When Apple introduced the iPhone, it was like Steve Jobs reached through a mysterious wormhole and pulled from within it an object from five years into the future; its design and user interface were like nothing seen before.
With the iPad, it’s like Jobs picked up a five year old magazine article about what Apple might have in store for the future, and based their new product on that. It’s even called iPad.
Many of us who are underwhelmed, however, may remember that the iPod was met with similar disappointment (and derision for its name) when it was first released.
Despite the falling price of decent digital cameras, analog photography on the web is still going strong. The sharpness and colour accuracy of transparency film is unbeatable [by current consumer digital cameras], especially if you take pictures with a medium format camera like Joshua Dunford [if you’re lucky, you can pick up a second-hand one of these pretty cheaply – my C330 was 75 Pounds Sterling]. This, coupled with the falling price of quality flatbed transparency scanners means that you can make images for the web which blow digital images away.
OK… lets make it ‘official artificial intelligence day’ [all but one of the links have been shamelessly stolen from the site of Matthew Yee-King, so in return, I thought I’d plug his stuff on the Rephlex label]:
Today, one my students told me that her parents are about to buy her a Mac, but she’s not sure which one to get. She didn’t know about the G4 Powerbook until I told her about it, so guess what she is going to ask Mummy and Daddy for now? Makes you sick, no?
The product code-named ‘Ginger’ will be an alternative to products that “are dirty, expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities.” Maybe it’s an ultra-sleek titanium Sinclair C5 with an ‘in-car’ 15.2 inch flatscreen LCD monitor, Internet access and slot loading DVD burner.
Apparently, it is possible to create a hyperlink straight into a Napster search (if you have Napster installed that is). I don’t know how cross platform/browser compatible it is though. So far, I’ve only got it working on IE5 for the Mac. [cheers Phil]
I’m currently trying to get hold of replacement parts for an old turntable I bought from the classified ads a few years ago. I found this website for the tonearm manufacturer – SME Ltd – and couldn’t help noticing the way in which the website itself looks as if it pre-dates the Internet by about 30 years. Check out the V-Dub vans outside the factory. Classic.
None other than Jonathan Ive [lead designer at Apple and the person responsible for the iMac and the Cube etc] was here in the office the other day. He was picking up an honourary degree from Northumbria Uni where he studied Industrial Design 10 years ago [the course I do a bit of teaching on]. He had an ‘entourage’ of university VIP types around him and I’m sure he really couldn’t be arsed with it all. Even though he’s probably worth a few million and he’s helped Apple out of the doldrums [for a while anyway] he seems quite a modest chap who hates the formality of these occasions. The current 3rd Year of the Industrial Design course are collaborating with Ive/Apple on a project – lucky so and so’s.
