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Device Evolution  (View post)

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, December 9, 2010
14 years ago225,587 views

The direction you look at this from reminds me of Kevin Kelly's book "What Technology Wants". Kevin also wrote:

"In general the long-term bias of technology is to increase the diversity of artifacts, methods, techniques. More ways, more choices. Over time technological advances invent more energy efficient methods, and gravitate to technologies which compress the most information and knowledge into a given space or weight. Also over time, more of more of matter on the planet will be touched by technological processes. Also, technologies tend toward ubiquity and cheapness. They also tend towards new levels of complexity (though many will get simpler, too). Over time technologies require more surrounding technologies in order to be discovered and to operate; some technologies become eusocial – a distributed existence – in which they are inert when solitary. In the long run, technology increases the speed at which it evolves and encourages its own means of invention to change. It aims to keep the game of change going."

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/01/what_technology.php

Moshe Eshel [PersonRank 0]

14 years ago #

Hi there, loved the cute story! but didn't understand why iPad is better than the Android Tablet? I'm not so much against the iPad as I want to trully understand what you find more comfortable in the iPad vs Say the new Galaxy Tab (or the future unreleased "official" Android Tablet)
Where I stand they seem more or less the same... (with the Kindle app you can subscribe to magazines on both if I understand correctly)...

Shane Fernlund [PersonRank 0]

14 years ago #

Thats an interesting way to look at technology. I personally thing apple and Google lead the race in the future.

[signature removed]

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Moshe, good question, here's some things in comparison iPad vs Galaxy Tab:

------------------- Galaxy Cons: -------------------
- colors fade quickly when viewed from the side. A big problem if you want to put the thing on the table (say, you're eating and browsing), or have more than one person look at it. The iPad's colors are crisp and clear from the side.

- the 4 navigation buttons quickly stop glowing after usage, making it hard to find them when it gets a bit darker

- the 4 navigation buttons can also not be felt by touch, as they're fully flat (compare to the concave iPad button); you can also not easily guess the position as it's not something quickly findable as "center" like on the iPad

- the UI animations are all lagging, they're not as smooth as on the iPad, the buttons in various menus are flat giving this an odd, non-intuitive and non-polished look

- I found the browser nearly unusable when trying with Reddit; scrolling was very slow and non-smooth, the text didn't wrap, the font-weight was too thin to comfortably read; all in all, nothing I'd want to use for surfing

- many apps in the market place aren't full-screen yet you also don't have a 2x zoom button, as the iPad has. This not only means that the resolution won't be as nice, it also means the game controls will be offset into an awkward position which is harder to reach!

- it's not as big as the iPad, meaning surfing isn't as nice (or video watching, magazine reading etc.), yet it's also not small enough to fit into any pocket.

- likely not big enough to work for many of the same-device multiplayer game approaches (checking that was the main reason I bought it, see http://versuspad.com).

- power off button and sound buttons are too close – you often accidentally power off the Galaxy when you just wanted to decrease/ increase the soundvolume

------------------- Galaxy Pros: -------------------
- Works great for emulator games. As the market place is more open than the Apple App Store, there's a whole world of emulators there.

- *Would* work terrific for games if only you could zoom into every game

- Easy to hold up with one hand.

- Does fit into certain jacket pockets

- It was easy to configure my VPN on it, somehow I couldn't get the same PPTP to work on my iPad yet (not sure why)

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