Apple
Today’s lesson: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”
2I’d like to share a nice quote of Apple CEO Steve Jobs with you:
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”
Mapping this to BI; you can design a fantastic and fancy BI report or dashboard with all the bells and whistles going on, but if it doesn’t work smoothly and intuitive it’s not ok. Design goes further than just only fancy gauges and charts.
New MacBook Pro available!
02 years ago
in Apple
The first of April, I’ll be starting a new challenge, building a Business Intelligence team at The Next View. So this is a new crusade with greater challenges than ever before. Well if you’re about to start a new challenge, what’s better than gearing up with some new hardware goodies?
I’ve been watching the Apple store carefully since I’ve read on Macrumors that the new MacBook Pro would be in stores in Q1 2011. Yesterday the news came in, the new MacBook Pro is released!
The first thing I did was searching for benchmarks and again, I landed on the Macrumors site.
source: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/25/new-macbook-pro-benchmarks-show-massive-improvement/
This looked promising so I’ve placed an order with the following specs:
15-inch: 2,0 GHz
2.0GHz quad-core
Intel Core i7
4GB 1333MHz
500GB 5400-rpm1
Intel HD Graphics 3000
AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB GDDR5
Built-in battery (7 hours)2
Next to that I’ve chosen to select the high resolution screen since SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (fka Xcelsius) demands quite some screen resolution to work properly.
I haven’t got many experience with Apple devices other than my iPhone and a Mac Mini but I’m quite happy so far. An interesting new feature is the thunderbolt connection which delivers astonishing I/O speed. Click this link for all the technical details.
Now I just sit back and relax and wait for the delivery..
Will Apple acquire SAP or visa versa?
02 years ago
I ran into this picture of the Gartner BI Summit.. Is this a hint? 
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timoelliott/sets/72157625944620374/show/
Unreal Engine 3 running on iPhone and iPad
02 years ago
in Apple
Nowadays, everyone has an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 in the living room for a great gaming experience with stunning graphics. Next to this, almost everyone also has a iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile smartphone to connect to your friends through all the social media and networks, to manage your agenda, to get the latest traffic info or even to make a phone call..
But now Epic brings the Unreal Engine 3 to the mobile platform iOS4.2! You almost don’t need a game console anymore for stunning graphics!
Click on the following images to watch the Youtube movies for the upcoming game Epic Citadel and be amazed about the graphical processing power of the Apple devices combined with the Unreal engine 3.
A short list of all graphical features:
- Bump offset mapping. Also known as parallax mapping or relief mapping, bump offset mapping enhances the visual appearance of stone walls and rocks providing intricate textures.
- Normal mapped architecture. Brings stunning detail to bricks and ground surfaces within the environment.
- Texture blending with painted weight maps. Refines nuances on roads and terrain, making them rich and lifelike.
- Global illumination. Unreal Engine 3’s built-in global illumination system, Unreal Lightmass, provides realistic lighting and shadows with minimal development resources.
- Dynamic specular lighting with texture masks. Helps create authentic cobblestone roads and vivid reflective marble surfaces, while lens flares and light coronas add dramatic emphasis when panning across light sources.
- Real-time reflections and animation. Environment mapping enables real-time reflections on objects such as the statue inside the cathedral. Dynamic movements of trees and banners are made possible through the use of vertex deformation and skeletal animation.
Quite impressive! Game on!
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