Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: iPad

  • The Logitech Tablet Keyboard And AAA Batteries

    I was a little bummed out when I got my Logitech Tablet Keyboard for iOS. People who follow me on Twitter or App.net have heard me complaining about the less than stellar plastic sleeve that turns into a stand. As a stand, the Tablet Keyboard is something of a failure since it risks sliding around on a flat surface such as a tabletop. I’m using said plastic thingy as a stand for my iPad mini as I’m writing this, and although it does work, I really wish I could motivate myself to go upstairs and fetch the excellent Compass stand from Twelve South.

    This isn’t about stands though. This is about batteries.

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  • WWDC 2013 Predictions

    WWDC 2013 logo
    WWDC 2013 logo

    I’m not much for making public predictions about events, but the past few weeks have been littered with conversations about what Apple will and will not show and/or release on WWDC this year. So here you are, my predictions, pulled out of the blue, just like every other analyst out there.

    • No new iPads or iPhones. Sorry, these are core products that warrant their own event(s). I would love a new iPad and although that’s less of a stretch than a new iPhone, I doubt it’ll happen.
    • iOS 7. This will happen, a beta and a lot of developer information, along with a brushed up but not completely revamped, and certainly not monochrome, UI. Apple iterates, they rarely remake, so don’t expect a completely different look, rather an evolved one.
    • OS X 10.9. Just as with iOS 7, I expect Apple to show off the next Mac OS, with more in common with iOS, but still completely different.
    • New MacBooks are coming. I expect a revamped line, not just upgraded innards, but Apple sticking with the current models wouldn’t surprise me either. The MacBook Pro line might be in for a retina only future, but the Air might very well be available in both retina and non-retina, if retina at all. Lots more graphics, still far from being a gamer’s choice.
    • iMac and Mac mini bumps. I think we’ll get basically the same shells, just more juice. No retina iMac, sorry folks.
    • New Thunderbolt Display makes sense, but Apple seems to be in no rush with this one. They usually let the Thunderbolt Display follow the iMac in terms of housing and screen, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m not sure this is big enough to be mentioned in a keynote, might get a silent update whenever appropriate instead.
    • We might get a new Mac Pro. In fact, I believe we will, and it’ll be US made. Expect a powerhouse that the tech press will deem too pricey, but it really won’t be. Just like its predecessor, up until Apple started to ignore it.
    • No iPods at all.
    • Finally, we just might get a new Apple TV. This might just be a sneak preview that opens up the Apple TV to apps, but if it happens it’ll tell us what we need to know about the Apple TV platform, even if the new hardware won’t be out immediately.

    I’m looking forward to see what WWDC will bring. The tech press will no doubt be disappointed, but that’s how the song goes these days. Luckily you can still make up your own mind based on hard facts and your own experience, and I urge you all to do just that.

  • Surfplattan går om laptopen i Sverige

    Skiftet i Sverige har skett tidigare än i många delar av världen. IDC har även släppt siffror för den globala marknaden. Där är prognosen att plattan går om bärbara under 2013 med en försäljningsökning på 58,7 procent till 229,3 miljoner enheter. Enligt IDC går plattorna om hela pc-försäljningen 2015. Siffrorna visar också att det är de mindre plattorna, på under 8 tum som säljs mest, och småplattornas andel av marknaden kommer att öka ännu mer framöver.

    Från Plattans svenska segertåg. Ingen är väl förvånad va? Dessvärre är det nog en hel del budgetplattor som inte kommer användas i någon större utsträckning med i statistiken, men allt eftersom generationerna av framför allt Android rullar på så förändras förstås läget.

  • The Simplicity Of Writing

    From The Setup’s interview with games writer Leigh Alexander:

    But really, my ideal setup is pretty close to how it presently is: tiny little keyboard on my knee, and probably some kind of whiskey within reach. Simple stuff.

    Writers, take note!

    So what’s Leigh Alexander using then? An 11” MacBook Air, or the equivalent Windows clone signed Samsung?

    No. He’s got two netbooks: an Asus Eee PC for events, and an Acer Aspire One “for slightly more things”. That’s right, a writing professional who’s relying on two netbooks, old ones at that since these things went away with the dinosaurs.  (more…)

  • Then And Now

    Bill Gates thinks that iPad and Android tablet owners are frustrated. It’s primarily the lack of keyboard and Microsoft Office that’re to blame, the Microsoft chairman thinks. And thus there’s a bright future for the Surface line, because that’s essentially a laptop with tablet form factor, and that’s what consumers really want.

    Bill Gates obviously lives in an alternate reality, in which Windows 8 is a success and people really just want to use Windows with their greasy fingers.

    I’m afraid that’s not the case in the real world. The reboot of Windows 8 should be evidence enough of that.

    Surface Pro, pretty in pink
    The Microsoft Surface Pro, pretty in pink

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  • What The iPad Mini Won't Do

    I’m a happy iPad mini owner. I swapped out my iPad 3 for a mini with cellular. Yes, the screen is a lot worse compared to the retina iPads, but you don’t have them next to one another do you? Yes, the processor is a step down, but other than a few laggy games that doesn’t bother me much. And yes, it is light and sexy and I totally get the reasoning that this is the iPad as it was supposed to be.

    Except that it is not. It is an option, treat it as such, for now.

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  • The Air And The Mini

    I’ve been away from home and office for about two weeks, my first trip after swapping my trusty iPad 3 for an iPad mini. I also brought my 11” MacBook Air for occasional work and necessary book editing.

    This is my first longer trip in quite some time where I choose not to bring a bluetooth keyboard, for use with the iPad mini. My reasoning was that I wanted to travel light, and since I brought the Air I’d rely on that one for any unplanned writing.

    That failed miserably. To me it is so much easier to get started writing on an iPad, it is more accessible. I’m even tapping this on my iPad mini, rather than pulling out my Air. Peculiar perhaps, but not really news to me.

    The reason I thought this would be less of an issue with the iPad mini is that the screen is far from ideal for editing. I go through and edit everything I write, and I’ve found that selecting words, inserting the cursor on a specific place and similar actions are a lot more cumbersome on the iPad mini compared to the full-sized alternatives. With that in mind, I figured I’d consume on the iPad mini, and whatever I felt like creating would be destined for the Air.

    I learned three things from this pseudo-experiment:

    1. I prefer to write on the iPad, which we’ve already covered. Even when it is as small as the iPad mini, it would seem.
    2. No matter how nice the MacBook Air is, it represents a less chaotic, more organized kind of content creation to me. That’s not the way I write, nor start something – order comes later in the process.
    3. I’m not going on a longer trip without my bluetooth keyboard for my iPad mini again.

    So how did I do? Well, despite me not opening the Air for anything but client work and the necessary editing to meet my deadlines, I still managed to write a few blog posts, an essay, an article, and three short reports, all on the iPad mini. It would’ve gone a lot faster with a bluetooth keyboard, or using the Air, but the best tool is the one you’ve got with you, and want to use, so there you go.

    On the plus side, I’ve gotten pretty good writing on this small bugger, getting close to the speeds I have on my iPad 3. At least that’s something.

  • Om möjligheter, och hur de vill ha din uppmärksamhet

    Jag skriver om hur alla möjligheterna som våra smarta telefoner (oavsett om du föredrar iPhone eller Android) och plattor (iPad, för det finns inga egentliga alternativ) ger oss i dag:

    So are the distractions and hence I’m thinking a lot about what all the noise is giving me. Do I need to be this available online get the most out of Twitter and Facebook? Can I disconnect for a week/month/year and still live on?

    Läs The Power That Is Possibilities på TDH.me.

  • The Magazine And What Marco Arment Got Wrong

    Marco Arment, of Instapaper, and more recently The Magazine, fame has written a post on the future of publishing. He says that several parties have contacted him about licensing The Magazine’s platform, a business he is reluctant to be in. He also says this:

    The last thing I’d want is for a bunch of The Magazine lookalikes to flood the App Store with mediocre articles that haven’t passed through an editor and should just be (or already are) someone’s mediocre blog posts, just so they can easily charge for a subscription.

    Well, too bad. Success will be copied, and The Magazine is not only successful, it is successful within a niche where people are starving for a solution, any solution really. I’ve already explained why that is, so let’s all take a moment to remember, shall we?

    Marco Arment then says this:

    If the App Store gets spammed with hundreds of bad clones, The Magazine itself will lose credibility and potential subscribers as people make incorrect assumptions about its article quality.

    I disagree. With that reasoning there could not be any blogs with credibility, since there are so many “bad clones” out there. Still there is, and still there is quality writing, bloggers with fanbases large enough to launch niche tablet magazines even…

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  • The Daily And Tablet Magazines

    Rupert Murdoch shuttered The Daily yesterday, the iPad only newspaper with a staff of a 100 or something like that. Quite an operation, quite a project, and quite a project propelled by the dreams of an old media publisher and their hopes of doing the same old thing on a new media format such as an iPad. No wonder it failed, right?

    The iPad magazine business, if we can call it that, is in an interesting spot right now. To understand this, it is important to remember where it all started, with bloated versions of paper magazines, more or less behaving like an interactive PDF really. Not only did the format, with its “tap to view video” and similar, not engage readers as much as magazine makers might’ve thought, it also meant huge file sizes for every issue. The weight issue has been handled somewhat, but magazines clock in at over 150 MB more often than not.

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  • Will Apple Really Give the iPad mini a Retina Display in 2013?

    The iPad mini is a nice little piece of hardware, light and featuring an overall nice design. It works surprisingly well in both portrait and landscape mode, something I was a bit worried about due to the small form factor. As for writing on it, well I’m tapping away at it right now and it works well enough, I’ll be doing speed tests later.

    One thing that really does bother me however, is the lack of a retina screen. Sure, the iPad mini might share the resolution with the aging iPad 2, and thanks to the smaller screen each pixel is smaller, making text look less jagged than on the iPad 2. If I had never seen a retina iOS device I might not have been bothered by this.

    But I have, and I am.

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  • Talk is cheap, especially on Twitter when the subject is complicated

    I love Twitter, 140 characters truly brings you down to the essence of whatever you want to say. Sometimes it gets a bit rich though, like this statement from Gustav von Sydow (@vonsydow) about tablet magazines:

    Compared to what it could and should be, tablet magazines must be one of the least well executed media experiences of all time.

    To be fair, Gustav von Sydow isn’t the only one expressing this point of view about tablet mags, and at a glance you’ll probably nod your head and agree.

    The problem is that you are probably wrong and you just haven’t realized it yet.

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  • The iPad: How far we have come

    I found a draft today, a post titled “Thoughts after an iPad only weekend”. I never wrote the post, it was a placeholder reminder to do so, sometime just after the first iPad launched and I’d gotten mine imported from the US.

    How far we have come. Today, that same post could just as well have been “Thoughts after an iPad only month”, or even more. There are things I can’t do on an iPad just yet, and there are things that just doesn’t work well enough, but they are dwindling. As a writer, I could make the switch altogether, although it would make my life harder at times, so I won’t.

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  • The iPad gives me flexibility

    How I wish that the iPad was enough. Don’t get me wrong, I love my MacBook Air, I love the sheer power of the maxed out iMac, and the thought of a portable workhorse in my MacBook Pro. Still, my go to device, my preferred device even, is the iPad. Sometimes with a bluetooth keyboard (from Apple, with the Incase Origami case), but always with me, even if the 11″ Air is.

    Why? Because the iPad gives me total flexibility.

    • I can read, be it books or articles or some other kind of research.
    • I can listen to music or watch videos.
    • I can play games.
    • I can waste time on Twitter.
    • I can write.
    • I can even write with an external keyboard.

    Most of the time, my bluetooth keyboard sits in my bag, but if the situation permits I’ll pull it out and set everything up. It is a smooth process, not much to think about really, since it just works when you’ve paired the bluetooth keyboard the first time.

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  • Om det faktum att den nya iPaden faktiskt bara heter iPad

    För mig är det helt naturligt att den nya iPaden faktiskt bara heter iPad. Jag förklarar varför på Nutopia.