Future Apple Products

I love this article from Mac|Life about what could come next for Apple:

Apple watchers are well aware that the company is planning to release some sort of tablet computer, and given Apple’s recent history of making surprise announcements, that could very well happen between the day we put this issue to bed and the day you read this article. But what if the tablet rumors are bunkum? And even if the tablet is announced, what comes next? Jaw-dropping products can take years to develop, and Apple surely has tablet-eclipsing wonders brewing in its labs.

For answers, we turned to five tech journalists, people who follow Apple every day and are straight-A students of its products. Each expert was asked to fill out the same worksheet, wherein we requested details on the features, specs, wow elements, and essential “Appleness” of the gear they envision Apple making. We then took their worksheets and turned their ideas into the fully rendered fauxtotypes you see on the following pages. We did our best to stay faithful to our experts’ visions, but sometimes we did add elements of our own. But, of course, this entire little game is an exercise in interpretation: We asked our experts to interpret Apple’s magic mojo, and then we interpreted what our experts gave us. We hope we served our experts well.

Read the rest of this fantastic article here: New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press | Mac|Life

Technorati Tags: apple, products, future, mac life, technology, tech

F.lux to Help Nerds Sleep

A couple of months ago, Varun wrote about a very interesting yet controversial application. Since then, a lot has been learnt and the app has come quite a long way. I’ll attempt to review the app again but this time, I’m testing the Mac version and I’ll try to look to it from a totally different perspective from he did. First, let me start off with a little background.

You must be familiar with modern LCD screens, right? If you look carefully, most of them have a button to automatically change the attributes of the screen to adjust for the types of media which is being viewed: one specially tweaked for movies, another for photos, a separate one for text and there’s one we’re particularly interested about — night.

You see, working in front of a computer screen at night raises a particular concern. The fact that you’re staring at a bright screen late at night when your body is supposed to be turning in, disrupts your circadian rhythm. A bit of medical jargon coming your way — during nighttime, darkness permits the production of melatonin by the pineal gland. Melatonin causes drowsiness and in tandem with the central nervous system, controls the circadian rhythm. In layman’s term, all this means is the bright light from the LCD screen screws up your sleep-wake cycle.

That’s why there’s a customized “Night” setting on your LCD. Furthermore, there are several apps that will reduce the brightness of your screen while working at night; Shades is one example of a Mac app that will do just that. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the LCD’s reflection off a person’s face at night — it’s mostly bluish white. Technically, the specific colour temperature is 6500K; also known as daylight. That’s right. If you find it hard to fall asleep after using your computer, this is why.

F.lux addresses this issue but it does it slightly differently. Instead of reducing brightness per se, it actually warms the colours you see on your screen and imitates the lighting in the room during nighttime. It’s quite hard to wrap your head around until you actually use it but I’ll do my best to try and explain it.

Read the rest at Makeuseof.com : Use F.lux To Sleep Better After Late-Night Computer Activities

Technorati Tags: f.lux, circadian rythm, sleep, help sleeping, lcd dimmer, lcd screen, night, day, software, application

DiscoveryNews

Discovery has just launched a new news web site devoted to news in science and technology. Finally a service that features breaking news in these fields! You can even install an app on your iPhone! News for nerds... love it.

Technorati Tags: discovery, technology, science, tech, news