Linked List: January 19, 2010

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

PC World: Apple Tablet Won’t Mean Business ★

I remember the old days, when PC World writers would wait until after Apple announced something new to declare that it was a toy.

Nexus One’s OLED Display and Subpixel Pattern ★

Interesting look at the subpixel design of the Nexus One display.

The high pixel density of the display is marvelous for reading text. Letterforms are, as you’d expect, very crisp. My biggest gripe about the Nexus One display is that certain colors are way over-saturated. All skin tones look very orange to me. Everyone gets that spray-on tan look. Reds, pinks, and especially oranges all go fluorescent. In short, I love the pixel density and brightness (and, so far, the battery life), but I do not like the color reproduction. I don’t know if that’s the nature of OLED, or if it’s specific to the Nexus One.

Jeffery Battersby Reviews Pastebot for Macworld ★

Pastebot isn’t just good. It (combined with its Mac component, Pastebot Sync) changed the way I use my iPhone. It’s that good.

Touchscreen Edge Cases ★

David Barnard:

While fiddling with the Nexus One last week, I was incredibly annoyed at how many times I accidentally tapped the Home button while trying to tap the space bar on the software keyboard. [...]

While typing on the iPhone I’ve been subconsciously tapping slightly below the bottom row of the software keyboard because it requires less precision. My fingers were using that muscle memory while typing on the Nexus One keyboard.

Same thing with me using the Nexus One. And the Home button is a particularly annoying, almost devastating button to accidentally hit by mistake: boom, you’re back at the Home screen of the system, right when you were in mid-sentence, trying to type a space. Barnard links to this example of a Palm guy demoing the new Pre Plus making a similar mistake.

I think you can argue that this is a touchscreen application of Fitts’s Law.

‘Apple iPad’ ★

MadTV sketch from 2006. (Via Jonas Wisser and Chris Herbert.)

MacRumors: ‘Will Apple’s Tablet Actually Be Called the iPad?’ ★

I say no. I guess it’s not a bad name in and of itself, but it sounds and looks way too much like “iPod”. (And for what it’s worth, the “ipad.com” domain name is not registered to MarkMonitor, Apple’s preferred domain registration service.)

I have heard nothing — zilch, zero — about the name of this thing from sources. So this is all just my opinion. If you wanted me to bet on a name, I’d say they bring back “iBook”. If so, maybe that’s the reason for the change from PowerBook and iBook to MacBook a few years ago. But that’s just a wild guess on my part, and mainly because I just think it’s a great name. Looks good, sounds good.

Second guess, even wilder guess: “Tablet”. Not “iTab”, not “iTablet”. I started referring to it as “The Tablet” just to have something to refer to it as, and because that’s what friends at Apple (who know nothing about the specifics) seem to call the whole secret project. (A lot of people at Apple refer to the iPhone as “the phone”, too.) But just plain “Tablet” actually started growing on me. Maybe it’s time to drop the whole “i” prefix thing anyway.

France Joins Germany Warning Against Internet Explorer ★

This stuff about avoiding or abandoning IE6 is foolish. Everyone should abandon IE, period. These security problems will never end. How many strikes do they get before they’re out?

Also, if it’s true that Internet Explorer played some role in the Chinese security intrusion against Google, it raises the question of why in the world anyone at Google is using IE. What’s up with that?

Indie Relief ★

Huge selection of indie Mac software, of which the entire proceeds tomorrow will be donated to Haitian relief. Great apps, great idea.

Why Is Tumblr Kicking Posterous’s Ass? ★

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues it’s because Tumblr is better designed. (I concur. Although I still don’t get the whole “reblogging” thing.)