mlongo

A set of everyday-use online developer tools - totally free. The parent site offers a bunch of other tools for design, finance etc.

Free tools for quick fixes. Helps designers and non-designers.

Interestingly, labor costs in Brazil are much higher than in China. The fiscal incentives for locally assembled equipment make all the difference in the pricing for sales to the domestic market, though.

Brazil is currently the 5th largest market for personal computers in the World and has thus attracted many Japonese, Taiwanese and Korean manufacturers that now have factories in the country.

Netbook manufacturers gave up Linux too easily. I originally got my with Linux and only replaced it with Windows because I needed to write about a Windows-only software.

Just as is currently the case with the iPad, I think most early adopters of netbooks didn't really care that they were on a different OS. They just cared that they could browse, email, use social networks, etc.

I don't imagine that Apple will ever "substitute" OS X with a mobile OS on the Macs. I believe that Apple will embed the functionality of the mobile OS in the hardware/software combination that is the Mac.

In Brazilian TV networks we are starting to see them in the hands of news anchors and talk show hosts all the time.

Several channels that are covering the Word Cup (in Brazil that is almost all of them :-) have the hosts reading information off iPads.

A WordPress widget that showed a user's recent links could be a nice addition to how people can use this.

Sometimes people are not really too lazy to blog, but just don't want to write a post about every link they would like to share with others.

It is a question of comparing bananas with bananas and apples with apples. (No pun intended.)

Android is growing as other manufacturers switch their OS to it. These same manufacturers are loosing market share to Apple. Android will continue to grow until all manufacturers that don't have their own viable OS have migrated. How much market share these manufacturers will hold in the future against Apple and Blackberry (perhaps HP in the future?) is the real question.

Well, right now there better be more books selling for the Kindle then for the iPad. :-)

The Kindle is a single purpose device that has been on the market for a couple of years and every single one of them was sold to a person who is a regular reader, otherwise they would not have bothered buying a reading device.

You might be right but that doesn't count the 50 or 60 books I've read on my iPod and I can transfer to the iPad without purchasing anything or downloading anything.

It is to early to estimate how much the iPad will be used for reading based on the number of downloads. Too short a period of time to gather meaningful data.

You could say that, but the fact is that it was my feeling of stragenss with the iPad / netbook comparison I mentioned in another comment here that got me to thinking about this.

The netbook has 8 times more memory, but can't play movies as well as the iPad can. So comparing such a basic spec isn't meaningful any more.

While those points might still seem relevant, I'm sure that they really are. Take the iPad as an example. With it's puny amount of memory it plays 720p movies perfectly which my netbook with 8 times doesn't.

Simply comparing these things directly isn't so meaningful anymore.

If too many had done that then perhaps the stock wouldn't be so valuable today. :-)

This story has been updated with a video from Fox12 Oregon, with an actual interview with the lady who has glaucoma and seems really happy about being able to read again.

She mentions that she could write, but she couldn't see what she had written.

I think that is great, and they are very fortunate. Unfortunately it doesn't match my experience with such seniors.

The ones I have contact with are totally intimidated by computers and can't seem to get past the complexity of using such simple things as the mouse and figuring out how the Windows work.

The ones which are more adventurous do use computers, but they loose their Windows and end up opening the same thing several times because the previous window was covered up by another, that kind of thing. This is where I believe the iPad makes such big difference to these people.

Exactly my point.

Based on a comment a reader left on the post, I thought I'd add a small personal comment.

I have such a senior lady in my family. One with 94 years and a pretty dull life. One that can’t really read the small type on a regular paper book or newspaper. She is my grandmother and anyone who thinks 90+ year old ladies sit in front of a desktop computer and just starts doing things is saddly mistaken.

Couldn't agree more.

That is exactly the situation that Apple wants to head off. Apple wants iPhone and iPad applications to fully integrate with the infrastructure they are providing such as fast task switching, social gaming and iAd.

No, not really. As I joined this community recently I submitted some articles that are not news related and which, as the welcome statement for the community says, stimulates deeper thinking about some issues.

The blog has had over 130 posts in the last two months, of which I've submitted 7.

Yes, perhaps when all those devices exist you will be able to write an application that runs on all of them, specially if you write an application that works on the oldest version of the OS as right now new phones are being released with widely different versions of Android. If your application does not try to match the particular look of a phone as each company is customizing the OS in a different way.

Each one of the platforms you mention are tiny in the application workspace right now. Palm is just about going under, Android is widely heterogeneous in implementation by manufacturers. If you are writing a game,the interface bit might not get in your way as games generally do not match the OS anyway.

All of this describes a very fragmented market. Now I will call your attention to a situation when many companies had their own implementation of what many considered a more powerful OS and one company had a simpler to use OS with a much larger number of applications.

Hummm... that happened in the 90s with Unix and Windows.

Well, iPhone OS looks a lot better now than Windows did then.

Well, I guess it is you that don't know a few things. My notebook in question was running Windows and it is made by Dell. There was no fan noise, just my CPU being used all to much to display a one inch big Ad on screen. I love how people presume you are defending Apple when you are not.

I didn't say Flash was bad, though I've had some bad experiences with the oddest bits of it consuming 30% of a code duo CPU.

The article just states that sits are dropping flash, because Apple doesn't support it. It also states that people are not stopping to use iPhones because of it. If you know some people that didn't get an iPhone because it doesn't run Flash, okay. Apple's sales numbers say that those people aren't all that many.

I've personally never seen anyone that avoided an iPhone because of that, though I'm sure these people exist.

Thanks for the feedback. Its been a while since I was last in Europe, I probably just didn't remember that being so.

It certainly isn't so in Brazil. Those other mp3 players normally can only be found in small, not so reputable stores here. Mostly they are from unknown Chinese brands.

Other than that, I only remember seeing a model from Sony, this year, in a large electronics store, as you put it. Everyone has an abundance of iPods, however. There is also an abundance of very cheap iPod clones, in those not-so-reputable stores.

You could be a bit more civil in your comment and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

I never said that Apple had pure or angelical motives for not wanting Flash, I just pointed out that many sites are stripping out Flash, because Apple doesn’t support it, which is quite true. There are several references in this blog to sites that have started or completed projects to remove the need for Flash.

I’m sorry that I’ve upset you with my opinion. I’m sure that if you wait long enough, a tablet that meets your standards, from a company that doesn’t have any kind of monopoly market position such as Microsoft or Google will come along and that it will be all that you dream of.

Not much that I can say to that, but I beg to differ. :-)

As you say, it might offer a competent alternative within a year, but it doesn't now and there is no competing device running Android right now.

I hope Android does offer a good alternative as I wouldn't like to see a market with a single dominant player, regardless of who that player is. Diversity is good for everyone.

I'm not in the US. I'm in Brazil. You cannot go into a reputable store here and find other players. Perhaps if you are really determined to buy non-Apple and are willing to spend a couple of hours looking you might find something but probably it will be no more than a memory stick that can play mp3s.

You might go to on street vendors who import a variety of cheap and mostly low quality iPod clones directly from Hong Kong.

I don't remember it being very different in Australia and a couple of European countries I've been to, but I might have been blinded by my fanboyism. :-)