Geek Swagger.
Posts tagged Apple
And the winner is…my next laptop:
Jun 8th
Apple's new Macbook Pro. Â Just announced a few minutes ago, it has all of the specs I was looking at from the HP HDX, the 7 hour battery only found in the Macbook Pro 17" before, 4 gigs of DDR3 ram, etc. Â The chart (from Engadget) is below. Â Only $1699, $300 less than previous Macbook Pros and it'll probably be bumped down to $1599 with a student discount. Â I'm very happy that I held out on buying anything until WWDC.
Now I'm just waiting for iPhone news.
iPhone OS 3.0 for Consumers
Mar 19th
I'm sure you all saw this one coming. Â Here's my run-through of what Apple announced at their iPhone OS 3.0 event earlier in the week. Â Since most of what intrigued me in the keynote was related to their "features for consumers" I'm going to dedicate this post to those. Â Some of the SDK additions for developers are interesting but that relies quite a bit on the actual developers putting them into good use. Â So, without further ado:
Cut, Copy and Paste
Shocker of all shockers, Apple finally got their act together and found some way to accomplish the impossible task of integrating cut, copy and paste into the iPhone. Â This has been a long time coming, and I'm glad it's finally here. Â With the new cut, copy and paste feature you'll be able to, surprise, copy and paste text not just inside of one application, but across all applications on the iPhone.
Landscape Mode
Another obvious and necessary upgrade, landscape mode lets you run all of the standard Apple iPhone applications in landscape.  Most importantly, this means that you'll be able to get the larger-format widescreen keyboard that was up until now exclusive to Safari in all of your Apple iPhone applications.  Note that I say Apple iPhone applications because, as far as I know, this will only count for their traditional suite of pre-installed apps (Mail, Notes, Contacts, etc.).  This update should help some of the folks out there with bigger fingers to type a bit more easily, especially in Mail.
MMS
Again, it seems as though with iPhone OS 3.0 Apple is just trying systematically tick off items on a fictional checklist titled "Cell Phone Necessities." Â With MMS you'll finally be able to send and receive multimedia messages on the iPhone including pictures, sound files, and contact cards. Â To me personally this isn't a feature I've been waiting for since you can already do most of those things in email, but I know that a lot of consumers have been deterred from purchasing an iPhone because of its lack of support for MMS.
Voice Memos
Have you ever seen one of those commercials with an older lady using a small voice recorder to remember where she parked, or what to pick up at the grocery store? Â That's basically what voice memos are. Â Using voice memos you can now use your iPhone to record short messages for later playback so you too can overcome your forgetfulness. Â I think this is a feature that seems kind of hokey, but some may like it.
CalDAV and Calendar Subscriptions (.ics)
Getting calendars to sync properly on your touch device has always been a tall order. Â Sure it can be done, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops if you're not using exchange. Â Now that the iPhone calendar app supports CalDAV hopefully keeping my Google Calendar synced won't be as much of an issue. Â I'm pretty excited for this feature, as I'd love to have my calendar events synced perfectly between calendar.google.com, iCal on the desktop and my mobile device. Â Also being able to subscribe to calendars will be a nice addition.
Search and Spotlight
Finally we come to search.  Search has been integrated into all of the standard Apple iPhone apps so you can now quickly and easily search through your inbox, contacts, calendar of events and so on.  Apple has also integrated a new homescreen, Spotlight, which lets you search the entire phone at once.  Say for instance I typed in "Ron" with Spotlight.  Not only would the Spotlight results show the emails I've received from my friend Ron, but also the songs on my iPod by the artist Ronnie Drew and a calendar event I set to have lunch at "Ron's Cafe."  Okay that last one was a bit of a stretch but check out the image below to get a better idea of how it works.
Conclusion
So that's it. Â Like I said there were no bombshells really, and most of the event was devoted to checking off some features that Apple has been inundated with requests for since the iPhone launched. Â Some of the developer SDK additions seem promising but I can't really comment on those until I get a chance to play with the apps that utilize them. Â It was a pretty straight-forward and almost mundane event, but that leaves a lot left for WWDC in June.
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 Event
Mar 15th
So this Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day, Apple is going to have an event to demo the newest revision of the iPhone's operating system. Â Presumably this will just be a technical event to show new features to developers, and then at WWDC they'll actually go live with OS 3.0. Â At any rate I don't feel like doing a speculation post, rather I'm going to say what I hope will happen. Â It probably won't, but here's what I hope goes down.
I desperately need a new phone. Â My current phone, a Samsung u740, is about 2 years old and is starting to give me some trouble. Â Worst of all? Â The battery lasts about 30 minutes these days. Â I've spoken multiple times about getting the next generation iPhone when it comes out, but what I'm most concerned about is that the next edition of the iPhone will be unveiled at WWDC in June but it won't actually be released until later in the year. Â That would kill me.
So what I'm hoping will happen is that Apple will actually unveil the hardware at this event on Tuesday, and then at WWDC the phone will be available for purchase. Â Even putting it off for that long will be kind of a stretch for me, but I'm willing to wait at least that long. Â Anyways, what I'm banking on is that there will be significant enough changes to the iPhone's hardware or features that they'll have to demo it now so that developers will be able to hit the ground running when the phone comes out in June. Â Will this happen? Â Probably not, but it would be nice.
Either way this Tuesday should be pretty exciting. Â It goes without saying that one of the iPhone's biggest competitors is on its way to the market (Palm Pre), and it would be a classic move by Apple to up the ante completely just before the competition catches up with a comparable device. Â Remember when Microsoft's Zune came out? Â Everyone was shocked that there was finally some solid competition in the MP3 player space, and then a few months later Apple debuts the iPhone and the game completely changes. Â Maybe the next version of the iPhone and its software will have a similar affect on the smartphone market.
Laptop shopping
Mar 5th
It's become painfully obviously lately that I need a new laptop. The ol' black macbook (with a Core Duo, not even Core 2) isn't cutting it anymore. I'd also like something with a 15"+ screen. So, check out the Macbook Pro, right? Not so much. They're expensive!
I've done some looking around lately and my two most viable options are the Sony Vaio FW and the Dell Studio XPS 16. The Dell has better components (DDR3 RAM, RGBLED display) but costs a few hundred more than the Vaio. Despite all of that the lowest end Macbook Pro costs several hundred more than either of them. The biggest problem is that I like the looks of the Pro more than any laptop on the market, but that really isn't worth the extra $500 considering I'd be sacrificing a faster CPU and bigger default HDD.
So honestly I'm kind of stuck. I've found that I mostly use my MacBook for work stuff and therefore I'm running Windows on it 90% of the time, so going with a PC laptop seems the best route. Still, none of them seem perfect. From what I've heard the Vaio has really loud mouse buttons and a less-than-desireable trackpad. The Dell is...well, a Dell. It's got a leather accent on it which treads the thin line between cheesy and classy. It's also covered in glossy black finish which would indicate to me that it's a magnet for fingerprints, even moreso than my black matte macbook.
What's a geek to do! Any suggestions?
Apple updates!
Mar 4th
Yesterday Apple updated a bunch of products. Most were just hardware updates (CPU speed bumps, graphics card updates, more RAM etc.) and there are so many to mention that I'll just have to refer you to or if you want to see the nitty-gritty details. Just know that if you were in the market for an iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini now's probably the time to take the plunge. I'm just happy because the iMac wasn't significantly updated, no aesthetic redesign or anything, so I'm still pleased with my 24" 3.06ghz iMac from last July.
What I did find interesting was a lesser-noted addition to Apple's product line: the new wired wireless keyboard. It's basically a wired version of of their wireless keyboard which means that it's shrunken down and has no number pad. To me this is pretty odd. The justification of forgoing a number pad on my wireless keyboard was that it was exactly that: wireless. Who's going to buy the same keyboard but now it has a wire and no numpad? Dunno, like I said, it just seems goofy to me.
What most excites me about these updates is what wasn't updated. This smacks of "clearing the road for WWDC" to me. With these updates they can get all of their spec-bumps out of the way and save the flashy stuff for WWDC. After all, announcing a new iMac that looks just like the old iMac but is slightly faster doesn't really excite audiences at a keynote. Instead they can roll out the new version of the iPhone, which I'm hotly anticipating. We might even see something a little more over-the-top like the iTablet everyone's talking about these days. Honestly though, if at WWDC they just spend a whole 2 hours talking about a new rev of the iPhone and how cool all of its new features are, I'll be happy.
If you think about it, the iPhone is the perfect product for WWDC. At a developers conference you should talk about what developers are developing for, right? Increasingly that's the iPhone. How many millions of applications have been downloaded from the App Store? Sure, standard desktop applications are still important but iPhone apps are the new hotness right now.
Is this the new Mac Mini? (video)
Feb 20th
I have to say, I think not. If Apple is going to ever refresh the Mini, I'd say they at least would give it the aluminum and black color scheme. It looks a little homemade, doesn't it? Seems a bit bigger than I'd expect it to be as well. With the way technology has progressed since the Mac Mini originally came out, you'd think they'd be able to get it about the size of a Time Capsule or Apple TV.
Sometimes I think that Apple themselves secretly release these as product mockups in order to judge what people like. It would be a brilliant strategy...put out some fake products, then when people say "Wow that looks terrible!" or "Wow that's awesome, except it'd be cool if they added ________ ," they can adjust accordingly. I guess I'm an eternal conspiracy theorist when it comes to Apple. =P
Here's the video (orignally found on MacRumors):
Apple cracks down on jailbreaking
Feb 15th
The techosphere is all a-flutter today because of the news that Apple is finally cracking down on the act of jailbreaking an iPhone or iPod Touch. They've officially said that they regard it as illegal. Some people think this is becacuse of the recent applications like Crackulous which let you pirate iPhone apps from the app store. These apps require a jailbroken app, and if Apple doesn't start taking this seriously they could be sued by the people who put apps on the iTunes Store. That makes sense to me.
Personally I have no problem with this becacuse I haven't jailbroken my iPod Touch. My plans were to jailbreak it when I got an iPhone just to see what all of the hype is about, but I guess those plans have flown. It's not something I ever really felt inclined to do. I know there's a solid line-up of apps made specifically for jailbroken touch devices, but I'm more than happy to stick with what I find on the App Store. I will admit that being able to customize my device more than I'm currently able to would be nice, but I have a feeling that Apple might integrate that functionality down the road. If you're interested in this you can go ahead and read the EFF article here:
Photos of the next-generation iPhone?
Feb 12th
Just a quick post, I thought this was interesting.
I'd like to see a switch to matte in the design of the phone. Otherwise there isn't much info to be gleaned from these shots, whether real or fake.
