Misleading At Best

Quality article title at pocket-lint.com:

Revealed: The Apple iPhone flaw that could cost you thousands

One of their worst case scenarios related to this "dramatic problem"?

T-Mobile would charge £150 for downloading 20Mb if you were in the US at the time, for example

That seems like significantly less than the thousands we're being warned about. Granted, if this issue actually existed, those charges could add up quickly. However, if you read through the first update to the article you'll learn that there is no flaw. In fact, the setting seems to work exactly as intended. Despite that, they call out three "troubling" issues. I'll paraphrase:

  1. If you allow your phone to use cellular data, it will use cellular data when there is no wi-fi.
  2. If you allow your phone to use cellular data AND FORGET, it will use cellular data when there is no wi-fi.
  3. The setting on the automatic downloads page applies only to automatic downloads.

Terrible right?

However, what really gets it for me is the updated article subtitle:

UPDATED: Misleading at best
Did they mean that the setting is "Misleading at worst"? Or are they referring to their own article?

Speedy Cam

This article on Engadget, which credits this article from the New York Times, and this article from MIT seems to use a somewhat misleading phrase. To be fair, it seems like the part that I don't like comes directly from the MIT article:

at a rate of one trillion exposures per second

This sounds like they are saying that this camera is taking one trillion frames/exposures in a single second. However, if you read the actual source material they are really doing something quite different.

effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second

So, rather than taking a trillion exposures in a single second, they are taking single exposures lasting two trillionths of a second. This would result in the 'trillion exposures per second' if they were doing it over and over a trillion times in a single second, but they aren't. Or at the very least, it isn't that simple.

The key difference, which is at least mentioned in the articles as well, is that the effective frame rate of the final visualization is taken from multiple runs. More complicated than that, each run is taking an effectively 1D capture. So the second dimension of the video is produced from multiple takes. The practical implication here is that you can't use this technique to capture anything that isn't exactly reproducible, because you need many identical takes of an event to produce something usable.

The technique seems fascinating, and regardless of my qualms with the reporting, it seems like a great accomplishment.

I love this take from the New York Times article:

If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years.

Of course, because the bullet might not follow a perfectly reproducible path, this technique probably wouldn't really work. However, for perspective on just how slow this slow motion is, I love it.

In Building Navigation

The concept of this device on Discovery News is one of those 'did it really take this long' kind of technologies in my mind. The implications for firefighters and other first responders are obviously significant both for being able to reach the location where they are needed, and for being able to get back out safely. However, my interest is more along these lines: 

She pictures it being an application for a smart device that helps users navigate to specific offices in a large building or a restaurant inside an airport

I can't wait for the day when my iPhone can navigate as well to a location within a building as it can to an address, or for when I can drop a pin when I park my car in an underground garage and be able to navigate directly back to it.

To make GPS work we had to put sattelites in orbit around our planet and allow devices on earth to communicate with them. Doesn't it seem like that should have been harder than developing navigation within a building?

Pyramids

From Discovery News:

After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.

It is amazing to me that something as old as the pyramids, particularly something that has been the subject of so much interest, can still have unexplored areas.

There are days when I get the feeling that there are too few unexplored places left in the world, but if we haven't explored every inch of something the size of a pyramid, what do we have left to discover in something the size of our planet?

The Karate Kid

One Cool Thing a Day (via The Next Web) posts links to videos of shot by shot rehearsals for the original The Karate Kid movie.

The last time I posted anything about The Karate Kid was probably back when Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi) died in November 2005, but it has been one of my favorite movies for much of my life - partly on its own merits, and partly on its role in getting me interested in martial arts.

I can truthfully say that I'm not sure I would have ever considered attending my first Karate class back in 1990 without this movie, and not sure I would have stuck with it without the goal of reaching a rank that would have allowed me to compete in the tournament from the movie. See this clip from 7:30 to 8:20 for the scene that defined that goal.

More than twenty years later I'm still involved in Tae Kwon Do, and a much different person than I would have been without those experiences. Stop for a moment and think about things that you've known how to do for 20 years. Can you imagine life without those things?

All I Want for Christmas

When I first saw this on ReadWriteWeb I was blown away:

Data from fall 2011 shows that 3.4% want an iPhone for Christmas, 25% desire an iPad, 2.1% want an iPod of some kind and 1.3% just want the iPod Touch.

First, 25% is a huge number. Second, how could there be that much disparity in desire for the iPhone vs. the iPad. However, a closer look at the tables pulled from the Piper Jaffray report suggests that this is just a typo, and that the actual iPad number is 2.5%, which makes significantly more sense.

This report reminded me of something I linked to on the old site back in October 2004:

"the iPod ranked fourth on teens' Christmas "wish lists," trailing only clothes, money and a car"

 

Ok, you say, why is that so amazing? The iPod is really hot right now. I can imagine it being up there on the teen wish list.

The amazing part comes in when you finish the quote:

"the iPod ranked fourth on teens' Christmas "wish lists," trailing only clothes, money and a car, but what stood out was that the iPod wasn't listed as an option. It had to be written in by the respondents." [emphasis mine]

The link I originally posted doesn't work anymore, but I think this is the article. The original source of the data there seems to be a similar Piper Jaffray report from 2004.

 

Steve & Stephe

The Bloomberg report (via MacRumors) on the upcoming auction of the founding documents of Apple Computer Co. is worth a look for anyone interested in Apple history.

However, what struck me first about this image is that I had never realized that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak aren't the same kind of Steve. One is a Steven, the other a Stephen.

Daring Fireball

From the old site in August 2004 with this link:

but daring fireball is always a good read

I'm not entirely sure when I first came across Daring Fireball, but it was apparently 2004 or earlier. In reading through the old site this was the first reference to it that I found. I still read it nearly every day, probably more than any other single site.

This may be the first time on this site that I've linked to Daring Fireball, but it won't be the last.

Friendship

From the old site:

The depth of a friendship may in fact be little more than a measure of non-disparity in the perceptions of the two people involved.

This comment came after some musing on situations where I might consider someone a better friend than they consider me or vice versa. My suggestion being that deep friendships are a product of both parties having the same view of the relationship.

I said at the time, and maintain today, that this would likely not stand up to scrutiny. However, I also still maintain that it makes for an interesting opening statement, and that consideration of this starting point could lead to some interesting thoughts.

If you don't buy the correlation with depth, what about the ability of a friendship to last? Do friendships tend to last because of a shared understanding of the relationship? Or not last due to a disparity in that understanding?

By Any Other Name

From the old site in January 2006, just after the MacBook Pro was introduced:

maybe after a bit they'll stop calling this thing a "MacBook" such that I never own anything with that name

At the time I was on my second PowerBook, and the new MacBook Pro name just didn't sound right. Today I'm typing this on my second MacBook Pro, and its been years since I had thought about the MacBook name seeming odd.

Does that mean the name wasn't as bad as I originally thought? Or just that you can get used to anything over time?

The Old Site

It seems worth mentioning that I ran a personal mac.com site/blog from 2002-2006. I will not be transferring the contents of that site to this site. I also won't be linking to it, as it will be no more in the near future.

However, I may pull over some selected bits that seem worth saving or commenting on. Now you'll know what I mean when I mention 'the old site'.

Forbes on the iPad

I ran across this Forbes article on Flipboard this morning. To be fair, I'm probably not the target audience for the article. However, I struggle to imagine who the target audience really is.

Let me recap the article:

  • Apple will have new iPads in the future, but we don't know when.
  • There are tablets that cost less than the iPad. Maybe Apple will make a cheaper iPad?
  • The iPad 3 will be more powerful.

The first and third points seem obvious to the point of silliness.

The second point perhaps deserves some credit for acknowledging that the tablet market seems to be evolving. Where the 'tablet market' used to be nearly synonymous with the 'iPad market' I do think we're starting to see some division of that market into two segments with iPad like tablets at one end, and smaller, cheaper tablets like the Kindle Fire on the other end.