Apple stiffs iPad owners on RAM

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New details of the iPhone 4 have me pretty pissed at Apple.

I’ve dismissed most of the criticisms leveled against the Apple iPad as clueless.  The few I’ve been sympathetic to are things that can and likely will be fixed with a software update.  There is, however, one thing that’s been bothering me, the iPad only has 256MB of RAM, like the iPhone 3 Gs.

Until I got my own iPad, the 256MB RAM limit was just an academic annoyance, but it quickly became clear that it was a chintzy move on Apple’s part. Mobile Safari on the iPad only lets you open 8 different “tabs” at once, but it often struggles to keep even a fraction of that number loaded.  Often if I switch between tabs, it ends up having to reload the pages, which is slow.  It’s even worse if I switch to another app and then back, then it often has to reload all the pages.

I put some of this down to the fact that it was the first release of iOS for the iPad, and assumed it would be improved any day by a software update (which has yet to materialize).  A software update could only go so far though, since the larger screen size on the iPad would likely drive up memory requirements.  And, of course, the eagerly awaited update of iOS 4 for the iPad would bring multitasking for third party apps, which would drive up memory requirements even more.

Well, now I learn that the iPhone 4 is confirmed to have 512MB of RAM, twice whats in the iPad (even though it has a smaller screen resolution).  This comes less than three months after shipping the first iPad, and less than two months after shipping the iPad WiFi-3G model I have.   I know that things move pretty fast in the tech industry, which is why I didn’t get bent out of shape when apple cut the price of the original iPhone by $200 only a few months after launch, but this really pisses me off.

The poor experience “multitasking” with Apple’s own apps on the iPad is the really my only big complaint with the device, and now its pretty clear that it’s likely that annoyance is going to extend to 3rd party apps when iOS 4 makes it to the iPad this fall.

Gruber Gets Pissy About AT&T iPhone Tethering Charge

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There has been a lot of discussion about yesterday’s announcement from AT&T of new smartphone pricing plans that apply to a range of devices, including the iPhone and iPad.  They are eliminating the unlimited data plans they used to offer, in favor of tiered pricing and finally allowing customers to use the tethering feature added to the iPhone last summer.  Reactions have been mixed, but nearly everyone has their nose out of shape about the additional charge for tethering.  I think most of them are wrong.

John Gruber of DaringFireball.net is a good exemplar of the critics.  Gruber reacted to an interview with AT&T VP Mark Collins on GigaOhm:

GigaOM: What about the $20 tethering fee? It looks like a convenience charge.

Collins: That capability is enabling something you can’t do today. You can use one device and get multiple connections so it’s more useful to you. You’re going to use more data so the price is based on the value that will be delivered.

Gruber’s response is typical of most of the bitching about this move:

(Emphasis added.) This would be true if the data plan were still “unlimited”, but it’s not. You’re already paying for a capped amount of bandwidth — 2 GB — and what you consume via tethering counts toward that cap. You’re using the same amount of data but in a different way. And if you go over your cap, you’ll be charged the $10 overage fee for each additional gigabyte. There is no excuse for this $20 tethering charge other than greed.

I don’t like mobile carriers, and I generally don’t like their approach to pricing, but  I don’t think Gruber and those of like mind are really thinking this through.

Its hard to imagine that someone using tethering isn’t going to use more data. I’m already using significantly more cellular data on my iPad than I was on my iPhone because the device itself is faster, because I can go through web pages faster because I can see more at once, and because I often opt for the richer desktop versions of sites on the iPad, rather than the mobile versions I use on the iPhone.  If I were using my laptop to access the Internet over my iPhone via tethering with any frequency, I expect I’d be using even more.  So, even if I’d still be using less than the 2GB limit on a $25/month iPhone data plan, I’d still be using significantly more than I would with my phone alone, and so would most other users of tethering, which would increase AT&Ts costs.

Gruber, like most others, focuses on the extreme case of the 2GB limit on the data plan, but tiered pricing plans are built on averages, and tethering is sure to shift the averages.  If they honestly believe that a tethering user isn’t going to place significantly more load on the network than an ordinary iPhone user, then it seems like the fair thing would be to add more pricing tiers, or better still, a fixed price per monthly GB.  How does $10/GB, which is their charge for anyone who uses over 2GB/month, sound?  I also like the idea of a rollover plan like they have for voice minutes.

Listen to Streaming Audio On Your iPad and do Something Else at the Same Time

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Probably everyone who cares already know that you can’t listen to Pandora in the background while you browse the web, or do anything else on your iPad — that kind of multitasking won’t show up until iPhoneOS version 4 makes it to the iPad sometime in the fall. But did you know, you can listen to some kinds of streaming audio at the same time you browse and use other appsiu? I didn’t, until I decided to try.

For it to work, your streaming source needs to support streaming of MP3 or AAC audio over http like our local NPR station, KUOW. Then you just click the link to start the stream, which starts a player in a browser tab, then you just go ahead and open a new tab and continue with your browsing, or switch to another app. This isn’t an earthshaking feature, but it should come in handy.

The iPad, and Why the Original Mac Didn’t Have Arrow Keys

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Bruce Tognazzini, one of the main user interface guys on the Mac recently blogged about parallels between Steve Jobs’s approach to creating the Macintosh, and the iPad.

It’s all interesting, but I wanted to call particular attention to this passage:

Few will remember, but, when the Mac debuted in 1984, there were no arrow keys on the keyboard. That was a big deal. Almost every application then in existence depended on the arrow keys (then called cursor keys) for navigation. With that one stroke, Steve reduced the number of apps that could be easily ported to the Mac from tens of thousands to zero, ensuring that this new computer would have a long and painful childhood.

Steve’s button mania, which grew from his earlier parts-count mania, was already in full flower, and many have ascribed this crippling omission to some sort of self-destructive obsession. It was not. It was one of several strategies specifically designed to ensure that existing software would not run on this new machine because existing software, in Steve’s eyes, sucked (an opinion I share). The absence of those four keys ensured that any developer who wanted to have software appear on the Mac was going to have to start over and write software that conformed to the Mac interface, not the keyboard-oriented precursors to MS-DOS.

via Mac & the iPad.

He goes on to compare this to Jobs’s stance on Adobe Flash on the iPad.  It also goes to one of the key points I made in an earlier post about why people who thought the iPad should run standard Macintosh apps were “crazy”:

There are no apps for the Mac designed for the type of [multitouch] interaction the iPad supports.

I Told You So (or meant to): Netflix on the iPad

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Not long ago, it seemed like worthless tech bloggers and journalists were all chattering about how Apple was keeping Adobe Flash off the iPhone and iPad so that they could monopolize digital content distribution and shut out anyone who tried to compete with the iTunes store.  I meant to make another installment in my series on puncturing anti-iPad hype on why there was ample evidence that this line of argument was just plane wrong, but sue me, I’m lazy sometimes.

So, it comes as absolutely no surprise to me to learn that new of a Netflix streaming app for the iPad isn’t yet another annoying April Fools joke.  Yes as TechCrunch has noticed, it’s the real deal, you can check for yourself in the App Store.

For those of you who weren’t following at home, various dumbasses were trying to convince us that that only option for rich media on the iPad was Flash, or nothing.  For this to be true, you have to ignore all those apps in the iTunes store, including apps from companies that would seem to compete with Apple in the digital media distribution business, like Amazon Kindle and Stanza app for eBooks; Pandora, LastFM, and more for music, Joost, TV.com, and others for video.

Well, now we have another example.  Netflix, which competes with Apple’s iTunes movie rental business by offering unlimited streaming for less than $10/month, whereas Apple’s rentals are something like $4/play.

Color Me Skeptical About the Bloom Energy Hype

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There has been a lot of chatter on tech sites about Bloom Energy after a friendly 60 Minutes story last night.  Like a lot of people on Hacker News, I’m very skeptical.

I realize that a lot of that skepticism is driven by the fact that most of the information about Bloom Energy’s technology has been filtered through 60-Minutes and other mainstream news sites who reduce everything to lowest common denominator terms, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about the company.

The fact that we only have the vague hype via mainstream news outlets is primarily the responsibility of the company.  They’ve been orchestrating this coverage and they are deliberately making us wait for more details.  Their website has no information, thought here is a timer that promises more this Wednesday.

There is plenty of “blame” to go around though.  We can start with 60-minutes, for their dumbed down coverage.  How difficult would it be to include some concrete numbers along side the symbolic representations they offer?  Rather than just saying “this refrigerator sized unit produces enough power for two average US homes” say “it produces 20 kW (or whatever), which is enough power for two average US homes…”

Of course, 60-minutes is just trying to deliver information that can be understood by its audience, but that’s actually even more distressing to me.  The 60 Minutes audience has, at least historically, been better educated than the average american, and yet it still seems that they are largely illiterate when it comes an even slightly rigorous treatment of anything involving math, science, and technology.

My guess is that there isn’t really anything revolutionary about what Bloom Energy is offering compared to whats been available from other commercial fuel-cell products.  My guess is that this press campaign is largely about capturing a favored position for government “green energy” funds and legislation.