Linked List: March 8, 2011

Tuesday, 8 March 2011

On the Quality of the iPad 2 Camera ★

Charlie Sorrel:

It’s extremely likely that the iPad 2 and the iPod Touch share the exact same camera (although we won’t know for sure until iFixit tears one open to see). It seems that it will be fine for movies, and bad for photos. [...]

Indeed, based on the published specs and a few test photos I shot at last week’s iPad introduction event, the iPad 2’s cameras are either identical or very similar to those in the iPod Touch — and definitely not of the caliber of the iPhone 4’s. Here’s a test photo I snapped with an iPad 2 in the hands-on demo area, and a corresponding photo taken with my iPhone 4.

Chris Stout argues here that the iPhone 4’s camera might not even fit in the iPad 2. I’m sure Apple could have found some sort of higher-quality camera that would have fit; the question is simply a matter of trade-offs: quality vs. cost. They could have added more RAM, or fashioned it out of solid gold instead of aluminum, too.

Still, for a device that costs a minimum of $500, it would be nice to have a better image sensor, rather than these bottom-of-the-barrel ones Apple insists on using. Will we ever get one? It’s starting to look rather doubtful.

Yes, I’m sure there will never be another iPad.

The Rolling Stone Interview: Stanley Kubrick in 1987 ★

Tim Cahill’s 1987 interview with Kubrick, while he was promoting Full Metal Jacket:

If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s vanity, this idea that the work is bigger than one’s capacity to describe it. Some people can do interviews. They’re very slick, and they neatly evade this hateful conceptualizing. Fellini is good; his interviews are very amusing. He just makes jokes and says preposterous things that you know he can’t possibly mean.

I mean, I’m doing interviews to help the film, and I think they do help the film, so I can’t complain. But it isn’t...it’s... it’s difficult.

Anatomy of a Crushing ★

Pinboard creator Maciej Ceglowski, on the day Delicious’s demise leaked:

Before this moment, our relationship to Delicious had been that of a tick to an elephant. We were a niche site and in the course of eighteen months had siphoned off about six thousand users from our massive competitor, a pace I was was very happy with and hoped to sustain through 2011. But now the Senior Vice President for Bad Decisions at Yahoo had decided to give us a little help.

And, toward the end of the story:

If Pinboard were not a paid service, we could not have stayed up on December 16, and I would have been forced to either seek outside funding or close signups. Instead, I was immediately able to hire contractors, add hardware, and put money in the bank against further development.

Remember Google TV? ★

Crickets.

Update: Brad McCarty wrote about this a month ago at The Next Web, but I was prompted by this tweet from Justin Williams.

Evocative Photos of Star Wars Toys ★

Terrific toy photography by Vesa Lehtimäki. (Via John Nack.)

Sometimes the Reason a Report Is ‘Exclusive’ Is That It Isn’t True ★

Jonathan Geller, Boy Genius Report, earlier today:

Oh, and we’ve also been told iOS 4.3 will be available for download publicly at 10AM PT today. Fire up iTunes and get your update trigger-finger ready!

Which iPad 2 Should You Get? ★

Great walkthrough of the various options from Marco Arment.

I bought a 3G iPad last year, but I don’t think I ever will again, now that the iPhone (4, and, presumably, newer models going forward) supports Wi-Fi hotspot tethering. I still have my Verizon iPhone 4 review unit from Apple, and the hotspot tethering works great for getting everything I carry around online. (I even used it last week in San Francisco to get my personal AT&T iPhone 4 online at my hotel, where I wasn’t getting a usable 3G signal from AT&T.) Getting an iPad online via hotspot tethering is not quite as convenient as with a 3G iPad where networking “just works” instantly, but it’s close enough. By getting a Wi-Fi-only iPad, you save $130 off the device, and for $20 a month to enable iPhone tethering, you can get anything online, not just the iPad itself.

Update: You might come to a different conclusion if you frequently use GPS on your iPad (Wi-Fi-only models don’t have GPS), or if you frequently use your Verizon iPhone 4 for voice calls while tethering to your iPad. I’m not saying there’s no reason to consider a 3G iPad if you have an iPhone 4. I’m just saying that for me, and probably many others, it’s not worth it. I don’t make a lot of voice calls and I don’t recall ever using GPS on my iPad.

This ViewSonic ViewPad Thing Just Keeps Getting Funnier ★

So it’s not bad enough that ViewSonic’s new ViewPad tablet dual-boots with two OSes (Windows 7 and Android 1.6), neither of which are meant for use on a tablet. ViewSonic’s own promotional image for the product shows it running, of all things, a slightly-disguised screenshot of Mac OS X. How does anyone take this seriously?

Update: They’ve updated the press release to show a screenshot of Windows 7, but the original image is still online. (And, of course, I have a copy.)

Jim Dalrymple: No iOS 4.3 Update Coming Today ★

He thinks tomorrow.

Headed Soon to a Trash Can Near You ★

BGR reports on ViewSonic’s $599 10-inch ViewPad:

Most notably, however, it features a dual-boot configuration that allows users to boot either Android 1.6 or Windows 7 on demand. “The lines of professional and personal life are blurring, which creates a need for devices that are suited for both sides,” said Adam Hanin, vice president of marketing for ViewSonic Americas, in a statement.

On the one side: an OS that wasn’t designed for use on a tablet. On the other: an OS that wasn’t designed for use on a tablet.