Of course, but the 10-12 inches they quote as normal operating distance is pretty reasonable as far as I'm concerned. So while clever marketing, I wouldn't call it false advertising.
I don't understand your point. The iPad has a 130 dpi display, if anything, it should be easier to double that than it was to double the iPhone 3GS's 160 dpi. (I know that making larger displays at that resolution is harder and more expensive, but that won't be an issue forever.)
You've grasped my point better than you realize. As you say the larger screen size and number of pixels outweighs the smaller pixel density.
This does change over time but that's also my point, more heterogeneous rivals can re-purpose various display sizes as required and as time passes they'll get higher res screens before the iPad, just like various iPhone rivals did.
They've also marketed themselves into a corner since even if they double the 130dpi screen they'll not reach their "magical" figure of 300dpi, and they've now introduced pixel density as a marketable commodity in one market, when they're at a disadvantage in another.
Ah, I get it now. I agree to a point. I'd add that once resolution itself is no longer an issue (because every phone's screen is above 300 dpi), Android still has the advantage of custom aspect ratios.
Regarding the iPad, marketing-wise, they might claim that people typically hold the iPad farther away from their eyes than 12 inches, say 15 inches, which places the "retina limit" conveniently just under 260 dpi.
I think you're exaggerating their demise, as it were. iPhone competitors released phones with higher res screens. So what, the next release of the iPhone trounced them all. Now the competitors will release something better and Apple will respond, on and on.
The difference between a Smart phone and a normal phone is it's not as easy to dump your current phone and just move to another. The differences will have to be pretty big to get people to be willing to go through the trouble of learning a whole new phone, moving their data, etc. And I don't buy the carrier argument because from my experience all US carriers are awful.
And having custom resolutions isn't necessarily a win. Look at all the complaining about the different Android resolutions so far. Just wait until they get 5 or 6 new ones.
I couldn't find an explanation of why one can't just put a real giraffe in a tank, fill it with water and "see what happens". (Obviously I suggest doing this in such a way that one can quickly rescue the giraffe in case it's not buoyant after all.)
It makes complete sense to me that most land mammals have at least rudimentary swimming capabilities, because it's probably selected for. Not very often, of course, but whenever there's a flood, all non-swimming animals in a region die at once, which is a lot of selection pressure.
I guess the trouble and expense outweighs the curiosity. In particular, I bet the intersection of people who have a spare giraffe and people who don't mind an ASPCA/PETA protest is very small.
Another example of an easily testable issue: Do people swim faster or slower in a more viscous fluid? Newton and Huygens, among others, argued back and forth over this, but no one bothered setting up an experiment until 2004. The paper went on to win an Ig Nobel Prize. (Answer: Viscosity doesn't seem to affect a person's swimming speed.)
Along the same lines, the Mythbusters had an episode about swimming in syrup. Here's a link to the first part of the episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4Q5jZSJbA
He says: "In the case of the question "Can giraffes swim?", we just aren't able to use real giraffes, so our approach is - at the moment - the only one we can use to test it."
That made me laugh as well. I mean, you're right why don't they just put a giraffe in a tank? Of course that brings to mind imagery of a 19th (or earlier) century scientist that would likely not have any care for the animal's wellbeing.
I'd imagine it's a combination of two factors. Firstly cost and secondly public image. I'm guessing a giraffe tank would be quite unjustifiably expensive and I could well imagine a university funding board rejecting this idea purely from the bad PR potential of scientists killing of giraffes rather pointlessly.
AFAIK it's a combination of the hardware not being good enough, and Apple not really trying to optimize for those devices (they'd be happy if you bought a new one). The iPod Touch went through several iterations, just like the iPhone; the latest iPod Touch is actually a bit higher specced than the latest iPhone.
No, they wouldn't. All that they'd compete on is perceived payout. In other words, if you have private competing lotteries, they'd optimize the heck out of the feedback loop explained in the article, ruining people's lives even more.
I think WoW has to do that because it's a very complicated interface with roots in the text-based MUDs of old (for example the combat log). I don't consider it an example of good UI/tutorial design.
Valve's Portal is how game tutorials should be done in my opinion. It introduces an unfamiliar game element (the wormhole gun) gradually: first you walk through pre-made wormholes, then you get to shoot one of the two wormhole entrances, and only then both of them. Even when you have the full portal gun, you get taught the various tricks (like accelerating by falling into a portal) one at a time. None of this is explained by a wall of text, rather, the level design itself suggests the only possible solution. This is all done so subtly that it hardly feels like a tutorial at all. In fact, for the player, the levels just get gradually harder and require you to combine more and more of the skills and tricks you've figured out earlier.
It works brilliantly, and makes for a much stronger experience than any of the text or voice based game tutorials I've seen so far.
Hey now, text-based MUDs are not yet obsolete. There are quite a few folks out there playing them. Most often, they are free, they do not put viruses or DRM on your computer, and they work for the folks who are trying to play online computer games out in the boonies with low bandwidth.
Even infinite depth of field wouldn't completely solve the problem. The point is, your eyes have to physically focus on the far away screen the entire time, or the whole movie becomes blurry (obviously). When you're looking at a "near" object, there's always a mismatch between its apparent distance and the focus point of your eyes. And as you pointed out, you can't turn your head.
However, given these limitations, I've found 3D movies to be a great experience. In the case of Avatar in particular, an important point of the movie was how the protagonist becomes part of the alien world, and I felt that the 3D environment really helped the audience to get the same feeling. YMMV of course.
What's really a rip-off is all those movies now that were converted to 3D in post production. It's a bit like manually coloring a black-and-white photo before color film was available -- it may look kind of okay if you don't look too closely, but it's not the real thing. The flat faces in particular make people look like cardboard cutouts.
That's true, many of those pathways are shared between all current species, so they must have evolved in that early period. I wonder how (for lack of a better word) inefficient organisms must have been before they evolved the modern citric acid cycle, for example.
Didn't the Gizmodo article say that he saw the owner's name and Facebook profile while playing around with the phone (before it was bricked remotely)? If so, why didn't he contact him directly?
"Don't fix the UI problem, work around it! Who cares if a good comment is downvoted and a possibly worse one upvoted, as long as the user's total karma is correct?" Is that your suggestion?
I was responding to the concerns of someone who was upset at accidentally downvoting a comment. I suggested two solutions, one which would restore karma, and one which would explain the downvote. Obviously not intended for SOP. One could use either solution, both, or neither.
After thinking about this more, I think you're wrong. There are at least two purposes to voting. One is to help find better comments, because points are associated with the comments.
But the other purpose is to provide karma to the posters. Otherwise there would be no accumulation of points associated with posters and shown next to your name when you're logged in.
Past 200 it doesn't matter. There is no extra functionality that gets enabled, so it only is an odometer telling you how much work you could have done.
