When Nullriver introduced NetShare, the iPhone app that allows you to tethter your laptop to it for internet access, appeared on the App Store, many were surprised. Then, without any explanation, it vanished.
On Friday it returned. Those who were smart downloaded it and were able to put it to use. By Saturday, the app had disappeared. Again. With no explanation at all.
While Apple’s control of the App Store can be viewed as a mostly positive thing, the NetShare debacle highlights what most of us suspected: When Apple holds all the cards, people tend to get steamrolled. In this case, the people are the developers at Nullriver. Most of what I’ve read seems to indicate that NetShare doesn’t vioalte the terms of the App Store in any way. So why ban it? And then why reinstate it for 24 hours, only to ban it again?
What’s going to happen to the users who have bought the app already? How are they going to get updates? Will they get refunds if updates aren’t provided?
Apple’s really been stepping in it lately, and unfortunately, this is just the latest example.
Category: Opinion,iPhone
Adobe blogger John Nack has let it slip that the next version of Adobe Photoshop (CS4 for those wondering) will be 64-bit… but for Windows only. While I’m usually one to cast blame at Adobe’s feet for decisions like these, I have to admit Adobe is doing the best they can with the situation they’ve been dealt.
Last year at WWDC, during the Mac OS X State of the Union, Apple dropped a pretty significant bomb that didn’t get much attention (probably due to the whole NDA thing, I guess). While Leopard would be a 64-bit OS through and through, Carbon would not gain 64-bit memory addressing. This essentially leaves developers with Carbon apps stuck in 32-bit land, with the only other option being migrate to Cocoa. This was counter to Apple’s promise in August of 2006 that Carbon would be 64-bit.
When I heard this news at the session, I immediately thought that apps like Photoshop, Flash, Office were going to suffer, long term. As Nack points out on his blog, this decision really did throw Adobe a curve ball. They were in the middle of developing against the previous Leopard seed from August of 2006, which did feature a work-in-progress 64-bit Carbon. (more…)
Category: Blog Watch,Opinion,Software
Are you kidding me? I don’t know who this Mike Barton guy is, but he clearly must be trolling for hits on his blog.
Hey Mike – first of all, your comparison of the Macbook Air to a ThinkPad notebook you just bought is disingenuous because the ThinkPad you link to at $599 is USED, not NEW as you list it. Besides, refurb Macbooks can be found on the Apple Store for well under $1000 (some as low as $799). And we all know, refurb is much better than used, as you get a full warranty with an Apple refurb.
You’re right about Apple needing a budget laptop though. I mean, the sales of the Macbooks are just abysmal. Apple’s market share is just tanking. What will they ever do?
For the record, the above is sarcasm. Apple’s Macbooks at their $1099 – $1499 price outsell the competition, are extremely profitable, and Apple is kicking ass on the market share front.
In short, you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
Category: Opinion
For Christ’s sake Mark, there are MySQL packages available for OS X, along with DarwinPorts and Fink (since you seem to be so fond of package managers). Nobody who uses Linux should be taking a smug attitude towards Mac OS X when it comes to installation. Sure, MySQL (and hundreds of other useful apps) are available in the apt repositories. But there are many applications that are not.
For example, try to get Parallels running on Linux (last time I checked, it wasn’t in the Ubuntu repository). Not a fun installation. On the Mac? A few clicks and you’re done.
99% of the software available for the Mac is either a 2-3 click installation, or a drag and drop. For those who like to get their hands dirty with command line, there’s source too.
That doesn’t make Mac OS X an “archaic OS”. It makes it flexible.
Category: Opinion
After a weekend with the GM of Leopard, I’m still amazed at how polished it is. Big features like Time Machine and Quick Look are easy to appreciate. But it’s the little things that I’ve come to love about Leopard. Among them:
Send SMS from iChat. Is your friend unavailable via IM? Do you know their cell phone number? Shoot them an SMS from iChat. iChat also makes it really easy to turn on SMS forwarding for your AIM account, so when you are offline, all of your IMs will be redirected to your cell phone. Neat.
Screen Sharing. Sure, VNC and Remote Desktop have long been options. But with Screen Sharing in Leopard, Apple has made it ridiculously easy to share another computers screen. Additionally, it is fast and scales very well to smaller monitors. It even has options that aren’t present in VNC, like the ability to see both screens on a dual screen monitor. Screen Sharing via iChat will become the new way to fix your friends computer from a long distance.
Maps in Address Book. Right click on any address in your address book, select “Map Of” and Safari launches with a Google map of that addresss. Nifty.
The iCal icon now displays the correct date. I repeat – the iCal icon now displays the correct date. Hallelujah!
Variables in Automator. Want to use Automator create zip files with your computers name and the current date? With Variables you can. This, along with “Watch Me Do”, elevates Automator to a serious production tool.
Adjustable grid spacing in the Finder. Wow, it’s like it’s 1999 all over again!
“Arrange By” returns to the contextual menu in the Finder. Again, a feature that was last seen in OS 9 circa 1999.
The ability to disable the Finder warning when changing file extensions.
An easily accessible list of all installed System Updates is now in the Software Update preference pane. Fewer trips to the console is always a good thing.
I could go on and on. Leopard is one heavily polished cat.
Category: Opinion
I’ve owned quite a few iPods (at least five to date). Many people complain about the iPod headphones. I’ve never been overly enthusiastic about them, but they did the job and sounded decent enough. The iPhone headphones are essentially the same as the iPod headphones, with a microphone/clicker on the right side wire, about 5 inches from the earbud. The micrphone/clicker is about half an inch long, and protrudes from the wire.
When wearing the headphones, you will notice that if you turn your head to the left or right, and you are wearing a shirt with a collar, that the microphone/clicker routinely gets snared on the collar. The reason I say they are defective by design is this: After several months of usage, that constant snaring takes a toll on the wiring in the ear bud connection. Eventually, it will short out, and ultimately, it will stop producing audio altogether.
Obviously, I’ve experienced this problem personally. Normally I wouldn’t care too much, except that because Apple made the headphone jack non-standard on the iPhone, I can’t just replace the included headphones with a new set (the market has changed – see below). I’m not interested in an adapter either, as I would lose the microphone and clicker (one of the coolest things about the iPod functionality in an iPhone).
So I called Apple Technical Support about a replacement. I am, after all, still under warranty. At first the nice lady said no problem. They would need a credit card number, just in case I didn’t return my defective pair. This was not a problem for me.
However, as we were wrapping up the call, she informed me that I would have to take the ‘phones to an Apple Retail store for the swap. There are a couple near me (within 30 miles), but frankly, I don’t have the time to drive down there, wait for a Genius, and drive back. I’m kind of stunned that Apple is making me jump through this hoop for a replacement pair.
So, sometime this weekend, I’ll be pulling my grumpy self in to an Apple Store for a replacement pair. Hopefully I won’t be made to wait too long.
Side note – I looked around for some 3rd party replacement ‘phones, and found a set for $12.95 from HD Accessories. I don’t have high hopes for them, but I’ll let everyone know if they are worthy of their price.
Category: Opinion,Reviews
Dear Apple,
I have finally figured out a way for you to fix the Finder in Mac OS X, and do it for considerably less money than you are currently spending. Since you are fond of three step descriptions, I have used the format here in my suggestion.
Step 1: Fire the entire Finder development team. I’m sure they could be put to better use somewhere else inside the company.
Step 2: Assemble a new Finder team. First, bring on John Siracusa as a consultant. He, more than anybody else, I believe, understands the current Finder’s weaknesses. Next, hire Steve Gehrman, the genius behind Path Finder. Steve has done a better Finder all by himself than your entire team of developers has done. Finally, make sure Mike Matas handles all of the visuals.
Step 3: Give the new Finder team a simple mission statement that sounds like this:
Create a new Finder that appeals to both new users and professionals. Make it easy to use, extremely responsive, and extremely powerful. Make sure it has every feature the past Finder has had since its inception in 1984. If a feature must be dropped, a better idea must be implemented to achieve the same goal.
The only part of Leopard that I find a disappointment is the Finder. Is it better than the Finder in 10.4? Hell yes. Is it as good as it can possibly be? Hell no.
Jobs tried to pass the Finder off as a whole new Finder back at WWDC, but it isn’t. It is an evolution of the original Mac OS X Finder, with many improvements, and many more lingering bugs.
It’s time to get serious. Kill the Mac OS X Finder and assemble a small, ninja-flexible team to do the work that you have not been able to accomplish in 7 years.
Category: Opinion
People, this is getting out of hand. There will be no Newton revival at Apple. Sit back, take a deep breath, and repeat after me. The Newton is dead. The Newton is dead. Now, let’s review why there will never be another “Newton” product at Apple.
First, the Newton was the pet project for then CEO John Sculley. In case you’re not up on your Apple history, John Sculley is the CEO that fired Steve Jobs back in 1985. Steve Jobs hates John Sculley.
Second, the Newton as a product is irrelevant. Apple currently has a hand held device that usurps the Newton in every feature. It’s called the iPhone. Maybe you’ve heard of it.
Finally, I think it is safe to say that “iPhone” has much better name recognition now than “Newton”. Most people know about the iPhone, and most people associate iPhone with hip, cool, sleek and sexy. I don’t know about you, but when I hear “Newton”, I think of dark grey plastic, green monochrome screens, and terrible hand-writing recognition software (OK, it got better towards the end of the product). Why would Apple want to introduce a new product with that kiind of stigma attached to it?
They wouldn’t.
So please. Let it die already.
Category: Opinion,iPhone
I’ve been a .Mac user since before it was .Mac (it used to be called iTools, for those new to the scene). I’ve anted up each Oct 2nd for the privilege of having a .mac email address, syncing across multiple Macs, easy iDisk access and the other .Mac features. However, this year I’m opting out. I had nearly decided to use my $100 early adopter iPhone rebate to renew .Mac this year, but decided against it (I opted for Aperture, which I really like).
Look, I’m not saying .Mac isn’t a valuable service. It is, so long as you want to do things the .Mac way. Let me explain this feature by feature.
Email: .Mac email is very nice. The IMAP implementation is speedy, has good uptime (but not great), and is super simple to setup in Mail.app. The cons are that the storage space isn’t great (it got better with the new update, but you have to share 10GB between email & web), the junk mail settings kind of suck, and it doesn’t “push” automatically to the iPhone like Yahoo! mail does. The last point was a sore spot for me. Why does Yahoo! offer push email to the iPhone for free, but Apple doesn’t?
iDisk: Or as I like to call it, slowDisk. WebDAV is super friendly, and being able to mount and work with the share via the Finder is nice. However, when the transfer speed is ridiculously slow, it really negates the benefit of ease of use. And I suspect the main reason the Finder still won’t write to FTP shares is that Apple doesn’t want to make the Finder too friendly to FTP, as it sees that as a way to drive people to .Mac. Whatever. Convenience is nice, but not at the cost of being a turtle on the information superhighway.
iWeb: I used to publish my family photos on my iDisk through Homepage. Homepage eventually was succeeded by iWeb. While iWeb is nice for those who don’t care about ridiculously huge unoptimized files, it is an abhor-ration for anyone who does web development. I can appreciate a tool that makes serving up pages/images super simple. I still think iPhoto’s export to HTML (while really ugly) does the job nicely. iWeb does a good job of making the average joe feel like they are creating a nice website, but at the end of the day, its a templated piece of crap. Web Gallery is nice, but I don’t want all of my photo/movie pages looking exactly like everyone else’s. Sorry, I’ll stick with iPhoto/Aperture web export, and Flickr.
Back to my Mac: When this was demoed for Leopard at WWDC, I was very impressed. It seems like it will make connecting to computers throughout your home super simple. The problem for me, is that I know how to enter an address in to the connect window, so I’m not really sure I’ll benefit from this. The ability to connect to your home computer via the internet seems slick, but you can do this currently with DynDNS (or other similar services) for free.
Syncing: This is the one feature of .Mac that had me justifying year after year to renew. .Mac syncing is wonderful. And it is getting better in Leopard. In addition to syncing Email Accounts, Rules, Keychains, Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks, Leopard will also add Preferences, Widgets, and Dock items. This makes getting a new computer up to speed incredibly easy. .Mac syncing usually lobbed off a good 30 minutes of setup time for each new machine/new OS installation I had. It is the one feature I will truly miss.
So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve started to migrate away from .Mac. On Oct 2nd, my subscription will lapse and I’ll be .Mac-less. I’m sure I’ll feel a little sting the next time I need to setup a new Mac. But I’ll just keep reminding myself that I can put that $100 to better use elsewhere.
Category: Opinion
Today’s announcement that NBC will not be renewing their contract with Apple to distribute content through the iTunes Store shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. NBC is just the latest content provider to look at iTunes, scratch their heads and say “why are we letting a third party company dictate the terms of our content distribution?”
I’m of two minds on how this can play out. Scenario one involves NBC soldiering on with their new video site partner (FOX) and successfully launching Hulu.com. Of course, if this happens, NBC/Universal is vindicated and Apple becomes a diminished player in the content distribution space.
Scenario two has NBC launching Hulu.com, and for one reason or another, it is a huge flop. We’re talking an URGE sized flop. In this scenario, NBC takes it on the chin for pissing away a lucrative revenue stream (iTunes sales), and the shareholders demand that NBC find a way to quickly fix the problem. Of course, NBC goes crawling back to Apple and we’re back where we were before this announcement was made. Except that Apple has now played chicken with one of its major content partners, and won.
I’m sure NBC (and Fox) feel pretty confident about their chances with Hulu.com. However, they should learn from the failed wreckage of Napster, Urge, and Sony Connect and realize that customers flock to the iTS because Apple makes this simple and affordable.
I’m not an expert in what makes a successful audio/video content distributor, but by looking at what all of the failures had in common, you can deduce the following:
1) DRM must be as flexible as Fairplay or better. Apple’s Fairplay is pretty generous as far as DRM goes. Having no DRM would be much friendlier to the consumers, but these are television executives we are talking about. They care as much about their consumers/customers as I care about Fidel Castro.
2) The content must be iPod friendly. This really is the defining factor on whether the distributor will succeed. Napster? Not iPod friendly. Sony Connect? Nope. URGE? Nope. All three are huge failures. Outside of the successful iTunes Store, the next successful digital content distributor is eMusic. And guess what? eMusic distributes DRM free tracks that are iPod friendly.
I’m pretty certain Hulu will “screw the pooch” on both of these items. After all, it will take a technology company partner to provide them with their precious DRM. And who do you think they will be partnering with? Yep, good ‘ol Microsoft.
Category: Opinion
