Battery life in RIM Playbook a problem

RIM struggling to fix PlayBook tablet battery issues, analyst says
[Via AppleInsider]

Research in Motion is unable to match the iPad’s longer battery life with its prototype PlayBook tablets, which get just a “few hours” of battery life, according to one analyst.

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This is a problem others have been finding. I expect it is why no other 10 inch display has appeared. I only started noticing my battery running down on my iPad when I started multitasking. I can see why Jobs didi not want that immediately.

And it looks like RIM is created a fragmented market with different OSes being used. Poor battery life and no useful OS. Not a prescription for success.

True Grit – best movie of the year or best movie of all time?

by anyjazz65

The Virtue of “True Grit”
[Via Big Think]

Let me recommend to you this fine review of this season’s best movie. Once again, I think the Coen brothers more than flirt with nihilism. The murderous violence of the film is, deep down, senseless, and the girl’s’ quest for justice defined as vengeance most misguided. Still, two bounty hunters …

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Also read this great analysis at the NYT. I’m not a professional at this but I think True Grit s one of the best movies made in the last decade. Avatar was a great movie, not because of the characters it created, which were pretty stereotypical, but because of the amazing landscape it placed them in. True Grit is great because it it puts amazing characters into a stereotypical landscape, one that helps inform us about ourselves in surprising ways.

While seemingly very simple, it provides such a complex examination of both our past and present, with characters who are simultaneously human and inhumane, that we have to watch it more than once to catch the nuances. And, in a way not often seen in Coen Brothers movies, it taps into our soft emotions and needs in ways that are seldom done as gracefully. I have laughed at Coen Brothers’ movies before and I have gotten teary eyes once or twice. But I was having to hold back body wrenching sobs in this one so that I would not embarrass my wife and son.

This is the first Coen Brothers movie I would call touching.

True Grit, as presented by the Coen Bothers and by the original book, is a classic bildungsroman, a story that examines a child’s journey into adulthood. We see the world through Mattie’s eyes as she goes on the journey that will define the rest of her life. The twist is that generally the journey ends by the protagonist becoming acclimated to society’s wants, no longer rebelling against them. Here, it is society and its people who change, essentially becoming the people Mattie wants them to be.

This movie is the first ruthlessly straightforward great Western of the last decade, if not longer. It reminded me in many way of the purity of The Outlaw Josey Wales, occupying a similar time period after the Civil War, when what was right and what was moral were still in flux. This movie presents some things that are much more deeply engrained in America than the very fun trifle that was the John Wayne version.

We see Mattie Ross enter into the American Frontier, the western edge of Arkansa. Young, like America, yet she has a firmness of view that will, in the end, get her what she wants. The world around her is in chaos, with good men being killed for no good reason, bad men going off scot-free and society not giving a whit.

She effectively takes Rooster and LaBoeuf, a drunkard and a braggart respectively and turns them into heroic icons by the end. While they do what they do for their own reasons, Mattie has crafted those reasons to fit her own. Better than she could have known, as her own survival becomes dependent on that very craftwork. (The true genius of the Coen Brothers and their cinematographer, Roger Deakins, was never more apparent than in the heroism of Rooster at the end. I still tear up thinking about it. It is the single most emotionally charged scene they have ever done.)

Her point of view not only transformed the two men into better shadows of themselves, at least for an instant, but also was ultimately responsible for the effective establishment of what we would call American morality.

In a twist on the normal narrative, Mattie is really no different at the end of the movie than at the beginning, although she pays a strong physical price for that. But the world is different. She is still unbending in her view of right, of who has true grit. We can see it in her encounter at the end with Cole Younger and Frank James – one she treats respectfully and the other she despises. But her viewpoint changed the world.

And, as with all great Westerns, her journey is a journey of the United States.

The Coen Brothers demonstrate here just how important Westerns are to understanding America. The great ones resonate with us in ways no other genre can. Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven – all tell us about our country and why we want it to be what it is.

So does this version of True Grit, because it does more than simply show us the West. It helps us understand why we are the way we are. Mainly because Mattie’s view of true grit won the day.

The craftsmanship of the Coen Brothers has never been on better display. They are operating at the peak of their abilities, providing us with a narrative that never seems unlikely or artificial. While I adore many of their earlier movies, that was one telltale aspect of their work – its obvious artifice. I always knew I was watching characters on a screen. In other Coen Brother movies, I often felt that the characters were doing what the Bothers had decided for them to do. That was the artifice. It was genius and wonderfully done by always had a slightly oddly artificial quality to them.

Not this movie. The surprise of True Grit is that I never thought that at all. The characters seemed so real and such a real part of the environment. The characters did what THEY had to do, not what the Brothers decided for them to do. It is almost as if they are now so confident in their craft that they no longer have to put ‘their’ imprint on the movie, creating a seamless masterpiece that is wholly their creation, yet not.

Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon both show that in an earlier time, they could have owned the Western genre. We love them so much that one of the hardest things the movie does is not let us say goodbye to them. They both float offstage without a final bow. Noone but us and Mattie know of their heroism.

Bridges was wonderful in Crazy Heart last year, revealing that a career that started with Academy Award nominations will also end with them. Jeff Bridges is one of 6 men who won an Academy Award after the age of 60 and the only one who arguably won it for his acting in that movie, rather than rewarding a career. John Wayne won an Oscar for True Grit at the age of 62. It would be wonderful if Jeff Bridges won his second post-60 Oscar for the same role. He does deserve it because I think he was better in this role than in Crazy Heart.

And Hailee Steinfeld may be burdened with this standout role her whole career. She so wholly occupied the persona of Mattie that we may easily see her as anything else. Her performance is what makes the entire movie possible. The casting by Jo Edna Boldin, Ellen Chenoweth and Rachel Tenner should also win some awards.

I really do not see how the Coen Brothers can top this but if they can, we are in for some incredible work ahead, even if they only come close.

Roland Emmerich never mentioned this in the film 2012

by John E. Lester

Giant spaceships to attack December 2012?
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Are there three giant spaceships on their way to Earth, dooming us to extinction when they arrive in — gasp! — December 2012?

Duh. No.

But you might think otherwise reading an article about this on The Examiner’s website. It documents the three spaceships, shows images, and even has quotes from a SETI astrophysicist!

SETI Astrophysicist Craig Kasnov (not to be confused with Craig Kasnoff ) has announced the approach to the Earth of 3 very large, very fast moving objects. The length of the “flying saucers” is in the range of tens of kilometers. Landing, according to calculations of scientists, should be in mid-December 2012. Date coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar.

There are some teeny, tiny, problems with this story, though. Like, the “spaceships” are actually image defects and aren’t real, there’s no way to figure out how big they from the picture, and the “astrophysicist” quoted in the article doesn’t even exist.

But gee, other than that…

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Man, sometimes the beatdown from a scientist who knows his stuff just makes the internets so worthwhile! The Examiner article describes a spaceship that can only be seen using a blue filter – it is not present using a red filter, whose size indicates it is much closer to us than the moon, has been there since the 90s and is described by a SETI scientist no one knows about.

This one is so easily debunked that I expect it to become viral any day now amongst a certain type of denier who takes facts presented by scientists as proof of a conspiracy. Particularly when dealing with 2012.

But wouldn’t it make a kickass sequel? Someone should do a mashup of 2012 and independence Day.

Wikileaks and Apple – why does Apple not leak anymore?

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by Collin Allen

Wikileaks: traditional liberalism with balls?
[Via Boing Boing]

The mainstream media likes to suggest, with a nudge and a wink and abuse of the word “cyber,” that Wikileaks represents a radical ideological position. But if there’s a moral crusade to be found, maybe it’s rooted in a tradition closer to home: classical Western liberal-democratic principles.

In The New Republic, Noam Scheiber takes for granted that Wikileaks is here to stay, with relentless pressure on big business and big government that permanently hampers their ability to prevent leaks. This will result in smaller, more humane organizations.

I have no idea what size organization is optimal for preventing leaks, but, presumably, it should be small enough to avoid wide-scale alienation, which clearly excludes big bureaucracies. Ideally, you’d want to stay small enough to preserve a sense of community, so that people’s ties to one another and the leadership act as a powerful check against leaking.

To make this point, Scheiber reminds us that Wikileaks’ stated aim–making organizations operate more ethically–is a mainstream one: “It’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more affected negatively by leaks than honest businesses,” he quotes Julian Assange.

Scheiber’s argument seems to be that Wikileaks’ disclosures could have more subtle and far-reaching effects on organizations than it expects.

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Apple demonstrates today the sort of company Scheiber discusses. Maybe it is because Jobs hates leaks.

Scheiber’s article is one that should be read by everyone. It is a very important one in its implications. Wikileaks, and the ideas behind it, may alter how businesses work and adapt. It touches on some of the ideas of David Brin in The Transparent Society – the same technologies that permit the powerful to spy on us can, and should, be used to spy on the powerful.

Scheiber postulates, and I agree, that the inability of large companies to stem leaks may result in the greater proliferation of corporate ‘cells – it is easier to control the flow in smaller groups without stemming the tide totally. Inefficiencies in small groups can be overcome when needed. In larger groups, it can be deadly.

Luckily, we also have the ability today for smaller organizations to leverage the abilities of others to succeed. The small biotech company I was VP, Research at had perhaps 3 of us who were working in the lab. But we did not need more because we could have other companies do the sequencing for us – no need for a core facility with tens of people. We could have other companies synthesize DNA for us – no need for a core facility with tens of people. We were able to accomplish great work with a company with 10-20 fold fewer people than it would have taken just 10 years earlier.

So, there will be business pressures to become smaller and more adaptive as well as information pressures.

That is why I think Apple is the first of its kind – a truly large company that has somehow maintained the abilty for small company adaptability. It acts small, has research abilities that are far beyond the modest number of people it has doing R&D. It is able to run rings consistently around other companies. It is one of the largest companies by capital value on the planet yet it acts like a startup.

I don’t know all the details of why but we all know that Jobs is the reason. But I think part of the way this new sort of company came about was because of Jobs’ reaction to leaks.

Apple used to leak like a sieve with whole websites devoted to writing about them. Jobs pretty much stopped that, so much so that a lost iPhone became a cause celebré.

One would have expected this sort of iron control on information leaks would have harmed Apple. Most organizations respond to by clamping down on information flow but, and this is especially true of large ones, this is like giving themselves a lobotomy. Information flow slows, making it very hard to make good decisions and adapt properly to changing conditions.

That is what Assange claims he wants to do with Wikileaks – cause the old dinosaurs to react in ways that result in their own downfall.

Well, Apple shut down leaks and actually became a better and stronger company. I’d love to know the details but I expect that Jobs actually implemented some of what Scheiber discusses. Break the groups down into more manageable units and use pressures to make leaking a violation of social mores.

Of course, this is a two way street and these same social mores can push back on the company to be more ethical, etc. Even the smallest group is open to leaks when some feel the company is acting unethically. It all becomes a system of controls and feedbacks that does not harm the information flow needed to adapt.

I believe that when it is all said and done, we will discover that the same things that ended most of Apple’s leaks also led to a large amount of their success. That somehow Jobs’ response actually did not stifle creativity but enhanced it.

If we can replicate this elsewhere, then things like Wikileaks would not need to be feared by most organizations. In fact, Wikileaks would become irrelevant for the vast majority of us.

Understanding Apple’s iOS as a complex system of devices

by Gonzalo Baeza Hernández

★ Emotional Rescue
[Via Daring Fireball]

There was an interesting thread of iOS-vs.-Android news and punditry over the weekend, starting with this report by Seth Weintraub for Fortune:

I had a chance to speak with Jim Tran, VP/GM Handset Line of Business for Broadcom, who was able to elaborate on the details of the new processor and what it meant for the industry. […]

But the kicker is the price. Tran says that phones made from the BCM2157 chipset will retail for under $100 and may dip as low as $75. Those devices should debut in just 3-6 months (and we might hear about them next month at CES). […] To be clear, That sub $100 price is not the cost of materials, it is the suggested retail price after the manufacturers (and carriers) have taken their profits.

In other words, $100 Android phones within the next year.

I’m not sure how this qualifies as news, though. US discount carrier Cricket already sells a Huawei Android phone with reasonable specs for $130. I’m not aware of anyone paying attention to this industry who hasn’t anticipated a race to the bottom from discount Android handset makers.

Here’s how Weintraub concludes his report:

What’s most interesting is that unless Apple has a plan to keep up, their iPhone, once one of the only usable smartphone games in town, may wind up back where most Apple products are slotted — at the top of the market, affordable only to those willing and able to pay a premium for Steve Jobs’ aesthetic sensibilities.

In other words, ever-cheaper Android phones spell trouble for Apple.

I expect better from Weintraub. He says the iPhone “may wind up” relegated to the top of the market. But isn’t that exactly where the iPhone started, and has remained, from 2007 through today? The key is how much of the “top”. There’s a big difference between, say, dominating the top 5 percent of a market and the top 30 percent of the same market.

In July 2007, by some measure of the word “usable”, Apple had 100 percent of the market for, to use Weintraub’s term, “usable smartphones”. Things only look disastrous for Apple if you count their ever-declining share of “usable smartphones”, rather than the company’s share of phones, or even just smartphones.

The real story, if Weintraub’s report of $100 Android phones in 2011 pans out, is the elimination of the distinction between “phones” and “smartphones”. Horace Dediu gets it:

What strikes me about the claim from Broadcom is that a $100 retail price for a smartphone implies an ASP of about $85 or so (assuming $15 or a very modest 18% channel mark-up).

That means that a smartphone could be built using this chip which would have nearly half the average price of all branded phones sold last quarter.

It would also be priced cheaper than the average price Nokia charged for all its phones (75% of which were non-smart phones.) […]

Note that I’m not suggesting that the market for high-end smartphones is threatened yet–there is still a lot of innovation that still needs to happen to shape that market into one of mobile computing (vs. mobile phoning).

Instead, what I am suggesting is that the bottom of the phone market is very vulnerable to becoming smart.

In other words: $100 Android smartphones in 2011 would be cheaper than the typical non-smartphone that was sold in 2010. Such phones will be a much bigger threat to traditional handset makers — Nokia, perhaps, particularly — than Apple.

Think of it this way: Apple has been competing against $100-150 cell phones ever since the iPhone was announced. Most of these phones are given to customers “free” when they sign or extend a two-year contract. The difference going forward is that even low-end phones are going to be what we today call “smartphones”, by any reasonable definition of the term.

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A fascinating say about Apple’s position with regard to the iPhone. WHat is partly discussed here is that Apple has created a complex ecosystem with its devices, a system no one else has. Many pundits look at each piece as if it represented Apple in toto.

But Apple has created something else. They are well on the way to having a single OS for ALL computing devices, from mobile to tablet to laptop to desktop, an OS that developers can leverage against all these devices. All the other devices fall into separate ecosystems.

In a biological sense, most phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops occupy separate niches, ones with very little information/development flow between them. So what happens on the tablet has little effect on the mobile device. The danger here, as with life in a real ecosystem, is that environmental changes can devastate anything that can not adapt rapidly.

But Apple lives in multiple niches at once, is able to adapt to changing environments by altering its devices as needed or putting more effort into others – for example, iPod sales are down but the overall iOS market is way up.

As mentioned by John, Jobs realized when he first saw a graphical user interface, he knew immediately that this would be how all computers would work. The Mac made this so and soon every computer looked the same on the screen. The iPod came out with its scroll wheel and soon, most MP3 players had similar hardware. Apple came out with the iPhone and soon smartphones looked like it. Apple came out with the iPad and soon tablets had the same look.

Things like iTunes and the App store hold this system together. But it really seems like something unique to me.

Like with humans, there are other animals that can do some things better than us, but none can do so many, especially when we demonstrate an adaptability not seen elsewhere. I expect Apple will continue to be more adaptive than any others in this market. That is why they are doing so well.

To Infinty Blade and beyond

  

I spent much of yesterday playing Infinity Blade, with the new bad guy and new equipment. I’ve now mastered all the equipment, leveled up to 45 – the highest level – and have the Infinity Blade, which kills just about everything.

Now I can pull out the game when I have a few moments and just want to thrash something without having to think too much.I hope the next update adds some things to the ending. Looks like it could be quite interesting, depending on which choice you made.

I hope they do not take my Infinity Blade away.