The iPad 2: yes, but still, what’s it for?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

I’m disappointed with the iPad 2. It’s not that I was desperately hoping it would have a Thunderbolt connector, or an SD card slot, or any particular feature.

I was just hoping that it would appeal to me, that it would instinctively make sense in a way the original iPad never has.

Because I do want to love the iPad. I’ve lived through enough technological revolutions to know how tremendously exciting and life-changing they can be. Frankly, I’m frustrated at being on the outside of this one.

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The all-new PC Pro Real World Benchmarks

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

It’s our mission to bring you the most accurate and informative reviews on the market. That’s why we’ve updated our benchmarks to reflect the way real people use computers today.

Our new tests don’t rely on synthetic measures: we use real, current applications such as Microsoft Office 2010 and Photoshop CS5, as well as a completely new set of responsiveness tests, to get an all-round picture of a PC’s performance.

That means the benchmark scores you’ll see from this day on are not directly comparable with older scores, but they give the best ever insight into exactly what each system can do for you.

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Shouted down by the Apple community

Friday, January 7th, 2011

I’ve been plugging my Android phone into an iMac to charge it. (It’s a long story.) My phone is set to USB disk drive mode, but 99% of the time when I connect it I don’t actually copy any files: I’m just charging it.

Neverthless, every time I disconnect the USB cable, the Mac gives me a little pop-up, as above, saying the disk was “not ejected properly” and tutting about “damage to the information” — even though, as the OS must know, there are no write operations pending. It’s not really a problem, but it’s a small intrusion; and now I’ve seen the message a dozen times, and I’m fully apprised of the risks, I’d quite like to get rid of it. (more…)

My New Year’s resolutions for 2011

Friday, December 31st, 2010

The New Year is traditionally a time for looking forward — witness the annual tradition of making promises to oneself to improve and grow. Happily, I need no improving, and I certainly don’t need to grow; so instead I’m going to welcome 2011 by writing about some of the display resolutions I have known and loved over the years.

64 x 48 (1981)

64 x 48 was the graphical resolution of the Sinclair ZX81. That may sound rather low, and indeed it was: early Space Invaders clones pretty much involved squares shooting squares at other squares. It was addressed in a rather unusual way, too. The screen was divided up into a monochromatic 32 x 24 grid, of which each cell could contain either a text character or a graphical block. These blocks looked a bit like miniature Tetris shapes (they’re at the start of the character table above), and could be stacked together to make complex – if rather large – shapes.

As you can see, text was actually rendered at a much higher resolution, and by using clever hardware tricks some programmers did manage to make use of the ZX81’s full 256 x 192 resolution, enabling them to create stunning photorealistic visuals. Not. (more…)

The best netbook OS: XP, Windows 7 or Ubuntu?

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

With the arrival last month of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, it’s time to revisit a familiar question: which operating system is best for a netbook? Linux-based systems may seem well-suited to lightweight devices (the original Asus Eee PC ran Xandros Linux), but there are advantages to the familiar interface and applications of Windows.

Indeed, if you buy a netbook today it will probably come with Windows 7 Starter, while older models are likely to be running Windows XP. Still, it’s easy to move from either to Ubuntu Netbook Edition, and of course it’s free. If you want to upgrade an older netbook to Windows 7 you’ll have to shell out £65 for the Home Premium edition, as Starter isn’t sold separately.

Each of these four operating systems has its attractions, but the key question is how each one performs on low-powered netbook hardware. To find the answer, I’ve spent the past few days installing them all – Windows XP Home, Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Home Premium and Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, with all available updates – on an Asus Eee PC 1008HA, and timing a series of typical netbook tasks to discover which OS makes the most of lightweight hardware. (more…)

Steve Jobs’ anti-Android manifesto dissected

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

As you’ve probably seen, Steve Jobs made a personal appearance on Apple’s earnings call last night in which he denounced Android and Google’s “open” approach. Here’s a complete transcript of that four-minute section of the call, with some of my own interjections.

“Google loves to characterise Android as open”

“Google loves to characterise Android as open, and iOS and iPhone as closed. We find this a bit disingenuous, and clouding the real difference between our two approaches. The first thing most of us think about when we hear the word ‘open’ is Windows, which is available on a variety of devices.”

I don’t believe there’s a single person in the world for whom the word “open” instinctively suggests Windows. Clearly, Jobs is trying to finesse the terms of the argument right at the outset, so he can focus on what he wants to talk about – a theme we might call “choice versus simplicity” – and ignore the rest of the issues that relate to openness. Coming one sentence after he’s accused Google of being disingenuous, that’s a bit rich. Indeed, Google VP Andy Rubin has responded with a terse tweet indicating one significant implication of “open” that Jobs overlooks – freely available source code.

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Why I prefer Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition to the iPad

Monday, October 18th, 2010

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, I must apologise for my rather uncouth language the other week. I was trying to get something done using an iPad (specifically, testing the Parallels Desktop 6 remote access app), and was finding the whole process intensely frustrating.

I should admit that I come to the iPad pre-irritated by Apple’s attempts to swaddle the thing in a wholly unearned sense of awe. A “magical, revolutionary device”? Please: the telephone was a revolutionary device. It’s like when some 20-year old would-be Apprentice declares “I am the best manager you’ll ever meet”: I want to smack him twice, once for the arrogance and again for the delusion.

And once I started actually trying to use the iPad, I hit practical irritations too. I couldn’t find the download I wanted on the website (all such links being sequestered away in the App Store); I really couldn’t get on with the keyboard; and, now I’m used to Android with its “back” and “search” buttons, I felt lost in the OS and its apps, scared to press a button for fear of never finding my way back. (more…)

Will Intel scratchcards unlock a new business model?

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Yesterday I returned from the Intel Developer Forum to be greeted by some interesting news that definitely wasn’t mentioned at IDF. In case you missed it, the CPU Goliath has started selling upgrades to its low-end Pentium CPUs in the form of scratch-cards – in the US, at least.

It’s a simple idea. The processor ships at a low price with some of its capabilities disabled, and these cards – which sell for $50 – reveal a code to download a software tool that unlocks those extra capabilities.

Not everyone approves. Some commenters (on more hysterical forums than ours) see this as an outrageous way to treat customers. “They’re selling deliberately crippled parts!” they cry. “They want to charge you twice for the same thing!” And, to an extent, they have a point. (more…)

Another Intel security lapse at IDF 2010

Monday, September 13th, 2010

The 2010 Intel Developer Forum opens today in San Francisco, and yesteday my colleagues and I went through the registration process. That’s a simple matter of filling in a web form on one of the provided laptops, and at first glance it looks the same as it did last year — when (as I blogged at the time) it ended up revealing visitors’ personal information to all and sundry.

As I entered my details this year I was pleased to notice that that particular data leak has been plugged. The information fields no longer support autocomplete, making it impossible to browse previously-entered information. A step up, surely, in security.

Sadly, the process remains fantastically insecure for other reasons. The computers themselves are regular Windows 7 laptops with full internet access – and they’re positioned facing away from the registration staff. So while it may no longer be possible to get information out of them directly, it’s a breeze to to download and install any software you wish (such as a keylogger or database scraper) without anyone being any the wiser. Indeed, since the registration machines are in a public lobby, you can just walk in off the street and start tampering with them.

Is this a serious problem? Admittedly, there’s probably a limit to how much havoc you can wreak on an IDF registration laptop. But if someone were to install an aggressive worm on one of these machines, it could easily spread to more sensitive systems, especially if the hardware ends up going back to Intel HQ. Good security practice means anticipating and eliminating risks like that.

Fundamentally, the lesson is the same as last time: when you build on an existing platform, your system inherits all the complexities and vulnerabilities of that platform. And, once again, this demonstration of that fact comes, poetically enough, from one of the pre-eminent producers of platform technology.

Google App Inventor: is drag and drop a flop?

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Confession time: I have never learnt to program in Java. Swoon, gasp.

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to. In particular, I’ve always loved the idea of creating my own mobile phone apps; but I’ve never seemed to find the time. So I was excited to discover at the weekend that Google has finally given me access to App Inventor — a visual development environment that lets you create Android applications via a drag-and-drop interface, with no Java skills required. (more…)