HTML5: With Great Templates Comes Great Responsivity - <AUTHOR> http://verekia.com/initializr/responsive-template <comment><USER2> Great beginner article on "responsive web design". I found the walkthrough to be very friendly.

Does anyone else feel like there are lots of buzzwords in HTML articles? For instance,

 _"The mobile-first approach is the equivalent of progressive enhancement for media-queries."_

sounds like it came straight out of the board room. It makes sense when you parse it, but I feel like it needs a "synergize" or two.

<comment><USER3> When developing Javascript-enabled interfaces, developers need to worry about older or incompatible browsers, paranoid users with JS disabled and crawlers. Therefore, depending on the browser's capabilities, it makes sense to enable/disable certain features and have the interface still work.

To do this, there are 2 approaches for development:

\- progressive enhancements, in which you start from a purely static interface (or the least common denominator you can start from) and progressively add more and more advanced features

\- graceful degradation, in which you start from the featurefull interface and gradually disable features / make fixes to have the interface still work

"progressive enhancements" is not a buzzword as the 2 approaches mentioned above WILL yield different results. Interfaces developed with progressive enhancements will tend to be featurefull on the common denominator, while interfaces developed with graceful degradation will tend to be very rich (GMail style), but barely usable on browsers with not enough capabilities and less accessible by classic crawlers.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I know "progressive enhancement" is an actual term. I thought it was interesting to hear it coupled with "mobile-first" and "media queries" as it sounded like a bunch of buzzwords.

<comment><USER3> "media queries" is a new CSS feature with which you can now have "progressive enhancements" (otherwise you would have to drop to Javascript), the advice being that you should start first designing for mobiles, then gradually evolving it into a full wide desktop view.

No buzzwords. It's actually pretty neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's funny. I lobbied for years and years to designers to use fluid layouts (percentages instead of hard coded numbers). I have been met with a lot of condescending resistance. Fluid is bad because fixed layouts are good and I didn't know anything because I wasn't a web designer. The arguments didn't matter at all. The way it was done it was the way to do it, period.

Years passed by and now everyone is doing it, which is great.

<comment><USER5> The landscape has changed considerably since olden days though. "Fluid" layouts of old were no use from a designers point of view because the designer was trying to consider the measure (words per line) as well as the layout, and the variance of screen size and resolution wasn't great enough to justify the work load in creating a truly useful (from a design point of view) fluid layout. We didn't have media queries and JavaScript was something that programmers told us we should never use, but all that has changed and the field of screen sizes has exploded in many directions (physical size, pixel size, pixel density...) meaning it's now appropriate/essential.

In short the environment has changed, weak ideas are now strong ideas, and the design approach has evolved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone else have the opinion that Responsive Web Design is a fad?

It seems that you are better served if you design your mobile site in the style of an App, and your website the traditional 960px grid. Tablets handle the desktop site okay for the most part.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for everyone's thoughtful responses.

I'm researching Responsive Web Design as an option for a large e-commerce site. But for me, for a large site with a lot of dynamic content and functionality, it doesn't seem ideal to simply shrink it down to one column.

And I also wonder about the amount of time it takes to create designs taking all screen sizes into consideration.

Anyways, thanks again.

<comment><USER7> There are frameworks like Skeleton and Zurb's Foundation that handle the media queries and resizing/restyling for you, you just have to use their markup. And what they do out of the box is pretty much enough unless you want to hand- tweak a style down the road.

Also, responsive design doesn't have to be about getting your website to work on your 2001 Nokia brick's display. A good first step in responsive design is just to take advantage of the full width of the device your user is using up until a point. A lot of websites I view from my netbook could take advantage of just one media query: a full-sized design for large screens and then a fluid width design for anything smaller. I find a lot of websites give me a horizontal scrollbar on the 10' screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I enjoyed reading this. I've been using www.getskeleton.com for an ecommerce project that will be launching early feb.

I decided to use a responsive template as we want as many people as possible to be able to see the content and buy the products. Responsive templates were the quickest way to achieve this.

There were still a few difficult problems to overcome, like how to represent long category navigation on mobiles and in an ideal world we would have a mobile specific version of the site which would better allow us to solve such problems.

However for now, responsive templates seem to have really worked for us.

EDIT: also the client loves it that there site 'works' on a range of devices without having to incur the costs associated with 'mobile specific' versions or 'apps'

</comment><comment><USER9> As a dedicated Android supporter, I wonder when the Android webview system will be decent enough to actually work with that design pattern, because the premise is good. Shake a xoom a little and the css loses track whether it's in portrait or landscape.

<comment><USER10> I switched to Galaxy Nexus (from iPhone 3GS), where I ended up using Web apps over native apps. This is not only because the native apps tend to install costly background services that keep the phone awake, or because their Java UI without exception consumes more battery than their WebKit based equivalent, but also due to the really crappy user interface the native apps provide. The biggest trouble is with scrolling, which is jittery. I did not know about Android WebView, let's hope that native apps will start to use it for more fluid web interfaces, which, coming from Java myself, I'd say will also be easier to make (based on proper templates and libraries, e.g. Bootstrap, Modernizr, etc.).

<comment><USER9> Well, from purely an app developer's point of view, the situation with Webviews on Android is completely opposite to the one you describe! WebViews are power hogs and unbearably slow to render anything. Their only saving grace in that respect is that they share a common WebViewCore thread to perform most of the legwork behind the scenes, so you can have plenty of these with relatively low overhead, but they truly are to be avoided at all costs if your objective as a developer is low battery consumption and a responsive/fast UI.

The main problem with most android apps is that they still include a tiny WebView just for displaying ads, carrying with it its dreadful WebViewCore Rube Goldberg machine.

I find it sad that Android App developers in general are so poor that they can't figure out a way to make their apps run faster or smoother. Native is and always has been the way to go for performance, responsiveness, UI speed and power saving on those devices.

Here's to hoping that the Android team solves the horrible performance and compatibility issues on their Webview component so I can safely go back on my words in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic stuff. I have found responsive design forces me to think as carefully about a button on my large-monitor designs as it does on my mobile- designs. It is a wonderful process of cut-this, cut-that until you have something simple.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was playing around with a redesign of my car blog over the weekend with responsive design with a vertical rhythm (<http://rockyroadblog.herokuapp.com/>) I like the post's approach to navigation and didn't know about the 'aside' element previously. If anyone's interested, I can post the source files for my redesign on github.

</comment><comment><USER13> It looks strange when they talk about the responsive layout on a site that takes about 1/6th of my screen width... pretty much a thin stripe in the centre.

<comment><USER7> Would you find it easier to read if the characters per line increased dramatically just to fit your screen?

<comment><USER13> No. Font size, kerning, multiple columns, etc. are all better alternatives.

I wouldn't mention it on any other page. It's just that this article is about responsive page design. But it's not responsive itself. The post itself mentions: "Use a big font size and an adapted line height (this template uses 16px / 24px)." and "To design a responsive layout, we have to forget about the usual static 960px width layouts"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bamboo for Chrome – Highlight Any Webpage - <AUTHOR> http://readbamboo.com

<comment><USER2> Seems very cool, but how is this different from [https://hypothes.is/](https://hypothes.is/) or others?</comment>


We found a JavaScript UI library that performs great on Android mobile web - <AUTHOR> Our company reviewed many of the options available based of suggestions from our Reddit posts. In the end we made a constructive attempt at trying all the libraries/frameworks that our team could attempt in a single sprint. In the end, we tried React, Ember, Angular 2, Vue, Mithril, Cycle, Preact and Inferno.
We tried the latest Vue 2.0 (https://github.com/vuejs/vue/tree/next) and Mithril 1.0 (https://github.com/lhorie/mithril.js) betas and we had some great results from both. We also tried Preact but we had issues with some SVG namespaces not properly being rendered so we gave up. Vue and Mithril enabled us to finally use our example app on our legacy Android testing devices. The experience with Cycle and Angular 2 was about the same as React (unusable) and the latest Ember was better but the initial page load times were still terrible.
We thought we found our library (Vue 2) until someone found a benchmark recently that showed that there was a library out there like Preact and React called Inferno. I highly recommend reading their readme (https://github.com/trueadm/inferno). It makes sense. We ran all our benchmarks and it not only came up quite a bit faster than both Vue 2 and Mithril 1.0, it also had a much more modular breakdown that allowed us to use our own state and router library without being tied to a framework – which was a massive win for the team. I have to say though, the amount of choices out there is insane. We're just lucky we found the right library for us and our needs. We highly recommend checking out Vue 2 though for ex-Angular codebases (which some of our team came from).
I hope this helped! <comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to give feedback on any of the projects we tested. A note also: we found Cycle the hardest to build, simply because it was a big departure from what we were used to in the past. We found both Angular and Vue the most familiar and easy to get started with.

<comment><USER2> I'm curious to hear about mithril 1 versus infernojs, inferno looks like it benches well but did you guys try it out on a real project? Miithril is interesting because its endorsed by the FSF. React is interesting because it has a huge community now, but it is also concerned with backwards compatibility with older browsers and they seem not so concerned about good mobile performance as the assumption seems to be you should use react native for mobile, however if you're developing for web audio that doesn't help.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Although I know that the React team have been spending a large amount of resources lately addressing React's performance problems. Inferno has a "inferno-compat" package that should allow it to easily replace a React app almost 1:1 without too many issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for trying Inferno. It's great to hear that it worked out so well for you too - let me know if you have any issues or need help with anything. I'd be happy to help :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Knockout always gets forgotten :(

I've found it to be very performant on mobile, provided you avoid a few gotchas.

<comment><USER3> I've found the opposite with Knockout, especially in complex apps that make use of many observable and subscriptions. Knockout used to be great for MVVM apps, but I feel it's quite dated compared to more modern approaches both in performance and architecture.</comment></comment>


Save Comcast - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-comcast <comment><AUTHOR>
      The W3C once stood for the open Web. After decades of using
      its power to make companies agree to clear the barriers that
      prevented innovation, now they're helping them create those
      barriers. It's a shame.

      It's shameful.</comment>


ABB Robots Katana Fight [video] - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=cR-YlZ9NdIA <comment><USER2> This is probably more for showing off the sort of capabilities which are needed in a manufacturing environment rather than front-desk security (don't be chicken, get over here and fight!). That probably explains the disappointing ritual and lack of finishing moves.

From the accounts I have read, sword fights generally had quick endings, so maybe a robotic fight which is realistic wouldn't be interesting to watch.

Dungeons and Dragons players might get right away that the robot, like the undead, receive less damage from bladed weapons than they do from blunt weapons. But if these katanas are +1 or greater or silver, then maybe they'll do full damage anyways.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I was hoping for more a "fight" and less a "dance", but this shows promise. Advanced robotic katana-handling algorithms will be necessary when the kaiju come for us.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow this sucked. Thought there'd be come cool ML or RL implementation here, but it's just two robotic arms moving two katanas in completely deterministic synchrony. Meh

</comment><comment><USER5> Impressive lack of backlash in the beginning part where the swords are tip to tip.

(I work for ABB but not in robotics)

</comment><comment><USER6> (2013)</comment>


ASK HN: What are the challenges of the liquid democracy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=occZIM2ovyE <comment><USER2> Not having enough liquid to drink?

<comment><AUTHOR> nice trolling!</comment></comment>


HP is shipping audio drivers with a built-in keylogger - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/11/hp-is-shipping-audio-drivers-with-a-built-in-keylogger/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314795)</comment>


Why text-based serialization is awesome - chaotic-good http://akumuli.org/akumuli/2015/02/09/resp/

<comment><AUTHOR> informative post. Like it !</comment>


Tablets - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/tablets.html <comment><USER2> This is absolutely right. My company been working on a medical device accessory for the iPhone and the possibilities the "tablet" form factor are amazing.

Lower Cost Structure - In our industry (diabetes) you give away hardware to get ongoing disposable revenue. This hardware is expensive to produce and develop. Plus you spend a lot of effort on areas that don't add much value e.g. reinventing the wheel re: display drivers. This completely changes the economics of the industry.

Higher Product Quality - By taking advantage of the core Tablet attributes like color touch screen display and processor you can do things feature wise that would be prohibitive with custom hardware. The amount of "ooohs" we get showing off our iPhone UI vs the current LCD one is staggering.

New Revenue Opportunities - Again our business has thrived on a single revenue stream, the disposable test strips. With connections to the web all manner of "virtual good", subscription services, and other digital business models get opened up.

Overall it is a huge win for both user and entrepreneur and is going to fundamentally change a bunch of hardware businesses.

If you want to see our product, here is a nice review ([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor- fo...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor-for-the- iphone))

<comment><USER3> Doesn't it concern you that Apple could shut you down at any stage? They could easily just decide that your app isn't suitable for their store. This would be especially true for industrial applications where there might be good reasons to want to step outside their TOS or guidelines.

<comment><USER4> I'd also be concerned that on Android that the user might have a device that doesn't allow off-Market installs, and then I'd have to use a distribution mechanism I don't prefer (maybe even an alternative market like Amazon was rumored to be creating).

No platform is perfect.

<comment><USER5> Less of a concern. If Apple decides to go into the Medical gadgets field and updates their terms of service accordingly, you are basically hosed. There's no recourse. Not even an alternate 'off-Market install'.

<comment><USER4> Unless your customer's Android device happens to come from AT&T, where you have the exact same issue.

(This isn't to say I don't agree with you that they shouldn't be able to kick you off, but, you know what? No mobile platform is good in that respect.)

<comment><USER3> Yes but your program will still work on other android platforms that don't try to prevent non-app software so the software development effort investment isn't wasted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth noting here that most analysts feel that the reason the original iPod was successful was that it only did one thing in an extremely friendly format.

I think the key question here is whether or not the app-universe grows in size until consumers desire separation of widgets again.

I know from my own experience that I found I maximize productivity by having separate devices responsible for separate things. For instance, when I pick up my blue iPod it's for education -- I keep books and lectures on there. But when I pick up my black iTouch it's for fun -- I keep only tunes there. My phone -- although it has all kinds of neat wizardry in it -- I use solely for talking to other people.

Perhaps both trends are true. Perhaps we end up individually separating our apps into physical devices based on preference instead of tradition. Neat stuff.

<comment><USER7> This, in my opinion, is the genius of Apple's choice of form factor. By omitting any physical buttons apart from meta-functionality, and allowing only full-screen applications, an iOS device essentially becomes dedicated hardware for whatever it happens to be running.

I remember marveling at the YouTube app the first time I picked up an iPad. It was the best YouTube experience I'd seen; it felt like I was holding a purpose-built device for YouTube viewing. The home button simply prepared it to morph into a different purpose-built device.

<comment><USER8> Video on the iPad is its killer app for - I don't check email with it, I do a fair amount of Web browsing and I have read a few books through Kindle on it - but with video (a ripped DVD, iPlayer or a movie rented from iTunes) it is simply wonderful.

[NB I noticed the other evening that an iPlayer at the distance I normally cradle it is larger than our 50" plasma at whatever distance that is from where I sit - no wonder it feels so immersive]

<comment><USER9> That mono sound really sucks you in

<comment><USER8> To watch an action movie with others I'd put it on the big screen and turn up the surround sound. Watching a history/science documentary by myself I prefer the iPad.

YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined._

That sentence is one instance of this sentence:

Developers have used <platformFunction> in ways <inventor> could never have imagined.

What better argument for open standards, APIs, and community cooperation?

<comment><USER11> Doesn't the fact that the iPad is itself a closed...errr, integrated...system counter your argument?

I'm all for open standards, API's and community cooperation of course. I just don't think that Apple is necessarily the antithesis.

The fundamental difference between Apple's position today to Microsoft's monoculture of the previous decade lies in their motivations.

Apple wants to make great stuff.

Microsoft wanted to control the world.

btw PG: I rfs8.html is not on the rfs.html page yet.

<comment><USER12> Microsoft's control was superficial, and that's how they like it. They don't want to control what you put on your computer, they just want you to pay them the same reasonable price.

Apple on the other hand clearly does care what you put on your iOS device, and in ways that go beyond a desire for good UX to a desire to control what is acceptable for society: [http://www.ncregister.com/blog/apple-finds- christianity-offe...](http://www.ncregister.com/blog/apple-finds-christianity- offensive-to-large-groups-of-people-removes-app)

<comment><USER11> Here's the difference:

You don't have to use any Apple device if you don't want to. _That_ choice is yours.

I spent many years working in places where you had to use Microsoft products. There was _no_ choice.

Microsoft didn't care what you put on your machine because all they care about is making money selling you stuff.

<comment><USER13> > I spent many years working in places where you had to use Microsoft > products. There was no choice.

That's ridiculous - you had choice - you could have chosen to work elsewhere. Can't get the same pay, conditions, etc? That's not the point.

These days there are plenty of jobs where you'll have to use a Mac because Jobs has dictated that you can only do iOS development on a (recent) Mac.

<comment><USER14> Microsoft's entire empire was built on platform lock-in and network effects -- from business to business, to customers, and to the homes of their employees. It was a staggeringly successful strategy that everyone copied, Apple being the most prominant exception. They've always made products to please the consumer who bought it and nobody else. Cherry pick counter-examples all you like, but this is pretty much how it was.

<comment><USER15> Really? I don't think that Apple has acted with such altruistic intentions. Certainly they're not just pumping out whatever they can to get more cash, but they're obviously working to make a profit.

If their number one priority was really to please the end-user, they'd be selling everything at cost, open-sourcing and giving away OS X for free, etc. People are generally greatly pleased when they can get cool stuff for cheap or free.

Apple wants to please their customers so much that Apple is deciding what apps their customers are allowed to use, because their customers are too stupid to correctly choose the application that works best for his/her needs. And if you attempt to circumvent this restriction, Apple will do everything in its power, technically and legally, to stop you from doing so.

Did Microsoft ever endeavor to do this? Personally, I find top-down control of the entire distribution channel more of a "platform lock-in" thing than encouraging the use of proprietary IE extensions.

It seems to me that Apple develops more to please Apple than to please end- users. The worship that Apple gets is so very silly, in my opinion.

<comment><USER14> It has nothing to do with altruism, it's about selling directly to the person using the product vs selling to someone who forces other people to use the product. Even if the seller is acting primarily out of self interest, users are going to end up much happier buying something because they _like it_ , and not because forces out of their control have conspired to make it their only viable option.

EDIT: here, straight from the horse's mouth [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=22hEtutXybw#t=520s)

<comment><USER16> Apple wouldn't be in existence without the billions it made volume selling to schools. From grammar school to graduate school I was forced to use an Apple/Mac.

Your comment, while mostly fiction IMO, does have a nice storyline.

<comment><USER14> Were you forced to buy one because your school had one? Was the school forced to buy them so they could interoperate with some other system?

<comment><USER15> Why do you keep insisting that people are "forced" to buy these things? Nobody has been forced to buy Microsoft. If your job required a Microsoft product, and you didn't want to buy Microsoft products, you could find a new job. You were not forced to buy from Microsoft any more than anyone has been "forced" to buy from Apple.

I've known plenty of people whose jobs didn't even require the use of a computer; if you are so picky about the software you use, perhaps you could consider a line of work that doesn't involve much computer usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > I wouldn't be surprised if by playing some clever tricks with the > accelerometer you could even replace the bathroom scale.

Galileo might take issue with that: <http://www.jimloy.com/physics/galileo.htm>

<comment><USER18> I'm glad there aren't too many dumb readers of HN. Otherwise we'd see a post 'I just stood on my iPad and now the screen is cracked'.

<comment><USER19> Well, the length of the crack would be proportional to the weight, and you could calculate the number from that :~)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Incidentally, I know the Wikipedia article has been deleted, but I'm assuming someone will fix that.

(Is this the current world record for deletionism, or have there been more egregious examples?)

<comment><USER21> It looks like there is some confusion over whether the correct term is etherialization or ephemeralization.

The wikipedia article on ephemeralization is somewhat more complete and what is linked from the page on Fuller. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization>

Other internet sources seem to indicate that ephemeralization is the term he used.

<comment><USER20> You're right. Fuller says that etherealization was a name suggested by someone else, but that he preferred to stick with ephemeralization. I fixed the essay. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What blows my mind is that I might have been able to see this coming in the 80's - but Buckminster Fuller saw it coming in 19 fricking _38_. That man was incredible.

<comment><USER20> It was already happening then. It's older than computers. In his day it meant e.g. replacing cams with variable speed motors.

<comment><USER22> Or, I suppose, Jacquard cards replacing cams in the 1800's. There's a lot more history to this than it's easy to see today. But Fuller's _insight_ , Good God.

<comment><USER23> Whenever people drop accolades upon historical figures (Fuller included) I always have to wonder if there is a bit of survivorship bias at play. I'm not saying that Fuller wasn't a complete genius (he definitely was), but I wonder how many other incorrect predictions, and other "geniuses", have been forgotten because they were incorrect.

<comment><USER24> How is this a bias? What value would it be to pay attention to all incorrect statements people have made over the years except to understand why they were wrong? People like fuller who had insight that seems to have lasted over time are interesting because we can learn something not just from the statements they made, but from _how they thought_ that gave them insight.

<comment><USER25> Imagine you have a set of people over history, all thinking in different ways, all making statements about the future. There's a good chance that some of those statements will be true, just by chance. If you don't account for that, you will be biased towards people who just got lucky (the survivors).

<comment><USER24> I understand the selection principle, but do we realistically think that's what's happening? Are there really lots of people recording detailed, insightful, coherent, highly varied, but wrong theories of the future that we are rejecting? Why would I have to imagine it if it were really going on?

<comment><USER26> Yes. "detailed, insightful, coherent, highly varied, but wrong theories of the future" are made all the time.

The really amazing things are not the genius predictions that are right and venerated, but the predictions that are wrong but the predictors are still venerated.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus> \- 1798 predictions of "gigantic inevitable famine" because of population growth. (Industrialization and technology have allowed population growth dramatically beyond Malthusian limits. The same arguments are still made today however.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Marxism> \- "the socialist revolution would occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations and once collective ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would disappear" <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/> "labour intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those which use less labour" (argue about whatever forces you want that have defeated socialism, but the argument continues)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager> Malthusian environmentalist Ehrlich predicts hundreds of millions of people starving to death in 1970s and 80s, and a genuine age of scarcity." He also loses 10-year bet against economist Simon. "All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events...Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker." [Wired]

Recorded, detailed, insightful, coherent, highly varied, completely wrong.

Oh, and Ehrlich won the MacArthur Foundation genius award AFTER his predictions were proven wrong...

kb

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I wouldn't be surprised if by playing some clever tricks with the accelerometer you could even replace the bathroom scale."

I'd be surprised. Very, very, very surprised.

<comment><USER28> I was mystified at this. I can't imagine a way to measure weight with accelerometer that doesn't involve spinning around in circles or jumping up and down on springs.

<comment><USER29> Isn't it obvious? Drop your iPad on the floor; it won't fall exactly downwards, but will veer ever so slightly off course towards you, and the amount of displacement is proportional to your mass. Done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The naming convention for these goes back to some research at Xerox PARC <http://www.ubiq.com/weiser/testbeddevices.htm>

Ubiquitious Computing is upon us, and much like the PC revolution, it will have been invented at Xerox and perfected at Apple.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just tweeted pg this but thought I'd say it here too. This is exactly what iRobot did when they saw the Roomba platform being taken apart and used for projects. They gave hackers the tools to use their platform and now sell quite a few Roomba based development kits instead of just plain old robot vacuums.

</comment><comment><USER32> Haven't we been calling them tablets for ages? People have been designing around the idea of tablets for decades. They had the ideas for the applications of tablets fifty years ago. I'm not sure I understand what this article says that is in any way original.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, I was nonplussed by the response to this piece. If it had 2007 stamped on it instead of 2010 I'd get it, but it's recycling ideas that have become commonplace over the last couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _The fact that you can change font sizes easily means the iPad effectively replaces reading glasses._

Really? I mean it might help someone not need reading glasses for the tasks they do on the iPad... but they still have to have them to read the dinner menu, instructions on the box of food, and so on. If you can't replace it fully how good is it? The iPhone replaced regular cell phones because of the fact you no longer need two devices.

Or... I read too much into that.

<comment><USER35> Or maybe an app that will immediately redisplay what the camera views in a larger format on the screen. Probably be a bit clunky, but might not be too bad. Might even help more for people who need high magnification for reading but whose distance vision is still good.

<comment><USER36> I bought my dad a Desire HD for it's big screen (the pixel resolution is the same as the standard Desire) and installed a magnifier app:

[http://www.appbrain.com/app/ideal- magnifier/com.ideal.magnif...](http://www.appbrain.com/app/ideal- magnifier/com.ideal.magnifier)

It not only magnifies, it lights up with the camera flash, it can reverse the black/white or add color filter if you find that easier, take a snapshot and let you zoom around it etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This isn't that surprising or revolutionary, it's all just part of the inevitable movement towards ubiquitous computing. It's obvious that we won't always be reliant upon one device's built-in sensors to constantly gather and supply relevant data in real-time, and inevitably we'll have an incredibly integrated network of real-time, physically collocated devices.

For now, tablets are great. And Apple is great at supplying them. But by no means does this mean anyone will be enslaved to Apple in the long term – someone else has the opportunity to create an open platform that enables any and all technologies to communicate with each other. Someone else will have to sell this platform to businesses, governments and, most importantly, consumers. And someone else will have to create the other, new interfaces by which we access and derive meaning from this data collection. And the challenge of preventing this from being too closed, too proprietary, is what will distinguish the best approach from the most profitable approach, and where we as users can choose to avoid a "client monoculture."

The tablet approach is just a step in an ongoing direction. It's way bigger than this.

</comment><comment><USER38> Replacing keys sounds like an interesting idea, but on one hand you have the problem that the tech needs to be rock-solid (if github is down I get mildly annoyed. If I can't get my door to open, I freeze to death) and you are competing against an already established technology that works really well (rfid tags) and isn't very expensive.

That said, I would love to hear more about your idea, if possible.

<comment><USER39> You _can_ still use a key with the YC startup replacing keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "For historical reasons, the device in your pocket or purse - the one that you use to browse the Internet and send email, is called a "phone." We need a new name for that thing." Scott Adams. He suggests calling them "head". <http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/phone/>

On a side note, I really need an innovation for keys, they scratch my iPhone! So, go, that new yc company, go!

<comment><USER41> In Sweden, a mobile phone is called a "mobil". In Germany it's called "handy".

<comment><USER40> In Turkey, they are called "cep telefonu" or "cep" in short, for "pocket phone" or "pocket".

<comment><USER42> And it's pronounced roughly `djep' or perhaps `shep'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This raises a question of how Apple will deal with "Made For iPod" interfaces that get increasingly generic. Right now they have a good framework for evaluating apps and hardware produced by one company to work together. They don't have a good way to understand hardware from company A working with software from company B.

What happens when someone wants to release a NES inspired D-Pad controller for iOS but wants to allow existing game makers to create apps that support it? Right now that is sort-of possible but it's very high friction.

Apple is a company who likes to build the whole stack from hardware to software; they feel like is necessary to create beautiful experiences. Will they compromise on this to facilitate a world where you can connect your iphone to any device in the house?

If they don't, progress may stagnate, hacks (like communication over wifi) will persist, and potentially they are giving up market share. Obviously they need to maintain the integrity and stability of the iOS devices but in my opinion they error too far on the side of caution.

</comment><comment><USER44> Tablets are obviously great, but does anyone think they'll really replace cameras or GPSes? It seems to me that tablets will cut the _bottom_ out of these markets (those with casual interest in photography or GPS or computing won't need to buy a dedicated device) but they'll never approach the quality of an SLR or a dedicated GPS. Or am I just being short-sighted?

<comment><USER45> The iPhone is already the biggest camera in number of pics on Flickr. I think the camera ( non slr) switch has largely already happened..

<comment><USER46> An interesting question for the DSLR makers is what they could learn from the tablet. The pictures are great, but especially at the entry level there's opportunity for improved interfaces and easier publishing. (<http://www.bythom.com/design2010.htm>) has some interesting ideas.

<comment><USER44> I think one of the biggest issues is _transfer_. It's SO easy to get your pictures off the iPhone -- no wires, no computer, dead-simple (hence the Flickr succes). High-end camera-makers would be wise to add 3G/wifi/cloud features, although the file-sizes of high-res photographs might be prohibitive for a while...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Doesn't the etherealization of hardware mean that we won't be referring to tablets, mobile devices, or laptops at all?

Isn't the only difference between an iPad and iPhone the screen size. So really, we're starting to refer to these devices based on size rather than power/memory/speed.

<comment><USER48> Why do you place more value on "power and memory", than the way people use a device (tablet vs. PC)?

Let me give you a clear example: my computer 10 years ago had 128 MB of RAM. My iPhone has 16 GB of RAM. Does that make my old computer not a computer?

My point is that the usage is what matters. I still use my computer to browse the web, compile code, run Excel and Word, etc.

<comment><USER49> pretty sure your iPhone doesn't have 16 GB of RAM- iPhone 4 apparently has 512 MB RAM...so still more than your old computer, but not so drastic.

<comment><USER48> To be pedantic, Flash memory is closer to DRAM than to disks, although it's used for storage. It has similar access cycles as DRAM, the chip architecture of controller plus array is closer than that of a HDD.

<comment><USER50> Surely it is more important what it is used for, rather than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think they're still just computers, and will be thought of as such. Sure, they're computers you hold in your hand, not the kind that sit on your desk. Gaming consoles and set top boxes are morphing into general purpose computers too. Those are computers that sit on a table near the TV. But they're all computers the same.

<http://luigimontanez.com/2010/the-computer-for-the-room/>

<comment><USER52> "Computers" still get viruses, require backups done by the user to be safe from data loss, have out-of-date software packages (each with its own broken update mechanism), take ages to boot up, are clunky and slow...the list goes on.

Sure, none of those are specific to the "computer" form factor. But they are all things that people think of when they think about their desktop computer (some mac and linux users excluded, of course: but that's still only 10% of the computer-using population). NONE of those items I just listed are problems with any "Tablet" computer.

The form factor is different, but so is the very model of user software and computing.

<comment><USER53> iPhones: * Have the potential for Viruses (don't call it an exploit it's a jailbreak is not great security reporting) * Reqquire backups done by the user to be safe from data loss * Since I'm currently rocking a 3G running IOS4 -- are "clunky and slow"

Of your 5 points - boot up and software update are reasonable. The other 3 can be absolutely issues.

<comment><USER4> That's not the point. Has anyone actually made a virus? No. Will somebody? Yes. Are they perceived as better in that regard? Yes.

The point is that they are not _perceived_ in that way, so people are not scared of them. It doesn't matter how true it actually is, it matters what people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Other stuff being replaced by smart devices: watches, alarm clocks, portable radios, cheap digital cameras, spirit levels, dictionaries and perhaps soon your wallet and physical mass-produced books. Looking at some of the creative stuff people do with mounting their iPad in vehicles, perhaps iPad-like devices will replace traditional dials in cars in the near future.

 _The only reason we even consider calling them "mobile devices" is that the iPhone preceded the iPad. If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear._ Hence the joke calling the iPad a giant iPhone. That was a pretty good description. If the future of telephony is VoIP, then that is pretty much bang on.

<comment><USER55> > _"perhaps iPad-like devices will replace traditional dials in cars in the > near future."_

The dashboards of the near future are going to start piping a lot of control over to paired devices, but I think they'll maintain their current level of sophistication in and of themselves. But those paired devices will be a huge opportunity.

And in the same arena: automotive diagnostic machines are going to be replaced. (e.g. OBD tools becoming an OBD->bluetooth adapter + software) As well as repair and service manuals. (Who needs a book to tell them when to rotate the tires if the car tells your phone?)

<comment><USER54> I'm actually working on a college project getting OBD-II diagnostics to your i-device. Some amazing stuff avaliable already e.g: <http://www.devtoaster.com/products/rev/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Last summer, I rather surprised myself by using my android phone as a level while working on a backyard building project.

Also in the summer, I was camping when my flashlight died en route to the washroom. On the side of the path, I downloaded and installed a flashlight app, and then used it to find my way.

I volunteer in an after-school guitar class at my son's school, and use my phone to tune the kids' guitars before class starts.

A few weeks ago, a website I maintain went nonresponsive and I used my phone to ssh into the server and restart apache.

Just for fun, I installed an app that measures my heart rate using the camera.

Just five years ago, if you had suggested these uses for a phone, I would have thought you were nuts.

<comment><USER57> My Nokia can do flashlight years ago without any 3rd-party app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Am I the only person who thinks the iOS usability is declining as its feature set and resulting complexity grows? It's still simple for me, but while my mother could handle the original iPhone, I think she'd get a little confused by the current one. (Double and triple clicks on the home button, cut and paste UI popping up unexpectedly, etc.)

<comment><USER59> Of course the complexity will increase as a function of the number of features.

However, I'd make the following claims:

(1) Some of the functions are simply not that used. You can get by perfectly well without knowing what double and triple clicks on the home button, for example, If you don't know they exist, you will never even notice.

(2) iOS has less features than Android and arguably this makes it somehow less powerful but also less confusing for my mom (e.g. no task manager, no intents).

(3) Switching to a Mac was actually quite challenging coming from PC land ("where's maximize?", "where's a working Alt-Tab?", etc). I'd say the usability still kicks in as far as how easy it is to do your job for most after the learning curve has passed. Your mileage may vary, but I find myself enjoying using my Mac more than I ever did using Windows on my PC for usual tasks, and that's part of what makes it usable for me. I'd expect a similar phenomenon with iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think a really disrupting and interesting field will be tablets as replacement for textbooks in education. The possibilities to create amazing educational material are endless.

On the other side, you have textbook publishers, who generally learn a lot of money with ever slightly changing editions and will do a lot to not see that income stream dying...

<comment><USER61> A few years back I was working for a supplier to academic libraries, who also did a lot of ebook sales to this market.

In my final days there they were just starting to get interest from some institutions who wanted to buy Sony eBook Readers (as the best devices then on the market) preloaded with 30-50 books, then dish these out to students on some high-cost courses. They felt the students would prefer this (a not unreasonable belief with that volume of material) and it'd be easier for them to manage.

So, yes, this sort of device (in the broad sense) will very likely replace textbooks at least partially. I saw it happening first hand a few years ago and see no reason it should have slowed down since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> > Many if not most of the special-purpose objects around us are going to be > replaced by apps running on tablets.

I respectfully disagree.

The trend for specialised vs. generalised devices seems to go in cycles over a period of a few years, in a similar way to the classic thick vs. thin client cycle. Consider games consoles vs. gaming on PCs, the iPod vs. mobile phones with media storage, etc. Neither extreme is ever going to take over entirely, and the bias moves as technology evolves.

I think this is mostly driven by trying to balance convenience and power. When new tools come along that are generic enough to make a certain broad class of jobs easier, we tend to jump on them. Many jobs get moved to those devices, and specialist devices that used to perform those jobs become obsolete. On the other hand, if you get too generic, you start to introduce waste and therefore inefficiency, which pushes things back the other way. Also, if your generic device is OK at doing lots of things but not particularly good at any of them, there is still a market for specialised devices that do a particular job better because their priorities are more appropriate.

We used to write software that ran on desktop PCs, but it turned out that a lot of practically useful software is essentially a simple user interface to a simple database. Native applications had common pain points in this field that could be overcome by hosting the code and data centrally, in areas like installation/updating/backup. Thus Web apps were born.

However, today, we're seeing major players in the industry trying to turn just about everything into such an application, and they are failing. It turns out that while Web apps are great for presenting relatively simple database UIs, they are relatively weak at performing most other tasks. Cloud computing is a pretty direct extension of the same argument.

I suspect things will go the same way with phones/tablets/mobile devices. A generic mobile device with a bunch of common built-in peripherals and sensors will solve a wide variety of real world problems, and thus various kinds of mobile app have been born. No doubt many more variations will follow over the next few years, as these devices support new functionality that was not previously available and ideas will spring up to take advantage of that functionality. The devices will be _good enough_ for these purposes and will be widely adopted as a result.

On the other hand, Swiss army phones could easily start to suffer from both overspecification in breadth of features and underspecification in performance of individual features. For example, the suggestion in the article to replace reading glasses with a smart phone seems unrealistic and oversimplified to me: it sounds great initially, given that we have cameras and screens on these devices, but then you consider the vast range of different reasons that people are prescribed glasses, the consequent individuality of each prescription, and the fact that glasses do not generally require holding in your hand to use them.

In short, I'm afraid I don't buy pg's argument here at all. A certain class of applications, some of which already exist and some of which will be developed, will probably move to handheld multipurpose devices. However, specialised tools aren't going away any time soon, because any generic device is always going to be either a poor replacement for a good tool or too highly specified to be efficient for a broad market, even if the technology exists to combine high-quality implementations of all the required features within the required space and cost constraints in the first place.

<comment><USER63> I think you make a good argument, but miss the mark on one important point. The specialization/generalization you're talking about seems to apply to apps, not the devices themselves.

Devices like the iPhone and iPad replace a _lot_ of things; the examples of glasses really wasn't a strong one. Consider this list of things being replaced: phone, mp3 player, GPS, maps, compass, books, wrist watch, stop watch, alarm, photo album, voice recorder, notepad + pen, calculator. From now on, _most_ people with a tablet device will use that instead of anything on the list _most_ of the time (except probably notepad + pen). These things will just never be nearly as popular as they once were, and the list is very incomplete.

It's just too convenient to have all those things condensed into one easy-to- use device, and in many (but certainly not all) cases the tablet is better than the device it's replacing.

<comment><USER64> An iPod makes a terrible compass, wrist watch, photo album, notepad, calculator and or camera. The advantage is a bad X is better than no X. So, while most people may end up using their cell phone as a stopwatch, people that need a good stopwatch will still buy it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> What's the YC funded startup which is a replacement for keys? As in "We funded one startup that's replacing keys."

<comment><USER66> I know you specifically asked about the YC startup, but there are a few really cool lock-related startups out there. There have been a lot of NFC (near-field communication) startups popping up for the last few years, but those require special hardware in the phone, so a company (I can't recall which one at the moment -- sorry) came up with a novel approach: have an app on the phone that plays a series of tones on the speaker, which the lock receives and uses as an audio key. While this could very well be dangerous if not designed properly, it's a really novel approach, and could very well be more secure than existing electronic locks; I know that in the hotel lock industry at least, security is horrendous as it stands, so hopefully this could help there.

<comment><USER65> I stayed at the airbnb corporate apartment and mentioned a reprogrammable lock as an awesome upgrade to their service back in 2009. I hacked something crappy together with a schlage lockset for my own use, but ended up having to go to Afghanistan a couple weeks later. I actually prefer the usability of what I had to how the lockitron appears to work.

Hotel locks are amazingly lame. Audio is an interesting output from the phone; flashing the display in front of a photosensor in a pattern would be cool too.

Mechanical locks are basically obsolete in the age of digital photographs and rapid prototyping...if you let me look at a mechanical key for a second, I can make you a perfect copy in 15 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I look forward to the day when fat people everywhere will pulverize their iPads using them as bathroom scales.

</comment><comment><USER68> In 2001, Bill Gates said that by 2006 tablets would be the most popular form factor for PCs. They obviously weren't back then. It's funny how Apple changes ecosystems.

[http://gizmodo.com/5324866/vintage-bill-gates-predicts- table...](http://gizmodo.com/5324866/vintage-bill-gates-predicts-tablets-to- be-the-most-popular-form-of-pc-sold-in-america)

<comment><USER52> I think MS could have delivered on the prediction if they had changed their software to match the form factor. All Windows tablets run a (basically) stock Windows XP / Windows 7. If the iPad used a (basically) stock OS X, it would not have sold! Too many small buttons, mouse-centered experience, etc.

Apple's key was realizing that the software had to change, too.

<comment><USER43> This is key. Another interesting observation is that in 2006 tablet manufacturers probably thought it vitally important that users could _print_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> _The fact that you can change font sizes easily means the iPad effectively replaces reading glasses._

I disagree. Reading glasses are close to the eye and magnify without sacrificing the amount of text to viewable surface area. People who need to significantly increase the font size (i.e. the same people who would use reading glasses) are going be constantly interacting with the iPad to tell it to pan/scroll the viewable (magnified) surface around so that they can see everything. Pagination is only a partial workaround (still have to interact, just deal with the large increase in page turns) and only makes sense with text-type data (e.g. pictures lend themselves to panning, not paging).

</comment><comment><USER70> In general, the tablet enables all the ideas that people have had over the years that were perfect "except you'd have to carry around a computer to run the thing". I'd love to see communications protocols and hardware (next gen bluetooth?) developed to allow devices that need a computer to wirelessly use the one in my pocket.

I'd also like to see more innovation in the space where users hold tablets while they're facing a television set. The tablet-as-remote-control where the program listings are on the tablet. The tablet-as-gaming-controller where you and your opponent both have tablets (draw a path on a map to move a character instead of guiding the character turn-by-turn).

<comment><USER71> I'm trying to think of something where I'd need more computing power in my pocket - most apps seem to either have enough power in the device itself or draw the extra needed compute/storage from the cloud... just wondering what you have in mind.

<comment><USER70> I'm saying that many things you own would work better if they had a little computing power in them, or if they had access to a computer. So, for instance, it would be too expensive to put a PID controller in your toaster oven. That's why there's a simple thermostat and a simple timer in there. But imagine if your toaster could send temperature data in a bluetooth-esque way to your tablet. The tablet does the proportional-integral-derivative calculations and sends commands back to the toaster. So you get all of the benefits of PID controlled temperature without the cost of the PID controller.

Another idea (likely in the works somewhere): tablet as guitar effects pedal.

<comment><USER71> Interesting thought. I don't know anything about PID controllers - are they so compute intensive that they need a processor significantly more expensive than a Bluetooth controller?

On the guitar effects pedal: Apple has actually run an iPad ad that included a shot of a guitar plugged into an iPad running an "amplifier emulator" (not sure what the right term is for that sort of thing). Not sure which app it is, but it's probably $10 or less. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Tablet is the wrong term. In fact I fear the use of it becoming _the_ term to use as I think it immediately prunes potential avenues of exploration. I think mobile or personal device is a better term as its really about the intent of the device, which is to be with you always. Tablet really seems to describe the form factor. I'm not convinced that the form factor is all that important.

<comment><USER73> Form factor means everything; look at how many new iPad only apps there are, strictly due to increased screen size. Jobs made this clear when he nixed the 7" iPad.

<comment><USER72> Let me be clearer. I don't mean form factor isn't important in general. I mean form factor isn't the underlying principle that unites these various devices.

Is the Droid Pro a tablet? What about the rumored Playstation Phone? Tablet seems to imply a form factor, and I don't think that's what is important in how we categorize these devices.

It's like if we called PCs "beige boxes" when they came out or if we called TVs "two through thirteen dial machines".

I expect the form factors for these devices to continue to evolve and improve, yet I think the general category of device will be the same (much like how a 3D LED HDTV is still a TV, although looks very different than an old B&W TV from the 50s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Here's the thing: people who aren't geeks often like and even _prefer_ single- purpose devices. There is, as has been noted (see [http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the- Bo...](http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box- Presentation/)), a "pocket exception", but for larger devices, people who aren't us are often intimidated or confused by devices that do many things.

And of course there are dangers in making a machine more general-purpose than it needs to be. Machines that are too general-purpose becomes more susceptible and sometimes tempting targets for hacking. (As usual, ground well-trod by xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/463/>, <http://xkcd.com/801/>)

<comment><USER75> This doesn't explain the iPhone though.

<comment><USER9> "pocket exception," also trendiest phone (phones are fashion accessories as well as devices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I always thought of these devices as 'casual computing'

</comment><comment><USER77> As much as the software is the _window to opportunity_ for these devices, the hardware is just as important. Apple's form factor is exceptional! Their Industrial Design sense and abilities is one of the most important recipes to their success, I think.

Google unfortunately discounts this, or rather, is late to understand how important UX is in the tangible world as much as the intangible. When you pickup a phone, tablet rather, your first impressions are based on the physical device. The intrinsic value during this interaction is irreplaceable by any software, no matter how good.

</comment><comment><USER78> Was Paul trying to coin the word "tablet" for these kind of devices? I don't know how this is anything new, I have read of the iPad "tablet" or "tablet computer" many times.

</comment><comment><USER79> The real thing that makes these "tablets" interesting is the number of features they have packed into them. The "ease of use" that people are talking about when referencing Apple's products is just a part of Apple's marketing for their devices. Android (and Maemo and MeeGo and etc) devices are much more capable and much more hackable. Why the praise for such a bland device such as the i-OSes when there's an awesome OS and device market sitting right next to it?

<comment><USER80> "Capable" and "hackable" are completely different than "ease of use". Apple really does have great ease of use (for normal people), and part of how they get it is by reducing the other two.

<comment><USER81> I continue to disagree with that concept. Mac OS X would not suddenly become better for normal users if Apple ripped out Terminal.app and forbade anything that replaced its functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Here's another good example of etherealization: With Skype one can get a US (and a few other countries) number that gets routed to my skype id.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it's clear that Steve Jobs is fully aware of this. It's why he _changed the name of the company to Apple Inc_ , just before announcing the iPhone - he wasn't indicating that he was going to start building hundreds of different consumer electronics products - he was telling the world that a the iPhone and it's variants would replace most of them.

</comment><comment><USER83> One thing that now seems ridiculous is the bank authenticator tokens, the blizzard authentication apps are a great example

</comment><comment><USER84> Apple's tablets are just one aspect of this etherealization. The real hero here is software. From the ability to create a physical three dimensional object to the manipulation of DNA - software makes it possible.

What's reassuring is that Apple doesn't have control over all the hardware interfaces that make (and will make) this possible.

</comment><comment><USER80> Another possible recipe for a startup (not saying this would be easy) is to find an important way that Apple is handicapping their devices and overcome it on Apple's own platform in a way that Apple will allow. If you can do that, users will love it and buy your product.

<comment><USER85> >If you can do that, users will love it and buy your product.

I'm trying now to remember a story relayed here about a company who developed a product that bested Apple, Apple considered buying them/it but the negotiator dropped the ball or something and then Apple wiped them out by besting them.

Anyway, if you beat Apple then they'll either lock you out (why handicap it if they'd let you carry on) or integrate your idea working around your IP. You're going to need lots of IP/anti-monopoly lawyers. You might get bought out too, especially if it's cheaper than there end of the court cases ... I guess what I'm saying is that building hardware on top of Apple's platform seems it would always be limited in some way.

But I'm probably wrong.

<comment><USER36> You could be referring to the story about how Panic's Audion nearly became the basis of iTunes, rather than Soundjam which they bought instead, though it is quite an old story.

<http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/>

<comment><USER85> Yup, that was it (extract):

        "Hi Steve, it's Cabel, from Panic."

        "Oh, hey Cabel! Nice to meet you. So tell me, what'd you think of iTunes?"

        "Well, I think it looks great! You guys have done a great job with it. But, you know, I still feel we'll do all-right with Audion."

        "Oh, really? That's interesting, because honestly? I don't think you guys have a chance."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> I'm a bit surprised that there was no mention of Jef Raskin's information appliance concept

[http://gizmodo.com/5452501/the-apple-tablet-interface- must-b...](http://gizmodo.com/5452501/the-apple-tablet-interface-must-be-like- this)

</comment><comment><USER87> The other question is for Apple - what other sorts of addressable hardware could be added to the iPad to make it even more versatile (temperature sensor, various transducers, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER88> Typo in the last line: "and inch" should be "an inch"

<comment><USER20> fixed; thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I just can't wait for the Kinect sensors to be an open standard with a commododized component in every electronics we have.

</comment><comment><USER90> I fancy the term "communicator," personally.

</comment><comment><USER91> seems like there's still a lot of work todo, and a lot of room for growth. A survey of how people use their ipads, coincidentally from today: <http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-survey>

</comment><comment><USER2> FYI, the link to RFS 8 is broken.

<comment><USER20> I know; I'm making that page now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> In Spanish the word "tabletas" is already used for this.

</comment><comment><USER93> i wish there is direct rss feed for the essays other than some intermediary channel.

<comment><USER94> <http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/feeds/pgessays.rss>

<comment><USER93> That feed doesn't update when the article is published. That's what i was trying to say. Anyway, its not that important to get real time. Oh, the signs of my urge to be informed under the influence of real-time web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> computer

minicomputer

microcomputer

...nanocomputer?

<comment><USER95> That'd make sense, but "nanocomputer" already has a meaning: a nanotech computing device.

<comment><USER14> When that field produces a viable mainstream product, they can have "picocomputer".</comment></comment></comment>


Odesk is not that bad - <AUTHOR>

there is a never ending stream of complaints and horror stories about odesk.
my experience is different.
I am using odesk for the last 4 years spent there tens of thousands of dollars,
most of the time it is incredibly useful. granted i had some failures but with "normal" hiring I had higher failure rate and each failure is much more expensive.
the biggest power of odesk is the speed of availability. within minutes i get many qualified contractors. ready to work.
speed unmatched.
last week i ordered a logo from a contractor on odesk and 24 hours later costing us 44 dollars, i got a logo for my new startup. (there was a full process of selection) this logo would cost me hundreds of dollars going the normal path and will take forever. (you can see the logo at www.glue.im)
a while ago i got in trouble while administrating a server, 15 minutes later I had a great guy, a knowledgeable system admin to the rescue - problem solved. he also showed me what i did wrong $12. now i use him to save my time.
as you can see English is not my native language, 3 hours before deadline for ycombinator submission, I need a quick English fixer 30 minutes later Evan from florida is with me on skype going over the document. $50 incredible job for the time he had.
ramen profitability - at glue (http://glue.im) we try to keep burn rate low while supercharging our code writing. with Odesk and our charm,
we keep burn rate < 5k while having 3 full time employees writing code + 1.5 founders. (the other half founder is writing this) we develop our mobile app on Android, iOS, and Tornado backend together.
with a diverse team from England, Ukraine and Bulgaria. <comment><USER2> > last week i ordered a logo from a contractor on odesk and 24 hours later > costing us 44 dollars, i got a logo for my new startup.

And your logo looks like a $44/24hr logo. It's unbalanced, uses simple stock colors, stock fonts and was probably tossed together in a matter of minutes. It looks like something a professional design firm would whip up internally as a way to start building mood boards and ideas to build off of.

> this logo would cost me hundreds of dollars going the normal path and will > take forever.

No it wouldn't. If you're typically paying hundreds of dollars for something that looks like this you're either very bad at writing a branding/logo/identity brief or you're hiring the wrong people.

> there is a never ending stream of ... horror stories about odesk.

And your story is now one of them.

<comment><USER3> >And your story is now one of them.

MDX, I fear that you're being flagged only because you took a stance (go you! :) ), and that stance doesn't keep the 'bigger picture' in mind. Allow me to elaborate -

 _Any_ branding around that price is going to yield something that simply says "Try us out. We're serious about what we're doing, but we haven't reached success yet". Once more successful, sure, they should look to spend thousands on branding; it'll be worth it. But even if the OP had spent twice the amount (still <$100!), they would still be delivering the same message.

What's more important - and this is the OP's argument, and which I am supporting - is that his Odesk experience was positive because of the time saved, i.e. the "Ship Shit Quickly Principle". The cost difference for finding an equivalent logo (say, -$20 or -$30) is minimal compared to the opportunity cost of spending time searching for such a logo. Instead, the logo "does the job" \- it's not perfect (or even good), but it presents a fun, memorable brand and getting it done quickly (which is what Odesk allowed him to do) allows OP to focus on the other important facets of their startup (which hasn't even launched yet).

Of course, _I_ might have the 'bigger picture' wrong or even share a flawed view with the OP. In that case, I invite explanations against this view.

P.s., OP, and this may not be your priority... but I have no idea what glue.im does; "gluing phones together" doesn't mean anything to me :( (though is a fun catchphrase that I'm sure will make sense :) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That logo makes me so uncomfortable the more I look at it.

I think Odesk is probably decent for certain businesses, but I can't imagine using it for a startup. You get tacky, inconsistent results.

<comment><USER5> Can you describe what's wrong with it? I think it looks fine.

<comment><USER6> Looks unbalanced to my eye ... I'm untrained though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see why designers/developers complain about Odesk and other freelancing sites.

If you're a freelancer, oDesk is awesome. It doesn't mean you have to charge any less than you normally would. When I hire people on oDesk, I filter all the developers that charge a low rate. I've found they are not worth the headache.

So don't think you need to compete on price, there are a lot of contractors like me looking for high quality designers/developers and are willing to pay for it.</comment>


How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2015/06/24/how-american-fans-pirated-japanese-cartoons-into-careers/ <comment><USER2> I enjoy watching various anime but am by no means into Japanese culture, nor the American culture that is into Japanese culture. However, when I was first introduced to anime by a friend (minus Spirited Away) which was Naruto, I was introduced to the English-subbed versions even though English dubs were available. After watching a few episodes of listening to Japanese and reading the subs, I thought it would be a good idea to skip the effort of reading and watch the English dubbed version instead.

That was a horrible experience. The English dubbed voices seemed to lack passion or say things in the wrong tones (or just be monotone!). Blue Gender immediately comes to mind as another painful English dub experience.

So, that is how my teenage self wound up pirating a lot of anime: because the fansubbing was extremely good and I could pick up on Japanese vocal intonation. I could actually tell what was a joke, and what was anger, instead of wondering when someone would have feelings at all in their English monotone!

In the case of Ergo Proxy, the additional notes in the fansubbing really helped understand the bigger dialogue. Without it I probably would not have held that particular show in has high of a regard.

The only consistent exception to the poor English dubs has been Miyazaki. Heck, Liam Neeson was a voice in Ponyo!

<comment><USER3> I would agree that a lot of english dubs are bad, but I consider Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell (Stand Alone Complex, not Arise) to be the two exceptions. The casting decisions were very well made.

<comment><USER4> I would add Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note to the list of well-dubbed content!

<comment><USER5> I'm hearing Baccano! dub is even _better_ than the original, though I haven't gotten around to that one yet myself.

<comment> james-skemp I think I went back to the Japanese, but I've heard this as well, and found the episodes I did watch to be quite enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is my story basically.

I started getting interested in anime in mid 90s. I set up dial-up Internet (Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.11!). I met this guy from Germany online who had somehow managed to get Ranma 1/2 on VHS tapes, which he graciously agreed to mail to me in Finland. I knew a guy who was into video editing, so he had the setup to be able to copy them so I could mail the tapes back to him.

From there it took many years before I knew enough Japanese to be of any use to anyone. But once I started to get there (and with a ton of help from my now wife), I skipped the fansubbing part and instead made a demo manga translation and sent it in a professional looking folder to two companies who were doing the official translations. I thought it was worth the shot, but didn't really expect a response. But to my astonishment BOTH agreed.

Soon I found myself regularly visiting the publisher for new work and had a professional translator as my mentor. I was getting paid to translate manga, it was my dream come true.

But after the dream ended the hard work started. I was surprised by the speed at which I was expected to translate these books. I was supposed to do 2-3 books every month! Take a look at a manga, see how many pages there are and you are not just translating the dialogue, but also explaining all the sound effects floating in the background.

Around this time social networks started releasing their APIs and I got into that world instead and left the translation work for others. That was a great choice, as I started making WAY more money doing that than I ever could have with translation. But I'm glad I gave manga translation a shot, as now it won't be left nagging as an unfulfilled dream in the back of my mind.

We translated the complete series Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and some other manga before "retiring" from this profession :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Piracy has never been about cost as much as it has been about convenience. For a long time the fansubbers simply offered a better product; shows from now rather than five years ago, with better-quality translations, and often better-quality video. Fans wanted to support the industry - I know more than one person with a shelf full of official English DVDs, still in their shrinkwrap - but the quality wasn't there.

Even today, as someone who takes the underground to work, a streaming service is no substitute for the incredibly well-oiled machine of fansubbing.

<comment><USER8> One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.

<comment><USER7> Matching the speakers' hair is useful, but too often notes end up as showing off. A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language, not explain every reference.

<comment><USER9> > A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching > something in its original language

It's my feeling that this should include what would be automatically understood by natives.

I have never found this to go too far - I have always wanted more local context.

<comment><USER10> My opinion on this has changed over the years. I now tend to look at any translation which needs to include translation notes on-screen as having failed, usually because they explain something that isn't _absolutely_ necessary to know, which isn't a good enough reason in my book to distract from the dialogue.

If you can't explain what you need to in the translation itself, just don't. Or include a TLNote.txt if you _really_ must.

<comment><USER11> what made you change your opinion? I love it when there are translation notes on screen. It feel inclusive to explain to me what's going on.

I can't speak Japanese, am not embedded within current popular Japanese culture and did not go to a Japanese high school and therefore there are references which I will not understand. These include jokes that rely on wordplay such as puns and malapropisms, and historical notes about Japanese history, geography and society which I am mostly ignorant of.

Without those translation notes, you exclude me from understanding anything but the surface of what's going on.

<comment><USER10> Many fansubbers didn't know where to draw the line, or didn't have very good editors, so sometimes you got the situation where there were so many TL notes they were stacking on top of each other.

Others have noted the most egregious TL notes ("Keikaku means plan" and so on) but there are some other bad examples, including "This is a reference to..." (not even everyone in Japan is going to get references either) and even a few explaining what the _English_ words they used meant.

There are many fewer these days, thankfully.

>jokes that rely on wordplay such as puns and malapropisms

While many disagree, I like translations that attempt to localise these. You can never get literal accuracy this way, but you can make a fun, entertaining and engrossing script. You might say it's not the job of the fansubbers to write the script, but it is their job to translate the one they have, and the best translations in my view are ones that take intended audience into account.

I watch anime comedies to laugh, not to read an explanation of what the joke is and why it's funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >"Now it's all about who has the fanciest typesettings and who has the wackiest karaoke lyrics for the opening songs," Nadelman pointed out. "They just want to have bragging rights to say this is their version of it, even though the same show will be available on Crunchyroll, or Funimation, or a number of other streaming sites."

It is true that many fansubbing groups now (much like in the old days) compete on who has the flashiest karaoke and typesetting, but I'd say it's unwise to completely fob off fansubbing in 2015.

The article goes into more detail on this, but video quality and encoding is generally still better on fansubs than on streaming sites, largely because anime fansubs tend to be on the cutting edge of video encoding. MKV has been the container of choice for years, 10-bit colour has been around for a few years now, h264 encoding even longer. You could argue whether this justifies the illegal fansub, but there are people who will give this as a justification.

There are still arguments over translation. Crunchyroll and Funimation have their "good" and not-so-"good" translators. The question is - do you keep it literal (perhaps keeping some Japanese idioms and ideas intact, causing confusion for some in your Western audience and possibly breaking immersion somewhat) or go more liberal (translate some concepts into Western concepts, such that it may not literally match the original script word for word, but the idea will be the same). I tend to go for the liberal side because I want to be entertained, not frustrated by concepts I know nothing of, but as you could imagine the arguments are fraught. Comedy is an especially difficult genre to translate successfully.

Also, America is still provided for better than other English-speaking territories in this regard. What's most annoying to me is when a company like Funimation picks up English-speaking streaming rights for a show, then restricts that to US/Canada. UK/Ireland/Australia often gets left out in the cold with legal streaming like this.

I'm kind of happy that fansubs are still around to keep the legal sites on their toes.

</comment><comment><USER12> French japanimation enthusiasts over 30 probably remember how official dubbers for Fist of the North Star/Hokuto No Ken in the late 80's actually took pride in providing bogus dubbing (with bad puns, changes in the dialog and purposely egregious voice-overs) because they thought "the show should not have been brought to young French kids" and just didn't care [1]

This is precisely why you need enthusiasts providing quality subs, because those anonymous people actually care about the body of work, being fans themselves. That the anime industry in the US was smart enough to recognize and offer them jobs is a sign of hope. Good on them.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jfBEgtc88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jfBEgtc88) (this is NOT a parody, this is the ACTUAL dub for the anime series).

<comment><USER13> This kind of dubbing wasn't exclusive to anime in that era, publishers basically bought the rights to cheap visual content and produced their own stories and scripts on top of it for maximum impact in their respective local markets.

Germany: Die Zwei / The Pesuaders [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persuaders!#Redubbed_versi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persuaders!#Redubbed_versions)

Most famous and polarizing was probably the reworking of three different original programmes (Macross, Southern Cross and MOSPEADA) into _Robotech_

Earliest example might have been [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Up,_Tiger_Lily%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Up,_Tiger_Lily%3F)

but the french perfected this sub-genre in the 70s:

[http://physicalimpossibility.com/2011/05/22/movie-rip- offs-a...](http://physicalimpossibility.com/2011/05/22/movie-rip-offs-a-users- guide-detournement-and-dub-parodies/)

<comment><USER14> Also - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers!

<comment><USER15> They rather quickly started collaborating and I understand that now most sentai shows are produced from the beginning in cooperation with the American studio they expect to be subbing in American non-costume scenes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> """piracy is really a last resort for when they really love the content but can't get it any other way."""

This is very true and a pretty strong indicator that you are leaving money on the table by ignoring a customer segment. I've reduced my media consumption a ton but know enough people who stream TV shows (technically not illegal) they'd gladly pay for. The problem: they want to watch them in the original language (typically English) and when they are released.

Incidentally that's also a segment that is willing and able to pay for that (for starters knowing the language means they are usually better educated than average which c.p. means a higher income) but the problem is it's just not available to buy. Pay TV is sloooowly getting there (I could watch GoT instantly on a pay TV channel for example)

<comment><USER17> Yup, that's exactly it. On-demand (not just immediately after release; sometimes you learn about already screened or even finished series and you want to start watching it), downloadable (optical media simply sucks, doubly so when they get scratched) and in original language instead of some crappy translation. There are ways in my country in which you can download like this in a technically legal way, with consistent download speed, simple interface and a better quality than streaming service - you only pay for gigabytes of transfer you use. There're tremendous amounts of money going to such services instead of publishers and authors because official sources can't be bothered to do media distribution in a viewer-friendly way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The anime translation business was on the brink of disaster until crunchyroll came around. They just could not sell DVDs of episodes that anime fans could afford and if took them 2 years to get product out and fansubs hit the street in 2 days the commercial product can't survive.

Note there is a genre of anime inspired video games (particularly for the PS vita) that I imagine are doing well commercially and there the complaints about bad voice acting do not apply. For instance the voices of Neptune and noire in the current gen of hyperdimensional neptunia are better in the English than Japanese in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER19> I too was a fansubber in the mid 90s.

It started innocently enough when I asked a friend for Akira tape and instead he gave me a badly but sufficiently subbed copy of Kimagure Orange Road from infamous quantity fansubbers Arctic Animation.

That lead to a local chapter of Cal-Animage (University of California anime club), where I eventually became an officer in charge of acquisitions and fansubbing.

At first I traded 3rd or 4th generation VHS tapes, but that was not to last.

I scoured obscure Japanese family stores in greater LA for new finds. I bought a LD player, a number of S-VHS recorders not to mention regular VHS and Beta decks.

I shelled out $500 for a Genlock for PC. I secretly envied those with Amigas whose equipment was better suited than PC.

I suppose the highlight was subbing of Evangelion episode 1. a week after a release in Japan and showing it at the club.

Reportedly I was responsible for kickstarting Fushigi Yuugi when my raw copies made it to Tomodachi Anime who were the big time fansubbers back then.

There was no money in it, most reputable fansubbers wouldn't charge more than a buck over reproduction costs and offered an option of sending in your own tapes.

Fansubbing was a team effort as it was rare for a single person to know enough Japanese and also possess the technical chops for editing/timing, producing.

Fansubbing seemed to start to die when pretty much everything seemed to be picked up by commercial companies but apparently it has never gone away.

These days I seldom watch anime, but when I do it usually is a dubbed version with my kids. And I realize that all those sub/dub wars were a bit silly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Translation is an overcrowded and not very generously paying field, especially in media. It's cool these guys can do it for a living but I gave up on it, personally.

</comment><comment><USER20> What really makes me love fansubs is when they include the honorifics when mentioning names. There's a lot of meaning that is put behind various honorifics, and that is lost when they are absent.

I'd say the largest reason to download anime from fansubbers rather than stream it is that you become part of a culture that dedicates their life to anime. It can be rewarding, time consuming, and you might end up taking Japanese classes hoping to one day translate anime and manga.

<comment><USER15> I speak Japanese and I think putting those in is a distraction. That is one of many deep nuances in Japanese that can't be directly translated into English but needs to be considered in the translation's gestalt. Your choice of personal pronoun, use of end-of-sentence particles, and choice to use polite, extra-polite, or casual expressions also conveys a lot about you and your relationship to people. However, nobody wants to read gibberish like "Boku am coming-masu now yo!!" because it's not English.

These issues are hardly unique to translation from Japanese, by the way.

<comment><USER20> There are times when the plot changes and for example, in a romance, characters may switch from using surnames to first names. I've seen many low quality subtitles where the character will use another character's last name, but the translation will use the first name. While it does require some knowledge of Japanese (or other Asian cultures), it does contribute to the overall consumption of the anime, and only distracts from the attempted transition from Japanese culture to Western culture as translated.

<comment><USER15> I mean, that's important, but the other nuances I mentioned can change in just the same way. An adept translator can capture these things without resorting to lots of untranslated Japanese (although whether the people doing fansubs are adept is a different question... often there are quite obvious misunderstandings of what was said in the fansubs I've seen).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have paid subscriptions to the legal streaming services and own a handful of the anime series I watch on DVD/Bluray. I still almost always download releases off of websites - some of which are actually just the legal streaming release repackaged into a form you can watch offline. I'd be happy if the services I paid for gave me a reason not to hit the shady fansub services.

Why?

* There are specific fansubbing groups that have a well-earned reputation for quality. They consistently do a better job on translation where even major shows will have glaring translation errors on the paid services. Some of these groups even manage to do it quickly.

* The video encoding is superior in both size and quality. (Sometimes video quality issues are down to the original broadcast looking awful, due to how HDTV works these days.)

* I can download an entire season of a series I've paid to watch, and watch it at my leisure on a laptop or tablet. If I wanted to stream it off Crunchyroll I'd need to have a stable network connection at the time and hope I'm not exceeding my 4G cap (on a mobile device). In practice the streaming players will break, too...

* Often the paid services release an episode days or weeks late (to be fair, usually due to negotiated agreements). This is a pain since it's very hard to avoid spoilers from people who watched it day-of in japan or quickly via fansubs.

* The viewing experience is better. Most of the paid services still use a flash plugin, which is pretty much a worst-case for watching 24hz video content - judder, tearing, dropped frames, bad upscaling/downscaling, etc. Worse still, the paid services often butcher the color-space and framerate of the video. When you combine all those small mistakes together, it's REALLY distracting to watch an action scene on these services. Sometimes the color-space issues render entire portions of scenes invisible.

Aside from a discussion of whether the localization is being done 'right' \- dubbing vs subbing, 'literal' translation vs natural translation - occasionally the paid services treat content with respect and I have no reason to use a fansubbed version. Those are great moments, but they're extremely rare. The last time I can remember this happening was the (FYI, pretty gross) series Kill la Kill, where the translation was supposedly provided by someone hired by the animation studio. There were no errors in translation, the script felt natural, and the video was good. Those occasional successes are part of why I still pay for the services I rarely use.

FWIW the manga industry has this same problem, but far worse. It's a miracle official English localizations of manga sell at all. Every company in that chain seems to be inept or actively taking steps to hinder their sales. Manga piracy is an actual business online, unfortunately, where anime piracy is more of a casual thing - there are dozens of websites out there that make money running ads on pirated manga. Naturally, the pirated manga usually ranks #1 on Google.

<comment><USER22> I'm not always the most attentive viewer, could you give me an example of the colorspace problem? I'm really interested to see the issue side-by-side.

<comment><USER21> Video is typically transmitted in one of two colorspaces. The terminology here is tricky and hard for me to remember, but I think it's 'studio levels' and 'computer levels'?

Anyway, all you really need to know is that there are two main standards for the range of values in each RGB color channel. IIRC, they are 0-255 and 16-235. So if you're using the broadcast standard (16-235), values below 16 or above 235 don't exist, and 16 is black. But a 24bpp/32bpp surface on a computer can store the full range of values no matter what, so there are various scenarios where graphics code needs to know what to do with those values. Discard them? Saturate up/down? Rescale everything so that the whole buffer is 16-235?

It gets trickier when interacting with other hardware. Your TV might expect 16-235 values, in which case your video card and/or software need to rescale 0-255 values down to 16-235 so they look correct on your TV. Your game console might be putting out 16-235 because it assumes you have a bad TV, and when you run that console through an HDMI capture device, it might be doing a 16-235 -> 0-255 rescale behind your back to 'fix' your video. Then when you fix your console settings to output 0-255, your capture device is still doing the rescale, and you're saturating values below 16 or above 235.

It's a mess.

If you search 'rgb studio levels' on Google you can find some people talking about it, like this: [https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/975618](https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/975618)

It's a common source of confusion when dealing with video, and if you're unlucky, _multiple_ stages in a display pipeline will each mishandle levels, scaling them to a range that's too small or truncating values, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> related: [http://www.phauna.org/papers/anime/anime.pdf](http://www.phauna.org/papers/anime/anime.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> dammit daiz.</comment>