Why Tablets aren't the future.

Ok so when the Ipad came it didn't hit my Geek spot at all, I've already grown past the time where every little shiney thing with an LCD screen impresses me, but I'm starting to feel like Zero Punctuation who had similar complaints about the Wii, it's gimmick, every time I say this no one agrees with me and they will come up with weak weak excuses for what you could possibly use a tablet for, even the Android and Windows tablets doesn't excite me at all. The points I hear are usually along these lines:

• It's light and easy to bring with you
• You can do homework on it
• You can read books on it.
• You can watch movies and stuff on it
• Social Networking
• It would be great at a hospital(Possibly the weakest)

Light and easy

So it's light yeah it's true about 700 grams, it's not super light, I think you will get surprised by the weight of it, that being said it's definitely lighter than a Laptop, but you don't need to hold a laptop like you would need to hold this tablet, you can actually write on the laptop withouth having to looking directly down to write and to see what you're writing, plus as much as they have improved touch screen you won't be able to use this like you would a normal keyboard, you can't feel the key's there's no indicator for F and J which is important if you want to type away.

Homework

Homework, yeah I guess if you want to do it in the most awkward way possible, again this is something the laptop does, and better, Any laptop or netbook atleast have USB so you can easily access a printer, which is usually something you need to do doing homework..

For reading books

This is one I've read a lot, so let me start with some basic facts. reading on a backlit LCD, OLED, or LED LCD screen isn't good for your eyes, it causes eyestrain, of course I will hear people claiming that that doesn't happen to them and they must appearently be super human, sadly this is the internet so I'm pretty sure they are full of it, I've been studying on laptops and PC's for 6 years and reading and entire book on my laptop is unbearable, I have good eyes, I don't need glasses but there's things I'm just not going to subject myself to.

Plus if all you needed it for was reading, why get get a 3.rd or 4.th thing with a screen obviously not made for long term reading? Get an E book or buy the book in hard cover if you want, buying a $500 + Ipad or other tablet is just overdoing it and not even doing it right in the first place.

Personally I've been considering the Kindle DX, yeah it's single purpose, but I have a billion multipurpose stuff it doesn't bother me having one device that just does one thing and does it well.. Plus the Kindle is surprisingly good for several things like reading PDF's and doing it on a screen made for reading(Non backlit E-ink) should be a lot better than on any Tablet laptop or any LCD device.

Watch movies

Ok If you have a netbook try this, hold it like you would a tablet, and imagine you're watching a movie or an episode of some series on it, first of all these tablet I've seen so far is not made for standing up, and why the hell isn't it a lot more prefereable to do so on your Laptop or even phone? I put Avatar on my HTC desire, and although I was skeptical I found that it worked really well, I only use it to get time going while I'm traveling and I for one reason or another don't want to use battery on my laptop. But I can't imagine watching an entire movie on my phone, I would watch chunks if I wanted to see an entire movie I would just set up my laptop since it has an adjustable screen, I can even watch blu ray on my laptop, so why would you want to try and watch movies on a tablet?

Social Networking

Social Networking is good, I'm not an obsesive that will twitter out everytime I get home from work, but it has a nice social feel to it that you can watch what people have to say or just get updated about things in general, and guess what, every phone, Laptop, Netbook and fucking thing has it, so why is it needed on yet another thing? I mentioned the Kindle earlier, yes it has access to Social Networking as well!

For use at a Hospital

This one was one I got told after I attacked some fanboys trying to seriously learn them a thing or two about critical thinking. While yes I'm sure you could set up a cool futuristic system with tablets at hospital beds, although the tablets they currently have seem to work pretty well and won't cost $500+ and you would have to over complicate something that is already damn complicated.. Not to mention how often someone would try and steal them.

And I find it funny that a fanboy who've ordered two already for his own personal use will use this as an excuse when it's clearly not his plan to start a hospital.

I know the Ipad have sold like 3 million already, but I'm pretty sure that most of these were for the gimmick crowd or people with too much money. Considering how many Wii's that are sold it wouldn't surprise me if it will sell a lot more, it's just sad in my opinion. The Wii did have some actual uses I thought about getting one my self so I could stay in and exercise but I kind of realized how silly that was and have taken up bicycling instead, but at least you had the option. I don't feel you have the option with any tablets.

In the end the tablet will only serve as an alternative to your laptop or your phone once you decide to use it for that, only if you're a really hardcore fanboy you would torture yourself with reading books on it and force yourself to use it as a laptop, in that case have fun living in a complete denial.

The underdog vs the Chihuahua

Ok, so first of all I've always been a "dogs" person, but this post will be about Apple, yaaay.

Anyway a long time has passed since my last post, it seems everytime I start writing something I save it and decide later it was all horrible and give up fixing it, so I think I have atleast 10 pages of text in my "Drafts folder"

But! let's get to it.

So about a month ago Apple released a new phone, the Iphone 4, So what's new about this phone? well it's definitely faster than the older ones, although I don't think the 3GS was slow, but more speed is always welcome, it has some design changes which I couldn't care less about, and it has a nice screen, however it's still not a OLED screen like the majority of Android based phones are using, but it's a screen with probably the best resolution out there for a phone screen, so that's good, and the only thing that really touches my geek spot. But then comes the turn off that makes me swear once again to never buy from Apple.

Apple, or Steve Jobs proudly presented the phone as magical, which doesn't really bother me that much, just comes off as stupid but yeah he then goes through some of these new features, one of which is the Antenna(most of you probably already knows where this is going). And how it's built into the chassis, interesting but by no means new, and I didn't know there was problems with the old antenna design, but yeah here it comes, the problem is that this antenna is on the outside if your chassis, and Wlan bluetooth and 3G signal doesn't combine well, so if you're left handed, like me, or just have the phone in your left hand and decide to use it like you would a phone, well your hand will connect the antenna for the bluetooth and Wlan with the 3G antenna, signal gets fubar and you drop a call. What was Apples reaction? Well seeing that a lot of the new phones don't have this issue I think the first step was to put something over the part of the antenna that got short cuircuited, not that Apple would ever admit that, but that will become clear later.

first there was the email, of a happy Iphone 4 owner who got a reply from Steve Jobs when he asked about this very issue, the only response from Mr. jobs was: Just hold it differently.

So there was so much of an issue that Apple decided to hold a press conference. Well like a 12 year old who got caught for something bad, Steve Jobs response was basically; But everyone else was doing it too! except they weren't Nokia and RIM(Blackberries) both went out against Apple because Apple in it's attempt to claim that there was no design flaw said that Nokia and Blackberry had the exact same problem(which they never had). And then they went on to claim that there really was no Antenna issue, but if you had bought a faulty Iphone 4 they out of their goodness of their hearts were prepared to give you a free cover, but not because the phone had any flaws...

It's this arrogance and complete disregard of it's customers I find to be so dispicable that I would never support such a company, now you might find it to be a little excessive, but this isn't the first time this has happened, google Mac Screen yellowing, or Timecapsule issues it took the two years to finally start replacing defective Timecapsules, 2 years!? They didn't even fix this problem they just gave you a rubber casing for your designer phone and told you to stop whining.

How anyone would put up with this when there are many alternatives out there is beyond me.

So where does my title come into all this? I've pretty much always been cheering for the underdog to win, in Processors I've always wanted AMD to do better because I feel they usually made great products that was the same quality as Intel, and they are trying to compete with them. While Apple have always been complaining about how big and mean Microsoft is, while it might be pretty true they don't seem to try and compete, They make their own terrible system to try and grab market and they make sure it's completely closed off so they won't have to compete with others. Ok Microsoft have an unfair advantage too and I really hope with forces like Google we will finally see someone break open this closed Microsoft deal, but that's no excuse for Apple to be worse than Microsoft when it comes to be anti-competition,. so as much as I've tried to like Apple, their arrogant attitude just puts me off and makes me hate them more than Microsoft.

And as much issues you might have with Microsoft atleast they seem to try, it didn't take them long to go from Vista to Windows 7, and there are things that Windows just does better than any Linux OS, and that's having performance as well as being user friendly, I try and hope desperately that tomorrow is the day that Ubuntu or someone else gets to run games and flash as good as Windows does it, but the fact is right now they don't even come close. I am currently running Ubuntu on a laptop at home, I keep it updated and all that, but I just can't use it as much as I use my Windows PC, with office stuff it works perfect and I can see them enter the world of offices and servers without problems, but casual surfing and stuff? Not yet.

But yeah to end this on my title, The underdog usually knows he's the small one and will therefore work extra hard for you and deliver you great stuff, while the Chihuahua will just bark it's head off and never shut up, and given the power it would just chew off it's owners face.