Yesterday, Apple unveiled the long rumored and hyped iPad Mini to much fanfare and some criticism. I am not an Apple fanboy or hater. Neither am I an Android fanboy or hater. I use and like both platforms and here are my thoughts.
I love my iPhone. I have used a 3GS for over 2 years and recently upgraded to the 4S when the iPhone 5 was released. It is easily the most capable and stable phone I've ever had. But I also recently purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" tablet and really like that device as well. It's the perfect size for me to bring along because it fits into the back pocket of my jeans and also in my coat pockets without getting in the way. While I can pretty much do the the same things on both devices, having a larger screen that is still comfortable to hold and use makes things like watching Netflix movies or playing Angry Birds more enjoyable.
My wife has a work provided iPad 1 that we have been using for over a year. While the bigger display and longer battery life are nice to have, it's simply too big size wise to casually carry around everywhere.
While the iPad mini will fill the gap the Apple had in the tablet market (I believe the 7" tablet is the fastest rising/selling form factor), I agree with the analysts and think they over priced it by about $80. Had they priced it at $249 or had better hardware than basically an outdated iPad 2, I think it would have made the decision to get an Apple tablet versus an Android tablet easier; especially for people already entrenched in the Apple ecosystem. That would have certainly been the case for me. Almost everything purchased for an iPhone could be re-downloaded and used on the tablet without having to buy new versions as I currently have to do for my Android tablet.
I'm sure they will sell a lot of the iPad mini's, especially to people who already have an iPhone and have so far resisted the (fanboy) urge to buy an iPad. I just won't be one of them.
I am, however, impressed by the newly designed iMac though! If only they had made the screen touch-capable and allowed you to run iOS applications on it... now that would have been really interesting and made for a great 'one more thing' moment!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
New Source Code Font
As a developer show spends an aweful lot of time looking at and reading text that is not proper English (programming terms, variable names, etc.) I have tried many different fonts over the years to make reading code easier. For the past few years my favorite has been Consolas with attempts at using Droid Mono, Courier, Arial, etc.
A few weeks ago, Adobe release a new series of fonts called Source Code Pro that has very quickly taken over as my choice font for all of my text/code editors. It has very good design, spacing, letter representation, and takes into account often confused characters (like the number one and a lower-case 'l', zero and upper-case 'O', etc.). These differences have quickly made things in my editor look a lot nicer.
Do yourself a favor and download the fonts and give them a try for a day or so. I think you'll like it... a lot!
More details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-pro.html
A few weeks ago, Adobe release a new series of fonts called Source Code Pro that has very quickly taken over as my choice font for all of my text/code editors. It has very good design, spacing, letter representation, and takes into account often confused characters (like the number one and a lower-case 'l', zero and upper-case 'O', etc.). These differences have quickly made things in my editor look a lot nicer.
Do yourself a favor and download the fonts and give them a try for a day or so. I think you'll like it... a lot!
More details here: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-pro.html
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
TypeScript
So, it's been a little while since Microsoft release a preview of their new language... TypeScript.
My first reaction was "Aren't there already a bunch of replacements for JavaScript (Dart, CoffeeScript, Kotlin, etc.) that just compile to JavaScript anyway? Why would Microsoft create yet another variant?" After looking at it a little deeper, it became clear that it isn't a replacement for JavaScript (vanilla JS is valid TypeScript), but an enhancement on top of the existing language to support static type checking at development time, (arguably) better syntax for creating closures/'classes', etc., while producing ECMAScript 5 compliant output that can be used in any browser/host/OS combination already in existence today (no plugins required).
After reading more, I found an article that sums up my thoughts nicely: Thoughts on TypeScript
It'll be interesting to see how this progresses. If nothing else, perhaps it will spur the adoption of the ECMAScript 6 proposals into the full spec sooner rather than later!
My first reaction was "Aren't there already a bunch of replacements for JavaScript (Dart, CoffeeScript, Kotlin, etc.) that just compile to JavaScript anyway? Why would Microsoft create yet another variant?" After looking at it a little deeper, it became clear that it isn't a replacement for JavaScript (vanilla JS is valid TypeScript), but an enhancement on top of the existing language to support static type checking at development time, (arguably) better syntax for creating closures/'classes', etc., while producing ECMAScript 5 compliant output that can be used in any browser/host/OS combination already in existence today (no plugins required).
After reading more, I found an article that sums up my thoughts nicely: Thoughts on TypeScript
It'll be interesting to see how this progresses. If nothing else, perhaps it will spur the adoption of the ECMAScript 6 proposals into the full spec sooner rather than later!
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