SIRI and iCloud: Beta or Alpha?

SIRI

If all you compare SIRI to is the previous iteration of voice control on the iPhone it is leaps and bounds more useful in its overall capability. And yet fails epically if you have a weak or non-existed web connection. The casual english phrasing does seem to be a step out beyond the competition but once you get down to basic word recognition it seems to be on par with the likes of Google Voice or Vlingo. As a result, all that advanced context deciphering is useless if it is determined from the wrong set of words.

Negatives:

• Requiring a net connection for even basic capabilities the iPhone already possessed offline seems a needless reduction. Granted its not like the old off line assistant was in wide usage. However this to me is the best evidence that SIRI is almost entirely cloud based. If it was doing any kind of end to end interpretation of voice commands locally you logically would have included prior capability.
• Word recognition is improved but still ultimately hit or miss… and on the second tries I now I feel like I am the idiot who thinks talking louder and slower will translate english into another language. Real english phonetic overlaps definitely cause SIRI problems Purana:Pirahna/ G’s :Cheese are a couple of examples I found
• To helpful: there needs to be a basic override phrase or action that always stops SIRI cold. As is SIRI attempts to interpret and if it thinks it figured something out and it can do it then it acts. I had LOTS of attempted misdials when doing non-phone stuff because tying a contact to communication seems to be the lowest common denominator. Word of warning.. if you hit a point where SIRI is showing you a list of possible contacts that you didn’t want just say cancel instead of trying to repeat your previous command. At that point whatever else you say will get produce a ‘strongest match’ to the listed contacts.
• Not helpful enough: I sort of understand not being able to create new reminder lists, contacts etc… The ‘to helpful’ problem could be disastrous if SIRI had create/delete power. However I am struggling to understand why SIRI is not even allowed to launch various applications or at least the basic Apple provided applications.
• Basic word capture is still not ready. Its better that is for sure. But this is what everything else turns on. Kudos to the SIRI developers to get far enough along to try and do more advanced interpretation of language. If you are not sure what I am talking about go open up a note or pages document or something with the ability to take diction and actually try to dictate more than a short basic sentence. There is no automatic punctuation. Word accuracy seems to drop dramatically as longer phrases/passages are attempted. Doing each sentence individually is perhaps a solution but still awkward. Catch 22 because if SIRI can’t automatically determine sentence structure that means you still require some kind of voice prompt language to tell it… and the process of telling the machine to punctuate as you pontificate is the classic problem people have with voice recognition being ‘un-natural’.

Positives:

• Context interpretation is good. SIRI follows natural language progression of dropping proper nouns pretty well. This was and is a major sticking point on most voice interaction systems that had no capacity for following a conversational thread. It is often what made it seems so ‘stilted’. This is still fundamentally hampered by problematic basic word capture.
• Music control is impressive. Starting playlists, genres, artists etc… all seem to work pretty good so long as the words are correctly interpreted which was most of the time I played around with this particular capability
• Wolfram Alpha searches are impressive.
• The Alarm/Timer interface is genius. This may very well be the feature that keeps me coming back to SIRI while they are honing the other areas.
• Text/E-mail interface is the holy grail I think… but its in view, not accomplished. Had LOTS of problems doing this, and ended up random dialing of contacts a lot. May be more useful on the receiving end than the sending beyond basic stuff. In the positive section because once you understand its limitations it works well. Most of my problems came from screwing around with it.
• Meeting setups are similar to e-mail/txting. Fabulous when it works…. again, WHEN it works.
• Reminder list works well within its limitations… but lacking when it comes to such things as making a new list or trying to add things to a list with a name that is a bit overloaded. I tried I don’t know about many iterations of trying to add things to a grocery list and ended up with a list of nearby grocery stores far more often than I did with items in the list.

Final verdict : Solid Beta. I think Apple made a good call in pushing this out to 4s owners only. Early adopters are generally far more forgiving of new feature warts than the general masses. SIRI definitely has warts. Knowing that Apple tends to pride itself on shipping complete features I surmise that the key factor in improving SIRI at this point is crunching through massive amounts of data only possible with a large varied real world audience. The next couple of generations of this technology could cross a tipping point and finally make voice a solid form of interface instead of a flaky side show. It will be interesting to see if Apple gets there first as this could easily be the next tipping point in device preference.

iCloud:

I shied away from any specific review of iCloud in my 4s take because unlike SIRI it is iOS 5 dependent rather than 4s dependent. Apple fumbled its last major cloud initiative (mobile me) and it marks one of the few black eyes Apple took under Jobs second tenure. What made it even more remarkable is that it is a black eye Apple never really healed. They tried a couple of major revisions and never really got it even to ‘good enough’ state. iCloud is ultimately a clean slate re-build.

Negatives:

• PhotoStream has some major flaws. Flaw number one is that it is either on or off. That is either ANY picture you take is flying around to all your devices or NONE of them are. Removing photos is also an all or nothing process and is one that must be done on each device. Translation… have one photo up there you don’t want you have to reset photo stream on iCloud.com and then reset the photo stream on all devices. How they shipped with this basic problem for something as potentially embarrassing as photographs is beyond me. Serious miss. Also not sure why you can’t access the photos from the iCloud website as that would seem to be one of the most useful capabilities. I could keep going… how about being able to share to others photo streams? (parents taking pictures of their kids with separate iTunes accounts for example) Or allowing others access. Granted not having these capabilities is what lets apple get away with horrendous ‘undo’ control of what gets into the photo stream. But it is those types of uses that will make it most use full in the long run.
• iWork on the Mac has been left out in the cold which seems to be a fundamental flaw. You have to upload/download from the site only for these applications and there is no update to bake the ability in. Of course this is fueling even more speculation that iWork is finally about to get updated to a new version.
• E-mail sync is for apple mail only. Thats great if you use it but most don’t want to shift e-mail addresses just for this feature. My problem with this is that note syncing is tied to e-mail. Notes should be free players able to cross device sync on their own like reminders.
• No general file sync option. Having a folder on your mac that is synced with the cloud ala Dropbox with some granular control on the website for external access would have been killer. Many have been saying that Apple should buy Dropbox. Here is another vote. Either buy them and integrate into iCloud or sherlock the idea and implemented on your own but DO IT. If iWork were the basic means of office document work then this would be less of an issue. But Office still rules and you need this kind of capability to sync Office documents or any other kind of non-mac but highly common/standard file type (pdf, txt, rtf, csv) etc…

Positives:

• iCloud sync breaking the cable (or new wireless) tie with a desktop running iTunes is long over due and other than initial growing pains of MASSIVE traffic looks to be the major bright point of this new service.
• iWork on the mobile side seems to be well implemented. Just seems to be half a solution without the desktop version along for the ride.
• Cross device app synching is nice… but I am already seeing a problem where I want more granular control than sync all of them or none of them. Example… games going to my personal and work phones that are both tied to my personal iTunes account. Sure, I could create an iTunes account for the work phone but then I would have to pay for lots of productivity apps twice that my company does not provide.

Final Verdict : Alpha and Beta. App sync, mobile iWork etc… seem polished and only troubled by massive initial traffic encountered with the roll out of iOS 5, they represent the beta quality points. Lack of granular control of distribution to multiple devices may seem to be an ‘ease of use’ decision but I think Apples refusal to address the intermixed nature of device use is what keeps hosing them on the cloud. Simple things like shared libraries between spouses are a long known issue. Also on the horizon are new issues like work/personal phones or even individual dual purpose phone use. These are the areas Apple is going to have to get better at. Competitors are finally starting to figure out the whole integrated hardware/software angle and they are looking to leapfrog on these particular issues. Final nail in the coffin is no basic file directory content syncing with the cloud. Apple may want to push everyone into a world where we no longer root around in the file system… but it just isn’t going to happen. At least not any time soon.

iCloud and SIRI type technologies are the next generation of uberness for folks in the business of selling computers and mobile devices. It is one of the final links in integration of computers into our lives. To go beyond these two capabilities will require physical interfaces (i.e. brain/nerves to computer). These could easily lead the next 20-30 years of computer advancement. An always on/connected/interconnected frame work tied to natural language interaction is conceptually huge and while nothing new… the possibility that the technology is finally available to make it a reality is exciting.

iPhone 4s: Apples 5th iteration of the phone

**Just FYI, I have not been hands on with a 4s yet. I normally wait before posting my thoughts on a phone/gadget but feel relatively comfortable posting this now due to the iterative nature of the release. Will revisit this as needed once I have used it for a while (10/12/2011)** ***moved SIRI to its own article that also includes thoughts on iCloud***

Following the Oct 4th announcement by Apple of the details of its new iPhone 4s all critics seemed to predict nothing but doom and gloom.

- No Steve Jobs at the keynote, we find out just a couple of days later it is because he was literally on his death bed, but no matter the reason it is a cause for panic. Apple is no more. Even before Jobs was officially no more. Sheesh. Talk about vultures. Though can’t say I blame them. Apple is no longer the plucky quirky underdog so its no longer cool or unexpected to pick them to succeed. Nope the pendulum has officially swung and now the journalistic preference seems to be predicting the giants fall. Thats what happens when your market value is second to one and causes shifts in the weighting of an entire stock exchange due to its unbalanced level of impact when your stocks values jump around a bit.

- They didn’t call it the iPhone 5. It is not perpetually powered by ambient light, able to double as a 4 inch chefs knife and serve as an eco friendly alternative transport method that will free us from foreign oil. Its just a much improved iPhone 4…. the horror! This is more of the same looking for something to tear down Apple with. If Apple had called this an iPhone 5 they would have derided them for the lack of external design change etc… All in all its just a name. This phone brought some serious updates to the table. Single Core to Dual core chip with a serious graphics capability update. In fact this is essentially the brains of an iPad 2 stuffed in the frame of an iPhone 4 and yet with all the increase in computing/graphic power it still cranks out significantly better battery life that its predecessor and is pushing into iPad territory on some fronts. Pretty frickin impressive stuff. 1080p video, 720p wireless mirroring, 8Mp camera that starts up and shoots faster than some dedicated point and shoot cameras. It hits the ground running with the newest iteration of iOS which brings a completely wireless existence. No more tethering with iTunes required. How long have the critics been screaming for that? And yet they seem to simply complain it hasn’t come sooner.

After all the doom and gloom Apple promptly sold over a million phones in less than 24 hours. For the conspiracy nuts that always seem to claim around now that Apple deliberately shorts their supplies for launch take a second and realize that having more than a million units available for the pre-order launch represented an almost 100% increase in launch stocks over the last release which sold out on day one with ~ 600k units. Nobody else hits these kinds of numbers for product launches. NOBODY. If the off contract cost of the hardware is ~800 bucks then over 1 million sold is approaching 1 billion in sales in 24 hours. This just doesn’t happen.

The bottom line here is this. For the past 5 years Apple has clearly put in place the most consistent performing line of smartphones available which have been tied to the wildly successful App store for the past 4 years. Android handsets from various sources can and probably will catch up on both fronts. But due to the proliferation of devices it is simply going to take time for it to consolidate its commodity position in the market. But that day is not now. Apple continues to take the best of available technology and weave it together in the best overall package. Nothing about this iPhone or any that proceeded it was revolutionary in and of itself. The odd thing about the iPhone wasn’t the presence of the device. It was the fact Apple was making it and that they managed to buck the common wisdom of the time for how to sell phones. What was revolutionary is that Apple figured out how to make such a device appeal to the common user instead of just the geeks. It is what they continue to do better than anyone. Which is another reason why so many of the tech elite are turning on it in my opinion. They keep waiting for the unicorn moment from Apple and instead keep getting better and better mousetraps that appeal to more and more people.

Case in point, there is one feature that even the most cold hearted, blood thirsty, want to see the giant tumble for all the stories they can tell about its fall journalists are all seeming to agree might be a game changer. The integrated SIRI voice controlled assistant. Voice control isn’t new. Its been around since a computer could crunch the signal from a microphone. Its been on cell phones in some various guise or other for almost a decade if not more at this point. Its been on PC’s, Macs and of course everyone hated enemy the automated voice control answer service systems. As such the last thing SIRI could be considered is revolutionary. It simply looks to be the first such system that works easily enough that it will be more than a useless ‘feature bullet’. The revolution is not the technology. Its the fact it works. If Apple keeps building better and better mouse traps they are going to dominate this market for a LONG time.

I tend to wait and post my reviews after I get hands on. But as I mentioned before this phone is in well documented territory. I have an iPhone 4 thanks to work so the Retina Display is nothing new for me. Extra snappiness is extra snappiness. Video reviews I have seen show this phone to be visibly quicker than its predecessor. Still… I will revisit the following bullets if needed once I have a few weeks of hands on time and see what needs changing.

The Good:

• Sharp Retina Screen still impresses even if its not the largest screen available.
• Poo the identical form factor all you want but sometimes if it ain’t broke it don’t need fixin. Exactly how much smaller do you want your phone to get? Besides this means there is already a HUGE amount of ready to go accessories with no wait for nice cases etc… Defiantly a mark in the + column despite the mobile phone fashionistas insisting anything new must look different.
• No More tether requirement with iOS 5 and the iCloud connection. Apple is starting to get serious about their Post PC vision. iPad 3 is going to be interesting.
• Better battery life? I mean seriously. For the longest time it seemed a given that the next generation of smartphone did 10 times as much and ran out of battery life 20 times as fast. Apple continues their trend of upending that notion and praise the lord the other manufacturers are following suit.
• 8Mp with quality optics looks to finally make this a camera on a phone without any need for apologies. Fast access tweaks very welcome. 1080p video overdue but also welcome none the less.
• Graphics boost hinting at things to come. Retina display needs pixel pushing power but you can only do so much fine detail that can be appreciated on a ~4 inch screen. The long term goal here is pushing video externally. Untethered device that can drive 1080p wired and 720 wirelessly? Curious. I expect wireless 1080p from Apple TV version 3.
• *SIRI needs its own article… * (updated 10/15/2011)

The So So:

• Still no SD slot? Really? Least they bumped the max capacity up to 64Gb. But as a new member of the parenthood club I am looking at the 64Gb onboard limitation to support music, photos and 1080p video as a poor match.
• No micro USB slot able to support charging? Dongles don’t count.
• Air Play is still half baked. Almost nothing supports it and the accessory market just isn’t heating up for it. Still this might be the best shot in the arm for the Apple TV yet. iPad 2 video mirroring was a dubious ability at best simply due to the large screen on the iPad itself. iPhone mirroring brings some interesting possibilities. Controller and game screen anyone?
• Double glass case. I have no problem with the overall design not changing. But the double sided glass be it gorilla stuff or not has made the 4 somewhat more prone to breakage. Remember seeing some concepts with ceramic or metal backing. Think it would have been a better call. May consider doing this 3rd party if I can find a warranty friendly solution.

The Ugly:

• Lack of official support for 3rd party app stores. Apple should be able to compete with the free market when it comes to apps delivered onto the phone. I withdraw this concern if they would stop censoring app submissions and judge them only on technical/security/privacy merits rather than moral or anti-competitive ones. Prurient content is an obvious example of one such form of censorship… but more importantly Apple often blocks or even co-opts apps that compete with their own offerings. Sooner or later I think it is going to get them into hot water for ‘unfair practices’ similar to the myriad of suits brought against Microsoft in the last decade and a half.


• Apple needs to flex their muscle with the phone companies again regarding unlimited data plans. And they need to figure out cost effective joint plans for multiple devices (iPad, MacBook Air etc…). iCloud is going to eat up 2Gb limits for breakfast lunch AND dinner…. or they need to just buyout a major cellphone telco and turn it into commodity ISP service like they should already be and force the race to the bottom. Bandwidth cost is the ‘oil’ of the information economy. Pricing for data plans are currently like paying 100 dollars a gallon to drive a V8 muscle car. AT&T better not get any crazy notions about separating me from my grandfathered in unlimited plans.


• Buehler? Buehler?

Prognostication Roundup, Amazon Kindle announcement, and iPhone 5 thoughts

In February 2010 I wrote the following regarding the then freshly revealed first generation iPad:

Make no mistake this is typical Apple early adopter pricing (read nose bleed high). In the long run this level of pricing may well continue to define the upper end. But based on these numbers I expect to see mobile tablets in the $100-300 range with more capability than the initial iPad inside of 2 years. E-ink is either going to step up its game (color, refresh rates), go sub $100 (sub $50?) or disappear all together. If E-ink gets to color refresh rates on par with LCD technology and remains lower power it will fold into this market quickly.

Prior to the iPad 2 release I also speculated about Retina displays

• iPad 2 would have Retina… OR
• iPad 3 would have Retina
• iPad 3 would release mid cycle

Today, September 27th 2011 about 19 months later Amazon just announced a new Kindle for $79. Not an old version made cheaper. An announced new Kindle with new higher quality E-ink display for $79. They also announced the Fire. A 7 inch color LCD device.

I’m a Genius:

• Sub 100 dollar e-ink reader in <24 months ? Check. The newly announced entry level Kindle is $79
  • Of special note, this is not a reduced cost older model but a new model with improved screen.

• E-reader move to LCD technology in <24 months ? Check (The color Nook from B&N was first a couple months back)
  • A major fallout of the move of printed material to electronics is much more direct competition with other kinds of media. I adopted a Kindle 2 for my reading only to supplant it with the iPad not because it was a better reading experience… but because the iPad offered me so much more along with a ‘good enough’ reading experience.

I’m a Schmuck:

• Tablet with better specs than original iPad for <=$300 in <24 months? Swing and a miss…. so far. 4 months to go ☺
  • Motorola Xoom has the specs (heck it beats the iPad2 specs) but the price is still north of 400 even with incentives
  • Kindle Fire and a few others have the price but not the specs
  • Double or nothing it happens < 36 months?
• iPad2 with Retina? Negatory Nostrodumus, try again
• iPad 2s/3 mid cycle release ? barring a surprise release as part of the october 4th event shockingly wrong again.

Still Waiting:

• iPad 3 with Retina ? Specs for the next iPad are still the stuff of much speculation. There is some solidifying evidence that Apple is preparing to make a tablet sized display in Retina type DPI ranges. Outlook favorable.
• Tablets a default part of the computing landscape in <=5 years? Not even 2 years in and looking good
  • Could argue we are already there.
    • Industry Tech discussion regarding tablets has gone from ‘why’ to ‘whats next’.
    • There does not seem to be any real concern about the ‘bubble bursting’ though the fact nobody can crack Apples strangle hold on the market still has a few thinking it is all a ‘distortion field’ driven market.
  • Next generation of devices is crucial to this one becoming a slam dunk and I really think a serious competitor to Apple needs to emerge to really drive this one home inside of 5 years from the release of the original iPad

Amazon made some pretty big waves a couple of days ago with its new Kindle Lineup

• Base kindle with new higher contrast e-ink perl display, wifi only for $79 bucks.
  • 4th generation device now in a pretty strong market and seriously cracking the $100 barrier vs. the typical 99.99 nonsense I think drives them even farther. 2012 will not be good to the printed book industry.
• Two new touch driven e-ink devices at only slightly higher pricing…
  • 99$, wifi only? (add supported?)
  • 149$ no adds and 3g (no adds)
• Gives a nice range of selection for the various e-bookworms to choose from.
• Highly anticipated color wifi android tablet reader for $200
  • Very aggressive pricing for a decent tablet spec.
    • Same screen technology and capacitive touch as iPad but smaller form factor and far fewer widgets (no microphone, no camera, no bluetooth etc…).
  • Amazon market for kindle material and Amazon Application market for Android represent the only real alternative challenging the iTunes/App store juggernaut from Cupertino.
  • Silk browser is creating some serious buzz and looks to be a truly useful feature

Amazon is fighting guerrilla warfare against Apple here. Head on point to point there is almost no comparison. But the e-ink devices excel at what they do and the launch of an LCD color tablet offers kindle loyalists the chance to expand within Amazon’s lineup and gives Apple escapists a real option in the tablet world with app and content support nobody else is really succeeding in putting together despite the fact android devices are hugely popular. Add in the truly tempting price point compared to even bottom bracket iPads and you have a very compelling device. This is going to be interesting.

iPhones next incarnation is finally officially being revealed on October 4th… quick thoughts.

• I am getting one regardless of the details. Will be the first Apple Device Pre-order for me in fact.
  
  
  
  • A lot of this is due to the absolute dominance of the app store and my current level of investment in apps
  
  
  • Also because I am that happy with my iPhone experience to date (primarily 3Gs but now also have a 4 for work)
  
  
  • Normally I want hands on experience before buying a device like this but the basics of the apple phone ergonomics are pretty well established. Apple would have to do something very unexpected in the reveal on the 4th to make me hesitate on a pre-order.
  
  
  
  


• Guesses that I haven’t seen on other sites… only have one really
  
  
  
  • Thunderbolt supported via 30pin dock connector which allows for super fast syncing with thunderbolt equipped machines running iTunes
    
    
    
    • Apples patent for adding thunderbolt to their 30 pin connector was a minor story several months back
    
    
    • Apple is strongly embracing thunderbolt… all Macs now have a port and the displays now connect via thunderbolt
    
    
    • I strongly believe an eventual endgame for iPad/iPhone will be the ability to drive a Cinema display (or two?) as part of a ‘desktop’ mode of operation. I see this as a long term effort by Apple to erase the basic concept that there must be a distinction between an ‘OS’ and a ‘Mobile OS’. There will just be an ‘OS’. The consumer then only has to decide on how much computing power they really need. ‘Mobile’ processors are rapidly reaching performance levels that could handle full fledged computing tasks with no apologies for the vast majority of users. If the idea of an OS becomes singular rather than context driven then processors will follow suit and the same technology will drive everything from your phone to a server cluster.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Ability to drive full HD on external monitors
    
    
    
    • Greater than HD would be very interesting as I mention above but I think its too soon for that. Would be an awesome ‘one more thing’ though.
    
    
    • Not much of a guess as the iPad2 can already do this and the iPhone 5 will likely have more CPU horsepower and RAM under the hood along with a graphics processor at least as powerful if not a step ahead.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Review (long term update): 2012 Mustang GT with Brembo Package

There have been quite a few mustang reviews for this model so I won’t go into my usual level of detail. For once there is plenty out there and more on the subject. Besides… its a Mustang so whats to know right? Big(ish) engine, bad handling, awful fall apart interior and mullets galore right?

Wrong. Very Very Very wrong. For one, I owned a Mustang that gloriously lived up to that stereotype and this car is nothing like it. For one it doesn’t actively try to kill me at the slightest provocation despite the fact it does still have a live rear axel. Just exactly how Ford managed that is a deep dark mystery… but I suspect someone lost their soul over it.

The new 5.0 deserves its Press. 400+hp hitched to a slick shifting 6 speed tied to standard limited slip differentials in 3 exciting flavors (3.31 ‘fun’, 3.55 ‘hell yeah’ and 3.73 ‘holy $#!&’). All that and it is still a typical base mustang engine (read lots of tuning potential). The difference is unlike in the past you no longer have to tune it just to get the power level that should be there from the start. 400hp with damn near 400 tq out of a lighting fast NA engine is a whole lot of automotive ju ju to play with.

The Brembo Package is a no brainer option for anyone who actually buys this car to drive for reasons other than making large clouds of white smoke (though thats certainly still an option). For those that don’t know this ~$1800 bundle of goodness brings you an actually sporty suspension tune, 255 max performance summer rubber on decent looking if heavy wheels, 14” 4 piston Brembo’s up front that can stand a hot lap or three without melting and a track mode for the electronic nanny for a nice additional touch. Any one of those upgrades over standard would cost you about the same thing as the whole ford factory package and each would risk voiding large sections of your warranty.

Combine the basic GT Mustang with the Brembo option and you get the following…

“Mustang…. its not just for straight lines any more”

It doesn’t even really take the Brembo package… that just seals the deal. Even the base beast is no longer just a traffic light drag race warrior. The base car is now essentially the 2008 Bullit limited edition car with a nicer interior and a serious drive train upgrade which isn’t exactly shabby.

Don’t take my word for it… go drive one. I did and will now do so on a daily basis for the foreseeable future. It may take surgical implements to remove the grin. All this and its still a ‘bang for the buck bargain’. Ford is currently pushing 0% financing out to 60 months and just 1.9% for 72 through early October (2011). Invoice cost is realistic though (patience may be required) and that drops damn near 2k off the sticker.

Oh yeah… I will throw in a couple of nuggets I know nobody else has bothered to report on. The rear latch system will work for a baby trend seat and the V-8 apparently has a distinct rumble that sends infants (well at least one) immediately to sleep :-)

Update: 2/21/2013

So after more than a year of ownership and ~22k miles what do I think? Well the Pirelli's that come with the car are expensive and they do not last long. Many folks on the forums quite 12-15k of life. I got 21 before getting down to the wear marks. Have seen a few folks claim 30k miles but they must really be driving like granny's to get it. I am not some hooligan doing burnouts and donuts all over the place. But I will break the back end loose on occasion and chirp the tires launching every now and then just because I can. After all, if you are not interested in that why exactly would you buy a 400+hp car to begin with? If you buy from tire rack and are looking to replace this tire look for the Audi spec one. it is $100 less than the Mercedes spec they quote as OEM for the mustang with the Brembo brake package and A call to Perelli confirmed they are the same tire. Same compound, same carcass. And from my experience so far the exact same driving experience. For some reason the speed ratings are different. but the Audi spec is still rated for 186Mph... considering the car in stock trim is electronically limited to 155Mps I think its safe to say the least. Even if you remove the limiter 186 is beyond the reach of the stock engine setup as the car tops out around 170 something in stock power/aerodynamic trend.

Other than that the only issues have been a slight misalignment of my front tire courtesy of a curb I lost track of in a drive through and oil changes every 5k miles. Ford says every 10k but they do not use synthetic by default in these cars and it is cheap peace of mind if over cautious to half the service interval (about 50$ for a dealer inspection/oil change). Think I paid around $100 for my 15k that also did the various filters.

I replaced that damned plastic piece of garbage they called a steering wheel in my 200a interior (base level) with a take off Boss unit from Roush. Wheel cost $250 from Roush (vs 400+ direct from Ford) and 150 to install and program the computer to use the new radio control buttons. Makes a HUGE difference in the quality of the interface with the car. Whoever approved that base level wheel needs to be sacked.  The 150 install was a bit of a ripoff... but I really didn't want to mess with the airbag and Ford had to hook it up to their shop computer to program it regardless so I let them do the whole thing. Ended up costing about the same installed as if I had bought the wheel from Ford Racing parts.

Beyond that I have not done any modifications to the car and do not think it needs any to enjoy driving legally on public roads. However, for future HPDE runs I would like to do I am following the Vorshlag build discussion (google it) and have given a lot of consideration to their recommended wheel/tire/suspension upgrades. Vorshlag camber plates at 2-2.5 neg camber, AST adjustible shocks, linear springs, white line watts link, 18"x10" forge star or Dforce 20# wheels and probably some BFG Rival super high performance tires for a street able setup that can haul ass around the bendy stuff without quickly destroying 1000+ worth of tires in the process... oh yeah and probably carbotech pads and some braided steel lines. Brembo's seem more than up to snuff for hot laps otherwise. Works out to around 6k of stuff. Add in some aero work it it looks like you have a really serious road racer on your hands in the Coyote s197 package. Stock power is plenty and to spare for the stock setup... and probably even for that super nice suspension setup based on what they are seeing with their second car. They have done no power mods on it and have been running similar laps to their first car with new headers and a tune pushing 420ish or so to the rear wheels.

iPad3 Retina Display and the implications

Ok. So back before the iPad 2 launch I had a post speculating about the possibility of an iPad with a retina display. I held that it was coming on either the iPad 2 (which it didn’t) or the iPad 3. Why do I think this will happen? Numerous reasons

• The technology exists
• Apple has patented an update to their 30 pin connection to allow for thunderbolt connections which will allow them to support pushing such a gargantuan resolution to an external display.
• Rumors have not stopped circulating that Apple is in talks to buy iPad three parts and that acquiring this level of resolution display from samsung is under discussions.
• Thunderbolt can be used to run at least 2 monitors at this resolution
• As I have discussed before, getting to the 300dpi mark in a device like the iPad will eventually spell the death of the print out and make good on all those thoughts of ‘paperless’ offices
• Apple wants to change the primary computing paradigm
• iPad is experiencing one of the fastest rates of uptake for a new technology in a corporate environment ever
• Lion is showing the future of Apple by moving to a more iOS type interface and method of document handling
  • Don’t worry... there will always be a need for a more nitty gritty OS experience... but Apple is looking to pave the nuts and bolts over for real. But in order to pave the way for a universal application environment the current paradigms have to be merged (Mobile and Full Fledge OS).

Here is how all this adds up.

Imagine if you would docking your iPad (or iPhone for that matter) and running an Apple cinema display attached to a keyboard an mouse. The iPad itself could become a pallete based input device or secondary display to assist with actions on the large screen. The large screen itself could even accept touch input and be mounted on a pivot that would allow you to do so with greater ease (see touch iMac patent for how). When you are done you simply undock the iPad and go about your merry business. Your works is saved on the device and if desired on Apples (or other services) cloud servers. You didn’t have to ‘save’ anything, it just did this as you did your work. Lost documents because you forgot to save becomes super rare and generally only costs seconds/minutes of work instead of hours/days. Information is stored in multiple places by default and so the problem of losing a device becomes less critical. Distinctions between working on a document on a ‘mobile’ device or a PC have all but disappeared. Any of your friends that have such a dock setup would be an opportunity for you to run your own personal computer setup rather than having to borrow theirs. When viewing documents on the go the screens 280 DPI or better resolution would be a close match for your standard laser print out quality. Printers soon start becoming something old and stodgy people rely on like fax machines in the face of e-mail. However don’t expect that transition to take a decade or more as with e-mail and fax. As this sort of on the go computing becomes more and more ‘normal’ there will be a ridiculous explosion in how our information interacts. What Facebook has done for online social interaction, tablets are going to do for moribund business processes mired in static media.

This is in a nutshell what Jobs means when he pontificates about a ‘post PC’ world. Make no mistake, Apple is not after a niche market here. They want the brass ring they lost to Microsoft in the early war for the desktop computer market. If they keep going on like this then the late 80’s decline into almost oblivion may ultimately be a ‘blip’ in a computing history dominated by the Cupertino crowd going forward.

The iPad 3 and similar devices are not going to accomplish all of that vision in one fell swoop. But a retina display and ability to drive such a high resolution external monitor will in my opinion be the ‘missing link’ device that gets us a large step down the road from a mobile & PC world to a unified general computing world. OS X and windows 8 both mark a move by the Major OS world to align with the mobile world just as the Tablet interfaces have steadily encroached on what has been considered basic computing.

Will they pull it off? Who knows. Going to be fun to watch.

Thoughts on Facebook

Here is a link to some information about a book on the Social Internet Darling that brought us ‘pokes’.

So what led me to Kirkpatrick’s book and musing about Facebook in the first place? Well recently I watched the Social Network for the first time. I could care less about the sex lies and scandal all given top billing in that movie. That part was entertaining of course but to me it got in the way of the real story. Facebook is a fascinating phenomenon. The high profile of Facebook in the 2008 elections combined with the information tossed out in the movie regarding the massive success of the site whetted my appetite for a bit more in depth look at just what they had accomplished. So off to Amazon I went to look for a kindle edition book on the subject. A quick glance through the more in depth reviews of the “accidental billionaires” seemed to indicate that the focus on the juicy stuff in the movie wasn’t exactly poetic license for the intent to sex things up... that element featured largely in the book as well which is not what I was interested in. Also I found out that the book was written with zero input from Facebook and almost entirely from the accounts of the estranged friend/partner Eduardo Saverin and the Harvard group accusing Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. “The Facebook Effect” on the other hand was written with a great deal of cooperation from Zuckerberg and numerous of the elite members of the Facebook Team. All in all I figured they would balance out.
While the book deals with the quite sensational birthing story in some detail it has a much longer running focus on the insanity of what the site has accomplished.

Facebook is currently beyond 500 million users and seemingly inexorably continuing towards 1 billion and beyond. That in and of itself isn’t unique. They aren’t the first to hit such numbers and they certainly won’t be the last (not sure about the 1 billion user mark though....). What is amazing is the sustained nature, level and frequency of activity of that massive flock. Some 50% of users visit the site daily. 90% are active within a month and they commit a staggering amount of time on status updates, pokes and social gaming among other pursuits to be found on the eclectic social hub. At this point is when the large but rapidly evaporating pool of non-facebook public collectively sniff and turn away. I had more in common with that mindset than I currently care to admit prior to taking in what “The Social Network” and “The Face Book Effect” had to say. What was that you may ask?

Well lets start off with some back story. For those of you that know me it goes without saying I am a pretty large tech head, geek, nerd or whatever phrase of choice you like to indicate someone who spends too much time obsessing over all things digital. That being said having graduated in 2000 I really was a couple of years ahead of the sea change that Facebook has wrought on the landscape of the internet and of its sweeping change a the college and high school level. Even being one with his ear to the ground on technology fronts I have largely missed what happened having generally dismissed Facebook as largely a waste of time except as a decent spam filter on communicating with ones friends. I knew it was big. I knew it was impressive... but until the past couple of years it seemed like one of many whiz bang companies from Silicon valley that go super nova briefly before vanishing twice as fast as they appeared. Suffice it to say I am finally convinced that they are nothing of the sort and have now been mentally kicking myself for not paying closer attention. I knew I was not up to speed on this particular facet of the web which was a large part of my desire to dig into it a bit more. What I hadn’t realized was the sheer magnitude of my ignorance. It really seems akin to having been walking around in the middle of a cloudless summer solstice thinking it was the dead of night. This shit is world changing stuff. I am not talking better mouse trap changing. Its Atom Bomb level changing. If there is a person or two alive today that will go down in history on par with the likes of Churchill, Stalin, Lincoln, Hitler, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Mao, Gandhi, Henry VIII, Alexander etc... My money and magic 8 ball currently says it is Mark Zuckerberg. He of the fleece hoodie and Adidas sandals good for all occasions. The other potential is the ‘player(s) to be named later’. I will explain in a bit...

Kirkpatrick stops short of such insane claims. But the last chapter or three lays out a general overall trajectory that is hard to miss. It is one my mind began sailing down long before I reached his finishing touches. Its quite possible, hell its likely, Facebook will fall short on Kirkpatrick’s musings (much less my slightly more colorful take) . But if it does (ready for more color????) I posit it will be Athens to some later Rome.

Why do I make these crazy over the top statements? Because Facebook has provided the most effective harness for the voice of the people history has yet to see. If you wonder why that is such an insane thing you should stop to ponder other times in history when individuals, or groups have managed to effectively harness the power of the masses. It built civilization. It created religions, It has sent us through numerous fits of social systems and changes the latest of which was shrugging off monarchal and other forms of elite rule for democracies. It made the streets of Paris run red with Blood. It birthed the ‘Great Experiment’ that is the USA. The ‘networks’ and social structures that made such events possible were nothing to the potential that is Facebook. How so?

Two examples. The first is The Salem Witch Trails. The second is H.G. Wells radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’. The first is a classic example of group hysteria and mob mentality but one largely dismissed these days because ‘modern’ society wouldn’t fall prey to such superstitious nonsense or ‘weaknesses’ of a close nit somewhat isolated social group. The second I bring up because it too is an example of group hysteria and mob mentality but one not so easily dismissed. Religion and Radio both had something in common that led to these two events that is fundamentally different from Facebook... and probably the reason Facebook hasn’t torn itself or a society or two apart (Though Egypt may beg to differ...) They are what I call ‘transmit only’ forms of... well for lack of a better phrase... control of the masses. The Salem witch trials are a tragic case of superstition and quite likely social taboo combining in a particularly nasty manner. The War of the Worlds an amazing indicator of the sheer power of mass communication technology to produce a sudden massive mobilization both mentally and physically of the public being broadcast too. Facebook is a new beast in that it is a true conversation of the masses. A signal boosting conversation of the masses if you will. But because it is a conversation it is much more difficult for someone to pull a ‘Wells’ because just as fast as someone kicks out something another movement is almost immediately a foot to unearth the fact there is no ‘invasion’. As a result most of Facebook is just purile noise and non-sense or canceling content of a more serious nature. But every now and again a signal gains critical mass on a issue with fundamental appeal and no obvious counter (not a bad thing in and of itself). 1 Million People against FARC. Egyptian social revolution organization. The not insignificant impact on the 2008 presidential election. Radio and other traditional forms of mass media have some elements of the ‘social’ conversation but it is limited by its logistics (you can broadcast to millions but you can’t take calls from a significant portion of them). Facebook has the power to turn your social circle... and EVERYONE else’s onto a particular thought in minutes/hours that used to take massive effort and days/weeks if not Months/Years.

So what do the Salem Witch Trails and “War of the Worlds” have in common with Facebook? The fundamental structure of Facebook is your inner social circle. This forms a closeness and greatly lowers your desire to question what they have to say critically. It is the dynamics of such tight nit groups that played a pivotal role in the escalation of the Salem trials to their tragic conclusion. While the motivations of ill informed superstitions and literal adherence to such unyielding concepts as “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” are largely gone... don’t think for a second that such circles are any less vulnerable to fits of hysteria given the right circumstances. That is part of the lesson of H.G. Wells taught us. The other part of that lesson was what happens when a more intelligent society encounters something that collectively makes them hit the “I Believe” button on something frightening in short enough order that it bypasses the ‘saftey valves’ so to speak. In effect it proved a modern society could go collectively off the deep end every bit as much as Salem did... and with far greater potential consequences. Finally it is one of the few concrete examples of such a new technology hitting large audiences before it really had figured out what its powers were. Facebook combines the early stage instability of a transformative communication technology far more powerful than Radio and combines it with a fast track of information into your (and everyone else’s) inner circle where it can reverberate and hit home faster than anything before in history.

That brings me back to Zuckerberg heading down into the history books... possibly with a ‘player to be named later’. By that I mean I am wondering right now if he will be someone that puts his hand on the tiller of his creation and does something with it. Think Jefferson/Washington/Hamilton/Franklin seizing on existing philosophies/concepts of de Tocqueville, Locke and others and setting about actually building a nation with them (Starting in Boston no less....). Or will their be a Stalin taking control of the Communist machine built by Lenin and running with it... or perhaps a less damning comparison of Julius Caesar taking the reins of Rome for himself.

Perhaps my examples are a little to far a field for you... I apologize. Perhaps something a bit more approachable and tangible like US presidential elections? In 2008 Facebook exploded on the US political scene. The social network that barely existed in 2004 changed the face of US presidential elections in 2008 whether you realized it or not. It was the first time the service really pinged on my radar as something I needed to pay closer attention to. It seemed like the news casters were competing with each other to see how often they could mention Facebook and its various polling and discussion groups. One of Facebooks early inner sanctum played a pivotal roll in Obama’s ground breaking election team. Nothing ominous in that... simply pointing out that the value of this persons experience was such that it put him in a key role for the election of what is considered the most powerful office in the world. Perhaps not unsurprisingly The voice of younger voters in 2008 was felt in a real way for perhaps the first time in a truly meaningful way. The impact was a few percentage points difference. But it was in the toughest most hard fought national arenas where success and failure is often measured in such small percentile differences. The post electoral break down by the pundits and bobble heads all seem to be willing to grant Facebook its due. It seems a common theme they felt its polling information rivaled and generally trounced long standing polling powers like Gallop. But that isn’t what I find interesting. In 2008 the active Facebook Audience in the US was significantly smaller than the voting population and it was also heavily skewed in favor of the College and 20 something demographic courtesy of Facebooks roots as a college social hub. By comparison, in 2012 it looks like Facebook will be drawing on an active audience in the US that actually rivals that of the voting populace and will far exceed any previous ‘polling’ audience. The odds are extremely high that anyone actually motivated to vote will have a Facebook account and they will be extremely likely to engage in the political process via the wealth of tools the site presents for such discussion. In english this means that in a given day (or certainly week) Facebook will not gather a statistical representation of voting intentions... it could effectively poll a huge percentage of all the voters straight up and put the results in front of you live, tallied up and dissected down to silly specific levels of social breakdowns. By the time the election actually happens it quite possibly will have happened multiple times at the same, or near enough as makes no difference, levels of participation as the ‘real election’ via Facebook. By 2016 if they continue to grow at far more modest rates they will likely garner a far HIGHER percentage of opinion from the citizenry than the official voting process. That is not just amazing. It is scary. It is exciting. It is a world changing possibility because it will be the same in numerous other countries as well.

If you don’t get why that is ‘nuclear’ stuff you really need to brush up on your history of nations. Suffice it to say that at the fundamental level Democracies (really any government) run on the basis of perceived legitimacy. Perception in this case is far greater an issue than reality. Perhaps more aptly I should say that in the case of democracy/government the perception of the masses defines reality. If ‘we the people’ believe the system to be legitimate then it is. If we believe it to be illegitimate then lets just say the ‘spark’ is out of the romance and in all likely hood such a government is going to rapidly be flushed. If the Facebook masses as a community believe their voice is legitimate and the actions of their respective governments run counter there will be a serious crisis. You think hanging Chads were big? Chew on this. Imagine if you will a Facebook election which consisted of a significantly higher voting population than physically cast a vote in the ‘real election’ resulting in the selection of different candidates in a nation critically divided on a critical issue. Remember. Ultimately the people decide what they will accept as real. Tradition will hold the line quite a ways. Suspicions of manipulatable results in the control of Facebook will be another cooling factor. But ultimately it is a question of what people believe. The world thought the Founding Fathers were nutz to place their faith in the vote of the general public. Is placing faith in a company run by a man who turned down a billion dollars cash on more than one occasion to maintain the integrity of an internet cast vote really any different or crazier?

Call me Crazy if you like. I’ve been called worse. While I am not certain Facebook will make good on these possibilities.... I am convinced that the potential is very real that they could... or ‘the people’ themselves could via the incredibly powerful tools Facebook has provided. And if their history is any indication they will waltz into this kind of stuff with barely any warning that its actually happening. It will just suddenly be and a month or two later you will wonder how it ever wasn’t. Heres hoping it all ends well. Enough ranting and raving for tonight... time for some sleep. Debate welcome as always.

New Tax Based on Miles Driven? Really?

There is a new idea being kicked around in Congress. Basic idea is to start taxing miles driven in addition to existing taxes such as the tax you pay on gas. Why? Well with new efficient cars and technologies such as hybrids and electrics it is possible someone would pay no gas tax and or revenues may fall due to the increased efficiency (less gas\diesel purchased).

Really? I might be able to understand this one if and only if they dropped the gas tax altogether. This is just getting plain silly. Let me get this straight. I make money. I pay income tax. I buy gas and pay sales tax (only in some states) and a federal gas tax. THEN I pay a tax for the miles I drive in the car I pay yearly registration fees (tax) on. Just exactly how many times do I need to get taxed on this?

Let me be clear... I am not some looney that thinks taxes should not be collected. However, I am a firm believer that any dollar I make should only be taxed once. IE if I pay an income tax to the federal and state governments then I should not have to pay ANY more tax because every red cent I make has been taxed. At least then it would be easy to determine just how much money vanishes down the government maw. Lets use this gas thing as an example.

I make one dollar. It is taxed at ~28% after FICA, SS and State income tax is removed. Leaving me 72 cents. If I buy 72 cents of gas that gets me... .21 gallons of gas. In Al that is taxed at about 32 cents a gallon... so 6.7 cents in tax leaving me to purchase ~65 cents worth of actual product from a dollar I made. That is a 35% tax rate on every dollar I spend on gasoline. If I drive a 30mpg car that will let me get a little over 6 miles down the road. If the tax rate is say 1 cent per mile driven (120$ yearly at 12k miles average) that adds another 6 cents leaving me with 59 cents of gas/driving purchasing power with the rest going to the government. ~40%. A ~40% tax rate. taxed at ~40%. No matter how I say it it seems ludicrous.

Now the article I link to does not say what the potential rate would be, or even that it would be a single rate. Perhaps 1 cent is to high? Well a 50 cent per gallon tax (over all national average) would be 1 cent per mile in a car getting 50mpg (not that many get that). Since average gas mileage is in the low - mid 20’s we already pay more than 2 cents a mile on average. So it isn’t crazy talk. Lets not even get into the sticky mess that would be variable rates. A 50mpg 2000lbs car does far less damage to roads than a 6000lbs soccer mom urban assault vehicle, which in turn does far less damage than a fully loaded Semi (~80,000 pounds). A single Semi on a deserted road does less damage than all us rats in our tiny go karts in rush hour. The combinations are endless as is the argument over what would be ‘fair’. Ideally fair would probably be something on the order of some calculation taking into account congestion, weight and cost of maintaining the current piece of road you are on at any given particular time. With GPS and some other electronic monitoring devices that is now actually a realistic possibility.... but that then raises privacy issues. Whether fuel consumption taxing is the best method or not it seems relatively fair to base your share on the amount of fuel you buy. It is is pretty simple and probably good enough. Electric charging stations and home meters can be rigged to charge similarly for juice going to electric vehicle batteries. Seems a much simpler fix than some convoluted electronic nanny system that will likely be royally abused anyway. And for those yammering about commercial vehicles causing more damage they are very right... and they are generally faced with further charges because of it.

Based on 2005 numbers it looks like we generate some where in the neighborhood of 69 billion a year in gas taxes (50 cent average tax per gallon, 20 million barrels of oil a day, 19 gallons of gas from a barrel, 365 days in the year ). This doesn’t include the added collection of diesel taxes. That isn’t enough? Really? Even with hybrids and electrics the amount of gas or diesel being bought isn’t exactly dropping just yet. When it does then perhaps it will be time to reconsider how we fund transit infrastructure costs. But it should NOT involve any method of double (triple if you count income tax) taxation. I personally think this should be rolled into income tax, or the entire tax collection system in the US should be switched entirely to consumption based taxes where money goes to things it is spent on when it is spent. Doing that would have the added bonus of killing the nightmare that is yearly tax filing and refocusing the IRS on sales tax collection\reporting rather than overseeing the incomes of every single wage earner in the country.

Anyway... enough ranting for one night.

AT&T cracking down on Tethering

Check the story here. But it looks like AT&T has finally deployed technology which allows it to detect who is tethering when they do not have a tethering plan. It is most likely a combination of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) combined with data usage profiles as it is much easier to use LOTS of data when tethering vrs just doing stuff with the phone itself.

Pardon the rant... but this one really chaps my @$$. I currently do not utilize the jailbreak methods to use tethering by this method but I have in the past and I did so with a clean conscious. I pay for unlimited data and even so I always stayed within the loose guidelines of what was determined a reasonable amount of data usage and in fact my usage is not anything insane. For instance I have never threatened the 5gb soft cap assumed to exist for AT&T iOS device unlimited plans. While my TOS has verbiage to the effect of trying to create a distinction between data that is relayed to my computer it is not one that I feel can withstand any real legal scrutiny as a realistic split. It is troll under the bridge stuff at its finest.

AT&T has ZERO right to judge what I do with the data I receive it from their network. Once the data hits the phone it is no longer their business what I do with it. In order to enforce a ‘no tethering’ clause AT&T is determining what I (or you) do with the data after it reaches my phone. This is none of AT&T’s business. Their control over the data ends once it reaches my device and concludes our service transaction... that of access to the mobile broadband network. To say I can’t tether is no different from AT&T saying I couldn’t transfer a photo I downloaded from the web from my Phone to my laptop. IE save image in mobile safari then blue tooth file transfer the image to another phone/tablet/laptop etc... ZERO difference from tethering in terms of the data being retrieved by the phone and sent to another device. Yet most people understand that AT&T trying to do that would be considered INSANE. But because the terms of service says ‘No Tethering’ many believe they can stop you from doing exactly that by the specific method of Bluetooth PAN connection.

I hope that sooner rather than later this issue gets a legal hearing. The terms of service are not ambiguous on the limitation. I am of the opinion that it does not matter. And there is plenty of precedent for ruling insane TOS clauses to be un-enforceable or just plain outright illegal. This is a growing consumer rights issue and I hope it gets resolved sooner rather than later.

iPad 2: Rumor Roundup and Thoughts

Hmmmm... perhaps I should change this blog title to “There aint no such thing as a free Apple”. Seeing as I have done so many apple reviews. Oh well.

Anyway the rumor mill is churning away on the next generation iPad and here are the basics.

• SD card slot. Opinion seems pretty solid that this would be as a ‘photo import’ or similar function ONLY device and not a true memory expansion option. Given the gnarly nature of app authentication and licensing nightmares around itunes media purchases I unfortunately think that is a very real possibility. Here is hoping it will allow you to have some expanded shared document repository functions for license free media/photos and files. It would be a very nice change from the current device. Hooking up to itunes to transfer files for the apps that support it is very annoying. A possible big change in Mobile me could be another way of easing the blow of not completely opening up the compact flash slot for use.
• Cameras on the front and back is pretty much a given at this point. SDK diving has revealed there is a good chance the rear job will be a lowly 1mp job for Augmented reality and barcode scanning type applications. The front camera will be a crappy vga deal for face time ala iPhone 4. Crappy may be harsh... so I will give it a quality vga deal (ie smooth etc...). I personally could care less about the front facing camera but it being there looks like the move is finally on to real video phoning being common. The back camera being the 1mp deal seems annoying... just like it was on the Touch. The camera cost is pretty small for those tiny little things and they already have massive production numbers with the iPhone 4 or even the older sensor in the 3Gs for something with a much better quality image. Including more spec will make it more useful... trust the folks out there to find the uses and give them the easy capacity for the couple of bucks the extra mega pixels would cost.
• A usb port has been rumored but largely dismissed. I unfortunately think the tea leaves read that way as well. The device can’t run the USB host spec without seriously hamstringing the battery and Apple has shown no sign of offering alternatives to the Apple dock for interfacing physically with their devices. Also SD cards are a better solution for flash memory additions due to being housed internaly which is the only viable host function an iPad USB port could serve. In other words SD is the ‘USB’ option. Apple has never been coy at utilizing less than standard ports. USB host interface will still be available through the dock connector as it is now. Any full implementation of USB host would rely on a powered dock apparatus.
• Bumped CPU and Graphics processing to dual core jobs. Both will be welcome though it would seem the Graphics bump will be tied to the big momma rumor of the Retina display for iPad. Without it there would be little need for such a serious jump in pixel pushing power. This is par for the course stuff on a refresh but along with the also expected RAM bump this could allow for some better multitasking in a future iOS release (iOS 5 I’m looking at YOU).
• Mini Display Port. Hmmmm... this is also somewhat tied to the Retina display discussion below. Suffice it to say if Retina iPad happens then this makes sense to me. It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for it to run the 27” apple monitor at native resolution at that point... and with readily available adapters (just 30$ a pop) it would actually have to drive LESS pixels on almost any other display currently out there. Translation... graphics would no longer be a sticking point on an iPad serving as the basis of your ‘desktop’ system... and mobile multi core processors are rapidly becoming powerful enough to be viable main use options. Hell, many folks today run on 720p resolution desktops... which the iPad can push out externally now. Having a dedicated port instead of relying on the dock connection based adapters means two things. One, they need it to push higher resolutions than they can through the dock connector without modifying it and breaking compatibility with the existing dock periphials (if it can work then don’t expect a separate display port). Two, Apple may seriously be considering a non-tethered life for iPad... ie that it is a primary computing device in and of itself rather than an adjunct device to a ‘base’ computer running iTunes. I think the hardware will be ahead of the software on that front. Think in terms of the delayed release of 4.2 for iPad vrs when it was released. iOS 5 and an iTunes Cloud could promote the iPad to primary device status in the eyes of Apple. To make that jump it will need to run accessories like displays, and iOS will probably have to deign to work with a mouse/trackpad.
• Retina Display. See below... this one is to big for even one of my ‘bullets’

The Retina Display for the iPad is rumored to consist of a whopping 2048x1536 resolution 10inch display. While not quite as pixel dense as its iPhone 4 sibling it is still 260ish DPI which is more than double current desktop monitor averages. Many seem to think this unlikely because it is hard or to expensive to make the display.. they would be wrong. Making a 10inch 260dpi display is technically easier than making a 320dpi 4 inch (iPhone 4). Manufacturers didn’t stop increasing pixel densities due to technical holdups in making them. They stopped because of numerous factors that caused desktop display resolutions to hit an HD resolution wall in the market. The question here isn’t how is Apple going to manage to produce a mobile device with this level of resolution... the question is why current desktops/laptops don’t have even higher resolutions/DPI. I bought a 15” laptop with a screen resolution of 1920x1200 more than 4 years ago. It was the absolute bleeding edge of semi portable laptop resolution at the time and it was about a year behind wide spread availability of that resolution on desktops. That marked the start of a stagnation of computer resolutions... largely because bigger screens were not really an option and increasing resolution without increasing physical dimensions means higher DPI which broke, and still breaks, the usability of a huge amount of desktop software and even the Operating Systems. A point driven home to me by some problems I had with that same laptop (its display had something like 140dpi). To my knowledge 1920x1200 is still the maximum resolution available for a laptop today and I don’t think computer monitor resolutions have EVER remained this static for this long since the birth if GUI based personal desktop. I saw several stories about 1 inch HD screens a couple of years ago (camcorder eye piece monitors). That is almost 2000 DPI. 300 DPI is NOT a problem. The graphics for 300 DPI are and Apple is in a position to make the transition to higher DPI levels for iOS devices and have already started with iPhone 4.

You may be asking what the big deal is with 300 DPI. The answer is as simple as comparing a printout of a sheet of text with the same text on your screen. Standard printout quality is 300 DPI. It has remained there despite the technical ability to produce thousands of DPI (used sometimes in high end graphics printing). Apple’s marketing for the Retina display is based on it. Its what you can easily distinguish at typical distances for using printouts. Smaller elements (higher DPI) would look the same. It represents the highest quality display level that will be unquestionably appreciated by the masses. Much higher and the only folks that can tell much (if any) difference are those with either super vision, or those who just always think more is better no matter what they can actually see/distinguish. Either is a niche market. 300dpi is the mass market display resolution maximum barring some means of improving average human vision.

The remaining questions are these. One, does Apple think increased DPI is a marketable feature that will distinguish their devices? Retina display is an Apple marketing term and is one of the leading features touted for the iPhone 4. Case closed, lets move on. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see a ‘retina display’ macbook/pro, imac etc... in the not to distant future.

Two, Can Apple afford to bootstrap a new production line for a massed produced screen that has currently only been demonstrated? Yes, they have one of the largest reserves of capital of any company and the money needed to do this does not represent a significant proportion of those reserves (say 2-5 billion out of hundreds in the bank). They even have current experience pushing super high volume of high DPI screens with the iPhone 4... scaling to a 10” screen is not a problem and with the current success of the iPad I think not much of a risk either. Next up, 30 inch screens? Now THAT would be a risk... for now.

Can Jobs and Co convince the board to take a multibillion dollar leap? Yes, the iMax, iPod, iPhone and iPad have proved that over and over again.

This leaves the final and critical question. Was Jobs/Apple confident enough to bankroll a completely new line like this for the brand new tablet market in time for an April ’11 release? iPad was enough of a gamble that by the time the returns were in and they knew for certain how big it was may have been to late for an April ’11 release of the next device with the new screen. In any case I have seen enough to firmly believe it is now just a question of iPad 2 or iPad 3 that comes with a ‘retina’ display.

My take? 15 months is forever in the tech world and from now that is the time it would take to get to an April ’12 device. 15 months ago the iPad didn’t exist and tablets where largely thought to be crazy. Now 17million iPads have been sold to the tune of Billions and dozens of competitors are racing tablet devices to market and corporate environments are sucking them up in almost unprecedented fashion. In 15 months time the iPad could be caught and slaughtered by cheaper super powered android units. It is time to double down for Apple and a 15 month delay for such a stand out feature may miss the boat in a market they created. So, I think the Retina display makes it this round. Possibly with a delayed release. An odd possibility, but not unprecedented for Apple, may be that this becomes a model difference (lower and higher resolution iPads). This is pretty similar to 3gs and iPhone 4s currently. This may also allow a bit higher (or stagnate) price point for the top tier devices while dropping the older generation device down to compete with all the ‘bandwagon’ competitors now rushing to the bottom.

If nothing else I hope this breaks the dam on display DPI being stuck around 100. 300dpi print quality screens are LONG over due. My seriously long range prediction (at least in tech terms) at this point is that iOS 5 and OS XI seriously change how graphics work so that instead of pixels, graphics are based around DPI leading to much easier scaling of various software across different devices with various screen technologies.... it might even be that iOS 5 and OS XI are one and the same literally rather than just very close siblings like 4 and X. If iPad 2 ships with a mini Display port I view it as a sign of this being a real possibility. This also has implications for the iPhone if it continues to match or even exceed iPad specs on the processing side (iPhone 4 currently outstrips iPad in pretty much every way). As that would mean anything an iPad could do... an iPhone could do as well. Food for thought.