I’m not a big Apple fan.  That should be fairly apparent to anyone who’s read my What I Use page.  Today was the launch of the rather unfortunately named iPad from Apple.  It’s now just over 18 hours since it was announced and while ever Tech journalist, Apple Fan boy and random person has been taking sides in the debate whether this is an awesome of crappy product (Quote of the day today was… “It’s just a big ass iPod Touch”) most people usually forget one thing.

This is version 1.0.

As Mr Jeff Atwood once said (not that it was said that long ago) Version 1 Sucks, But Ship It Anyway.  It will also not be the coolest thing since sliced bread on the first go.  The first version is the idea, the feelers, the does this thing have any real future version.  If the first time you released a product you had every single feature and idea perfectly laid out thought out and working correctly, you either have an extremely tiny one feature product or WAY too much start-up cash.

Everything needs a few revisions and more feedback to help grow the product into what it can be.  Look at the iPhone, the PC, Cars, any software be it desktop, web, mobile, service, framework all need more than one revision to get them right.  While I can easily say I’ve got plenty of feature requests for the iPad, I’m sure for many people it will be an awesome product just ready to be used.

In the meantime, find something better to argue about, like Windows Mobile 7 perhaps :P

I don’t subscribe to the whole dreams thing, but there was one dream the other night that I think needs to be retold.  Especially as I’m currently on a health kick where I’m not eating any Fast Food Chain Food and Fast Food in General.

This crazy dream, myself and another person I don’t know, were touring the world, taste testing Fast Food Chains burgers.  Not only were we touring and taste testing we were critiquing the taste of the burgers and in one particular fast food chain (I believe it was a Burger King) one of the staff got to come touring with us back to Australia to see what Fast Food should taste like, somewhere on this return trip to Australia we were playing soccer in some over grown basketball court.  Strange….

I think this is my brains way of breaking out of the addictive bond that is Fast Food… onto healthier options, hopefully…. day 15, 340 days remaining…

Welcome to 2010.  This post is a few days late.. ok maybe 10, but better late than never.

It seems this year many people are leaving resolutions at the door so they can’t be broken within the first few days of the new year.  Technically I’ve tried to do the same, but I have ended up with just one resolution that should impact most areas of my life.  While it sounds like some big massive resolution I’ll never be able to keep it’s actually really simple.

Be More Disciplined.

The idea behind my resolution of being more disciplined is well I suck at it, I’m inherently lazy.  I could think of nothing better than lazing on the couch watching some random TV show or movie or playing an Xbox game.  However this laziness over the past year has meant I’ve also not released any of my little projects I’m working, hardly posted on this blog and feel like I’m really going nowhere.

How am I implementing my little resolution… one tiny step at a time.  My goals are 1 blog post a week, but if I manage more great, I’m doing fairly well with twitter I think (even though I have less than a thousands tweets a year, I’m not telling everyone when I wake up or go to the toilet and never will).  Just by being slightly more disciplined in my online activities I’ve already started to notice I’m pushing myself to be more disciplined in other areas, daily vitamins, better food decisions, meal planning etc and even being more disciplined with work tasks, not starting too many things at once without getting them finished.

I’ve had plenty of people tell me I need to get a year calendar and cross off days as I do such things, but that just wouldn’t work for me, I’m too digital, trying to find a working pen at my place is a mission in itself.  I need a online product that watches my online lifestyle and keeps me up to date on my goals.

I think I now realise why there is a huge market for removalists and why they can charge so damn much.  After a crazy few days which saw dirty units, dying vacuum cleaners, lifts being shut off and dying computers the move is almost complete, bar a few small items.

I'm extremely glad that the move didn't have to be completed in a weekend and I continue to be surprised with how much can be shoved into a small unit when you get efficient :)

Now to let my bones and muscles heal.  The good and the bad part about moving I suppose is the huge amount of exercise, next week onto training for the Bridge to Brisbane, it's only 10kms, but I'd like to be able to at least jog some of it.

As the great Barney Stinsen would say… Ted, SUIT UP!  Well I’m not Ted to start with but it is almost time to suit up.  Today I head back home to ensure my mother isn’t running around like a headless chook before my little sisters wedding tomorrow.  Hopefully everything goes to plan and everyone gets their drink on afterwards :D

Should be a nice interesting weekend.

Also don’t forget about your mums on Sunday. :D

I try to keep up with most happens coming from Microsoft, which is quite a task in itself; however I have been noticing lately that while the Microsoft badgering continues without fail, there is a lot brewing for the second half of this year and next year.

On the consumer front by the end of the year, it looks there will be…

• Windows 7 – The brand spanking ‘major’ update that has everyone talking,
• New Zune Hardware
• Updated Zune Software & Marketplace (this goes with the international launch)
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• MyPhone Final release (and possibly integration with Live Services)
• Windows Mobile Marketplace
• Live Mesh Released
• Advertising coming out of every Microsoft orifice

With the consumer ads not actually advertising Windows (except for the last splash frame), they are doing a very good job at getting people to talk not only about Windows but PC’s which great for the entire PC makers community.  This with their big push on a Windows Phone and the new WM6.5, which from the betas is turning out to be a pretty nice refresh release and Windows 7 and all it’s goodies, there looks to be quite a nice push to the consumer side of the market where Microsoft has never really done very well in the past (except OS of course :) ).

Also on the consumer side, there is the Xbox Live Marketplace, the Zune Marketplace, the Microsoft Store and the new Windows Mobile Marketplace.  I wouldn’t be surprised if suddenly they all became linked (much like Microsoft Points already are between Xbox and Zune, but buy a song on Zune Marketplace and suddenly it is on your Xbox, Zune, Mobile and PC running Zune)

All this in the next 6-8 months… Then in 2010 (not all consumer)…

• Office 2010
• Windows Mobile 7
• Visual Studio 2010

While it might be a partial pipe dream to think all of this is just going to happen by the end of the year and next year, if Microsoft can pull off their plans to get all this new stuff out, it is really going to start falling into place for consumers.  The big feature that seems like it will pull it all together for Microsoft is LiveMesh and I guess at a lower level Azure.

It will be an interesting year for all consumer tech companies as we see what everyone can pull out of their hat in the current ‘economic climate’. (I really hate that term – feel free to let me know a better term to use.)

Please note that everything in the above post is all speculation and opinion of myself.  I have no mystic contacts in Microsoft (that will tell me anything :P) and I have not yet completed a working time machine that also makes a good cup of coffee.