Cold again: nothing too bad though. Actually surprised I managed 2 weeks of bike riding before the body rejected exercise. Still feeling better today than yesterday, so hopefully I can resume my fitness training tomorrow (or Tuesday).
Xboxless: This one lasted longer than the previous one, as I actually used it. Though only used if for a few days and then it sat unused since January. Sold the console for £130 and a couple of games for £36. Still got Forza 3 to shift. Probably will loose about £40 since purchase which isn’t too bad I guess.
Indecision: So with the money from the post above I have around £175 to spend on things. I did buy a DS XL but took it back as I didn’t think a great deal of it (Resolution is still the same as the normal DS, so some things looked messy). I *may* look at a HD freeview box (actually just thought of it!).
/edit: Cold got worse, now cold has been escalated to Bloke Flu level 2.
I know I didn’t post pictures from the Part 1 or even blog about it so………..
……so there you go.
Anyway part 2 is with us in the early hours of Saturday as were visiting the Collection Centre in Dollman Street. There’s a limit of 30 people this time and it’s all ticket. Visit the 4amProject website for more info. So see you there (and I promise to post images faster this time.
Quite an unusual place for a meeting, but the Created In Birmingham shop proved to be a good venue. A fair amount of us in the sofa corner listened and contributed to the aims of the project. Marie (Foulston @Tigershungry) is the person at the top organising what to do. As I said it’s still early days, it’s a little difficult to approach certain people as we don’t want to appear to be a ‘Save the Library’ mob.
So not a lot to report yet, but keep an eye on the Project Brutal website for more info. Or you can look at this blog as I’ll probably have some involvement with it.
So it seems Steve (Jobs) has a nice new product (iPad) and other Steve (Fry) met him talked a bit and seems to really like it. I’m not disagreeing with either. I’m sure it’s a great product at a great price, but this Steve isn’t sure where it fits in.
The iPhone and Macbook have their pluses and minuses. Whilst the iPhone is great, the web side can be a pain (mind you O2’s network doesn’t help). Other than that it fits the bill. The Macbook on the other hand is a superb bit of kit, but it’s heavy and less portable. So the iPad should fit in between these two devices. O.k. it’s not a phone, but the phone part of the iPhone is almost secondary to me. It’s used more as a non voice communications tool than a phone, it just happens to have a good phone built it. So it seems apart from the phone element the iPad is a clear winner. Maybe, maybe not. The other advantage of the iPhone is it’s pocket-able, which for me a major consideration.
So at this point it’s not winning.
Looking over at the Macbook it’s hard to see where the iPad wins, other than cost and weight. For me the Macbook is essential for working/input etc whereas the iPad isn’t an input tool. It has the ability to input, but really at this moment in time it’s not a viable solution for working.
A dead duck then?
Probably for me it is, it seems whilst the ability to create on iPad is not lost, it’s certainly no Laptop. It’s miles ahead for creativity compared to the iPhone, but still lacks multitasking that laptop users have relied on for years. Maybe the iPad/iPhone v.4 software will address this. If so then productivity would be increased on both devices.
It’s still missing something important from the MacBook: OS X. Underneath the iPad/iPhone is a mobile version of OS X, which is superb. Unfortunately it’s a closed system, you can’t change it too much and the freedom to buy applications off the shelf isn’t there. Apple don’t want to go down the netbook route, which I can understand. Netbooks are pretty much just a small laptop, not much cheaper than a normal laptop but with a smaller screen and low spec CPU/Ram combination. For portable mobile computing Apple have the MacBook Air, which does come with a very large price tag (which in turn isn’t too far away from the pricing of Dell/HP etc and their MBA style laptops).
So the real reason for the iPad: Content
Apple haven’t hid away from this, in fact it’s probably the biggest win for the device. As a pure content delivery device I don’t think there’s anything to match it for style, price and usability.
Problem I have is I’m not a content person. I do use the iPhone on the bus/train for music, but that’s it. Trying to use an iPhone for the web on the 17 bus is a nightmare, it’s not an easy task (really the roads were bad before the winter and the potholes). Maybe with the iPad it’ll be easier. I suppose it would, after all it’s a bigger device so navigation may be less problematic.
With regards to video content my Bus/Train journeys are too short for anything but a 30 minute video, so nothing again for me here. Maybe the eBooks will be a winner, again not for me as I don’t read (sadly, never got the bug – wouldn’t know where to start now – probably try War and Peace or some other mammoth tome – just to clarify I can read, but don’t read apart from Technical manuals).
Video treat: Stephen Fry unboxes an iPad and accessories
So to conclude:
It’s a great product, but it probably doesn’t fit me.
