I have used the Apple iPhone. I had a private briefing the day after Steve Jobs' keynote and spent about 45 minutes noodling around with the device.
You may touch the hem of my robe if you wish.
In response to a Beatlemania-scale pile of e-mails, here's what I can tell you so far, based on my hands-on impressions, my talks with Apple and general first-hand sniffing around:
1. The touch-interface works flawlessly, in terms of both technical function and user interface design. Whatever you want to do -- select an album to play, make or take a call, compose and send an e-mail -- your first impulse is almost always the correct one.
This is the simplest phone ever.
And there are no lags, no pauses, no waiting for the slickly animated UI to catch up with you, even when you're scrolling through a stack of album art that's flopping past your finger in 3D: It's liquid.
The bad news: It works only with direct, skin contact. You can't wear gloves, and I don't know if you can even put a screen protector on it. On the plus side, the screen is supposed to be more scratch-resistant than an iPod.
"So long as you don't have a pocket full of broken glass, it'll be OK in there," I was told.
2. I think the iPhone's virtual keyboard is a huge improvement over the mechanical thumbpads found on the Treo and any other smart phones of its size.
The buttons are significantly larger, you don't have to hit them dead-center, you lightly tap them instead of punching them down, and the software is smart enough to know that you meant to type "Tuesday" instead of "Tudsday."
After 30 seconds, I was already typing faster with the iPhone than I ever have with any other phone. I suspect that true e-mail demons will need to adapt to the lack of tactile feedback, though.
3. It's the most beautiful freakin' display I've ever seen on a phone or PDA, both in range of color and level of detail. Even microscopic browser text is credibly readable.
4. The apps that were functional at the time of the demo give the satisfying, protein-rich experience of "real" software. The mail client and browser make you feel like you're using a powerful desktop app, not a cell phone that can kind of send e-mail and browse the Web (depending on how you define "e-mail" and "the Web").
5. Apple will keep a very tight rein on software development.
I asked point-blank if third parties would be able to write and distribute iPhone apps and was told, point-blank, no.
However, it appears that there'll be some third-party opportunities. I'm going to take a guess that iPhone software will be distributed the same way as iPod games: no "unsigned" apps will install, but apps will start appearing on the iTunes Store after successfully passing through a mysterious process of Apple certification -- one that ensures that they meet a certain standard of quality and won't, you know, secretly send your credit-card info to Nigeria.
The lockdown on software is an area of ongoing suspicious interest. I noticed that the iPhone's pre-release browser was missing some plug-ins. I asked if Real and Macromedia et al. would be writing media plug-ins for the iPhone's Web browser, and was told that no, the browser would ship with plug-ins, but Apple would be writing them all in-house. Odd, that.
6. The iPhone runs the same OS as the Macintosh. And not in the way that Windows Mobile is, I suppose, technically, if you want to split hairs about it, classified somewhere in the Microsoft Windows phylum.
Nope, everything I've learned (both in official briefings and "you and I never spoke, all right?" sort of discussions) says that it truly does run Leopard, the upcoming 10.5 OS that will be released for the Macintosh late in the spring.
Those spiffy UI animations, for instance, come courtesy of Leopard's Core Animation suite.
So will it run Mac software? Nope. The iPhone runs OS X, but it's an iPhone, not a Macintosh. And it stands to reason that the OS on the iPhone doesn't include any bits that it doesn't need.
And no, the iPhone's Widgets aren't the same as the Mac's Dashboard widgets. But they do use DashCode and other desktop widget tech, so who knows? I'm really hoping that widgets will be more open to third-party developers than apps.
7. The iPhone is still under development and isn't feature-complete. I opened the "Notes" application and found myself tapping impotently at a JPEG of what the app is supposed to look like. And the camera app only had one button.
Any complaints about what the iPhone can't do are premature. Remember, it won't ship for six months.
I really, really like what I've seen so far. But true judgment won't come until June.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A Missile Punch at Bullet Prices by Michael Zitz
Normally, new weaponry tends to make defense more expensive. But the Navy likes to say its new railgun delivers the punch of a missile at bullet prices.
A demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive weapon yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren had Navy brass smiling.
The weapon, which was successfully tested in October at the King George County Base, fires nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds, using electricity rather than gun powder.
The technology could increase the striking range of U.S. Navy ships more than tenfold by the year 2020.
"It's pretty amazing capability, and it went off without a hitch," said Capt. Joseph McGettigan, commander of NSWC Dahlgren Division.
"The biggest thing is it's real, not just something on the drawing board," he said.
The railgun works by sending electric current along parallel rails, creating an electromagnetic force so powerful it can fire a projectile at tremendous speed. Because the gun uses electricity and not gunpowder to fire projectiles, it's safer, eliminating the possibility of explosions on ships and vehicles equipped with it. Instead, a powerful pulse generator is used.
The prototype fired at Dahlgren is only an 8-megajoule electromagnetic device, but the one to be used on Navy ships will generate a massive 64 megajoules. Current Navy guns generate about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.
The railgun's 200 to 250 nautical mile range will allow Navy ships to strike deep in enemy territory while staying out of reach of hostile forces.
Rear Adm. William E. "Bill" Landay, chief of Naval Research, said Navy railgun progress from the drawing board to reality has been rapid.
"A year ago, this was [just] a good idea we all wanted to pursue," he said.
Elizabeth D'Andrea of the Office of Naval Research said a 32-megajoule lab gun will be delivered to Dahlgren in June.
Charles Garnett, project director, called the projectile fired by the railgun "a supersonic bullet," and the weapon itself is "a very simple device."
He compared the process to charging up a battery on the flash of a digital camera, then pushing the button and "dumping that charge," producing a magnetic field that drives the metal cased ordnance instead of gun powder.
The projectile fired yesterday weighed only 3.2 kilograms and had no warhead. Future railgun ordnance won't be large and heavy, either, but will deliver the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile because of the immense speed of the projectile at impact.
Garnett compared that force to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph. "It will take out a building," he said. Warheads aren't needed because of the massive force of impact.
The range for 5-inch guns now on Navy ships is less than 15 nautical miles, Garnett said.
He said the railgun will extend that range to more than 200 nautical miles and strike a target that far away in six minutes. A Tomahawk missile covers that same distance in eight minutes.
The Navy isn't estimating a price tag at this point, with actual use still about 13 years away. But it does know it will be a comparatively cheap weapon to use.
"A Tomahawk is about a million dollars a shot," McGettigan said. "One of these things is pretty inexpensive compared to that."
He said estimates today are that railgun projectiles will cost less than $1,000 each, "but it's going to depend on the electronics."
Projectiles will probably eventually have fins for GPS control and navigation. To achieve that kind of control and minimize collateral damage, railgun ordnance will require electronic innards that can survive tremendous stress coming out of the muzzle.
"When this thing leaves, it's [under] hundreds of thousands of g 's, and the electronics of today won't survive that," he said. "We need to develop something that will survive that many g 's."
At the peak of its ballistic trajectory, the projectile will reach an altitude of 500,000 feet, or about 95 miles, actually exiting the Earth's atmosphere.
The railgun will save precious minutes in providing support for U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces on the ground under fire from the enemy.
"The big difference is that with a Tomahawk, planning a mission takes a certain period of time," McGettigan said. "With this, you get GPS coordinates, put that into the system and the response to target is much quicker from call to fire to actual impact."
General Atomics, a San Diego defense contractor, was awarded a $10 million contract for the project last spring.
The concept was born in the 1970s then promoted when President Ronald Reagan proposed the anti-missile "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative. The SDI railgun was originally intended to use super high-velocity projectiles to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.
A demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive weapon yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren had Navy brass smiling.
The weapon, which was successfully tested in October at the King George County Base, fires nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds, using electricity rather than gun powder.
The technology could increase the striking range of U.S. Navy ships more than tenfold by the year 2020.
"It's pretty amazing capability, and it went off without a hitch," said Capt. Joseph McGettigan, commander of NSWC Dahlgren Division.
"The biggest thing is it's real, not just something on the drawing board," he said.
The railgun works by sending electric current along parallel rails, creating an electromagnetic force so powerful it can fire a projectile at tremendous speed. Because the gun uses electricity and not gunpowder to fire projectiles, it's safer, eliminating the possibility of explosions on ships and vehicles equipped with it. Instead, a powerful pulse generator is used.
The prototype fired at Dahlgren is only an 8-megajoule electromagnetic device, but the one to be used on Navy ships will generate a massive 64 megajoules. Current Navy guns generate about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.
The railgun's 200 to 250 nautical mile range will allow Navy ships to strike deep in enemy territory while staying out of reach of hostile forces.
Rear Adm. William E. "Bill" Landay, chief of Naval Research, said Navy railgun progress from the drawing board to reality has been rapid.
"A year ago, this was [just] a good idea we all wanted to pursue," he said.
Elizabeth D'Andrea of the Office of Naval Research said a 32-megajoule lab gun will be delivered to Dahlgren in June.
Charles Garnett, project director, called the projectile fired by the railgun "a supersonic bullet," and the weapon itself is "a very simple device."
He compared the process to charging up a battery on the flash of a digital camera, then pushing the button and "dumping that charge," producing a magnetic field that drives the metal cased ordnance instead of gun powder.
The projectile fired yesterday weighed only 3.2 kilograms and had no warhead. Future railgun ordnance won't be large and heavy, either, but will deliver the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile because of the immense speed of the projectile at impact.
Garnett compared that force to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph. "It will take out a building," he said. Warheads aren't needed because of the massive force of impact.
The range for 5-inch guns now on Navy ships is less than 15 nautical miles, Garnett said.
He said the railgun will extend that range to more than 200 nautical miles and strike a target that far away in six minutes. A Tomahawk missile covers that same distance in eight minutes.
The Navy isn't estimating a price tag at this point, with actual use still about 13 years away. But it does know it will be a comparatively cheap weapon to use.
"A Tomahawk is about a million dollars a shot," McGettigan said. "One of these things is pretty inexpensive compared to that."
He said estimates today are that railgun projectiles will cost less than $1,000 each, "but it's going to depend on the electronics."
Projectiles will probably eventually have fins for GPS control and navigation. To achieve that kind of control and minimize collateral damage, railgun ordnance will require electronic innards that can survive tremendous stress coming out of the muzzle.
"When this thing leaves, it's [under] hundreds of thousands of g 's, and the electronics of today won't survive that," he said. "We need to develop something that will survive that many g 's."
At the peak of its ballistic trajectory, the projectile will reach an altitude of 500,000 feet, or about 95 miles, actually exiting the Earth's atmosphere.
The railgun will save precious minutes in providing support for U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces on the ground under fire from the enemy.
"The big difference is that with a Tomahawk, planning a mission takes a certain period of time," McGettigan said. "With this, you get GPS coordinates, put that into the system and the response to target is much quicker from call to fire to actual impact."
General Atomics, a San Diego defense contractor, was awarded a $10 million contract for the project last spring.
The concept was born in the 1970s then promoted when President Ronald Reagan proposed the anti-missile "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative. The SDI railgun was originally intended to use super high-velocity projectiles to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.
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