{14:18} And
the men of the city said unto
him on the seventh day before the sun
went down, What [is] sweeter than honey? and what [is] stronger
than a lion? And he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had
not found out my riddle.
Judges 14 vs 18, King
James Version
CES (Consumer
Electronics Show) 2011 was a blast in Nevada.
I wish I could relate it
in an article, but alas, the spectacle would fill chapters – with Tablets? Say
what? Yes, again, writing as precisely as I do, it was MAINLY about Tablets,
with main centerpiece being the Google Android OS 2.4 Honeycomb powered tablet
appropriately name the Motorola
Xoom.
It won the CNET Best in
Show Award – not to mention coming loaded with a barometer as stated in the
article “Motorola
Xoom can predict the weather”, published January 11, 2011 9:49 AM PST by
Darius Chang, CNET News - Crave.
Great for dodging rain before it happens, as sudden drops in pressure are a
surefire way to predict Stormy Weather, Ella
Fitzgerald Style!
Of course other things
were at CES 2011. 3-D HDTV got a makeover which had been tacitly hinted to them
as far back as last year: lose the glasses! Universal 3-D Glasses and 3-D
glasses-less display are the trend among 3-D HDTV at CES 2011.
Toshiba was the first to
respond with a 3-D HDTV solution sans the pesky goggles as stated in the
article “Glasses-Free
3DTV's coming this year courtesy of Toshiba?” published Tuesday August 24
2010 by PC World, Yahoo! News.
Nintendo, not to be
outdone and realizing the gaming potential, also rolled out their 3-D stealth
bomber in the form of a Nintendo 3DS as stated in the article “Nintendo
3DS comin' at ya, starting in February”, published Wednesday September 29,
2010 1:35 pm ET, Yahoo! News -
albeit to be honest with such as small screen, it better not have
been intended to have glasses!
Sadly, gamers below six
(6) years of age, pregnant and suffering from epilepsy cannot enjoy gaming in
the Third Dimension. Apple, realizing a coming wave, is swimming out to ride
it, rounding out the trifecta with patents for a glasses-free 3-D Projection
(Apple 3D Projector TV, anyone?) as stated in the article “Apple patents
glasses-less 3D projection”, published December 1, 2010 1:25 PM PST, by
Erica Ogg, CNET News - Circuit
Breaker.
This last tit-bit may be
an indication of the possible Apple TV that analyst Gartner has been
speculating would makes its appearance in 2012 as stated in the article “Analysts predict
all-in-one Apple TV in 2012”, published September 20, 2010 11:10 AM PDT by
Don Reisinger, CNET News.
Motorola Xoom – Talk of the Town means Storm
Weather raining on Apple’s Parade
But Tablets are the main
talk of the town, with the Motorola
Xoom setting the bar VERY high as to what a Tablet powered by Honeycomb can
bring to crash the Apple Car set in motion by the Apple iPad. For starters, it
is tightly integrated with Google android OS 2.4 aka Honeycomb in much the same
way Apple’s iOS 4 is so tightly integrated with the Apple iPad.
If that was not warning
shot enough to the dominance of the Apple iPad, the lighter 10.1” Motorola
Xoom sports a Tegra 2 Dual Core Processor, with 1GB RAM, albeit no word yet
on the battery life.
Supporting Flash 10.1,
it also has two (1) cameras, one (1) front and one (1) rear facing and is
capable of 32GB of on-board storage, expandable to 64GB with the inclusion of a
SD Card slot. Set to debut in the First Quarter of 2011 on Telecom Provider
Verizon’s Network, it may be sporting support for LTE (Long Term Evolution).
There’s still no word
yet on whether it will be on two (2) year Contract or sold with a pricing
schema akin to the Apple iPad. Interestingly, no word whether or not it will
have alternate versions supporting Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) and Wi-Fi (IEEE
802.11n) + 3G/4G separately.
Albeit it is early days,
it AMOLED (Amorphous Light Emitting Diode) display may be a clue. Powered by a
Nvidia 3D chipset it is possibly a 1080p with support for 3-D glasses-free
display, again riding the 3-D glasses-free trend and a definite power hog. This
means that Power Management features (or just simply a bigger battery?!) would
be needed to eke out at least six (6) to eight (8) hours of full usage power.
Do that, and the Motorola
Xoom would be a strong enough contender to beat the Apple iPad as per my blog article
entitled “Motorola,
RIM and the Tablet - Indiana Jones and the Palace of Doom”.
So with these excellent
specs and must-have add-ons, it is all left to Pricing, Battery Life and
Accessories and Integration into Home, Work and Business usage, something the
Apple iPad is succeeding at slowly. Business? Yes, as with any device, it must
be aimed at the Business community, traditionally the bread-and-butter of
Silicon Valley titans such as Microsoft.
Plus the weather
vane cum barometer does it some justice, as I would want to be
caught in a place where it could get wet, a handy trench coat reminder that
would endear it to Wall Street stockbrokers looking to dodge between droplets
to work. It is left, ultimately therefore, to the Customers to determine the
fate of this gift from the Mighty Egyptians! What is stronger than a Lion
indeed? Honeycomb!
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