After a pre-order launch which left much to be desired,
resulting in Android Police calling them a scam, Notion Ink have decided to amend themselves by giving up on secrecy and releasing more information on their upcoming tablet, Adam. Originally planned for the product’s unveiling at the upcoming CES, these blog posts go into more detail about the software running on top of their product, called “Eden”. Note from Kroc: Readers please also welcome OSAlert user Neolander (Hadrien) as the new OSAlert editor!
Congrats as new editor!
Yep, welcome Neolander!
For some reason whenever a new OSAlert editor is presented, I find myself humming Queen’s ‘Another one bites the dust’
Hope you have thick skin!
Well, if I look at existing examples, I’ll soon be at the same time pro-Microsoft, pro-Apple, pro-Linux, pro-Adobe, and will have an agenda against all of them at the same time.
But that’s okay. My disturbed and schizophrenic mind is up to this.
Edited 2011-01-01 20:02 UTC
I see you’re already clearly displaying your obvious anti-Google bias by deliberately failing to refer to them above.
How are you with car analogies?
He also failed to mention alternative OSes.
I’m telling you OSAlert is going to the gutter man.
Well, you see, Google is like a car : intrusive technology that takes way too much place in people’s life, but you’d have a hard time doing some things without them…
Better this way ? ^^
EDIT : Oh, and alternative OSs are the unicorns of computing.
Edited 2011-01-02 08:25 UTC
It’s a bit disturbing that you suddenly changed your avatar to look like this… I most often like your contributions in comments, but I don’t know what to make of a friendship with nt_jerkface — I’ll take it as a sign of good people skills for now.
Oh, that ? It was meant as a visual joke : since I now belong to the faction of disturbed and evil admins, I couldn’t resist when I found this when parsing the dark and forgotten corners of my hard drive
It’s still the same photo of myself, I just played with it differently and had fun mailing it to relatives at the time. Warp tools are great for silly jokes.
You’re right that it’s a bit offensive-looking though. So I’ll probably set it back to the sketch or something else at some point.
When I randomly discovered this friend/fan functionality, I didn’t know what to do with it. I first thought of some people who I really liked a lot on OSAlert : vodoomoth, Thom, and Kroc. Then I decided to have fun by also adding the three people which I argued with the most, putting a more ironical meaning on the “fan” word : I’m glad they are there, because I think OSAlert would be a dull place if everyone just agreed with each other.
There’s something more deep behind this choice, though : when I think that someone is stupid, I just ignore him. If I keep arguing with these guys, it means that even though I don’t agree with them, I respect them enough for endlessly discussing things with them.
You mentioned nt_jerkface, so let’s talk about him as an example. Maybe you think he’s just a pro-Microsoft and big content troll, and that’s what I also thought first. But on second look, he knows some of the things he’s criticizing well enough to criticize them well, and some of his arguments make a lot of sense to me when I look at them fairly. Plus, he has some sense of humour – just read any post where he mentions his youth, it’s hilarious, and his nickname itself is a joke. So he’s not someone I could just mock with a harsh one-liner and forget.
And then there’s yet again another reason why I try to look at those people who I find annoying with an open mind…
Never quite satisfied with currently existing products, I’m currently writing the very early components of what is supposed to become at some point a desktop operating system. At some point I obviously had to ask myself “What do people ask from a desktop operating system ?”. This question is critical, because the less clear your view of the thing is, the further away from customers’ expectations the final product is – and that’s not something I want to happen, because correcting a product after its release based on customer feedback is a PITA.
Some people will agree with my vision of an OS right away. These people are essential in that they provide me support and faith in these early stages of development. At a later stage, they might also help me spreading the word, testing the thing, and so on. It’s good to have friends when you’re doing something complicated in this world. And writing an OS is certainly not the simplest hobby I’ve ever had.
But skeptics are important too. If I want to succeed, I must understand why people are happy with system X and not with system Y. What makes people like or loath Windows, OS X, Haiku, Linux, BSD, and the myriad of other OSs in existence. This is critical, and it’s a fun task too.
So nt_jerkface likes Microsoft product enough that he’s using them. Great, there is say a 90% of the desktop computing world who thinks like him. The difference is that he has spent a lot of time in a world of other OSs. At some point, he has necessarily underwent a thought process during which he had to ask himself why these other guys are happy with them. It seems to me that he has tried them at some point, too, so he did not just dismiss the thought. Since he continues to advocate Microsoft products in the blatant way we all know of, he has probably found some answers to his questions, and proven to himself that he was right. I want to find out how. And since asking directly wouldn’t lead me to a full answer, because it’s the twisted way the human mind works, I’ll have to get to know more in another way.
Hope this answers your question.
Edited 2011-01-03 08:25 UTC
Thanks for answering my post in such an informing and balanced way. This bodes well for your editorship and OSAlert in general..! Wish you all a great 2011 with many advances both personal as technological!
in a teacup (or whatever is smaller than that, a tequila glass?) about some (initially) suspected vaporware or “scamware”. Looks like that to me. I admit I didn’t read all of the linked page (partly due to its weight: 1.5 Mb for a single page!) but the warranty conditions are ridiculous and would have never been accepted by me.
Welcome in your new shoes Neolander. It took some time to remove the wrapping from around the gift; my noticing the yellow band on your posts had prompted an email to the crew so I already knew. Still have time for the os ‘periment?
Sure ! I’m currently writing regression tests for memory management. It’s a rather lengthy process, because in the way I notice horrors in the code I test, and take care of them. If it wasn’t for a “TODO” text file I keep around, I wouldn’t know how I started to do something and what’s next sometimes…
As I said on the blog, I’ll start work on interrupt management once I’ve got memory management and allocation testing done. I just feel like this part of the kernel is so important that it should have its automated test suite written as soon as possible. Moreover, it allows me to test my code more extensively than when I did it by hand, and I want this to be rock solid before moving to something else.
Edited 2011-01-01 20:59 UTC
YOU’RE BEING TOTALLY OFF TOPIC AND SHOULD BE FIRED
Just kidding, congratulations on making editor! I’ve generally enjoyed your presence in the comments so I’m sure I’ll like you as an editor too.
Errr… *thinks thinks thinks* Hey, I’m being off-topic about an alternative OS in an early development stage, so that’s okay, right ? ^^’
Thank you a lot, and everyone else too
Hope I’ll manage to do this job well.
Edited 2011-01-03 07:14 UTC
I’m sure you will do it well, and I wish you nothing but success in that stressful position, against trolling, people with prejudices, being called a fanboy of whatever… Not to be a pessimist
The Adam looks awesome. I’m probably going to wait for the iPad 2 announcement and if it isn’t anything earth shattering, I’ll get an Adam.
Also, congratulations for the new editor!
Didn’t this computer come out almost 30 years ago? I remember anticipating the Adam rather anxiously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam
Edited 2011-01-02 03:02 UTC
i had one i think my mom still has a pic of me opening it for christmas ill have to stop by and look for it maybe upload it later
Not enough unicorn references… ;-p
As long as you are pro real OS news and anti-unicorn, I’m happy! Long live OS news!
You’re not necessarily going to be happy all the time then, because my opinion on those matters is that if there’s nothing newsworthy happening in the world of operating systems, it’s better to write about something else than to write very poor OS-related articles or to write nothing
Edited 2011-01-03 08:21 UTC
Since I’m probably the only one who actually looked at the link…
I watched a video and wasn’t very impressed. I have a viewsonic g tablet and this shows similar woes i’m having with it. Too much choppinness, bad touch behavior. And the interface didn’t seem intuitive. I can only assume the choppinness is likely android itself.
At this point I’m more than willing to take a shot at meego. I have a nokia n900 and although the app catalog isn’t great it definitely delivers a noticeably smoother experience than I’ve had with android so far.