Smarterware » Apple

iCloud: What If Someone Trips on It?

Gina Trapani — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:51:10 +0000

Rumor has it today's iCloud announcement from Apple will be about a Dropbox-like Time Capsule-based file syncing. That would be A Good Thing. Decentralized, personal cloud storage and syncing from hardware you own and control is a cloud I want. Update: Turns out iCloud won't be Time Capsule-based at all; it pushes to Apple's servers. Oh well.

Disposable Computers

Gina Trapani — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 22:53:01 +0000

Here's another difference between Apple and Google: Apple makes beautiful computers, and Google makes computers disposable. Check out this ChromeOS commercial. I actually recoiled watching the coffee, toaster, sink, and ice cream sundae land on the notebooks in this video and destroy them. Zero data loss is great, but I also love keeping and caring for devices I love.

What Looks Different in iTunes 10

Gina Trapani — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:53:34 +0000

Garrett Murray diffs iTunes 9 versus iTunes 10 user interfaces in rollover screenshots. I like how the volume slider is so much more iPhone 4ish.

Apple Blocks Official Google Voice App, Pulls GV Mobile from App Store

Gina Trapani — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:26:45 +0000

TechCrunch got this headline just right: Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store. The second half was originally "and It's Likely AT&T's Fault." Apple's withheld approval of the official Google Voice application and pulled the unofficial GV Mobile app on the grounds that they "duplicate iPhone functionality." If TechCrunch is right, once the AT&T exclusive deal is done, this will likely change. Until then, as more Google Voice invites go out, Android, BlackBerry, and even Palm and Windows Mobile are looking like much more useful (read: open) mobile platforms.

What You DO Get in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Gina Trapani — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:17:43 +0000

Among other things,* Apple announced the release of the next version of Mac OS X dubbed Snow Leopard today. Mac owners can get the 10.6 version hike this fall and it will cost a modest $29, a full $100 less than previous OS X updates.

Why is that? Well, while Snow Leopard has had much work done under the hood, there aren't a whole lot of user-facing new features--and that's what sells operating systems at a $129 price point. Instead, this time for 30 bucks you get "enhancements and refinements" (Apple's words).

Still, even though you might have to dig for them, it looks like a few nice tweaks are on the way with Snow Leopard. Here are the ones I'm most looking forward to.

Faster bootup and shutdown times, and half the disk footprint of Leopard, which will save you about six gigabytes of disk space.
Signal strength indicators in the Airport menu (so you can choose the Wi-Fi network with the best signal).
A split pane terminal, so you can run jobs side by side (like tail a log in one pane while running a script in another, so you can see what's going on in each simultaneously).
Date in the menu bar. (I use a hack to get this right now; happy to hear that won't be necessary anymore.)
Safari 4. While the beta was crashy (at least for Windows), it is leaner, meaner, and a bit more flashy than Firefox or Chrome.
Video editing and screen recording (for screencasts!) in Quicktime.
Microsoft Exchange support--good for all those (poor) folks using Exchange.
64-bit computing, which means you can get more memory into your system.

Here's the full list of Snow Leopard "refinements and enhancements."

* Oh yeah, there was also something about some new phone and laptops, too. Or something.