The tablet race is getting hotter by the day. NEC is readying a seven- or eight-inch-screen Android tablet for the Japanese market, according to Slashgear, and expects them to eventually sell in the millions--though the initial production run is rumored to begin at around 150,000. (Picture courtesy of Slashgear, via Nikkei.)
But tablets--running Android or not--may quickly be usurped by color, video-playing e-paper devices that consume vastly less power and which can get by with thinner enclosures. Sure, the Kindle can't do much right now, but its successors will.
Proof? E-paper maker Liquavista is showing off a truly amazing video-playing, touch-enabled, and color digital paper that seems poised to blow the lid off of e-book hardware constraints as we know them. Other companies have shown progress too, but nothing is as slick as this.
Other research groups are close, too. According to the May issue of Nature Photonics, e-paper researchers at the University of Cincinnati have figured out how to build e-paper pixels with high contrast and pigment ratios, and that can refresh quickly enough to display video. According to UC, it will "achieve the brilliance of printed media." Read how it works here.
For an Apple Tablet to be a hit, it will have to be more than a big-screen iPhone. And the difference between a lithe, touch-based Mac and a giant, lame iPhone comes down to one crucial nerd-factor: memory management.
Memory management is boring to talk about. It's also boring to do. You're probably half-asleep just reading this sentence, but that's sort of the point; developers hate memory management. When they build iPhone apps, they have to control the iPhone's
memory: what goes in, what gets stored, what comes out. When
your program closes, your app is supposed to give back all that memory
to the OS, so that it your computer can use it for other apps. If your
program doesn't give back memory to the system, it's called a "leak." Leaky programs are bad; they make things crash. But it wasn't always this way.
Once upon a time, there was the oft-mocked Newton. Like the iPhone, it ran a real OS build on a robust, object-oriented
language called NewtonScript. But the Newton did a major thing that the iPhone only wishes it could. It supported garbage collection, or automatic memory management, just like full-grown desktop Macs. What's the difference to you? More powerful apps.
The iPhone doesn't support garbage collection; it's not fast enough. So iPhone apps tend to "leak memory," or hang on to memory too long. Developers I've interviewed--even Apple Design Award winners--have mentioned to me that their iPhone apps are leaking memory almost constantly because they're too lazy to be really anal about manual memory management. But since most iPhone apps are relatively simple, it's not a big deal; you close the app and life goes on. (Eventually, the phone regains the leaked memory, in various ways.)
But this means iPhone apps can only get so complex before they require too much hand-tuning to be worth the time. IPhone developers have been hitting a wall: there's a lot more the device could do (at least, the 3GS, with its better hardware) but the OS is still too basic.
A tablet with faster hardware and a more potent version of OS X could run real garbage-collected apps, letting current iPhone developers imaginations run wild. The tablet app store would explode ten times as fast as the original app store; I've spoken to several developers about porting their apps to a larger format, and the consensus is that the process would be relatively painless. (The only question is about hardware-accelerated graphics; the tablet might run a different version of OpenGL-ES than the iPhone, because it will have a different graphics processor.) We'd have more than big-screen iPhone apps, though; because of garbage collection, we'd have apps on steroids.
Like other Apple products ahead of their time, the Newton was quietly axed because of low demand and scope creep.
But Steve Jobs never forgets a good idea: witness the original iMac,
the Apple TV, and the G4 Cube, all reminiscent of earlier failed
models. Hell, the Cube even failed twice and came back to life as the
Mac Mini. When the curtain lifts at Apple's January event, there may well be a Newton behind it.
Earlier we reported that Google was abandoning Tele-Atlas to begin collecting its own mapping data. Now Forbes is reporting that personal navigation companies are afraid that Google will begin making its own PND software, undercutting the market's current leaders. Add to this Apple's recent acquisition of a mapping startup ostensibly to develop its own map data service, and you've just calculated the shortest distance to a technology throwdown.
Google would be able to offer such map data more cheaply because it is crowd-sourcing much of the grunt work. (Above, vehicles recording Google Street View, another one of Google's sources of map data, by Chris Malcolm.)
Right now, consumers pay subscription fees for getting fresh mobile maps beamed to their PNDs or smartphones. But Forbes says that Google may pursue a free, ad-supported model that would bring smartphone makers (and customers) running, leaving PNDs behind. With its Android smartphones, Google would have a ready-made mobile launchpad.
According to Forbes: "Close watchers of Google say there is evidence it is developing a navigation app. The company has been collecting mapping data for years via several methods, including high-resolution satellites and its own fleet of camera-equipped cars. In August, it rolled out an additional feature that sources traffic information directly from its users' phones."
But Google will have a willing competitor in Apple, which looks to be developing its own map data service as well. In July, Apple acquired the startup Placebase--which specialized in customizing public and private mapping data--and quickly integrated the newcomers into its GEO team. But Apple seems less likely to license its map data to other companies--after all, they won't even license OS X to other computer-makers. But with the iPhone's substantial lead in the smartphone market, Google's toe-hold in mobile mapping could prove tenuous.
Both Google and Apple have been tight-lipped about their strategies, though industry speculation abounds.
Passwords are the bane of our computing lives. But do we really want PCs that can log themselves into our systems without us?
Uniloc, a California security company, has launched a product that allows computers and smartphones to generate their own security keys based on their hardware and software configuration. According to MIT's Technology Review, the software, dubbed EdgeID, learns 100 different pieces of information about your machine--including unique fingerprints like the pattern of bad data blocks on your hard drive--and uses them to generate a unique key for that machine. Once the machine is registered, it can login to a central server, which would also run EdgeID software.
The hope is that companies can cut down on thousands of hours of wasted help-desk aid recovering lost passwords, and avoid expensive auto-generating key systems that require employees to carry around key fobs or reset passwords every few weeks. Stolen devices could be locked out of the system, and new devices registered at the company's discretion.
But when our machines become the gatekeepers, we lose the ability to roam; though our brains might be tired receptacles for usernames and logins, those portable credentials allow us to work from home, from coffee shops, from airports and from smartphones. The question is: how much mobility would we sacrifice to be able to abandon our passwords?
Ever use email to talk to the person sitting one office down? You're not alone. Most people use the Web to talking to people within their own city, not far-flung contacts, according to a new study by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The study says that while the Web has developed a reputation as a tool for geo-commerce and penpalling, the main utility has been to increase communications hyper-locally. In fact, the abstract says, "the volume of electronic communications is inversely proportional to geographic distance."
The finding puts a new spin on Stanley Milgram's controversial 1963 hypothesis that every American is connected by roughly six mutual acquaintances. Apparently, our most-used connections--even aided by Facebook and all our other techno-tools--still have more to do with geographic distance than personality, work, politics or other uniting factors.
Experimenters studied data from 100,000 participants that were both Facebook users and email users. They found that most Facebook users' friends are within several miles of their location--not too surprising (see graph above). But they also found that emailing followed the same pattern: 41% of the emails that participants sent were within their own city (see graph below). Click below to download the study.
With geo-aware brains and no driver, this modified Audi TT-S experimental vehicle is built to drift around corners and then regain control of itself. It could be the forerunner of future handling systems that could allow drivers to avoid accidents.
"We're trying to understand how to control a car at the limits of its performance," says Ganymed Stanek, a senior engineer at VW's Electronics Research Lab (ERL) in Palo Alto, which worked with Stanford University on the car. The vehicle was developed by the same team that produced Junior, an autonomous VW Passat that was awarded second-place in DARPA's robot-car race in 2007.
The new autonomous TT-S is markedly different from Junior, however. Junior was environmentally-aware; it had cameras that could see objects and road features, and it paired that data with GPS data. All that processing required two on-board Linux computers running quad-core Pentium chips and programmed in C and C++.
The new TT-S, unofficially dubbed "Shelly," uses a different system. It has no cameras, only GPS, and a smaller, less powerful computing box running Sun's Java Real Time System running on Solaris. Why? Despite Junior's speedy processors, it still takes the car between 20-50 milliseconds to react to inputs from its sensory equipment. Because the TT-S "Shelly" is traveling at much higher speeds--the team has pushed it over 140 mph--even 20 milliseconds is too much of a delay. Most of its drifts are performed around 40 mph.
"For controlling the wheels at the limits of friction in the Audi TT-S, we require reaction times of a few milliseconds," says Stanek. So in most scenarios, the TT-S can adjust course in just a few microseconds, he says. The utlimate test of the TT-S will come when the team runs the vehicle over the course over the Pike's Peak hill climb race next year.
We were all pretty tired of NASA and its endless shuttle missions--until, of course, it bombed the moon. Now the agency is capitalizing on that good PR with a new iPhone app, perhaps hoping that some more public interest will help it limp into more funding.
The app gives iPhoners all the latest dirt on current and future NASA missions, and also shows off images, countdown clocks, online videos, and the agency's multifarious Twitter feeds. If you're curious, the app will also tell you where the International Space Station is over Earth, and uses the iPhone's MapKit framework to show NASA's satellites over detailed maps of the world.
Since the iTunes Store has almost nothing in the way of SEO, you'll have to search "NASA for iPhone" in the App Store (just "nasa" won't cut it.) Or click here.
A new Apple patent filing suggests the company might want subsidize the price of its computers with a complex advertising program that maintains the attention of the user and can lock the computer if the user spaces out.
According to PatentlyApple, the list of machines eligible for the program would run the entire Apple gamut from iPod to desktop computer. But for this kind of scheme to work, OS X would have to be built with all kinds of enforcement mechanisms to make sure that ads could not be disabled or interrupted. The ads would be targeted based on the user's behavior on the machine: the sites, videos, and music they view would all become fodder for the ad system.
As they explain: "In the case of a desktop or notebook, the UI and its components (e.g., menu bars, icons, etc.) may be faded, darkened, brightened, blurred, distorted or otherwise visually modified during the initial state (or while the advertisement is being presented) so as to emphasize that the desktop UI is temporarily inactive."
Though Apple has had a reputation for robust security, implementing a system like this would encourage serious under-the-hood chicanery for hackers seeking the holy grail: a subsidized but ad-free Mac. Should Apple decide to pursue an ad-supported OS X, it'll have to be an immutable code-bunker, which would mean turning off access to some of the built-in features--access to Terminal, for example--that once set it apart from Windows.
This week we've seen the new 27-inch iMac compared to a television, and we've watched Windows 7 get all TV-happy with in-home streaming. But it was in over a decade ago that Apple ventured to show us how TVs and PCs would eventually conflate, and in true Apple fashion, they did it way too early with a commercial flop.
The 20th Anniversary Macintosh wasn't ever meant to be a popular success, but it failed even in its limited scope. It was outrageously priced at $7500 when it was introduced at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in 1997, and though only 12,000 units were made, sales were still tepid. Later, the machine was discounted to around $2,000, but not before a few models were sent from Apple to its executives abroad. These days, it's been somewhat vindicated as a proof-of-concept, but not one that was quite worthy of gravitas Apple attempted to capture in its commercial advertisements.
The TAM, as it was nicknamed, had a 12.1-inch flat LCD screen, a vertically mounted CD-ROM, and an Apple TV tuner card with a remote control. It also boasted bigger speakers than other Macs, and the base of the CPU featured a Bose subwoofer. It also came without a mouse--just a trackpad, which would foretell of Apple's just-announced Magic Mouse, a kind of trackpad/mouse amalgam.
TV, remote, flat screen--the only thing we've lost since 1997 is the option for direct-to-door concierge delivery service, which offered tuxedoed attendants who would perform in-home TAM setup.
Earlier this week I reported that Sears seemed to have won the book price wars started by Wal-Mart by giving away books essentially for free. At the time, I speculated that the move might actually have positive ramifications for smaller booksellers and for publishing companies. But if that's the case, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) isn't waiting around to find out. The association has filed a letter with the Department of Justice (DOJ) as of Thursday afternoon, arguing that the government should investigate what it calls "predatory" book pricing.
According to the ABA, the stakes are high. They say the price war "will devastate not only the book industry, but our collective ability to remain a society where the widest range of ideas are always made available to the public." The letter continues that the big-box stores are "devaluing the very concept of the book," and that authors, publishers, and consumers stand to "lose a great deal" if the war continues. But the letter stops short of saying exactly how the big-box retailers have broken any laws.
As a kicker, the letter expresses vague anti-trust concerns about e-book pricing as well, pointing out that the $9 price point deserves DOJ scrutiny.
But tablets--running Android or not--may quickly be usurped by color, video-playing e-paper devices that consume vastly less power and which can get by with thinner enclosures. Sure, the Kindle can't do much right now, but its successors will.
