IE9 is now being tested, the third big update for Microsoft’s browser in the past couple years. Unfortunately, it’s as much a joke as the others. On the test drive page itself, it shows an Acid3 test–and scores a dismal 55%. While it is an improvement over the laughable 20% score IE8 coughs up, it’s still a joke. Four years working furiously on this app, and Microsoft can’t even pass a web standards test better than 55%? Chrome and Safari score 100%, Opera 99%, and Firefox 93% on my computer. Is Microsoft simply incompetent, or do they truly want to break standards?

As most web designers would agree, IE makes designing web sites harder than it should be. It’d be great if (a) more people knew what a piece of junk it is, and (b) the whole world would require Microsoft to give users the browser lineup that Europe requires. It’d be great if Apple did the same thing, BTW.

Computerworld, known for their occasional slanted reporting, does it again in style when reporting on the “Top 10 features that Apple stole from Windows.” In fact, they just reprinted the list from an InfoWorld article from last October–but what makes it pretty pathetic is that they didn’t bother to fact-check what was roundly criticized as a badly-written article. I swear, there seems to be hardly any more editorial filtering any more.

The list provides a few solid cases of Apple swiping ideas from Microsoft, but some charges are backwards and others so bizarre as to be staggering. A quick overview:

1. Apple’s Finder Sidebar is really the Windows Navigation pane. This is mostly true. Tree Directories are a pretty old concept, going back to UNIX days. What Apple stole was the idea of putting a jump-to navigation area in a sidebar on the left side of file management (“Finder”) windows.

2. The Mac Path bar is a copy of the Windows Address bar. This is at best a stretch. Paths predate Windows, and Apple’s path display is not that much like Windows’. You can only say that Apple “copied” it because it put the information in a file management window. But such a window is the only logical place for such a feature, and Apple varied from Windows about as much as one can imagine in what is essentially a classic OS element. It would be like saying that this year’s Toyotas stole from last year’s Hondas by putting handles on the car door.

3. Apple copied Windows’ Back and Forward navigation buttons in its folder windows. Um, no. Windows took that from its own Internet Explorer, which brazenly stole them from Netscape Navigator, which got the idea from the original hyperlink software. It’s an idea that goes way back. Microsoft put that feature into its OS as part of integrating the browser so deeply that it could not be separated, and in so doing killing off the competition in a rather illegal manner. Not to mention, back and forward buttons are a pretty dead-basic concept.

4. Apple minimizes a window to app icons. Actually, NeXT did this first, and NeXT is the precursor to OS X.

5. Apple has Screen Sharing, copying Window’s Remote Desktop Connection. Um, no, Timbuktu had screen sharing on Apple way before Windows got the same thing, and it was around on older OS software (e.g., Remote Login) before that.

6. Time Machine is really Backup and Restore. Backing up data? Really? Again, it’s like saying that Mazda stole brakes from Ford.

7. Apple’s System Preferences are a rip-off of Window’s Control Panel. This is a real “WTF?” moment. Apple’s original Mac OS had something actually called a “Control Panel” which Microsoft blatantly copied from Apple–in almost its exact form. Then again, older OS’s grouped preferences together, so the idea is not new–but Apple copied nothing from Microsoft here, while Microsoft clearly ripped off Apple’s presentation.

8. Apple has support for Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Exchange 2007. Again, WTF? These are licensed technologies. Apple no more “stole” them than Microsoft “stole” TrueType fonts or support for FireWire.

9. Apple’s Command-Tab rips off Windows’ Alt-Tab. FINALLY, here’s something that Apple blatantly stole from Windows. Probably the only clear-cut theft in the entire list.

10. Apple’s Terminal is Windows’ Command Prompt. Once again, WTF. Seriously. UNIX, anyone? Heck, I think Apple’s first computer, before Microsoft even had and OS, had a command prompt.

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In the world of computers, there is a lot of borrowing and stealing, but creating “top ten” lists equating Apple’s theft of OS ideas from Microsoft to Microsoft’s from Apple just smacks of false equivalencies–trying to be “fair and balanced” by saying “both sides are equally bad” when that is clearly not the case. Everyone ripped off ideas from everyone else, but there is no question that Microsoft is the champion of ripping things off.

Some claim that Apple ripped off Microsoft’s Task Bar with its Dock–but that’s kind of like saying that the Segway ripped off its idea from roller skates. Microsoft, however, did rip off Apple’s Dock in Windows 7’s Task Bar remake. Aero Peek and especially Flip 3D are blatant rip-offs of Apple’s Exposé, and much of Windows’ basic design is stolen from Apple’s original implementation of the GUI.

Some say Apple stole from third parties–most notably that they stole Dashboard and its widgets from Konfabulator. However, Apple didn’t steal it as much as it reclaimed it–Konfabulator “stole” the idea from Apple’s original Desktop Accessories feature. And I would not be at all surprised if that idea had been present in some form somewhere else.

Even some rip-offs are not as much a rip-off as one would imagine. Take the GUI, for example–many would say that Microsoft stole it from Apple, seeing it in the original 1983 Lisa and then rushing to put Windows 1.0 on the market. But then others will point out that Apple ripped off the GUI from Xerox. That’s not exactly true, however–Apple hired Jef Raskin, who pointed Apple to Xerox PARC, but Raskin had brought some of those ideas to Xerox in the first place–and those ideas stem from work done by Douglas Engelbart at SRI as far back as the late 60’s. Engelbart invented the mouse–not Xerox–and Apple paid SRI, Engelbart’s employer, for use of the patented device.

The idea of stealing in the OS world is a bit of a spectrum: on one side of the spectrum, you have features which are natural ideas which would be difficult to do any other way–like expressions of the directory path, for example. These are things that can’t be stolen any more than you can “steal” the idea of some kind of steering device on a vehicle. On the other end of the spectrum, you have either unique features or very specific implementations of basic features which can very much be ripped off. Microsoft happens to regularly inhabit that end of the spectrum, more than just about anyone else. Internet Explorer was nothing but a rip-off of Netscape Navigator. Apple steals, but it does so less. When it does, it is usually either a feature widely recognized as useful, or it is recreated with new functionality. The theft of Microsoft’s alt-tab window switcher is an excellent example of both: it was a feature that was a no-brainer to include, and Apple did a much better job of implementation, both graphically (admit it, Apple’s version looks ten times better) and functionally (e.g., Apple allows you to quit programs while going through the list). Not that they didn’t rip it off, of course–they very much did.

In 2002, CEO’s from the leading technology companies in America called on the federal government to adopt a goal to give 100 Mbps Internet connections to 100 million homes and small businesses by 2010. This was hardly a pipe dream: Japan’s “e-Japan” policy called for 30 Mbps nationwide by 2005–and they achieved it a year early. 100 Mbps connections are now ubiquitous here, and 1Gbps connections have been available for more than a year now. Of course, this is easier to do in Japan, but hardly impossible to do in America.

Bush gabbed about such goals in 2004 and probably at other times, but never actually did anything. This was typical of Bush where high-minded tech and science goals were involved: taking credit for calling for stuff but then never funding it or moving forward in any meaningful way. For six years after the industry leaders called for a federal plan, Bush did jack about it–and so the U.S. now lags behind lots of other countries, when it should be in the vanguard.

In comes Obama, and a year after taking office, he is doing what Bush should have done eight years ago: actually moving forward with something. The FCC, which under Bush actually hindered progress, is moving forward to demand nation-wide 100 Mbps Internet access by 2020. Yeah, pretty late–but that’s what happens when the previous administration trashes the place: you have to start from scratch. The important thing is, the Obama administration realized that something had to be done, and it is doing it.

As people talk more and more about the ups and downs of the Apple ecosystem–the closed nature of the App Store on the iPhone and soon the iPad–one theme always comes about: Apple is being oppressive and controlling. This viewpoint, however, comes from the perspective of what we have had up until now, which is not entirely objective–nor is it without its own ups and downs. It helps to step back and take a look at the bigger picture, trying to understand the forest instead of noting vague shapes beyond the individual trees we’ve come to feel comfortable around.

Think of the current system and then the App Store ecosystem as societies. Our current setup is, to be frank, kind of like a Joss-Whedon style dystopian anarchy with overtones of corporate oligarchy. Competing major corporations (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) offer the only real structure to what’s happening, and the denizens of this society often align themselves with these organizations. However, most of society is independent, trying to live freely on their own in the anarchy that exists outside the immediate corporate structures–but they can’t escape some level of corporate control as they depend on what the corporations produce. They grumble about the prices they have to pay to the oligarchy and they way things are run.

For that reason, many join the pirate culture, stealing from the corporations because they can, and because they feel they have paid enough already and are entitled to. But anarchy means that it’s not just the pirates stealing from the corporations–lawlessness abounds everywhere. Most people are beset by malware and scammer crime, and live amongst mountains of spam littering the streets lined with gaudy neon Flash billboards. They must hire anti-virus bodyguards and yet still watch their wallets and not fall prey to lures. Once in a while you may even be targeted by a professional hacker, god help you. Just as the anarchy allows you to be a pirate without much fear of punishment, the anarchy lets the element aimed at you work just as freely. Some avoid this by living closer to the oligarchy and paying full price for everything, others attempt to inhabit the Apple and Linux islands of relative stability. The Apple island has high rent, but it’s even easier to be a pirate and you’re safer from the anarchy pointed at you–but you get branded as an elitist snob who is a willing slave to Apple. The Linux island is sparsely populated and not well-supplied, but has more independence and is less stigmatized.

At some point, Apple declares that they’re forming a new state, the App Store Federation. It’s a territory pioneered by the iPhone contingent, soon to be joined by the iPad population, and who knows where it will expand to next. This new state has a rather structured form of government, introducing regular but not too excessive taxes–you’d be paying about the same most of the time in the anarchy anyway, unless you were really good at working the system just right. Apple is the government, and the OS is the constitution. They exert a certain amount of control, and they make the laws. It’s not a Democracy, it’s more like a benevolent dictatorship. But it’s clean, safe, and simple to live in. They’re not oppressive–they don’t arrest you or impose fines for misbehavior–but they do try to make you live the way they feel is best. You may not agree with what the government dictates, but most of the time it’s pretty good. There’s a certain amount of censorship to go along with it.

The society is nice, modern, bright. and relatively clean. As with the Apple island in the anarchic oligarchy, the rent is high. However, food, clothing, and entertainment are pretty cheap–mostly cheaper than you paid for before. It’s harder to be a pirate, but there’s also a police force to keep you safe. While there’s still quite a lot of spam litter and some scam artists lurking around, government regulation keeps Flash ads from making things seedy and the police force keeps most of the crime under control. You feel safer walking the streets. It’s a more comfortable life, but those who enjoyed the freedom under the anarchy feel chafed by the level of control exercised here. That’s the trade-off. If you don’t like that level of control by the government, you can always go back to the anarchy–but you lose the benefits of living here. There are some in the anarchy who try to replicate the Ecosystem without having the control, but they tend to be expensive themselves, and as copycats trying to get a quick buck, they tend not to be as stable, with shaky foundations and only superficial wealth. Google is making the best go of it, but is a bit disorganized and split between their Chrome and Android personalities.

But people often want the best of both worlds–they want the nice, clean, safe, and modern lifestyle the Apple ecosystem provides, but they also want the free-wheeling, independent, live-as-you-like and do-what-you-want lifestyle the anarchy afforded. So a splinter group formed the Jailbreak community, setting up in the foothills just outside the Apple ecosystem, living off the controlled lifestyle but at the same time sticking it to the man–who discourages the practice and tries to cut off their supplies from time to time, but otherwise just kind of lets them be. Most people commute, living partly in the Apple Ecosystem and partly out, so the control isn’t so bad even for those whom it chafes. But people can foresee a time when they may have to choose permanent residency, and are wary about what that would be like.

Apple is experimenting with a new computing culture, and computing society is reacting to it, forming new communities around it. The other major corporations are looking on warily, knowing their most of their business is still safe at the moment, but also aware that this could grow into something bigger later on. If enough people are drawn to the Apple ecosystem, it could become the new paradigm, replacing the old anarchic oligarchy with something new. Google is trying to set up its own ecosystem, but they’re less organized. Microsoft, meanwhile, just wants to maintain their current dominance in the oligarchy, but is willing to change systems if they see that things are moving that way–they’re used to watching Apple’s lead and moving in if there’s profit to be had.

Expect Apple to eventually bring the Ecosystem culture from the mobile community to computing at large–either by bringing it to laptop and desktop computers, or by having mobile devices become primary computing machines. I doubt very much that they’ll want to stop with the iPad–this system is too good for them, if they can make it work.

Where would you like to live in this world?

A recent survey taken by a gaming site claims that Windows 7, after just three months in retail, has already been adopted by 29% of Windows users. That sounds impressive, except for a few small points: first, the survey was of gamers, and although the site tags gamers as “deeply suspicious,” they are nevertheless not a representative sample of the market as a whole and are more, not less, likely to adopt a new OS version than the general public. And second, the same report shows 43% of PC users still using XP, an OS nearly a decade old. Not an impressive statistic.

More objective numbers tell a worse story for Windows: according to Net Applications (which changed its Mac-to-PC methodology recently, but still is a good indicator of use within each OS sphere), a full 72% of all Windows users are still using XP, an OS that was released in 2001. And while gamers may have already voted for Windows 7 over Vista, most people haven’t; 19% still run Vista, as opposed to 8% running Windows 7.

What’s really odd is that Windows 7 has almost exclusively grown at the expense of XP–which means that while Vista isn’t growing (not surprisingly), neither are Vista users switching to 7. Virtually all of the people switching to Windows 7 are those updating from a 9-year-old OS–and much of that would be due to people just buying a new computer and getting Windows 7 installed by default. And while Windows 7 is seeing a growth rate double that of Vista, it’s still only 2% per month–meaning that at this rate (which seems to be holding steady so far), Windows 7 will see 50% adoption in 21 months. So, after Windows 7 will have been out for two years, only half of Windows users will likely have switched to the OS–even though it started with 70% of Windows users stuck with a decade-old OS.

On the Mac side, adoption of new OS versions is much stronger. Despite Snow Leopard offering very few visible new features, already 35% of Mac users have upgraded (an average of 6% per month). OS 10.5 users dominate with 46%, meaning that 81% of Mac users are running an OS released since 2007 (as opposed to 27% of Windows users doing the same), and adding in Tiger (10.4), 96% of Mac users have an OS released since 2005. Snow Leopard is currently growing at a steady 4% per month, meaning that it will have reached 50% adoption in just 9 months since release.

Just FYI.

A lot of people are panning the iPad, voicing a variety of complaints. It’s not revolutionary, they say; there’s nothing new here, it’s just a giant iPod Touch. It’ll be too heavy, too awkward, I don’t see how I will hold it or use it for such-and-such an application. It doesn’t replace other devices like the iPhone did, putting the features of the cell phone, iPod, and PDA all in one place. There’s no multitasking, no front-facing camera for video conferencing, there’s no USB or video out without an adaptor, no HDMI at all, and Flash doesn’t work on it. The battery can’t be replaced. The screen is a bad aspect ratio for watching widescreen video, I hate touchscreen keyboards, and an LCD monitor is bad for my eyes when I read. And the name is terrible, just look at all the feminine hygeine jokes.

So, the iPad is the biggest disappointment in history relative to its hype, right? From how these people are complaining about it, you would think so. It seems like articles based on the “iPad sucks” thesis are in vogue now. The question is, are they right? Is the iPad being trashed for good reason? Well, you can easily see from the title of this blog entry that I disagree. So let me explain why. It helps to break down the complaints into categories: lack of features, lack of novelty, and the user experience.

Lack of Features

Many people are upset that the iPad lacks many things they expected. This is often because they heard about such features in pre-release rumors, and came to think of them as part of what the iPad should be. It has a powerful enough CPU, so there should be multitasking; why won’t Apple support Flash animations; the device is a natural for video conferencing so where’s the camera; and why doesn’t it have the ports I want?

There are three answers to cover all of these questions. First, some features are software-specific, like multi-tasking. As with the iPhone, multitasking can and will be added with a software upgrade. If you get an iPad today, expect improvements to come without having to purchase a new device. Just like early iPhone adopters eventually got features like the App Store and cut-and-paste despite them not existing on the original device, your iPad will similarly receive updates, and multi-tasking is an obvious one–not to mention that it is implied in OS upgrades even now being tested.

Second, some physical features were not included in the original model, but they will be eventually. Yes, there’s no camera–but you can fully expect the feature to come with a future model. Again, just like the iPhone originally had no GPS, no video camera, and no compass, the iPad comes with a relative paucity of features. This was an obvious thing to expect; I predicted it myself in a blog post published ten days before the iPad was announced. This is simply the way many products are released. If you feel that a front-facing camera is a must-have, then simply wait for the next model to come out.

Third, some features were not included for design and esthetic reasons. We all know that Steve Jobs is a stickler for seamless designs; it’s the reason he never added a separate, physical right-click button to any Apple mouse. Few people agreed with him, and maybe this aspect of his design preferences is unnecessarily off-base. But this is part of the overall package, both the good and the bad, and what it means in the end is just that there’s no seam for a removable battery, and fewer ports along the edges. Fewer ports may also be a pricing or manufacturing concern, but whatever the case, most of these issues can be worked around, or don’t matter as much as many may think. You can add USB, SD card, and video out with adaptors. HDMI adaptors may come in the future (just as third-party HDMI adaptors came out for the MacBook Pro), but VGA should suffice in most situations if you want to use it as an output device. As for the battery, ten hours is more than almost anyone would use the device in a single day, and plugging in the device to recharge at night is not a hardship.

Some people complain about the lack of sufficient storage. I myself am peeved by Apple’s pricing tiers: $100 is way too steep for an extra 16 or 32 GB of memory. They clearly want to lure people in with the base price, but get them to end up spending the extra cash on more memory after having decided to buy one. However, there is a possible reason why the amount of internal storage won’t matter as much: networking. The iPad is not designed to be a storage device any more than the iPhone is. You don’t store your entire film and music libraries on the iPhone, you leave them on your main device and then sync the media with iTunes; same with the iPad. With the iPhone, wireless syncing was not included due to certain issues, battery life being the most significant. With the iPad, that may not be an issue. If you need a file, then from what I hear, you will be able to get it from your main computer using the WiFi network. Most stuff will be stored over the network, and so more storage on the iPad won’t be a big issue.

That leaves the lack of Flash support, and that was not an oversight: Apple intentionally left it out. They did so because they see Flash as more of a vulnerability than a benefit. Flash is slow, buggy, and opens up security holes. Personally, I detest Flash; although it can be used beneficially in controlled moderation, most Flash designers go way overboard, creating a web-surfing blight unmatched by any other, including the animated GIF and the “blink” tag. Apple is right to abandon it–and not just because it would open up the iPhone and iPad to hacking attacks, which is a good enough reason by itself. Flash is so Internet Explorer 6, it’s the Floppy Disk of software. Apple abandoned floppies years ahead of Windows PC makers, and they are similarly ahead of the curve where Flash is concerned. HTML5 is where it’s at.

Lack of Novelty

The next category of complaint is that the iPad isn’t revolutionary. We again see the problem–once more, as I predicted before the iPad was debuted–where expectations raised by the rumor mill led to disappointment. Everyone was looking forward to something completely new, a revolutionary OS or a stunning new design. Instead, Apple came out with what was essentially just a big iPod Touch. Why did it takes years for the Apple design team to start from scratch several times over to come up with something so basic?

It helps to remember that Apple’s challenge here was not to make something completely new and unexpected; Apple’s challenge was to make a tablet computer that would be practical and fun to use. People just assumed that this would naturally involve something new and revolutionary. I was personally nervous about the rumored “steep learning curve” of the tablet: if Apple made it too revolutionary and different, then people might not be able to use it. Just look at the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard–hardly a huge new concept, but people freaked out at the idea.

The lack of novelty in the iPad might be explained by the old saying, “That’s a feature, not a bug.” As Steve Jobs pointed out in the unveiling, there are about 75 million people who will know exactly how to use this device from the word go. Apple chose the exact opposite of a steep learning curve, and once you think about that in light of the challenge of making a tablet computer easy to use, it makes perfect sense. The iPad is not intended to wow you with its novelty, it’s intended to be comfortable and convenient. People who complain that it’s just a big iPod Touch are completely missing the whole point of this new device.

One other consideration along these lines is the iPad’s place in the spectrum of usability. Many have noted that it doesn’t replace anything, save possibly for ebook readers. The iPhone, for example, replaced the need for lugging around a cell phone, PDA, ipod, digital camera, and video recorder. That’s wonderful, but that doesn’t mean that every device has to accomplish the same goal. The iPad was not design to replace existing products, it was designed to fulfill an existing need. That need was for a mobile device which was more capable than a smartphone, but easier to tote and carry than a laptop. It may not be the widest category of need you can imagine, but a lot of people will greatly appreciate and desire exactly such a device. Students will go nuts over what this will do for textbooks, for example. People who want color, backlit ebook readers will love it. How many people have complained about laptops being too heavy, or burning their legs with the excess heat, but can’t do what they want on a tiny smartphone screen? And then there are the uses that nobody thinks they need right now, but the iPad will open up for them–a holy grail in product design.

The User Experience

That brings us to the last category of complaint: it looks like I won’t like it. It looks too heavy and awkward to hold, the size is wrong, the screen won’t be good for me, the touchscreen keyboard is no good. The problem is, people who have only seen the device and have never held one in their hands are already making judgments about what it feels like to use one. That may be why almost all of the criticisms are coming from those who have never had a hands-on with the device. Look at the reviews by those who have played with the device, however, and you’ll encounter the same advice that Jobs gave: you have to use it before you understand how right it is. Once you use it, you may find that your concerns were unwarranted or have easy solutions. It may be heavy, but so are some books; we compensate by holding such objects while resting them on our laps or whatever surface is available. The touch keyboard may seem awkward, but so did the iPhone’s, and most people seemed to have little trouble adapting to that. I myself took just a few hours to get used to it, and now type on my phone almost as fast as I do a full-sized keyboard (a miracle relative to the numeric-keypad hell that I avoided for so long). The screen may be brightly backlit, but that’s what the brightness control is for.

This is not to say that the iPad will be for everybody. Some will never get used to a virtual keyboard; others will never be comfortable holding it; many may be bothered by any level of light from a backlit LCD screen; some may hate the design and esthetics, or may never get over their high expectations from the pre-launch days. Apple has always had its haters, and always will. That doesn’t mean that the product is bad or doomed to failure.

Dispelling Criticisms Is Not Proof of Excellence

You may have noticed that I have spent the entire blog post so far explaining why the negative reviews are off base, and have not really explained why the iPad is “Deceptively Good,” as I claim in the title. So let me take a whack at it. The answer lies in two aspects: the user interface, and the product’s future potential. Both are inextricably linked, and both are right now vastly under-appreciated.

The UI

When the first “personal computer” came out, it was fully a geek’s plaything. The Altair computer had no monitor, no keyboard–just a few rows of switches and blinking lights to allow for communication in binary code. Very few people could actually use one for anything. A few years later, the “trinity” of PCs–the Apple II, the Commodore Pet, and the Tandy TRS-80–introduced a “CLI,” or a text-based interface. You either remember or have somewhere seen the old “green-screen” text displays. This allowed people who were not comfortable in binary to use the machines, although you did usually have to learn the language that the computer understood, which still kept most people too distant from the PC experience.

It only took seven years after that for the first commercially popular PC to use the GUI–the graphics user interface with visual metaphors like the Desktop, folders, icons, and menus–that we have become so accustomed to. The GUI was a godsend because it made the computer interface more recognizable, something we could relate to more easily. We understood that a desktop is a place where you begin your work, that you choose from menus, and that folders contain documents. Suddenly, almost everybody could use a computer, and PC sales took off. But we’ve had the GUI for a quarter of a century now, and it’s beginning to show it’s age. What’s next?

The answer is multitouch. Using a mouse may be a step up from a text-only interface, but it is still uncomfortable and clunky. Surely you have seen people trying to move something on the screen farther than their mousepad gives them room for, and clumsily attempt to pick up the mouse and reposition it–in fact, you may well have been that person, several times. The flaw with the mouse, and the trackpad as well, is that you are not directly controlling the content on the screen. It is one step removed from a “hands on” experience.

To get a good sense of how significant that is, try drawing a picture. Do it on paper first–I draw a pretty good Snoopy, for example. Then open a drawing app on your computer, and with the mouse, try drawing the same picture. You’ll most likely find the results appalling. A trackpad may not fare much better, unless you’re experienced at it. Whenever your hands and fingers are removed from the immediate action, you lose dexterity and control. Current cursor devices like the mouse and trackpad are remote devices; multitouch allows direct access, which is far more natural, comfortable, and accurate. However, you won’t realize this until you’ve actually used a device like the iPad where multitouch comes into far more appropriate use than it does with the smartphone.

The problem with multitouch is how the screen is placed when you’re doing your hands-on controlling. A desktop screen is much too distant, and even a laptop screen would require holding your hands out in an unnatural fashion. A smartphone screen is more suited for that, but it’s too small to do much with. The tablet PC is, if you’ll forgive the cliche, just right. Anything you control with your hands has to be in your hands. Yes, there are disadvantages, but the payoff in control will far outstrip any of those.

A good example is Apple’s multitouch trackpad on the MacBook Pro. When it came out, I thought it was cool, but not really revolutionary. I figured that I’d be able to do a few new things on it, but did not expect it to change they way I use computers. However, I only recently realized that I had completely stopped using a mouse–something I had depended upon for years with previous laptop models. The multitouch screen is the next step up from that; after getting used to it, you’ll laugh at how clunky a mouse is. But the catch is, you won’t realize it until after you’ve used it for a while. The true utility of the touchscreen sneaks up on you.

One Word: Potential

That brings us to the real promise of the product. A lot of people look at the iPad’s current state, and what we already know about using iPhone apps, and see that as the end result. That’s a big mistake. What you have seen is only the beginning. Most of what the iPad will wow you with hasn’t come out yet.

To get a better sense, watch the keynote, and pay special attention to the software demos. Pay attention to how Jobs used the photo viewing app. Watch what Phil Schiller does with programs like Numbers and Keynote, how the multitouch comes into play. Watch the Nova game demo, and note the grenade-throwing and door-opening gestures. Be sure to watch the users’ hands, not just the screen. These are just a few examples of what can be done, but there is far, far more. It is limited only by what software developers can come up with, and you’ve seen the amazing stuff people have come up with on the iPhone App Store. The closed ecosystem provides a sheltered environment which not only helps prevent malware incursions, but slows piracy so that apps can be sold more cheaply. But most significantly, it allows the individual, the small-time software tinkerer, to immediately offer their wares for sale in one of the biggest marketplaces in the world. And now the iPad blows that wide open by combining the novel and powerful multitouch interface with enough real estate to make almost anything possible.

I can appreciate the benefit to apps whose layouts have traditionally been hard to control, like Filemaker Pro for instance; creating, resizing, and placing fields and buttons has always been a bit of a pain. I can easily imagine multitouch being used to make that not only easier, but a lot of fun to boot.

Conclusion

The features most people have focused on so far–the music playing, movie viewing, browsing and email, and even the ebook reading–are all just background. They are little more than examples of what can be done with the machine. Once you take in the full potential of the device, you will come to understand that the concerns people are airing today miss the point entirely. Panning the iPad because the screen size doesn’t fit the aspect ratio of certain movies is like saying that your Porsche is abysmal because the gas cap is the wrong shade of grey. The iPad is way, way more than just one application. Watching movies on it is a perk, not a raison d’etre. Same goes for many of the other concerns.

Apple’s mission was very simple: make a platform, and they will come. The idea was not to introduce something with whiz-bang flashing lights that would knock people’s socks off, it was instead to do what computer makers have been trying for nearly a decade and failing at: creating a tablet computer which has enough going for it that it can succeed as a product category. Apple has, by all appearances, succeeded in doing that. By building on the achievements of the iPhone platform and the introducing full-scale multitouch UI in a low-cost product where that feature can flourish, Apple has created something which is truly groundbreaking.

Remember, ground-breaking innovations are not always appreciated or understood when they come out. A lot of people sneered at the original Mac, many thought the iPhone would fizz out after the buzz dissipated–heck, even the PC itself was dismissed as an expensive toy at first back in the late 70’s. So don’t count the iPad as DOA before it even arrives. It’s far more than it seems.

Hey

So, by now, you have probably thought, “If you’re criticizing others for coming to conclusions about the iPad sucking before they get their hands on it, how can you claim that the reverse is true if you’ve never held one yourself?” Well, you got me. Part of it is an educated assessment–I’ve been looking at this kind of technology for a while. But that’s not enough.

Call it an article of faith.

You’ve probably heard about how China has been spreading malware and using it to hack in to email accounts to spy on activists, journalists, and god knows who else. Of course, this should not be surprising: the Chinese government has quite a track record of acting like complete pricks and never facing consequences because everyone is afraid of losing access to a market with more than a billion customers and a very cheap labor force. So, old news, we all knew China’s doing crap like this.

What’s more immediately interesting are some reactions to this. France and Germany, for example, have begun urging their citizens to dump Internet Explorer–all versions–in order to avoid security breaches like those committed by China, which exploited security holes in the browser to invade people’s privacy. Of course, I fully support this; Internet Explorer is the Worst Browser Ever, with issues not just concerning security, but also concerning standards–IE completely fails standards tests, and not just by a little; whereas Safari gets 100% and Firefox gets close to that, IE scores in the 20-30% range–even including IE8 and the as-yet-unfinished IE9.

In short, IE is a bad joke and should be abandoned by everybody for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera. That said, to be completely fair, if IE hadn’t been around, China would have probably just hacked a different browser. None are inviolable, but IE is known to be particularly open to attack.

An amusing postscript to the story: Microsoft is now advising users to drop not only IE, but Windows as well! Of course, they’re not telling them to drop Microsoft products entirely, just old versions–they advise upgrading from IE 6 to IE 8, and from Windows XP to Windows 7. In other words, they are using this attack to sell their new OS.

However, an upgrade is indeed called for:

The Shiba Inu mama Kika has had a new litter of 5 puppies (3 red, 2 cream), born a bit less than a week ago. Popularly known as the “SF Shiba Inu Puppy Cam,” this became a sensation a while back as 3 million people watched the puppies on a more or less regular basis.

If you have missed your regular fix of Shiba Inu puppies, or if you wished you could have started watching them when they were younger, then here they are.

Steve Ballmer on the tablet computer:

This morning, I interviewed Ballmer and asked him about the market for tablet/slate computers. He made the excitement sound like empty chatter. He claimed to believe that there isn’t a sizeable market for the tablet.

“They’re interesting,” he said. “But it’s not like they’re big numbers compared to the total number of smart devices in the world.”

Well, Ballmer’s an expert in the field, isn’t he? Here’s Ballmer three years ago, on the iPhone:

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

Well, there you go.

It might have something to do with the fact that Ballmer had just attempted to steal Steve Jobs’ thunder by showing off three tablet computers at the CES in Las Vegas, to underwhelming disinterest. Since his presentation was a flop, it has to be because tablets just won’t work at all, right?

Cue Steve Jobs, January 27th.

So, Apple has killed Psystar. isn’t that for the second or third time? I forget. But whatever the case, Apple has again successfully prevented third-party Mac clone makers from getting a toehold.

In some ways, you could see this as bad: it means that Apple has a monopoly over its domain, that there is no competition to drive down prices, no alternate choices which could lead to great Apple software running on much cheaper machines.

But the more you look at it, the more you have to admit that Apple is right to do what it does. The mistake comes from seeing computers and OS makers as being separate, which is the Microsoft model, also followed by other makers of OS software. And maybe if Apple had the 90~95% worldwide market share that Microsoft has, it would be more of a monopolistic concern.

However, that’s not the case. Apple never intended to sell software and hardware separately; it is designed to be an integrated system. Think about other makers who do similar things: what if I made a new DVR, but took the OS software from Sony’s DVRs to make it run? Sony would shut me down and nobody would think Sony was out of line. Hardware makers do that kind of thing all the time: create closed, integrated hardware and software systems. In fact, everything that’s not a PC sold as a PC is designed exactly that way, from cell phones to cars: the manufacturer creates the operating system to run with the hardware, and they see both as something they own. If a user wants to tweak the system after they buy it, then fine–but if a for-profit company wants to tweak it and then sell it for a profit, potentially robbing sales from the original designer by using their designs and concepts–that’s different. As far as I know, Apple has never tried to go after any private users, even for things like software piracy–Apple has far fewer safeguards and hurdles against such things relative to Microsoft.

So while the freedom-to-tinker part of me wants to see clone makers succeed, the I-made-it-I-control-it part of me sees how it’s the right of the creator to prevent someone else from making money selling hardware based on Apple’s work. (I don’t think that the “I own Apple stock” part of me is really influencing what I think here, but that’s harder to say.)

I thought about it seriously for quite a while, investigated the models, shopped around and everything. But in the end, I kept coming back to the question, “Why?” I’ve got a MacBook Pro, after all. Yeah, it’s heavier, but that never bothered me. The only other thing I’d want a netbook would be to have a handy WIndows computer around. But a netbook is so underpowered, there really wouldn’t be much point to it. In the end, I’d be shelling out $300-plus for a disposable Windows computer. I probably wouldn’t use it much outside of showing it to my class. Just not worth it, for me.

Just when you though web ads couldn’t get more annoying. Already, it’s annoying enough for YouTube videos to have those ads that pop up at the bottom and have to be clicked away, but at least there you figure that they have to make revenue somehow. But now the same ads are appearing on regular web sites over photographs. Accidentally mouse over them and ads pop up. This easily clears the “unnecessarily annoying ad” hurdle.

The ads pop back down again only when you mouse over a new one. You can train yourself to avoid them, like you do when you see a double-underlined link–but you first have to discover them, and with photos, they are not apparent.

Google text ads I like fine, and I even follow them sometimes (a big thing for me, as I tend to hate ads–I only follow non-offensive ones). But any ad that moves, even a little, is enough to drive me away from a site. I figure I’m not alone in that.

When I first came to live in Japan, going back to the U.S. meant two things: visiting with family, and shopping. Shopping meant getting all the neat stuff that I couldn’t get in Japan–often including several pounds of See’s Candy (arguably the best chocolates to be found). Mostly, though, it involved a few trips to Costco, getting new shoes (shoe sizes in Japan traditionally have stopped at size 10 or so), English-language books, candy & other food goods, and so forth.

However, over the years, most of these goods have found their way to Japan, especially books, but also lots of food items. What isn’t sold in local stores is now available at Costco Japan, or via mail order from the Foreign Buyer’s Club. Amazon.co.jp handles a lot of the rest, and prices on many goods that used to be a lot more expensive are now a lot more cheap.

Nevertheless, there remains a lot which is still worth buying in the U.S., and in order to make things run more smoothly, I now make an online order from Amazon a week or two before traveling, so everything is there–allowing for return or exchanges should something be damaged or not work. I thought that the list of stuff I found best to buy in the U.S. included interesting perspective on what international buying is still like.

Blu-Rays. Now that Sachi and I have a Blu-Ray player, it’s about time we got some Blu-Ray movies. Unfortunately, the local rental shop, typical of Japan, has a depressingly paltry selection of Blu-Ray titles, and most new DVD releases don’t even have Blu-Ray versions. What’s up with that? Blu-Ray is a Japanese standard, made by Sony. I have a student who loves “Fast and the Furious,” and insists that the Blu-Ray is not available in Japan–but it is in the U.S.

Add to this the fact that Blu-Ray regions conveniently put America and Japan in the same region, and you got good reason to buy–especially from the U.S., where again, things are much cheaper.

The Ultimate Matrix ($52 U.S., $171 in Japan). This one makes extra sense, given that if put in a Japanese player, Japanese language options appear. And it just seems like a natural Blu-Ray movie, being primarily visual in its appeal.

Kung-Fu Panda ($24 U.S., $44 in Japan). The movie is good, but that’s not the reason I’m getting it. In 1080p Blu-Ray, it’s stunning. When Sachi and I rented it–the first Blu-Ray movie we saw–our jaws (well, my jaw) dropped to the floor. Subtle textures in fabrics, for example, stood out in a way which I am certain are invisible in lower resolutions. The detail is simply fantastic. And it’s a funny movie.

Contact ($17 U.S., $27 in Japan). This is one of my favorite movies–a great story, well-made. Despite having one of the lowest price differences between the U.S. and Japan, this one comes with Japanese subtitles in the U.S. version.

Wall•E ($18 U.S., $42 in Japan). A good movie, one that should be great in Blu-Ray, and doesn’t need subtitles nearly as much as almost any other mainstream contemporary movie out there.

I, Robot ($13 U.S., $34 in Japan). I like it, it’s cheap, and reports say that it’s another stunner in Blu-Ray. It’s also one of those movies that depends a lot on visuals.

Star Trek ($20 U.S. [3-disc w/ digital copy], $42 in Japan [2-disc]). This is one which probably won’t have Japanese subtitles, but it matters less–the technobabble is babble anyway. This is just a film I like–ironically, it probably won’t shine as much in Blu-Ray, as the film was shot in a less-than-sharp manner, with even the effects shots having fake dirt and dust on the lens.

And that brings me to an observation about Blu-Rays: you can’t count on the extra resolution making a difference sometimes. With some films, the extra definition simply isn’t there, and with others, the transfer to Blu-Ray was made with a lower-resolution copy. Sometimes I’ve watched a Blu-Ray and wondered if the DVD would really be any worse. But sometimes, the quality of the movie is pretty incredible.

Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter Cable ($8).

Macs have always been less than universal about video ports. For a while some models had S-video and/or DVI, but for a while now they have more custom ports for which you have to buy adapters. The latest is a non-Apple standard, the DisplayPort cable. While Apple does have a hand in its development, it’s not a proprietary Apple technology. Alas, it is also not used by anyone else at present, at least not that I can see, and so cables are not in abundance.

In particular, I have wanted a Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter so I can hook up to my HDTV more easily–but I cannot find any such cables in Japan, period. So I’m getting one when I go back home.

Motorola S305 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones ($40).

This comes under the category of “too expensive in Japan.” Amazon Japan sells these puppies for $76. And outside of places like Amazon, finding anything Bluetooth is hard to do. Bluetooth mice are rare here, much less stereo headphones like these.

A friend bought a pair of S9’s, which are essentially the same but have ear buds instead of the muff-style pads. I really prefer the pads. And the S305 reportedly works quite well with iPhone OS 3. I only hope that they don’t break too easily–but at $40, I don’t feel it’s so great a risk.

Kool-Aid Sugar Free On the Go, Tropical Punch ($20, 6-pack).

I got hooked on these when I stumbled across them a few years ago. Pour one into a bottled water, and you got instant no-calorie juice. Japanese people seem to be averse to powdered drinks, the exception being sports drinks. But something like “Kool-Aid” is unknown here. When I use one of these in class, my students frown and act like I’m making haggis or something.

So far, no one offers this in Japan–not Costco, not FBC, no local stores, no import shops. I guess it’s one of those things that Japanese people won’t go for. (Same goes for the flavor–you just don’t see Tropical Punch here.) If so, it’s probably just because they don’t know what it is. Like Pimenton, it’s a great product that’s just unknown. For me, these help as I am trying to avoid sugar drinks.

That’s all for today–more soon. (I ordered a lot of stuff!)

More and more these days, the charge of using child porn can fall on unsuspecting computer users who would never in a million years even think of downloading child porn. Computer viruses exist which can make your computer download volumes of the filth without you being aware of it–until the police come knocking at your door. They’ll believe the initial IP evidence and then stop thinking about it–there’s porn found, so you’re guilty.

More than a year ago, I wrote about the case of a 53-year-old for Massachusetts’ Department of Industrial Accidents who was doubly victimized: the incompetent IT staff who gave him a computer with anti-virus protection turned off. The unsuspecting worker used the computer, not knowing it was riddled with malware, some of it downloading child porn. The same inept IT workers saw the stuff being downloaded, jumped to conclusions, and pointed the finger at this guy, ruining his life. Despite the fact that a cursory review of evidence would have immediately shown that a virus was responsible, IT staff and prosecutors alike simply assumed, and that was that.

To add insult to injury, a cap on lawsuit awards has made it impossible for the man to find an attorney willing to sue for damages.

But this guy is not the only one falling prey to this kind of virus. Anyone who gets it can have the same thing happen, and they will find that it is very hard to prove one’s innocence. Police believe the victim is just using the “SODDI” defense: “Some Other Dude Did It.” Hiring experts to sift through the data and prove it was malware can be prohibitively expensive; the Massachusetts worker spent a quarter of a million dollars to do so, pretty much wiping them out financially–and for the rest of his life, he’ll be fighting off the stigma applied to him carelessly.

Lesson learned: anti-virus protection is even more important than you realize.

Frustrated that the FCC won’t respond to his threats, the Telecom-bought senator from Arizona introduced a bill that would make it so that the FCC could never “propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services.” A bill introduced by a colleague in the House says the same thing. As is usual for politicians, they named the bills to sound like panacea: the Senate bill is the “Internet Freedom Act of 2009,” and the House’s is the “Real Stimulus Act of 2009” (snark!).

So, the best way to stimulate the economy is… deregulation! Because that has worked so well in the financial sector. In short, McCain wants to prevent the FCC from protecting consumers so that the Telecoms can charge anything they want, restrict anything they want, do anything they want, and create any cartels or monopolies they want, without any competition or accountability whatsoever.

Swell idea! The best part about the bill is that it is almost sure to die quickly.

Imagine if this guy were president.

You know that U.S. Telecoms are corrupt and greedy as hell when you read stories like this one, via Ars. A small town in Minnesota approached the regional Telecom, TDS, to ask if they planned to lay fiber optic in the town. TDS said no, they had no plans in the near future.

This is to a great degree because they know that they don’t have to, and without spending tons of money on infrastructure, they can charge just as much for low-speed “broadband” networks that already exist. This suits them: rake in as much cash as possible without laying out money for new systems. In the 90’s, the Telecoms got permission to hike rates substantially by removing the old “rate of return” regulations; in return, they promised (non-binding) to spend the extra money on upgrading infrastructure so that 86 million US households would have 45 Mbps broadband or better. Guess what? They took the money and didn’t upgrade. Surprise! Unless I missed something, and most of the U.S. gets 50 Mbps F/O for $50 a month nowadays. Nope. Instead, the Telecoms raised your rates to the tune of $200 billion and more, and did very little to earn it.

That’s why Japan, which had a successful “e-Japan” policy, got true nationwide broadband–30 Mbps and higher– five years ago. In Japan, the average connection speed is 61Mbps, and Japanese pay about 27 cents per megabit. In the U.S., the average is 4.8 Mbps, and they pay $3.33 per megabit–12 times more for 1/12th the speed.

Unhappy with the Telecom’s refusal to keep their promises, the small town of Monticello, Minnesota forged ahead on their own, voting for the installation of a municipal F/O network. Well, we can’t have that. TDS actually sued the town–how dare they build their own network and not let the Telecoms fleece them! When it was clear that TDS could not stop the town, they set out to lay a competing F/O network at warp speed–showing clearly that they were perfectly capable of installing FTTH anywhere they damned well pleased, not ten years from now, but immediately–but just didn’t want to make the investment when they knew they had a captive audience. Monticello only got action when they set to make their own network, threatening to put TDS out of business in that town. TDS’s explanation: they didn’t know that people wanted broadband. Bullshit: they knew full well.

It makes very clear what I think everyone has known: the Telecoms have long been able to deliver high-speed fiber connections–they just don’t want to because they can make more money by letting the U.S. wallow in high-cost, low-speed backwaters. Which is why my dad pays more now than I do for an ISP connection, while receiving speeds that were a joke in Japan just five years ago.

Want high-speed Internet? Do what Monticello did: get your city to make their own network. The Telecoms will get off their asses and deliver only when they discover that their customers are no longer apathetic chumps.

There is now an exhaustive review of Windows 7 on Ars Technica. I have not read it all, but did read the first several pages and last conclusion–and instantly found things that turned me off to the whole review. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trashing W7, it’s supposed to be good; it’s just that this reviewer comes across as less than credible.

The lesser of the two questionable items is on the last page:

Windows Vista, for all its (alleged) flaws, was the best version of Windows ever shipped.

OK, maybe I missed something, but I start to get the feeling here that this reviewer possibly isn’t the most unbiased observer ever. Vista was the best ever before 7? Maybe in a narrow, specific manner that only a power user who can tweak the system and work around problems easily could appreciate, but to the average user, I don’t think so.

Another red flag was the fact that although the reviewer took up a 7-paragraph page just on installation (half of it spent talking about how Vista is so great), he made a glaring oversight: he completely ignored the transition from XP to 7, something that 80% of all Windows users will have to suffer through. There is no upgrade from one to the other; instead, you are forced to archive your data on a separate drive while 7 reinitializes your hard drive and does a clean install–so you lose all your software, and are forced to reinstall all of it. Another clue that this guy is married to Vista and is disconnected from the experiences of a majority of Windows users.

But the bit that really raised red flags was right on the first page:

Just as XP was fundamentally not as bad as its initial reception would lead one to believe, the same was true of Vista. Stripped of the Vista name and placed in front of unsuspecting users, “Windows Mojave” was warmly received. And even corporate customers have started to migrate to the OS.

This I do know for sure about: Mojave was a scam. In a marketing attempt to get people to like Vista, they loaded it up on a specially prepared, souped-up PC, made sure that all the peripherals were compatible with fully-functional drivers, then brought people in to watch someone practiced with the system dance through demos designed to look impressive. That’s what you call “stacking the deck.” The crappiest software ever could be made to look cool if presented in this way.

As I noted at the time, people who were shown Vista in this fashion were not given a copy to take home, so they did not discover the headaches involved in the installation of the OS, shortcomings of their hardware in running it, or the lack of drivers for their peripherals they were bound to run into. They were not even allowed to really use it themselves without an expert guiding them, or discover the problems like the annoying nagging that the security system would make them endure in normal use.

For this reviewer to accept Mojave wholly as evidence that people liked Vista simply screams bias.

As for corporate customers, that statement is highly misleading: some were migrating, perhaps. Most were steering clear of it. Even now, almost three years after its release, only 20% of all Windows users have Vista installed–and many if not most of those people only have it because it came with a new computer. But corporate customers? That’s a joke. Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), on the other hand, is running on more than half of all Macs, and that’s after two years. 10.6, Snow Leopard, is already on about 15% of all Macs, and it’s been out for just a few months. In less time than Vista took to get 20% to change to it, the new Mac OS’ have gotten two thirds of all users to switch over.

The fact that this guy is so blind to the flaws, shortcomings, and obvious realities regarding Vista makes it questionable as to what he thinks of 7. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to claim that 7’s not the best Windows ever, that does seem to be the general consensus. I’m just not going to trust much coming from someone who thought Mojave was in any way credible.

Classic:

Looks like they forgot to plug in a cable. People have pointed out a touchscreen on a standard desktop computer monitor is pretty pointless–nobody is going to reach out to their screen like that to control it all day. The orientation problem will have to be fixed before it is actually something people will want to use. Microsoft’s jump into this functionality is an excellent example of kitchen-sink mentality: use something because it’s there, rather than because it’s a good idea.

John McCain is threatening to circumvent the FCC’s authority to decide Internet policy–he is that committed to reversing a decade and a half of successful Internet policy and handing control of the Internet to the Telecoms for free (those campaign contributions were just a coincidence). He is spouting the industry line that Net Neutrality will introduce “government control” which will impose “oppressive regulations” which will stifle “continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans.”

Which, of course, in technical Internet terminology, is commonly referred to as “bullshit.” Net Neutrality, far from oppressive regulation, is a policy which says that government and industry must take a “hands-off” stance and let people use the Internet as they see fit, without anyone standing in the way. McCain wants to end that, and burden the Internet with slowdowns, fees, prohibitive industry-mandated rules, and other garbage which will win you nothing but will cost us all. OK, maybe he doesn’t want that, but it’s what he’s trying to make happen.

Without Net Neutrality, the Telecoms can and will start telling you what you can and cannot do on the Internet; they will start charging you and everyone else more, and will not spend any of it on “innovations,” just like they failed to the last time they got Congress to give them something in exchange for empty promises of investment and upgrades.

If Net Neutrality is shut down as McCain hopes, the Internet economic engine will have an industry-wide tax imposed which will go straight into the pockets of the Telecom shareholders. It is this that will stifle innovation, making it more difficult for start-ups to get off the ground, slowing down the economy and killing off jobs in a valuable area.

McCain, like so many other Republicans, is nothing but a witless shill for the industries that fund him. He’s been in the pocket of the Bells since the 90’s, and will continue to be. Yet another reason to be thankful that he lost.

Apparently this is real: The Windows 7 Whopper:

There’s a Burger King at Sunshine City, a few blocks from where I live. I’ll have to check that out. Not that I will actually order one of these abominations–the four-patty “Mega Mac” was bad enough. How many thousands of calories could be in this thing?

Don’t be fooled by the price: at’s 1450 yen (about $16). The “777” yen ($8.50) price is for the first 30 customers of the day. A promotion which, on second thought, might actually last all day.