RIAA (sort of) responds to SOPA critics, says copyright "offers little real protection"
Ars Technica's Nate Anderson with a great summary and response of the RIAA's response to SOPA criticism. Anderson doesn't stoop to ignoring valid concerns of the opposition, instead discussing the entirety of the RIAA's position.
Good journalism.
Preorder at makeplaylive.com
The Spark is a new tablet based on the open source Mer and KDE's Plasma project. As someone who always did prefer KDE to Gnome (especially back in my linux-as-primary-OS days), I've been fascinated by the Plasma project so it's nice to see an interesting project making use of it.
The tablet has modest hardware:
- 7 Inch multi-touch capacitive screen
- 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor with Mali 400 GPU
- 512 MB DDR2 RAM
- 4 GB Nand Flash Disk
- Wireless Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g (3G via USB Extenal)
- 1.3 MP built-in front facing camera
- HDMI 1080P Output
- 2 USB ports
- MicroSD slot
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- Hardware volume and power buttons
- 4 dimensional Gsensor
- Battery: 3000mAH @ 7.4v
- Weight: 355 grams
John Gruber was one of just a few Apple watchers brought in for 1-on-1 meetings with Phil Schiller (Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing) last week to discuss the next release of OS X and receive a preview build of the OS.
Gruber addresses the potential implications of such an odd non-event event well, but this part struck me:
And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule.
Gruber addresses the issue of Apple finally having the resources to give both iOS and OS X this kind of attention now (OS X 10.5 was delayed because the original iPhone's development strained Apple's resources).
The thing he doesn't mention is how this rapid release cycle for the core computing OS will be something we haven't seen in proprietary desktop OSes before. It's akin to first Chrome and now Firefox being on 6 week development cycles. Many will probably complain that each major release isn't as significant as prior ones, but this rapid release cycle will allow quicker release and polishing of new releases as well as easier course correction of a development is seen as a misstep. Previously we'd only really seen this on the desktop OS side in Linux distributions (Ubuntu famously releases two version bumps a year), but in the Linux world the distribution vendors are often restricted by development of tens or hundreds of external open source products which make up the whole.
It's an interesting time in the world of operating systems, that's for sure.
by Michael in Business, Video Games
A new standard in design: in-depth with the PlayStation Vita
A small snippet from Ars Technica's thorough look at the hardware (added emphasis mine):
It's a confusing time in the world of mobile and portable gaming. Consumers seem to be moving away from the idea that they need an entirely separate device to play games on the go, settling for cheap, generally simple touchscreen games on their cell phones and tablets. Nintendo, following up the insanely successful DS system that rested on a seemingly gimmicky double screen design, added a newer glasses-free 3D gimmick to its Nintendo 3DS—only to see extremely slow sales force it into a premature price drop. Sony's PlayStation Portable, meanwhile, has carved out a niche for itself as a serious gamer's system, especially in Japan, but is beginning to show its age as a system designed in the pre-smartphone era.
For the new PlayStation Vita, Sony responded to this confusion by throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the system. For hardcore gamers, there are two analog sticks—a first for a portable system—and a gigantic screen loaded with pixels. For casual players, there's the now-ubiquitous touchscreen as well as a unique rear touch panel to enable new tactile, touchy-feely gameplay. The Vita has two cameras, a GPS receiver, and a 3G data option. There's music and video players, a Web browser, Google Maps, and even a proximity-based social network. Oh, and it also plays games, I guess (more on those in a separate post).
It's a curious approach. What's likely to keep standalone portable video game systems afloat in the face of cell phone gaming is not processing power or connectivity--the rapid improvement in iterative cell phones will always dwarf static platforms in these areas after the gaming systems have been on the market for a short time. The advantage of these dedicated game systems is in the optimization for gaming itself: developers can spend long development cycles on ambitious game designs because the hardware target stays the same for a long time and control mechanisms can be offered which can not be touched by devices which need to be more flexible.
Sony's approach hasn't sacrificed that optimization here, but the entire fate of the system's success rests on how well it performs in the games area. These dedicated systems will never be preferred by a large enough audience over a good smart phone for most things. The PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS will be purchased--or not purchased--entirely on whether people who care a lot about playing really good games decide the quality of gaming on offer is worth having a dedicated device at all. The Vita and 3DS don't have the advantage home consoles have of being set up on the television--the display people use for any number of things, thereby justifying all manners of streaming media and family interaction as a selling point. If gaming ends up being an afterthought on the Vita (I'm not implying it is--it is far too early to tell), the device will fail.
Let's see how this plays out. I think there's more than enough space for both the Vita and the 3DS, despite the burgeoning smart phone market--even if they become a rapidly decreasing percentage of the total portable game market's revenue.
In the meantime, check out the article at Ars. There's a whole lot of detail there.
Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller Screen
Wall Street Journal:
Apple, which works with suppliers to test new designs all the time, could opt not to proceed with the device.
That's really the only important part of the article. Of course Apple is testing tablets with smaller screens. Just as Apple is certainly constantly testing phones of 3 or 4 different sizes. It's unlikely anyone in the industry tests as thoroughly as Apple does. Testing doesn't necessarily indicate intent to bring to market. Anyone who proposes without real inside knowledge (which no one outside of Apple's upper management has) that Apple will introduce one soon would--if Apple did so--be right only by coincidence rather than by insight.
Having multiple sizes of the same device always brings a cost--especially for iOS. Android, like Mac OS X and Windows, is not made for fixed resolutions so new screen sizes and resolution scan easily be thrown around within reason. iOS, however, only runs at 3 resolutions to date, one of which is exactly quadruple another--allowing for design elements to stay exactly the same physical size. iOS only has two target UI sizes right now. The trade-off between the two approaches is simple: design consistency and sharpness (iOS) versus display size flexibility (others). Introducing a new larger phone or smaller tablet will mean current apps will have comparatively poor usability (Apps designed for a 9.7" iPad will end up having extremely small touch targets on an 8" or 7" tablet--or apps designed for an iPhone will just be less clear than what people are used to and have oddly large touch elements), so if optimized apps are possible to make at all it will introduce yet another design target.
These issues aren't necessarily insurmountable. If Apple introduces more physical sizes for its touch screen devices, it will be because it decided the usability / interface fragmentation sacrifice is less significant than the gains provided by a new size OR they've figured out a way around the problem. Anything is possible, so Apple certainly could introduce a new size touch device, but simply testing sizes is not evidence at all.
(For the record: I think a scaled up iPod Touch at 7" would probably be more usable than a scaled down iPad, but I can't exactly test such a thing. Even then, it would certainly be awkward for many iPod Touch / iPhone apps and definitely not optimal for the size.)