Watts Martin
Apple has always implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) asserted you should use their products because they’re better than the competition in the ways that matter to users. Apple’s products frequently don’t win on a feature-by-feature comparison, to which Apple fans tend to reply that sealed batteries have turned out to be not so bad in practice, that we can actually find all the software we want for our iOS devices no matter how philosophically objectionable the App Store is, and that we really don’t care that the iPad has no USB port and that the iPhone cannot be used as a wifi hotspot, HD projector and five-speed blender. There is a large subset of tech users who go into apoplectic fits at that, seeing it as proof that we’re brainwashed morons. So be it.
Brilliantly put.
That fact that people are taking this personally is ridiculous. It’s a damn phone, which works fine. Works great in my experience. They will give you a free case if you want it. If it doesn’t work where you live, don’t buy it, or take it back.
One final note. Dear tech pundits, Get a life. Spend some energy about something that matters, like the oil spill in the Gulf.
Categories: Apple.
Tags: Apple
I picked up the new iPhone 4 today. Here are my first impressions:
- The phone feels great in my hand. The stainless steel frame is very elegant and rigid.
- It feels a tiny bit heavier even though its a bit thinner and narrower. Thats a good thing.
- The retina display is amazing. Words can’t do it justice. It’s flat out breathtaking. Immediately makes previous iPhones (2G, 3G, 3GS) feel dated.
- The battery life is better than expected. I got 11 hours of near constant use.
- The interface (iOS4) is crisp, fast, and not overly burdened with superfluous animations. The A4 chip is terrific.
- The dont-hold-it-in-your-left-hand reception issue is slightly annoying and frustrating. Hopefully there will be a fix.
Once again, I’ll actually enjoy using my iPhone. I’ll be up in Green Bay this weekend for a wedding, so I’ll give my full report after a few days of typical use.
Categories: Apple.
Tags: iPhone
Andy Ihnatko:
Google wants to make sure that every part of your life happens under their searchlight. They don’t want you to use desktop apps; they want you to use apps on the Web, so that they can observe how much time you spend at each task, and get at least a vague sense of the data you work with.
They want you to use their mail service, so that they can better understand your relationships with other people.
They don’t want you to send data to your phone via a secure, user-controlled cable. They want you to do it through the Internet, so that they can note the sort of music you like, the locations you’re interested in, the places you’ve been.
They also want to be able to “push” apps onto your device that you might not want, and let websites push data into specific apps. They want the ads they push onto your device to have an unusually close level of interaction with your phone hardware and the data therein.
And Google wants to know what you do in your living room. What shows do you watch? What shows do you record? Once you’ve recorded them, how long until you watch them? Do you watch them all the way through? Did you pause during a commercial? What did you do during that pause? Did you visit a site or search for a keyword? What was that keyword?
Very interesting take from the Google I/O conference.
Categories: Random.
Divvy
Divvy is an entirely new way of managing your workspace. It allows you to quickly and efficiently “divvy up” your screen into exact portions.
With Divvy, it is as simple as calling up the interface, clicking and dragging. When you let go, your window will be resized and moved to the relative position on the screen. If that seems like too much work, you can go ahead and create as many different shortcuts as you’d like that resize and move your windows in exactly the same way.
Installed and almost immediately became part of my normal daily workflow.
Categories: Apple.
Tags: Apple, osx
This Apple KB document:
iPad supports over 40 fonts and font families which can be used with iWork for iPad apps. When importing a presentation that uses a font not available on iPad, iWork attempts to replace an unsupported font with one that is a close match. If a close match is not found, the Helvetica font will be used instead. After the import process, fonts that were replaced are listed for review by the user.
Fonts available on the iPad include:
- American Typewriter
- AppleGothic
- Arial
- Baskerville
- Bodoni 72
- Bradley Hand
- Chalkduster
- Cochin
- Copperplate
- Courier
- Courier New
- Didot
- Futura
- Geeza Pro
- Georgia
- Gill Sans
- Heiti J
- Helvetica
- Hoefler Text
- Marker Felt
- Optima
- Palatino
- Papyrus
- Party LET
- Snell Roundhand
- Thonburi
- Times New Roman
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
- Zapf Dingbats
- Zapfino
Categories: Apple.
Tags: Apple, iPad