Monday, January 04, 2010 |
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Apple Tablet Rumors |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM   
As a small-time Apple fanatic, I'm definitely excited by the rumors swirling about an Apple tablet. Gizmodo recently posted The Exhaustive Guide to Apple Tablet Rumors. It's a fun read.
Of course, tons of people are asserting definitive claims, most of them contradicting other people's definitive claims. I suspect that most people don't know jack, and if some people do know something, we have no way to determine who they are.
Nonetheless, all the crazy speculation makes me happy. People are soooo excited about a device that they don't know anything about and that might never come to market. I love that! Apple has indeed built a great reputation for itself.
As for the rumored device, unless you're suggesting that it's going to sear your steak and wash your laundry, you're probably underestimating it. Most people seem to be imagining the device to be little more than an extension of current technology, meaning a large version of the iPhone.
That's exactly the mistake that people made with the iPhone during the rumor-mongering phase. They thought it would be some kind of blend of the iPod of the day plus a cell phone. For example -- and these are highly amusing -- see Four iPhone Mockups That Completely Missed the Mark and The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone. My favorite wrong comment is from the author of that second article, who said:
And the swiss-army knife philosophy of today's phones seems anything but Jobsian. Would the iPhone play music, capture still photos and video, do e-mail and browsing, and be a mobile gaming platform (oh, and let you make phone calls)? Or could Apple get away with introducing an elegant device that did voice, music, and possibly video extremely well--and didn't even try to do anything else? Haha!
I suspect that people are so excited about this tablet because, based on Apple's history, they have reason to believe that it will be so much more than they can imagine right now. That's what the innovative producer does. He does not give us what we want; he produces some new thing that we didn't even know we wanted until we saw it. He does not satisfy demand; he creates demand.
That's what makes capitalism so damn great.Labels: Business, Computers
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Saturday, November 22, 2008 |
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Tenth Circle of Hell: A Week of PC After Two Years of Mac |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 7:33 AM
I'm in PC hell.
Yesterday morning, I used my computer -- my beloved Mac PowerBook Pro -- to check and answer my mail. A bit later, after I'd fed the beasts, I returned to find it apparently frozen in sleep. So I rebooted it. It bonged and the hard drive whirred, but the screen never lit up. I tried again, and again, and again. I got nothing. When I hooked it up to an external monitor, I got nothing.
So I took it to the friendly local Apple Store. It looks like a dead video card -- just as I thought. Unfortunately, they need to ship it out, and I likely won't get it back for a full week. Boo hoo hoo!
So in the meantime, I'm working on my old PC laptop. That's not going to be fun. I don't have access to regular programs, including programs that I use regularly for dissertation writing. I'm going to have to use web mail. (UGH!) The setup is now unfamiliar, so I'll be doing all kinds of stupid things. Windows will do its usual dumb things like asking me to reboot every few minutes after an update. (Yes, that's happening already.) The keys on the keyboard are really cramped and hard-to-press. My space key onlyseemstowork intermittently. So I'll have to fight this machine -- like all PCs must be fought. Worst of all, however, the video card on this machine is flaky, so I might need to switch to Paul's old PC, which isn't set up how I like in the slightest. (I'm very fussy!)
The good news is that I do backup my whole Mac -- meaning that I mirror the entire hard drive to an external drive -- every week. (I also backup my dissertation to multiple off site locations on a regular basis.) I just did that total backup on Wednesday night, and the Apple Store did another backup for me on another drive last night. So I shouldn't lose any data whatsoever.
I do expect to age a few years in this next week, however.Labels: Computers
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Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
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MacBook Pro Sleep Problems |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 12:54 AM
Hooray! I've finally fixed my MacBook Pro's problems with waking up from sleep!
Basically, about one time in ten, my Mac would only partly wake up from a state of sleep. Nothing would revive it, so I'd have to reboot. That was very annoying, and multiple web searches over the past few months offered no help whatsoever until I discovered this page on how to change the sleep mode. So now my Mac is set to sleep mode 0 (i.e. the "old style sleep mode, with RAM powered on while sleeping, safe sleep disabled, and super-fast wake") instead of the currently standard sleep mode 3 (i.e. the new sleep mode where "RAM is powered on while sleeping, but RAM contents are also written to disk before sleeping" so that the machine hibernates if power if totally drained).
The lack of ability to slip into hibernation as a backup isn't a problem for me, since I never fully run down my battery while in sleep mode. Plus, I like that the computer sleeps and wakes faster than before. Most importantly, however, my computer has woken up perfectly from sleep for a few weeks now, with just one funky exception. Until it began working properly, I didn't realize how much the constant nagging worry that my computer might not wake properly wore on me! Now I feel liberated!Labels: Computers
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008 |
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Dark Castle |
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By Diana Hsieh @ 11:02 PM
I've never been much for computer games, but back in my early teens, I spent tons of time playing Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle on my little Mac SE and Mac Classic. Now, thanks to TUAW, I recently discovered that a new version, Return to Dark Castle, is supposed to be forthcoming shortly. It's in color, with all its characteristic sound effects, and includes not all the old levels from the prior two games. To get a glimpse, you can check out the just-released trailer.
Apparently, the game has been in development for some time, so I can only hope that it will be released sooner rather than later. Otherwise I might just explode.Labels: Computers
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