Geek Swagger.
Apple
Steve Jobs Dead at 56
Oct 9th
I really did not want to write this post, especially because I already devoted a post to Steve Jobs’ resignation at Apple. It’s not because this event isn't important to me as an Apple fan, to the tech industry, or to the world at large. It is. It’s very important. However I didn’t want to dedicate two back-to-back posts to the felling of one of the greatest individuals that I had the priviledge to share time on the Earth with.
Anytime I sit behind a keyboard to write anything I struggle with my bad habit of being hyperbolic about my topic. With that said it’s very difficult to be hyperbolic about Steve Jobs. He was this generation’s Edison, a man that brought so many new technologies to the world that he changed the way we lived our lives. I’m not going to run down the list because we’ve all heard it a thousand times before, but I think the saddest part about losing Steve Jobs is the fact that he was a great human being that exemplified American exceptionalism. It always made me proud to think that Apple was a homegrown technology company based in the United States, one that had its fair share of ups and downs but recently because the most valuable company in the world (if only for a brief time).
When I wrote my post about Steve resigning I didn’t at all expect that he was near death. To me, a sort of Apple prognosticator, I assumed Steve’s stepping down was a part of their grand strategy. Apple was at its highest point of success, and we all knew Steve had to retire at some point, right? He had done what he set out to do in 1997, he had brought Apple back to unbelievable success. So, to my mind, it made sense that Apple would move forward with their post-Steve Jobs strategy and under his guidance continue their success. Of course I was wrong. Steve Jobs was so dedicated to his work at Apple that it wasn’t until he was literally unable to contribute that he had to resign, and we lost his mere months later.
I haven’t been a dedicated Apple user for a long time, all things considered. Though I grew up using Macs in school I never owned one until they switched to Intel processors in 2005. I still have that first Mac, a black Macbook, and it runs like a champ. I was drawn to their hardware because it was sexy, I was drawn to their software because it represented a level of design to make using the computer fun and easy for users. However, being able to run Windows via boot camp was the straw that broke the camels back for me.
I’ve since owned 3 other Macs including the one I’m using to write this blog post: a beautiful Macbook Air. I’ve also owned other i devices that were game-changers in their respective categories: the iPhone reinvented the modern smart phone and the iPad gave new life to the tablet computer. I’ve loved using all of these products, and all were brought to me because they were a single man’s vision. Steve Jobs wasn’t an inventor, he was a visionary who surrounded himself with the insanely talented people he needed to make products that people would use to do and make great things all with a smile on their face.
I think Steve Jobs was an influence for anyone doing anything in the technology space today, even if you aren’t a fan of Apple products. Om Malik wrote that Steve was our secret muse, and often times the questions one asked theirselves was “Would Steve do this?” or “How would have Steve done things differently?” I’m certainly not in a position to make high-level Steve-style decisions but at the same time there has been much to learn from his approach to living life and running his business.
With that said, there have been a lot of folks that have said they wish they were just like Steve. I don’t feel that way at all. At the end of the day one of his primary ideals was that each individual needs to be just that, an individual. Don’t waste your life trying to be someone else, instead focus on what you’re passionate about and put everything you have to give into that passion. Steve will be missed, but I don’t think his influence on any of us died with his death.
Rumored Amazon tablet – the first true iPad competitor!
Jun 23rd
Steve Jobs said it during the iPad 2 announcement: 2011 would be the year of the copycat when it comes to tablet devices looking to compete with the iPad. For the most part, so far at least, I agree. Everytime I turn around I hear about a brand new tablet computer that will truly compete with the iPad and iPad 2 once and for all. For the most part I think these claims have been empty. The slew of Android tablets, though very tempting on paper, have yet to reach critical mass with the general public. Don’t get me wrong, Android-based tablets as well as other competitors like BlackBerry’s Playbook have been evolving all year, but at the end of the day if you ask your Aunt Susie what kind of tablet device she’s interested in there’s a pretty good chance she’ll want an iPad.
In my opinion, part of the reason for this is Apple’s approach to their device. Rather than start with hardware they built upon a stockroom of great services and features they had already developed for other products in their arsenal, whether it be music and video through iTunes or applications through the App Store. On the other hand, many other tablet manufacturers are thinking hardware first and ecosystem second, and that’s exactly why I think a tablet made by Amazon could be the first true competition the iPad has seen since its launch.
I love Amazon. I use Amazon Prime constantly, I’ve bought 4 Kindles to give to friends and family as gifts, I use Amazon MP3 as my primary music store and I check into the Amazon App Store everyday on my Droid X to see what the free app is. Essentially, Amazon already has the ecosystem built to successfully support a tablet device. At the end of the day folks don’t buy a device because of the number of processing cores it's using, but rather the user experience. Instead of asking questions like “How much RAM does this have, and can I connect it to my TV with HDMI?” folks ask “Can I watch movies and listen to my music library, and does this have a ton of great apps I can play with?” It’s all about user experience, and Amazon already has the repertoire needed to support the average consumer’s laundry list of requirements for a tablet device they’ll love.
Consider that the Kindle is already the best-selling item on Amazon.com. Now combine that success with the growing popularity of tablet devices. If people could get a reading experience like they have on their Kindle combined with all of the other great services Amazon offers to users of their music, video and app services they’d have the total package. I’m not really sure what an Amazon-developed tablet would look like (would it use an e-ink display, or one of the many Kindle apps already developed for other mobile devices?) but I do think they have a shot to be a major player.
If nothing else I’m sure an Amazon tablet would have one hell of a shopping app!
Switching from an iPad to an 11″ Macbook Air
May 17th
In April I decided to make an investment with my tax return by buying a refurbished 11” Macbook Air with the following specs (top of the line, as of April 2011):
- 1.6 GHZ Core 2 Duo Processor
- 4GB of RAM
- 128 GB Solid State Hard Drive
I could go on listing other details but those are the important bits. Since getting it in the mail I’ve also installed Windows 7 on a second partition, as well as Visual Studio, Photoshop and the Office suite of applications. That’s just to give you an idea of what I’ve done so far, but let’s start with the primary question: why did I make the switch?
The iPad is Not a Developer’s Device
At the end of the day, I’m a web and software developer (.NET primarily) and there’s not a whole lot of development work I can get done with an iPad. Don’t get me wrong, I used my iPad all of the time but the Macbook Air can double as a work device for me and that added functionality is very valuable. Essentially, the 11” Macbook Air is an iPad with a keyboard running a desktop operating system and that works just fine for me!
It is by far the thinnest and lightest computer I’ve ever owned (much more mobile than my 15” Macbook Pro) but still packs in the features required to be an awesome day-to-day work laptop. If you’re looking for the perfect meeting device, this is it. I used to take my iPad into meetings all of the time and though it works quite well at the end of the day nothing beats a physical keyboard when you need to take some notes quickly.
From a performance standpoint the Air is the “snappiest” computer I’ve ever owned despite being so miniscule. Using it has been my first exposure to computing with a solid state drive and I honestly can’t imagine going back to spinning platters with my future computing purchases. Though it doesn’t pack a beefy processor, this little sucker loads all of the apps listed above significantly faster than my other work and home computers. Note, when you do some processor-intensive tasks like batch photo processing in Photoshop things do slow down a bit, but generally speaking the speed of this device is hugely impressive.
Battery life is impressive but not comparable to my iPad’s. I can get about 5 or 6 hours on a charge which doesn’t quite touch the 10 I’d get with Apple’s massively-popular tablet. That said I haven’t once had the Macbook Air’s battery die on me throughout a day of work and in fact I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving my charger at home which is a testament to my faith in the battery’s ability to last. Also, if you’re thinking about picking up an Air of your own you can choose to go with the 13” model which sports a longer-lasting battery (up to 7 hours, according to Apple who have been surprisingly honest when it comes to battery life as of late).
Things I Miss About My iPad
With all of those positive notes listed I do miss my iPad from time-to-time. When it comes to a relaxed computing experience I still think a tablet is a great way to go. I miss simple things like the awesome suite of games I had on my iPad, or being able to have my iPad in my lap when I’m lounging watching TV. I also miss iBooks as I used it as my primary book-reading platform. Ultimately the monolith tablet form-factor is more convenient than a laptop’s, but in the end I think most of these sacrifices were worth it as the MacBook Air is the “funnest,” most portable and speedy computer I’ve ever owned. I’m considering selling my Macbook Pro and just using the Air as my full-time work computer. The only issue would be hard drive space, but an external hard drive would probably remedy that issue.
LittleSnapper: An Awesome App for Designers
Jan 21st
I was perusing the Mac App Store a few days ago and noticed an app called LittleSnapper that was said to be an excellent addition to any designer's toolkit, and having used it a lot since then I can vouch for that. I you're into design and have access to the web (which you must if you're reading this) you'll absolutely love LittleSnapper. If you're a designer that works with the web or software, doubly so. It's a beautifully designed app that fills a need you might not know you had, but once it's brought to your attention you'll wish you had started using it months ago. So what the hell is the damn thing??
Say Cheese!
example full-page websnap
LittleSnapper is, at its most base root, a screenshot management program. It sits in your mac's menu bar and anytime you see something cool you can quickly take a snap which is stored in your library. The snaps can be categorized and tagged so you can easily find particulars after the fact, and the best part is that they're all displayed in a -like interface that is full of awesome. Screen snaps can be customized quite a bit, including singling out specific windows to snap and even selecting multiple windows to snap together (that's how I got this picture for my post about Sparrow).
You can also make websnaps with a supported browser like Safari. Why is this cool? A couple reasons. First off LittleSnapper will always snap the entire length of the page, no scrolling necessary. You get a clean look at all of the elements on the page with no browser window cluttering the picture up. Secondly, you can import a web snap right into LittleSnapper's integrated web browser to pinpoint individual elements on the page to snap. That's awesome if there's just one cool page section that you need to make note of. Finally, to top it all off, all edits to snaps are non-destructive, so if you mark a snap up in editing or crop out everything but one element in a page, you can always get back to the original source image.
Inspiration Database
If you're a designer how many times have you been on your computer, saw something cool and thought "man, I could work something like that into a project" only to forget entirely when the time comes to go to work. No worries, LittleSnapper remembers all of those cool websites and photos for you. I can foresee sitting down to start working on a new project and going to LittleSnapper before anything else for inspiration. So far I love it.
I bought LittleSnapper on the mac app store at a discounted introductory price and unfortunately for anyone reading this they've returned to the normal retail price. There is a at their site though, so give it a look and if you like what you see be sure to (with your cash money, of course).
Sparrow: Twitter-Like Email for your Mac
Jan 20th
I've tried a TON of different email clients over the years, including all of the staples like Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple's Mail.app and Windows Live Mail. For whatever reason I never end up sticking with any of them, and after a few days I end up back in my web browser using gmail's web client (which is admittedly great, as far as email web clients go). All of that changed when I found out about , however.
"Sparrow" even sounds like a Twitter client...
Sparrow (left) and the Official Twitter App for Mac
Sparrow is billed as a minimalist desktop client meant for accessing gmail in particular. Instead of a near-fullscreen window displaying your email you get a small column showing your inbox much in the way most Twitter apps display the latest tweets from your news feed. If you want to take a closer look at an email a drawer slides out giving you the full message, including threaded responses much like gmail has natively, and you can also apply labels to messages in a snap. Sprinkle in some and the ability to manage multiple gmail accounts and you have one heck of an email client.
Sparrow is still in beta (currently beta 7) and is completely free with ad-support. I'm assuming that they'll have a paid version down the road that removes the ads, but even the ads are nicely designed so they aren't hard at all to look at. You can also turn the ads off altogether in the app's preferences pane. I have to say I adore Sparrow's slimmed-down approach to email, and its unobtrusiveness has caused me to stick with it for about a month now. I still check gmail.com from time-to-time (it's almost an instinctual habit at this point), but I have Sparrow running all the time on both my macs. and let me know what you think, or leave a comment below with your favorite email client!
5 Ways to Improve Your iBooks Reading Experience
Jan 14th
I've written a couple (literally a couple) of posts about books lately, and those books were read on an iPad with iBooks. Although I like the features iBooks offers to users, I think the default setup can be harsh on the eyes. The good news is with the recent update you have some options that I think make prolonged reading a lot less painful. I also have a plea to Apple for a painfully obvious update that'll both make them more money and make my life better. So let's delve in, shall we?
My iBooks Setup
First up I'd like to share my iBooks setup that is proven by science to reduce eye-strain by 85%.* Follow the steps below for better reading, today! ™ **
1. Turn Down the Brightness
The iPad's screen is beautiful so it's understandable that you'd be tempted to crank the brightness up to a retina-searing 100%. Go ahead and turn it down a bit. I've found that around 60% is the sweet spot for my eyes, but feel free to experiment and adjust as you see fit.
2. Turn on Sepia
I believe this feature was added in a recent update and I love it. By turning on sepia you reproduce a bit of the magic behind the Kindle's excellent reading display. I find that reading black on white, especially on backlit displays like the iPad's can cause high contrast and therefore eye strain. Sepia alleviates that issue for the most part.
3. Experiment With Different Fonts
iBooks comes with a few different fonts for a reason - some are easier to read to different people than others! I used the default Palatino for quite a while but have since switched to Cochin which I think is a big improvement. This is mostly a matter of personal preference, so I'd suggest loading up a dense page of text to test the different fonts with.
4. Increase the Font Size
I have terrible vision and have to wear glasses or contacts if I want to be not blind, so I don't feel bad about bumping up the text size if I need to. In conjunction with step #3, the different fonts offered in iBooks are different sizes by default, so again you may have to experiment here. Don't dismiss a font because it's hard to read at its default size, instead try scaling it up or down for the perfect fit!
5. Hide the Controls
When I first started using iBooks I loved all of the information it gave me. I could see how many pages were left in the current chapter, roughly how much of the book in total I had read, and I even had quick ways to skip back to the table of contents or to return to my library from which I could choose a new book to read. However after a while I realized that a lot of that information was simply distracting. At any time while reading with iBooks you can tap the screen to hide the controls - try it! You may find, like I did, that you're able to focus on the text a little easier without them there. Plus if you ever need to bookmark a page or find out where you are in the chapter you can tap the screen again and all of the controls return.
My Plea to Apple
Why can I not gift books from the iBookstore? Right now you can gift apps but no dice when it comes to books. Help me help you, Apple. The only time I can guarantee that you won't receive my money is when it's impossible for me to give it to you. I'm sure they'll have that fixed in a future update.
* - I like to lie sometimes.
** - Not really trademarked. This beauty of a tagline is my gift to you, the dear reader. Now go forth and make millions from the sweat of my brow.
My 5 Reasons for Switching Back to the Verizon iPhone
Jan 12th
If you haven't heard that the iPhone is coming to Verizon by now you must be living under a rock. I had been an iPhone user for about a year when I decided to switch away from AT&T and pick up a Droid X so I could have consistent cell service and give android a try. Don't get me wrong, I think the Droid X is an incredible phone, but here are the 5 reasons why I plan on switching back to the iPhone this year.
The App Experience
I simply miss a lot of the iPhone apps and games I used to use. Apps like , and yes, even the app come to mind most readily. I know that in most cases if there's an iPhone app there is an app on the Android marketplace that has the same functionality, but even in those cases I typically prefer the look and feel of iOS apps. Additionally, at least in my experience, some apps on the android marketplace aren't maintained as well as their iOS counterparts. I have to pick on the official Geocaching.com app in particular. On iOS it runs flawlessly and is regularly updated, but on the android side of things there are bugs have have gone unfixed for some time. I also like the app discovery experience on iOS. I do wish Apple would adopt the trial model for apps, with which you can be refunded for an app that you don't like. That's a huge plus for google and android, though I was bummed when they significantly reduced the length of the trial period.
Syncing With iTunes
Since I bought my Droid X I've used to sync content to my phone with varying degrees of success. On my iMac, DoubleTwist K.O.'s my computer everytime I sync and on my Macbook Pro it's dog slow. It's unfortunate because I really like the that was recently released for DoubleTwist which lets you copy media to your phone wirelessly, but again the process was slow enough that I would usually have to plug my phone in or the battery would die anyways, and it usually slowed the rest of my network traffic down considerably as well. Syncing my old iPhone 3GS was always a quick and simple process even though I wish Apple would implement wireless syncing in the future.
Form Factor
I believe it was Kevin Rose that said it best, the Droid X is the Ultimate Warrior of android phones and that can be a good or a bad thing depending on the situation. I love the phone's display for watching video, browsing the web and the added real estate makes the virtual keyboard a dream to type on. With that said the phone is big boy. I'm not afraid to admit that I have hands that are on the small side, so it can be awkward to handle at times. Then there's the issue of phone bulge...this sucker takes up a lot of pocket space. I'm ready to have a small phone again, one that I can slip into my pocket without a second thought, and then when I need a larger display I'll turn to a tablet-style device. The Droid X splits the difference between mobile phone and tablet which is great in a lot of instances, but you know what they say about a jack of all trades.
Apple's Attention to Detail in iOS
There are some small things that I miss about iOS. They aren't deal-breakers in-and-of-themselves, but when you add up all of the user experience niceties I think iOS is a little more enticing than the android OS (and to be fair it should be, iOS has been around longer and has had more time to mature). One thing I notice regularly is that whenever I reboot my Droid X it takes probably 30 seconds for the phone to become fully functional. A lot of that time is spent loading Motorola's special blend of android goodness and the few widgets I've added to the phone, but for a little while my phone is quite slow when it's first starting up. On the other hand, when you start up an iOS device it's instantly responsive.
Additionally I prefer the pinch and zoom in iOS. The best comparison I can think of when it comes to comparing my Droid X's zoom with my old iPhone or iPod Touch's pinch and zoom would be to call the droid a flipbook while the iOS device is a fluid animation. That may be hyperbole, but it gives you the idea. Also, when you double-tap to focus on a section of content with the Droid X web browser it does a weird re-arrangement of the page layout to conform to the zoomed view, where-as in mobile Safari it simply zooms into that particular section. It's hard to quantify some of the UI disparities and they're all pretty nit-picky, but not so much so that I don't notice them.
More Intrguing Development Platform (to me)
This will be a quick one, I promise. I've dabbled enough in iPhone application development enough to be dangerous with Objective-C and the iOS SDK, so from a time-investment standpoint alone I'm more committed to developing for iOS (and therefore, the iPhone). This is not at all to say that developing for android is bad in any way, and in fact I'd like to explore android development more in the future, but for right now I prefer Xcode and iOS. You might be wondering what, if anything, owning an iPhone has to do with developing for the device - it's not like you need to own one to develop for it - but it's easier to stay in touch with the new functionality unleashed by new versions of the SDK if it's something you use everyday.
No Disrespect!
So that's it. My concern having written this post is that I'll be perceived as some sort of android or Droid X hater when that's not at all the case. I've been using and enjoying both for about 6 months now and I think the future of the android OS specifically is very bright. Not only that, there are certainly aspects of the Droid X that I'll miss down the road (I'm already cringing at the thought of returning to the iPhone's measly google maps application for instance). It's not you, android, it's me. Also I should mention that I don't plan on switching straight to the iPhone 4, instead I'll wait for whatever the iPhone 5 equivalent will be (presumably to be announced sometime this Spring). I'm not sure if AT&T will have a limited exclusivity deal on the next iPhone, so it could be quite a while before I make the switch. Maybe at that point I'll make a follow-up post to address the things that I miss about my dear old Droid X.
Thoughts About Apple’s Mac App Store
Jan 8th
Although CES is in full swing, one of the biggest stories in the tech industry this week was the launch of Apple's desktop mac app store. Similar to the app store already available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, the mac app store promises to simplify the process of finding and installing new software for mac users. This idea has been met with all sorts of resistance from folks terrified of developers being forced into another one of Apple's "walled gardens" as a result of the tech juggernaut imposing the same content restrictions and profit sharing model associated with their mobile app initiatives. So then, was it worth it, or is this the end of software development as we know it?
The User Experience
From a user experience perspective I think that the mac app store makes perfect sense and executes its purpose wonderfully. Essentially the mac app store is just like the app store experience on the iPad, which isn't a bad thing. From the home page you get access to some of the featured apps, New and Noteworthy apps, the hottest apps and of course Staff Favorites. As a means of app discovery, particularly for normal users that don't really seek out new applications very often, the mac app store is a boon. Within minutes I had already installed my first application (the official Twitter app [], which is awesome and free by the way) and had already clued into many others that I'm looking forward to purchasing in the near future.
Impact on Developers
Those are some of the reasons that I think developers shouldn't have any fear about the mac app store. Since it does such a great job of promoting apps that lots of folks wouldn't ever be exposed to in the first place, the chances of your app's sales increasing are pretty good. There are some geekier users of the app store such as myself, and even I've come across applications I hadn't heard of before. The app store also introduces a more competitive pricing model, and we'll probably see a "race to the bottom" similar to what we saw with the iPhone and iPad stores, but this means that ultimately more units will be sold. It may not be the case that you'll make up the losses in bulk, but if your app offers value you can always stick to a higher price point.
Do I think that the mac app store represents some massive shift in software development for the mac? No. You have to remember that although Apple takes a cut this is also an incredibly compelling promotional avenue, the apps are hosted for free and all of the transactions are taken care of by Apple which takes significant financial burden off of the developers. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing more 1 or 2-man development teams start cropping up that focus on creating beautiful mac software just as we've seen with iOS. Plus unlike with the iOS stores you can still host your own application independently and users will still be able to download and use it. All I know is that if I developed mac software I'd be racing to get my application onto the app store, even if that meant I took a 50% cut from its original retail price.
Other Thoughts
One interesting thing that I noticed when browsing the app store is that some traditionally mobile-focused applications were cropping up, such as Mashable's news app [. I've never really even supported singular news apps on my iPad because jumping back and forth between apps to get news seemed like a chore, and I support it even less on the desktop considering there are so many great RSS news readers available. This might be a question I need to posit to you guys - would you run an app that was a port of a mobile application on your desktop? I'm not sure if I'm in love with the idea so far.
The 2nd Generation Apple TV Post
Jan 4th
Christmas gifts at were all about TV boxes in 2010. My brother received a Logitech Revue from my family, which is powered by Google TV, and I received an Apple TV which is powered by iOS. It kind of makes sense in a way, if there's an Apple "fanboy" at the company that'd certainly be me, and Donny loves Google. That said, this isn't going to be a post comparing the two devices. Instead, I'm going to discuss some of the pros and cons of the Apple TV in case you're considering picking one up.
Form Factor
Apple certainly knows how to make beautiful, small products. The Apple TV is no exception, and the 2nd generation model is freaking tiny. It's a small black box that's about a quarter of the size of the original Apple TV, about a 20th the size of my Xbox 360 and it kind of just fades into my entertainment center. Some folks were sad to see the aluminum enclosure go but I think the average person will be happy that the box really doesn't stick out like sore thumb. It's easy to integrate into your existing setup. As far as ports go, you have:
Power- HDMI
- Micro-USB
- Optical Audio
- Ethernet (also works with wifi)
Accessories
There really isn't much to be said here. With the Apple TV you get the small aluminum remote pictured above, some manuals, apple stickers (of course) and a power cable. That's it. The power cord doesn't have a big brick with it because that's been built into the unit itself, and so all you really have to do is plug in a couple of cables and you're set to go. One obvious missing accessory is an HDMI cable. It's kind of annoying that they didn't just include one (you have to supply your own), but I knew that in advance. It's very un-Apple like to have a product that a buyer might not be able to use right out of the box for whatever reason, so I'm kind of surprised they didn't just include the cable.
User Experience & Interface
From an interface perspective the Apple TV is all Apple. It's clean, simple to navigate and very easy to use. The first thing you're presented with are a slew of movie and TV covers that are selectable if something looks interesting. Below that are just 5 main menus:
- Movies
- TV Shows
- Internet
- Computers
- Settings
And that's it. You can drill down into each menu depending on what you're looking for. Movies and TV Shows are fairly obvious, Internet gives you access to Netflix, Youtube, podcasts, your Mobile Me account if you have one, Flickr pictures and also streaming internet radio. From the Computers menu you can gain access to the music and movies contained on any of your computers that have home sharing enabled, and finally the Settings menu is exactly what it sounds like.
Since I received the Apple TV I've watched a couple of movies using the iTunes streaming service, and I have to say my experience has been middling. The first movie I watched was Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and as I was watching it had to stop to buffer multiple times. The quality was exceptional, it's just that a 2 hour movie turned into a 3 hour movie because a couple of times I had to step away for a while to let it buffer. I'm using wifi so the performance might be better with an ethernet connection and that was also during the holiday so it might just have been a case of the servers being overloaded. I later watched Inception - again the quality was amazing. This time I let the movie buffer for a while before watching it and I didn't run into any hiccups.
I have yet to watch a TV show with it because, to be honest, the streaming selection isn't great. To compare I went to the iTunes Store on my computer and was able to find a lot of what I was looking for, but those shows are for physical downloads. Hopefully Apple will step the content up moving forward.
Netflix works great on the Apple TV and the interface melds itself right into the rest of the unit. I've watched a few episodes of Arrested Development and some movies and the quality is great plus there are no buffering hiccups. Same thing for YouTube videos, home sharing and the streaming radio - all work exceptionally well.
Air Share and iPad Integration
My absolute favorite part of using the Apple TV is how well it integrates with my iPad and other computers. With Air Share you can instantly start streaming video playing on one of your networked computers or iOS devices on your television. Say, for example, I'm watching a digital copy of a blu-ray on my iPad. All I have to do is tap a little button like the one to the left and it instantly starts playing on my TV. It's pretty incredible. The most impressive part is that there's almost zero buffering involved.
But that's not all! Apple also has a really handy free application on the App Store called Remote. With it you can completely control your Apple TV's playback, including play/pause, scrubbing foreward and backward in the movie...even information like movie chapters gets pulled in automatically. The best part is using the iPad's on-screen keyboard to input text rather than the remote that comes with the unit which can take forever. Not to mention interacting with your TV by swiping your fingers back and forth on the iPad is straight up cool.
Conclusion
For only $99 the 2nd Generation Apple TV is a powerful little box. In some ways it might seem like a box that just lets you pay Apple more money, and if you don't have content on your computers, aren't a Netflix user or heavy into YouTube it probably will be exactly that. Since Christmas I think I've spent $10 on movie rentals but otherwise I'm enjoying mostly free content. I'm not sure how well it'd work with PC computers though, so if you're not an Apple computer user you might want to take that into account before pulling the trigger.
Thoughts About Apple’s Mac App Store
Oct 29th
Last Wednesday Apple held a conference in which they unveiled and previewed a lot of new software and even some hardware, but the one announcement that caught my eye above all was the unveiling of the Mac App Store which is due to launch with OS X Lion. If you have followed any of the criticism against the implementation of the app store on iOS devices it's that the platform is closed and heavily regulated. Some say it's for the best given the overall quality of iOS apps, others feel that it's harming the potential of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Now port all of those issues to the Mac, and you have the argument against the Mac App Store.
I'm somewhat split on this announcement. On the one hand I think the idea of having one place I can visit to easily download and install applications is excellent. Additionally, I love the idea of having all of my application purchases logged for me, so I don't have to worry about serial keys and registration information. However a lot of folks are concerned that, if the Mac app store is successful it will do away with external application discovery and installation. A couple years from now, if people truly embrace the Mac app store, will Apple completely dominate all of the software purchases on their platform? How will this affect developers? After all, Apple will also be getting a 30% cut of all sales, just like with the iOS app store.
Personally, I think that it will be Apple's stringent requirements for having applications placed in their store that will keep non-app store purchases alive. They've already released some of the guidelines for why an application would be denied access to the app store, some of which include (does this sound familiar?) that the application duplicates or mimics the features already included by Apple-developed software. So, for instance, if you develop a mail application that is just like Mail.app it will be denied. The question then, is what does this mean for applications like Mozilla's Thunderbird? Is a music player going to be denied access because it infringes on the features already included in iTunes? Truthfully, as bad as it sounds, I think it probably would be...but that's good news! That means that Apple users will still have plenty of opportunities to visit third party software developers's websites to buy and install software not verified by Apple that suits their needs.
I also think this will be good for developers - after all, how many normal computer users seek out software online? Not very many...but the app store has been hugely successful for average consumers on the iPhone and iPad. This means that it opens up the application discovery side of computer use to the average Joe user, and as a result a developer will have access to a larger audience. Sure, they might not get the full 100% of the purchase but if it wasn't a purchase they would have had without the backing of Apple, that's still a big benefit.
Finally, I heard Alex Lindsay make the argument that this could possibly reduce the cost of Apple computers and software in the future. If Apple is getting a cut of software developed by folks they don't actually employ, it would make sense that they could use those extra funds to supplement what they're charging for hardware and software. As you can tell, I sort of support the idea of a Mac app store and I think most developers will as well.
