Here’s one of the first commercials Apple put out with the launch of the original iPad model. I had not seen it (or remember seeing it) until a few days ago, when I came in contact with it while looking for something else, but some excerpts caught my attention. The obvious one is the wide user-base that it has appealed to and ended up acquiring over time. And given the fact that two years after its introduction, several negative reviews by market experts, and many failed attempts to capture the consumer imagination by other companies, the iPad still remains the one to beat, I have to admit and say .:. not bad, Steve, not bad.
By Brienne Walsh
Source: The New York Times
The boat slid across the teal waters of Lago Argentino, and soon we were 900 feet from the Perito Moreno Glacier. Through the morning rain, the glacier loomed above us — a jagged wonder glowing with colors: aquamarine, pure white, pale gray and an otherworldly, nearly fluorescent blue. Every few seconds there was a thunderous crack, and a chunk of ice, distant and unseen, went crashing into the ice field.
This was the end of a journey that had begun four days earlier in northwest Argentina. My friend Michael and I had arrived in the ski resort town of Bariloche laden with dreams of driving down Route 40 — the near-mythical highway that had been an escape route for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid more than 100 years ago — to the Perito Moreno Glacier, 50 miles west of the town of El Calafate.
I had just spent nearly two months in Buenos Aires and was tired of urban life, of nonstop human interaction. I wanted solitude and a dose of adventure before returning to my home in New York. Then it occurred to me: I would call Michael and we would go to Patagonia, the windswept frontier bequeathed with the earth’s few remaining glaciers. Adventure and solitude would surely be found there, I figured.
The agents at Hertz, where we rented our car, assured us the route hadn’t changed much since the days it was traversed by outlaws. Especially in winter, they said, it is covered with black ice and riddled with potholes. Hertz would rent us a car only if we promised not to take Route 40 the entire way.
So we mapped a new route, a 1,180-mile cruise along the paved highways that slashed across the lonely landscape of Argentinian Patagonia. It would take us east, to the coastline, and then south along the water, and then back west, to El Calafate, near the border of Chile.
We enlisted the help of our hotel porter the night before our departure. “The first afternoon, you’ll drive south to Esquel,” he told us, making notes on a piece of paper. Soon the page filled up with the names of sights: national parks, caves full of prehistoric paintings, estancias. He circled Sarmiento, the town where Bruce Chatwin, the travel writer, encountered amateur archaeologists collecting dinosaur bones from the banks of the Lake Colhué Huapi. He made a star next to Puerto San Julián, the harbor where Charles Darwin had gathered scientific data in 1834 as a member of Robert FitzRoy’s Beagle survey. If we made good time, the porter said, by the evening of the third day we would be in Río Gallegos, a hair’s breadth away from Tierra del Fuego. From there, we would make our way northwest to El Calafate.
Early the next afternoon Bariloche, with its tidal wave of tourists, slid behind us, and the Andes, black and speckled with snow, filled the horizon.
Patagonia is famous for being a magnet for wanderers. In 1977, Chatwin described the region as having “an effect on the imagination something like the Moon.” Occupying roughly 490,000 square miles, it extends from the Colorado River in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south. On the western side, it is bordered by Chile; in the east, it meets the Argentine Sea, which feeds into the Atlantic.
But Patagonia today is a different land from the one that Chatwin explored 30 years ago. Stretches of emptiness still exist, but it’s impossible to drive more than a few hours without coming upon a town ripe with three-star hotels, satellite TV and restaurants that accept credit cards.
If anything about Patagonia is still otherworldly, it’s the colors embedded in the landscape — teal, mauve, mahogany, jonquil, periwinkle, azure, lavender.
We arrived in Esquel, 120 miles south of our starting point, as the sun was setting over the mountains. The town is the home of La Trochita, a steam train line relegated to the tourist trail with hourlong journeys through the Andean foothills. But we were in Esquel only to sleep, and left early the next morning.
As we drove, the thermometer on the dashboard dropped to the freezing point. Ahead lay the low, tiered steppes that cover most of southern Patagonia. By noon, we were at Gobernador Costa, a town that looked like a John Wayne movie set, sleepy and seething with boredom. It was here that Route 40 intersected with Route 20, which we took east toward the coast.
Occasionally, we’d be startled by something unexpected — the viridian and turquoise of Lake Musters, framed by ocher reeds; the stratified rock formations of Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento, which presided over an abandoned realm of petrified wood chips deposited by a river that had carved out the valley 65 million years ago.
At this year’s Frankfurt Motor Show Volvo has been showing off the Concept You — a new luxury sedan featuring some pretty nifty, touch-based controls and digital displays with a variety of information.
The You is an evolution of the Universe concept unveiled at the Shanghai auto show in April and presents a more businesslike, upscale Volvo to luxury buyers.
Since last year, when Ford sold the brand to Geely of China, it appears the new owners have decreed that Volvo must now move upmarket, away from the near-luxury foothold it shared with others like Saab, Acura and Lincoln. During the presentation conspicuously little was said on safety, usually Volvo’s trump card.
It features seat backs tailored like gray flannel suits, complete with pocket flaps. And for the “Revenge of the Nerds” demographic, there’s even a protected pocket holder for pens and pencils.
But Concept You is otherwise brimming with futuristic flights of fancy, including a touch interface on the central control panel console in the cockpit that uses an infrared sensor to pick up on any hand or eye movements before activating to bring up the system’s infotainment control mode, which boasts an unreleased FreshAir subwoofer from Alpine. From here, you can surf the web, swipe through radio stations, check for safety alerts or control your air conditioning, using only your fingers or customized gestures.
Alternatively, you might feel the You evokes HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
The car’s steering-wheel features some sensor enhanced panels, which you can use to adjust your radio or cruise control settings. Directly behind the wheel lies a monitor that digitally displays your basic driving information, including speed and a map of your trajectory. The screen, which can subsequently be controlled by touch, seems a bit complicated.
Plus, there’s an extra touchscreen placed between the two rear seats, meaning your kids won’t be left out of the action, either. Yeah.
The You is not meant for production; it doesn’t even have an engine. Still, Volvo says the platypus-billed sedan should influence future design.
An exclusive video by Engadget of the Concept You’s so-called smart pad technology, along with the full PR.
A Concept You PR video from Volvo Cars: exclusive design, materials, and craftsmanship.