Avid readers of my blog will know that I dislike silly signs. The worst offenders I celebrate here and then do my best to ignore. However, this week the issue of silly signs was brought so close to home that it really must not be ignored. One lift in my apartment block now bears this sign inside and out:
Don’t go it alone – this lift demands “3 Persons Only”
Usain Bolt was disqualified from the final of the 2011 World Championship 100m for one false start. The IAAF rules are now coming under fire for being too harsh, since they afford no latitude for accidental false starts.
The false start rule used to be more lenient. Historically, every athlete would receive a warning on their first false start and disqualification on their second. In 2003, the rule changed so that the first false start warning applied to the entire field rather than just the offending athlete. In 2010, warnings were eliminated entirely. Avoiding delay to TV schedules was a key driver for streamlining the rule, but I suspect that broadcasters would rather show “The Lightning” competing than have him disqualified on their account.
So, let’s explore the rule and consider alternatives.
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Recently did a ScrumMaster course at work. Best bit was building a LEGO city to practise agile development. Check out the photo of the city we built. 20 people, 4 self-organising teams of 5 people, 4 sprints of 11 minutes each. Great fun. And educational too!
For some time I’ve held Domino’s in high regard for the ease of their online pizza ordering. Fun and functional, I thought. Today I experienced an acute counter example from my attempt to order a pizza on the way home from work.
Step 1 – Start the iPhone app – denied!
Step 2 – Upgrade the app – denied!
Step 3 – Realise they’ve created a new app rather than updating the previous one
Step 4 – Download the new app – denied!
Step 5 – Give up on app and decide to use web browser, only to be told…
Aaaaargh! I persevered and ordered successfully eventually. Would have been far quicker to place my order by phone – but smartphones aren’t really for phoning, are they?! In the end the pizza was ok, but the ordering process for once left a bitter taste in my mouth!
You’ve probably seen adverts for Apple’s new iPad – it’s been splashed across TV and billboards nationwide. A sleek, touchscreen multimedia tablet with Apple’s customary ease of use; it is a very attractive device. But I’m not buying one. At least, not yet. Despite its many virtues, it doesn’t quite stack up as an ownership proposition.
What can the iPad do? It’s basically the iPhone’s big brother – excelling at all the usual email, web, iPod, multimedia stuff – and of course Apps. The bigger screen makes it easier to navigate and digest content, and makes it practical to read eBooks and electronic magazines (like the iPad edition of WIRED magazine). Compared to a conventional laptop, the tablet design is much neater and the touchscreen control more friendly – this really is a fantastic device with which to sit back and enjoy web and multimedia content. So what’s stopping me?
Any prospective new computing device would need to earn its place alongside my phone (iPhone 3GS) and my laptop (Dell XPS M1330), or replace one of those outright. The iPad can’t replace a phone (I’d look like Dom Joly shouting into his oversized brick), nor can it do everything I need from my laptop (downloading photos from my camera and culling/geotagging/organising them whilst on holiday is just one obvious example). The obvious place for using the iPad is around the house. That leaves the iPad needing to carve out a house-bound ‘multimedia’ niche:
So, what’s the problem? The fundamental problem is that the iPad is a single-user device. Only one person can set up their details on it. This makes sense on a phone, but not on a larger multimedia device like the iPad that begs to be shared between people. Say I’ve set up details of my email and other online services (Google Apps, Facebook, Flickr etc) on an iPad and then hand it to J, she would have to log out of each of the services and then log in as herself. And vice versa when it’s my turn next. Families with kids who are buying an iPad as a ‘family’ device are going to have bother (e.g. when little Johnny emails Dad’s boss, or deletes all of Mum’s Google Contacts). That’s a long way behind my laptop, which allows J and me to maintain separate profiles – we just log in with a quick fingerprint swipe and all our settings are as we left them. The iPad is a fantastic bit of hardware that’s ideally suited to sharing (for example, the wide viewing angle of the display), but the iPad’s single-user operating system (rooted in iPhone beginings) limits sharing to “look at my iPad screen” rather than “let’s make this our iPad”.
Steve Jobs would no doubt say “just buy two”. I say, “when it’s ready, I’ll buy one”.
Update 17/08/2010: Rumours suggest there might be a second-generation iPad on the way by the end of the year. It will need to compete with a range of alternatives, the most interesting of which appears to be the Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tablet. I’ve also found an interesting comparison between the iPad and Tablet PCs.
