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Posts Tagged ‘Newton Messagepad’

Checking in from Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, aboard the M/S Regatta

Filed under: iPad

It seems that a lot of Apple-related events happen while I’m on cruise ships. Back in 1998, for example, I was aboard a cruise ship when I read the headline that Apple had decided to drop the Newton MessagePad. Before we went on this trip, I knew that Apple would start taking iPad pre-orders and reservations on March 12, so I expected that I’d just be able to pull up the Apple website early in the morning, pop in my reservation, and then go on with my vacation. Little did I know that it was going to take me until 4 PM local time (3 PM ET) on March 12th to get my reservation into the system.

Just before I went to sleep the evening of March 11th, I saw a post here on TUAW that outlined when the Apple Online Store would open for pre-orders and reservations. Doing a quick time calculation in my head, I determined that I’d be able to pop in at 9:30 AM local time and make my order… no, wait a second. At 8:30 AM, I was going to be taking a ship’s tender over to shore. Dang.

We were scheduled for the proverbial “three hour tour” in this beautiful tropical location, so I decided to be patient and wait until I got back to the ship at about 11:30 AM local time. Of course, when we were on the other side of the Samana peninsula at 12 PM local time and still hadn’t left, I realized that I was going to really have to put the order on hold for a while.

The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed… well, at least the tender going back to the ship was getting bounced around pretty good. We finally headed back towards the ship when they announced that we’d have to go to Cayo Levantado, a small resort island in the midst of the bay, to transfer to a larger tender before returning to the ship.

Eventually, at about 2 PM, we were back aboard the ship and I was ready to run to our stateroom, fire up the MacBook Air, and make my order. However, “she who must be obeyed” was starving (as was I), so we stopped at the ship’s poolside grill for a quick bite to eat. Everyone else who had been on a shore excursion was thinking the same thing, so the line for a quick bite was moving slowly.

Finally, after talking with some fellow passengers, having a beer, and finishing our lunch, we made our way down to the stateroom where I fired up the computer, hooked into the horribly expensive and ridiculously slow shipboard Wi-Fi, and started the reservation process at about 3:15 PM local time.

How expensive? Can you say US$0.60 per minute? Of course you can! How slow? I think the 300-baud modem that I had with my original Commodore VIC-20 was faster! The total reservation process, which would probably take about 5 minutes on my office Internet connection, took about 45 minutes to complete. Thank God we had a bottle of wine to open and drink while waiting….

Well, all is done and I’ve reserved a 64GB iPad for pickup on April 3rd. I’ll also have some great and funny memories of this day every time I turn on that iPad.

TUAWChecking in from Samana Bay, Dominican Republic, aboard the M/S Regatta originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wi-Fi Direct to bring secure peer-to-peer networking in 2010

Filed under: Wireless, Odds and ends, Apple

If there’s one thing that I’ve wanted to be able to do for years, it’s to set up a direct Wi-Fi connection to another device without having to actually be near a Wi-Fi base station, or going to the trouble of getting an ad-hoc network set up on both devices. This type of peer-to-peer networking is nothing new; back in the Newton MessagePad days we could beam address cards and data between devices through an IrDA connection.

Now the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that this will be possible next year through the use of Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct will come built into many new devices and can be implemented in existing devices through software updates. Wi-Fi Direct competes directly with Bluetooth, and will provide much faster data transfer speeds (using more power, unfortunately). According to the Wi-Fi Alliance,

“The specification, previously code-named ‘Wi-Fi peer-to-peer,’ can be implemented in any Wi-Fi device, from mobile phones, cameras, printers, and notebook computers, to human interface devices such as keyboards and headphones. Significantly, devices that have been certified to the new specification will also be able to create connections with hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED legacy devices already in use. Devices will be able to make a one-to-one connection, or a group of several devices can connect simultaneously.”

I can imagine that at some point in 2010, we’ll be able to sync our iPhones using Wi-Fi Direct, directly send address book information to other iPhone-toting people, and enjoy high-speed multi-player gaming fun. Apple is a sponsor corporation for the Wi-Fi Alliance, so adoption of Wi-Fi Direct on Macs, iPhones, and future Apple equipment will hopefully be swift and widespread.

[via MacRumors]

TUAWWi-Fi Direct to bring secure peer-to-peer networking in 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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