Luis Rei: Archive

I think it’s clear that the Kindle Fire is not meant to be an iPad competitor. It’s a Kindle for media. Amazon may not be competing with the iPad yet, but it is spending more and more time and energy fighting iTunes. Put another way, the Kindle Fire’s biggest problem isn’t the iPad — it is iTunes itself.

(via Tao of Mac)

It’s not a full iPad competitor yet. I think the next generation will go that way. And it is already an iPad competitor in media consumption, games (though a very poor one atm) and web browsing. Give it a generation and apps might start to show up (hence the amazon app market). Apple should be worried if this thing starts getting 5-star reviews - we’ll see if it does soon enough.

Sep 28, 2011

Responsive web design is about a lot more than the size of your screen. This talk is about about how GitHub handles links, the url bar, partial page updates, and explains why I think the HTML5 history API is the most important thing to happen to front end development since Firebug.

Funny, I looked at Github’s website in chrome just a few weeks ago to determine how they were doing some of this stuff because I felt it was one of the best done “web apps” out there.

Sep 21, 2011

Unlike Apple’s once-a-year release cycle with the iPhone, Android OEMs and carriers have gone crazy, releasing as many new phones as possible, as quickly as possible. As a result, there are a ton of Android phone reviews written. I want to make it easier for tech writers, so I’ve created a list — a recipe, if you will — to help make this easier.

Sep 20, 2011

Competing with the MBAir

Acer Taiwan’s president Scott Lin and Compal’s equivalent Ray Chen have both put out public complaints that Intel isn’t cutting chip prices to let their ultrabooks compete with the MacBook Air. Lin insisted that Acer and other Windows PC builders couldn’t get below $1,000 with their ultraportables without a subsidy while meeting the performance targets.

Remember when Apple stuff was “overpriced”? Only if you consider paying for quality to be superfluous…

But anyway I wonder how Apple would react if Intel subsidized their competitors (monopoly abuse much?) and what their agreements with Intel say about selling them components at a higher price. Somehow I doubt that Apple’s aggreements with their manufacturers don’t include a clause specifying that they get at least as good a deal as anyone else.

Anyway, why should Intel care who sells their processors as long as someone is selling them?

Sep 20, 2011

The Mythical Growth Somewhere Else

Michael Dell in an interview Sunday [free reg. required] took a stance that there was no such thing as a post-PC era. In spite of struggling PC sales, he argued to the FT that the PC industry was still growing, particularly in developing countries like China. Smartphones and tablets weren’t “necessarily” replacing PCs, and long-term forecasts suggested that would stay the case for years to come, he said.

Remember when RIM’s co-CEO was saying that everything was OK, that iDevices weren’t that big of a deal and there was going to be a huge growth for RIM in developing markets that would make up for losses in the “developed markets”?

Sep 20, 2011

“Good design is as little design as possible” —

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

Sep 17, 2011

Play

Sep 17, 2011

Play

Sep 13, 2011

“In a distant place no one knows you — nearly always a plus.” —Amazon.com: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (9780618418879): Paul Theroux: Books

Sep 13, 2011

Play

Sep 11, 2011

Steppenwolf (orig. German Der Steppenwolf) is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. Combining autobiographical and psychoanalytic elements, the novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes. The story in large part reflects a profound crisis in Hesse’s spiritual world in the 1920s while memorably portraying the protagonist’s split between his humanity, and his wolf-like aggression and homelessness.

This book surprised me. An instant favorite from the moment I started it.

Sep 11, 2011

Play

Sep 8, 2011

Luis Rei

September 2011

13 posts