iPad不够强大的一些解释
1. Safari的javascript不够强，可能和苹果不希望Web apps过于强大有关。
2. CPU没有更强大，和电池寿命有关。另外，如果功耗再大一点的话，连到USB上就完全都没法充电了。现在很多PC和老的Mac的USB供电都不足它消耗的。我现在接在MBP上，半小时也许冲进去1%，而且亮度还是一半。
3. 内存小，可能和苹果事实上没有计划支持第三方多任务有关。iPhone OS 4.0可能也不会有常规意义上的多任务，但可能有变种。另外内存小可以使得开发者用心开发高效率的软件，避免这个平台迅速bloat化。事实上，如果苹果可以保证iPhone OS比较lean的话，就意味着在以后的竞争中相比其他Bloat起来的Mobile platform更有优势。试想如果Android需要2X iPhone OS的CPU和内存才能较流畅运行，那么iPhone将在价格和性能上都占据优势。
iPad Review 测评
After over a day of usage, I think now I can review iPad.
Hardware
The hardware itself is very nice. It may feel heavier than expected, but I do not think it is a problem. As long as you don’t use single hand to hold it for extended period of time, it would be fine.
The anti finger print coating on the screen is ok but not as effective as expected, which would cause the viewable angle to be worse than expected for an IPS panel. But I guess for any touch screen device out there, iPad is already pretty good.
The basic 16GB model may show its limited storage capacity after a few months of use. And especially if Apple doesn’t allow iTunes/Lala streaming over Wi-Fi, putting music on iPad is something that will consume the most capacity for me. I hope this can change once iTunes in the cloud is available.
It has been immediately confirmed by me once I got the iPad, that there is only 256MB RAM for both OS and apps. This is totally unexpected. I thought there would be 512MB. I understand that the performance is the most important thing rather than specs, and iPad perform really well, but this is just a bad news for people expecting multi-task function in iPhone OS 4.0. I will also talk about this problem in the software section.
Audio quality wise I haven’t really tested.
Charging the battery on when it is connected to a computer is really slow. Connect directly to power outlet make it faster.
My first test of battery life gave me roughly 8.5 hours. It could be that it was not well fully charged. I am going to test this again. 8.5 hour batter life is achieved by 50% brightness, auto correct brightness, WiFi on all the time, playing games and also playing videos, music, and surf internet, installing apps, switching between apps very frequently. The screen is on all the time, therefore the battery life is still very impressive even if under very heavy use we can only get less than 10 hours.
Software
Most softwares look really nice. But I am also worried that this new trend of emulating real texture is a little big too much. I like the simple and elegant interface on Snow Leopard maybe a little better. Plus because the RAM is only 256MB, these textures definitely are wasting RAM.
Most things works smoothly and fast. But I think the Safari performed especially poorly. This is totally in contrast of other reviewers who claimed the Safari is very smooth and fast. I think that is totally not true. However I believe Apple will continue improve Safari performance on iPad, just like they did for iPhone.
But it is the limitation of RAM that makes Safari a little unpractical for intense web browsing. If I open a couple of web pages with a lot of graphics, it is almost for sure when I switch tab, the activated tab will have to reload. Why? Because Apple is unreasonable about local cache of web pages. When Safari run out of RAM, it will just kick the previously loaded tabs out of memory, instead of storing it on the NAND flash drive. Therefore it takes time to download again that web page, and rendering. This is such a waste of bandwidth and time and battery. I do not understand but I hope Apple will improve this. Because of the constant reloading of tabs, this surfing experience is in fact much worse than on my laptop. Steve Jobs claimed that the surfing experience on iPad is the best, but I do NOT agree. Unless you fix that reloading issue, it is really worse than laptops.
Also, Safari loads webpages about 2-3X slower than my Macbook Pro. But it is definitely about twice as fast as iPhone 3GS, this is also confirmed by other people. The javascript performance on iPad can also be further improved. Right now it is more than 10X slower than my Macbook Pro. I believe webkit team can optimized it better for ARM processor.
iBooks performance is ok when reading books. However other times I can feel the lag, and I do not have more than 5 books in the library.
There is no easy way to subscribe to Podcasts in the iTunes.app on iPad. This is a little bit sad.
I heard there will be a centralized mechanisms to manage files. Unfortunately most apps have not been taking advantage of that yet. I hope I can open PDF in a different program other than Papers, for example. But Papers doesn’t allow other programs to have access to those PDF files. And the PDF annotation software Aji PDF annotator doesn’t try to do that either. Hopefully these can be fixed by different developers.
There are a lot of media apps, such as NPR, which is very nice app. But the problem is there is no background playing. Apple should allow these content providers to do this easily. Because I do not always want to be listening to my iPad.app when doing other things on the iPad. And 16GB really doesn’t give me a lot of room for music either.
The Future
The iPad does that it is designed to do pretty well. And there are indeed quite a bit advanced apps on there already. This could indeed be the future of mobile computing. Windows XP/Vista/7 or Mac OS X by themselves could not perform at all on a 256MB RAM machine. iPad can, perhaps, make developers write more efficient code, and that’s good. Right now most apps on the desktop are bloated and use way too much RAM, including Safari and iTunes.
Doing some things on iPad is easier than on laptop or desktop. Its performance is good, but of course will not be able to compete with laptops. The App Store is what makes iPad great. All the applications on iPad can make it more useful than laptops and netbooks.
Because of 256MB RAM limitation, I do not see much hope for multi-tasking. But on the other hand I plan to use iPad together with my laptop sometimes when reading some research papers, so it is not that bad. And perhaps it may help people concentrate on one thing at a time? But it is still ridiculous for Apple to sell $800+ machines with 256MB RAM in them.
First post from iPad
I am sending my first blog post from the iPad. The keyboard is not bad. I can type pretty fast after a couple hours of chatting on iPad. I think it would not be a big issue without the physical keyboard. For light content creation it is fine. I am typing pretty fast right now.
I like many things about it. There are still some disappointment here and there. I might write up a review soon.
Dr. Andrew Weaver’s Talk on Climate Change
I went to Dr. Andrew Weaver’s talk on climate change, well, in fact about how climate change was communicated. It was an inspiring talk, and totally explained why people living in North America, especially the US, do not believe global warming or climate change.
Essentially, first, there are special interest groups. And special interest groups probably influence politics. A strategist once wrote a memo to the GOP basically saying that they need to make sure people believe that the global warming is uncertain among scientists, by somehow let scientists and engineer to say it for them.
Second. US media/journalism like to do “balanced” reports. They state some facts first. And they interview scientist who say the temperature is indeed rising. Then they interview other people who oppose global warming or deny human contribution. These people probably are totally not credible at all when examined by scientific peer review standard. About 50% and 70% reports between a studied 5 year period or so, on newspaper/magazines and TV, are these “balanced” reports. No wonder Americans are so confused! But this is not the first time nor the only case where media can sway public opinions.
Third. The special interest groups are still working. Rumors were spread ahead of Copenhagen meeting. And he expect more coming this year because of ad hoc or UN meeting in Bonn and Mexico this year. And yes people confuse more snow last winter with global warming is probably hoax.
I am not going to reproduce all of his talk and it is also impossible.
But what’s interesting to me, is that although we know US media hate global warming, the conservative party and people hate it, US media still give it 50-70% “balanced” reports which supposedly present opinions from both sides.
From my nonscientific perception, reports about China are about 20-30% “balanced”. Apparently they hate China more than global warming.
It’s the trust issue between US and China. And trust cannot be earned when there are no basis for it. Unless there are a lot of underground negotiation we are not aware of. But without both countries’ involvement, stop global warming is like… impossible.
终极观点
政治自由，只是人类生活的一部分。是的，所有的人都希望有政治自由。不过，人还想要别墅，想要香车，想要超级模特美女，高档服饰，HDTV，iPhone等等等等。更不要说，生活在更为落后的第三世界国家的人，想要食物，洁净的饮用水等等基本的东西。
中国和很多第三世界国家一样，政治自由确实不足。虽然中国科学技术已经发展，但是还是和大量落后国家一样，需要高新技术，需要钱，需要经济发展。
西方世界，政客，常常吹嘘的是自己是人权卫士。人权是好东西。不过，为什么他们一般就仅仅吹嘘自己是人权卫士，是要把民主散播到世界各地，而不是宣传要技术支援第三世界国家，无偿提供技术，切实得帮助第三世界国家发展经济呢？因为前者只需要嘴皮上说说，几乎不花钱的，还可以帮忙拉点选票。西方政府也只能这样说，因为他们不掌控技术，他们没资格把私有企业的技术援助给发展中国家。政客掌权，还需要这些私有财团的支持才行呢。
事实上，非洲很多国家不仅没有得到民主和人权，更没有得到足够的金钱和技术支援。西方也不是没有给他们钱，但是他们更关注的是去援助了，这样面子有光，道德高尚，并不真的那么在乎援助是否真的帮助改变落后国家，是否真的能够让他们起步腾飞。中国之所以最近能够争取到一些非洲国家的支持，就是因为中国是真的在帮他们做实事，做基础建设。光给点钱给一些腐败的非州政府，难道这些钱还真的能帮助他们经济发展，真的能落到穷人手里？真的能到穷人手里的，估计也就红十字会之类的到一些人道主义灾难地区直接给点吃的和医疗。对改变现状一点用都没有。
所以，虽然比如美国好莱坞明星经常装作关注人类，关注人道主义，但是事实上西方国家远远没有做到他们应该做的。一些国家虽然获得了西方式民主，虽然我不认为这是坏事，但是他们也确实没有因此真的腾飞起来，当然有些国家是腾飞了，比如韩国，但是并不是主流的现象。
中国需要更民主更自由。不过像Google这样炒作，“撒娇”，还真的屁用没有。真的就和政客一样，只是为了给自己脸上贴金。如果Google在中国占有60+%的份额，我敢打赌，我们就绝对看不到最近这出戏了。
我要抄袭别人一个观点：
如果说Google中国把六四之类的都屏蔽掉是中国政府强加的censorship，那么在Google.com上搜索”tiananmen square“出来的头条，和大部分内容都是和六四相关的东西，又不是不是一种“逆向censorship”？
这个观点的关键是，话语权问题。为什么中国要censor？因为中国没有话语权。西方有话语权，西方基本不上又经常是和中国作对，而且确实是西方更多的控制着互联网。中国抢不到控制权，所以如果中国不控制互联网，不建造一个“局域网”，中国互联网上很多话语权就会被西方控制。我觉得说得有道理。
根据我前面所述，如果西方控制了中国互联网话语权，哪怕是20%，你觉得他们会用这个话语权来干嘛？当然是继续人权，民主了。虽然这些问题是中国发展中的重要问题，但是西方大概是不会真的去关注、帮助解决那些更为切实的中国问题，比如房价，贫富差距，教育费用，医疗费用，环境污染，粮食人口等问题。西方也不是没有关注过有些问题，但是总是会最后拉到民主自由上去谈。我也觉得，这也不是中国人需要的和想要的，中国的问题也不是这样可以解决的。好比西方要中国二氧化碳减排，但是他们就是不会在经济上和技术是帮助你减排的，就算要“帮”，也是高价卖技术或最终高科技产品，而不是技术转让，最终还是要赚你的钱，是他们，要在第四次科技革命中占领先机，保证领先。第三世界国家减排目标的完成过程中，西方也想大赚一把。
最后希望中国有更多话语权，这样中国就不用建局域网了。其实，很多被封的网站，个人感觉不封，也没什么大不了的。不封，还少一些骨头被人挑，政府不会因此垮台，还至少减少了群众对被控制的互联网的不满。不过，事实上国内矛盾还是挺激化的。大概只是为了消灭一些导火索，但是真的有效吗？最终还是要切实把矛盾的源头消灭，而不是建一堆“绿坝”。不管是蓝坝绿坝，还是红坝，都是可能决堤的。
关于Google
Mr. Schmidt made the argument he long has, according to these people, namely that it is moral to do business in China in an effort to try to open up the regime. Mr. Brin strenuously argued the other side, namely that the company had done enough trying and that it could no longer justify censoring its search results.
From WSJ via Daring Fireball.
In fact, if you dig deep enough, you may find stories about Brin how he is anti China and anti Chinese government. It is not surprising considering his “origin”.
However, I think Google has gone too far. And I would call Google a big fat liar because their chief legal officer said, years back when Google entered China, it is not for financial interest but to help making China more open. What? Who has a sane mind would actually believe that? Like I said, Google is just trying to gain moral high ground and making itself look good, just a PR strategy.
Essentially, as my previous blog has continued to show, that China has problem in freedom of speech, yes. But for US, it is also very problematic. Some Americans, as I’ve seen, are saying as long as Google filter child porn, it is ok if they don’t filter political content that Chinese government doesn’t like. But hey, you know, Child porn is filtered in the US based on US law. Who do you think Google is not to abide Chinese law to not to filter all the porn?
US has an effective control over speech. Just in a different form and way from China. Google may not block certain content in the US. But essentially it is not heaven and hell difference.
While I would be extremely happy if China stop censoring or blocking websites, I am not on the side of Google. Even less when Google is pretending to be the freedom defender. Remember, Schmidt did not even think privacy is that important on the internet because if you don’t want other people to know what you did, you better not do it. Google is totally far away from a saint company. No matter how hard you try to make you look like one.
审视Google
I use Gmail and Google Reader most.
Seriously Gmail is so dated. I am sick of it but so tied to it. It does have more features than many other email system. But it is ugly, messy, and have absolutely no style and difficult on the eye.
Google doc is still mediocre. But I still use it. Because there is nothing better.
Of course, I almost forgot, Google search. It is probably still the best. But Google hasn’t really innovate in this area for a long time while Yahoo and Microsoft is doing some nice things. There are still many problems with search, I am still often not very satisfied with search results. But ok… Google is still the king.
Google map is ok. But the POI mistakes are just ruining it. Experienced a few times.
Google Video is a joke.
Google Voice is ok. I use it because of free SMS.
Google books… I don’t know. I don’t use it.
Google Translate… not easy to use. But I can use it if I bare with it.
Blogs… really? how many people still use Google’s blogs
Calendar.. is ok. But now I am back to MobileMe becuase it can push to my iPhone and sync with MobileMe cloud.
Photos… I basically only see Chinese people use Picasa web albums. And it is ugly. Flickr feels better.
Reader… probably the No.1 thing I like about Google right now.
Others… many failed products.
Google checkout: never took off.
Google desktop really still anyone use it on Windows 7?
iGoogle is probably the most ugly customized home page on earth. I would take Yahoo or netvibes instead of it.
Product search is ok. helps me find cheap stuff sometimes. But often the price other calculations are inaccruate and frustrating. And it seems it still doesn’t understand the different between British pounds and US dollars.
Google toobar… no thanks. I am not over 50 years old.
Trends… gimick products. Fun sometimes, overall quite useless.
Google code… I wish sourceforge is still the god. Google code.. the interface is just…
Orkut… what’s that?!
Sites… does anyone use this?
Talk… ok…I use it sometimes. But why can’t I send files? And I use it with Adium. Basically, it is not even feature rich compared to AIM or Yahoo Messenger.
2009年我最爱的音乐
精选了一些YouTube大家可以立即品尝我的推荐。
我的list从美国到英国到加拿大到阿根廷到中国，感觉还比较国际。
Artist – Album – Genre – Release Year
1. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House – Neo-Folk/Alternative – May 2009
美国Gay四人乐队，Grizzly Bear，新民谣。这张评价很不错。进入很多排行榜前列。
Pick: Two Weeks，Southern Point，I Live With You.
Two Weeks的MV很不错。
***
2. IAMX – Kingdom of Welcome Addiction – Alternative – May 2009
英国前Sneaker Pimps主唱单飞后project的第三张专辑。这张更带劲，更电子舞曲，更硬。
Pick: Kingdom Of Welcome Addiction，Tear Garden，Think of England。
***
3. Beirut – March of the Zapotec & Realpeople – Alternative – 2009
美国才华型Zach到墨西哥拆封，用丧葬乐队搞出来的好东西，外接一些garage electronics。爱死The Shrew这首歌了。我要卡拉OK!!
Pick: The Shrew, The Concubine.
amazing video above.
Debut The Concubine LIVE
看了很想很想看他的Live.
也算是新民谣吧？
***
4. Zero 7 – Yeah Ghost – Pop/Rock/Electronic – Sept. 2009
英国电子trip hop后续二人组。时常配有很不错的女声。例如来自澳大利亚的Sia。这张新专辑，和之前三张有很大的区别，以致很多前歌迷表示不喜欢。加入了一个新女声，颇有趣。
Pick: Swing (Sia), Mr McGee, Pop Art Blue, Medicine Man, Sleeper
Pop Art Blue LIVE:
listen to Swing:
Sleeper:
***
5. Sufjan Stevens – The BQE (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – Instrumental – 2009
美国songwriter Sufjan Stevens时隔多年再发专辑。不过居然是全instrumental的soundtrack。而且movie也是他拍的。还没有看movie究竟怎么样。不过搞得很艺术。他还是很擅长编很复杂的东西，很喜欢里面的brass之类的吹奏乐器。
Pick: Movement II: Sleeping Invader, Movement III: Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise, Movement VII (Finale): The Emperor Of Centrifuge.
The BQE trailer:
Movement II …Surprise
***
6. 朱哲琴 – 七日谈 – New Age – Jan. 2008
中国最高质量音乐代表，朱哲琴+何训田，不用多说，多年之后朱哲琴复出的作品。据说之前何训田还担心她不愿意出来唱。朱哲琴已经移民加拿大了，不知道还能不能算中国？依旧是七首歌。七日谈。
Pick: 不翼而飛，夕陽西下， 路過地球
***
7. SimCity 4 Rush Hour Soundtrack – Soundtrack
EA游戏，貌似很多soundtrack做得很好。这个就是典范。这张是Rush Hour Expansion Pack里添加的音乐。个人认为比原来的SimCity 4里面的稍好。里面的Jerry Martin, The HUmble Brothers, Andy Brick等人专门做soundtrack，很有点才华，能够给这个游戏配怎么符合题材，质量又高的音乐，我很佩服。这张里面不少算是现代交响乐＋电子杂交。
Pick: Bumper to Bumper, Wheels of Progress, Metropolis.
Bumper to Bumper:
Wheels of Progress:
Metropolis:
***
8. Tegan and Sara – Sainthood – Alternative/Rock － Oct. 2009
加拿大lesbian姐妹摇滚乐队第二张专辑。强大之处是常给人out of box的新鲜感，有些东西颇有试验感，而且比较悦耳。弱点是编曲时常老套，一首歌可能开始很好之后似乎感觉她们才华难以支撑？或者需要更好的制作人。这张也是进入若干排行榜。
Pick: Arrow, On Directing, Night Watch, Paperback Head.
On Directing在YouTube上好多Cover。
Arrow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsmrlJX2gIA
亚裔mm cover Paperback Head drum
推荐上面这个！
***
9. Little Dragon – Little Dragon – Rock/R&B – Sept. 2007
瑞典籍日美混血主唱。另类R&B杂种音乐，常给人耳目一新的感觉。
Pick: Twice. Constant Surprises, The Last.
Twice:
***
10. Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care – Electronic – April 2009
加拿大电子二人组。最近美国巡演也要结束了吧？其实也没跑几个地方。最新特别爱好这种合成电子，而且很fresh的感觉很好。Honorable mention里面的Grand National也有点这种类似的电子感。最近比较流行有些古老电子游戏的感觉。但是绝对不是那样粗糙的，而是很精致的。
Pick: Dull To Pause, Hazel, The Animator,
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
Honorable Mention:
Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted to Sins – Alternative
Clint Mansell – Moon (soundtrack from the Motion Picture) – Soundtrack
没看过这个电影，应该去看看。是David Bowie的儿子拍的。
Juana Molina – Some of her music…
阿根廷的音乐。节奏很有趣，其他地方很少听到。音乐不错，不好搞到，我也不全。2003年的Segundo，iTunes上都没有。但是第一首Martin Fierro很不错。
Nine Inch Nails – The Slip
说实话这是我第一张NIN的专辑。。。
Santogold – Santogold – Alternative
很少有黑人MM唱这种风格的音乐啊。水平还可以。Indie。
Grand National – Kicking The National Habit – Alternative
单曲 Honorable Mention
Bjork – Wanderlust (Ratatat Remix)
Ratatat很有趣。。
Peace Orchestra – Who am I? (Animatrix mix)
这个很老了。但是这个别人做到的video很不错
Who is this person?!
Based on this Washington Post report:
Even the students who posed questions to Obama were pre-selected, and most appeared to be members of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League. Afterward, some of them, when contacted by a reporter, criticized Obama’s statements about Internet censorship, even while saying they were generally pleased having seen the U.S. president up close.
“I strongly disagree with what Obama said about the Internet firewall,” said Tao Weishuo, a 24-year old postgraduate student from Fudan University. “I think all Chinese people have Internet freedom — we can speak out freely on the Internet about current social affairs.” He said the question to him came from a Web site outside China.
Still, Tao said he was impressed. “I think he is kind and warm,” Tao said.
This report has been widely cited and retweeted among Chinese bloggers. Apparently they do not agree with this student. So who is this person?! Is he just ignorant, or is he saying that because he is asked to?
Of course, that doesn’t mean I believe Americans have the real Internet freedom or other kind of freedom. But generally America is still more free.
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Vitamin-Max//维生素Max
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! I plan to shift the focus of this blog soon! Probably more towards science, and tech.
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