October 26th, 2008
This semester we’ve been assigned a lot of coursework that needs to be worked on in teams, with each team usually consisting of around 3-6 people. To help us share files, work on document together and generally stay in sync, we’ve started using a few different online services…
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October 16th, 2008
With the introduction of the new aluminum Macbooks, Apple has finally dropped their long-standing policy of offering a “crippled” entry-level Notebooks. For years now the iBooks and Macbooks have been limited in one way or another in order to distinguish them from their “Pro” cousins.
Whether G3 vs. G4, Combodrive vs. Superdrive, Mirroring vs. Screen Spanning, Plastic vs. Aluminum or Integrated Graphics vs. Dedicated Graphics, Apple’s low-end offerings over the years have always included some kind of “gotcha” to keep them from cannibalizing Powerbook / Macbook Pro sales.
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October 12th, 2008
(This isn’t really a new story, but I didn’t see it get much coverage despite arguably being one of the more interesting iPhone app rejection stories - so I’m bringing it up now a week or two later)
“Freedomtime” is basically a countdown app that lets users track George W. Bush’s last days in office. It’s obviously designed to poke fun at the current US administration, but isn’t really overly offensive in my opinion.
The application was rejected by Apple, so the developer wrote Steve an email. Steve responded personally (in keeping with the semi-new communication strategy Apple has been making use of) with the following statement:
Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?
Steve
It’s an interesting response for several reasons. First off he voluntarily reveals his personal political leanings. Whilst it’s hardly a secret that Jobs is a supporter of the democrats (Al Gore is on Apple’s board and public records of political donations are easy to find) you don’t often hear CEO’s admit it in public for PR reasons.
In fact, Jobs actually spells out those reasons: Personal political preferences are not often brought up out of fear of alienating customers. But “personal” is the key word here - if Steve is deciding not to let his own political leanings sway him into approving the app for political reasons, shouldn’t it follow that an app also shouldn’t be rejected for purely political reasons?
By Apple’s standards, it would seem this app is objectionable, whilst the Barack Obama campaign app isn’t. I’d agree with that assessment as I’d wager most people would. But where do you draw the line? Does this mean that political apps are okay, as long as they don’t poke fun? Who makes the distinction between objectionable and non-objectionable political content?
Removing Apps for business considerations (Netshare, Podcaster) is one thing, but I think Apple is really skating on thin ice by rejecting apps solely by their content - political or otherwise.
(Screenshot and quote from the developers blog)
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October 1st, 2008
So after a few months of controversy, Apple has finally dropped the NDA for iPhone software that has been released. This effectively allows developers to free discuss any matters regarding the iPhone software available to the public, but of course prevents them discussing unreleased or upcoming code.
Apple also gives a reason for keeping the NDA in place for so long: They claim the NDA gave them an additional layer of protection for the innovations found within the iPhone’s software and that they’ve now dropped it in favour of promoting the platform amongst developers.
I see this as Apple’s reaction to all the recent flak they’ve been getting over the “closed” nature of the iPhone in general… perhaps new AppStore submission guidelines are on the way as well?
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October 1st, 2008
Apple is notorious for being the most tight-lipped company in the tech industry, only reluctantly half-heartedly acknowledging the current trend of company blogs, ongoing open dialog with customers and other web 2.0 phenomena.
However, in recent years Apple has been more chatty than ever before: Steve Jobs has written a whopping total of 2 blog posts, and even allowed 3 entire posts about the Mobile Me launch before silencing poor David G.
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September 30th, 2008
So now that I’m back in University, I’ve had a chance to use the iPhone’s Cisco VPN client more regularly on a daily basis.
So far it’s worked great: The VPN connection is established within a few seconds and all applications are able to access services through the VPN tunnel immediately.
Browsing speed over wifi doesn’t seem to be impacted at all, as I’d already mentioned in my first look.
My only gripe? An on/off switch for your default VPN connection that’s accessible from the top Settings menu (similar to the current “Airplane Mode” toggle) would be useful for users who frequently need to access the VPN client.
Posted in Opinions, iPhone | Comments »
September 21st, 2008
No college student can get by nowadays without a few productivity apps to help them keep track of assignments, files, notes etc. There are a ton of different apps designed to do this sort of thing, but a lot of them are either aimed at business users (and priced accordingly) or don’t just feel to feature-laden and dense to be really practical for quick notes in classes.
So here’s a few productivity apps that students might find are worth checking out. Affordable, intuitive and ideal for quick notes, references, links and more.
Posted in Mac, Opinions, Reviews | Comments »
September 10th, 2008
So the Jobsnote is over and apart from the leaked iPod nano and rumored iPod touch updates, the biggest news was iTunes 8.
The Genius feature is the only one that is really new, whilst the Grid view is mostly a new take on the old “Albums with cover thumbnail” list. To be honest, whilst it’s visually quite appealing, I don’t find it very practical for actually finding music. iTunes very rarely finds the covers for all the songs in larger libraries (CoverScout anyone?) which will leave most users with a lot of black missing covers.
The same goes for the Genres Grid-view: Whilst Apple includes attractive artwork for the most common genres, others such as Funk, Grunge and Porn Groove (don’t ask) are instead assigned the cover of one of the artists within that Genre, leaving you with an odd mix of album art and genre-designs.
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September 2nd, 2008
Well, Chrome is here and so far I’m pretty impressed. Although currently only available for Windows (you can’t actually download the Windows version if your browser identifies you as a Mac user - I had to select a Windows user agent for the download page to let me download it) it’s quite snappy, even running under Parallels.
I had no trouble loading any pages and even complex pages such as my netvibes.com customized homepage (which is slow to load on other browsers) seemed to load very quickly (and this was in a virtual machine!).
Posted in Opinions, The web, UI Design | 1 Comment »
September 1st, 2008
Whilst there’s not much to go on yet, I believe Google has hit the nail on the head with their goals for their new browser. Browsing the web with both Firefox and Safari is usually pretty enjoyable, until you hit the inevitable few seconds of slowdown:
The dreaded beachball of slowness starts cropping up, new tabs take a while to load and memory usage seems to go through the roof.
By setting themselves the target of speed, reliability and efficiency first, Google is addressing all the frustrations typical of other browsers. By making the browser multi-process based, they also have a fresh technological approach that might mark an interesting new direction for browser design.
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August 13th, 2008
Last week whilst on vacation (without access to a computer), I really came to appreciate having my iPhone on me. Even on a slow E-Plus GPRS connection, it proved to be pretty invaluable (and yes, I know I’m pointing out the obvious and gushing).
- Checking the web for updates: Someone on the trip was expecting important exam results and I was able to check the appropriate websites and download several large PDF files to check the results.
- Budgeting: Pennies (AppStore link) is a great $2.99 app that lets you keep track of your expenditure. It uses a “fuel gauge” metaphor to indicate how much of your budget you’ve already spent and lets you add new expenses with a single tap.
- Combine multiple tools: I used the iPhone to tune a guitar someone brought, check the weather and route before we set of for a hike, send email snapshots to friends at home and provide music for everyone.
It’s not until you’re really without access to a computer that you realize just how powerful a replacement the iPhone is. Sure, it’s not quite as comfortable or as fast, but it’s still an incredibly useful - as well as fun - device to take on a trip.
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July 22nd, 2008
OpenID seems like a nice idea to simplify logins and profiles on the web. The promise: Create an account with one OpenID-enabled service such as Yahoo, Wordpress or others and then you’ll be able to sign in to other OpenID-enabled services.
The reality? OpenID still has some way to go before really becoming seamless enough for the average user to use it. Most of the issues lie with the sites implementing OpenID, but from what I can see they’re pretty systemic Here’s my OpenID experience:
So I decided to sign up to Skribit. They offer OpenID support, so I decided to try that, rather than create a traditional account. First of all you’re asked for your OpenID url. If you don’t know what that is, tough luck. There’s no link with more information on what your url could look like or how you can get one.
Frustrated, I figure I’ll go to OpenID.org to find out more. OpenID.org looks like a cross between a phishing site and 1996:
Posted in Opinions, The web, UI Design | 2 Comments »
July 21st, 2008
So besides the more obvious new features, Apple has also added a fair bit of spit & polish in nooks and crannies you might not notice them. Here’s two changes and one “hack” I’ve found so far:
1. Banish Marker Felt from Notes with Chinese
Take care of Marker Felt Olympic style! It seems as though the iPhone automatically substitutes unsupported fonts when typing languages with glyphs. Simply add Chinese as an additional keyboard layout and type a single character to switch the current note’s font to Helvetica (at least I think it’s Helvetica!).
The downside? This trick needs to be done for every new note you create.
2. Improved auto-correction
The auto-correction feature now seems to work a bit better and first letter substitutions in particular seem a lot smoother: When only a single letter of a word is corrected, that change is made seamlessly, without the “drop-in” animation you get with more extensive corrections. It’s a minor detail, but it does make typing feel a lot easier.
3. Add / Edit contacts whilst on a call
You may be wondering why Apple has added a “dedicated” Contacts app, especially it offers the exact same functionality as the contacts list within the phone application. Well now you can easily lookup, add or edit contact information whilst on a call!
Posted in Hints, Opinions, iPhone | Comments »
July 16th, 2008
And this is why forcing users to enter credit card details to test a free trial of your somewhat troubled online service is a bad idea - here’s one users experience after signing up for a trial:
“I have just checked my card account online and apple have put a £121 pending transaction on the card! that’s not even 1 years subscription.”
Link to the relevant Apple Support Discussion thread.
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July 15th, 2008
So it looks that whilst it took them a while to get around to it (hey - releasing highly anticipated CE devices can keep you occupied!) Apple is now finally suing Pystar.
Some have been expecting this move for a while. Whilst Apple doens’t seem to be coming down to harshly on the homebrew Hackintosh community, people selling them commercially is obviously something that hurts Apple’s business and this suit was to be expected.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the other company planning to offer a commercial hackintosh product, EFix (who have announced a USB dongle solution) is reconsidering their launch on hearing today’s news.
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