Category: Analysis

‘Open vs. Closed’ and other mythical battles on The MacJury

August 20, 2013 /

I joined a panel of pretty smart pundits on the latest edition of Chuck Joiner’s MacJury podcast. We started out with a look at the “battle” between so-called Open and Closed ecosystems, including of course Android and iOS (and some thoughts on why Android is ahead of iOS in market share), and then delved into TV and movie content distribution and other tangents. As usual, it was a lively discussion that I think shed some light on some of the issues at play. Guests Peter Cohen of The Loop and iMore and Weldon Dodd of Rewind Technology were lots of fun to banter with.

The episode’s worth checking out if for no other reason that to see how much grayer my hair’s gotten since my last appearance.

RM Flashback: How we covered the introduction of the iTunes Music Store

April 28, 2013 /

decadeOn the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Music Store, we thought it would be fun to turn back the clock and take a look at how we covered Steve Jobs’ introduction of the service. The event also introduced iTunes version 4 and the third generation iPods, with what turned out to be a short-lived redesign and a capacity of up to 30GB — “up to 7,500 CD-quality songs,” according to Jobs, in an analogy that might not have much meaning for today’s music buyers.

Read on for our “as-it-happened-coverage” of the birth of a music industry sea change.

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10 years later, we’re still trying to figure out online publishing

January 10, 2013 /

Amazon’s recent “AutoRip” service has a lot of people talking about how welcome such a service would be for books. Imagine buying a book and getting the digital version for no extra cost (notice I didn’t say “free.”) It’s something I’ve proposed for a long time, but more directly, it got me thinking about one of the first RandomMaccess pieces I wrote about online publishing — way back in 2002. Five years before the iPhone and even longer before the Kindle, there were really only two choices for reading text online: a computer screen (CRT at that), or a PDA — a personal digital assistant, like the Palm Pilot. Back then, there were two rather interesting experiments going on in online publishing. They were two very different approaches and…well, why not just read for yourself:

“The Genesis of online publishing.”

‘First weekend with the iPhone 5’ on MacJury

September 28, 2012 /

You may have already heard, but Apple released some sort of new phone last week and Chuck Joiner was kind enough to ask me to talk about it on his excellent MacJury podcast.

Also on the panel were Adam Engst, publisher of TidBITs and Take Control Books, Katie Floyd, host of the Mac Power Users podcast and Mark Tuccio, principle at piqsure.com. The show focused on first impressions of Apple’s latest phone, as well as upgrade options and advice, some advice on solving battery issues with the new phone/iOS and what makes Chuck and his wife the greatest parents ever, according to Twitter.

MacJury episode 1213 is available as a free download at the MacJury website.

About those Apple Genius ads

July 28, 2012 /

They’re not cool; they’re not “Steve” ads; I don’t like them. But they may be appeal to “non-Apple” folks, and if that works, that’s fine. They’re also the first Mac-rather-than-iOS-device-ads I’ve seen since the “I’m a Mac” spots, and that makes them a good thing.

Read more in my latest article on The Mac Observer.

On over-the-air updates and other iOS magic

December 25, 2011 /

[I neglected to link to this post I wrote over at The Mac Observer, but as I watched my son synching his new iPod touch over WiFi this Christmas, these thoughts came back to me; I figured they should be here as well. – Editor.]

Apple released iOS 5.0.1 yesterday, mainly to address battery issues and add multi-touch gestures to the original iPad. The most remarkable feature of the update, though, had nothing to do with what it contained and everything to do with how it was delivered: the update was the first to be delivered and installed over the air (OTA), with no tethering to a computer (indeed, no computer at all) required.

This is not new to Android users, but it was a welcome event for iOS users. Since I heard about the update on Twitter before my devices notified me, I didn’t get to see how the update might have announced itself (it at all.) Once I knew about it, though, it was a simple matter to go to Settings: General: Software Update, where my iPhone 4 — and, later, iPad 1 — dutifully notified me there was an update available. Both my devices were almost fully charged, so I ignored the warning about plugging into a power source, and the updates downloaded and installed without a hitch.

Another new update method got considerably less attention yesterday. Apple released version 7.6 of its Airport software. Just for fun, I fired up the new iOS Airport Utility on my iPad, and sure enough, the app informed me of the available update and allowed me to install it without having to go to my Mac at all.

I suppose the Airport update shouldn’t have seemed all that amazing — after all, it’s a remote update whether it’s done from the iPad or a Mac. But this is the one that gave me the bigger “living in the future” feeling. One that reinforced the notion that my iPhone and iPad are not just satellite device for my Mac. They are peers, and in more and more instances, provide a better experience than those “real” computers.

As if a million crappy restaurant websites cried out and were silenced

November 9, 2011 /

Adobe has announced it will cease development on Mobile Flash. Arguments about proprietary technologies vs. open standards aside (but still valid), Adobe is finally admitting what Apple and other critics have been saying all along: Flash just doesn’t work well on mobile devices.

The end result of this will be the marginalization of Flash on the desktop/laptop as well — it simply won’t make sense for most developers to create two versions of their offerings, especially as mobile devices increase as a percentage of web traffic. The converse was true, too. Had Apple relented and supported Flash on iOS, there would have been no incentive for developers to offer standards-based versions of their sites and we’d all be enduring a much poorer experience.

You can read about the decision on Adobe’s blog, but good luck finding the facts in the obfuscated marketing speak that passes for a post. Instead, read ZDNet’s Jason Perlow, who broke the story earlier today.

In the future, everything will look like an infographic

November 1, 2011 /

“Visionary” video from Microsoft. I don’t hate these in general as much as Gruber does, but this one is just soulless. Unlike AT&T’s “You will” ads that showed specific ways new technology would enrich our lives (send a fax from the beach, kiss your kid goodnight via video chat, pay your toll without stopping), this video is little more than a coat of futuristic paint over things we can already do — mainly centered around sharing data (OK, the cloud), along with some UI effects left over from “Minority Report.” There’s nothing new here, but Microsoft is presenting it all as something they are in the process of inventing. In the meantime, as I watched the video (or tried to), I was doing many of the things it promised on my iPhone.

Today.

Productivity Future Vision Video

Where’d they put that? iOS 5 edition (Updated)

October 14, 2011 /

I’ve been around tech a long time now, but I have to admit I was having trouble finding some of iOS’s new features. Here are a few of the less obvious (to me, at least):

  • iMessage: Don’t bother looking for an “iMessage” app on your phone — there is none. Instead, activate it from Settings–>Messages. Then, in the regular Messages app, create a new message addressed to the recipient’s iCloud address (usually their me.com account). The header will change from “New Message” to “New iMessage” and the color scheme will change from green to blue.
  • Camera app zoom feature: When I couldn’t get this to work with the usual screen tap, I wondered if Apple had removed the digital zoom feature from the built-in camera app. No fear, it’s still there, now invoked with a “pinch to zoom” multi-touch gesture. (Hat tip to @jgamet and a host of Twitter followers for setting me straight on that one.)
  • Reminders: We iPhone 4 and older owners may not get Siri, but it doesn’t mean we can’t use those cool “geo-fence” reminders. (“Remind me to call my wife when I leave work.”) [Update: Location reminders are only available in iPhone 4/4S; they don’t appear to be available in older iPhones or iPads.] They’re there, in the Reminders app itself. Just create a new reminder, then tap it to set the details. Tap “Remind Me” and you’ll see that one of the choices is “At a location.” You can choose your current location, those available in your own Address Book card from any contact in your Address Book. You don’t appear to be able to type in a specific address though. Reminders doesn’t appear to be clever enough to link relationships to contact information as Siri does.
  • Multitasking Gestures for iPad 1: If you were one of the enterprising iPad 1 users who used the not-so-super-secret developers’ hack to add the ability to do things like swipe with four fingers to switch apps, you may be in for a disappointment: it looks like only iPad 2 owners are getting those gestures with iOS 5 — the update not only doesn’t add them to your iPad 1, it removes them if they were already there. Get to it, jailbreak developers!

I’ll keep posting these as I discover or learn about them.

[UPDATE:] Apple says the next iOS update will restore/enable gestures on the original iPad.

A couple more found features related to weather: In the Notifications page, swipe the local weather display for the six-day outlook. In the Weather app itself, tap (or swipe down) on the six-day outlook to get an hourly forecast.

Where’d they put that? iOS 5 edition (Updated)

October 14, 2011 /

I’ve been around tech a long time now, but I have to admit I was having trouble finding some of iOS’s new features. Here are a few of the less obvious (to me, at least):

  • iMessage: Don’t bother looking for an “iMessage” app on your phone — there is none. Instead, activate it from Settings–>Messages. Then, in the regular Messages app, create a new message addressed to the recipient’s iCloud address (usually their me.com account). The header will change from “New Message” to “New iMessage” and the color scheme will change from green to blue.
  • Camera app zoom feature: When I couldn’t get this to work with the usual screen tap, I wondered if Apple had removed the digital zoom feature from the built-in camera app. No fear, it’s still there, now invoked with a “pinch to zoom” multi-touch gesture. (Hat tip to @jgamet and a host of Twitter followers for setting me straight on that one.)
  • Reminders: We iPhone 4 and older owners may not get Siri, but it doesn’t mean we can’t use those cool “geo-fence” reminders. (“Remind me to call my wife when I leave work.”) [Update: Location reminders are only available in iPhone 4/4S; they don’t appear to be available in older iPhones or iPads.] They’re there, in the Reminders app itself. Just create a new reminder, then tap it to set the details. Tap “Remind Me” and you’ll see that one of the choices is “At a location.” You can choose your current location, those available in your own Address Book card from any contact in your Address Book. You don’t appear to be able to type in a specific address though. Reminders doesn’t appear to be clever enough to link relationships to contact information as Siri does.
  • Multitasking Gestures for iPad 1: If you were one of the enterprising iPad 1 users who used the not-so-super-secret developers’ hack to add the ability to do things like swipe with four fingers to switch apps, you may be in for a disappointment: it looks like only iPad 2 owners are getting those gestures with iOS 5 — the update not only doesn’t add them to your iPad 1, it removes them if they were already there. Get to it, jailbreak developers!

I’ll keep posting these as I discover or learn about them.

[UPDATE:] Apple says the next iOS update will restore/enable gestures on the original iPad.

A couple more found features related to weather: In the Notifications page, swipe the local weather display for the six-day outlook. In the Weather app itself, tap (or swipe down) on the six-day outlook to get an hourly forecast.