John Nack of Adobe argues that because Flash gave us online video, we shouldn’t focus exclusively on its flaws. This is a bit like saying that because a hooker got you off, the burning rash is nothing to kick up a fuss about.

…and that’s why I use ClickToFlash in Safari, Flashblock for Firefox, etc. Also, John? Adobe Air sucks for all the same reasons Flash does, making, for instance, many sections of the Adobe site (no longer really part of the web) excrutiating to use. What do you suggest as compensation for that sucking chest wound?

It just came to me in a flash (but not with Flash, because that would make Steve mad). Apple’s in the hardware business, and the tablet is not a standalone device, so you need something to connect it to. If you have a home machine and a carry-around tablet, then you don’t want a laptop, you want an all-in-one desktop. An iMac. Hence the name for the tablet:

iTosh

“iMac and iTosh”, or perhaps, “I Mac and Tosh”.

Student tool?

The iBookstore format is ePub, which has relatively limited layout support, making it a poor fit for most textbooks. Apple has not announced any support for Adobe Digital Editions, and non-DRM PDF textbooks are a pipe dream (feel free to solve this problem next, though, if you're up for a challenge). Also, the tiny on-screen keyboard with no support for a stylus means no serious note-taking. You can tweet and fingerpaint, but that's about it, so you'd still need to carry actual notebooks. If you were, say, going to the library to work on a paper, do you take the iPad and an external keyboard, or just carry your laptop?

Carry it to meetings?

No remote for using it in presentations, need to carry a dongle to attach it to a projector, no serious note-taking, microphone unlikely to work well for audio notes.

Errand-running?

Pretty big for holding your shopping list, no GPS for finding your way around (although WiFi-based triangulation may work in some areas), no camera for scanning bar-codes.

Commuting?

Only on a train or bus, and definitely only with an optional case to reduce the risk of dropping it (and also hide the big shiny expensive steal-me gadget).

Visiting friends and family?

"Hey, check out the new pictures of the kids! Oh, you want a copy? Hmm, I can't plug it into your computer because it will try to sync, so maybe if I plug in the SD dongle and copy it to a card from your camera, you can transfer it to your machine later. Oh fuck it, I'll just mail you the Flickr link."

Camping?

No GPS, no offline mapping, poor 3G pretty much anywhere interesting, and can't read a book after the "up to 10 hour" battery life is over.

Not an exhaustive list, to be sure, but so far, every reason I can think of to carry this gadget involves either doing without some functionality or carrying it in addition to something else, like pen and paper, a laptop, a phone, a GPS, a camera, or some of the many optional accessories. Taking notes? Add a Bluetooth keyboard or the special dock. Transferring data, including attaching it to a larger display? Carry dongles and cables. Etc, etc.

It’s 7.5x9.5x0.5 inches and weighs a pound and a half. Add a case to protect it from damage, and you’re carrying around a cookbook. In fact, you’re carrying around this cookbook. I could carry this cookbook everywhere I go, but it’s big enough that I wouldn’t do so without a good reason. Take a look at the top 100 applications for the iPhone; are any of them compelling enough to justify carrying a cookbook around? I haven’t found one, and the notoriously capricious approval process makes it unlikely a compelling app will get released quickly, and the notoriously clunky App Store makes it unlikely you’ll find out about it if it does.

Apple promises optimized versions of iWork, but even in landscape mode, the on-screen keyboard is no bigger than the one on the original 7-inch EeePC. And if you put the iPad in a comfortable position for typing, the shiny screen is at an awkward angle for viewing, especially in less-than-perfect lighting.

Am I rationalizing my recent purchase of a Lenovo S12 netbook, and wishing I’d saved my pennies for the iComeToJesusTablet? No. Not only didn’t I expect the iPad to ship before March, I never expect the 1.0 release of any Apple product to be stable, so I wouldn’t have bought one until at least June anyway, and in any case, I can afford to own both. Right now, though, I don’t want one, because I can only envision using it around the house, and all my stuff is already there, so why bother?

I get some use out of the iPod Touch, and I’ve often wished for a scaled-up version, but what I wanted scaled up was the capability as much as the size. The iPad has the size (very close to B5, with a bigger-than-B6 screen), but is basically limited to consuming content created on actual computers. So why not just carry a real computer when you want to work, and an iPod when you only need canned content?

[Update: I’m leaning towards iSpork – only good for consuming canned goods; if you want to cook, it’s the wrong tool]

• iMaxi
• iReadOnly
• iCantTakeNotes
• iCanHazDongles?
• iGotRejectedByTheAppStore
• iPodTouchButBigger
• iPoundAndAHalf
• iTrophyWife
• iOnlyConsumeContentCreatedElsewhere
• iStreamPornOver3G
• iHuntAndPeck
• iBling
• iWTF
• iDrinkKoolaid
• iLikedTheNewtonBetter

Tomorrow morning, Steve Jobs speaks. Tomorrow night, President Obama speaks. One of these speeches will be filled with hope, change, and a bright economic future. The other will be the State of the Union.

(yeah, I was off by a day the first time…)

Speaking of One Piece, here’s a picture of a well-stacked Nami, courtesy of Mari Yaguchi’s blog (Mari sings the current OP for the series):

more...

In the Mac/PC wars, I’ve occasionally commented that my primary computer is a Mac because it’s simply more useful to me right out of the box, and it takes less work to add the rest of what I need. Well, a few weeks ago the Lenovo outlet store had a few refurbished (~30% off retail price) S12 netbooks with the nVidia ION chipset that replaces the pathetic Intel shared graphics that the Atom comes with, and while I waited for it to ship, I started assembling things to install.

[Update: in the essential column, add GetGnuWin32, the wrapper for the GnuWin32 packages. Better than CygWin, less conceptually disgusting than Portable Ubuntu]

Bare minimum to make a computer more than a toy (supplied with every Mac):

• Perl (I used Strawberry, not ActivePerl)
• GNU Emacs
• Putty (SSH)
• Sqlite
• Quicktime
• Update: Virtual CloneDrive (mount ISO images)

Equivalent to extremely useful supplied Mac software:

• Safari/Firefox/Chrome
• iTunes
• TrueCrypt
• PasswordSafe
• Sharpkeys (the CapsLock-killer; sadly doesn't install under Win7)
• SecureW2 TTLS (sadly no longer free, despite all earlier versions being GPL'd)

Other stuff that helps make a laptop useful:

• 3G drivers (AT&T USBConnect Mercury)
• Adobe Flash 10.1 (beta, with hw-accelerated video)
• CCCP codec pack (like Perian on the Mac)
• DisplayLink
• GPG4Win
• Mercurial
• Microsoft Office
• Python
• RealVNC
• TeamSpeak
• VLC
• Windows Security Essentials

Fun:

• Steam
• Good Old Games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Might & Magic 6
• World of Warcraft
• Champions Online

I still need to find something that will mount ISO images as file systems, buy a cheap bare drive to use for backups, and bump the RAM from 2GB to 3GB, but I’m set for now. I wish that the ION version of the S12 didn’t replace the ExpressCard slot with an HDMI port, and I’d love to find a Bluetooth mouse that holds up under regular use, but this is a nice little cool-running carry-around machine, with reasonable performance and battery life.

Oh, and I installed the Nanami OS-tan theme that shipped with Japanese pre-orders of Windows 7. :-)

Good: Sony’s SPUDownloadManager. Lost the install CD for a Sony product, or is it old enough that Microsoft has released two new operating systems since you bought it? Plug the device into your computer, run this tool, and it installs the latest versions of all the relevant software and drivers.

Bad: Lenovo’s VeriFace. This is a biometric authentication system that uses your laptop’s built-in camera to scan your face as your password, and record the faces of people who fail to login. It includes an optional check to make sure that it isn’t being fooled by a photo, but it’s still useless, because it only works under excellent lighting conditions. You can spend upwards of a minute finding good light and staring at the screen until it recognizes you, or you can just type your password.