What bemused you today?

[Hinfrance]

Jonathan, you don't have to justify yourself. If you want one, buy it. Just buy it for honest reasons. Ooooh shiny sparkly new should do it. Don't pretend is is some great step change in technology, because it isn't. Believe me I've been through the whole early adopter thing. I'm just bored by it now.

[Jonathan]

Nothing like a reasoned debate is there......

[spinner]

Why do Applephiles think that 'cool' is a useful function or feature 

Or they could buy an iPad for a "little" more (I suspect UK price will be £349 but a straight conversion puts it at £249).  Build 20 different folios for different clients, shuffle them around and have hundreds of pics to talk about if things go well (a folio generally holds about 20 and that's a good number to pitch with).

Well I must admit, for this one reason and this one only you may have sold me on this thing. 

[chris@seary.com]

Well, the FCC is gonna hold you up from buying one:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/wondering-why-you-cant-pre-order-the-ipad-it-isnt-legal-yet/

Here's a good write up:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/187962/apples_ipad_mistakes.html

No multi-tasking? Wot?

So, basically, the iPhone has been put on a rack and stretched out a bit.

Apple really are the homeopathy of computing...... Style, appearance, no substance and propagated like a cult.

I'm absolutely staggered. I've read loads of posts on the net from people saying they're buying one as soon as possible. All the non-techie press are raving about how great it is. All the sites that are technically savvie are slagging it off.

Will this sell loads? Well, Alan Sugar thought that the iPod would fail. Obviously, it plays MP3 files. But then so does my mobile phone. But the iPod doesn't make calls, play games, send texts, have a camera, alarms, an organiser.....   So the iPod must be cheap as chips, right? Just like the Apple Mac, which is an Intel based PC running a stripped down, butchered version of BSD Unix (which is free). That's as cheap as chips as well, yeah?

My eyes are rolling while I write this.  

I'm thinking of some story about the emperor and his new clothes.....

[anglefire]

I think you will find its more of a blown up iTouch rather than an iPhone!

A lot are making a big deal about multi-tasking. I really wonder why. No really, think about it. Email will work in the background as will some of the basic Apple apps such as alarms and such, 3rd party apps (As far as I can tell and based on the iPhone) don't - but when do you actually do more than 1 thing at once? Truely, I mean, yes you may have a couple of things open, but actually using them?

Mind you, not that I can see me buying one anytime soon. The guessed UK price is 1/2 of a 100mm f/2.8 IS L Macro lens! 

[spinner]

Well, the FCC is gonna hold you up from buying one:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/wondering-why-you-cant-pre-order-the-ipad-it-isnt-legal-yet/

Being Canadian, I don't expect to see it here for at least a year in any event.

[hevans]

Nothing like a reasoned debate is there......

And you can't apply logic to religeous topics, which is generally what any apple thread degenerates into.

I won't buy an ipad, because i can't see a situation that i am regularly in that would make it more useful than the effort of carrying it around. Now if it fit snuggly in a pocket...

What it does do is raise the "style" bar for the competitors in the field.

[greypoint]

So the only real reason for buying one is as a presentation tool to best show off a portfolio. For that reason I can understand it could be a good investment for business use - apart from that.....

[Simple]

C'mon folks. It is all about brand power. The kids nowadays are brought up with it, they don't know any better. They wear trainers to go shopping, but it has to be fashionable Nike, Adidas etc. So if you are a student or teenager, nothing will be more fashionable to show up your friends than getting one of those Apple i-something out of a bag. Rather than a netbook or laptop. And Apple knows and works hard for this. I bought an i-phone for my son last week, and tried about 5 shops on the highstreet. Every one told me that the i-phone is the one to have, and is outselling all other phones at the mo.

[Hinfrance]

You are right, kids can be complete label mabels with all the attendant mediocrity that follows.

As for 'phones, the stats tell a rather different story: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=985912

Apple sold 4m units, Nokia sold just shy of 100m units. Apple aren't even separately listed in overall sales, and only sell about a quarter as many 'smart' phones as Nokia.

I wonder which 'phone has the biggest margin for the retailers in your high street?

And I can really see clients be impressed looking at images with finger prints all over them. But that's a criticism of all touch screen devices, not this one specifically. Can you imaging trying to drive your car by dabbing your fingerprints all over the windscreen - you wouldn't be able to see where you were going after a few minutes. That and the blindingly obvious fact that pressing a screen with your fingers is a waste of both your fingers and an excuse not to have a more practical interface. Like the optional extra keyboard, for example 

[greypoint]

...and if they found some way of attaching the optional; keyboard - say with a couple of hinges at the bottom.........then you could close it up to protect the screen.....er..hang on.....

[ABERS]

Enough of all this chat about technological bling, what bemused me today was the video on Pradar showing the recent jamboree in Trafalgar Square protesting at the perceived harassment of photographers by the boys in blue.

At one stage I had intended to go thinking there may be some interesting pictures to be had, but after giving it some thought common sense prevailed . Why would I want to take pictures of photographers taking pictures of other photographers? I might get involved in lengthy discussions about pixels, bokehs, full frames and the latest ND multifaceted filters and have my day completely ruined.

Watching the video, yes there was the usual attention seeking idiot prancing around, the one in the mask features in most of the demonstrations that I have pictures of over the past 18 months.

More than that however it was the interviews that took me back to the demonstration in Hyde Park in 1988 when Muslims from all over the UK gathered to protest about Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.  

Like the people in Trafalgar Square the Muslims back in the 80's were protesting against something that they had only experienced via the media, nobody I spoke to in Hyde Park had even read the Satanic Verses, and it was obvious those in Trafalgar Square had no experience of this police harassment. One woman talked of arrests, I stand to be corrected but I think not one photographer has been arrested for taking pictures in a public place.

Let the police get on with their job of keeping us safe from the extremists and if it inconveniences us now and again so be it.

When the next atrocity perpetrated by murderous extremists occurs there will be the same people protesting that the police weren't up to the job.

[Hinfrance]

"When the next atrocity perpetrated by murderous extremists occurs there will be the same people protesting that the police weren't up to the job."

That would be because they were too busy harassing innocent citizens to notice . . . and for a whole host of non policing related reasons too.

And there have been arrests. One police force, I forget which, has had to pay compensation for unlawful arrest. There have been many other cases. You might not look threatening to a jobsworth Alan, but even poor old jinky has been victimised.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out."

Martin Neimoller. 1946

and then of course there is:

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed" - Adolf Hitler

[ABERS]

That would be because they were too busy harassing innocent citizens to notice . . . and for a whole host of non policing related reasons too.

Maybe it's because they are vigilant that we haven't had one recently.

No arrests that are for taking a picture in public I'm glad to say, maybe for not moving on when asked to do so.

[Forseti]

Now this should be right up Jonathans street.