Geek Swagger.
Apple
11″ Macbook Air – Feeding my shiny Apple device addiction
Oct 28th
Let me first say that I haven't yet purchased one of the MacBook Air laptops that apple announced at their "Back to the Mac" event last week. Next, let me say that I really want to, and have visited Apple.com multiple times to run through various configurations of the 11" model. My lust for all things shiny was reaffirmed this afternoon when I was listening to this week's edition of Macbreak Weekly. They discussed the new, incredibly tiny machine at length and the overwhelming feedback was very positive.
With a $999 intro price it's not too much more expensive that my iPad, and so that seems to be the comparison I'm making most frequently...if I were to ditch my iPad for the MacBook air would I miss it? Even if I didn't, am I just an Apple fanboy that will want a new iPad when it is revved (presumably next year)? A lot of self-reflection has gone into this decision.
The biggest reasoning I keep coming back to is the ipad's lack of a hardware keyboard. I'm writing this post on my iPad while watching TV and, although the typing process is smooth, I could probably blast through this post in half the time with a MacBook keyboard. Not to mention the revisiting process I go through to proofreader and fix mistakes in my typing would go much faster...the iOS predictive keyboard is usually accurate but I'm still better with a normal "clickety-clack" keyboard.
However, my biggest argument that supports the iPad would be the tablet form factor. As thin and light as the Macbook Air is, I couldn't ever see myself taking it to bed with me (sorry, didn't mean to get sexy on you there). That is to say, the iPad is the perfect device to use when you're lounging on the couch to read a book, check news, and access all of your media. A laptop, on the other hand, is always a bit more awkward and unwieldy.
I have a feeling that if I were to have a MacBook Air, one of the two devices would probably go unused a majority of the time...so the question is, which one? Honestly, if only because I already have a nice Macbook Pro, I think the neglected device would be the 11" Air. Truth be told I very rarely use my iPad, or any small mobile device, to do a lot of text entry. In fact, in most cases such a device's primary purpose involves media consumption. For that reason I think I'm going to stick with the iPad and skip the new, tiny and beautiful MacBook Air. Props to apple for reviving the line though...I thought the iPad would eventually eat the MacBook Air's lunch but it's still going strong.
A Week With the iPad
Apr 11th
There has been a lot of discussion in the tech community about whether the iPad is a significant new computing device or simply another digital toy that will run it's course and end up sitting in a closet collecting dust. Although I can't really comment on the device's long-term viability, I can comment on some significant realizations I've come to in the week since the iPad launched.
Believe it or not I'd say that I've used my iPad as much or more that my laptop or desktop for daily computing. Since it's small and light enough to literally take everywhere, I find it's just easier to browse the web, check my email and even do things like IM with the iPad. The display is awesome for all applications so I always have a great viewing experience, and much to my surprise typing with the virtual keyboard is a breeze (I'm using it to write this post in the iPad WordPress app). In fact, when the device is in landscape mode I can basically touch-type, and even if I do make a mistake it gets corrected automatically 9 times out of 10.
Watching movies, reading books and listening to music on the ipad are all great experiences. In fact I'd have to say that the iPad is the ultimate content consumption device on the market. One of the biggest surprises I had while first using it was the quality of the built-in speakers. They're totally listenable and I never felt the need to plug in headphones while listening to music, playing games or watching video.
Another happy surprise was the battery life. When Steve Jobs said you could get 10 hours out of this thing most people expected that would be a best-case scenario and actually expected more like 8. That's not the case though, the iPad lasts a very long time and if you're only using it lightly it could easily last multiple days.
All that being said the iPad isn't perfect. First off I think the pricing for apps has been inflated a little too much. I came from the iPhone app store where I was used to paying 5 dollars at most for applications, but on the iPad 10 or 15 dollars is the norm. I think the higher prices are somewhat a result of apple themselves pricing the iWork apps at $10 each, and I'd even say the iWork apps are worth that, but there are several apps that were mostly ported from the iPhone priced just as high. I'm hoping that the marketplace will somewhat self-regulate over time, but as of right now the pricing is unrealistic.
I also wish the app store in general had an official trial system. As I mentioned on twitter, spending 0.99 cents on a bad iPhone app is one thing, spending $15 for a bad iPad app is another. If I could preview apps, even if just for a matter of hours, my experience with buying apps would be much more pleasant.
Additionally, The iBook store doesn't have nearly as many titles as I wish it did. I've already searched for 3 different titles that weren't available yet. I'm sure this will be remedied in the future, and there are alternatives like the Amazon Kindle app, but it's still slightly annoying.
In the end I think the iPad does signal a change, or as Steve Wozniak put it a reboot of computing devices. Using this thing is fun, easy and it just makes sense for 90% of my daily computing tasks. It's the perfect device for any casual user and would probably serve well as their primary computer, and it's an excellent netbook or even laptop replacement for power users. I am a total geek and I use it for several hours a day everyday, and aside from being able to do development work it meets all of my needs. Plus, as developers get a better handle on creating iPad applications in the future it'll only get better and become even more useful.
MacHeist nanoBundle 2
Apr 8th
So this is a first. I bought the application I’m writing this entry with via MacHeist, specifically their nanoBundle 2 which includes:
- ($40)
- ($20)
- ($27)
- ($40)
- ($25)
- ($35)
- And, assuming the bundle gets to 50,000 purchases, ($79)
All of these applications were bundled for only $20. Truth be told I bought the bundle for RipIt because I had heard about it as a pick, but the fact that I got 5 or 6 extra applications for the same price is pretty sweet. So far I’ve tried out MacJournal (obviously) and RipIt, and both are fantastic programs. Maybe one day I’ll end up reviewing all of the applications, but I have to say this is a great deal. If you’re a mac user and you haven’t heard of MacHeist do yourself a favor and . Not only will you probably find some great software but a portion of the proceeds are donated to charity so it’s a win-win.
Given my recent departure from social media, including blogging, MacJournal has been a great outlet for my rambling. I’m hoping to get a nice collection of “in-the-dark posts†to upload once my break ends, and because they tout blog integration as a feature, I’m assuming that won’t be too difficult.
More to come...
Apple’s iPad – It’s all about the apps.
Jan 30th
I've had some time to digest Apple's announcement of the iPad this Wednesday, and despite being confused and unsure at first I think I've come around on it. Â Is the iPad perfect? Â No. Â Is it a device you need? Â No more than you "need" an Amazon Kindle. Â It's a luxury device that'll fill some use cases for you and probably make your life a little more convenient, but certainly not a necessity.
There has been a lot of commotion about the iPad being "just a big iPod Touch." Â I disagree with that sentiment completely, for a couple of reasons. Â First, it's about the user experience. Â What's the most-obvious difference between the iPod Touch and iPad? Â The display size, of course. Â Because the display for these touch devices doubles as the user input interface, it means developers can do a hell of a lot more with the software they create on the iPad. Â I think it'll be the first device to truly recognize the full potential and yes, I'll admit it, "cool factor" of multitouch. Â Sure I can do some multitouch functions on my iPhone, but usually only to zoom in or zoom out on an object. Â Imagine the possibilities of the iPad's nearly 10" of screen real estate, particularly when you can set it down on the table or in your lap and have two free hands with which to manipulate the on-screen information.
The second major difference is the horsepower. Â My current smartphone is the iPhone 3GS, which has a ARM processor clocked at 600mhz by default and only 256MB of memory. Â The iPad on the other hand, has a 1ghz processor and rumored 1GB of RAM. Â That means that the applications that are being developed for it will have a much wider range of capabilities and a richer user experience. Â While watching Apple's keynote it wasn't until Scott Forstall brought developers up on stage to show their iPad apps, not to mention when Phil Schiller did the iWork demonstration, that I began to truly understand the amazing amount of potential this device has. Â Compare the iPad right now to where the iPhone was when it launched: there are very few native applications and those that do exist were created by Apple. Â The one thing that the iPad has going for it over the iPhone though, is that we already have an SDK for the device before it's even released. Â How long did it take Apple to get the iPhone SDK out there?
I'll be the first to admit that I think the way they've chosen to integrate iPhone apps into the iPad is a little cheesy. Â You can either run them in a native mode, which displays them in a tiny black box in the middle of your 9.5" display, or you can use "pixel-double" to expand them to fit the screen. Â Pixel-double might be good for apps that are predominantly text or image-based, but I have a feeling that there's going to be significant graphical degradation with video playback and games. Â With all that said though, iPhone apps on the iPad are not what users should be excited for. Â Software developed with the iPad in mind will truly make the device sing, and I think it'll be the best media-consumption device we've seen so far.
Plus you can't read ibooks on your iPod Touch, you illiterate brigand!
Pocket BLU
Jan 1st
So I popped Inglourious Basterds into my PS3 the other day, and was delighted to see a quick ad for a new, free iPhone application called Pocket BLU. Â Basically, Pocket BLU will find your blu-ray player on your network over wifi and let you control the movie's playback from your phone. Â As I mentioned my blu-ray player is my PS3, and I hate using the PS3's controller to playback movies, so this is an awesome app for me.
The main UI does everything you'd expect, you can navigate the blu-ray's menu, play/pause, rewind/fast forward and so on. Â There are some other cool features though - for instance a "Now Playing" button that will provide you with information about the movie you're watching. Â Like the movie's soundtrack? Â The app will give you access to the iTunes store so you can purchase it. Â Pretty cool!
When you flip the phone on its side you get some information about the movie's playtime and can even "scrub" through the movie as though it were a song.
The only problem with the app is that it only works with movies that are Pocket BLU-enabled, but I assume that'll be come a standard feature here on in. Â Like I said, it's totally free so if you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user you can grab it at the link below!
Google Voice
Oct 3rd
I was fortunate enough to get invites to both and this week, but for now I’m going to stick with discussing Google Voice. This is mostly because nobody I know has Google Wave yet and, for a product that’s about collaboration with other people, it makes it hard to form an educated opinion about its usefulness.
Google Voice is a new service from Google which lets you link multiple phone numbers (home phone, work phone, mobile, etc.) to one new number of your choosing, as long as it’s available. You can search for numbers via keyword (for example your name), area code or zip code. Once you’ve chosen your new number all you have to do is link your pre-existing numbers to that one and you’ll have access to the host of cool features that Google Voice provides.
The most obvious feature Google Voice provides is call forwarding. Using the site’s settings you can set Google Voice to forward calls and messages to one of your various phones automatically. For example, you could set your work phone to only receive Google Voice calls between 9 and 5 on weekdays, or your home phone to only receive calls on weekends. You can even setup and manage certain groups of contacts and set the default phone for each – for example, if you want to direct work calls to your mobile phone you can do that.
The next feature I like is getting Google into some hot water with carriers – free SMS messaging. From the Google Voice website you can send text messages to any phone, for free. Many people have presumed that this feature alone is why the Google Voice application was denied from Apple’s App Store. You can be sure that AT&T wasn’t too excited about the idea.
One of the best features you get with Google Voice is the purest form of free visual voicemail I’ve ever seen. Voicemails sent to your Google Voice account are automatically transcribed to text and forwarded to the Google Voice website where you have an inbox for all incoming messages. The transcriptions are surprisingly accurate, but you can also playback the message from the website if there are a few missed words. As you would expect, from your Google Voice inbox you can read incoming messages as though you were reading email from your Gmail inbox. You can search for messages, leave notes to yourself and even add stars to important messages so you can come back to them later.
All said I think Google Voice is an excellent service. I can only hope that someone at Apple or AT&T decides to let the application through to the App Store. If not, you can bet that Google will work on a mobile web version of Google Voice like they’ve done with most of their other services, and we’ll get access to it anyways.
Snow Leopard – Impressions after 24 hours
Sep 1st
So I've had 24 hours to use Snow Leopard on my iMac, and I have some thoughts. First, some background.
Though my original intent was to do a fresh install, I decided to go ahead and try an upgrade from Leopard instead. I have all of my data backed up but being that this week has been a busy one I didn't really have the time to restore it (especically because my iPhone is connected to the iMac). So, I went ahead and upgraded. It took about a half hour which is bit longer than expected, but not altogether bad.
On the first boot of Snow Leopard I had two reactions:
- Oooooh, pretty wallpaper
- Okay, what else changed?
Snow Leopard has been getting more negative attention than a lot of people expected because the changes are so minute. Â Sure there's dock expose, the 6-7GB of extra space after install, and scrolling stacks but most changes will go unnoticed. Â For example the entire Finder has been rewritten, but it works 98.8% identically to how it did in previous versions. Â It's a bit faster but other than that there are no noticeable changes.
To be honest, Snow Leopard does feel like sort of a service pack for Leopard. Â In fact, to an average user, the changes might be completely non-existant. Â Things are a bit snappier and most of the animations look a lot better but otherwise there isn't much to say. Â Here are the few features I've noticed and liked so far:
- Improved Text-To Speech - I use the mac's text-to-speech to alert me of the time every half hour. Â The new version is noticeably less robotic and overall sounds much better.
- Animations - When flipping between spaces or opening a stack the animation is much more fluid and cooler-looking
- All New Stacks - Stacks basically work like they should have worked from the beginning. Â You can scroll through stacks, and most importantly you can navigate folders in stacks without having to open up the Finder
- Selectively Snappier - Though I haven't noticed much of a boost in speed in all-around computing I do notice that the Finder, Spaces and Stacks respond much snappier in Snow Leopard
- New Wallpapers
- More HD Space - Freed up about 6GB of space after my upgrade, kind of negligible on a 500GB hard drive but it's better than losing space I suppose
So is Snow Leopard worth it? Â Honestly, maybe not. Â The changes aren't all that impressive to me yet. Â Maybe over the next couple weeks I'll really begin to appreciate the new upgrade but right now it's a slight improvement at best. Â I think this weekend I'm going to go ahead and do a fresh install and if that improves the experience at all I'll make sure to do a follow-up post.
Snow Leopard on Friday
Aug 24th
After a bunch of speculation the release date for Apple's OS X Snow Leopard is confirmed - August 28th, this Friday. That had been the rumor going around and yet again it proved to be true.
There really isn't much else to be said. If you have Leopard on your machine and you're looking to upgrade, you can get your copy of Snow Leopard for $29. Even better, if you've bought a Mac anytime between now and last June, you can get your upgrade copy for just $9.95.
Because I bought my Macbook Pro in June I preordered my copy way back then, so I should have it on Friday. Expect a post about how the update goes.
My Second Geocache
Aug 16th
The iPhone is a wonderful device. Â I can honestly say that without it I probably wouldn't have gotten into geocaching. Â Actually, without the Totally Rad Show's segment on geocaching (embedded below) I probably wouldn't have picked up on it in the first place, but that's a whole different story. Â Using the iPhone I'm able to locate geocaches via GPS and track them down using Google Maps, even using a compass as I get closer and closer to the cache to narrow the search. Â From there I can log my visit, and see any other caches that are around me via a list sorted by distance (another handy reason to have GPS on your phone).
Anyways, I might start logging caches as I find them. Â To be honest I've only found two to date, but whenever I find one from now on I'll post pictures here (again, using the iPhone). Â The first is below. Â Before that though, I want to sing the praises of an application called, surprisingly enough, Geocaching. Â It's the most expensive application I've purchased weighing in at $9.99, but it's been worth it so far. Â The simple fact that it's a cheap entry point to a fun hobby that will pay off in entertainment value alone is enough to garner my recommendation.
However, it's the first app that has truly impressed me with the wide-range of functionality included with it. Â As I mentioned you can search for nearby geocaches and navigate to them via Google Maps using the iPhone's included GPS. Â You can use a compass to point you in the right direction if the map isn't sufficient. Â On top of that it interfaces with Geocaching.com, a website which features a database of geocaches for finders and hiders alike. Â The site has a ton of information (descriptions of caches, hints if you're stuck, and user comments - and that's just the beginning). Â All of this is accessible with the Geocaching application. Â I'll include an iTunes link to it at the bottom.
So, here's my latest (second) find. Â Yes, it was attached to a ceramic dalmatian. Â Yes, it's a dalmatian because it's part of a 101 Dalmatians-themed series of caches. Â Come on people, I'm new to this! =) Â I signed the log included in a tube container on the dog's collar and was on my way (Signed "Dave Kemick 8/16/2009 - TRS" in case you're in the area).
DOOM Resurrection only $2.99!
Aug 15th
Doom Resurrection is a first person shooter from the folks at id Software, makers of the Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and now Rage series of games. Â It takes its cues from Doom 3 in particular, which was best-known for being a graphical revolution when it debuted on the PC back in 2004. Â Resurrection uses assets from that same game but, as you would expect of the iPhone, doesn't look quite as good.
The fact that it's an FPS has been misleading to some, because it's one of the multiple "on-rails" games that have found their way to the iPhone. Â That being said it's a full-featured experience that doesn't borrow levels from its previous PC counterpart, and even though it doesn't look as good as that game in particular, it's one of the most impressive visual showcases on the platform.
Doom Resurrection was previously priced at $9.99, but at $2.99 it's a steal. Â Hurry though, this is a QuakeCon exclusive deal that will end at noon tomorrow (August 16th). Â It's worth noting that id's iPhone version of Wolfenstein 3D is also on sale for only $0.99. Â Links to both can be found below.
