shahid

BBC TV Licence Fee Con

Pretty much the only TV I watch now is via Netflix. There’s not enough new stuff on there to distract me, but just enough quality older stuff with the odd documentary that provides for some light entertainment from time to time on demand.

I’ve written before about my disdain for the BBC, and it’s nice to see other people pick up on the rather obvious conclusion that the BBC has become unreliable, biased, unrepresentative and cowardly in its news reporting. I don’t care much for the rest of its programming either, and given that if I want to watch programmes I’ve already paid for, I have to pay for them again on iTunes or whatever, I hardly think it fair that I should have to pay the licence fee for a channel that not only doesn’t report the news properly, but has also for many years now played a role in making Islamophobia pass the dinner-table-test.

So if anyone knows how I can get away with not paying the licence fee, please let me know. I have no intention of watching anything the BBC makes without paying for it, I’d just much rather pay for it on demand.

See Change with the New iPad

I’ve been surprised by John Gruber’s relative restraint in the face of the big reveal of The Holy Grail last week. I’m less surprised over the spate of articles by people who have their heads in the sand about what this new product means and how revolutionary it actually is. Although I was enjoying the nearby GDC during the announcement, I was blessed enough to be able to place my pre-order from the Starbucks on 3rd Street, from my iPad 1, naturally, just before the battery died after an intensive day of recording audio, taking notes and Engadget-page-refreshing.

The pre-existing iPad sales were hardly anaemic.

(This was just from the last reported quarter)

The fact that an unmatched software base (over a quarter of a million apps work on iPad) and a slightly insane 25 billion downloaded apps in total on iOS makes for customers that are not likely to be going anywhere else soon, seems to be lost on these so-called experts who think that hundreds of millions of iOS customers are suddenly going to jump ship to another platform “soon”.

What impressed me the most was that Apple was able to include a much more powerful SOC, a 4G LTE radio, known to drain Android handsets in little more than an hour and 4 times the pixels (can’t wait to read Instapaper) at a far greater colour saturation level on a device that doesn’t drain the battery any faster than its predecessor. That’s an engineering rabbit-out-of-the-hat delivered with insouciance by a confident company on top of its game while it sits on top of the world. Ridiculously impressive, and ridiculed only by the self-evidently ridiculous.

For the developer of iPad apps though, there is now a serious problem that I have never faced in 30 years of software development. It’s simply this: Never before has a target device had a greater resolution than the display used to create the software for it. The worst case has been parity (like when I wrote games for the Atari 400 on the hardware itself). Up until last week, the resolution on most high definition monitors meant that what you saw on your iPhone Retina could at least fit onto your working HD display, even if the dot pitch meant you’d see a grotesquely bloated version of it, but with the new iPad, you won’t even be able to see all of the pixels.

That’s a first.

And if that doesn’t scare the competition, they are already over.

(March 17, 2012 update: Note I said “most” monitors. There are always edge cases. I specifically excluded the wonderful 27″ iMac and the Thunderbolt display, out of the reach of many people, myself included for now. In any case, neither the 27″ iMac display, nor the Thunderbolt display and other such devices can come close to the pixel density of the amazing new iPad. The display on this new device is entrancing.)

Which Apple?

I got asked a rather odd question this afternoon as I moved my various Apple gadgets around on the breakfast bar. “If you could only have one Apple device, what would it be?”

This caught me by surprise. I fought back tears as I took turns in imagining life without just one of my devices. Alright, I didn’t fight back tears, but I had to buy some time.

“So where would I be that I couldn’t have all of them?”

“Say a desert island!”

“Well that’s easy then. I’d take the iPhone. I’d just call for help”

“There’d be no reception!”

“In that case, there’d be no electricity either!” I protested.

“Look just imagine you have electricity and no reception!”. My family were beginning to lose interest by this point.

I’ve thought about this a lot and I tend to cut the thought experiment short through strategic equivocation. An iPhone is what I’d call the greatest personal computing device ever invented. Mine never leaves my side and is the closest thing I have to a prosthetic. Given the choice between always having to have an insulin pump attached to my body and carrying an iPhone, well, the pump has already lost that battle.

As for the MacBook Air, an 11″ model from 2011, fully maxed out with the processor, RAM and SSD upgrades, well that’s the greatest personal computer I’ve ever owned.

Then there’s the iPad. It’s such a 55M-sold-in-a-year anomaly, that I still haven’t been able to classify it. Most everyone I know says the same thing – that they can’t think of why they’d need one. Then of course they get one and wonder how they got along without it. The iPad doesn’t quite inspire the same degree of love as does an iPhone or MacBook Air, and you wouldn’t type a novel on it (but how many people type novels anyway), but you end up using it for much more than you realise. (I’m writing this post on my iPad, lying down, comfortably. I’d not be able to do this using the MacBook Air.)

On the iPad I run my life with the best version of OmniFocus there is. I can’t run Xcode on it, which would be fantastic and make my life complete, but I have given many presentations off it, going straight into a projector. In fact, I have once written an entire presentation on a tube journey on it. Keynote on iPad is the best presentation software I’ve ever used on any platform.

I once had an hour to write a 30 slide presentation. I chose my iPad and got the job done.

I read books on the iPad. For technical books it beats my Kindle hands down, but granted, for novels it is simply too heavy. For short form reading, I still prefer Instapaper on iPad.

I’d use it for writing if iA Writer didn’t have that cursor positioning bug that the author never responds to queries on. Still, there’s SimpleNote, which I pay for.

There is no more convenient browser than Safari for iPad. It’s the first browser I reach for when I’m at home. For email, I’d rather use the iPad than the iPhone, and it’s often more immediate and therefore convenient than reaching for the laptop.

My favourite diary app is Day One. I like it best on the iPad.

I used to prefer TweetBot on iPhone to any other client on any other platform until TapBots made the iPad version.

I use a Cosmonaut pen by the guys who made the Glyf. I’m still waiting for them to send me a replacement tip, but whatever, I use it on Penultimate, which I use every single day for free form writing and ideas. I used to buy loads of notebooks and then I felt too much reverence for the paper to defile it with my writing. Now I can use page after page of virtual paper and never feel the twinge of regret that I did when I used to lay waste to trees with my ridiculous paper fetish. The iPad did that.

I think the best portable gaming device is the Vita. You might accuse me of bias, but I genuinely believe that. The iPad runs a close second. Right now, there are some fantastic games for iPad and I see only more time wasting brilliance coming this way. It’s better for games than either the Mac or the iPhone.

Then there’s music. I have a folder full of music apps that are absolutely brilliant.

I know that as a geek I should pick the MacBook Air. I know that as a rational time and motion study, the choice would be iPhone.

But if you ask me today, I’d have to take the iPad. I don’t love it as much as the other two, but it’s the one I’d have to take. It is worming its way into more and more areas of my life and nearly always does what I need it to do.

It’s loaded with my music and a couple of choice films (I’m presuming my life’s truncated music collection would be available via iTunes Match) and most importantly, with more books than I will ever be able to read in what’s left of my life.

I will be able to read, write, play, draw, make music, record my thoughts, blog, write Lua if I really want, scribble, access my personal archives, pretty much everything I could do with a MacBook Air bar making iPad apps. And I haven’t made an iPad app, so let’s be honest with ourselves. An iPad is all the machine I need, in a format that makes it a lot easier to use, a lot more immediate, a lot more friendly, a lot less buggy, a lot longer lasting and a lot more personal than a laptop computer. As a canvas, it excels and outs the iPhone into the shade. I can’t see this changing. I see the iPad occupying an ever-increasing portion if my life, and the lives of hundreds of millions of others and I don’t see Google, or almost anybody else, catching up for a decade in this space. The traditional computer is dead bar the shouting.

I just wish it would be a bit quicker, and have a retina display. Roll on March.

Why the Kindle is Better for Reading

Marco Arment writes about the benefits of e-reader displays. I’m on his side on every issue, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, but there is one important benefit he’s missed out on.

There is a pure ergonomic benefit to e-ink that LCDs will never be able to offer, and that is that like paper, they rely on ambient light. It might seem curious that I should point to a restriction as a benefit, but e-ink gives us more than just great battery life.

I recently spent 24 hours in a sleep centre, where I was monitored very closely by skilled professionals armed with some seriously heavy duty equipment. I went to sleep at night (kind of) wired up like some kind of pre-wakened Frankstein’s monster.

During the day, I was asked to try to go to sleep every two hours. For half an hour preceding my nap, I was told to stop using my iPad. I was surprised as I used the iPad to help me reach a soporific state, or so I thought. It turns out that emitted light falling on the retinas stimulates wakefulness. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

It appears that this problem with iPad displays causing insomnia is more common than I thought and for this reason, e-ink displays, such as the one on the Kindle I bought after my sleep centre session, should be popular for some time to come.