From the monthly archives:

October 2011

Samsung Series 5 Chromebook

October 30, 2011

As the first post about my Chromebook challenge experience, I thought I’d take a look at what Chromebooks are actually like to use, from the perspective of a Mac user. The model that I’m using is the Samsung Series 5, and I’ve actually had it for a few months. When we were burgled earlier in [...]

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Heaven help me, I’m taking the Chromebook challenge

October 30, 2011

A while ago, I wrote a column for Tap on the differences between Apple and Google’s vision of “the cloud”, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) came down hard on the side of Apple’s. iCloud, as I saw it, was very much the more user-centred version. The iPad and Chromebook represent two different views of the future of [...]

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The future of Siri

October 26, 2011

Oh yes: Siri could be the interface to future products, like tiny little Nano-sized devices, or home entertainment systems. I think the people thinking of putting Siri on to the Mac, Apple TV or iPad aren’t thinking big enough. Imagine a Nano with Siri, and you’re closer to the mark of where Apple is going.

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Mathew gets it

October 23, 2011

Mathew gets it: I’m sure when Bill Gates looks at the iPad or the iPhone, he thinks about all the features it doesn’t have, or all the things that it can’t do. But no one else thinks about those things — all they are interested in is what they can do, and how much fun [...]

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It’s all about discovery

October 22, 2011

The biggest problem online since the turn of the Century has been that it’s really hard to discover new stuff. Not find stuff: discovery isn’t the same thing. If I know roughly what I want, Google makes it easy to find. But finding things that I might like that I don’t know about yet? Much [...]

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Roboto and the open source red herring

October 20, 2011

I largely agree with John Gruber and many others than Roboto is a bit of an ungainly beast of a font, although it’s much better than the hideous thing it replaces. But I think that John is missing the mark in this statement: This idea that designers who favor iOS criticize Android for being poorly [...]

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