Apple Co-Founder: My Prius Has a Problem, Too – Wheels Blog

So far, the Prius is not on the list of models that Toyota is recalling for sticking accelerators, though one high-profile owner of a 2010 Prius — Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple — says he has had acceleration issues, too.

“Toyota has this accelerator problem we’ve all heard about,” Mr. Wozniak said last week at Discover Forum 2010 in San Francisco, reported CNET.com (via Autoblog). “Well, I have many models of Prius that got recalled, but I have a new model that didn’t get recalled. This new model has an accelerator that goes wild, but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again — safely.”

He added: “This is software. It’s not a bad accelerator pedal. It’s very scary, but luckily for me, I can hit the brakes.”

According to The Los Angeles Times’s Technology blog, Mr. Wozniak said that the problems started several months ago. He was using the cruise control in his Prius to increase his speed when the car accelerated to close to 100 miles per hour on its own. Tapping the brakes managed to slow the car down, but the episode was disconcerting enough for him to contact Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

You might think that when the Woz speaks, people listen, but he said he didn’t receive a response from either party. So on Tuesday, Mr. Wozniak went on a media blitz.

“I think it’s mostly software in my case that caused it,” Mr. Wozniak told ABC News on Tuesday. “I can’t cause it every time on every trip, but I’m sure it will happen again.”

What does this mean? It’s hard to say. Mr. Wozniak said Toyota engineers would examine his Prius for a week to diagnose the problem, though his issue seems quite different from other complaints of sudden unintended acceleration, which Toyota attributes either to sticking gas pedals or to accelerators’ getting hung up on floor mats.

If this were an episode of “House,” you could throw “Prius” and “cruise control” onto the dry erase board, along with “floor mat,” “pedals” and “electronic throttle control.”

Meanwhile, The Times’s Hiroko Tabuchi is reporting that the Prius is the focus of another investigation in Japan, where there have been 14 complaints of brake trouble and the government has ordered Toyota to look into the issue for a possible brake defect.

An earlier version of this post erroneously included Transportation as part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s name.

Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. the Android Tablets
by Dan Nosowitz

Everybody’s talking about tablets, especially those single-pane capacitive touchscreen ones more specifically known as “slates.” The iPad is the biggest newsmaker, but there are lots headed our way (most with built-in webcams). Here’s how they measure up, spec-wise:

As you can see, they have different strengths and weaknesses, some of which will become more clear in the coming months as we learn more about each tablet. (That Dell Mini 5 is especially inscrutable right now.)

The iPad has the most storage, cheap 3G, the time-tested iPhone OS and its mountain of apps, and a serious amount of Apple marketing juice behind it. But it’s also famously lacking features common to the other tablets, such as webcam and multitasking. The Notion Ink Adam is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, with its dual-function transflective screen from Pixel Qi: It can be either a normal LCD or, with the flick of a switch, an easy-on-the-eyes reflective LCD that resembles e-ink. Its hardware is also surprisingly impressive—but it remains to be seen if Android is really the right OS for a 10-inch tablet.

The Dell Mini 5 and forthcoming Android edition of the Archos 7 tablet are two of a kind, almost oversized smartphones in their feature sets. Is an extra two or three inches of screen real estate worth the consequent decrease in pocketability? Perhaps not. And finally, there’s the maligned JooJoo, formerly the CrunchPad, a bit of an oddball as the only web-only device in the bunch. It doesn’t really have apps, can’t multitask, and pretty much confines you to an albeit fancy browser, sort of like Chrome OS will. The JooJoo is also the only tablet here to have no demonstrated way to read ebooks.

Data Sources:
Apple iPad: [Gizmodo]
HP Slate: [Gizmodo, GDGT; Tipster]
Fusion Garage JooJoo: [Gizmodo]
Notion Ink Adam: [Slashgear]
Dell Mini 5: [Gizmodo, Gizmodo]
Archos 7 Android: [DanceWithShadows, Gizmodo]

A quick word about “slates” vs. “tablets”: These are tablets, and it’s a word we prefer. The sad fact is, it’s overused. There’s no way to say “tablet” without including every godawful stylus-based convertible laptop built since 2002. (Thank you, Bill Gates!) And even the new touchscreen tablets come in single-pane and keyboard-equipped laptop styles. So “slate,” good or bad, is the more apt term.

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz
January 7, 2010

Don’t let the chumminess distract you. Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) were high-fiving and fist-bumping yesterday over a deal that will give Warner Bros. four weeks to sell its Blu-ray discs and DVDs before making them available through Netflix’s service, in exchange for some sweetened conditions. But subscribers are getting hosed.

Time Warner is trying to secure a 28-day window from Netflix, Coinstar’s (Nasdaq: CSTR) Redbox, and Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) because the movie studio thinks it will maximize its sales if it’s not competing against discounted rentals. Warner Bros. claims that 75% of its DVD sales come during the first four weeks of a film’s release.

In other words, Netflix is going to start offering you Warner Bros. DVD rentals after most of the demand has gone away.

Time Warner throws a lot of money behind its theatrical releases, only to embark on a marketing campaign several months later, when the flick is out on Blu-ray and DVD. Netflix subscribers are now going to be kept in a penalty box — for 40,320 minutes — until they get a crack.

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