Thursday 28 January 2010

Well,

now after the apple iPad announcement, it seems I didn't get it right, I am a bit disappointed. The iPad looks usable but it could have been better. It's slim indeed and apple needs to make a healthy profit, so smaller resolution than expected display but if the software is clever it makes up for the lack of pixels in most cases.
It has adopted a more conservative and old fashioned aspect ration of 4:3 rather than my favorite Golden ratio (phi, 1.618) - pity for my taste, but component availability might be responsible for that.
The wide bezel doesn't look nice either, but not very ugly either.
Also disappointed no more 3D metaphors are present in the gui. Nice 3D surface for the standard icons at the bottom a la OSX, but there is more room for improvement.
No skype video conference either, no camera. One of my favorite apps.

To be continued...

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Tablet predictions

What a tablet computer can be:

(possible forecasts for the Apple tablet)

1. Have an aspect ration of the 'Golden Ratio' Phi (φ) 1.618. Possible resolution of screen (under the commercial availability as of Jan 2010) 1280x800 or 1280x768 (or perhaps even 1440x900.) About 10 inches diagonal.

2. Have a finger and gesture touch interface. No pointer on the screen. Designed to function with fingers, not stylous.

3. Have more 3D (real or 3d-looking) user interface elements, like coverflow and the date-time picker found previously on the iPhone OS. 3D looking home page(s.)

4. Runs on arm cpu and has 3D acceleration.

5. Has webcam.