“The iPad screen is 7.76 by 5.82 inches. The ASUS screen is 8.8 by 4.95 inches. ASUS is larger in one direction but smaller in the other direction, and has 3.55% less area than the iPad, not 36% more as Microsoft depicts.”

That’s a lot, right? Yep. Then I decided to visit the tech specs pages from both products [1, 2], made life-size documents for both products, and then took a frame from the ad (infact I used the one posted by MacRumors).

After that, naturally paying attention to keep the proportion between both products, I transfered the images do the screenshot, keeping the iPad as the reference for size. Here’s what I found out:

Yes, the ad shows a bigger product than it actually is to try and make the iPad look smaller. Maybe to help get their message across that the product is 1/3 bigger than the iPad, and not smaller.

But we’re talking about screen size, right? Very well. Next I isolated just the displays:

The difference is even clearer!

What I don’t get is why someone would call all the attention to the difference between sizes and then manipulate the very sizes hoping that nobody will notice. Did they really think that nobody would check that?

The whole “If you can’t convince them, confuse them” by Harry Truman? Yeah, you’re doing it wrong. Ask Siri about it. Maybe it’ll teach you.

Related post:
New Microsoft ad throws a punch at Apple, but really aims at Samsung

Notice how there isn’t a tablet running Android there? That’s the point. To fight for second place, you aim for the first.

John Gruber agrees.

Well, as far as I understand it, Republicans do hate updates of any sort…

One of the questions was regarding why Apple wouldn’t put the Intel Inside stickers on their computers. While Tim Cook and Phil Schiller didn’t manage to hold back the laugh, Steve Jobs looked for the best way to reply to such a dumb creative inquiry:

Good thing the iPhone never ran this risk.

Via CultOfMac

At some point, he said the following:

“And despite the faster change in the industry, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. And some of that has to do with the negativity. It’s about us versus some other company, or some stupid thing. We should be building great things that don’t exist.”

Beautiful, right? It’s shame that Google doesn’t believe in this utopia at all. Right before Larry Page got up on stage, during 3 long hours, Google announced a barrage of services. But they were not innovative services. They were not great things that don’t exist. Infact, everything they announced already exists. And everything they announced will go up against companies that have been established in their respective markets for years:

Google Hangouts: Google’s WhatsApp / Skype / Facebook Messenger / etc…
Yet another way to shove Google+ down mankind’s throat. It’ll be available for the web, as well as for Android and iOS. It’s a service that will unify Google’s countless chat services (Talk, Chat, Google+ Messenger). Dori Storbeck already confirmed that the system will soon embrace SMS as well as outoing voice calls.

Google Play Music: Google’s Rdio / Spotify / Pandora / etc…
This was an old rumor. The company will finally launch their own music subscription service. It’s hard to tell how important it’ll be or how worried every other company in this market should be, as they didn’t specify how many songs will be available or how many labels joined them. What we do know is that it’ll cost $9.99 per month. It seems that Apple is about to launch a similar service. Jason Snell made a good point about this. Did the world really need more options on this market?

Google Wallet: Google’s PayPal / MasterPass / etc…
Google’s digital payment service got more powerful. Now you’ll be able to send money via email as if it were an attachment. There will be an actual button labeled “Send money” in the message. They also promise to save you time by automatically filling form fields in a purchase page. Which is pretty much what PayPal has been saying they do since they first appeared in 1998. Yep, that’s 15 years.

Images on Google+: Google’s Flickr / iPhoto / Photoshop / Pixelmator / etc…
This part of the presentation ended up being comical because of how long it dragged on. The announcement was basically of a powerful system to improve and correct images, as well as a revamped posting and storage system of these images on Google+. Just like on Flickr, photos are stored in their original size. To show how much better than everybody else’s services this one is, they compared image sizes with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I really didn’t understand why they put Instagram there. But they did throw that punch.

Voice Search: Google’s Siri
If you’ve tried Google’s Voice Search you’ve noticed its differences when compared with Siri. While Apple’s service caused quite a buzz when it was announced, Google rushed and released this same service, with a superior experience (which according to John Gruber is really what Google is about). Now they decided to take it a step further, allowing search to be done in a more natural way, as if you were talking to an actual assistant. Adding Google Now to the mix, you’ll be able to say “Find me a nice bar near tomorrow’s 6pm meeting”, and the search will know what to do. It’s basically what iOS and Mac users have been asking since Siri came along.

WebP: Google’s JPEG / animated GIF
Yes, Google wants to change the standard for images on the web. During this segment they presented the advantages of the WebP, which according to them presents the same quality with a smaller file size. They compared a 468kb WebP with a 676kb JPEG.

VP9: Google’s H264
If you work with videos you know how magical H264 files are. You can convert a 200mb+ file into something as light as 2mb. Google compared H264 with the VP9 codec, presenting a 343mb H264 file and a 125mb VP9 file. They said that YouTube will soon support this codec. What they didn’t say, however, is that H265 is just around the corner, and it promises the same quality of H264 with half the filesize.

Stock Samsung Galaxy S4: Google’s Samsung Galaxy S4
That was a surreal part of the presentation. They announced the arrival of an unlocked Galaxy S4 running stock Android. Nobody seemed to care, especially after they announced it’d cost $649. No applause in that segment.

I’m not exactly sure where Larry’s speech goes here. What I do know is that every new subject this long presentation brought up, informed the world that Google was about to enter a new and established market. When something like this comes from a company that abandons without thinking twice 35% of their products and initiatives, this is quite worrisome. Especially when the current CEO says things like “Don’t Be Evil was the supidest thing I’ve ever heard” and “Sometimes the Internet needs a Delete button“.

Google Reader’s living proof of that. It came along, disrupted a well-established market for RSS readers, and as soon as Google got bored they killed it leaving millions of users out in the cold, as the other players in this market perished in this meantime.

Larry Page, that was a nice speech you gave. It’s a shame that the company you founded doesn’t agree with a single word of it.

“BBM will finally expand beyond the BlackBerry platform. BlackBerry on Tuesday announced that BBM will launch this summer for Apple’s iPhone and for Android devices.”

Aa inexpressive as BlackBarry may be, i work with people who wouldn’t give up their BlackBerries for anything. That’s yet another (huge) nail in the coffin of the SMS.

That’s Netflix one step closer to “becoming HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix“.

Via AllThingsD

I’ll say it again: If Apple is about to launch a streaming service, it’s a pretty safe bet to say that Sony’s artists will be present in the catalogue.

If you like Daft Punk, all you have to do is click here to listen to all the tracks from the upcoming album, which will be released on May 21st.

Related post:
D. Bowie and J. Timberlake streaming for free on iTunes. Both from RCA. Interesting.

That was almost as fast as the Nexus Q demise. Although this is a hard one to beat, as the Nexus Q never even saw the light of day.

Now what I don’t understand is how something like this can possibly happen. Especially to companies that should know better by now. I wonder if someone decided to skip the market research part of the process, or if it was the result of the research that was conveniently ignored. How the hell does a phone that nobody wants (not even for free) makes it all the way to the stores?

“You shouldn’t expect an iTunes app on Windows 8 any time soon. iTunes is in high demand. The welcome mat has been laid out. It’s not for lack of trying.”

Meanwhile, I don’t see Apple asking Microsoft to pretty-please develop an iPad version of Office. Infact, the only person who thinks that people are frustrated for the lack of Microsoft’s Office on the iPad is Bill Gates. Everyone else has already found a replacement for it.

And quite frankly, the lack of iTunes is the least of the problems that Windows 8 users are facing.