I get confused when people say the iPad is the easiest to use computer ever made.

iPad home screen

There are a few reasons for this.

Primarily it is that actually damned hard to use. If you want to do absolutely anything other than open an app, it is difficult. The navigation, in an attempt to be simplified, has been simplified to the point where it is consistently inconsistent between apps, the system, and anything else.

It is also absolutely dog slow. Perhaps I have been spoilt by the Galaxy Nexus, which let me tell you in no uncertain terms: it never keeps you waiting. The iPad is quite the opposite. Even loading the Settings app takes forever on mine now. Perhaps Apple is hinting at me to buy a new one (not likely).

It is also virtually impossible to get support when it goes wrong. If there is a problem I usually google it. However any mention of iPad in a search term gets your results flooded with all kinds of crap blog posts about how to do simple things, when I actually want a solution to a problem. I think this is partly because the iPad seems so simple, it makes just about anyone think they can provide technical support for it. Not the case.

In that vein, a reminder to myself. If your iTunes app ever disappears from your iPad home screens again, it has most likely been disables in the Restrictions of the General settings in Settings. Good luck remembering your Restrictions pin! Image for future reference:

Look for Restrictions

My post earlier about the hovering robots got me thinking about other robot videos I’ve seen recently. I thought I’d have a look to see what else is around online at the moment. Here are some highlights.

Big Dog

This video has been around for quite some time but its rather impressive. Highly tuned reactive control system in action, and very nicely done too.

Aldebaran Nao

Spotted these little guys’ new version announcement a few months back. Seem a bit gimmicky in the promo video but I wouldn’t say no to having a go with one. Would be interested in finding out how its programmed, unfortunately they’re very secretive with their APIs.

Asimo

Honda’s got a bit gimmicky with Asimo too.

Here are some really awesome robots in action. The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP lab has been working on getting quadrotors under control and working together in tasks.

It looks like these are controlled by a central computer wirelessly and then tracked with cameras and markers in the environment, which is a great way to quickly get started without requiring gigantic machines with processing and swarm communication algorithms on board.

The first video has been doing the rounds online, but the other two are still really worth checking out.

Matlab has long proclaimed itself as “The language of technical computing”. However its language leaves a lot to be desired.

Having worked with Matlab on and off for a number of years now, I am going to try and explain what could be improved:

• Error messages – usually vague and not helpful, and often difficult to find explanations for what a particular error message actually means.
• Programming experience – largely just a text editor. Something like Intellisense would go a looooong way to improving the experience.
• JIT compiler – a just-in-time compiler (much like Eclipse does with Java) would benefit the above point too. As Matlab variables are just matrices, you have to work out what size they are for yourself. There’s not even a way to annotate what size they should be so you don’t have to look it up later.
• Proper functions and objects – Matlab’s function definition system is backwards and annoying. The syntax is horrible too. Objects are (somehow) worse.
• Proper education support – this is something they could charge universities for and make a killing. However it will only work if the support is at the right level for students. If we’re learning a particular technique, highly technical docs are all well and good, but could do with some background as to how the parameters relate to the base technique.

Everyone seems to be going mad about Pintrest at the moment so I thought I’d give it a go.

I’m not one for the most abundant content on there (flowers, arty photos, dresses and various haircare products) so I made one about something I am interested in (and do know something about) – F1 cars.

So far I have found numerous problems with their website:

• Popup modals are visually nasty, difficult to pick out from the background when they’re popped up and often get their events bound multiple times if you do it more than once on the same page
• Following links seems a bit weird, sometimes it follows redirects and sometimes I end up with feedproxy URLs on the “pins”
• There doesn’t seem to be a good way to get to one of your boards – you have to click just below its title?!
• Generally buggy picking images – several times I tried to pin the second or third image from a URL and it still rendered the first one
• Their CDN is sloooooow to propagate – first few page loads and the image isn’t there
• Have to log in with Twitter or Facebook (at least you can turn it off again later)

Let’s hope the experience improves a bit.