eBooks

If you have been reading this blog for quite some time, you would have known that I hated eBooks. I detested them. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read; softcovers or hardcovers, but ebooks just get me. It feels weird in your hands, it doesn’t look right, it’s uncomfortable, blah blah blah. But yesterday something remarkable happened. We can say the impossible became possible. I read two books, over 500 pages in total… on my iPad. When a software as elegant, efficient, simple, and advanced as Overdrive pops up, it becomes impossible to resist the electronic era. Why  carry a stack of books around when you can still have them all, literally on a thin piece of glass weighing less than 1.5 pounds?

I came home two days ago thinking “I totally forgot my book!!!” I didn’t want to go to the library, so I did the only thing I could. I opened up my iPad, slid my finger across my mirror image and tapped on Overdrive. I connected to our local library’s eBooks catalogue and found my book. Then after I plugged in my library card, I tapped open the cover. The experience wasn’t like what I remembered last year, maybe the app updated, maybe I changed  No matter, I enjoyed it and found myself drawn to tapping the “Get more books” icon and downloading the next few books in the series.

We, as in our Western 21st century generation are more than cyborgs now. We aren’t dependent on electronics and the internet. Our technologies are what we are made of. We don’t seem to see a difference between our beds, tables, or chairs and our computers, credit card, internet, or cell phones. Both lists are things that we need, things that if taken away will literally completely change our world.

I am not trying to say that anything is bad, just that if credit card companies’ servers were attacked, or if we have a shortage of computer chips, we would be in big trouble. Our minds are wired to rely on technology, I hope by 2012 being “the end of the world”, this is not what it means 🙂 . Anyways, onto my 3rd eBook!!!

Mountain Lion: Is It Any Good?

Well, it’s here, the long awaited operating system: OS X Mountain Lion (The word Mac is officially dropped from OS X). Even though it’s here, I don’t think it’s any good. However, Mountain Lion is needed to ever upgrade again, say the next operating system next year. That means if you want to ever get a new operating system, you need to get Mountain Lion. Anyways, here’s what’s new:

As more and more people are enjoying the iPad and iPhone, Apple decided to put their popular IOS features into the Mac. From IOS, there is Game Centre, Notification Centre, Notes, iMessages, Reminders, and enhanced iCloud. Personally, I don’t really use any of these features, so it makes no difference to me. Plus, Growl is a perfect substitution for Notification Centre, and I also have Anxiety as an alternative to Reminders. Even though Apple thinks making the Mac as similar as the iPad and iPhone, with Launchpad and the new Mail app from Lion, and now all these new apps, is good, I don’t really care for it very much.

Other than the IOS features, there is security updates, and other little details. For example, Power Nap can update mail, apps, and so on when the laptop is closed. The littler things include new autosave functions, sharing options, airplay mirroring, accessibility enhancements, etc..

I don’t believe Mountain Lion is worth getting, but again, isn’t it better to get Mountain Lion, use it, then upgrade, instead of getting Mountain Lion then an actually significant upgrade next year or the year after?

Anyways, putting the debate over getting Mountain Lion aside, what I really want to know is what Apple will name their operating system after Mountain Lion. It seems that Apple was running out of options: Pumas, Cougars, and other cats are also Mountain Lions. You could say Mac OS X 10.3 was Mountain Lion, even though OS X 10.8 is actually named Mountain Lion. I really can’t think of any other cat that’s better than Mountain Lion. Maybe OS X 10.9 would not be a cat. I wonder…

EDIT: Apologies, the images that are linked seem to no longer exist, please ignore them for the moment.

“The New iPad”

Personally, I am not really pleased with “The New iPad”, I think it could be better. Sure, there’s the retina display that’s clearer than a HDTV with 3.1 million pixels. The processor is now A5X, which is incredible. The iSight camera is light years ahead, shooting videos at 1080p and taking incredibly detailed photos. Speech-to-text is included, and there is 4G LTE (again, incredibly advanced) models. But something is missing.

This is Apple. Waking up today, I expected something grand. Maybe a SD slot or perhaps a haptic display? Wouldn’t it be really cool if iPads have a haptic display, giving items on screen texture? The upgrades we see today is already a huge leap, but it isn’t as exciting as other updates. The iPad and the iPhone, the two newest products have had significant changes since they arrived. The first iPad was amazing because it was the first of its kind. The iPad 2 was completely changed with a sleeker design, various hardware changes and IOS 5. But “The New iPad” dosen’t have anything completely new. Even the iPhone 4S has Siri, which is pretty awesome, sci-fi, and more importantly, never seen before. These new features on “The New iPad” exists in other places. The iPhone 4S has a retina display, 4G, iSight camera, 1080p HD video recording, and speech-to-text. The A5X processor is just a small upgrade from the A5 chip. These features are only worth adding because they haven’t been on a tablet before.

Why is “The New iPad” in quotations? Well, because it is just called the iPad. Not iPad 3, or iPad HD. This iPad is just called iPad. iPad is a nice name, with a lot of legal battles in China, but it is still a great name. However, the first iPad was also named “iPad”. How do we refer to this iPad a year later when another new iPad comes out? Are we going to call the iPads iPad, iPad 2, The New iPad, The New-New iPad, etc.? I guess the Apple product numbering system is saying goodbye…

Lots of rumours have been proved right, other unconventional features have been proved wrong. Today, we see a new leap in tablet technology. However, Apple, you can do better. As Tim Cook mentioned, Apple have “the most innovative [people] on earth.”

To see the full keynote and details of the release of the new iPad, Apple TV, iPad iLife suite, iPad iWork suite, and apps for “The New iPad”; click here.

Textbooks… Reinvented

Before I go on, I just want to say a quick “Happy New Year”. I was quite busy and wasn’t able to blog in the last while. Anyways, I hope everyone will live a successful and happy 2012 (that is if the world doesn’t end ;-)). I also want to wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year (if you celebrate it). Have fun in 2012, the year of the dragon.

School districts in North America are working furiously to catch up with today’s technology. A couple years ago we used blackboards and chalkboard; then came the whiteboards and the projectors; now some schools use crazily high tech Smart boards. They try to catch up by using technology in class. Students type, and sometimes even blog. Schools are encouraging laptops, iPads and to learn the “21st century way”. But why haven’t we changed one of the most important aspect of education, textbooks. As far as my family and I can remember, the world had always been using paper textbooks. Just think about it for a moment. Now even if Steve Jobs isn’t here, someone sure would’ve thought about decreasing the weight of student’s backpacks by putting textbooks online. However, Steve Jobs is here. He and his team at Apple truly reinvented textbooks with the iPad.

For too long our students have been bored out of their minds with textbooks. But these textbooks are different. Using the iPad’s multitouch technology, students are able to interact with these textbooks. A 3D model can be manipulated, a timeline can be animated, the options are endless. But it gets even better. Flashcards are incorporated in to the text book so it is super easy to take notes. There could be lesson checks and best of all, anyone can make their own textbook for free. Now through the Mac App Store and “iBooks Author” anyone can share their knowledge. Imagine the possibilities.

Regular textbooks can cost hundreds of dollars, but these are available from the iBooks store for a much cheaper price.

As we speak, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education, and Pearson Education (3 of the top K-12 textbook providers) are developing iPad textbooks.

We are definitely moving forward. This is great, it will help education become better, much better. Technology make the new generation more prepared for their world after 16 or so years of schooling, because in 16 years our world will change dramatically. Apple, thank you, once again.

The link to iBooks textbooks is here: http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/

UPDATE: Cars 2 AppMATes

Zoom! Now you never know if it is a Hot wheel on a carpet with tracks all over it, or an electric go-kart. But more recently, it could have been a car on an iPad.

I know I mentioned it before and gave it an account, but know that it is actually out, this is a review after I tried out the game (if you do not owe the physical toy, like me, it is possible to play with two fingers and a, icon named “Paper Lightning”). The introduction is here. Also, the MAT in AppMATes is a acronym for “Mobile Application Toys”.

As I was saying, I, owing an iPad, decided to check out the new application by Disney that pairs a physical toy with the iPad. I found it entertaining, but there are a few minor problems.

One, was that the car moves the fastest in the middle of the screen so the backdrop can move. But the problem is that humans have a natural tendency to push objects to accelerate its speed. When you do push the car, a voice tells you to move it back to the center, and sometimes glitches.

Another minor problem is that the game is slow. Because it has to load so many collisions, and graphics, it make the gameplay glitch up a bit when it is loading many tasks. This only occasionally happens, but is still a bit annoying.

Lastly, the arrow that points you to places you want/need to go leads you from A-B directly. It discourages you to use the roads, but go on top of buildings, cars, signs, etc. This is fine, except that I personally like following the road.

This is a great idea and come as a surprise to me that no one really took the advantage of being able to blur the line between physical and  digital objects with the iPad and other iDevices. But then again, it didn’t come to me either. But blurring the lines of reality isn’t new at all. For one, there’s the SMART Board (an interactive white board).

The app is available here (US and CAN, iPad 1 and 2)

The cars are available in the US Apple store, US Toys R Us, and Disney store (20 bucks for 2 cars).

Overall, I like this concept of blurring the lines using everyday products we actually (normal citizens) have. I believe more and more companies will start to do this. I suspect that in 50 years, we won’t know what’s real or what’s fake. I wonder  what life will be like then…

New and Noteworthy Gadgets

These are absolutely the funniest things ever! Have you ever abused the “snooze” button? Well, you will no more with Clocky or Tocky. These adorable robots developed by MIT will allow you to snooze only once. After that, it will jump down from your bedside table and run around the room beeping. Next, it will find a hiding spot and keep on beeping until you actually get up and close it.

I stumbled across it several times, it seems that every time some crazy gadget goes in to the market (or even before), the news goes crazy over it. Well of course not the formal ones like CNN, but rather the unofficial news/rumor sites.

The link is here.

This is only for the ones who love gadgets, I mean, who would risk getting fired just to sleep in? At least, not me.

Here’s another interesting gadget, the Disney AppMATes.

It combines a physical toy with the magic of the iPad. For $20, you can buy 2 Cars 2 Hot Wheels size vehicles which are made to be able to  run on the iPad. With a free app, children can actually use a physical toy to interact with the digital world. The cars can talk to other characters, they can race and run on race courses, plus fly, jump, etc. With add ons such as wings, it is another creative idea coined by Disney.

The only problem I can foresee is toddlers thinking any car can be paired with the iPad and scratching the screen, or landing a jump too hard.

What a difference between the carpets with roads we had back in the times of the dinos!

The video is below.

Update: To see my review, please go here

Post a comment! Do you like them? Why or why not? Really, someone had to make these sooner or later.

Oh ya, and by the way, “New and Noteworthy” was totally not from Apple. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, hope you don’t mind the sarcasm.