Vincent Gable’s Blog

February 23, 2009

Laptop Mats

Filed under: Announcement,Design,Usability | , ,
― Vincent Gable on February 23, 2009

I just really want somebody to make a good portable cooling pad for portable computers.

Laptops1 are too hot to be used on a lap. This Penny Arcade comic says it best, if a little crudely,

Using this Macbook is like putting my dick in a George Foreman Grill. Okay? It’s like making a penis panini.

There’s a real need for something to keep your your lap cool. You can buy gel cooling pads. But I have reservations about them. The biggest is the weight of the gel. And according to reviews, eventually the pad absorbs enough heat to turn into a hot pad.

My solution is inspired by sushi mats:

415ANWJ8X6L._SL160_.jpg

It’s a very simple idea really, instead of bamboo slats, you use hollow aluminum tubes in the mat. That gives you an extremely light pad that’s easy to roll up and carry anywhere. It keeps the hot computer off your lap, draws heat away from the computer. (Aluminum has been used to make heat sinks for decades.)

Oh, and just in case you were wondering I’m using a book to protect my lap as I write this. But books are heavy, so I only carry one if I need to refer to the book.

If you have a better way to stay cool while working on the road, please share!


1
I’m counting netbooks (inexpensive, ultraportable but slow computers) as separate from “laptops”. Certainly many netbooks work just fine on top of the lap. But some people will always need more powerful laptops.

February 18, 2009

Competing Software Engineering Approaches

Filed under: Cocoa,Programming,Quotes,UNIX | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on February 18, 2009

Tim Bray,

…Palm’s approach is
radically different from both Android’s and Apple’s. Since they’re all here
at more or less the same time, running the
same Web browser on roughly
equivalent hardware, this represents an unprecedented experiment in
competitive software-engineering approaches.

Language Framework Notes
Apple Objective-C Cocoa Old-school object-oriented language compiled to the metal; general-purpose UI
framework with roots reaching back to NeXT.
Android Java Android Java language, custom VM, built-from-scratch UI
framework aimed at small-form-factor devices, fairly abstraction-free, based
on “Actions” and “Intents”.
web OS JavaScript “Mojo” All Web technology all the time. Innovative and visually-impressive
“card”-based UI.

(I think it’s interesting to see Windows Mobile on the list:

Windows Mobile C/C++ Windows CE/.NET Micro Philosophically tries to bring Windows to the phone. When I did WinCE development it felt like doing C++ for a Windows OS from the past.

)

I see way too many other factors to attribute success/failure of the devices to the language. So I wouldn’t call this an experiment.

But it is interesting how much development for each platform diverges at a fundamental level!

Historically most operating systems —
UNIX, OS/2, Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac (Classic and OS X) — were predominantly, written in C/C++. While each platform has it’s own frameworks, they all have strong support for C++ development. (Although Mac OS X has is slowly dropping support for it’s C/C++ “Carbon” API, and Windows wants to be moving to C# .NET)

It’s really cool to see mobile platforms doing something radically different from each other. There are good arguments for each approach — may the best one win.

December 8, 2008

Optimize CPU Usage of Your Website

Filed under: Programming,Quotes,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on December 8, 2008

The thing is, web developers should test their pages for CPU usage the same as app developers do. And anytime a page is idle, CPU usage should be at 0%. Same as with any other app.

Brent Simmons

Last quarter notebooks outsold desktops for the first time. Netbooks, and iPhones have been exploding in popularity as well. That means a significant number of your website’s visitors will be running off a battery, and since battery life decreases proportionally with CPU load, you really do owe it to your users to do this. The internet shouldn’t be something you have to be plugged into a power outlet to use.

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