512 Pixels

Mara Gay for AOL News:

Four-year-old Ryan Thomas was on his way to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., with his parents when TSA agents forced him to take off his leg braces at Philadelphia International Airport in March 2009.

This incident took place in March 2009. The TSA has been out of control for a lot longer than the whole backscatter deal.

Our two-year old son has leg braces to help compensate for his partial hemiplegia, caused by his brain tumor. If we were asked to take them off and have him walk without them due to “safety concerns,” I’d punch the TSA officer in the goddamn mouth.

What a great sentence in a somewhat odd story.

Ben Brooks:

The iPad is a companion device, but a companion device that is both large enough and powerful enough to serve as a primary computer for many people. Just take a look around the web and you will see a good number of Geeks like myself who have left behind their laptops on recent travels, preferring instead to take along their iPad only.

The Tab is not that type of device, it is not able to span the category of both companion and possibly a primary computer. As I see it the Tab isn’t even a secondary computer. That does not make it a bad device, I actually rather like it under the right circumstances.

Ben nails this one on the head. The Tab is an odd device, and doesn’t really know where it belongs quite yet. That said, it’s a fairly decent device. At the very least, its shortcomings are the same as other Android devices for the most part.

I am taking a few days off to spend with my family over this holiday weekend. As you should, instead of scouring the Internet for something to read. Go unplug and enjoy some turkey and football.

Sarah Palin (who has a journalism degree), in an interview with MSNBC:

I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting. I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported.

Because that’s totally what she and her buddies at FOX News do.

Federico Viticci:

You remember T.J. Maxx and their brief iPad adventure, right? The popular apparel retail chain started selling iPads last week, at the curious price of $399 — which was $100 off Apple’s suggested price.

[…]

They bought the iPads from retail (perhaps an Apple Store, who knows) at $40.000, they sold them at $32.000 generating a loss of $8.000 but they ended up on all major blogs and thousands of people visited their stores hoping to find a discounted iPad. With just $8.000, they gained a huge visibility that would have costed way more with standard advertising methods. Very clever.

Clever, but pretty obvious. I’m not sure why people got so worked up over this — the reason behind this move seemed pretty clear to me from day one.

Still, clever indeed.

Nick Dillon, with Ovum¹:

With support for Flash 10.1 growing, users will become accustomed to a similar web browsing experience on both mobile and desktop devices; this will ultimately impact the attractiveness of Apple’s proposition. Flash certainly looks to be gaining ground with device vendors and Apple may need to re-evaluate its position if its dominance is threatened as a result. In addition to garnering support for Flash 10, Adobe has launched its own app distribution service for Flash and AIR applications. InMarket will help developers to sell their apps across various devices. This is clearly a big draw for developers and will threaten the dominance of platform vendors in the mobile apps market.

Just stop and think about this for a moment. Apple has left Flash off of its mobile products for three years, while continuing to grow in its anti-Flash retoric. HTML5’s video functionality has taken off mainly because of Apple’s stance on Flash. Putting Flash on iOS devices would greatly hinder — if not completely derail — HTML5’s growth.

Yes, Flash runs on Android. And for the most part, Android devices choke if Flash is turned on. Apple isn’t going to enable a feature if it leads to stability or speed issues on its devices.

Analysts are such idiots.

Warren Buffet, in an interview with ABC:

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it. The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

[via The Consumerist]

The Apple PR machine has the details. Also, MobileMe’s “Find my iPhone” feature is free for all iPad, iPhone 4 and current-gen iPod touch owners.

The release is the “4.2.1” release candidate that the company pushed to developers last week, and should be ready for download at 10 AM PST.

As I’ve written about plenty of times before, I used a Droid for the better part of 2010.

About 8 weeks ago, I sold my Droid and have been carrying a dumbphone, making my Wi-Fi iPad my only mobile device.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Android, and my time with what was (for now) the last completely stock Android handset.¹

There are a lot of things to like about the Droid. The hardware is great, and Verizon’s coverage in the Memphis area is simply stunning. Android itself, however, ended up leaving me a little disappointed. Parts of Android are great. Other parts are seriously lacking.

Apps & Nerdery

Ben Brooks is currently working on his review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and asked to me send him a list of apps I enjoyed using on my Droid.

I had to stop and think about it. The list was short, especially in contrast to what apps I use daily on my iPad. Without a doubt, both the quality and quantity of Android apps is inferior to the quality and quantity of iOS apps. While the platform’s gaming is seriously lacking, even staple iOS apps aren’t present in the Android Market. Apps that are on both platforms are usually far less polished on Android. Many apps aren’t just visually polished, but simply don’t work very well.

The biggest thing Android has going for it is its integration with Google’s cloud services.

Even here — on Android’s home turf — there are issues. While Gmail, contacts and calendars work really well, other services, like Google Maps and Google Talk don’t interact well with the cloud. This uneven quality across Google services isn’t anything new, sadly. Coupled with my growing uneasiness over some of Google’s statements, I’ve gone back to MobileMe since ditching the Droid.

For a long time, I forgave Android for these things because of the nerd factor. I loved tinkering with my phone. I not only rooted my phone, but even ran a third-party ROM on it. While fun, this type of nerdy behavior is draining after a while.

A few days ago, in a piece titled “ Where Are the Android Killer Apps,” John Gruber likened the iPhone to a game console — a generally closed system with loads of optional, optimized software. Here’s a bit from the article:

Android, perhaps, could be an app console, technically, but it doesn’t seem like that’s how it’s being used in practice. Google doesn’t treat it that way, developers don’t treat it that way, and Android users don’t see it that way. In fact, many of the most popular third-party Android apps are ones which treat Android like a PC rather than a console — background apps, task killers, system home screen replacements, alternative keyboards, and the like.

I think Gruber has said what I’ve been thinking for months, but haven’t been able to nail down. And I think he’s right.

“Open” vs. “Closed” vs. “Integrated”

Longterm, it will be interesting to see how Android does, especially if the iPhone ends up on Verizon — Android’s stronghold in the US. Windows proves that a janky, multi-platform OS can do very, very well. While comparing mobile devices and desktop computers is really tricky, the discussion of “open” vs “closed” is also tricky. Here’s Avi Greengart at SlashGear:

Google argues that consumers want an open OS. Why? The benefits to consumers for Apple’s controlled environment are clear (the iPhone delivers a consistently good user experience), while Android’s openness has been a mixed bag: there is diverse hardware available, but fragmentation has left some phones unable to run the latest apps, and even as that situation improves, carriers have imposed their own restrictions on core elements of the platform. Cellphones are the most personal of personal technology, and there is no reason to think that we will end up with a single platform. Our present state of seven major platforms (iOS, Android, WP7, webOS, Symbian, MeeGo, BlackBerry) is not sustainable, either, but it is definitely not a zero sum game where if Android succeeds, the iPhone fails.

Android is open, but not in the way Google would like people to think. Customers are not the big winners when it comes to Google’s willingness to let — OEMs and carriers are. Companies like HTC, Motorola and Samsung are building huge brands out of their customizations that sit on top of Android.

Yes, users can swap the software that draws their home screens and run custom keyboards. Yes, some devices allow users to side-load apps onto them. But more and more, OEMs and carriers are tightening the noose. As this continues to happen, users will continue to loose the freedom Android fans crave.

Calling the iPhone “closed” isn’t quite right. “Integrated” is a better word. Since Apple has become more transparent when it comes to the App Store, users and developers alike have fewer surprises when it comes to what is available. Much like the Mac, Apple’s hardware and software combination makes for a smoother experience. Yes, swapping out the home screen isn’t possible, but I think most users are willing to trade such flexibility for a more stable experience.

The Future

Right now, Android and iOS are pretty much neck-and-neck for market share. Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, WebOS, Symbian and others are out there too, with their respective strengths and weaknesses.

So, would I purchase another Android device? At this point, probably not. There are too many iOS-only apps that I’ve come to rely on, and using the iPad as my only mobile device has reminded me just how polished and well-rounded Apple’s platform has become. I don’t think Android can catch up unless Google makes some serious changes, not only to the OS, but to what OEMs and carriers can do it.

I’m not saying Android will fail. I don’t think the average user — the people who haven’t bought their first smartphone — don’t care that much platforms. Apple has name recognition with these users, but with Android being on so many carriers, name recognition may not be enough. If my mom, who has been on T-Mobile for a decade, wants a phone that has email on it she is more than likely going to walk into a T-Mobile store and pick up and Android phone, regardless of what apps are available or how polished the UI is.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for Google to keep Apple on its toes.

From a 1985 Playboy interview:

I think Woz was in a world that nobody understood. No one shared his interests, and he was a little ahead of his time. It was very lonely for him. He’s driven from inner sights rather than external expectations of him, so he survived OK. Woz and I are different in most ways, but there are some ways in which we’re the same, and we’re very close in those ways. We’re sort of like two planets in their own orbits that every so often intersect. It wasn’t just computers, either. Woz and I very much liked Bob Dylan’s poetry, and we spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of that stuff. This was California. You could get LSD fresh made from Stanford. You could sleep on the beach at night with your girlfriend. California has a sense of experimentation and a sense of openness — openness to new possibilities.

Besides Dylan, I was interested in Eastern mysticism, which hit the shores at about the same time. When I went to college at Reed, in Oregon, there was a constant flow of people stopping by, from Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert to Gary Snyder. There was a constant flow of intellectual questioning about the truth of life. That was a time when every college student in this country read Be Here Now and Diet for a Small Planet — there were about ten books. You’d be hard pressed to find those books on too many college campuses today. I’m not saying it’s better or worse; it’s just different — very different. In Search of Excellence [the book about business practices] has taken the place of Be Here Now.

There may be some NSFW-ish artwork on that Playboy page, so I’ve saved the text as a PDF file you can download here.

[via The Atlantic.]

Dave Caolo, on using an iMac G4 as his primary system:

As my MacBook Pro slowly dies, I’ve called my old G4 iMac back into service. Years ago, that machine was wiped clean and given an install of Mac OS X 10.5 before being boxed in the basement. On Friday I will wrap up one week of using it as my primary work machine. In that time I’ve found that it’s slow, beautiful and perfect.

Be sure to hit that link to see just how minimal Caolo has made this system. It’s a thing of beauty, really. Running 10.5.8, he can do everything he needs to, without any major problems. (Once Lion roles around, however, Leopard may start to show its age, as 10.4 Tiger is now.)

While you’re there, subscribe to 52 Tiger’s RSS feed. Again, a thing of beauty.