iPad camera comparison

These are pictures of the iPad 2 camera (front and back) verses the new iPad camera (front and back).

First of all, the iPad 2 and new iPad have the same VGA camera in the front. I really wish Apple would improve on this. In their minds, people only want to use the front camera for FaceTime; this is however very wrong. People want to be back to take pictures of themselves with friends, and obviously having a front facing camera is easier than a back camera for this.  It's not always easy to line-up the perfect shot when you can't see the screen, i.e., using the back camera.




The specs differ with the back camera. As you can see, the iPad 2 has a mere 0.7MP camera. That's less than 1MP ad the main reason why the camera on the iPad 2 sucks so much. The new iPad has a 5MP camera for clearer quality pictures. However, an LED flash would have helped improve visual quality in dark or dimly-lit rooms.




So there you have it, the difference between the camera on the iPad 2 and the new iPad. I used iPhoto on my iPad to get these information screen shots. The location date is edited out for obvious reasons, everything else remains unchanged.

Why I will not buy a Wii U

I've been a loyal buyer of Nintendo products since the first Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the early 1980s, but that trend is about to stop and for very specific reasons.

1) Bad customer support:
When I brought home the original Nintendo DS and discovered it had dead pixels on it, I called Nintendo and the person on the phone didn't want to fix or replace it.

2) Doesn't support own products:
Shortly after buying the e-Reader add-on for the Gameboy Advance, Nintendo decided to cancel the Cards used for game scanning. Also very few games took advantage of the Transfer Pak used with Pokemon Stadium. Wii Speak is another of these unsupported products. Other than Animal Crossing: City Folks, can anyone really say they use Wii Speak?

3) Lack of good 3rd-party support.
The Nintendo 64 was the last Nintendo console to enjoy really good 3rd-party support. The GameCube was reappearing off support, and the Wii almost has none. Great 3rd-party companies, such as Midway, are giving all their support to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 these days. Why should I be unable to play the latest Mortal Kombat just because I own a Wii? In households where they can only afford one console, will be disappointed with this lack of support.

4) No vision for the future.
Before the Wii came out, I had 3 HDTVs in my house (Nintendo's reasoning for only supporting up to 480p was that not enough people had HDTVs). Now that companies like Vizio are making 21:9 TVs with 4K resolution, Nintendo is going to finally support 1080p. They are backward in their thinking. You should future-proof, NOT produce something that is outdated before the box is even opened! The Wii looks horrible on my TV.


So with all these faults, why should I continue to support Nintendo? This is the end of an era Goodbye Nintendo, it was fun while it lasted.

Putting perspective in the warm iPad discussion

As you may have heard, people are complaining about their 3rd generation iPads getting warm in the lower left corner. What people need to remember is that this warmth is still nowhere near as hot as a laptop gets. My MacBook Pro would get so hot that I could fry an egg on it. My iPad 2 stays cool to the touch. Though the 3rd gen iPad gets warmer than the iPad 2, it's still nothing compared to a MacBook Pro.

Firefox now supports H.264

In my previous post regarding web video I mentioned that Firefox doesn't support H.264. Well that is all about to change, as Firefox has now officially announced they will support H.264 as a way to prevent irrelevance.

Johann Gutenberg, language, and the Internet

It is deplorable the level of writing we have been accustomed to in recent years. Various "professional" blogs are filled with typos, misspellings, and foul language. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a grammar nazi. Different states have different school board standards, and grammar isn't the same across the country. However, spelling never changes; for example, cat is spelled c-a-t no matter which state you're from. And that is what is so deplorable, the lack of correct spelling. It shows the laziness of the arthur, because looking up the correct spelling online takes only a few seconds.

This brings me to my next point: Technology. Johann Gutenberg's generation thirsted for a new book every six months, this generation gets a new web page every 6 seconds! And how do you think people this technology? They spend their time creating new LOLcats and looking at animated badgers.

In the middle of the 15th century, Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press and it changed the frequency of book publishing. And it seems that as a society, we took a technology (the Internet) meant to bring new information and ideas to from anywhere in the world, and instead we're using it to add stupidity to our lives. What has our society become? Gutenberg would be rolling in his grave if he knew what information technology is used for these days.