Brian Dipert

Link This | Email This | Comments (4)

Apple and forced obsolescence: More questions and comments

Wow. It’s good to be back! I’m frankly pretty mind-blown at the popularity of, and response to, last Tuesday’s post, “ Obsolescence by design: Short-term gain, long-term loss, and an environmental crime .” As of Sunday morning, when I began writing this follow-up, readers had left more than 70 comments on it, roughly half of those in the first 24 hours it was... More

Link This | Email This | Comments (1)

The system retrofit: Thanks, iFixit!

As mentioned in my prior post, I plan to leverage iFixit’s maintenance resources ( documentation and video ) whenever my girlfriend’s iPhone 3GS’s embedded battery becomes sufficiently capacity-hampered to require a swap. And I’ll drop $20 on the replacement battery and tools from iFixit , even though the collection is available for less on Ebay, to acknowledge... More

Link This | Email This | Comments (76)

Obsolescence by design: Short-term gain, long-term loss, and an environmental crime

A recent conversation with my girlfriend reminded me of a longstanding “beef” I’ve had with a major consumer electronics supplier. Although I realize I’m a poor case study of “voting with my wallet,” going forward I aspire to do a better job of “putting my money where my mouth is.” And in the interim I hope you’ll follow the spirit... More

Link This | Email This | Comments (1)

The top three rules of (display) real estate: location, location, and location

Having discussed handheld device display ppi (pixels per inch) in some depth in my prior writeup , thereby giving (at least near-term) closure to one of the topics I raised in the preceding post , I thought I’d wrap up this particular series by focusing on the remaining subjects I previously introduced in this series: the sizes and pixel densities of computer monitors and... More

Link This | Email This | Comments (6)

Hold me closer, tiny display*

Last week’s write-up, “ The Only Constant Is Change ,” posited a question; why have computer displays and televisions remained at fairly conservative ppi (pixels-per-inch) metrics, while tablets and (especially) smartphones have pushed the envelope quite quickly (a la Apple’s Retina Display )? Those of you who did the homework I assigned you , consisting of... More