Just like I, and most tech writers/bloggers with dignity that seek content quality over clicks, have been saying all along - the iPad Pro that was so highly reported as "certainly" coming out in 2014 has been shelved. Apple works with a plethora of screen sizes, always has. There might be a bigger iPad one day, but that day is not soon.
Why Tesla and CarPlay Matter to Everyone
Tesla, along with Apple's recently announced CarPlay, are positioned to have a major influence for everyone planning to be driving a car in the foreseeable future. This is independent of whether or not you're driving a Tesla or a car equipped with CarPlay.
Stuck in the (Technology) Dark Ages
The auto industry has managed to remain uniquely positioned with respect to technology. Low to middle-end cars are the worst offenders, but in this class cost almost always comes first. Higher end cars are still behind, but not as far. You could argue that Ford has had their voice control service for a while now, other companies are on a similar trajectory, but the offerings are entirely underwhelming at best.
Here are a few key reasons the auto industry is able to have inferior technology and charge such a premium for it; these are inferences I'm making, not based on inside knowledge.
- Cost is king when people shop for new cars.
- The tech we're used to isn't designed for as rugged of conditions. Your iPad's operating temperature certainly doesn't cover -15 degrees, but your car's touch screen does. Vibration isn't likely as much of a concern.
- Design cycles are long for cars, there's a reason cars debut so long before they're ready to buy. The tech available in that car will lag what is thought to be current because it was designed a couple of years (?) beforehand.
- There is a vested interest by auto makers to prevent major software feature upgrades. These comforts, when outdated, can become driving forces behind another purchase.
- Proprietary barriers exist. Supporting only Apple or only Android is highly limiting and until now there was no official protocol to support. If they chose to support an unofficial protocol, there is no guarantee it would continue to work, which would result in very angry customers.
Driving Change
So where do Tesla and CarPlay come in? I think CarPlay is fairly obvious. It is the first major step at taking the brain of the technology out of the car and putting it into the phone. Phones are a lot easier to upgrade. As long as compatibility to the CarPlay protocol is maintained, this is a vast improvement over the current situation. The most obvious issue is that CarPlay is Apple/iOS only, and likely always will be. I suspect cars will eventually need to ship supporting CarPlay, Google's solution, and maybe even Microsoft's to remain competitive.
Inside Man
Tesla has the potential to disrupt from the other side, the inside. They're the first actual shot at being a successful and forward-looking auto maker. They have high tech at their very core, it is what they are built on. Tesla has embraced the smartphone revolution in a very serious way giving you a tremendous amount of control over your vehicle from within their app.
Progress in this industry will only come if it is successful enough that auto makers can't produce cars without competitive technology. The CarPlay features are low-cost to implement with the potential for high return. Tesla is sweeping the industry with their incredible design, tremendous safety, and aggressive adoption of new technology. I'm not declaring these two products as the long-term "winners," but I do firmly believe they'll serve as excellent propellant to move this industry out of the dark ages.
Some Things Cannot Be Faked (Hint: Samsung)
Samsung isn't exactly know for their design prowess or their honesty. They've been caught paying people to leave fake negative reviews on competitor's products, they've been caught rigging their devices to perform better on benchmarks than they do in real life, and they've been caught stealing design cues from Apple (though rarely nicely implemented).
Side note: everyone in tech steals things from everyone else. There are a limited number of layouts, gestures, and features. There will be overlap. Don't read into that one too much, I couldn't resist posting a link to that Tumblr page.
What does this all add up to? The first thing that comes to mind is desperation. It is a shame, they're doing some decent things. Their phones are selling in record numbers and they're the only Android device maker that's actually making any money. Then they go and do things like fake leather with fake stitching on their products and paying a boat load of money for celebrity endorsements who promptly return to their iPhones when the camera turns off.
Loyalty cannot be faked; it can be purchased in the short term, but it won't last. The simplest description I can come up with is that this is the difference between being passionate about products and being passionate about your reputation at all costs. They'll keep doing these things until the market votes for a company that doesn't, for example by buying a Moto X instead of an S5.
Shame on You, Microsoft; Outlook for iPad is a Mess
I'm a slave to Outlook and OWA for work, no way around it. I use the native iOS email app on my (work-issued) iPhone. On my personal iPad, which is rarely used for work, I use the official Microsoft OWA (Outlook Web Access) app. I launch the app 0-4 times per day, usually 1 or 2. Approximately 10-25% of app launches result in this update state where I cannot do anything, I must wait (look at the banner along the bottom):
So I wait. Usually about 60-90 seconds. When it finishes? You guessed it, the good ol' fashion Windows-style reboot.
It is a shame. The app is fairly well designed, though there are some glaring usability flaws. This isn't new, and this isn't temporary. I've used this app since October 2013, here we are 6 months later with no fix or update.
If you're at Microsoft, you've got to ask who is signing off on this quality of work.
Where Time Comes From →
Time is imaginary, invented, our own making. Yet without time, life as we know it could not exist. It is part of the math and science that has given us today's technology and so much more.
This short (6 minute) video tells us about how time is determined and how accurate it is. Our current system measures 16 decimal places; this means that in 300 million years not a single second would be lost or gained.
A second is exactly 9,192,671,770 periods of oscillation of an undisturbed cesium atom. And time, well in my definition of time, is that it's a coordinate that lets us most simply understand the evolution of the universe. But that is a circular definition.
