Tablet Style Personal Computing:
Personal computing tablet style emphasizes simplicity. What is simpler, sliding a mouse along a table top surface and clicking a button to select an object on a screen, or tapping the screen where the object is displayed?
Personal computing tablet style is mobile. Tablets are smaller, lighter and have longer battery life than notebook computers, and they are designed to be typed on via an on-screen keyboard from almost any position, while a notebook is designed to be typed on while placed on a flat surface.
In short, the iPhone Way to simplicity is a combination of limitations and control, and both of these tenants are completely opposite to what we have known about personal computing.
It is my belief that Steve Jobs views the iPad as an implementation of the iPhone Way to personal computing, and because that the iPhone Way is completely opposite to how we have always thought of personal computing, there are a lot of negative reviews of the iPad. You see arguments like “the iPad does not multitask (run mulitiple programs at the same time) so it is not a real computer,” or “the iPad does not have any USB ports to plug in hardware peripherals, so it is not a real computer.” I think both of these intentional design limitations were made to make the iPad simpler to use, because, who is to say that our definition of personal computing today will be the same definition ten years from now.
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the Apple iPad announcement. Back on January 27, 2010 I wrote, “Has Apple Made Tablets Legit?” and the answer ten years later is a resounding yes. Personally, my iPads are my most used and most important personal computer. Ten years ago the iPad was limited enough to be viewed as a device one uses to read or watch videos, but the current iPads and now iPadOS paired with a keyboard and mouse make it capable of most forms of personal computing. There will always be situations and people demand nothing but a full notebook computer, and that is fine, as Steve Jobs said back then, one can still drive a truck. Happy belated birthday iPad!
P.S. Reading my past writing on this topic, I realize that embedded in the iPad was Apple’s transition to designing their own processors, with their first included in that iPad.
P.S.S. I find it really cool that I can look back and read what I wrote ten years ago. Of course, that only happens because I am paying the bill to continue hosting my old blog. This December I will have been blogging for 21 years.
Manton has added a replies feature to micro.blog that I think should provide a way for you to create and see replies to these posts.
You can buy almost anything on Amazon! And I mean anything. (Look at the address bar.)
Cold, wet, and melting
Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, has passed away.
The Pinebook Pro is an ARM-based laptop that you can buy for $200. You get a 14-inch IPS 1080p screen, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, and you can use SD cards for additional storage. Is it the Raspberry Pi of laptops?
Last week I participated in the MobileViews podcast and in it we talked about foldable screen devices. I stated my opinion that we ought to think of them as foldable tablets rather than foldable phones. In other words, are there use cases in which we wish we could use a tablet but it’s too large to carry around? I think this is important positioning because most people are going to think smartphones are small enough, and foldables are really about making a large screen surface smaller. Coincidentally Microsoft released their SDK for Duo, which is there planned foldable smartphone that they announced last October. The Verge has taken a look at the SDK and explained how that translates to the user experience and I agree it sounds like Microsoft has the right approach. I do wonder, though, about how many cases where users wish they could see Android apps side by side because that appears to be one of the cases Duo will be well suited.
Monty Python’s 10 funniest sketches, per The Telegraph.
The New York Times has a strong statement about Bernie Sanders, which I see as a bug, not a feature. The bug was introduced to the U.S. government by Ronald Reagan. The bug is thinking that compromise and changing one’s mind is wrong. Reality is that compromise and changing one’s mind is wisdom, which we sorely lack. The root cause of the bug is thinking of the President of the United States as a dictator. You see this clearly in Trump’s actions and in his words: “Only I can do it.!” In the Republic formed by the United States Constitution governing involves compromise and convincing people to change their minds. By design one person can NOT change our government. It’s on purpose, and I do not think one can claim themselves a patroit of the United States without embracing this understanding.
Packers imploding. Exhibiting characteristics of a team that is out matched. Game over if the 49ers go up by two touchdowns.
Writer Peter Hamby: This is why President Trump appeals to casual voters - CNN Video
We’ve got the President we deserve. I think this is one if the reasons why the Founders disliked democracy and put in the Electoral College, although we went and screwed that up.
What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means
Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning.
My observation of the managers I work for is that when they talk about “growth” they mean financial (revenue and profit) growth, not at all what is described in this article. Perhaps that is a difference between managers and leaders?
I don’t think Kansas City can afford to spot Tennessee a multi touchdown lead like they did last week because the Titans have a much better running game.
I am compelled to link to this blog post mostly because of the Newton MessagePad image that frames the post. NIce.
I told Google Home to remind me to do something in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes pass and I get a notification “ding”, so I ask Google what is my reminder. I have a couple of recurring reminders and its is really annoying that Google Home (or rather Assistant on Home) is not smart enough to know which reminder is the trigger for the notification. When I ask Google for my reminder it begins to read me all the reminders for the day when I only want to know the most recent one. Do Googlers even use this stuff?
This morning when I attempted to access my primary instance of River5 I observed an ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED message. This instance is hosted on Google Cloud and River5 has been running non-stop for over two years. It looks like there is a bug in urlfeed.toLowerCase() that causes a TypeError: Cannot read property ‘toLowerCase’ of undefined.
The interesting thing is that same error occurred on a second instance of River5 that is running a newer version of the code. I’ve restarted both instances, really no harm, no foul.
We got the second significant snow fall of the year overnight. Right now it is good snowball and heart attack snow.
