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Hmm, well, this and that. Those who know me will perhaps be aware that I keep pretty irregular hours, normally going to bed one hour later than the previous day. This has resulted in my going to bed at 6am this morning, and I spent all night trying to build a 3.5Mhz direct conversion radio reciever (anyone who's got some spare variable inductors drop me a line by the way). That didn't work but I find something oddly soothing about building circuits generally, and I find radio stuff really interesting - the idea that you can send data literally through the air over hundreds and thousands of miles seems new to a lot of people, but hams have been doing it for years. There's even a healthy amateur TV scene going on. But while I was working the iron and trying to fiddle inductors from all manner of scrap gear I started thinking about this bloody iPad that everyone's going on about. I won't spend too long going on about it, but it seems to me that Apple have really crapped out with the iPad. Gasp!
One thing that Apple do seem to have right is the size of the thing. Bigger than a PDA, more screen space than some NetBooks, and no troublesome physical keyboard or trackpad or (heaven help us) trackball cluttering up the device. I've been a Palm user on and off for years and years and years - I even had a cellphone cradle for one of them. I really like them, but the killer is the software. Us Windows users are really spoilt - if you can think of something you want to do with a PC, you can usually find plenty of apps to do it and a good few of those will be freeware. But Apple decided that the iPad would be (basically) an iPhone with a bigger screen. Now I have an iPhone and I really, really, REALLY like it. But to have anything approaching the freedom of chioce that "traditional" computer users are used to, you have to jailbreak that sucker. The world and his bloody dog knows that it's one of the first things that us propellerheads do when we get an iPhone because the stuff on the App Store offers no real advantage over apps from anywhere else, and damn it I want to CHANGE the UI! The (lack of) flexability of the iPhone is an irritation on a small screen which is really too small to do anything other than occasional "at a pinch" browsing, a spot of tweeting and a quick game of chess on the train. The bluetooth functionality of the iPhone is awful. Laughable, some would say. Why the hell can't I sync iTunes over Bluetooth? Or WiFi? These pitfalls can only be magnified in a more accessible device. Apple themselves realise that people want "mini-desktop" functionality in the iPad, otherwise why would they have recompiled iWork? I want to be able to do "desktop" things on a device which is smaller than a laptop, and from the first 45 seconds or so of the launch you'd have thought that was what we were going to see. But nope, we're going to put people in a position where people WANT to unlock it because seeing that homescreen without Winterboard just seemed a waste of screen space to me. It's a way bigger screen than the iPhone, I want it to sing to my eyes. After all the talk of the "liberal arts", Apple seem to restrict what their devices can look like with an almost maniacal zeal. Strange.
It's too big to carry around in the same way as an iPhone I think. And you don't really seem to get anything in return except a bigger screen. You can't even multitask without jailbreaking. What a waste of a 1Ghz custom processor. The storage capacity seems too small at first, but when you realise that you're tied to the app store it makes a bit more sense. But one thing that really, REALLY bugs me is that IT'S ENTIRELY A DRONE DEVICE. I can't keep my iTunes library on it. I can't sync my iPhone or iPod to it. So now I have a third device which has all the drawbacks of a netbook, all the drawbacks of being tethered to the App store and the data dead-endedness of a handheld, the drawbacks of Apple's restrictive stance on customisation...don't get me wrong, it looks like a really fun device. In the same way that the hand-held LED-based invaders game I had when I was 10 was fun. But don't go expecting me to think it's going to change my life.
Anyway that's enough waffle about the iPad. I'm bored of it now and I probably won't be buying one (unless Blazin' Balls does insanely well). I hope you like our new template for the site. It's much more to my liking and far easier on the eye. And on the subject of the site, I'll be adding a subdomain over the weekend for a new microsite. I spend a lot of my time fiddling and faddling around with all sorts of things - electronics in general and radio in particular, astronomy, audio software, other weird bits of code, creating weird music and musical instruments and I've decided that I should start keeping track of it all and posting my technical journal. Well, journal is a bit of a grand name for it, when it's just a glorified notebook. Anyway the plan is that labs.mstargames.co.uk will be home to all my non-game tinkering. I'll post a link when the site is up and I've added some content. I expect it'll be another Joomla-based site since it's so easy to set up and use and administer. I'm a little restricted for budget for my projects at the moment, but I have lots of fun toys to share and maybe even some simple fun circuits you'd enjoy building too. I built a load of Theremins a couple of years back, so I'll maybe write something on that. I'm thinking of using an old TV I have knocking around to build an oscilloscope but that high-voltage stuff is a bit much for me, and I've also got a load of "working" radio stuff which I could show. Weather satellites, aircraft tracking, ham radio stuff, all manner of juicy tidbits. And some of the physics style nonsense I got up to when the mood takes me. And my darkroom gear. Oh and all the music studio gear. Kind of a technical blog really. OK so I'm off to bed now before it hits 1am. I'm trying to get my body clock back in order.
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