Nothing Important Happened Today
I took delivery of my new Windows 7 Tablet today, an ExoPC Slate, on the day ironically when Apple unveiled the iPad 2 to the world. It's thinner, lighter and has two cameras. The latter we already knew and the former two should have been expected of a new device. But what does the arrival of the new iPad actually mean for the people of planet Earth?
The iPad has so far sold extremely well, in the last year Apple have sold 15 million units (though in fairness these will be units sold to retailers and not actual units in end-users hands). This is a very large, nay huge, number whichever way you look at it. It's odd then that, while tablet computing has finally found its niche with the help of Apple, that it's still not been embraced by the mainstream in the way that netbooks were in the same time period.
Now before you all come back at me shouting how brilliant the iPad and comparable Android devices are, and how rubbish my personal choice of a Windows 7 tablet was, let's discuss some of the finer details. Certainly the iPad is revolutionary. It's the one colourful adjective used by Steve Jobs to describe it that I'd actually agree with. It's not reinvigorated the tablet market, it's not even reinvented the tablet market. It's taken something that was calling itself the tablet market and shown it how wrong it was. But how many people do you see sitting in bars or cafes, or travelling by bus or train using such a device?
Not too long after netbook's hit the market they were everywhere. You could see them in bars and coffee shops. You could see people getting them out on trains and planes. This just hasn't been the case with tablets. My view, and this is only one perspective, isthat tablets are, for now at leats, very much a home use device, and for only a limited number of people. Those would be tech-savvy people like myself and yourself who read websites like gHacks or follow the latest technology in magazines and the news.
This is an ever growing number of people which partly explains why tablets have taken off in a way they didn't when Microsoft first introduced the concept a decade ago. People have recognised that the technology is now at a point to make such devices viable.
It's smartphones that have done this for us, and done this for Apple, in getting people accustomed to touch screen interfaces, web browsing without a keyboard and mouse, and that have now lead those very same people to want more from such devices.
But listen to the rest and you'll hear nothing but silence. At least from the rest of the population there was a murmur when netbooks were revealed but there is much more resistance to the "tablet revolution".
So where does this leave tablets? Apple will always claim the iPad and iPad 2 to be huge successes, and in raw numbers that's exactly what they'll turn out to be. Other tablets could do equally well and sell in huge quantities. But no technology has really become successful until it's broken into the mainstream and won the hearts and minds of the general population. For this market that's still some way off, but it's coming and it's only a few short years away.
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Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
EMRE ÇITAK posts are useless because they are fraught with inaccuracies and are irrelevant.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.
No, they didn’t lmao.
https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1706523877478670542