13 posts tagged “apple”
It was time…I pulled the trigger and got a new Mac. To be more specific, I purchased a refurbished MacBook Pro, one of the newer 15” models with the 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM. Overall, I am quite happy.
Interestingly, Apple has tweaked the initial out-of-box experience somewhat since I bought my last Mac.
- The first time you boot the machine, you are treated to a cute welcome video. This is somewhat like the animation you see when you reboot your TiVo.
- One of the initial setup steps is to choose from the autodetected wireless networks. Nice.
- If you’ve ever bought anything from iTunes, the computer knows your name, etc. after you supply that username/password.
- You are prompted to take a picture that represents “you” with the built-in iSight.
- OS X immediately downloads any relevant software updates. There are about 10 items to download, instead of the 80+ you’d see in Windows.
It just gets better and better.
No, I didn’t buy one. I did play with one for about 10 minutes yesterday at the Apple store, and a few things jumped out at me:
- Size: It’s slimmer than I expected for some reason. And though it’s wider/taller than other devices, the tradeoff of having a larger screen is worth it and it feels comfortable to hold.
- Interface: The word that comes to mind is futuristic. It works just like the commercials we’ve all seen, so in that sense it merely meets expectations. But when you compare it to your old, boring phone you see it’s a huge leap forward.
- Screen: Big and beautiful…no two ways about it. The graphics are lovely, but the mere fact that the screen is twice the size of a Treo’s or BlackBerry’s is the biggest game changer. It opens up a lot of possibilities and it would be hard to give that up if you switched to another kind of phone.
- Keyboard: The compromise regarding the screen is that you don’t get a “regular” keyboard. However, I found the keyboard workable, and I was using two thumbs right off the bat. I would gladly make this compromise to get a huge screen in return.
- Browser “tabs”: The web browser has a feature almost like tabs that allows you to keep multiple browser windows open…I thought this was really cool. This is one of many features about the device that pushes it beyond the category of “phone” and into “handheld computer.”
Those are the highlights in the first 10 minutes…the Chat-style SMS was nice, Google Maps looks good, yadda yadda. On the minus side, I couldn’t figure out how to “zoom in” on specific parts of a page in the web browser. Seeing the full page is a neat trick, but without the ability to zoom in the text is unreadable. I kept clicking on the links instead, which would open the next page.
I’m sure I’d get past that eventually, but the missing “line item features” like 3G and ActiveSync are really what’s standing in my way. At this point the iPhone is a 7 or 8 out of 10 in my book, and I can wait until it gets to be a 9. If these “line items” don’t matter to you, though, I say buy it.
I happened to be near an Apple store at 6pm yesterday when the iPhone went on sale...I'd say there were between 250-300 people in line. Below are some pics.
It was kinda cool that the people in line clapped as shoppers exited the store with their iPhones. I saw one guy take his out of the box and it was smaller than I thought it would be, and it comes with a dock.
And no, I didn't get one...if it wasn't for the lack of Exchange integration I'd be on it like a hobo on a ham sammich.
This is pretty ballsy. Steve Jobs is putting public pressure on the record companies to give up DRM.
Wow.
The folks at Google are showing their love for the Mac more and more as time goes by, most recently centralizing their Mac downloads onto this page. Very nice.
Even though I don’t see it happening, it would kinda fun if Google took a shot at Apple’s Spotlight by releasing Google Desktop for the Mac. Anything that can goose Apple into making Spotlight less sucky is a good thing. I’d like to see Picasa on the Mac as well, just to see iPhoto sweat a little.
Maybe someday.
I was out of the office last week and all sorts of fun stuff happened when I wasn’t looking. If you’re looking for a nice, neat synthesis of the Apple announcements last week, check out this New York Times article. Totally new iPod nano and shuffle, better battery life all around, movies on iTunes…hot damn.
Let’s say it’s New Music Tuesday and you’re treating yourself to something from the iTunes Music Store. You poke around a while, finally decide, and click Buy Song. You then notice this e-mail sitting in your inbox:
To: 4th Floor employees From: SYSADMIN Date: 5 mins ago Subject: Reboot needed Due to a software update, the Internet firewall/router will be rebooted soon. Internet connectivity will be down briefly. Your Overworked, Haggard System Administrator
Dude! My iTunes! What’s gonna happen to my download?!
Chill, yo. Apple’s got your back. If you lose connectivity in the middle of an iTunes Music Store download, iTunes displays a nice little error message, prompting you to use the Check for Purchases option under the Advanced menu.
Hit that bad boy and watch your download pick up where it left off. Once it’s done, commence with the rockulation.
Every once in a while I get sick of switching back and forth between Safari and Camino to get all my browsing needs met and I start looking for other options. Camino has a really annoying download bug, which is apparently Firefox’s fault, and is slower than Safari, but Safari can’t handle some of the new AJAX-heavy sites on the Net.
The option that would seem to hold the most promise is OmniWeb, from the folks that brought you other great Mac tools like OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner. Unfortunately, seem is the key word in the previous sentence. In its current iteration, OmniWeb renders pages in a weird way and has a slightly awkward interface (in some areas).
There is reason to take heart, however: a new version of OmniWeb will be in public beta in a few weeks and it’s based on Apple’s WebKit rendering engine. (That means OmniWeb will display web pages the same way that Safari does.) This will be a nice step forward, and could make OmniWeb a viable option for me.
The dealbreaker here could be lack of AJAX support, especially as it applies to Google Calendar. Google Calendar currently doesn’t work in Safari (so it won’t work in OmniWeb either), and at this point it’s my calendar of choice. Google has straightened out the notifcation issues (they come on time now) and the ability to search your calendar is cool. I’ll also admit that I like the e-mail Google Calendar can send you every morning telling you what your schedule is.
I’m gonna hold out hope that Google will find a way to make it work in Safari, even if it’s at the expense of some decreased functionality. Also, Backpack will have a calendar soon (so they keep saying), and I may switch to that. You can bet dimes to dollars the Backpack calendar will work in Safari.
All this having been said, the interesting thing I’ve observed here is the market opportunity for a “Pro” browser on the Mac.
The “Pro” Browser
Nowadays especially, computer geeks of all stripes are using Macs. Many of these individuals have a need for a browser that’s simply more advanced than Safari. Perhaps you need extensibility (like Firefox provides) to add your own features to the browser. Or maybe you just want to take advantage of the lastest Web 2.0 AJAX wondersite. Whatever.
Firefox seems like it fits the bill here, but there’s just one tiny problem: it looks like ass on the Mac. (Refried ass, actually.) It just sticks out like a sore thumb, and though they’re apparently working on this, I think it’s such a deep-down part of the core architecture that it’s hard to believe Firefox will ever be really great on the Mac.
Hence the market opportunity.
I wouldn’t worry too much about competition from Apple here, either. It’s safe to say that Safari will never have a lot of features, or at least not enough for the power users. Apple is likely to keep it very simple, like Mail or iChat, but there are people out there that either pay for or need more than what those apps provide.
Plus, it’s easy to switch browsers. You can usually export your bookmarks without too much trouble, and it’s not like there’s compelling iLife integration or something to keep people in the Apple fold where the browser is concerned.
The best thing I learned in college is that it’s all about incentives: Apple doesn’t really have an incentive to build this type of browser. No one will be switching to the Mac because it has a better built-in browser. They want to make a kick-ass WebKit, for themselves and other Mac developers, and keep Safari lean and simple.
But guess what: someone else does have an incentive. They can have some of my money! Or, jump into the Camino/Firefox code base, fix some of the nasty bugs, and watch the job offers roll in! You’ll be featured in Wired magazine before you know it.
Will such a browser be easy to build? No. Will I be building it and retiring on my millions next year? Hell no.
But somebody can do it. Who’s up for a challenge?
How’s this for a catchy first line: the January 26th edition of Apple’s eNews marketing newsletter included a blurb about iWork’s ability to perform spreadsheet-like calculations in table cells.
And this got me thinking.
Some folks have lamented the fact that Apple does not sell or otherwise provide a spreadsheet program. Pages 2 and Keynote 3 can create spreadsheet-like tables, but that’s it. However, I assert that almost no one actually needs a spreadsheet program. (You heard me.)
The vast majority of Excel spreadsheets I’ve encountered have contained no numeric calculations at all. They’ve basically been text, albeit arranged into vertical and horizontal boxes. The point here is not that spreadsheets are horribly misused…they certainly are. What I’m saying is this user behavior can be seen as a failure on the part of word processing programs to make tables easy enough to use.
And so I was thinking, “I wonder if Apple will ever play into this and release some spreadsheet software.” Right now I’m thinking not. They seem to be taking the high road and making a word processor that can include tables. Another way of saying it is that releasing a spreadsheet program invites bad user behavior (creating spreadsheets), and I don’t think Apple will encourage that.
What Mac users do need is a way of opening Excel formatted files without giving Microsoft any money. I would love it if OpenOffice.org was good enough for general use, but it’s not. You might be willing to compromise and use OOo instead of buying MS Office, but it’s not actually better in the way that Firefox beats IE. Especially on the Mac.
I’m not sure what the solution is here. Making Pages able to open XLS files? Seems awkward. The best thing I can think of is if Apple came up with a spreadsheet program that was as similar to Excel as Pages is to Word. (That is to say, not very). But, this software would be able to open XLS files and “convert” them into its native format.
Any better ideas? Post a comment.
Side note: My Rails apps have been running pretty well for a week now, so I’ll probably post them on Monday.
Yesterday’s post discussed Yojimbo (a product I wouldn’t recommend) and ended with a mention of the fact that it uses .Mac syncing services to keep its data synchronized across multiple Macs. In a nutshell, this means that the creators of Yojimbo made use of some technology offered by Apple as part of .Mac to provide syncing capability in the program. The downside here is that to use this feature, the user needs to subscribe to the $99 per year .Mac service.
Right off the bat, I’ll say that IMHO machine-to-machine syncing is a not-good-enough substitute for being able to access the data from any web-enabled computer (as with Backpack). Setting that aside, the point here is that .Mac is a weak offering overall and I’m not the first person who won’t be renewing this year.
For me, $99 a year is a ridiculous ripoff for an e-mail address, some half-baked web hosting, and some quarter-baked file backup. Right now, I’m paying $5 a month for a very nice hosting package from A Small Orange, which provides a lot more functionality. If you consider yourself a “techinical” person and are considering web hosting, I highly recommend them.
On the flip side, I’d really like to recommend .Mac for the non-technical user, but I have trouble doing that as well. The biggest reason is the flaky nature of iDisk and the questionable quality of the backup solution. To me, this is essentially a dealbreaker, because the inexperienced user is not likely to be vigilant about backups (nor should they need to be). So, that’s all the more reason why the backup solution needs to not suck.
As far as I can tell, that leaves .Mac as an OK solution for people who will be savvy enough to backup their files some other way, but aren’t technical enough to get more about of a (much cheaper) real web hosting account. That’s not a great position to be in, market-wise. But, maybe Apple doesn’t care that much, because I suppose they’re only interested in .Mac as much as it will convince someone to buy some more Apple hardware or software.
I need a little more than that.
