Comments on: Episode 5.5 – iNconceivable iRony http://www.thetightwadtech.com/2010/06/17/episode-5-5-inconceivable-irony/ Doing More with Less Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:19:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: garrettw http://www.thetightwadtech.com/2010/06/17/episode-5-5-inconceivable-irony/comment-page-1/#comment-355 garrettw Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:57:22 +0000 http://www.thetightwadtech.com/?p=108#comment-355 Two aspects of the iPad that you didn't mention are the tablet form factor and the battery life (which I'm assuming is more than just a couple of hours). I know that Acer's Aspire Timeline series of laptops are supposed to have really good battery life (for a laptop), and there are tablet PCs that you could get for the price of an iPad (with probably less-than-stellar battery life), but having both features in one device is appealing. Of course, the limited functionality of the iPad negates those benefits, because they are only secondary to accomplishing anything. With regards to apps and their availability / openness, I like Mozilla's model for their add-ons: there is a central repository run by the company in which submissions are thoroughly vetted, but if there's another site offering an add-on you want, and the main site doesn't have it, there's nothing keeping you from downloading it from that third-party site. It's similar to the major Linux distros; they have apps in repositories, and there are also third-party sites that you can freely download stuff from. That seems to be a happy medium between Apple's model and, say, Microsoft's model, not counting the software they sell -- i.e. there is no Microsoft-run repository of [non-Microsoft] Windows apps. Two aspects of the iPad that you didn’t mention are the tablet form factor and the battery life (which I’m assuming is more than just a couple of hours). I know that Acer’s Aspire Timeline series of laptops are supposed to have really good battery life (for a laptop), and there are tablet PCs that you could get for the price of an iPad (with probably less-than-stellar battery life), but having both features in one device is appealing. Of course, the limited functionality of the iPad negates those benefits, because they are only secondary to accomplishing anything.

With regards to apps and their availability / openness, I like Mozilla’s model for their add-ons: there is a central repository run by the company in which submissions are thoroughly vetted, but if there’s another site offering an add-on you want, and the main site doesn’t have it, there’s nothing keeping you from downloading it from that third-party site. It’s similar to the major Linux distros; they have apps in repositories, and there are also third-party sites that you can freely download stuff from. That seems to be a happy medium between Apple’s model and, say, Microsoft’s model, not counting the software they sell — i.e. there is no Microsoft-run repository of [non-Microsoft] Windows apps.

]]> By: techleslie http://www.thetightwadtech.com/2010/06/17/episode-5-5-inconceivable-irony/comment-page-1/#comment-91 techleslie Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:59:25 +0000 http://www.thetightwadtech.com/?p=108#comment-91 I hope you've jailbroken it. I hope you've jailbroken it.

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