David Acevedo's Blog

I've been doing a lot of research lately and have been getting a ton of ebooks in the process. My eyes sometimes get tired from reading on a computer and it's not as nice as reading a book, but carrying around a whole bunch of book is not great either. So when I heard Google was coming out with a new tablet I was excited. I was convinced after reading Ars Technica's glowing review . Figuring it would pay for itself in two to three years at the rate I buy books, I ordered it and received it yesterday. And in one day I already saw all I needed to see. Design Flawless. But in the days of iPhones and iPads, it has to be flawless. Anything less is not even considered. The Nexus 7 resembles the first few iPhones with a glass surface bordered with a metal bevel. The back is rubberized and curves nicely in the hand. The dimples in the rubber give it a nice look and also make it pleasing to the touch, giving it a nice solid feel. There are three physical buttons: power and volum...

Dear Apple, Why should you reconsider your green registry pull out . I know that innovation and the “wants of the customers” are business pressures that are hard to ignore. They want it faster, lighter, cheaper. And you so want to satisfy all that. The designers want it sleeker, cooler, svelte.  Now is not the time to pick short term over long term. While it may seem that having products that aren’t easy to repair, recycle and take apart is what people want, like Henry Ford said: “If I’d asked people what they wanted. They would have asked for faster horses.” It’s easy to forget the big picture. Apple had its start catering to that tinkering vision and recently providing a mesh of engineering and design unparalleled in the world. It’s not design alone. It’s not engineering alone. It’s that alchemical combination that when it’s right it’s magical. The computer, the tool, melts away and the crafters of words, images, music, presentations, code, see only their cr...

A new version of iTunes 10.5 came out for Windows with compatibility for iOS 5. After upgrading my boot time jumped a huge amount of time. Here is how to tame the Windows Boot back into shape when you have installed iTunes. 1. First install Soluto (mentioned in my Windows utilities post ). Then go to chop boot and look for these processes Apple Application Support Bonjour -- this one is optional Mobile Devices (Apple Mobile Devices Support) And set all three to "Delay." Unless you only use your computer for iTunes/iOS support from the minute you start the computer, there is no real reason for those to hold up the start-up of your computer. 2. Then open Run... and type 'msconfig' and go to the start up tab. On Windows 7 you can just type it on the Start search bar and it will fire right away. Don't ask me why but when things are set up here sometimes they conflict with Soluto. Go to the Startup tab and look for any processes that shouldn't ...

As a companion to my blog on Windows utilities, here are two paid apps on the iPhone that I consider so fantastic that are must buys in my opinion. -Easy Calendar ( $1.99 ) The iPhone Calendar is one of its weakest features in my opinion. I miss the clear Black Berry calendar on my pearl whenever I had to use it. This app makes the calendar not only easy to use but way more useful, I see my week laid out for me with an easy ability to push things to other days (rather than having to re-enter the appointment). This app has completely re-made the way I organize things. I'm way more organized and rarely miss appointment now. This app is a steal at it's prize. No other app adds such simple functionality to the iPhone like this one does. It's like my secret organizer helper. -Sleep Cycle ( $.99 ) I tried out this app because it was recommended on Tim Ferriss's books . I had seen this app before when it came out and thought it was intriguing, but it was way expensive. N...

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. A true visionary, he will be missed by people who not only used his product but got inspiration from him. His vision allowed him to defer credit to the team that build the company and create a fierce loyalty in his costumers. Along with his many inspirational words in Standford's Commencement Speech we have dictum about art: Real Artists Ship and Real Artists get paid. Both of which are really good ones I think. Steve Jobs was not perfect, but he did have the courage of his convictions and dared take one the hyper conservative world of running a corporation with an attitude of running a start-up. Like the apt writer from Ars Tecnica, John Siracusa , summed up "In a post-Steve-Jobs world, there is no longer an excuse for large corporations to be less bold than start-ups." He will be missed by me, because in a world where people can seem to sit and look for opportunities to discourage you, it is great to see one daring and succeeding ...

About a year ago Microsoft came out with a highly publicized phone called the Kin. You might remember the commercials about a girl wanting to do a trip to meet her friends face to face. Well, a few weeks after the phone was out in the market Microsoft killed it. Why they went ahead with producing it only to kill it? Hmmm. Now Hewlett Packard (HP) has pulled the exact same maneuver. A few days ago I saw a commercial with of all people Many Paquiao for the HP TouchPad that uses the WebOS. Yesterday I read how Best-buy is returning its huge order of HP TouchPads. And today HP pulled a M$ dropping the tablet and the modestly successful Pre phone that works on WebOS. Dumb asses. Really. Dumb asses. They killed the platform by starving it. It's like being disappointed in Einstein because he was bad at math as a kid, saying this kid will never do any good in school. He's not a prodigy let's pull him out of school. What were they expecting? With Apple dominating the...

In a recent CNET article , it describes how the Xoom has had little impact on the tablet market and attributes this failure in light of the outstanding success of the iPad to the Apple Stores and their focus on the tablet. I disagree. I think the Xoom fails because it tries to do what the iPad does but not be the iPad. It's roughly the same size and same specs and almost twice the price. Why would anyone shell out almost $300 dollars more for a product that's just a mimic of the iPad? Better to go with the original. The only tablet that I've seen that differentiates itself from the iPad is the Galaxy Tab 7 inches. It's used in Spain's EOI (Escuela de Organizacion Industrial) a prominent Business School precisely because of one of it's advantages. It's open-source. But I'm sure the fact that it's cheaper than an iPad had something to do with it too. The 7-inch tablet is much smaller than the iPad allowing it to be used in a more portable way. ...

Recent article in Computer World  predicts that Apple will dominate the PC market in 2011. This was a company that had but a fringe of user a just over a decade ago, and Windows seemed like an immovable Juggernaut in control of the whole industry. So what happened? The article suggest the tablet dominance of the iPad for it's dominance of the market, but I disagree. I don't think that's what's going on here, that's just the symptom. I think the reason for this boils down to one thing: users, users users! In a rather popular internet video the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer , goes around yelling what windows was all about: "developers, developers, developers." This focus had served the company well. After all Microsoft's early success lay in its business contracts. Few people outside hobbyists had personal computers. Computers were business tools used for spreadsheets, word processing and data processing outside the hands of most users. The world...

Back in the nineties Apple made some key mistakes: 1. It refused to sell computers over catalogs, even thought it had one (Dell and Gateway took off with this) 2. It messed up the licensing of its operating system and 3. Having a better graphics platform than many PCs of the time it actively discouraged the use of the Mac for gaming. Now finally gaming is coming of age on the Mac. This year has seen the release of Valve's steam platform for the Mac. Which not only brings Valve's very popular games like Team Fortress 2 (TF2) but also allows cross platform purchasing. If you buy a game like Braid that is available for both Mac and PC you only need to buy it once and you can use it on both Operating Systems (OS).  Arguably the beginning of this period was the smart move by Bioware to release it's popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (WOW) as a Mac and PC release. Now the Mac has become a great gaming platform for most casual and occasional gaming. And Apple has learned it's le...