Apple has sent out press invites to the much anticipated launch of the iPad Mini. Much has been said about Steve Jobs’ criticism of 7-inch tablets. First, the iPad Mini is likely bigger than 7 inches. Second, his criticism is for the, back then, smallish iPad competitors, not for an Apple product.Finally, that was then and this is now. Things change. Personally, I’m very much excited about a smaller iPad. It’s like the difference between a hardbound book and a paperback.
After a few delays, Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver, daredevil and BASE jumper, has finally done his much anticipated space dive. From a record 39,045 m (39 km!!!) . He also set the record for the highest manned balloon flight and fastest speed of free fall at 1,342 kph making him the first human to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. Baumgartner was in free fall for 4 minutes and 19 seconds, 17 seconds short of the 1960 record of Joseph Kittinger. An inspiring feat of human achievement however you cut it.
Saw a 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe on the expressway yesterday. It looks great except the pricing sucks. It’s priced at P1,768,000 for the 2WD version and P2,228,000. for the 4WD version. That’s way higher than the quite capable pickup-based SUVs (Mitsubishi Montero Sport, Toyota Fortuner, Ford Everest, and the new Chervrolet Trailblazer) and already heading towards the Mazda CX-9, Ford Explorer, and Honda Pilot territory. Sure there is a void in that price range and there will still be buyers at those prices but I don’t think it will be the same as the levels that propelled Hyundai to great success the past few years. Yeah, I’m bitter.
Leslie flashed a CyanogenMod 10 (CM10) nightly build on my LG Optimus Black (Thanks, Les!). HUGE improvement! I previously said “it’s a little bit laggy due to the low-end specs as well as all those virtual machinery and hardware abstraction layers”. Scrap that! The lagginess, it seems, was due to the Android version (Android 2.2 Frozen Yogurt and later Android 2.3 Gingerbread) and the LG Touch UI. With CM10, which was based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, everything was snappier. There’s a fair bit of instability (hangs mainly, this is a nightly build after all) but it’s quite usable. Looks like this phone can go on as test phone for another year. Maybe I could even use it as secondary/backup phone.
Grabbed a pair of EarPods yesterday. They were out of stock in quite a few stores but I finally got lucky.
The EarPods come in a case that acts as a cable wrap and is really pretty and, more importantly, functional. The earphones themselves are just as beautiful. It’s got a curvy organic look. Supposedly it was designed for the human ear. They’re not in-ear headphones but they are shaped in such a way as to deliver the sound directly into the ear canal.
The sound is definitely better compared to the old Apple earphones. The sound is not as tinny as before. Definitely there was an improvement in the mid and low range. The bass is definitely not the thumping, at least in the ear, kind of way but I guess they also had to consider voice.
I’m quite pleased with them. Too bad, because now that I have them, there’s one less reason for getting an iPhone 5 :P