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Every year at CES there’s a theme, a trend that runs through the event like a seam of CE gold. A few years ago it was GPS devices and last year it was netbooks. There was a period of laser TVs in there somewhere along with some 3D stuff, but generally you could watch almost every manufacturer fall over themselves to get something out the door that matched the zeitgeist.
This year, friends, it’s tablets and it won’t be pretty. Dell is planning an Android tablet and folks like Archos should be dumping more Android MIDs on us in a few months. At IFA this year, in Germany, even Toshiba tried to get in on the act with one of the ugliest little tablet things in the world. How horrible was it? They decided it would run WinCE.
Yes, yes, I know we were supposed to have a tablet. No comment.
However, if history is any guide the popularity of an item at CES is an inverse function of its actual sales in the next year. If – and this is a big if – there’s an Apple tablet at MacWorld or thereabouts then expect copycats to blow out in droves. However, if Apple holds onto its iPad for a few more months the tablet revolution will soon peter out.
Tablets were never good. Mainstream OSes were too keyboard dependent and the technology was half-baked. I think simplification is key but I worry that companies dedicated to making things as complex as possible – Dell, Sony, and HP come to mind – won’t know how to strip down their tablet offerings once Apple shows them how to do it right.
Oh, PC. Your hijinx extend back so far that in those days, you had long hair! Apple wins again!
While this newest Apple ad (about which I am being paid millions to post) is entertaining in a sort of superficial, nudge-nudge amirite kind of way, I don’t think it’s really as compelling as most of the other ads, even as lacking in facts as those were. I guess these ads are so simple to make that they can afford to just run with every idea, no matter how vague or half-baked. In the end, I think all this one is going to do is pique viewers’ curiosity about Windows 7 — that is, if they haven’t already dismissed it out of hand.
And does anybody think it’s a little weird that Mac doesn’t change his look over the last 20 years of OSes there? I used System 7 for a long time and buddy, it is not the same shirt and jeans as OS X.
Man has long been on a quest for a better battery. This has resulted in some less then ideal solutions, such as the potato battery (it was half baked) and the onion battery (too smelly). Finally, researchers at the University of Missouri have developed a smaller, more efficient, and hopefully radiation free nuclear battery.
To be fair, there are already a few nuclear batteries around, but the problem with them is they break down rather quickly. This is due to the obvious problem of radioactivity causing the semiconductor to break down. The current versions of the nuclear batteries are used in satellites and pacemakers.
Where the innovation comes in, is the size and how it’s made. The researchers have stated that their goal is to create a battery that is the size of a penny, using a liquid instead of a solid semiconductor. The long term goal, is to take the technology even farther, and create a nuclear battery that is smaller then the thickness of a human hair. Sounds like a great idea to me.
In a show of forward thinking stifled by corporate lethargy, it seems that Sony had a PSP Go planned since 2004 but didn’t think the infrastructure was ready for it. Well, Sony, you missed the boat on that one. As usual, you took the low-risk, low-reward path and as usual I’m going to mock you for it. Because you know what else wasn’t ready when it came out? The Wii.
Yes, the MotionPlus accessory for the Wii confirmed to everyone that Nintendo launched the Wii half-baked but still revolutionary enough. Sony, what if you released two PSPs at the beginning, one with a card slot and one with a UMD slot? The infrastructure would have grown (as you must have known it would) to embrace the cartridge-less version, and then there wouldn’t be this ridiculous and awkward changeover time.
At the PSP’s conception, there were ideas of a “NETTOWAKUSENTORIKKUMODERU,” which I believe is a Japanese way of saying “Network-centric model.” And why not?
Sony, don’t talk about the infrastructure not being ready. You are the infrastructure. You could have pulled strings and pushed standards and all that, but no, you hamstrung yourself by sticking with your crappy format and were satisfied with just enough sales to not look like a total chump. Well, Sony, if you’re okay with that, I guess I’m okay with that. Mainly because I’m not one of the loyal customers you could have done better by.
Okay, I’m giving them a bit too hard of a time over this, but seriously, they could have had a revolutionary product (which, if I’m honest, we would have laughed at when it launched), but instead they stuck us with good ol’ UMD. Nobody wins!
Man has long been on a quest for a better battery. This has resulted in some less then ideal solutions, such as the potato battery (it was half baked) and the onion battery (too smelly). Finally, researchers at the University of Missouri have developed a smaller, more efficient, and hopefully radiation free nuclear battery.