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E.T. Phone Home

One reader pointed out something to us that didn't cross our mind at the time, after reading our opinion piece from November 28th, entitled "A Super Ultra-Portable Mac in an Easy-to-Swallow Pill?":

I didn't see another potential use for their touch screen patents in your article. That would be the iPhone device(s). It might be useful in eliminating the physical keyboard. I could see that potential for dialing as it wouldn't be used intensively. For text messaging it wouldn't, as screen real estate would be too limited for keys and text display...

Thanks for your article.

R. Boylin

We wrote back and thanked Mr. Boylin for pointing that out to us, something we didn't see mentioned by any of the "pros" out there at the time of writing. A great analysis. Wish we'd thought of it. We might have, as we said to Mr. Boylin, but pointed out that we were focused on two products. To throw anything more into the picture would have shifted the focus of the "Super Ultra-Portable Mac" which we're hoping to see more than an iPhone. And the phone idea was way out in space at the time. (Out of our head).

Can't 'Wii' All Just Get Along?

One reader told us that they loved our article on November 22nd which showed people how to "Use Your Mac for Something Other than Work this Holiday" though we didn't know whether we were being insulted:

Hey, your article about motion sensing games on the Mac was neat, I'm gonna try it when I get home. But it was flawed in the sense that it IS indeed something Nintendo has done before. They have had tilt pinball games for GameBoy and such, and more so, the Wii which you mentioned as not being innovative at all is actually based around a motion sensor controller. What are you like, sixty? seventy?

Justin

Of course, we made sure to respond to that one, and pointed out to Justin that this columnist is under 30 years old (thank you) who frequently gets mistaken for being a high school student, and that this columnist is also a Nintendo fan, currently the owner of a Nintendo DS original version, prior to that owning a GameBoy Advance SP which we traded in for that DS. ("Wii" still have the original GameBoy and an SNES. "Wii" just got ourself, for Christmas, a new GameCube since we were out of our budget and couldn't get the Wii).

We did point out, speaking of being out of date, that mentioning the GameBoy, an old piece of technology, would be out of place. By quoting our own article, we pointed out to Justin that we did mention this feature in our article, about the GameBoy Advance SP having games that had a motion sensor in the cartridge. We also mentioned that we stated the fact that motion-sensing technology is built-in to the Wii's remote.

Justin wrote us back:

I hadn't gotten to the second page yet, I just felt like complaining. I was going to email you again but I figured one random email was enough for me for one day, haha. Sorry. Again it was a neat article and I didn't know about the other ways to exploit that feature on the portable Macs...

Oh and yes, we forgive Justin 100% for thinking we were a member of the Senior Citizen club. (May have been a case of motion sickness, getting a little excited over the newly-found feature on his Apple portable). Maybe we should post our picture on the index page...?

Well, that's it for the first edition of "The Press Box Mailbox" here at PBCentral.com. Isn't it nice when people learn from each other, as in Mr. Boylin pointing out something to us (in regard to the iPhone), and Justin learning from us about the SMS feature on the Mac? (Like we said, not many people know about that feature).

Speaking of the club, if you have anything to say, comment, add, etc., in regard to any of the articles here at "The Press Box" at PBCentral.com, feel free to do so. Just send them over to: j.leo@macprices.net

**Note that most e-mails may or may not receive a personal response back to the reader's e-mail address-- though we endeavor to do so --and also, responses posted here may not exactly match what was sent to the reader. If necessary, reader's e-mails to "The Press Box" may have been edited for content. (Disclaimer: readers need to know that any correspondence sent here may be published online).