Apple made it’s name with a truly visionary OS and the idea of a computer as something more then simply a machine.  It recaptured the public imagination after it’s near failing with the iMac and the letter “i” became one of the most recognized symbols of technology.  From the humble iMacs came the real powerhouse of Apple’s resurgents into the main stream market place, the iPod and iTunes and the beginnings of Apples closed system.  From there the iPhone took the world by storm and now the new iPad has surfaced to further push the Apple image.  However some things about Apple don’t make sense and the internet has been buzzing about all of it.  After sifting through more material then I care to remember I’ve tried to make sense of the iPad and it’s role in the modern landscape of computing devices as well as the shift, and seemingly contradictory directions of Apple.

The release of the new Apple tablet device (the iPad) has created quite a stir in the comments section of a number of tech article sites.  This, of course, follows the larger stir of Apple’s stand against Flash and the even older debate, that’s died down but is far from vanishing, about Apple’s closed nature through the use of the iTunes App store.  Take the PC World article with the inflammatory title “Apple iPad Will Leave HP Slate in the Dust” as just one example.  In reading over countless comments I’ve tried to distill what is the real reasoning behind the, often less then cordial, debate between those who see the iPad as an innovative device and those who view it as just a larger version of Apple’s already successful iPod Touch.

Taking the example article from PC World above as a sampling of what you can expect in the comments sections of articles about the iPad I’ve discovered that both sides are attempting to compare (pardon the metaphor that is often over used in these types of discussions as well as the pun that follows) apples to oranges.  The iPad, simply, is a larger version of the iPod Touch.  The HP Slate and other similar devices (Asus Eee Top, Gateway One, MSI Wind Top, etc) are much closer to Netbooks with touch screen capability.  The core difference is in the operating system.  The iPad is little different then an iPod Touch or iPhone OS, while the other devices use PC OS, Windows or Linux and thus are capable of performing the same tasks as a regular PC desktop or notebook.  For this reason the two devices simply can’t be directly compared.  Nor should they be.

The iPad, like the iPod Touch, performs a very limited set of tasks.  All Apple vs PC rhetoric aside Apple’s devices are limited in what they can do despite the iTunes app store.  My personal experience with the iPod Touch and iPhone (I don’t own either but have family members who own both and I have used both devices) showed that the users of these devices rarely required any of the apps provided through the app store.  Rather the majority of their use was focused on accessing the web, texting and MMS.  The various, highly specialized, apps on iTunes seemed to be more novelty acts with little value other then what they garnered in social standing or as a demonstration of the device to a friend or colleague.  The “i” touch devices are nothing more then highly specialized web access panels.  For that reason content for the devices isn’t an issue as the web access provides a limitless amount.

While I don’t own any Apple touch devices I do own a netbook.  The iPad has gotten allot of press as a netbook killer as any google search for “ipad netbook killer” will readily show.  However it is precisely the distinction I drew above that foils the killer argument.  The Apple devices simply don’t do enough to remove the need for something more substantial.  Be it a netbook or notebook you’ll want to have something else on hand that can run a productivity application or two, skype and other web cam activities, as well as Flash on the web all the while supporting connectivity to a number of other devices.

The iPad, while interesting, and very appealing to anybody who likes Apple products, wishes their iPod Touch was larger or simply is looking for something to surf the web with, has a place.  However it is not the holy grail of the all in one mobile device.  If anything I believe it’s a step backwards from the iPhone.

Yet despite the iPad sitting in a class of it’s own, save maybe with the iPod Touch, there is always the desire to compare it to something else.  And while there may appear to be devices that are like it, in reality the devices have more separation than similarity.  It is this desire for meaningful comparison, which cannot be achieved at the present launch of the iPad, that reveals the underling issues between supporters of the Apple brand and their antagonists.

To the antagonist the iPad offers a fresh target with which to aim their displeasure of Apple policy at.  For it is not the iPad that is the problem its it’s mother, Apple Inc.  The real displeasure, that bleeds into meaningless arguments of false device comparisons, is over Apple’s policy of a closed system.  In the now famous Apple TV ad of 1984 that introduced the Apple Macintosh computer:

The rest of the computing industry, dominated by IBM and Microsoft DOS, was an evil, overbearing corporation that controlled what you could do with your computer.  As has been pointed out countless times Apple’s iTunes and it’s system of closed application development for it’s mobile devices rings with the irony of the 1984 TV spot.  The fact that Apple has sought to become the Goliath when once it touted the virtues of being the David rubs allot of people the wrong way.

In defense of the Apple censored app store Apple has claimed it as a security measure.  However this argument doesn’t hold water.  Rather Apple’s control over what gets on an iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad allows Apple to profit from every application for their devices as well as having direct control over what is developed.  If they don’t like it, if it competes with an app of their own making or for any other reason Apple can pull the app off the store.  Yet this focus on controlling content through applications on it’s devices doesn’t jive with it’s stance on Flash.

Apple has taken a stand against Adobe Flash by not supporting it on any of it’s mobile devices.  The latest in a slew of attacks on Flash, starting with how it is a resource hog and security risk, has culminated in the old Linux/Unix mantra of an open internet.  Flash keeps to much of the web content depended and beholden to one company.  Yet the real reason is competition.  If developers could build Flash applications that would cut into the app store’s sales.  Any other rhetoric is simply diversionary.  Apple and Jobs will stand firm against Flash indefinitely in order to protect the lucrative nature of the iTunes app store.

Its obvious that the days of grass roots apple computing are long dead.  Without question Apple has become a mover and a shaker in the corporate cabal of the free market.  However it’s products, though tied to this corporate culture of control and limited competition, should not be judged simply on those merits.  Let them stand for what they are.  Technology, developed to do something that either makes our daily lives easier or entertains us.  If it’s a debate about corporate policy, an open internet or open computing that you want to have, then the devices have nothing to do with.  Keep the technology reviews to the technology or you risk politicizing the hardware, which in an of it’s self has no politics.

So I just started using Google’s new browser “Chrome” on my MSI netbook.  Just for kicks I went through the process of setting Microsoft’s “Bing” as my search engine.  I figured a little role reversal would be good for both of them.  While not as simple as sifting through a list of search engine bar add-ons as Mozilla’s Fire Fox web listings provide, a quick search is all you need to find the simple instructions you need to set it up.

Now I’m a FF user.  I’ve been one since the earliest release and I’m sure anybody out there who is a diehard FF user can tell you a large part of it is the extensive library of great plugins, add-ons and themes.  Google’s Chrome doesn’t have any of this fleshed out yet, granted it’s still in beta.  While there are themes and plug-ins out there (search-able even on Bing) they are all unofficial, unorganized and generally unappealing.  So for right now FF has a solid place on my main machines as the “default” browser.  On the netbook the position isn’t so certain.

Chrome is definitely better suited to dealing with the limiting factors involved with Netbooks.  The resolution on my MSI Wind is 1024×600, while the width is enough for nearly every web application the height can require a significant amount of finger work when reading an article or review.  To accommodate this limitation I have my Application Bar in Windows XP on auto hide granting me a few extra lines of text.  With FF and no tabs open I have four bars at the top, one of which (the standard MS Windows window bar is completely useless until I want to minimize or close), however with chrome it’s only three.  This comes out roughly to a 23px gain for Chrome.  When I open a new tab that number grows to five in FireFox but stays at three in Chrome and the pixel gain grows to roughly 50.  In addition to two more top bars with tabs open firefox also has a permanent bar on the bottom of the window.  This is quite handy for some plugins, particularly web development and debugging plugins, on the Netbook personal browsing environment this takes away an additional 23px.  This brings our total vertical screen space gain to roughly 72px giving you an inch or more of extra vertical viewing in most browsing situations.  Chrome does have a lower bar when a page requires you to scroll horizontally or when you are downloading files (no extra pop-up window) but the latter can be hidden.  For the Netbook screen environment Google’s Chrome has a significant advantage.

Another item that I find heavily effects the Netbook web experience is memory and resources.  How much space and power the browser is using.  With memory (RAM) FF is eating up 67mb with only my blog open, Chrome takes up a much more modest 23mb.  Now I do have two add-ons with FireFox, most notably and another big Netbook browsing factor is a flash blocker, the other is from AVG (which Chrome “seemingly” doesn’t require).  Here I’m a little conflicted.  Chrome is still in beta and it would be expected that add blockers and flash blockers would become common place soon and definitely after the “beta comes off”.  However the advantage of a flash blocker become obvious when you visit a site that uses allot of flash advertising in the vertical column spaces such as Tom’s Hardware Guide or Gamespot.  Because Flash is a processor intensive media, and Netbooks aren’t known for their processors, hitting one of these adds can slow your scroll to a painful crawl.  Having more available RAM doesn’t alleviate this.

SIDE NOTE: Nvidia’s new Ion platform for Netbooks, incorporating (relative to the platform) a robust gpu, and Adobe working with Nvidia to move towards Flash taking advantage of available GPU power may remove this concern, as may faster more powerful CPUs for Netbooks.  Presently it still remains a concern.

Firefox also has another thing going for it, customization.  You can pull in a number of different buttons (history, bookmarks, dividers, etc) onto your main url bar and move them around however you wish.  You can add a number of different search engines to your search bar and select them quickly.  You also get a divider in your bookmarks to better organize them.  These are all small cosmetic things but they add up to quite a bit of flexibility in personalizing the browser to your own way of using it.

All that said, for now at least I’m actually going with Google’s Chrome (beta) browser and the kicker was the extra inch vertical page space.  While the lack of a flash blocker is a significant annoyance, having the 4-6 extra lines of text, image, interface, whatever, is even harder to give up.

Working while on the road is never easy. Having a good laptop, something you can place your trust in defiantly helps. However there is no substitute for finding a spare mouse lying around. But what really is the kicker is having to maintain the same thought processes and level of detail in a varying environment that is usually a far cry from your home base.

Never-the-less there is still a kind of freedom to it, not being tied down to the office. However a good masseuse is hard to find and the first thing I find myself needing after hunching over, propping up or laying next to the laptop.

Anybody who’s used CSS knows the limitations of float and the trickery needed to get something to click to the bottom of a browser window. Float is handy but it’s also tricky as sometimes a float will not position properly inside it’s container also there is not float bottom or float top. I would love to see a revision of CSS that includes more float options and refines the 100% issues that exist. When I look under the tree this year I hope to see some new floats! And hey microsoft! How about pushing the envelope is CSS support. If you want your browser to be more competitive it’s time to start improving support for the latest new development options.

I got a couple emails recently concerning the four image links next to the title of my blog here. For the longest time they weren’t linked to anything. The fact that they didn’t do anything seemed to gnaw at the nerves of one of these emailers stating, and I quote; “…the first one just links to google, wicked lame…”. I agreed, it was “wicked lame” that I hadn’t done anything with them yet.

I got the idea for the four image links as an inspiration from the four horsemen. My initial idea was to make them pivotal sites that play a large role in my philosophies. Well that idea fell though and I was left with four images that did nothing but jump the users mouse. Instead I’ve decided to make them a sort of revolving list of links that I find usefully, interesting, humorous, or any other reason that provides me with the motivation to change them up. You’ll be happy to know, or not, that they are now live and link to various web resources that I frequent and find most illuminating. Most significantly the second one, the lone reference to my original inspiration and who knew the zombie apocalypses had a wiki page.

Fortunately for you, and I suppose for me, google adsence and google it’s self only think I’m somewhere in Germany. When I look at my site all the google ads are in German. I’ve had this problem ongoing, that being that google thinks I’m in Germany. When I’d go to google.com it would kick me over to google.de. I reported the problem to them and they said they’d set my IP as a United States address. However the problem persists.

When I first noticed it on the google ads I was alarmed. Who’s going to click a German ad while reading and english blog. Furthermore my web statistics indicate I haven’t gotten a single visitor from Germany, further adding to my lack of ad revenue woes. I quickly called around getting everybody I knew to take a look at it making sure the ads they saw there could also be read by them. Fortunately the case of the German IP was localized to myself.

I again sent a shot over google’s bow indicating my problem. Still no luck yet. However with the aid of a few Firefox plugins I’ve managed to gain google.us search capability from my firefox search bar. The craziest thing is, while I live in NY Ipchicken says I live in Kansas. Some obscure German part of Kansas I suspect.