Pere Benavent Personal Blog
A work mate offered me his old white macbook. As long as Apple decides about the so called programmed obsolescence, he installed a Linux to stay secure and fully operative.
He use to run Linux Mint, which is a good distro for the desktop and end-user.
He asked what distro I use, and so, he will install it to me saving my time. The funny side of the story is that when he told me he was surprised about how fast and smooth Fedora performs on the same hardware. Good point for Fedora team.
I’ve been involved in a contactless payment project, in fact, maybe one of the biggest projects in Spain.
Among other powerful reasons (such a VISA and Mastercard support) one reason to choose NFC as a technology to implement contactless payment is because it’s an standard. I do love standards
Apple has shown its contactless solutions (it starts at 43:11) as a breakthrough. But, it has been so? Not really. In a few lines;
Conclusions?
Recently I read 12 Reasons Why the Apple Design Process Is Nothing Special, which is a resume from the original interview with Jony Ive.
Most of the things he say is just pure common sense and we use to forget that things on day to day work:
I may higlight things in a different way than Ive says, but this are my personal highlight.
Finally is out and it has been less that I was looking for. Yep, I’m talking about The new iPad, people is so devoted that even the brand name have been commented.
It’s no so revolutionary, for sure they have done a great job. Personaly, I really believe they’re yet leaders on this category. You ain’t gonna found nothing so good for 499 bucks. Most of buzz comes form the new screen, GPU improvements, size and weight…
In my opinion there’re two things as least as important as hardware improvements, and both of them are software related: app’s for iPad use and Siri.
We’re, definitely in a post-pc age. With the iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band, things reserved for a computer, now can easily done from the iPad. The rest of competitors should note how easy and integrated applications are with the whole environment.
Finally, Siri the network not only a place to storage but a place to work with, an extension in software terms. Maybe this Siri importance falls if your language isn’t supported by Siri.
Busy as I’m it tooks to me too much to say something about iPad2. I’m going to be very very direct, and for sure it’s just my opinion.
As I said Motorola Xoom was the only to face iPad; mainly for two reasons:
I don’t care about how good the hardware was or how much does it cost. Now we know Motorola Xoom is $599 at Amazon. There’re more Android 3.0 all around but to compete with iPad they need to look not as a lego piece of plastic (yes, I’m thinking about you Samsung Tab) and have a great company supporting it.
So, what has happened? while the rest of the world was competing against the iPad, Apple was preparing the iPad2. They have a great merchandise team; have a look on those demo videos about iPad2: awesome.
By the way, techies spend time about how many Gb or Mghz has that or those tablet… do you how much does it worry to a normal user? The great improvements on iPad2, thinking as a normal user are:
And talking as a techie there’re just two significant things: slim battery (that longs the same, probably ’cause they control everything, hard and soft) and powerful GPU which is important in user experienced (games, web and apps rendering…)
As a conclusion, Apple strikes back. We all know they are a closed solution, they hate Adobe Flash, they control hardly apps in their store… yes, it’s true, but they are a step ahead, don’t you?
PD: I haven’t and iPad, neither I’m going to buy an iPad2 although any present is wellcomed.