Posts Tagged ‘Creation’

Have a happy period, iPad

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Completely ignoring my Apple iToaster idea, bespectacled pencil Steve Jobs has finally laid waste to years of tablet speculation by bringing out the Apple iPad.

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So big it takes up an entire wall.

Ignoring the name that sounds like the most technologically advanced sanitary towel, this new product from, soon to be religious cult, Apple no longer seem content with branding everything they create with a half-eaten fruit and feel the need to make everything look like an iPhone. The iPad is the latest in an explosion of new Tablet PCs – devices which blur the line between netbook and smartphone as they boast the convenience of the latter with the performance of the former. Apple, as expected, declined to unveil this at CES in front of their undoubtedly jealous rivals and staged yet another overhyped product launch in which Steve Jobs walked the huddled masses through the device.

The iPad is, of course, a touchscreen tablet computer that runs Apple’s 1GHz “A4” processor, the first device to do so and, indeed, the first time in recent years Apple have developed a processor rather than sliding between AMD and Intel like an overexcited horse on ice-skates. 1024×786 resolution screen means good video playback but not full HD (or 3D, they’ve missed a trick). It also comes with a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash memory capacity and a battery claiming up to 10 hours of use time and more than a month in standby time. Now, I don’t know a lot about batteries, but that’s quite a discrepancy.

Under the hard stuff, we have the OS which appears to be simply a variation on the iPhone OS – similar icons and support for iPhone apps, upscaled to fit the larger screen, and a choice of buying it with or without 3G and needing a data plan. I suppose not including the same OS you would get on a computer presents this more as a leisure device, which is at odds with the unwritten apparent application of tablets which is to replace netbooks as a portable, work device (illustrated helpfully by Steve Jobs and some handy graphics involving a middleground and falling words at the keynote speech, the netbook was crushed by the mere name iPad).

One of the biggest problems I see with the iPad, is the lack of Flash support in-browser, which absolutely fucks the idea of this being used as either a leisure device OR a work device. Using it as a leisure device, in this age of the internet, means web browsing, and that’s made a whole lot harder when the platform that a big chunk of the web is built on isn’t supported. This will also affect is as a business device given that any company worth it’s bisto does publicity and presentations in big shiny flash videos. Sure, Apple were kind enough to offer us a scraping of flash in the stuff we do most (namely BBC iPlayer and YouTube) but this device absolutely needs Flash support or it’s going to have problems; other tablets support flash, within months (if not weeks) Adobe will release their mobile flash plugin and I’ll be able to view Flash content on my Palm Pre, but the iPhone won’t support this. Apple, stop being petty, get your shit together, let Adobe pass it’s mobile flash for the iPhone and please your obsessive, salavating hounds of fanboydom or……well nothing. Admitedly, nothing will happen to damage the sales of the iPhone, or even the iPad, without Flash because most don’t understand it. While people see and know the term “Flash Player” bandied around on the web, usually in those few seconds before it kicks in on a YouTube video, but few understand what it is or understand when you mention it doesn’t support it. Someone I know, on mentioning that there’s no Flash support, replied knowingly ‘Oh that’s ok, I always take photos in the day’. Typical.

Typing, of course, is handled by an onscreen keyboard and this, I feel, is where the iPad, and indeed the whole tablet concept, falls down. At the keynote speech Jobs demonstrated it by resting the device flat on his lap and typed facing straight down. This is one of the major flaws I see with tablets, in that, to do anything worthwhile involving typing you need to suffer excruciating neckstrain and it just isn’t worth it when you can have a netbook. Laptops were designed with hinges below the screen for a reason. It’s not all bad, however, because in a very Apple-like move, Jobs announced a keyboard that can dock with the tablet making it, that’s right children, a sodding computer. If I were to own one, I wager it’d spend a lot of time sitting docked (and plugged in) on my desk and be used as a second computer.

I actually feel that this device is pretty under-spec, it’s supposedly a work-on-the-go device with all the things you’d need, yet it runs a measly 1GHz processor. Apple fanboys will tear the tape away from their mouths (I got pissed off with the 3GS and started kidnapping them, is anyone complaining?) to tell me that a slower processor doesn’t matter in an Apple environment because it the OS runs faster and more efficiently. Excuse me while I wipe yet another cliché that Jobs tries to sell from my ears and call bullshit on that. Sure, Windows is bloated but I cannot allow you to say that, even if that were true of Apple, a 1GHz processor would run at a bearable speed, it just doesn’t gel.

Obviously the rumours of this device have been around since Duke Nukem Forever was in pre-production but, for the most part, these have been dashed. The toenails of rumour-man were getting so long that it’s good Apple have decided to clip them (I’m not sure what made me think of that metaphor, I must cut my toenails), but it’s a shame because some of the aforementioned rumours, which is now relegated to rank of “made up bullshit”, were quite intriguing and would’ve made the device really stand out, like if it had run Mac OSX (which of course they couldn’t do otherwise it would be a Mac and have the price to show that). Instead of introducing an entirely new looking device, the “big iPhone” look makes sense I guess but putting it on a larger and definitely not pocket-sized device confuses the idea of a phone handset. It’s hardly surprising that Apple wanted to spread this form factor as a brand having managed to do so with every other possible aspect (even with music, going so far as to create their own DRM a few years back), but I think they needed a new look to set out this device as the laptop-smartphone ‘middle ground’ they’re so fond of and not merely an extension on the latter. The screen is laced with a black edge bigger than Steve Jobs’ piggy bank, so the whole things feels like they’ve compromised a lot of screen real-estate for the purposes of the iPhone-look. I would’ve gone with a screen touching the very edges of the device, but that’s merely to feed my uber sci-fi technolust.

What advantages does this tablet have over every other tablet that were announced at CES last year. Apple’s unsubtle timing with the Creation event clearly generated enough hype to overshadow the devices announced in Vegas so that anyone contemplating a tablet will automatically think of Apple. To be honest, there’s nothing that would feasibly set this apart, I was privy a little while ago to some of the visuals of the OS that made it onto the final unveiling and they did make me salivate, but unless it’s in practise I can’t say anything. The eBook reader interface was what I liked the most, but it’s worth mentioning us Bulldogs won’t get native eBook support, and bear in mind that it lacks the e-Ink screen. Maybe it’s because I’m a tech writer, but if I was going to buy a tablet I’d feasibly look at my options and include the iPad as a contender, but not automatically assume it was best and blindly buy it.

Scarily though, fanboys wouldn’t be quite so discerning, and it doesn’t really matter what this device does because there’s already a market who would’ve bought it a month ago. Creator of Digg and co-host of Revision3 show Diggnation, Kevin Rose did a survey a few weeks ago essentially saying that if Jobs said we have a tablet and told you nothing else about spec, features or price but just said that you can order it now, would you buy now? Shockingly, around 30% of the people who took the poll essentially said “Yes, I trust Steve Jobs and would buy right away”. Apple’s hold on these obsessive Apple fanboys is so absolute that regardless of how tablet computers fare in the future, Apple will always have customers.

I like this device, I have to confess, but I think the target of tablet computers in general need changing, and will probably do so organically as these devices become commercially available. These devices are being touted as a replacement for netbooks, as a portable yet functional device, but they won’t work like that; a functional device needs a keyboard that you can use without breaking your neck. I think that these devices will become perfect gadgets, not for “on the go”, but for “around the house”. I can picture myself sitting down on a sofa in the morning with a coffee to read some news, read a book, check my email – but not work.

Though I lose any future Apple-bruising points for saying this, and risk being called an Apple-polisher, but I may actually buy this, or I may buy some other tablet if it’s got a better spec, but this is pretty good. It’s being sold in the US for $500, which equates to around £300ish in the UK, so it’s a relatively cheap device for Apple. However, for the reasons I mentioned above I’d only go for the WiFi one rather than shelling out for another data plan.

But I’m not using that fucking onscreen keyboard…

P.S. I apologise for the lateness of this post, I’ve been quite ill this week and had to wait for my thumping headache and nausea to subside momentarily so I could read the keynote coverage. Night.

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Creation

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

I read a news report today that I find quite amazing.

If you look back a few posts to my review of Tarantino’s new film ‘Inglorious Basterds’ you’ll see I mentioned a few other films that I’m eager to see in the next few months. One of which is ‘Creation’ – a film based on the life and struggle of Charles Darwin before, during and after he wrote On the Origin of Species, battling between his faith and his science with his highly religious wife. As you can read from the report I’ve linked above, however, no film distributor in the US will show Creation when it is released because they deem it to be ‘too controversial’ to show it in there, citing statistics that only 39% of US citizens believe the theory of evolution over intelligent design.

If you’ve read what few posts I’ve written about my own beliefs, you’ll know that I’m an hesistent atheist, I don’t believe in the Bible and miracles etc. though I’m hesitant to say outright that there is no God and shoulder some belief in a higher power, possibly not supernatural or omnipotent but something we’ve come to identify as God. However, my stance on evolution is unfaultering, it is, in my mind, simply a fact. If you choose to stop reading here because my belief doesn’t concur with yours and you believe that my opinion is of no futher validity because of that fact, then goodbye, the exit button is on the top-right of the window, or if you’re using a Mac the top-left. My own beliefs (and the fact that I’m reading ‘The God Delusion’ at the moment) aside it seems incredible that simply the faith, fundamental or otherwise, of a nation can have such a massive influence on the film industry simply because it involves Darwin and Evolution, regardless of it’s story or it’s visual integrity or simply whether or not it’s a good film, as a film.

Granted, everybody is entitled to their opinion, a policy I exercise on a regular basis in this very blog and indeed it would be most hypocritical of me not to consider the other side of the coin, I delight in doing so. But it seems to me that, regardless of your opinion of the theory of evolution and the story of creation and, by extension, intelligent design (note: for fairness I use theory/story as both suggest but neither affirm truth), there is no reason to, passively I’ll admit, ban this film from cinemas. I’m not going to go into the evidence or reasons that I myself have for believing, as I most firmly do, in Evolution as biological fact because I’m simply not a biologist and could offer no articulate reasoning. I don’t believe that there is an alien man in a blue box travelling through time and space either but I’ll still watch Doctor Who, the same applies, even if you don’t believe or accept something as truth is no reason to cause such controversy about a film depicting it as truth. The premise of the film isn’t even the validity, or lack thereof if you want, of the theory of evolution, it is simply a character piece on the man himself (based on a fictionalised account of the events written by Darwin’s great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, in 2000), who was a scientist, not the devil. Although some would have you believe otherwise…

I’m being very British and doing my utmost to be fair and polite but I was astounded and somewhat sickened to read in the report about the comments on Darwin by a Christian film review website movieguide.org, which apparentely is quite influential in America. There is no review of the film itself (nor, by the sounds of it, will there ever be) but there is a review of a newly released book called “Darwin’s Racists” (mentioning they only rarely review books if they are noteworthy, describing this as “timely”), the review itself (as you will also see quoted in the news report) says that ‘Darwin’s Racist’s’ “exposes the real Charles Darwin: a racist, a bigot and 1800’s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder. This well written book shows that Adolf Hitler, along with other genocidal mass murderers, was influenced by Darwin’s half-baked Theory of Evolution. This book exposes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution for what it is: an elitist and racist dogma that has infiltrated our every area of culture thereby undermining sense and sensibility.”

Now, if I may exercise my own right to opinion, this is outright ridiculous. Charles Darwin, being the scientist that he was, observed and drew up his theory with, initially, no idea how controversial it would be until he began to develop it. Even when he had collaborated his theory it sat there, take it or leave it. It was down to Hitler to, as is frequently alleged, interpret this into the baffling view that the Germans make up a Master Race that should dominate the globe. I can’t think of a decent analogy to use to expostulate this point further, and I’ve really tried, but the point is that Hitler was responsible for how he interpreted Darwin’s findings, and he was responsible for the actions he took and attrocities he committed based on his own interpretation. Charles Darwin was an amicable and benevolent scientist who created a theory and was in no way responsible for the interpretation of his theory and despicable actions of Adolf Hitler a full 80 years later (and 57 years after Darwin had died). Where, in Darwin’s findings, does he so much as hint that his findings suggest that Germans had evolved differently, let alone superior, to the rest of humanity. If I recall correctly, which I may not and can find little evidence either way so forgive me a brief freestyle, I believe Darwin says relatively little on the evolutionary origins of humans specifically and focuses more broadly on other animals and plants, perhaps knowing what uproar a direct and clear contradiction of intelligent design and “God….Man….Own Likeness” would cause, though he (evidently) wasn’t subtle enough. I will grant you that there are links, but the Bible itself teaches responsibility for one’s own actions, so shouldn’t this arguement make perfect sense to you instead of using it as cannon fodder to slander Darwin. I should note here that I am referencing all genocidal murderers throughout history to which the review refers under the same arguement as I have done with Hitler, much as I am referencing all variations on Christianity into the same title as simply Christianity and not uniquely considering each slight variation thereupon.

We didn’t see Passion of the Christ banned (again, banned is not literally what’s happened but it is close) because it doesn’t conform with Muslim views, of which there are nearly 100,000 permanent residents in the US. We didn’t see Inglourious Basterds or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas banned because it dealt with the Holocaust, Nazism and World War 2 which may upset the 5.3 million Jewish citizens in America. Why is it that the majority, as Christianity is with 76% of the US population, can yield such authority when the United States Bill of Rights expressly forbad any sort of official state religion or for that religion to have any kind of governing power, the Bill of Rights offered total and equal freedom of religion. So why has the US film industry been so easily persuaded not to show this film owing to the controversy it could cause from a religious group if the US has that?

You may say, given that this film was deemed too controversial and not actually banned, that I am exaggerating, but clearly the problem was sufficient for the US film industry to reject any kind of sales from this film, and that suggests a serious issue arising. Granted, the Christian lobby in the US has had no political or governing power to use to stop this film being shown in the States, and technically they haven’t, but if the film industry was so swayed by the controversy that it could, and probably will (even without being shown), cause from the uproar that 76% of America can cause, then something isn’t right. It’s close to scaremongering.

Having read the first 100-pages of ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins, I found it hard to fathom or even believe that the extent to which Dawkin’s describes the US to be devout theists in the twenty-first century. Lo and behold, once I started reading this book, a report such as this appears, were I a supersticious or religious man I might even call it fate, or God. It’s still, nevertheless, hard for me to grasp such a scale that people hold this belief living in the UK, where though there is no an absence of religion, controversy is limited by our general British politeness to quiet frustration and the voice of Christianity itself is a clear but calm voice (the gentle eccentric tea-drinking vicar that Dawkins paints is still going strong in the UK) that has undoubtedly allowed me to maintain friendships with Christians who, in a more fundamentalist environment, may not be so accepting of me, and possibly nor me of him. Though, I should mention, this is not entirely the case and I know a fair few fundamentalist Christians who are less sporting in a fair debate with me as the ones I am friends with.

As usual for ANY of my posts, feel free to reply with comments arguing for or against my view, even if you just want to insult me, that’s your choice. I have conjectured my opinion with as much evidence as I feel is necessary (carefully avoiding the subject of evolution vs intelligent design, I’m not a biologist so could offer no intelligent or articulate evidence myself) so if you will write a rebuke to my words, back it up with evidence and I will gladly listen.

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