Ab Phablet

I listened to the latest Vector podcast, and I think they missed one big thing (the biggest, actually) driving Asian demand for phablets.

Our family went to Hong Kong for vacation a year and change ago, to visit family over there.  And the biggest thing that struck me was how many people were watching TV shows on their phones on the MTR (Hong Kong's metro; they were going to and from work, presumably).  Seriously, it was a large majority of the young people.

And that's a big application that will look best in 1080p (I'd hate to think how big the tablet would need to get for 4K to make any sense, even ignoring the streaming bandwidth demands of that).  If you're going to spend half an hour or an hour every day watching TV on your phone, you'll damned-sure want to do it with maximum resolution.  So I can certainly see why people would want a bigger phone.

(And while I'm talking about this, let's also point out what this says about our crummy public transportation, that we can't even offer free WiFi on trains and buses.  And what it says about our telecomm infrastructure, even more than what it says about our transportation infrastructure.)

The downside, of course, is that the phone looks ridiculous when you're using it as a phone.  I remember one young lady using one of those phones with a case on it.  It looked like she was holding her purse up to her ear to talk.  Looking cool, she was not.

All that said, if Apple were to make one, would I want it?  I'm leaning towards no, but I'd definitely have to hold it and play with it a bit to be sure.

All aboard

One of the things I found kind of funny about a bunch of the Disney Land rides was that they gave "boarding pass"es to people getting on them.  I don't know if it's changed since the last time I was there, but they certainly didn't have these at Disney World.  Maybe it's just me, but they feel kind of... goofy.

Oh, and if you look closely, you'll see that this one is for the Dumbo ride.  Worst line we had the entire day (a bit over 45 minutes), for a one- or two-minute ride.  Not one of our better decisions (especially as they had a virtually identical ride in the space area).  Still a good day; just not one of the high points.

Trains that feel very long

I loved a number of things about the Hong Kong subway:  it's fast, reliable, clean, and punctual.  There are some more minor things I like as well, one of which you can see from this picture.  There are no doors between cars (only the second subway system I've been on like that), so you can see a long ways into a train.  And get a lot of warning about slopes and turns, if you're in the back of the train.

What you can't see in this picture are the subway maps at every door.  They show the whole line that you're on, tells what direction you're going, what stops you're at/between, which line(s) you can transfer to at the next stop, and which door will be opening.  It's a very nice, compact, map that conveys a lot of info.  Very well done.

Learning slowly

I'm still sorting through the pictures I took on our trip to Hong Kong, and a couple of things have jumped out at me.

The first is that I'm not used to shooting in full daylight.  That leads to some options for editing that I'm not used to having.  It's also nice, in that I rarely need to run noise-reduction software on the pictures.

The other thing is that I should have done something to have a flash handy.  Too many shots with just backlighting, where a flash, especially one off the camera, would have done wonders.

What I needed to do about that was to use the belt system that I've thought about (well, ok, I actually bought it, but haven't used it yet), keep a flash in there, with this little doohickey (scroll down to the second picture) and a cable on hand.  Then I could have easily pulled it out and used it quickly.  Live and learn.