Paul Howland's Profile

  • Sep 04, 2011
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Latest comments made by: Paul Howland

  • I think you mean 56.6 kbps ... 56.6Mbps would have been impressive!
  • Pointless. If someone wants an iPad with a keyboard they can easily buy one of the several iPad cases featuring a built-in bluetooth keyboard, or get a separate keyboard. Extra screen size alone would not merit this - far more likely is a nextgen iPad with "retina" display that simply ups the resolution of the existing size.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Sep 29, 2010 Posts: 38
    Is an iOS Netbook in the Works?
  • Objection Number 5: Apple has secured practically no content deals for most of the world, rendering the device an expensive paper weight.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Sep 10, 2010 Posts: 38
    Dismissing the Apple TV Objections
  • Spot on. The point is, Ping is nothing about social networking, it's all about an attempt to increase sales in the iTunes store by allowing friends to share tracks they've just bought. It's another form of advertising, an area Apple has woken up to with iAds. Once you realise that, the limitations make perfect sense.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Sep 07, 2010 Posts: 38
    Ping: Apple's Dismal Foray into Social Media
  • I was pretty skeptical about the value of the Magic Trackpad when it was announced. After all, don't most trackpad users (i.e. laptop users) end up plugging in an external mouse? However, I just bought a new iMac and decided to get the trackpad with it. After a week of using it, I can say it really is good. I use it in conjunction with the Magic Mouse - which is what Apple intends (you can't buy the iMac without the mouse, even if you take the trackpad option) and I find myself swapping between the two. Like the article says, it's best if you turn on tap-to-click and also double-tap to drag, and all the multifinger options. You can then work quickly round the MacOS interface with ease, with much less fine movement control than with the mouse. It's great for browsing. The only time I swap to the mouse is where I need to move quickly across the screen several times: then the mouse is more efficient. I recommend it - and as I said, I started off very skeptical.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Aug 27, 2010 Posts: 38
    Magic Trackpad: A Mouse Replacement?
  • As a new iPad owner I can say that Flipboard is absolutely amazing - a superb application. Beautifully done - a must have. I'm amazed it's free.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Aug 06, 2010 Posts: 38
    Flipboard on the iPad: Sweet!
  • "In other countries there is no carrier competition." ?????? Urgh? Which countries would those be? In most "other countries" the cell phone market is way more developed than the US with far more competition. Not sure you researched this article adequately...
    Paul Howland had this to say on Jul 08, 2010 Posts: 38
    3 Ways Apple Can Trounce the Droids
  • I agree few people are talking face-to-face on their computers using iChatAV - but that's a very Apple-centric view of the world. The fact is, millions of people are talking face-to-face on their computers using Skype. Why Skype and not iChatAV? SImply because it has market momentum and "just works" on any platform. Although iChatAV is compatible with AIM, so few people use AIM (at least in Europe) that this is irrelevant and so iChatAV only allows you to chat with the small percentage of Apple users that keep iChatAV running in the background. In other words, a small percentage of a small percentage of the computer users in the world. FaceTime is destined to suffer the same fate for the same reasons, *unless* all other vendors adopt the same open standards and so it becomes a guaranteed way of talking to anyone with a mobile phone. As soon as communication systems become unreliable (either technically or due to limited adoption) people will swap to something else.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Jun 12, 2010 Posts: 38
    FaceTime? Try Rehashed Pea Salad
  • UrbanBard - there is a big difference between asking Apple to tidy up its store front so I can see what I might want to buy; and asking Apple to dictate to me what I may and may not buy. I've read your defense, but I really can't agree. Software quality on the Mac seems to have not suffered with the free market and Apple has not felt a need to dictate to Mac owners what they can and can't run on their computers or that software can only be bought from them. I can't see why the iPad should be any different. The best thing Apple can do to ensure quality software is to continue to develop rich application frameworks and powerful development tools. That is their competitive advantage. If they get that right, they won't need to police their market place as developers will want to use their tools because they're the best, not because they're the only option.
  • Your argument is superficially attractive, but ultimately incorrect I believe. To apply a political analogy, Apple is following the communist approach, where Big Brother knows what's best for the application developer and user. The alternative is the capitalist Free Market approach, where the consumer decides what applications are worth keeping and which are not. Ultimately if the "vanilla" Flash-based applications are bad and the Objective-C/Cocoa applications are excellent, the market will reflect that and people will vote with their wallets. Absolutely no need for Apple to dictate. That said, if someone is able to write a good application using some intermediate standard, good luck to them! Indeed, by Apple restricting the developers to using only Apple tools, Apple is ultimately limiting competition in the developer tool space and preventing others from perhaps developing better development solutions. Whether Adobe or someone else is in a position to develop better tools is highly debatable, but my main point is that the market should decide, not Apple. Indeed the biggest obstacle to this at present is the organizational mess known as the App Store (more like an App yard sale) - it may have 100000 applications, but how on earth do you find the one you want, and identify the better applications? If Apple focused their efforts on providing a better interface to the app store then the rest would take care of itself - and they'd probably sell more applications to boot.
  • Agreed - I wouldn't want an ad to take up an eighth of my screen for an app I paid for. Indeed, I wouldn't buy that app in the first place. However, I would consider using an app with ads that I didn't pay for (i.e. a free app).
    Paul Howland had this to say on Apr 12, 2010 Posts: 38
    iAd: Apple's Retaliation to Google
  • Not sure I agree with you there Khürt Williams, nor like your characterization of me as a geek. Having a built-in webcam is hardly a luxury item these days for a mobile computing device. In fact, I don't think I've seen a laptop or netbook without one in recent years. It's integral to mobile computing. I take your point that there will always be those who won't buy one until some obscure feature is added, but a webcam for video chat hardly falls into that category. Furthermore, I'm happy to go on record as predicting that iPad v2 will feature a webcam, include a mobile version of iChat that is marketed as the most significant innovation since the telephone and that Apple fans throughout the blogosphere will instantly forget how unimportant the webcam is and simultaneously be ready to rave about how innovative Apple was to include one. I love Apple products, but do find it very tiresome how so many fans are unable to think outside of the box Steve Jobs last gave them.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Apr 01, 2010 Posts: 38
    Last Year's Model: Fine for the Rest of Us
  • I'm not buying the iPad until it gets a webcam. For me this is a glaring omission. The iPad is the perfect travel companion (and I travel a lot) but without a webcam to support Skype then it fails. Can't understand why Apple missed this off the list - other than to artificially generate additional sales for v2 of the iPad released at the end of the summer.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Mar 31, 2010 Posts: 38
    Last Year's Model: Fine for the Rest of Us
  • UrbanBard - yes, we'll see. But I doubt any of them will be fundamentally due to the shift to 64-bits. Having used a 64-bit UNIX over ten years ago, I can assure you there will be no revolutionary change. Just as we have seen little revolutionary change so far as Mac OS has already largely migrated to 64-bit. I'm curious, what is it that you think you can do with 64-bits that you can't already do with 32-bits - other than address more memory or use longer registers? One example of a revolutionary change would be interesting.
    Paul Howland had this to say on Feb 12, 2010 Posts: 38
    What's Next for Mac OS X?
  • I struggle to understand why commentators above believe that the 64-bit kernel will bring about revolutionary change in MacOS. The move from 32-bits to 64-bits simply allows a greater address space (which is irrelevant for the 95% of users with less than 4GB RAM) and access to some larger registers. This will bring evolutionary, incremental performance improvements - but nothing more. 64-bits is as much a marketing slogan for the masses as anything else (I'm not talking about the server market here, where it is relevant). Digital UNIX, for instance, has been pure 64-bit since 1998 but did not bring about any computing revolution - it was simply a solid server-orientated operating system. Of course 64-bits is a wise migration to allow for ever increasing hardware requirements in the future, but don't expect to see any extraordinary changes...
    Paul Howland had this to say on Feb 11, 2010 Posts: 38
    What's Next for Mac OS X?