So I just picked up a new laptop — an Asus X202 — and it’s pretty neat. Already I can basically endorse Jeff Atwood’s point about touchscreens being the future. Not for all interactions, mind you — this thing pops up an on-screen keyboard every once in a while to furiously negative effect — but for a lot of single-click effects (switching tabs in Chrome, for example) it adds another way to avoid mousing around. That’s pretty huge. It might end up selling me on a touchscreen for my desktop, once those get more properly developed.
The timing’s a little bit off, though, as I’m probably going to pick up a Surface Pro when they come out, which looks to fill the “forum surfing while I’m watching football” role a little bit better than this one. Still, it’ll be fun to compare the two.
Besides the virtual keyboard — which the actual keyboard makes more or less impossible to use — popping up every time I touch a text field, the only other thing I immediately hate about this computer is the plug-in power cable. Apple solved this problem years ago, guys: magnetic power connector or GTFO.
I’m surprisingly okay with Windows 8 on this ‘un, given how much of a pain in the ass I thought it was while testing software on it at work. Again the touchscreen makes things suck a little less.
Apple solved this problem years ago, guys: magnetic power connector or GTFO.
Apple also patented the solution and refuses to even licence it, so no-one else can do it. And are surprisingly terrifyingly effective at shutting down anyone who even looks sideways at making a similar connector.