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Joshua Topolsky: Let’s just put this up front: the keyboard in Windows Phone 7 is really, really good. We’re talking nearly as good as the iPhone keyboard, and definitely better than the stock Android option. It’s one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we’ve used on any platform — and that’s saying a…
Joshua Topolsky:
Let’s just put this up front: the keyboard in Windows Phone 7 is really, really good. We’re talking nearly as good as the iPhone keyboard, and definitely better than the stock Android option. It’s one of the best and most accurate virtual keyboards we’ve used on any platform — and that’s saying a lot
I have to admit that I really want to try one of these phones – they look a lot better than Android.
I was pumped when I got my first DODO Case for my iPad – it was awesome, beautiful and looked like my Moleskin notebooks, a perfect case. The other day I saw this post about DODO talking about what a wild success they have been, and it got me to thinking about how much I…
I was pumped when I got my first DODO Case for my iPad – it was awesome, beautiful and looked like my Moleskin notebooks, a perfect case. The other day I saw this post about DODO talking about what a wild success they have been, and it got me to thinking about how much I have grown to hate that case.
The first DODO case I got warped after sitting on my desk for just one weekend. (see picture 1 and picture 2) It took me two and a half weeks to get a new case from DODO (free replacement) and I returned the warped case. I don’t know why the case warped – though I suspect that the wood may have been too ‘green’ (meaning it was not fully dried) and that is what caused the warping. This is most likely do to trying to ship the product as fast as they can and really does not reflect on the quality of the manufacturing.
The second DODO case arrived and I watched it very closely to make sure that it was not warping. To date it has not warped, but last week marked the last week that I would have a DODO case to use for my iPad.
One month ago I dropped my DODO case (with my iPad in it) on to the ground. The case landed on the corner, on office carpet from a distance of about 3 feet. I scrambled to pick it up and checked my iPad out – all was OK and the iPad was sufficiently protected.
Fast-forward about three days and I am starting to notice that the iPad is not fitting as secure in the case as it did when I got it. The same symptoms the case exhibited when it was warped – I checked the case for warping and noted none. I did however see that the wood that holds the iPad in place was cracked in the corner that I dropped it.(picture 1 and picture 2 of cracking)
Some super glue later and the crack was repaired – it wasn’t pretty but the iPad was secure once again. Last week sitting on my couch I noticed a chuck of wood fall from the case. It was a chunk that broke off in a completely different corner, and the glue had broken free. Marking the death of the DODO case for my iPad.
The DODO case is a beautiful case for the $60 that it costs you. I would still be using it today if it could hold up – but in less than a couple of month’s time it has completely fallen apart. This is a shame as the case is really great, perhaps more of a shame is the fact that I don’t even want to bother trying to get a new one from the company – the customer service was poor the last time and I frankly don’t want to use this case any longer.
On to the next one…
Stan Schroeder: In another attempt to bring a usable computer to the masses at an extremely affordable price point, India has developed a touchscreen computing device which will cost only $35. According to a press release by India’s Press Information Bureau, the price is expected to drop even further, first to $20 and ultimately to…
Stan Schroeder:
In another attempt to bring a usable computer to the masses at an extremely affordable price point, India has developed a touchscreen computing device which will cost only $35. According to a press release by India’s Press Information Bureau, the price is expected to drop even further, first to $20 and ultimately to a mere $10.
This has been all over the news this morning. But I don’t think it really is that great of a ‘deal’.
The mean household income in the U.S. is $60,528 a year. I could not find similar statistics for India, but from the non-factual sources I could find it was pegged around $1,000-2,000 a year. For the sake of argument let’s go with India at $2,500 mean income per household yearly. Let us also use the iPad as the equivalent Tablet in the U.S. at $499 each.
In the U.S. then the iPad represents 0.82% of the mean annual household income – in India this new $35 tablet represents 1.4% of the mean annual household income. That is a huge difference and in a nation as poor as India it is not really affordable. $35 might sound amazing to everyone in the U.S. – but it is still the equivalent of an $843.61 expense for us in the U.S.. Not so cheap now is it?
MG Siegler: WebOS is the key to all of this. It’s the software layer that HP’s hardware has been lacking — forcing them to go with Microsoft instead. But the Palm acquisition in April changed all of that. From the moment that happened, HP has made no secret that the reason for the deal was to “double-down” on…
MG Siegler:
WebOS is the key to all of this. It’s the software layer that HP’s hardware has been lacking — forcing them to go with Microsoft instead. But the Palm acquisition in April changed all of that. From the moment that happened, HP has made no secret that the reason for the deal was to “double-down” on webOS.
This whole post is spot on.
MG Siegler: Microsoft easily beat Wall Street estimates that they would see about $15.3 billion in revenues. Microsoft largely credits strong sales within enterprise of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Net income was also strong at $4.52 billion. And earnings per share were at $0.51. Both of those beat Wall Street estimates as well.
MG Siegler:
Microsoft easily beat Wall Street estimates that they would see about $15.3 billion in revenues. Microsoft largely credits strong sales within enterprise of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Net income was also strong at $4.52 billion. And earnings per share were at $0.51. Both of those beat Wall Street estimates as well.
John Gruber: This might epitomize the difference between Android and iOS. [via DF]
This is so very not good.
This is so very not good.
This is so awesome looking. Best stand yet – which means that I have two available for purchase if you want them let me know.
This is so awesome looking. Best stand yet – which means that I have two available for purchase if you want them let me know.
Apple: Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 61 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.41 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit…
Apple:
Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter, representing a new quarterly record and a 33 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 61 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.41 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of 3.27 million.
That is a crazy amount of iPads sold.
Very interesting – so much of what is wrong with government is due to officials not caring about their job. They are there for a check and not to help you. Keeping that in mind read this bit from David Streitfeld: “Remember the Soviet Union?” said Hector Alvarado, who heads a civic advocacy group. “They…
Very interesting – so much of what is wrong with government is due to officials not caring about their job. They are there for a check and not to help you. Keeping that in mind read this bit from David Streitfeld:
“Remember the Soviet Union?” said Hector Alvarado, who heads a civic advocacy group. “They had a lot of bureaucracy, and they lost. Maywood was like that. Now people know if they don’t work, they will be laid off. Much better this way.”
Loss of your job when you work for local governments is very rare from what I have seen – outsourcing may be controversial, but it can work.
Sounds like a great way to mitigate damage done by exploits people find in Acrobat – next up should be Flash.
Sounds like a great way to mitigate damage done by exploits people find in Acrobat – next up should be Flash.
Good luck with that. Seems like if they do manage to meet the October date it will be utter crap – they have yet to even pick an OS for the device. They simply do not have enough time to make a well polished device to compete head to head with the iPad if they…
Good luck with that. Seems like if they do manage to meet the October date it will be utter crap – they have yet to even pick an OS for the device. They simply do not have enough time to make a well polished device to compete head to head with the iPad if they have not perfected it by today (for a launch in October this year atleast).
As I figured this would fall apart once evidence started coming out. It looks like the guy knew Zuckerberg, but probably can’t prove the ownership of Facebook.
As I figured this would fall apart once evidence started coming out. It looks like the guy knew Zuckerberg, but probably can’t prove the ownership of Facebook.
It seems the answer to the above question brings a mixed bag from people. The way I see it there are two camps: those that think Apple needs to do more, and those that think Apple has reached a resolution. What is more telling though is exactly who is saying what. The Apple Should Do…
It seems the answer to the above question brings a mixed bag from people. The way I see it there are two camps: those that think Apple needs to do more, and those that think Apple has reached a resolution. What is more telling though is exactly who is saying what.
This crowd is made up of people that are experiencing dropped calls due to the ‘weak spot’ on the iPhone. They are not satisfied with Apple’s free case solution and yet are not willing to return the phone. These people also are getting terrible coverage with AT&T and just didn’t know it before due to the screwy algorithm that Apple was using.
This crowd wants a real solution where no matter how they hold or use the phone they experience no problems. This is not unreasonable on the surface, but it is far from possible at this point.
This group may or may not be able to make the weak spot drop bars, and are rarely experiencing dropped calls outside of the normal ‘I-am-on-a-major-highway-in-Seattle-and-the-call-dropped-while-I-was-on-Bluetooth’ calls. Further they couldn’t be happier with their iPhone 4 and a free case is just icing on the cake.
It has become apparent to me that the real problem is not the iPhone 4 it is actually AT&T (and every other cellphone provider). You see every other major smartphone on the market suffers the same fate of the iPhone 4 if held in certain ways (you can argue if you want that the iPhone 4 is more prone due to the manner that you hold it, but it is irrelevant). If the only way to solve this problem (at least that I have heard about from antenna engineers) is to go back to external antennas that you have to pull out on the phone, or the nubs at the top – then I think we can all agree it is a solution that none of us want.
So the only solution then would be to improve the cell network coverage of all the major carriers. This means that if I touch the ‘weak spot’ on the iPhone 4 I only lose one bar instead of two, which means there is no dropped call (assuming the better network gives us all full bars).
We should all be pissed at the cell carriers: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile. It is they who have failed us, not the smartphone manufacturers. It may take AT&T 3-years to get a new cell tower in downtown San Francisco as Steve Jobs stated, but how long does it take to roll out free Femtocells to customers with poor reception? Shouldn’t AT&T just be giving these away – why would you charge for one, they are far less costly to install than a regular cell tower and guess what: they can be installed in days.
Even better AT&T keeps charging you for the bandwidth used on these devices even though you are the one paying for the internet connection. Femtocells is not the end solution to the entire problem – better network coverage is – but they are certainly a great stopgap. They are a stopgap that AT&T just may need to use to stop an exodus to other carriers if/when the iPhone goes to them.
Fred Vogelstein has written an incredibly interesting article on the Apple and AT&T relationship, if you don’t have time to read the whole thing (you should make time) take a look at these choices quotes: They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’ and we always said,…
Fred Vogelstein has written an incredibly interesting article on the Apple and AT&T relationship, if you don’t have time to read the whole thing (you should make time) take a look at these choices quotes:
They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’ and we always said, ‘Fine, we’ll escalate it to Steve and see who wins.’ I think history has demonstrated how that turned out.”
and
Even more irksome to AT&T, though, has been Apple’s relative silence in the face of thousands of frustrated customers. “AT&T went in thinking the deal was a true partnership: ‘We’re in this together, and we defend each other throughout.’ That wasn’t the way Apple did things at all,” says someone who worked on the project for AT&T. “We’d say, ‘Let’s resolve these issues together,’ and they’d say, ‘No, you resolve them. They’re not our problem. They’re your problem.’”
and
Even if AT&T had wanted to respond with iPhone ads, Apple would have refused. “Put yourself in Apple’s shoes,” says an Apple executive involved in those conversations. “The reason the Verizon ads were so effective wasn’t because of the iPhone. It was because of AT&T’s network. We would have been letting them use the iPhone to put lipstick on a pig.”
and lastly
Jobs and his team would continue to discuss switching to Verizon, but these were always short conversations. “Every time the issue of switching came up, it always seemed to cause as many problems as it solved,” according to a source who attended some of these meetings.
I would ignore this on most blogs, but Stephen M. Hackett used to be an Apple Genius (still is, just not employed as one) and given that he has pretty good sources on this matter.
I would ignore this on most blogs, but Stephen M. Hackett used to be an Apple Genius (still is, just not employed as one) and given that he has pretty good sources on this matter.
