arvino's posterous

my daily log of ideas and observation on business 'un-usual', innovation, breakthrough ideas, management, life, experience, wisdom & entrepreneurial spirit around the globe

SwiftKey X (Tablet Edition) makes typing on your Galaxy Note becomes so fast, light, responsive, accurate and easy. *and the soft-keyboard aesthetically looks beautiful too*

Swiftkey-x

If you happen to use Samsung Galaxy Note as your portable iPad companion, or as a standalone portable tablet device, and you would like to make the Galaxy Not'se keyboard feels so light, swift, rapid, and yet at the same time able to improve your rapid touch-typing accuracy significantly, then you might want to try SwiftKey X. 

I tried it on my Samsung Galaxy Note this evening, and I could share with you that it performs fabulously. It does word prediction real fast, perform thing brilliantly smart and accurate. The outmost beauty is: it does all these without slowing down the soft-keyboard responsiveness at all. (In the past I always turned off many "predictive" technology because it becomes so annoying as it slows down the response time of the keyboard system itself significantly).

All and all: based on experience, I found this keyboard software deliver what it promises to do: it does improve the speed and accuracy of rapid touch-typing significantly and greatly. 

In my case, such makes it a great additional software to make my Samsung Galaxy Note to become as high performance, as highly responsive, and as aesthetically beautiful as my iPad.

Truly sorry Mr Tim Cook, you are no Steve Jobs! ** Boring listening to Mr Cook's new iPad "pitch" & presentation ** :'(

Mr_tim_cook

Following the tradition of Steve Job's great sessions, Tim Cook was getting a warm applause from the audience in the beginning as he appear on the stage. But after that: no thunder applauses, not when he declared the emergence of the Post-PC era, not when he said "people wish the got one great product for the Post-PC era, .. Apple got three", not when he announced how the iPad and the three Post-PC device contribute significantly to the Apple quarterly revenue, not when he tell the story about the latest and most beautiful Apple store. They lost it! The session and presentation is dry, no magical Steve-Jobs pitch feel in it.

I would imagine how in that important initial 3 minutes pitch, Steve Jobs would already make his audience getting ecstatic, super excited, and wanting more. At least there would be 3 or 4 thunderous applause at each declaration and revealing. But not with Mr Tim Cook.

Such make -- for the first time in 10 years after the great Apple comeback -- Apple event feels anticipated before its happening, yet when the "revealing session" itself come up: the initial pitch in feels super boring! It become not worth to sit down waiting for the revealing of the product; there's no magical, electrifying excitement that makes "Apple special event" so special; there's no thunderous applause that happen because people really feel something great and exciting is being presented (and revealed) infront of their eyes; there is no joy of pride and proud of being part of history in the making, as Apple (and Steve Jobs) announce their next step in making the world of computing an even better step to be once more.

If this continues like this, all and all, Apple perhaps will keep continue being recognize as the great company as it has been, if it can keep its innovation relevant, it will still be loved as the great pioneer of great integrated engineering product company, at the same time it might still becoming the largest tech company that people love, but its "special event" -- the magical session, the pinnacle of all that people eagerly and excitingly awaits to hear the great revealing of the initiative, the tremendous result achieved so far, and the electrifying revealing of "one more thing" that people really love to hear, perhaps eventually will ceed.

Of course, Mr. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. But as history reveals, great innovative inspiring electrifying leaders indeed gives inspiration and motivational power to the entire company. It happens to Sony during Mr. Akio Morita, it happens to Apple during the era of Steve Jobs. Listening to how Mr. Tim Cook presenting, everything seems becoming "non electrifying" anymore -- no matter how great the thing is. Revenue numbers become as boring as financial number that is announced by a boring accountant once more, revealing of engineering marvel become as dull as listening to boring techie guys trying so hard to convince people how "cool" their innovations are, revealing of amazing things become as dry as sitting in a cinema -- watching the most boring movie ever.

Apple is at the peak of its greatest achievement these days. It achieves some of the most amazing achievement that other company never achieve before. But if it is Mr Tim Cook that announce it, no matter how much "amazing", "gorgeous", "awesome" words is being used (even with deep voice texture that try to pitch how "great" or "deep" it was) it just come up as a boring number, non electrifying announcement, and -- all in all -- a so so event. This marks the first time the world feels the big loss of Steve Jobs in inspiring the world about what makes Apple truly exciting company to watch to follow in the first place. This marks the end of an era: an era when Apple becoming so inspiring and exciting through the sound, voice, gesture and leadership of Apple's greatest leader: Steve Jobs.

We truly miss those inspiring pitch, those electrifying reveals, those magical revealing moment ... those "uh oh" that makes the thunderous applause seems keep and keep coming automatically (and so much worth to give). We miss those magical Apple moments that is so Steve Jobs ... and we miss that "one more thing" too! 

So sad to miss those moments. If we could choose, we still would love to hear that awaited "one more thing" moment once more. :'(

What would happen if Apple buy Microsoft and suddenly allow MacOSX to run on any PC & any Intel based machine?

What would happen if Apple suddenly announce that MacOSX (and later iOS) suddenly being allowed to run on any Intel based machine ? What would happen to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's stock price? Would it suddenly collapse? Then what would happen if -- once the Microsoft stock collapsed -- Apple immediately use its huge half trillion valuation to buy those collapsing Microsoft stocks, make Microsoft to become an Apple Company, then direct its Microsoft Office division to build Office for iOS instead (and shut down development for Office for Windows). If such ever could happen, what would the future of computing looks like? *my silly "what if" thoughts as of this evening. Don't take it too seriously. "half-joking" mode only* ;-)

Windows 8 Metro Interface transforms Microsoft's OS from a "desktop" concept into -- in my own word -- a connected "webtop" **pretty fascinating & intriguing ideas Microsoft/Frog Design had**

Windows_8

I havent' tried the software yet, but probably will download it pretty soon to be used on my old laptop. (Probably on my slightly older MacBook air to see how the experience works on "older" devices; hopefully it works great on that older MB Air).

But overall, I think the key transformative idea that Windows 8 bring is that it transform the metaphor of a computer from a productivity desktop, into an integrated device that integrates the entire people's work and activity into once place. Social, work, live, entertainment, all combined together into one screen, accessible across multiple device.

For me personally, such ideas might work on my desktop, but -- as of now -- might not that interesting yet to be used on my smartphone nor tablet (I got my iPad 2 and my Galaxy Note for those purposes). But for millions of people who were using older PCs and haven't switch to integrated work+social metaphor yet, Windows 8 might be a fascinating "opener" to the world of work+social for everybody.

If I am not mistaken, the legendary Frog design is the brain-power behind the Metro interface. As we know Frog was the award winning design organization that Apple was using in the past (during Apple first Macintosh era) for some of their major industrial design initiative. If indeed Metro is truly designed by Frog, this "Federal Republic Of Germany" Design company (hence "Frog" Design) is indeed still as creative (as imaginative, and as ground breaking) as they ever was.

Truly intriguing concept and ideas. Worth a closer look and try. 

Apple is now Half Trillion USD company; makes it becoming the most-valuable company on earth. Truly awesome. Way to go Apple!

Apple

Some facts in the half-trillion valuation territory:

  • The half-trillion dollar valuation puts Apple in some extremely exclusive territory, making it one of the five most-valuable companies at any point in history. Only Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Cisco and General Electric have ever surpassed that mark.
  • Exxon did it most recently in late 2007, when oil prices were soaring. Microsoft, Cisco and GE reached half a trillion dollars in market capitalization in 1999 during the height of the tech bubble.
  • Microsoft was the only company ever to have a valuation of $600 billion. Microsoft market cap now sits about $267 billion.

Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies. The company reported in January that its sales grew 73% last year. It also posted the second-most profitable quarter in history for a U.S. company.

Truly awesome!

On March 7th Apple will introduce the iPad 3 *Will the 7" iPad model finally arrive?*

Ipad_3

It's not known when such a new device would be available for sale. Last year, sales of the iPad 2 began in the US nine days after the announcement.

Personally I hope a 7" iPad model will finally arrive. An even much more portable (and pocketable iPad) -- I think -- will be tremendously popular. Even more great if we can smoothly touch, type and write/draw on it too.