My screen is my computer
This is the year of the tablet, big and smaller, the e-reader, big and smaller, and the all-in-one desktop computer—all screen and no box. This is more than a packaging evolution, this is a usage ...
Benchmarking—it just ain’t fair
This editorial is dedicated to one of my heroes—Lewis Black. If you don’t who he is or what he does, start here. And then go to whatever city you have to in order to see ...
The more you get—the more you need
Watching SD after living with HD is like drinking Yellow Tail after having Pauillac Bordeaux. We adapt, it’s our design, and once we do we learn—and you can’t go back—why the hell would you want ...
I don’t want to look like a dork—and I’ve got work to do
I was brainstorming with some friends/clients about what a workstation would look like five years from now, and I said, “You’ll wear it.” You will. My model can be built now, well almost. But that’s ...
Tension at the inflection point
This week the world was introduced to the next, and possibly most significant, inflection point in the PC industry since dual-core—the embedding of graphics processors with the CPU. There has been an inevitable march of ...
The problem with crystal balls
Twice this past week I was confronted with soothsayers, magicians, and fortune tellers—you know—industry analysts and company guidance managers. One of the problems with having grown up in this industry (but, I’d like to point ...
The data’s there, why not use it?
Every day we (or at least I) read about an augmented reality (AR) application or installation somewhere in the world. Maybe I’m just sensitive to the topic since it fulfills one of my fantasies about ...
Leading edge, bleeding edge, or just edgy?
Siggraph is enigmatic, sphinx like, all knowing, all seeing, and unknowable. Is it a trade show, an academic conference, a big R&D lab, a screening room, a job fair, an artist’s colony, or a gathering ...
The art of testing and other esoteric sidelines
We test a lot of things here at JPR and at JPA before that. We’ve been testing stuff officially and unofficially for 30 some years—you’d think we’d know what we’re doing. Hell, we thought we ...
Been seeing double for a very long time
The idea of using a computer for stereovision representation of molecules dates back to Project MAC at MIT in 1966. And in the early 1980s the concept became known “molecular graphics” and the Molecular Graphics ...
It’s the noun stupid – Video Game Consoles
I couldn’t understand after all these years why the press keeps referring to, and getting excited about “video games,” and yet never mentioned the PC. The first console dates back to the “Brown Box,” Ralph ...
Those ungrateful consumers
Look at all we’ve done for them and have they once said thanks? No, all they want to do is talk about the good old days. The good old what? You mean when we had ...