Good Will Blogging
How do you like them apples...

I’ve had the iPad (3) for about 2 weeks now, and although the screen is stunningly sharp, I have to say that apart from being much larger (obviously), it is not as good as the iPhone 4/4S screen.

The main complaint is that the iPad’s screen is not bonded to the front glass, like the iPhone’s. The improvement Apple made when they first did that in the iPhone 4 was, I think, one of the most underrated and underreported features of the new display. I think Gruber put it best:

More importantly, though, is that it looks better. The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass, it’s like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like “live print”.

It also improves the field of view for the display — you can view the display from an oblique angle and it looks great. Again, like print. It’s like a glossy magazine come to life.

On the larger iPad display however, the downsides of having a layer of air behind the glass are more noticeable. Two surfaces (the front glass, and the display itself) mean double the reflections. And the reflections don’t quite line up, so the area of screen affected by a reflection is bigger. Also, you can see the reflection of the glass move when your finger places pressure on it.

Don’t get me wrong — it still feels like an ultra–premium display, and much better than anything out there at this size — but to me, the iPhone 4S still has the best-looking display of any device on the planet.

I hope that the iPad 4 closes this figurative and literal gap next year.

Update: Thinking about this further, I wonder why Apple built it this way. That thin layer of air is clearly more than 0.6mm thick — the increase in thickness of iPad (3) over iPad 2 — which implies that not bonding the display to the glass was more important than keeping the same thickness as iPad 2.

In other words, bonding the larger display to the glass either presents such difficult engineering challenges, or impacts the overall quality to such a degree, that Apple was willing to bear the potential negative consequences of releasing a thicker product. And now I can’t stop wondering what was so important.

When I decided to move from Blogger to tumblr, I knew about the automatic theme for iPhone, which makes blogs easy to read and scroll on iPhone without needing to zoom & pan, etc.

But I didn’t know about the awesome tumblr app for iPhone - sweet! I’m using it to type this right now.

After only 1 day playing with my iPad, it’s clear that the “beautiful” apps own this space. I’m sure we will see the same deluge of fart apps and just plain ugly apps that we have on the iPhone, but on iPad, the really gorgeous UIs stand out more than they do on iPhone. And with the higher price tags that for now seem to be the norm, users will expect more and demand better.

But “beauty” is not a requirement to publish apps on iPad, it’s an impulse—an irresistible urge. To me at least, it seems that if you give some people a canvas, they cannot help themselves but create art.

Take TV advertising as an example. The job is simply to tell people about your product, and how they can get it, within the time constraints imposed by the platform. But many ads on TV stand up on their own (without the product) as beautiful art. It’s a similar story for printed ads, buildings, built-in computer alert sounds, business cards—basically any human activity where discretion is allowed. People are addicted to their own creativity, and everybody benefits.

I wrote before that Apple gave iPhone OS developers a forced lesson in UI minimalism. And now there is no excuse for getting it wrong on iPad. There are oodles of pixels to work with, plenty of grunt to push them with, and a big reservoir of power in its twin batteries. To help even more, the typical iPad usage session is many multiples of the iPhone. You have the full attention of a comfortably seated, wide-eyed audience.

Better give them art.

- posted from my iPad

(originally posted here)

I just took delivery of my new Sennheiser MM100 Bluetooth headset. It cost ¥19,800 from the Apple Online Store. Sennheiser are a very well-respected professional audio device company, and the comments on the online store were very positive. So after some ums and ahs I clicked Buy.

They seem to work as advertised, and I had no problems pairing them to both my iPhone and my iMac. The sound quality seems to be excellent, although I usually try to reserve judgement on the sound until I’ve used them for a week or so.

I can’t comment on battery life yet, but according to the manual they will handle 7.5h of continuous audio, 9h call time, and 220h (about 9 days) of standby time. Not bad!

I think the thing I am most impressed by is how comfortable they and light they are. I was expecting it to be awkward to put them on, but they’re a lot easier to wear than other wrap-around headsets I’ve tried. I jumped around a bit and they didn’t fall down or even move. The over-ear plastic part starts to irritate the top of my ears a little bit, so I’ll try some different angles and see if it improves. I don’t seem to have any problems wearing them with glasses, either, which is a relief.

I’m not really used to wearing large headphones (I have always bought earbuds until now, but I haven’t found any good Bluetooth earbuds yet), so to me it looked kind of weird in the mirror. We’ll see if it gets funny looks on the street…

One more thing I noticed is that the blue indicator LED on the right side reflects on the inside of my glasses, so I can see a little blue flashing light in the right periphery of my vision. Ironically, this has actually helped with the setup, as I didn’t need to take them off to check what the indicator LED is doing! I wonder if this would be distracting enough to be dangerous. It’s probably only noticeable in a dark room, so hopefully it won’t cause me to crash my bike!

Anyway, just a first look for now. Not ready to give my recommendation yet, but so far it seems pretty good.

(originally posted here)

Update 1: The next/previous buttons don’t work with iPhone, so there’s no way to skip forward or back via the headset. Not a huge deal, but disappointing given that iPhone does support this with other headphones.

Update 2: I’ve been using the MM100 in anger for more than a week now, and it’s still on its first charge! The battery life is incredible. Definitely iPad-worthy!

Also, after listening to Björk’s Homogenic and others, I am completely satisfied in the sound quality. This is by far the best bass I’ve heard on casual earphones, which is pretty amazing considering how light they are. The high end is bright and sharp, and the mid tones are warm and have nice depth. The only problem is that since the earpieces are not sealed at all (as I’m used to with earbuds) sound from outside is clearly audible, so in noisy settings you don’t get to actually enjoy the full depth of sound they provide.

I find that maximum volume is not very loud (a European thing?) and I tend to use them at this level or just below.

Given the beautiful sound quality for music, the crappy sound quality for phone calls is inexplicable, and inexcusable. First, ring tones are so overdriven and distorted that they all sound like they’re being played with a bad electric guitar. Second, the sound of the other person seems to drop in & out, kind of like using a speakerphone. I haven’t tried being on the other end of the call to see what I sound like yet.

As for the wear, I still find it can irritate the tops of my ears after long usage, although I usually don’t notice it until I take them off. Otherwise, they are extremely light and comfortable to wear. They do look a bit funny though. One guy commented that I look like the flight controller on the Death Star.

I find the controls work fine and are not intrusive. The volume is controllable from both the headset and the iPhone, so you can reach for whichever is convenient at the time. The lack of next/previous is a disappointment, but so far hasn’t produced more than one “aargh!” moment, thanks to the iPhone’s lock screen home-button-double-click iPod controls.

Update 3: The volume is definitely a problem. Even with iPhone at max and headphones at max, in crowded/noisy places it’s basically inaudible. Granted, this is more of a problem with the utter lack of a sound seal than with the volume—if it did allow me to crank the volume up enough to overcome surrounding noise, it would probably damage my ears.

Update 4: I just heard myself from the other end of a phonecall (called myself and left voicemail). Holy distortion, Batman! The quality for the other party is so bad, it’s difficult to understand anything. If hands-free calling is important to you, definitely avoid these. Bummer.