Latest MacBook Air might as well be the “iPad Classic”
The latest MacBook Air, with its increasingly form factor and ever-improving hardware specs, is attempting to put a new spin on a very old concept. Even in the early stages of the iPad era, the idea of a mobile device which uses the same inputs, same OS, and even basically same form factor as the computers we’ve been cranking away on for decades seems suddenly of a previous lifetime. And yet most of us still spend more hours per day on a point-and-click computer than we do on an iPad, so the new MacBook Air lineup is a timely reminder that while the era of the cursor-based computer may have already peaked and may indeed be on its way out the door entirely eventually, the era of the double-click is still very much alive.
Apple, by releasing aggressive new MacBook Air models, has stipulated to this. But then again that’s no surprise, as Apple has continued to keep the iPod Classic around, which is by now positively ancient in iPod years. More than three years ago Apple decided touchscreens were the future and launched first the iPhone and then the iPod touch – but in doing so, still kept a hard drive based iPod on the market for those who weren’t quite ready to make the leap. In the case of the iPod Classic, it was (and still is) almost entirely about capacity, as even the beefiest iPod touch holds a mere half or so of the content of the iPod Classic.
Three years later, the iPod Classic is still with us, although it’ll probably disappear next September when the iPod touch 5 goes to 128 gigabytes of capacity. The Macintosh, and the entire cursor-based computing era, will certainly be with decades longer. But in an era in which Apple is increasingly having its biggest success with products whose name begins with the letter “i” instead of containing the word Mac, you have to wonder just how much longer before the dynamics shift to the point that a future MacBook Air is instead branded as the iPad Classic.
New 6th gen iPod nano gains touchscreen, new iPod shuffle regains buttons
September 1, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Apple has introduced a new touchscreen iPod nano with multi-touch technology, which means the end of the click-wheel era for the nano. “It’s really small, it’s very tiny,” says Jobs of the new square-ish iPod nano, which is indeed small enough that it comes with a built-in clip. Jobs says it’s 46% smaller than the previous nano, and also nearly half as light. The new nano includes hard volume buttons, but is otherwise a touchscreen device, with its screen taking up essentially the entire front face.
Apple has also introduced the new iPod shuffle, and it looks a lot like the second generation iPod shuffle that Apple abandoned a year ago. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that users have “missed the buttons” to they’ve been added back. The fourth generation iPod shuffle is smaller than the second generation, but still resembles it with a more square shape. This marks the end of the button-less iPod shuffle era, which lasted only a year to mixed reviews. The new iPod shuffle has fifteen hours of battery life and sells for forty-nine bucks.
“BlackBerry Torch” sounds like a violent way to switch to iPhone 4
August 4, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Having had such great success with its “Storm” smartphone (seriously, do they even make that anymore? If it were canceled, would anyone even know?), Research In Motion has decided to continue with the “violent aspects of nature” theme for the names of its BlackBerry phones with its new “Torch” smartphone. Like most BlackBerry phones, it probably has a long list of mostly impenetrable features that are enough to simultaneously impress the geeks who review smartphones for a living and confound everyone else who tries to put the phone to good use. We’re guessing it either has a midget-sized physical keyboard (like most BlackBerries) or a terrible, terrible attempt at capitalizing on the iPhone’s success with virtual keyboards (like the Storm, which we promise we’ll try not to keep mentioning, mostly because it’s still a sore spot for the seventeen people who got sucked into buying one).
But mostly, we can’t get past the fact that “BlackBerry Torch” really just sounds like an overly violent way of ridding oneself of a BlackBerry for the sake of switching to an iPhone 4. Really, do you hate your BlackBerry so much that you feel compelled to set fire to it? We’ve heard you can make decent money by eBaying your used BlackBerry to some other sucker lover of tiny, tiny physical keyboards and interfaces from the black lagoon. Surprisingly enough, there are still slightly more people using a BlackBerry than an iPhone, which does have a lot to do with the fact that the BlackBerry has been around for eight years and the iPhone for a mere three. The truly confounding part is that the BlackBerry is just as impossible to use here in 2010 as it was back in 2002.
Ten One Stylus is iPad-compatible
January 29, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Ten One Design has announced, perhaps not surprisingly, that its existing stylus products for iPhone and iPod touch are fully compatible with the iPad. The lineup consists of the standard Pogo Stylus as well as the longer Pogo Sketch, the latter of which as a built-in shirt/pocket clip. Both products consist of an aluminum tube with a padded tip which the company claims offers a more precise touchscreen user experience. Both are currently available for $14.95 each.
Learn more about the Pogo Stylus and Pogo Sketch at TenOneDesign.com.
Review: Dots Gloves
New in iProng Magazine: a hands-on review of the Dots Gloves for use with the touchscreen on the iPhone and iPod touch, priced at $15 to $25…
review by Bill Palmer
Dear readers, I’ll make you a deal: so long as you don’t ask me to assign an actual star rating this here pair of gloves, I’ll be happy to tell you all about how you can use your iPhone or iPod touch in cold weather while keeping your hands warm.
While those (like me) who live in perennially warm-ish climates rarely if ever face such a scenario, the fact is that the touch-screens on the iPhone and iPod touch can’t be properly operated if your fingertips aren’t bare. And if you live in a place that gets cold enough that you need gloves just to get through the day, using the world’s most straightforward smartphone suddenly becomes very complicated.
A company named Dots thinks it has the solution: instead of removing your gloves every time you need to change playlists or make a phone call, simply affix conductive pads to the tips of the thumb, index, and middle fingers so you can operate the touchscreen while wearing the gloves. And it works. Mostly.
I tend to use the vertical tip of my index finger, so it took some adjustment to the fact that the dots are located on the fingertips (where your fingerprints are). But once I got used to that, tapping the screen was easy. One-finger scrolling took a little more effort but was definitely do-able. Not so much with two-finger pinching, which I never got any good at, no matter which combination of fingers I tried. But those are just my results, and I’m not the most dextrous to begin with. Your mileage may vary.
As I said up front, no star rating because I wouldn’t know how to compare the Dots to normal gloves, as I’ve never before owned a pair of gloves in my life. But they feel comfortable enough, and for what it’s worth, I never once dropped my iPhone during testing. Available in $25, $20, and $15 models (pictured left to right above).
Learn more about the Dots at DotsGloves.com.
