Rumors that Apple is building a tablet computer have reached a fever-pitch over the past six months. The basic gist is it will have a 7 inch screen and run a version of the iPhone OS making a good chunk of the apps available to also run on this new tablet. But why do we even need such a thing?
This thing sounds too big to be carried around with you wherever you go like an iPhone or iPod Touch but too small for long periods of work. It almost seems like it is aimed at two lifestyles: 1) Frequent flyers, 2) a TV watching companion device. This sounds just like the MacBook Air which was introduced on January 15, 2008.
I wonder, how long the battery will last in order to power a 7 inch display? And what extra functionality will this bring to our lives? According to one rumor blog, Apple Insider,
“The tablet is expected to be portrayed as a multimedia device capable of browsing the Web, watching movies, and reading content.”
Wow, you mean just like my laptop of today? Again, why is everyone getting worked up over this?
There have also been rumors swirling that the iPhone is coming to Verizon, which seems less likely from a technical stance (CDMA vs. GSM). I think if we ever see an Apple/Verizon partnership it will be for a data plan for this tablet device so you can use the web wherever you go. Verizon currently does this with a few netbooks, though it is a horrible deal. $199.99 + a 2 year contract of at least $39.99 per month ($1,159.75 total), all for a dinky, underpowered netbook that retails for $399.99 on HP’s own site.
So the idea of an Apple tablet looks lackluster from my point of view pre-announcement. Maybe Apple has a card up its sleeve when it announces the device and the world will wonder how we lived in the pre-tablet era. Perhaps this post will go down in Apple fanboy history just like all the negative reactions when Apple first introduced the iPod in October, 2001. Or maybe the Apple Tablet will just fade away into gadget history just like the Apple Hi-Fi.
“Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where’s the Newton?!”
—WeezerX80′s reaction to the announcement of the iPod.
I-81 North in Virginia is at a dead standstill. There is atleast a 20 mile backup. We’re at mile marker 166 and just a few minutes ago we saw an emergency vehicle drive past us on the shoulder. Hooray for Internet connected devices.
It’s 5:20 am. We’ve been in standstill traffic for the past 15 minutes or so. So much for getting a headstart on our trip to deep south Virginia. No worries as there is an in-van DVD player, an inverter to power my laptop, and I have my Zune. Don’t worry I’m not driving. Kristina’s parents sure know how to travel, they rock!
After work Kristina and I went to Brookside Garden of Lights with our friends Kathy and Alex. They had lots of displays including a thunderstorm with a rainbow, lions, turtles, pigs, a wolf howling at the moon, and lots of flowers. Pictured here is a giraffe and a sea dragon. They were easily my two favorite light sculptures.
The blogosphere exploded with rampant speculation about the latest Android phone to poke its robot head out. Here is the sequence of events that led up to what we know now.
The first mention of a Google phone came from The Street.com on October 20th. Michael Arrington from Techcrunch heard similar rumors and really got the speculation started with their post The Google Phone Is Very Real. And It’s Coming Soon on November 17th. A leaked HTC phone roadmap gave us the specs for the Bravo on December 6th, which has also gone by another codename Passion. The specs listed sound very impressive squashing any complaints of slow and pokey Android phones that have been released to date:
Snapdragon QSD 8250 1GHz CPU
HD 720p Video capture
3.7″ WVGA AMOLED screen
256 MB RAM or 512MB RAM
16GB MicroSD card in-box
1400mAh battery
Things were fairly quite over the next few weeks until all hell broke loose when several Googlers got their own employee version of the Google phone and tweets started flying out about the sleek device. @lhawthorn had the first say. It was being described as “A sexy beast. Like an iPhone on beautifying steroids” (@GreatWhiteSnark). All of the commotion and rumor-mongering caused Mario Queiroz, Google’s Vice President of Product Management, to put up a post on the official Google Mobile blog about how Google likes to “dogfood” its products for quick feedback.
A popular term on the interwebs is picture or it didn’t happen and Cory O’Brien holds the honor of posting the first picture of the device in the wild. The previous tweets about how good-looking and sleek the device looked were confirmed.
John Gruber from Daring Fireball revealed the name of the phone as the Nexus One by looking through logs of web browser user agent strings. Thanks to the name, it wasn’t long before Engadget dug up photos taken with the phone which were found on Google’s own photo sharing site Picasa. This proved a max resolution from the camera phone of 2592×1944 which comes from a 5 megapixel sensor.
People weren’t sure which carrier this dream device would land on and initial rumors suggested it was to work unlocked on all 4 major U.S. carriers (quite a hefty feat). Hope for this slowly faded to just the two GSM carriers, AT&T and T-Mobile. The AT&T compatibility was from an anecdote by Jason Howell about how he saw a Google employee playing with it using an AT&T sim card. Other leaked photos were showing a T-Mobile logo in the upper right. Peter Kafka heard from his sources that Google approached all 4 carriers about the phone but only T-Mobile agreed to help sell the phone.
Google does not intend to sell its new “Nexus One” phone the typical way, sources familiar with the company’s plans say. Instead, it envisions a scenario where customers who buy the handset on a separate Web site are provided with a list of carriers from which they can make a selection menu-style.
By the end of the weekend, Joshua Topolsky of Engadget tried to make sense of it all with a summary post titled The Google Phone: what we know… and what we don’t. He pointed out that there was no hard evidence that this phone was even for sale and postulated it was most likely the 3rd developer phone used for testing Android apps. That would be a major bummer.
Come Monday morning Engadget confirmed the device is compatible with T-Mobiles radio frequencies thanks to an FCC filing which also mentions the Nexus One name. A nice surprise is revealed that it supports UMTS/HSUPA meaning it is capable of taking advantage of T-Mobile’s faster 3.5G data service. (7.2Mbps down/ 2Mbps up). No mention of AT&T frequencies.
Reuters hinted at a January 5th launch date which coincides with the biggest consumer electronics show on the planet taking place that same leak. Mashable thinks this is going to be a huge CES announcement.
Boy Genius Report got two more shots of the phone in the wild. The first shows off the gorgeous (though still rumored not confirmed) 3.7″ AMOLED screen, while the second shows off the slender Nexus One next to chunky-monkey T-Mobile G1. It is interesting how the trackball sticks out kind of like the nipple on the Apple Mighty Mouse.
Finally, the Nexus One boot animation made its way to YouTube for all the phone nerds to drool over as they wait for more information to pour in.
So that pretty much sums up how we got to this point. I’m anxious to see what else is revealed as we inch closer to a launch date.
After my company party, Kristina and I took a stroll down to the White House to see the National Christmas Tree. It was bitterly cold but the warming hut felt nice. We even got a picture with Santa! Kristina will post an album on Facebook later.
South Korea is poised to launch a broadcast network in full HD 3D. Lots of TV manufacturers are touting 2010 as the year of 3D. I think this effort will fall flat on it’s face just like it did in the 50′s and again in the late 70′s. While there continue to be innovations eliminating the need for funky red and blue glasses, the added value of 3D is slim to none.
I saw the Disney film UP at the theater in 3D. The glasses were fine and the movie was enjoyable. I was in awe at the beginning of the film with the increased depth. The movie was playing the 3D effect up with characters that lunge towards the camera to jolt the audience. But near the end of the film I noticed the 3D less and less. After the initial wow factor, 3D was more of a gimmick rather than an aide to the telling of the story. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the same part of the brain that processes 2D images, also handles 3D images.
The technology behind 3D video still needs to improve to become as seamless as human vision before we’ll see a big pickup in the consumer electronic industry.
My new Rav 4 is covered in snow for the first time. I heard we were supposed to get some snow today but this is more than I expected. It is really coming down in big, flakey chunks.
Good thing I got the 4×4 model Rav 4 as I am supposed to drive up to my parents house later to help out with a kayaker holiday party.
