Jon Reed: blog
The ramblings of a Lead Developer
The iPad isn’t the iTablet
In: Misc| Technology
28 Jan 2010There has been a lot of disappointment around the launch of the Apple iPad. I believe the iPad isn’t the product everyone was hoping for, because it is actually a different product. It’s not an iTablet at all, it’s an iReader. I believe that the iTablet is still in development, and I’ll attempt to rationalise this in this post.
The first big thing, is that the co-founder of Apple (Steve Wozniak) has, himself, described it as an eReader:
I believe that the iPad development was started just after the iPhone was released; there are a few reasons why I think this.
- It looks like an iPhone.
- It’s running iPhone software.
- It syncs the same way the iPhone does.
- There has been minimal software development in making it.
- There has been minimal hardware development in making it.
This is the reason why the iPad is cheaper than expected, there is nothing new here. There are new iWork Apps, but these are charged for separately. Other than that, all the software has to do is double the size of everything. This is not a revolutionary product.
The processor which they claimed was revolutionary, appears to be just a collection of 4 other pre-made components (which have all been used before), with an Apple logo stuck on the top of it.
To top it all off, it look like the books can only be purchased in the US at launch.
In fact, I dont think its even a very good product; the UI at times is comical.
- The orphaned ’slide to unlock’ button
- The icons with huge gaps between each one
- You still can’t have more than 4 apps in the bottom dock
- You have to scroll between pages of Apps, even though there is more empty space than used space on the screen
- The iBook UI appears to have been “stolen”
I fail to believe that this is the tablet product which Apple has been working on for years, when its based on a product which is only a few years old. My prediction is that we will see a tablet based Mac from Apple late this year, or early next year. I also think that the iPhone 2 will use the new processor that is in the iPad.
I’ll leave you with Hitlers opinion of the iPad.
Panasonic TX-L32S10B Full HD LCD TV Mini Review
In: Misc
1 Jan 2010I decided to buy this TV for many reasons, the main one being: it’s simply a superb TV. Some top-line stats:
- VIERA Full HD LCD Television (1080p)
- Wide Viewing Angle with IPS Alpha Panel
- 50,000:1 Contrast with Intelligent Scene Controller
- Smart Networking with VIERA Link
- VIERA Image Viewer (AVCHD/JPEG)
- DVB Tuner (Digital Tuner)
- 178 degree viewing angle
- 24p playback
- 3x HDMI connections
- Composite, S-video, Audio, Component, PC, CI, USB inputs
The full specs are available on the Panasonic web site.
I bought the TV from the John Lewis site for £449, most of the awards the TV has one were reviewed when the TV was about £600.
EDIT: John Lewis have increased the price by £50 to £499, and is now OOS (1st Jan 2010)
Some of the awards are as follows:
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If you have a Which? subscription, this is the full review |
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See the full review from HDTVtest.co.uk (an awesomely techy review it is too) |
John Lewis delivered it on 29th December, pretty impressive – only ordered it 3 days beforehand, and not many delivery companies delivery during the xmas period. Massive box!
Unpacking & Installation
Unpacking & setting up was easy; as soon as you turn the TV on, if it detects a DVB signal, it starts tuning. Very good tuner, better than my Panasonic DMR-EX77 DVD & HDD recorder. Even though that will upscale Freeview to 1080p, the picture seems a little over-processed, and there is a lot of noise. Using the in-built tuner in the TV, creates a much nicer image. Maybe I just need to play with a few settings.
The DMR-EX77 support Viera link with my TV, and it allows me to turn on/off, control the whole system with just the TV remote. This is a very nice feature. It is worth noting that the DMR-EX77 only supports HDAVI Control, whereas Panasonic are up to v3 now; this latest version allows the tuners between the TV & DVD recorder to be a little more intelligent, allowing you to pause live TV.
The EPG in the TV is the same one that I’m used to in my DVD recorder, but its MUCH faster & much cleaner. The resolution of the menus are much higher too – looks much more professional.
Picture Quality
This is where the Panasonic L32S10 really stands out; especially from my 4 year old 26″ LG LCD TV. The colours are dramatically better, and the 50,000:1 contract ratio benefits can clearly be seen. The difference between 720p (the best my LG could handle) and the 1080p on this set is clear as well. One specific example was when I was watching the new Start Trek film; I’ve now seen this in DVD, Blu-Ray 720p, Blu-Ray 1080p & IMAX cinema. It wasn’t until I watched it in Blu-Ray 1080p that I noticed in a scene towards the beginning of the film, where Captain Kirk is beaten up in a bar, that the model starship (USS Kelvin) he is playing with is actually a salt mill! The salt falling from the mill is so fine that I just wasn’t able to see it before in lower resolutions (Not sure how i failed to see it in IMAX though!).
Gaming is another place where this TV really stands out. As mentioned in other reviews, the lag time on this set is EXTREMELY small. Guitar hero (reliably) informs me that the delay on my LG set was about 35ms, but on the Panasonic L32S10, calibration always comes outs at 0ms. This is already showing its benefits in CoD:MW2 multiplayer 
Conclusion
An extremely short ‘review’, I know, but I’ve only had the 32LS10 for a very short amount of time. However, in that time it has not failed to impress. High build quality, high picture quality. I cannot comment on the sound quality (it’s connected to a Sony surround sound system), but I would assume like the majority of LCD TVs that the in-built speakers are not up to much.
I realise that you can get much bigger TVs, for much less money – Tesco are even selling a 32″ 1080p TV for £199 – but I would still recommend this TV to anyone, I don’t think you would be disappointed.
My Slow iPhone
In: Misc
30 Dec 2009This is just another quick post to show a quick picture of just how slow my iPhone is. So slow that I can take screenshots of it doing things it shouldn’t.
Combine this the fact that I’ve had months of incoming phone call problems, outgoing phone call problems & data problems (O2’s apology); and my girlfriends Android phone is looking better and better!
AJACSS
In: Development| JavaScript
8 Oct 2009This is just a very quick post to talk about AJACSS – a bit of a hack, but a nice way to be able to cross-site AJAX.
“Like JavaScript includes, this works because CSS is not subject to the same-origin policy that affects XMLHttpRequest. CSSHttpRequest functions similarly to JSONP, and is limited to making GET requests. Unlike JSONP, untrusted third-party JavaScript cannot execute in the context of the calling page.”
Google Wave Beta – Initial Impressions
In: Google Wave| Misc
1 Oct 2009OK, so I managed to get an invite to the Google Wave Beta. I have to say, I really owe some people for getting me the invite – thanks so much – you know who you are!
I’ve used up all my invites, trying to get as many people I know, as I can to be on there as well. It seems like none of the invites are being sent automatically – the interface says that you’ve “nominated” them; I’m assuming theyre being added to a big list, and as Google get capacity for new people, they will deliver out the invites.
Without many people on there to reguarly talk to – that I know! It’s hard to see the real use of it so far. If someone doesnt have a Wave Account, there is no way (that ive found) that you can contact them through it. So you end up going back to your normal Gmail account to email or chat to them.
Another thing I found annoying is that I couldnt use my Apps account with Wave. I had to create a “normo” Gmail username and use that. Finding a Gmail username which isnt already taken is no mean feat!!!
Overall, having only played with it for an hour or two, it does seem like a great piece of kit. However you really do need Google Chrome to run it. The higher spec the PC/Mac – the better as well. At work, I find my PC just isnt quick enough to run it in any browser but Chrome. On my MacBook Pro Firefox is fine, but after a few tabs, it does tend to stall a bit.
I’m really looking forward to having some more work people on there, I can see how collaboration with this tool is going to be brilliant – but for now, I’ve just got to wait for the invites!
The Joy of Developing for Firefox only
In: CSS| Development| HTML5
20 Sep 2009I work for a medium sized marketing company, and we have an Agile environment. Well, when I say Agile, some would say we do “ScrumBut” as coined by the excellent Scrum Trainer Jimi Fosdick. To this end, if we have good reason for implementing change, then the business are quite happy to take on this change if they can see the benefit.
The internal line-of-business application is a web-based reporting suite and set of tools. We’ve written this in a mixture of CodeIgniter and Zend Framework (I’ll be blogging about these later, since we have an unusual setup). The appplication heavily uses jQuery & AJAX, and we’ve spent a lot of time working on improving performance in IE7. However, it soon became aware that being an internal application, the easisest and cheapest way to combat this problem in the short term was to get the business to use a better browser.
We rolled out Firefox 3.5 as the default browser for the business – we have no requirements for Internet Explorer – I dont think I would want to work somewhere where they were still uses 3rd world browsers like IE6. I know there has even been talk of Orange fining employees for installing Firefox.
I am therefore currently developing some mockups using XHTML5 and CSS3 – and I only need to test them in one browser for now. It’s turned developing into a joy again; writing fully-compliant code for a (mostly) fully-compliant browser and it rendering exactly as you would expect it to. If only all front-end development could be as easy as this.
About this blog
The ramblings of Jon Reed. I am a Lead Developer at a leading UK Online Marketing Agency. Everyday I work with various technologies such as PHP, MySql, CSS, XHTML. I Love Web Development.
Categories
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- r5d4: Nice, but i'm afraid it's a samsung series 7 for me :) [...]
- Chris Sedlmayr: Same here. It looks like users invited by the lucky few are getting it as they increase capacity ove [...]
- Buddhamagnet: Still waiting for my invite Jon but as soon as I do it's collaboration city! [...]