Nicely done, Apple

[da]

This article from Time has a hands-on description from a reporter, and makes it look that much more appealing. If you're interested in such things, and are willing to shell out the money, that is. I bet lots of people are.

"To Jobs's perfectionist eyes, phones are broken. Jobs likes things that are broken. It means he can make something that isn't and sell it to you for a premium price."

That seems about right. As an example: apparently, they've borrowed the multi-touch gestures that I first saw last autumn where pinching your fingers together on the screen zooms out and drawing your fingers apart zooms in.

I wonder whether the revisions they required Cingular to make so all their network features would work, will filter down to other cellphone companies as well. And I like that this "phone" is actually a sneaky reimplementation of the ideas behind the Newton. Apple has 200 patents for this little device. I'm looking forward to seeing a writeup of the more interesting ones.

But personally, unless I can see one hands-on and decide it's going to change my life in a real way, I can think of better things to do with $500 US.

Incidentally, lost in the news from Cupartino, is news of a real full-size Macbook Tablet, made by Axiotron. (Yeah, who?) Oh well. It's got GPS built in. (I wonder if I can get that as a PCMCIA card for my Mac Book Pro yet?)

Comments

[ckd]

The MacBook Pro doesn't have a PCMCIA slot; it has an ExpressCard/34 slot.

Perhaps a Bluetooth GPS would be a better choice?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

The MacBook Pro doesn't have a PCMCIA slot; it has an ExpressCard/34 slot.

...which is a PCMCIA standard; I just didn't take the time to remember the full name. :)

Yes, eventually, I probably will end up with a bluetooth GPS. I'm just casting about for something worth using that slot for.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Yep. You could get an excellent one for 1/3 the price of the mac tablet.

[thingo.livejournal.com]

The video you point to is a live recording of a video that's already available directly here. I've played with Jeff Han's system, and I can say without reservation that it's the single coolest thing ever. Apparently, it's not even too hard to build one, a project that's on my long-term todo list.

Also apparently, Apple licensed this technology from Han. It would be really neat if this were the sensing technology in the phone, though it's not clear from my understanding of FTIR-based sensing how they would have managed it.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

..did they? It looks they might've patented multi-touch themselves. (along with a universe of other things). Hope this doesn't mean every interface designer is going to be cursing Apple once it becomes clear what Apple requires licenses to use.

[thingo.livejournal.com]

Hm. I had heard rumours that Jeff's work had been acquired by Apple. That may be complete bunk, or it may be true but not applicable to the iPhone. Web searchers on "Jeff Han" and "Apple" definitely turn up a lot of pages where the two are mentioned together.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll believe your rumours.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

WTF? Multi-touch has been on the market for many years. How can you patent something that other people have working, buyable products implementing?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hm, looks like they might be doing a botch job with the name "iPhone," even.

Must be tough, being Apple. :)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

And yeah. Let me know if you want help with that long-term todo list item. I want one for my wall.

[thingo.livejournal.com]

Easier said than done, actually. The system requires a digital video camera and projector that sit underneath the screen and reach all of it. It would take another leap of inventiveness to make a flat version that can hang on a wall.

On the other hand, check out the Lemur.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

...sure, I'll take one of those. Purty. Multi-touch, too.

Have you gotten one for research purposes yet?

[chezmax]

It look pretty cool. :)

And if this means data features will become cheaper, then I'm all for it :)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

You could buy a GPS receiver as a PCMCIA card for your MacBook Pro if your MacBook Pro had a PCMCIA card slot. Unfortunately, it has an ExpressCard/34 slot (which I guess is technically a PCMCIA standard). As far as I know, there are no GPS modules for ExpressCard/34. There are hardly any ExpressCard/34 modules at all.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I saw the other ExpressCard/34 response after I posted mine. :) The best use for the slot that I've seen is a dual eSATA adapter, which, when hooked up to an appropriate two-disk eSATA RAID enclosure, provided disk speeds something like 6x as fast as the internal drive in the machine. Outside of that, and admittedly it's not really that portable, I've pondered getting a multi-format ExpressCard/34 memory card reader so that I could pop memory cards into my MBP whenever.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

If you can afford it, you can get EVDO ExpressCard/34 cards.