iPad image from Apple

That is a question I have been considering not too long after the announcement of Apple’s new iPad product-line. Initially, I had been in the camp hoping the new tablet would be some kind of OSX device. While I would still love to see such a device, it is also apparent that one would sacrifice battery life even if it were considerably slower than my current laptop. Slower I could deal with, less battery life I can not. iPhone OS was clearly the way to go for a device of this size/weight.

First a bit of a review:

The iPad has some distinct advantages. First, it leads to much longer battery life. Apple is stating 10 hours of Web surfing or watching video. I’m guessing that if you’re doing less intensive stuff it will go considerably longer. However, 10 hours is enough for most people to be able to charge over-night and not have to worry about lugging a power-brick and cord (like laptop users must). That saves more weight.

Second, this thing is small and light:

• Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
• Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
• Depth: 0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg)

I probably don’t need to say much more about this. We all want to lug less weight around with us. My current laptop (2006 MacBook Pro) weighs in at like 6.7 pounds when I include the power-brick (that’s the smaller one now available,the original would push it over 7 pounds) and cord. Even if I add an external Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad (about 14 ounces), I’d still be under 2.5 pounds (which is still less than a MacBook Air).

Then there is stuff like instant on/off. You push the power button… it’s ready to go, push it again, it’s ready to be put away. Believe it or not, this makes a big difference when you’re on the go and want to just take down a quick note or look something up. Similar is not having to open it up and find a place to set it down. Imagine trying to look something up on your laptop while standing on a train or bus, hanging onto the bar with one hand. I can easily do this with my iPod Touch, and I’d guess I could with the iPad without too much more trouble. It would require some gymnastics with a laptop. But these things are also handy when in a more casual meeting where everyone doesn’t have the laptops out and setup, and then you need some info or to jot a note down. A laptop is much more hassle and disruptive to the flow of things. I also like having the ability to use a virtual keyboard or real one (and when I say real one, I’m not talking about an undersized one you’d find on a netbook). The touch interface is excellent for these situations as well.

There are a few downsides:

- CPU power – Obviously, it doesn’t have the computing power of a laptop.

- Interface – It doesn’t have all the connectors like USB and ethernet (though it has WiFi and optional cellular data).

- Storage – It doesn’t have the storage capacity of a laptop with a hard-drive.

- Camera – They left the web-cam off which would be nice for video-conferencing. (I’m going to guess the 2nd generation will, if you can wait that long.)

- Multi-tasking – It doesn’t have full OSX-like (or Windows-like) multi-tasking…. yet. But, even so, really think about what you need that for when doing mobile type stuff. I mainly want to have IM open while doing something else… it can do that. Or, listen to music while I work on other stuff… it can do that. Have a VoIP call open while I look something up… can’t do, yet. I’m hoping they will open up the multi-tasking a bit to allow this to happen, and I think Jobs has already alluded to their doing so. But, that isn’t a deal-killer for me.

Other reported downsides (or disappointments) and my responses:

- No hand-writing recognition – I just don’t get this one. I assume these people have never used it and just think it would be cool or useful. I suppose for a few it could, but to the rest… learn to type! There is no way a person could handwrite such that it could be recognized at a rate anywhere near what someone could type… even on a virtual keyboard, let alone a real one.

- lack of 4G – I guess this is valid, though I’m thinking of taking that external anyway with something like a MiFi or Overdrive unless the plan is VERY cheap (in Canada). I also don’t want a plan for each device, and with MiFi, I could use any device (as well as others with me) on one plan. I also save the additional cost of the 3G model then.

- lack of Flash – I don’t want to get into this one too much. There is a big political aspect to it, and I think Apple is trying to push web standards over stuff like Flash (which I agree with them on). However, there is also a very practical side. Flash sucks! Battery, but also in its instability.

But, can it replace a laptop?

First, I need to make it clear that for most people, this will be a ‘second computer’. It isn’t going to replace the OSX or Windows desktop, for example. I’m talking about laptops for mobile work here.

The real answer to this question is going to be different for everyone. If you need to do things like Photoshop, CAD, etc. while you’re mobile, than obviously not very likely (though there will undoubtedly be those kinds of apps eventually… but unlikely for serious work). I suspect, though, that most people will be able to cover the kinds of things they do with the iPad. What does a typical person do anyway? Check their calendar and make appointments, address book, surf, e-mail, instant message, maybe VoIP. They use word processing, take notes (in class or meetings), spreadsheet, and presentations. The iPad can do all these things. I know when I learned that it has video out, and the ability to present Keynote presentations, I was pretty sold!

What I recommend is that you start making a list of things you do while you’re mobile, and especially note things you ever find yourself doing that you wouldn’t be able to do on the iPad, or things which would be difficult to do on it. Maybe rank them as to how important it is, or if it was something you think you’d seldom have to do or have to do a lot. This way you can make a clear decision when it is released. You may well find some show-stopper, but I have not yet.

The iPad also has some other benefits, even around home. Have you ever tried to use a laptop while laying in bed? This thing will allows me to read books or surf the Web in very relaxed locations a laptop just won’t. A laptop isn’t that nice at the park or a beach… though it will remain to be seen how the screen does in those environments (that might be the one big Kindle advantage for e-books). This is really geeky, but I was thinking it would even fit into our recipe holder on the kitchen counter… try that with a laptop!

I also think it would be nice for families that currently have more than one computer. You could have a desktop with multiple accounts for the heavy-lifting, and then iPads (which are cheaper than laptops) for individual use so desktop-time isn’t always being fought over.

Ultimately, it might be harder to decide what to do with your iPhone or iPod Touch than your laptop. I think I would still need to take my iPod touch along, as the iPad won’t make a good iPod in a lot of ways. It won’t just fit into my pocket and be easily accessible for my music playing like the iPod is. I take my iPod to the grocery store, for example, and the iPad would be just too much for that. But, it also seems a bit silly and redundant to have both.

I am currently taking a class on Christianity and Capitalism at school. We’re looking at the underlying assumptions of economic systems (esp. capitalism) to see how they fit into a Christian worldview. While doing some research I ran across this interesting article by A. M. C. Waterman. He has some interesting stuff to say about our current economic situation and stimulus packages.

Sorting Through Keynesian Rubble

However, I also ran across a bit of interesting history. It turns out it was both parties who led us into this financial mess. Big surprise, huh?

Clinton, Republicans agree to deregulation of US financial system

While I wouldn’t align myself with the source (or agree with them on the whole), some of the quotes and information in the article are pretty interesting. If you read nothing else of it, read the last 2 or 3 paragraphs, remembering that this was written in 1999!

Consider:

“Legislation first adopted to save American capitalism from the consequences of the 1929 Wall Street Crash is being abolished just at the point where the conditions are emerging for an even greater speculative financial collapse.”

or

“A financial deregulation bill was passed in the early 1980s … lifting many restrictions … of savings and loan associations … to the home-loan market … culminating in collapse and the biggest financial bailout … more than $500 billion. The repetition of such events in the much larger banking and securities markets would be beyond the scope of any federal bailout.”

Well, it happened, and we bailed it out. The question remains if we can afford it. It may still well prove ‘beyond the scope’…

Wow, is that a mouthful! (pun intended) You’re going to love this tip and recipe though.

I love popcorn as a snack. However, we have never been able to find a popcorn popper that we are happy with. We, like many I would guess, did the microwave popcorn thing. That always bothered me on several fronts. First, have you ever read the ingredient label on those packets? They put some nasty stuff in there, but even that aside, they plain aren’t very healthy for you in terms of fat and salt content. Second, they make popcorn quite expensive compared to what it costs to just pop the kernels. Third, I really hated tossing out all those bags just to get a bowl of popcorn!

So, we started to experiment. Alton Brown of Good Eats (TV show on Food Network) showed a method for making your own home-made popcorn bags. That solves problem #1, as you can control what goes into it. It somewhat solves #2 as it brings the price down a bit. However, it does little for #3. One day, I noticed that we had microwaved something that got pretty hot in our Pampered Chef Classic Batter Bowl**. It seemed to hold up fine, even the cover. I wondered if it could withstand the heat of popcorn popping with that lid on. I decided to risk it (you know, ask for forgiveness later kind of thing). It worked great! After many batches of popcorn, the lid is only slightly discolored, but in fine shape. It took a bit of time to get the timing perfected, but this makes such good popcorn and you con completely control what goes in. It is cheap and there is no waste (other than a few un-popped kernels).

Equipment:

• Pampered Chef Classic Batter Bowl
• Microwave Oven

Recipe:

• 1/4 cup popcorn
• 1 ~ 2 Tbsp Olive oil (and/or butter, etc., optional)
• 1/4 tsp popcorn salt (or to taste, optional)

Cold bowl: 3 min 40 sec

Hot bowl:  3 min

Put the popcorn in the bowl, then drizzle oil over it and salt.

Microwave on high for 3:40 minutes*** when the bowl is cold (there will be a few more un-popped kernels in the first ‘cold bowl’ batch). Microwave on high for 3 minutes*** when the bowl is hot (ie: making second batch)

Salt to taste, but it does seem to help to put salt in before popping if you are using some kind of oil. If you are popping dry, then you will want to wait and salt after popping.

Enjoy!

—

** I guess ours probably wasn’t ‘classic’ when we got it; we’ve had it for years. We simply love this thing. It is probably near the most used dish in our kitchen. You need to get one if you don’t have one. It is good for much more than popcorn.

http://www.pamperedchef.com/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=211&words=batter%20bowl

*** (our microwave: Panasonic Inverter NN-SD698S – 1200W …. times vary here… you will need to experiment. We basically picked a time that seemed reasonable, then increased / decreased by 15 second increments until the popcorn was perfect. Be careful not to start a fire by going too far the first run. If you underestimate and get a lot of un-popped kernels, you could increase 15 seconds and see if you get more popped, but no burnt flavor.)

“You keep doing what you’re doing, and you just keep assuming that growth is going to go on forever. And then at some point it just drops out from under you … ”

Alan was speaking about the glut of automobiles now on the market since people have stopped buying, but it applies equally well to the majority of the overall mess. I thought we might have learned from the dot.com crash, but people just found a new ‘get rich quick’ scheme to chase after. But, the bigger concern I have is if people have learned any lessons… and not just about investing.

Most public companies are run as if they are operating in the above fantasy world… the growth just can’t possibly stop or even slow. Making constant profit is no longer the mark of a good investment, but year over year growth by some percentage X. In places I have worked, X was often over 100. It doesn’t exactly take a rocket-scientist to figure out that this can’t continue. The damage this kind of investing has done to companies is horrific. Super short term thinking and operation has become the norm.

The only hope the U.S. has of getting out of trouble is if the average person, as well as the government, stop living on borrowed money… AND companies start running in a more long-term, sustainable manner. If not, the house of cards will fall… if it hasn’t already started beyond repair.

This bailout, though, shows just how bad that management has been, and is a very troubling development. Yes, the sudden downturn in the economy means that an already fragile auto industry needs help. The repercussions of not doing so would be catastrophic to the USA if not the world. That said, how we got here is very troubling. What overly greedy investment tactics and sub-prime mortgage failure have to do with falling profits of automakers? I think this is a good question. If you have some answer, I’d love to hear it.

What we have here, is an extremely mismanaged industry, the failure of which would have too severe of repercussions to ignore. At the same time, the failure of which is to be expected. Now all us tax-payers have to foot the bill. This is absolutely unfair, but unfortunately, a likely reality.

The trend here that is so extremely dangerous, is that huge companies can be mismanaged, with such extreme waste… and then expect to be bailed out because of their critical importance to the national and global economy. Why even worry about the long term when running such an organization? Take the maximum money you can extract and waste… worry only about the shareholders…. if everything falls apart, the tax-payers will just bail us out.

I think we’re going to have to implement some kind of check and balance on any company that gets this critical to national and global economy. This means either breaking them up, or some other kind of external oversight to be sure they don’t get into this kind of mess. I’ve see this coming for a long time with GM. I’m sure others have as well. Yet, they just blindly fumbled down a path of destruction for many years now.

So, who will be the next industry to cash in on government bailout? It’s easy money if you are a big and important industry. We can hardly let them fail. Yet, they don’t seem to care about anything but feeding internal and external greed… not even enough to do any planning for the future.

Mark my words on this… if we do not fundamentally change the way companies are run, and how investors invest in them… we WILL NOT get out of the economic crisis we are currently in. If we do temporarily because of bailouts and governments manipulating the economy, it will only be covering up the the real problem. The current history-breaking swings of the stock markets show the investors don’t have a clue about the nature of the problem. Companies like GM are prime examples of the cluelessness on a corporate level as well. Can we fix the problem without letting it all come crashing down? I think the answer is yes, but it will take fundamental changes in thinking about investing and business. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this will happen without a complete collapse.

You probably are aware of this scam concerning wifi, as it is not new. But for OSX users, I just wanted to post a visual of it. I took this screen-shot on a recent trip while I was at the airport. As you can see, you should be looking for a network to join up where it says TELUS. If you look under ‘Computer-to-Computer Networks’ you will see ‘Free Public WiFi’ and ‘tmobile’. Both of these are scams. They are probably people sitting in the airport with their personal sharing turned on, waiting for someone to connect to the Internet through them. They can then capture packets of data, and look for people logging into services. Many services an average user might connect to are not all that secure (ie: properly encrypted passwords, etc.). They snag this info and then can use it.

Even if you connect to an actual router… such as ‘TELUS’, it could still be a scam. However, it is certainly more complicated to to setup that scam. Also, if you are somewhere such as an airport, there are usually advertisements as to what the name of the service is you should be seeing.

Also, just to be safe, whenever you are in a place using a Internet connection other than your own, be aware of what kind of services and things you sign into. The big problem is that many people check their e-mail, which is not a super-secure thing to do. While you can’t ever make yourself totally safe, you can prevent a lot of problems with just a bit of care.

But today I thought…. “hmm, I still don’t have time to write a ‘real’ article…. and I pick on M$ too much… maybe I can find some something nice to say about them…” I mean, they did delay the release of Vista for a long time to ensure product quality. That’s positive, right?

So, I fire up Safari to peruse the typical news sites looking at what Microsoft has been up to lately.

In the recent article “Microsoft: We’re not Google, and we’re proud of it” it is clear that M$ has decided to start upholding the law rather than breaking it. In a move to protect content providers, they believe the ‘fingerprinting’ technology in their Soapbox video-sharing site will be much more responsible than Google’s YouTube. It is refreshing to see such a drastic change after the drama and lies during the anti-trust trials and their long history of patent infringement.

But it is not just lawyers and corporations… Microsoft looks out for its user base as well. Another recent “news article” makes me aware of another great M$ technology called WGA. Coming from the Macintosh world, I was not aware of this technology. Will those innovators at M$ never stop? WGA is an acronym for Windows Genuine Advantage. This incredibly cool feature of Windows XP and Vista keeps you securely tethered to the the M$ mother-ship. Let’s say that you accidently installed Windows on some computer. WGA protects you from the legal hassles you might face if you were caught. As the article points out, the system still has a few bugs and hiccups. It recently prevented hundreds of legitimate users from using their computers for 19 hours or so (possibly for days or weeks if they were traveling)… but this is really a small price to pay to keep a few disorganized people out of jail, don’t you think?

Even the family lives of the leaders of this great company are not forgotten. For example, current CEO Steve Ballmer has apparently read about the danger of things children might find using search engines on the Internet, as well as incidents of assault and theft of iPods recently. He says, “My children–in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.” It is great to see parents concerned for their children’s welfare in this age of ‘hands off’ parenting.

And, despite all the success, leaders at M$ remain completely humble. Gates says, “At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.” Indeed, how could one person possibly take credit for vast innovation such as Microsoft BOB or the Paper Clip Assistant. How do they do it?

But what is Microsoft truly most gifted at? Marketing. Who else could come up with such a creative, positive name for Software Copy Protection as ‘Windows Genuine Advantage’. This is the true innovation going on at M$, and it leaves me, well…. speechless.

Here is a photo of the article, preserved for posterity (I love the ad for the iPhone now on the page too… kind of adds something special, dontcha think?):

I love the statement by Ed (Palm CEO): “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” and “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Enter Apple… LOL (If you don’t understand what I mean… go to Apple’s web site and watch the part of the keynote on the iPhone.)

The original article can be found at:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/21/palms-ed-colligan-laughs-off-iphone/

Heck, even us Mac users have been perking up and paying attention… over the last year security firms have found spots in OSX where a skillful hacker *could* potentially have caused us some problems. We’ve not seen a virus yet, so it’s not like panic has set in or anything… but one always has to be on guard. Some Mac users even go so far as to install anti-virus software, just in case!

But, while I was perusing some of those ‘tech’ sites this morning, I ran across a totally new approach. Duh! It seems M$’s Windows co-president, Jim Allchin, found a MUCH more simple way to avoid all these problems.

WARNING: Don’t read further if you are not sitting down….

It seems that Jim has actually unleashed his 7-year-old son…. to surf the net…. on a Windows machine…. WITHOUT anti-virus software! GASP!

OK… if you’re still with me… before you go into a state of shock, read on…

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193700656

“Honestly, he doesn’t have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can’t download things unless it’s to the places that I’ve said that he could do, and I’m feeling totally confident about that,” Allchin said. “That is quite a statement. I couldn’t say that in Windows XP SP2.”

Man, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. All you have to do is lock down your computer with parental controls, so you can only go to a few known good web locations…. and you’re safe. How amazing is that?! Maybe he should patent the idea.

However, what I find even more amazing is that last sentence. Apparently, to get this safety, you’ll have to buy Vista (oh, and probably a new computer which can run Vista). I guess previous versions of Windows can catch a virus just by thinking about the Internet.

Well folks… there you have it. A simple solution from the great minds at M$. All you have to do is give them a couple hundred bucks…. buy a new computer… and lock down your parental controls for a 7-year-old… and you’re safe.

Oh, I guess the only thing I need to figure out now is how you determine the ‘safe list’ of web sites. Maybe Jim will be distributing this? Or, I guess you can call one of your friends with Mac.

But Jim, I have an even more simple solution…. why not just get a Mac and save yourself several hundred $.

(OK… I promise to write about something besides picking on M$ soon. But, they just make it so easy… ‘like shooting fish in a barrel’ I think the saying goes.)