Posts Tagged iPad
iPad and the BBC
In the morning we normally have the BBC news on while we are getting ready. At about 08:20 this morning they did a piece about the iPad, well I say ‘a piece’, it was a hatchet job.
Technology reporter Rory Cellan-Jones, who looked quite flustered and confused for some reason, had a bunch of pad devices in his hands (obviously to show that the iPad wasn’t the only game in town) but only talked about the Apple device and the Kindle.
Firstly he angled the device so that the screen reflected the studio lights (and all the finger prints – it looked like he had been using after eating KFC) into the camera.
He then showed an iBook on the device but slagged it off for being £15 and it not being shareable (“you can’t loan it to your friends can you?”).
Then he tried to demo the new Times app (launched today – this should be good I thought) but after moaning that it cost a tenner a month, it crashed on launch and he ended up showing a kids book instead – oh how embarrassing, way to go guys, that was your 15 minutes and you failed. Cellan-Jones commented “well I’m sure it will get better” in reference to the Times app.
No mention of iWork, nothing on the thousands of other fantastic apps on the store.
He finally summed up by calling it an expensive useless toy trapped in Apple’s ecosystem.
Tosser.
****Update****
I was speaking to a chap in the studio earlier who is closely involved in the Times App project (he was demoing it on camera for the site) and he knew about the “crash” of the app. Apparently it didn’t crash at all. It has been rock solid for all the time he has been using it including early betas and watching him demo the thing today it certainly looked like the onscreen graphics that I saw on the spot this morning were actually it’s splash screen with the Times masthead and then the choose and edition page – there’s only one edition in the middle of the screen because the thing only launched today!
Thinking back to the BBC footage, there wasn’t an unexpected close which the iPhone/iPod Touch does to misbehaving applications, they cut away to a wide shot before the app had started and he angled the thing away from camera. There were no blue dialog message boxes popping up or any other indications that is had fallen over.
The plot thickens – was Cellan-Jones deliberately pouring scorn on the Times App at the same time as dissing the iPad to really show it in a bad light?
As I said – Tosser
Another one of those ‘wouldn’t it be great’ posts…
With the ready availability of relatively inexpensive cloud storage, isn’t it about time some one (COUGHapple) had a small server for the home (COUGHtimecapsule) that had some intelligence to store just enough of your files that were regularly used to make them quick to retrieve (lets call it a cache for want of a better term) but off loaded all your files to the ‘cloud’ (COUGHidisk) automatically so you could have ‘unlimited’ safe storage that was accessible anywhere?
You know the sort of thing, the device would manage what it had on it’s local storage. Of course the online storage would cost a little bit extra on the services you already rented (COUGHwwwmecom) but a small price to pay for ubiqutous access to a robust storage solution surely.
At the same time, why not make the other devices you own (COUGHiphonepadpod) also access the data, hey it’s your data, your playlists, your music, your pictures, why shouldn’t you have (almost) instant access to it right? Would be good, wouldn’t it?
Hey by the way did you see the pictures of that huge data centre that Apple were just building and recruiting for?
Amazing. I wonder what they are putting in there, I bet that’s something to do with mobile advertising or distributing films or something don’t you?
Now where did I put the cough medicine, I have a really nasty tickle.
iGlad or iFad?
Well it’s out, the Apple device is called the iPad, is small cute and expensive enough to get some people moaning about it’s price but affordable for the devout/fashionably stupid to get one.
Looks quite nice and I’m sure it will be a roaring sucess, but why isn’t there a camera and iChat for comms? Once again they have overlooked Instant messaging/Video or audio chat for a mobile device – it is so frustrating. It doesn’t even have a mic from the look of it.
Will I get one? well never say never, it is very neat and I haven’t had the thing in my greasy mitts yet but I think I’ll be saving my cash at the moment for the next gen MacBook Pro. Sorry guys, with a MacBook and an iPhone, why do I need something I can’t put in my pocket or run any app I wan’t on.
At the end of the day I don’t spend enough time on the loo or in sitting on a train to justify it.
— update —
Ok, it DOES have a mic apparently, but still no zarking camera – really, I ask you – WHY?