Best PlayBook review so far

Why RIM chose to ship the PlayBook in such a state is unfathomable. The iPad 2 and Xoom have been out for weeks, so there’s no heading them off at the pass. Instead, the PlayBook debuted with all eyes on it — but instead of a world-class performer, we got the homeless guy who plays air guitar in front of the mall.

One of many money quotes from Galen Gruman’s highly entertaining review of the RIM PlayBook (“PlayBook: Unfinished, unusable”) at InfoWorld.

As I was saying…

Adobe releases touch-based SDK for Photoshop. Great things expected, and probably rightly so.

As I was saying eons ago…

And probably before any of that, we’ll start seeing people using iPads as “controllers” for their desktop computers. I can’t imagine software developers haven’t been thinking about “tethered apps” already. Think of an application running on your computer’s big screen(s), and interacting with that with the companion software running on your iPad.

Think Quarterly

Think Quarterly issue #1 is a lovely design and smart concept, with interesting articles, even if its Flash interface is annoying. It was produced by Google UK, and designed by TCO London.

At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten ‘killer application’ — the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest. We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service.

But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.

(Via Bruce Mau Design.)

Hayek on social insurance

Why have so many conservatives forgotten the rational, compassionate foundations upon which they have built their current hateful ideologies?

Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.
—Friedrich Hayek

The Road to Serfdom is an iconic conservative, anti-big-government text, a “passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production”. And yet, the author argues that social insurance is not only acceptable, but a very good idea. Single-payer health insurance is the classic example of “providing for … common hazards of life”.

The word “aerobics” came about when the gym instructors got together and said, “If we’re going to charge $10 an hour, we can’t call it jumping up and down.

Rita Rudner

The bottom line here is that privacy has its value, not just between members of the public, but between citizens and their governments, and between government officials. Everything does not need or deserve to be public. There is a line. And while I certainly would not elect myself to decide where that line is, it does exist. And to those that say such a line is unneeded or inappropriate, I call bullshit on that.

Why does everything suck?: What everyone isn’t getting about Wikileaks

On a related note, I think presidential tapes, for instance, should be released, and the current release schedule is probably about right. Nothing governmental should be out-of-reach forever, but curation and time delays do serve useful purposes.

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.

Attributed to an IBM maintenance manual, ca 1925

My prediction: If Apple announces a pill that cures cancer, AIDs, herpes, and reveals a light bulb that lasts 99 years, while telling us the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body, the Apple Haters will still call the announcement “disappointing,” and will be angry that Apple thinks that they cured cancer first (they’ll bring up an obscure scientist in New Guinea that maybe did it first).
Then they’ll insult the people who buy the cancer medicine for being Sheeple and complain about the fact that you have to swallow it in tablet form (why no syringe, Apple, it’s faster, OMG!). They’ll then declare that they will wait for the Android version in syringe form.

Poll Technica: what iTunes-y thing will Apple announce? (in a comment by PaulChapel)

Here’s someone who starts with the user experience, who believes that industrial design shouldn’t be compared to what other people were doing with technology products but it should be compared to people were doing with jewelry.

[…]

What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do – but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist.

[…]

Having been around in the early days, I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.

[…]

Microsoft hires some of the smartest people in the world. They are known for their incredibly challenging test they put people through to get hired. It’s not an issue of people being smart and talented. It’s that design at Apple is at the highest level of the organization, led by Steve personally. Design at other companies is not there. It is buried down in the bureaucracy somewhere… In bureaucracies many people have the authority to say no, not the authority to say yes. So you end up with products with compromises.

John Sculley On Steve Jobs, The Full Interview Transcript | Cult of Mac