Now it looks like the uber-mouse has had a coat of black paint, a new name and is being targeted at gamers, particularly World of Warcraft players.

Not surprisingly, it still looks crazy and makes my hand twinge in pain just looking at the product shots. I’m sure there is a place for this mouse but, black plastic or beige, it’s not on my desk, I’m afraid.

Credit to Engadget for doing a pretty decent review all the same.

Firstly, the iPad isn’t a computer – it’s not a desktop, netbook or laptop. It’s not going to replace any of these for good, like so many people are suggesting. Instead, it is expanding on the idea of the iPhone and developing the category of ‘appliance’. You need to check Facebook? Ok, press this and it becomes Facebook. Email? Press this and it becomes email. Most people won’t need to know how the workings or filesystem operate underneath, just like no-one these days can fix a toaster if it breaks. The appliance just does what it says it will do without you having to worry.

So yeah, it’s not going to be the enthusiast’s cup of tea. With the exception of those jailbreaking etc. there won’t be a way to mess around with the insides. And that’s fine. It hasn’t stopped the iPhone from moving 40 million units at all. The problem is that the enthusiasts are the ones making all the noise at the moment, because we’re the ones who got up at 4am to follow the announcement and write the blog posts. If the ‘average user’ had a choice between iPad simplicity or complexity that they wouldn’t use and would increase vulnerability to hacking, viruses and instability, I think I know what the vote would be.

Same goes for multitasking. In most cases, the average user is going to use Facebook, then use email, then watch a video. Not try to do these all at once. The boost to battery life is a far more valuable selling point. Sure, background processes need to be introduced for live updates and applications like Latitude, but we’re already halfway there with push notifications. Likewise, there will need to be a way to move information between apps, particularly now that iWork is coming onboard; hopefully this will be via online cloud storage rather than an onboard file system.

So, as stevenf puts it, is a manual car better than an automatic? No, they’re just different. Apple have built a brand on the idea of ‘turn it on and it works’ (well, that and ‘ooh, shiny!’). The iPad is just the next extension of this. The iPhone brought a lot of enthusiast mobile phone features (such as basic web browsing on the go) to the masses, and the iPad will do the same for a wider range of computing functions. It’s certainly not perfect, but for a first generation product, it’s pretty damn good – developers are going to have a field day with a multitouch screen that big.

The biggest question at the moment in my mind is whether content providers will take up the challenge. The iPad (and the slew of devices that will mimic the concept over the next few years) represents a very mainstream adoption of the tablet concept, one that is built for content consumption. Apple could well be throwing newspaper and magazine publishers a lifeline here. However, it’s not going to be enough to simply reproduce the same product for a different media, they are going to need to evolve and evolve quickly to compete.

Publishers will need to look closely at what features can be used on the device and go out on a limb to ensure that their material is what people turn to. Because they are not just competing with other magazines or newspapers any more – when someone picks up their iPad, they are choosing between games, videos, music, books, blogs, and countless other competitors for their attention, not just between traditional types of published material. Users are going to need a reason to turn to a magazine.

Book publishers will also need to lift their game. The iPad is not going to be the world’s best ebook reader, the screen clearly dictates that. However, the iBook store will fast become a major player in book sales and customers are soon going to become frustrated and angry with the games that publishers currently play with pricing, distribution and availability. Book publishers have so far been lucky enough to avoid the fate of record companies, but this could quickly change once ebooks receive the same treatment that music got via iTunes. It’s time for some radical changes in the industry if people want to stay in the game. Otherwise, there is going to be one hell of a backlash from consumers.

So sure, rail against the iPad and its lack of this or that for now. It’s certainly the fashionable thing to do and shows how much more you know than Apple. But then wait until you hold and use one. Wait until the next Flight Control, Evernote or Facebook killer app is released. Wait until the devs start pushing the limits of the device. Then look around and see the sheer number of people that this device allows to get online without the hassle of a full computer and operating system and the inherent problems and confusion that they bring.

Steve Jobs knows that you can’t just give people what they want, he’s already pointed out the problems when you do that. Instead, Steve and Apple have the ability to innovate and sense what people will want; and not just the enthusiasts and tech professionals, but the general population. While we’re waiting for it to be released, try looking back over the cries of outrage when the iPod and iPhone were released. And just as the iPod and then the iPhone brought so much mobile computing and network power to the masses, so will the iPad do the same (even with the stupid name). Just give it a bit of time.

I’m sure this will shortly prompt a slew of articles about privacy and how much personal information Google stores about you, even though this is very much an opt-in services. Not to mention the dramatic increase in transparency that (also recently released) Google Dashboard now offers. Personally, I’m not too concerned.

On a related theme, this is also a great way to track exactly how much time I spend on motionless trains between Flinders St and Richmond or North Melbourne. Thanks again Connex!

Google Latitude tracking my travels

Note that this is from the Blackberry Bold app, which is able to run and update my location in the background. For things to really get useful, my iPhone needs to come up with a way to do this too. To be honest though, I think that this is the only point so far that has been awarded to the Blackberry – it’s pretty hopeless at everything else.

The case in point at the moment is the new OpenOffice mouse. This thing is a monstrosity that has clearly tried to incorporate the good ideas and intentions of everyone who walked past during the design stage. 18 buttons? Check. Analog joystick? Check. Flash memory? Check. Adjustable resolution? Check.

Unfortunately, they also included the ideas from the guy that was frozen since 1994, hence the aesthetics and the cord. To wrap it all up, the finance guy’s suggestion was also included: the price is a hefty US$74.99.

The new OpenOffice mouse

I like my peripherals as much as the next guy (I use the Logitech MX Revolution at home and work myself), but the OpenOffice contraption looks to be an unwieldy and unmanageable piece of equipment with far too many functions for any of them to be useful. It’s the Crust pizza equivalent of a mouse – sometimes too many options and ‘features’ is a bad thing.

I’ll wait to hear more reviews to see if I am proven wrong (the reviews link on the official website currently goes nowhere) and I’d love to give it a shot it I get the chance, but until then, I’m chalking this one up as a good example of why you need a product manager with a strong point of view and the ability to say no.

The article goes into detail about various aspects of the keyboards, consistently comparing the two. The iPhone keyboard wins out overall, but not due to any one killer feature. What I did find interesting, though, was the section on Dynamic Key Resizing, which I didn’t realise the iPhone did:

The iPhone changes the size of the «touchable» area of each individual key while you type to make it easier for you to hit keys it thinks you might want to hit. David Pogue describes it like this:
“Although you don’t see it with your eyes, the sizes of the keys on the iPhone keyboard are changing all the time. That is, the software enlarges the “landing area” of certain keys, based on probability.”
For example, if you type the letter «N», the next letter is unlikely to be «H», but quite likely to be «G». Accordingly, the iPhone will increase or decrease the target areas of these keys. If you type «N» and then hit the space between «G» and «H», the iPhone will assume that you meant to type «G» because «NG» is a common letter combination in English, while «NH» is uncommon (except for people living in New Hampshire).
While this often cheats you into hitting wrong keys when typing in a language the iPhone doesn’t support, it’s a huge help for the languages it does support. As far as I can tell, Android doesn’t seem to do this kind of key resizing at all – you never know how much you’ve been relying on this feature until you use a virtual keyboard that doesn’t have it.

Make sure you read the full article, it’s very well put together. There are also a few other recent entries on ignore the code dealing with handhelds and keyboards.

I still wish the iPhone came with cursor keys every now and then though, not to mention the option to switch to a Dvorak layout.

1. Google Reader is by far the most accessed item on my iPhone and, while not an app, it certainly deserves pride of place on the homescreen. The iPhone interface is so easy to use and move around it makes reading feeds simple. Being online, it perfectly compliments the full web version and no other RSS reader I’ve tried has come close to touching it.

2. Stanza is a great app that I use to read ebooks. The online catalogs make downloading new titles a no brainer and the desktop app enables painless sharing of texts you already have. I’m a bit concerned that Amazon have bought the app, but I’m optimistic that they will use it to greatly improve the Kindle app (although I’m expecting that they will hobble future versions with more Kindle-like features)

3. OzWeather. This is basically a better weather app than the default iPhone app. Current conditions, forecasts and the radar images using the Bureau of Meteorology data, which is the critical point for an Australian weather app. While it might seem strange to pay money to replace an app that is included for free, this is a good example of a superior replacement. On my wishlist are push notifications to update the app badge with the current temperature, but I think that’s pretty unlikely. Overall, very nicely done.

4. Balance is a tiny app, but one that does the job it needs to do. I don’t keep a full budget on the iPhone, but I do use it to keep track of the money I spend. Balance lets me do this easily and quickly without any unnecessary bells and whistles.

5. TweetDeck and Tweetie. This is still a tie at the moment. Tweetie has been great, but after using TweetDeck for a while now, I’m starting to like it (even if I still haven’t come around to the desktop version yet). Both have an amazing range of features and stand out among the dozens of Twitter apps in the store at the moment. This is one category that is still exploding on iTunes at the moment, so there’s bound to be more apps that let you tweet on the move. Birdhouse, from Sandwich Dynamics, is one example of an interesting take on using Twitter from an iPhone.

6. Metlink Melbourne. Public transport in Melbourne can be a bit of a hit and miss affair, but at least with this app, you know when things are meant to turn up. Metlink supports saving favourite stations/stops and covers trains/trams/buses/VLine all in the one app. It’s just recently replaced the MetroMelb app and is worth getting if you rely on public transport. There’s versions for other cities under the ‘Metro’ title as well.

7. I like to use Instapaper on the desktop to save long articles I want to come back and read, so when the iPhone app came out, it really made sense. The Instapaper app downloads the saved sites, so once you’ve synced, you can access everything on a plane, in a tunnel or anywhere, regardless of reception. A great app.

8. Remember the Milk and Todo. This is another tie. As a GTD nut, I live and die by the lists I keep in Remember the Milk, but still haven’t found the perfect way to tie this in on the iPhone. The RTM app is nice and now supports push notifications, but has surprisingly poor support for smart lists and tasks with no deadline, which is what I need most of all. Todo offers full syncing with RTM and, while it doesn’t actually support smartlists, you can use the focus list and the filter to achieve a similar list. However, I’ve noticed that the sync hasn’t been working that well lately and I can’t rely on the app as much as I would like. It’s a relatively expensive app (and worth the price), but hopefully this issue will resolve itself soon. I know the crew at RTM are always developing their product, so I’m hoping a new version will arrive soon that will fit the bill – it’s one that I would use constantly if it fit my workflow correctly.

9. Aussie Rules LIVE is my pick of the AFL apps. It offers all the team information and news, as well as past scores and head to head information that you’ll need, but I find their live data to be the best. It’s easy to check the scores around the grounds and the commentary is a great way to get a feel for how the game is going. They’ve recently added DreamTeam scores as well, which is exciting, but unfortunately this doesn’t include the SuperCoach competition I play in – hopefully this is for a future update…

10. The final app on the list is Facebook. At the end of the day, it is just Facebook, but the way the app works just makes it perfect for the job. It’s easy to use and has most of the features you need. I would love support for more applications on the iPhone, similar to what Lexulous offers, but for catching up on news, photos and messages, you can’t beat the app.

I must give honourable mentions to a host of other apps as well, there are heaps that I use on a regular basis and some of the innovations and interfaces the developers have used are pretty amazing. WordPress, AppSniper, Weightbot, TripIt, CommBank, Snatch, Dropbox, AroundMe and eWallet are all apps that I could have added to this list. If you use this as a shopping list on the App Store, you’re sure to find some great applications.

Note that there’s no games on these lists. There’s plenty of those on my iPhone as well, so that is a list for another day.

I’m constantly looking for great new apps, so I’d love to hear any feedback about these lists, or suggestions for anything I may have missed.

I realise the target demographic aren’t really the ones that are buying high end ‘phones to swap in, but I still don’t think this was a smart move by Apple. All the same, I’m sure it’s a great player, it’s just the worst one Apple have released in a while.

Better yet, get it today and help them break the record for software downloads in a day.

My initial impressions were quite good and they haven’t come down too much. The system was a cinch to setup and I have since replaced the provided cable with a composite version without any hassles. Getting used to using the cursor does not take long and, while I’m still not sure of the best place to put the sensor bar for my setup, I find the remote to be quite accurate. As expected, playing a game such as Wii Sports is very intuitive, to the point where I had my parents bowling strikes in about ten minutes. However, it does seem that in many cases, the developers don’t quite know how to handle the remote. MK:A is an example of this and I quickly moved to using the classic controller instead of trying to perfect the motion controls.

One game that I have thoroughly enjoyed is Super Mario Galaxy. After putting in far too many hours over Christmas, I have picked up 118 stars and have nearly thrown the remote out the window trying to get Luigi’s purple coins! The game is brilliantly designed with great graphics and a surprisingly good soundtrack. I had fun with the gravity mechanics, and while the majority of the game was not overly challenging, a few levels are particularly difficult and the level design is consistently good, meaning I was never bored. I can’t say the same for Super Paper Mario, however, as I feel this game doesn’t meet up with where my expectations were of the gameplay mechanics and execution of its concepts. I’m looking forward to experimenting with more games that push the envelope a bit in terms of what we expect from a console.

The News and Weather channels are quite useful – this is one area I hope continues to develop. I have also heard that some games are able to replicate the current weather in-game, which is a nice touch. I hope that further channels, such as an RSS reader for example, come online soon and help make the Wii a more versatile tool in the lounge room. To that end, the Internet channel is a welcome addition, even if it does come with a price tag. The ability to quickly check something on the Internet in an ad break while watching TV is definitely a convenience. I don’t see all that much value in the Mii Contests or Everybody Votes, but these are an amusing distraction every so often.

My main concern with the platform is the number of worthwhile titles being released. There seems to be a small number of must-haves that implement the features of the system well, such as Super Mario Galaxy and what I’ve heard about Zelda: Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime: Corruption, but the majority of titles seem to be poor translations of other, franchised titles that have been twisted to work with the Wii’s radically different control system.

We seem to be at crossroad in console design where simple ports just won’t cut it anymore. The Wii, like the DS, needs to be designed for with the control system in mind. This in itself opens up so many possibilities, as the controls allow for a completely different style of gameplay that the old d-pad or analog stick can’t match. Until more developers realise this and start innovating, a great platform will suffer because of the lack of quality software. Hopefully, the homebrew scene will start to make their mark and, with any luck, their outside-the-square thinking will flow on to larger game studios and in turn prompt them to develop more interesting and unique titles, rather than just shoehorning the latest EA Sports title or blockbuster movie tie-in onto every conceivable platform without thought.

However, there is always something that takes the wind out of my sails and plants me firmly back on my butt. This thing is Linux.

The latest round started a couple of days ago with downloading Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and a spare PC. The setup, the partitioning, the install, even some nifty terminal gymnastics all worked fine, until it came to the networking. After at least four or five attempts at different Linux distributions, I am still yet to get any one of them onto a network or the internet. It usually comes down to a problem with drivers which, coincidentally, is also where my Linux-fu happens to run out (incidentally, the wireless card I’m trying to use is a Belkin PCI card, of the RT2500 variety).

So, Ubuntu, you win this round, again. But I’ll be back, maybe not with this release, maybe not with the next one, but I’ll be back.

And next time, I’ll be learning how to install drivers…