Apparently, some physicists have figured out how to levitate things. Awesome? Yes.
A Series of Tubes
An archive of old posts.
Tag Archives: News
iDay (Guess which phone comes out today?)
So yeah, in about an hour (here on the East Coast, at least…it’s being released at 6 PM local time) the iPhone will be unleashed upon the masses. Reports of what the lines are like are somewhat disappointing, the longest being The Cube in New York at about 200 people (The Cube is the 5th Ave. Apple store). There’s some buzz about who’s in line in different cities, for instance the Mayor of Philadelphia is waiting in line, fully decked in his rain poncho and a fold-out chair. The Woz is #1 in line wherever he is, and apparently there’s a troupe of circus people with a mini golf rig in line in San Fransisco (No, the prize is not an iPhone).
iTunes 7.3 was released earlier today, adding iPhone support, since it’ll be managed like an iPod…I took the liberty of constructing a paper iPhone which I think does justice to the real thing:
No, I’m not buying an iPhone, I can’t pull off $599 at the moment. Plus the data plan, and I’m completely screwed over. Oh well. I did take the liberty of laughing at each Sprint and Verizon store as I walked past them today to check out the line at our AT&T store. There was actually a little 5 person line outside it! 😀 Made me feel so cool.
OS X Leopard
So the WWDC (World Wide Developer’s Conference, an annual Apple event) keynote was given yesterday by Steve Jobs. Frankly, it was kinda boring. No hardware updates for anything, no new features for the iPhone (save for the addition of custom apps, more on that later), but a lot of updates on Leopard, Apple’s next revision of OS X.
There were 10 Leopard features either announced or elaborated on at WWDC:
- A new Desktop – with the addition of Stacks, pseudo-folders on the Dock, a new semi-transparent menu bar, and a reflective, 3D dock
- A new Finder – with a new Sidebar and the ability to browse your other macs over the internet, plus coverflow! 😀
- Quicklook – a pseudo-app built into Finder which lets you quickly view documents without loading any other apps, great idea since I hate Preview…
- Complete 64-bit support – a bit more technical than the others, OS X is now completely equipped to run on 64-bit processors. Just like most applications these days are “Universal,” meaning they run on Intel or PowerPC, the same will be true with 64-bit and 32-bit apps. Everything will work on either a 32-bit (like a G3, G4, or Intel Core Duo), or 64 bit (like a G5, Intel Core 2 Duo, or Xeon) processor just fine.
- Core Animation – again, kinda techy, but in essence this means that any app can have really shiny animation effects without lag, without much effort from the guy making the app. There’s a really impressive demo of this in the Keynote, with that apple tv intro movie, but interactive. Thousands of videos, all playing at once and moving around really fluidly, with no lag.
- Boot Camp – Boot Camp is faster, and now it’s built-in, which means no more disc burning to get the drivers. Yay!
- Spaces – a virtual desktop manager, lets you organize windows into different sectors to keep everything neat and clean. This is one of my most anticipated features.
- Dashboard – of course, the Safari web widget, over 3000 widgets written, yadda yadda…
- iChat – cool stuff here. Better audio quality for voice chat (this is mostly improvements for the video aspect of iChat), the addition of backdrops, some cool Photobooth-esque effects, and Theater, which lets you stream video files, documents, etc. over iChat.
- Time Machine – old hat, automatically backup stuff, instantly restore it, slick interface, uses Quicklook, all that good stuff. Another of my most anticipated features.
So yeah, that’s Leopard. Some time in October release date, I’ll be buying it. 🙂 For more info and deets, check out Apple’s page on the matter. Speaking of Apple’s website, there was a complete and total redesign of the site to finally bring it out of the Panther-era tabs it had at the top. It’s very slick now…but it’s hard to find the movie trailers page, and the newest trailers section has disappeared…Too bad…
Anyway there were two other announcements. One was Safari for Windows, which from what I’ve heard, sucks. It’s got too much smoothing or something, and apparently there are already 8 serious security flaws in it. Of course, it is in beta (the beta is available for Mac as well, it is crazy-fast…), so some amount of issues are to be expected, but really, 8 holes? That’s pretty rough.
The last announcement was the inclusion of AJAX and Web 2.0 support on the iPhone, meaning that developers can write their own webapps for the iPhone and basically have custom programs like that. However, this isn’t realizing the iPhone’s full potential as a portable Unix machine (it has all of the pieces required to make OS X: Unix, cocoa, darwin, core image, all that good stuff). This means that only Apple will be able to make real apps for the iPhone, which I don’t really have a problem with, but there could be so much more. Oh well, maybe they’ll change their mind.
The iPhone Released
Well, new iPod/gadget from Apple Inc. (no longer Apple Computer Inc.) is here (or actually, it’s been announced. It’ll be here in June), and it’s called the iPhone. The name is a bit deceiving, since it’s really a lot more than just a phone, it even tops most of the smartphones out there (think Blackberry, Treo, etc.).
So, the features. It is a phone, yes. It lets you make calls at the touch of a button (a virtual button, the thing is like one giant touchscreen), and access your “visual voicemail”- a list of the missed calls with voicemail messages attached. That way you don’t have to listen to all the previous saved messages to get the one you want, just scroll until you find it. It also lets you access your e-mail (via any IMAP or POP3 e-mail service), send SMS text messages, and all that jazz that phones do. It also has a 2 megapixel (better than the built-in iSight and most other webcams, also currently the highest megapixel count in a cameraphone) camera in the back.
Aside from the standard phone features, the iPhone acts as a full-screen iPod as well. It allows you to scroll through the menus of artists, albums, songs, etc. by “flicking” the screen up, as if you were dragging it. One tap, and the song starts playing, with standard iPod UI. It shows the album art, as well as all the other album art you have, and lets you flip through the art like in iTunes 7. If you turn it on its side, the picture on the screen rotates to landscape view. Video? It does that. It shows video in landscape mode by default, on its 3.5″ 340×480 screen.
The iPhone does internet, too. It comes with both WiFi and EDGE (so you can connect to the internet anywhere you get phone coverage, basically), as well as Bluetooth compatibility for the new wireless headphones (mad ugly, in my opinion) that come with it. The iPhone has its own version of Safari built into it, and supports syncing of your bookmarks from a Mac or PC.
It comes in both 4gb (at the standard inflated Mac price of $499) and 8gb (again, $599) models, and should be released this June.
Harry Potter 7 Title Announced
J.K. Rowling has hidden the title of Harry Potter 7 somewhere on her website, for you to find. I must say, I’m a little disappointed by it, but it does make some sense. There are a lot of rumors about this book, since it will have the responsibility of tying up all the loose ends of the series. Apparently, two main characters will die. Most people are betting on Harry and Voldemort, which makes some amount of sense, but I think it will be Snape and someone else. Whatever, we’ll find out when it’s released in 2007.
Windows Vista released to Businesses
Today Microsoft released the business version of its new OS, Windows Vista. This is the first major OS update from M$ since Windows XP came out, so it’s been pretty widely anticipated. Vista sports a new look for windows, called Aero, and a lot of other cool features. Nobody I know is planning on upgrading just yet, and not just because the home and ultimate editions won’t be released until January 30th. I only have one friend saving to buy Vista, but everyone else I know just doesn’t care.
And don’t look at me, I’m happy with OS X.
PlayStation 3 Release
Today, Sony’s third generation video game console was released. And what a beast it is. I went to Best Buy to try it out, and got some pictures and a video.
Let me just say this. Wow. And I mean that totally sincerely. Wow. I expected it to be amazing (well, with a $500 core model and $600 full, it pretty much has to be), but this is ridiculous. The graphical quality is freakin’ amazing. It looks insanely photorealistic. The images it produces on the fly are like images pre-rendered by Pixar or something. I feel like I’m preaching here, but I really believe this stuff.
The new controller design (as in, redesigned l2/r2 buttons) is awesome. I really like the trigger-style buttons. They move much faster and more fluidly.
I took some photos of it at Best Buy, go to this gallery to check ’em out.
And here’s the video I took (pardon the quality, youtube ruins movies…):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb0Ua0TxjWQ]
(check out this photo for an idea of what the footage actually looked like)
Zune Release
Today Microsoft released the first version of its PMP (Portable Media Player), the Zune. Supposedly M$’s “iPod Killer,” the Zune costs $250 and comes in 3 “colors”: Black, White, and (get this) Brown. Those are some colors there, yup…I could make a whole freakin’ rainbow of Zunes. It comes equipped with WiFi, but (for some reason, most likely legal) you cannot use it to transmit music to it from your computer, and you cannot use it to buy music from M$’s online music store.
What can you use it for? Trading music from other Zunes (The 3/3 deal though: you can either listen to the song 3 times or keep it for 3 days before it deletes itself, whichever happens first), trade pictures from other Zunes, or synch it with your 360 (score keeping, friends’ statuses from Live, etc). It’s one of the largest wastes of money I’ve seen so far. Why bother making customers pay more for a Zune with WiFi, when the WiFi doesn’t even do anything useful yet? I would release a cheaper, smaller Zune (which maybe costs less than the iPod, its rival, and therefore sell more?) that has the same features as the iPod Video (plus the larger screen, more customization features, and sadly yes, larger color selection…), while they worked on developing that WiFi a bit more so it could do PC syncing and wireless music purchasing. But that’s most likely a problem with the RIAA, not M$. Stupid RIAA.
But for all the good things about the Zune, its software looks horrible. Check out Engadget’s review for more information on that front. I don’t plan on buying one any time soon ever.
Oh and I should mention the Zune ad campaign, most of which sucks (“Welcome to the social” is not English, folks!), but this site has many of the TV ads and posters (or maybe they’re just concepts? I’m not sure) that are actually good. Watch the one with the robot and the two birds one, as they are the best.
School Bans Tag
A school in Boston (not far from my home) has banned tag, touch football, and other chase games for fear of the kids getting hurt during recess and suing the school. This means that these kids have next to no chance of actually learning anything during recess. A common misconception is that kids don’t ever learn anything during recess, but this is when social skills develop, and if they aren’t allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, how will they learn the lessons not taught in school? This is just one more way we are becoming more and more sheltered, moving closer and closer to a ‘utopia’ like presented in The Giver and other such stories. Way to go, Boston.