Slashdot linked to Jalopnik's story on the RSV on Friday. Among the comments is this gem from Kulprit442:

I remember seeing car ads from the past (just because I am an automotive pop culture nut) and it wasn't uncommon for the small cars of the 80's, 70's and even 60's claiming 30-40mpg...so why with all the technology in 30 years can we not make alot more vehicles get alot more than they are now. I still say conspiracy!!!!

The thing about those old cars is that they didn't have much horsepower. The RSV included the 1.7L engine from the mid-70's Honda Accord. The sedan of today offers as its smallest engine a 2.4L 177 hp version, with a 3.5L 271 hp V6 available on the more premium trims. In 1988*, the Accord only offered 98 hp in the DX/LX and 120 hp in the LXi, both with 2.0L engines.

Over time, manufacturers have offered more power, and buyers have accepted it. Today's 110 hp engines find their way into subcompacts ranging from the Toyota Yaris (106 hp) to the Honda Fit (117 hp), or end up as part of a hybrid system, as in the 2009 Toyota Prius. (Ye olden subcompacts often made do with about 66 hp, but nobody truly liked them.) I don't really blame manufacturers nor buyers for this, though. Power is a lot more fun than economy, no conspiracy needed.

Although weight could soak up the performance difference between modern and older cars, the trend appears to have been for power to increase faster than weight. That 1988 Accord is only 2482 lb. for the DX sedan, for 25.4 lb/hp. The 2010 LX sedan weighs 3230 lb, for 18.2 lb/hp.


* This being as far back as MSN autos provides data for it, and I'm not interested in doing heavy research on Memorial Day weekend.

Watching the New York Times, CNN, and others (recently GQ in the ads on Ars Technica) embrace the iPad so wholeheartedly, I wondered why they were doing it. What was so awesome about the device that publishers would embrace it in a way that they had never approached a tablet any time in the previous decade? I think the answers are all “design” and “control.”

The iPad is not a commodity. There will be only one manufacturer, one overall design, and one software environment. Although six models are being offered, they differ only in storage and network connection, neither of which have any bearing on the resources available to run actual apps. Effectively, any iPad is the one and only iPad from an app’s point of view.

The processor is always an Apple A4 at a single clock speed; the memory is always 256 MB; the screen is always 1024×768×32 and always driven by the A4’s integrated PowerVR chip; and your app is single-tasked, so the crapware a typical PC has will never slow it down and darken your good name. The only real variable is whether the screen is portrait or landscape, and even that only alters your dimensions by 33%. Unlike unrestricted PC hardware, which could be running anything from my venerable 5:4 monitor to a (comically short) 16:9 widescreen—to a 700×500 window stuffed in the corner of a much larger desktop.

All this, combined with the fact that iPad apps are not mired in the matrix of browser capabilities and technologies of the Web, gives designers a tighter set of constraints to work with, which allows them to produce designs that much better suited for the target device. It’s so much better to design in a framework of either-or than “anything from 800 to 2560 pixels wide, and whatever you do, IE will mess it up.”

iPad publishers also gain a measure of control over their content when it’s not on the Web, vulnerable to deep linking and copypasta aggregators like Google News. For additional control, I would bet Apple did the same for publisher’s apps as they did for iBooks, letting the publisher set the price rather than taking Amazon’s hardline “$9.99 or no Kindle sales for you!” stance. Finally, on competing platforms, there is a common DRM scheme in use platform-wide, which makes the payoff associated with cracking it much higher. A successful crack of a common system opens the entire platform. Whereas an app for each publication may only compromise a single app/publisher when a weakness is discovered.

So overall, the iPad is a much more attractive proposition for traditional publishers than the current crop of competitors. This will most likely remain true over time, as Android/WebOS knockoffs will try to out-spec each other in a race for the nerdiest audience, totally neglecting the other benefits that the iPad offers to developers. Both in traditional media, and in new development.