Edit: and two independent implementations (out of the hundreds of phone models) certainly doesn't prove obviousness; that's a nasty insult to the engineers/designers who worked on the neonode and may well have been proud of their innovation.

Still, for all that I love Apple and their products, swipe to unlock is a pitifully small thing to waste a patent on. To my mind, patents are needed but should be:

* non-transferable to a new owner -- no buying and selling, and lost altogether when the owning company is itself acquired.

* only applicable to actual products -- invalid if none of the company's products use it within, say, one or two years of application.

* short term -- two or three years from initial product release ought to be enough, while still allowing some competition down the line.

* very low base cost, but with a small cost per product model and maybe even a tiny cost for each device sold.

Those four changes could probably bring the patent system back to its original intent, in my opinion.

Surely there are lots of possible solutions -- tapping multiple points of a photo in sequence (am I the only one who prefers tapping for the reduction in finger prints?), camera face recognition, etc. You could even use a physical gesture, detecting patterns of movement of the phone through the accelerometer and gyro. Hmm... maybe I need to patent that!

A physical button would have been fine too -- something like the mute/orientation button would be enough to prevent most accidental triggering. Not very discoverable, though.

Right now my the only method I actually like is the iPad smart cover, as it's already unlocked by the time I have opened it. I tend to use a flip open case for my iPhone -- to protect from the inevitable fluff while in my pocket and to help the speaker when open (angle it just right for a big improvement in volume) -- so I'd like to see the iPhone 5 include that magnetic detection technology. Not very likely, I know.

Yes, it seems that many devices -- even phones -- have had a physical slider to lock/unlock. What I find strange about the lcd-touch-panel version is why everyone wants to use it? I thought skeuomorphic design was something that everyone but apple was actively avoiding.

I think I actually prefer the version where you draw a 2D pattern on a grid of numbers, or a picture... although this may also be covered by the patent. Hate patents.

Just tried his test case and at first I couldn't reproduce it at all. On my iPhone 4S, you have to do the second finger tapping quite quickly for it to go wrong -- just touching it the way he does in the video is not triggering it for me.

I actually prefer controllers for FPSs now, but mostly because I rarely game on PC anymore.

In addition to those you list, I would say that anything largely mouse controlled on PC should work reasonably well on mobile devices -- RTS games, Diablo-type games (looking forward to infinity blade dungeons) and sim games (theme hospital, etc.).

In fact, the only games I'm really missing on iOS are the FPS games. And it really is just the attempt to have virtual dual-stick controls that I dislike -- the games are there (mass effect infiltrator, dead space, etc.). If someone could just produce a decent Bluetooth controller and get developers to support it, I'd say that iOS could be the most well rounded gaming system out there -- capable of both console-style gameplay as well as game types that are weak on consoles (RTSs and the others listed above).

I'm also excited about onlive, which I already use with the TV-connected box. I think they were also working on a universal controller…

True enough, but there are also the mobile ports of older games -- notably the touch-friendly ones like monkey island, but more serious 'gamer' games are also coming, such as the Baldur's Gate rerelease. There are variations on C&C and Starcraft (official for the former, less so the latter). There are board games like monopoly and card games like poker and even magic the gathering.

On the social gaming side, I agree that very little of what you do in things like FarmVille actually seems like gaming, but then that was also my experience with much of World of Warcraft…

I think you just have to give it time -- gaming on mobile devices will probably grow up with the users, who seem to be predominately younger folk and teenagers from what I've seen (referring to mobile gamers here, not smartphone users in general).

Also, I have high hopes for the low initial cost and easy in-app purchases finally leading to some decent story-driven episodic games.

Mobile gaming is already huge. They are mostly casual games, certainly, but they are selling quite well.

Also, I have been to a steadily increasing number of offices in recent years where everyone had laptops (typically Dell, I think) with docking stations and monitors. This is usually to make it easier for presentations, attending conferences/training days and working from home.

In fairness, the video seems to be comparing exactly this -- the sports questions seem to show that he's using iOS 6.

Speed and voice quality are irrelevant to me, but I do really like what he was able to do with the image search on android. It wasn't clear if the android version integrates with wolfram alpha, or any of siri's other sources.

I answered with a question because no-one here is in a position to actually answer any of these questions -- it all really hangs on what was said and done behind the scenes; I'm just playing devil's advocate and providing an alternative point of view.

My opinion is that upping the max. resolution for a graphics card is neither especially innovative nor difficult (early reports seem to show that the chip is not really fast enough for it anyway -- see the review on anandtech). While producing a 15" retina display may be more difficult than a 10" model, it seems to me that it's more of a yield and cost issue (but perhaps there's a lot more involved).

On the other hand, having the vision (okay, the deep pockets also help) to get all these previously non-existent pieces together, and to get it working with reasonable battery life and heat, could be seen as innovative -- if any part of the MBPwRD is.

(The redesigned fan is actually my favourite part -- I hate whining high-pitched laptop fans).

As for your final example -- there doesn't seem to be any innovation in it at all? Innovation is about coming up with something new. Let's change it a little -- suppose your boss came up with a complete idea for a genuinely new web app and asks you to build it; much of the innovation is his, in my opinion. If you do something genuinely new in the implementation, then you may also be innovating.

I guess my point is that (I believe that) the product can be innovative even if the parts aren't, and especially if they are.

> How much of a MacBook Pro is Apple innovation? and how much of it is doing a great job of pulling together supplier's innovations with some great design and system integration?

And how much was it that suppliers were being pushed by Apple into being 'innovative'? Would anyone be producing laptop size retina panels if not for Apple's demand? How long would we have waited for retina laptops if we had to rely on HP, Dell, etc.?

Combining old components into new products can be just as innovative as creating new components themselves. Innovation is not restricted to the lowest levels.

Edit: let me clarify this a bit. If apple goes to LCD panel suppliers and says 'you only support 1080p in this size, but give us 2880x1800 and we'll buy x million units', is it the supplier who's being innovative? Remember that apple also had to get nvidia to produce a mobile graphic chip with a much higher max. resolution -- it seems to me that it was Apple's vision of the whole that drove the innovation for the parts.

I think I must have very nearly every app of this type in the app store. All have noticeable lag with a jot pro stylus, though some are reasonable when just using a finger -- I guess the lag simply can't be seen in that case.

I find handwriting with my fingers to be a bit unnatural, unfortunately; it tends to break my flow.

I tend to use whiteboards with a team who are all in the room with me, rather than as an individual (although I'm thinking of installing one in my home office, just to see how useful it would be). The iPad is less useful in this case, although I suppose you could get a big TV screen connected (or apple tv). Also, there are apps specifically designed to take and share photos of physical whiteboards…

The real killer for me is still the lag. Handwriting is just painful, although perhaps simple diagrams are not so bad? It seems to me that an Android tablet could distinguish itself by providing both very low lag with something like the Wacom accuracy. The iPad is unlikely to ever reach the ideal 1 ms lag -- I suspect the retina displays have relatively high response times (but have no evidence).

> Possibly with walkmans/iPods

And do books count as well? Not really devices, but just as absorbing, for some of us. I don't really understand why we think about electronic devices differently from every other human invention.

A year or two ago, I had a short train commute (Loughborough to Leicester and back, on one of the main routes to London) on a daily basis and saw far more people immersed in books than in their phones -- I suspect it was a bit early in the day for the younger folk, though.

In fact, it was more common to see business people using laptops than books and phones combined.

Their engineering team produced a much smaller version and their competitors had products very similar to the mini. So there was a very good reason to release the superior product -- why hold back?

What was great about the mini -> nano transition is that they did actually kill the mini. Too many companies would have hedged their bets and kept it around, which I think would have been a mistake.

People who keep it disabled on all but a few white-listed sites.

That would be nice, but the battery life would be really poor. There's no optical drive to ditch for more room in the Air.

I expect this to be the main differentiator between the 13" Air and Pro models going forward.

Also works fine on mobile safari (iPad).

Very interesting, but most of these examples look like they would be fairly nonsensical to someone without JavaScript enabled (especially the line chart). To say nothing of those who use screen readers.

Is there a handy way of providing some more meaningful 'alt' text? Perhaps just ignore text in the element? (I didn't check -- you may already be doing this, but I didn't see it mentioned).