Hey Look! Another Steve Jobs Blog!

Yeah, I know, there's a lot about him right now. But love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has been an extremely influential person in the world of computing. And while reading through countless articles about him, and mocking those which sounded like obituaries (mentaly calling up Monty Python's "I'm not dead yet" and the SNL "Gerald Ford, tragically died this weekend" skits) you see a lot of adoration. A little fewer in between is the negatives, but all have to admit how much the guy has influenced the way we view computers now days.

My first experience with his product was the lovely green monitored Apple IIe, playing Oregon Trail so many times that we were trying to kill off our pioneers rather than get them to California (oh, and we played the learning games the school provided. But we finally wore our lab teacher down so she would let us play Oregon Trail.) My first experience with a computer with a color screen, GUI, and mouse was the Mac, in that same computer lab. Fast forward to college, and I used the design lab's blue candy-shelled iMacs to do my class assignments. Then I married a computer geek, and we now have three Apple products in the house: a Macbook, and two iPads. Our kids know how to operate Netflix, Angry Birds, and Kindal on the iPads--such a different experience than that of the 3 1/4 floppy'ed IIe. And as always, I'm curious to see what Apple will come up with next. What will make my kids think of the iPad as a relic, in their future? The Apple-sans-Jobs company will have all eyes on them in that respect, to see if they can continue in that tradition of innovation.

Death of the HP Tablet

"As I write this, I’m sitting in a cafe. Around me, there are five people on laptops — four of them are MacBooks. Four other people are using tablets — all four are iPads. Welcome to the Post-PC world."^*1

Yeah, that pretty well sums it up. HP announced last week that it is discontinuing its tablet division and webOS products, and is trying to spin off the PC division. The part of this that rather surprised people is that this comes only a couple of months after buying the Palm brand and webOS, in order to try to really compete in the tablet world. They launched commercials with celebrities (that chick from GLEE and Russell Brand are the ones that I remember right off the top of my head.) But apparently that did not compensate for the fact that the OS, while smokin fast on other hardware, was bogged down and slow on the HP tablet hardware. And while their PC sales are good, they still are being eclipsed by Apple's MacBook sales. In my own house even, with two computer industry professionals, the numbers are three Apple devices, one PC, and an ancient dinosaur of a desktop that I *think* is running a version of Linux. I personally only know of one person who has a non-Apple tablet, and that was bought after this announcement, when the price dropped. Was HP merely getting out early in this situation, reading the writing on the wall, or is it jumping ship that could be fixed? Time will tell.

In the meantime, here's what other people are saying about it:


^*1http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/18/apple-wins-without-throwing-a-punch/

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/18/okay-hp-lets-make-some-lemonade/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/19/hp-down-20-now-officially-hated-by-almost-everyone/

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/rumors-of-webos-death-are-greatly-exaggerated-20110819/

One Stop Blog Spot

If you're anything like me, you may read blogs and think link round ups are a cop-out. In writing for this blog for a while now, I realize they are not necessarily so. For me, it is a by-product of adult ADD and not wanting to miss showing you all informative/uber neat/completely random things! It was near-to-impossible to narrow things down to one (coherent) post, there were security topics, hardware topics, awesome save your live apps, and so here you are:

UPSM is working on an app that will document the locations of all AED's (automated external defibulators.) So if someone is experiencing cardiac arrest, you or the 911 operator could locate one nearby, thus getting help more quickly.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/this-app-could-save-your-life/

If you find your laptop is lost or stolen, change the passwords that are stored in it immediately. Duh, I know. But it can be hacked from the laptop, and you could be screwed.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20089726-281/lose-your-laptop-change-all-passwords-pronto/

A PC with Mac Air specs? Why yes, I likee. Oh wait, read that last paragraph. Fail.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/09/acers-aspire-3951-leaks-with-macbook-air-like-specs-available/

Wait, what do you mean that mobile banking on your android went wrong? How could banking on an easily-lost, app'ed up device go wrong?
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/The-Future-of-Android-Part-2-Security-Snafus-73036.html

Price versus Function, Tablet versus iPad.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/are-cheaper-tablets-the-answer-to-the-ipads-dominance/14138

For the truely geeky amongst us, we mourn as news of SyFy's Eureka is cancelled.
http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2011/08/09/eureka-cancellation-of-the-day/

And, for good measure, something from the tinfoil hat file.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/has-the-united-states-already-suffered-its-cyberwar-pearl-harbor/53901