Sleepy-Head

Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS →

Great article about WebOS on the Verge. It’s such complicated topic, and one technology people really want to understand. I bought a pre when they came out, and was excited about them. I didn’t like some of the direction Apple was going at the time, and the UI of WebOS was actually really great.

A lot of that got wasted though, but by a lot of different people and decisions. Reality isn’t simple.

# apple hp webos palm technology

Posted 11 months ago from bookmarklet
The MinIon is an array of nanopores – 512 to be precise – and circuitry housed in a USB stick. Why a USB stick? “The form factor is determined by the requirements” – as there are no fluidics you don’t need a big machine. There are no fluidics. “Your fluidics is a Gilson”, said Brown. The prototype version has an ugly battery pack attached to it but it will eventually use USB power. The USB stick is disposable. “Why do you need an instrument?” he says.

— Oxford Nanopore megaton announcement: “Why do you need a machine?” – exclusive interview for this blog!

# bioinformatics genetics science technology

Posted 1 year ago from bookmarklet
That ship has sailed. They’ve made up their mind that this is a Class III, which is why most people are going to Europe with this technology, not the U.S.

—

College of American Pathologists - Regulators scanning the digital scanners

Keep in mind, this technology is completely fine for use now, and the FDA will regulate the whole workflow intact, killing any healthy vendor ecosystem…

I wish people realized we currently have the worst of both socialized and private healthcare.

# healthcare technology pathology imaging

Posted 1 year ago from bookmarklet 4 notes

Apple’s Cloud

I feel like lately Apple has sidestepped a lot of the “normal” ways of implementing cloud services in a way that might make them look naive, but is actually very subtle.

The main example is iMessage. People have been looking for the next thing to replace email for a while. Companies like Facebook, Groupme etc are all on the case, trying to get people to alter their behavior. Meanwhile SMS is still what most younger people use, despite its ridiculous costs. Apple steps in and makes the service that should always be free, actually be free, and normal people don’t even notice. This is a huge deal though, and could allow apple to innovate on this in ways that no one is expecting, just because they mimic the previous behavior of SMS so well. It’s not SMS though, so anything is possible, iMessage API, app store integration…

The other example is iTunes Match. I didn’t think I would use this much, because I’m happy with the amount of music i can sync on my iOS devices. What I didn’t appreciate was that it completely abstracts the idea of syncing and managing music. Everything you have is simply everywhere. Not only all your songs, but the playlists, playcounts, ratings, everything. This is a big deal, since you also still have your files. In my opinion this is better than Spotify/rdio streaming options. You can stream if you need to, but usually you don’t have to. Again, offering all the benefits and more of traditional cloud offerings without making people do things in ways they don’t want to.

I love the idea of an open market, but when I think about why Apple is in a position to do this sort of thing, I can’t help but think it’s because they completely own the platform. This is somewhat troubling, as I don’t think Facebook could make something so usable on iOS, but I think the main message is more important.

Just because Apple isn’t making websites and things that look like traditional “cloud” offerings doesn’t mean they aren’t sidestepping the whole thing. A smart company with a ton of advantages in hardware and software might end up making services that look different than a 5 person startup, yet address the same needs.

# apple technology

Posted 1 year ago 2 notes