Tech journalism is not an oxymoron
I didn’t know this:
If you’ve got a Wi-Fi-only iPad or iPad 2, you’re generally unable to use GPS to get more accurate location pin-pointing. Unless you also happen to own an iPhone and use its Personal Hotspot feature to tether—which, it turns out, passes along GPS data.
(via LifeHacker)
From Macworld.com:
Each month, users will freely be able to read up to 20 articles at the newspaper’s Website, though links from Facebook and Twitter will not count against this quota. If you want to read more than the allotted number, you’ll need to sign up for the NYTimes.com Plus Smartphone App plan at $15 per month. As the verbose name suggests, that plan will get you unlimited browser access to the Times’s site via all the devices you own, as well as unlimited access via the company’s official smartphone apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.
If you want to read via The New York Times’s iPad app, which gained access to most of the pubilcation’s content last October, you’ll need the NYTimes.com Plus Tablet App plan, which runs $20 per month. This plan also offers unlimited browser access to the Times’s site on all your devices. But while it enables you to read the publication via its iPad app, the Times Reader 2.0 app for traditional computers, and the NYTimes Web app for Google’s Chrome browser, it does not include access via the smartphone apps.
If you want ubiquitous Web and app access to The New York Times, you’ll need the All Digital Access plan for $35 per month, which includes all aforementioned apps across all supported platforms.
If it takes 217 words to describe what you’re selling, something’s seriously wrong.
From the GiveWell.org Blog: (via Paul Kent)
On Friday, we recommended that donors wait to see how the situation unfolds before giving. At this point we are ready to make a recommendation, though of course this is subject to change as the situation changes.
Makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of superb reviews, Macworld’s Christopher Breen pens the definitive look at Apple’s GarageBand for iOS as only he — accomplished writer and musician — can.
GarageBand for iOS is what I’d always hoped it would be on the Mac. We’re no longer limited to just stringing loops together; now it’s possible to compose actual songs, with chord changes, without real instruments. The new version truly makes it possible for anyone to create real songs. I can’t say enough about it and it looks like Breen agrees with me — I don’t remember the last time I saw a full five-mouse review in Macworld.
Superb review of the new iMovie for iOS by my friend Jeff Carlson at Macworld. He mentions that the new version doesn’t run on the original iPad. True enough, but there are several workarounds that will let you get around that limitation, including at least one that does not require a jailbreak. (via Your Mac Life)
Jordan Yee ponders: “I’m just putting two and two together here, so hear me out: if an iPhone 4 can only make FaceTime calls over WIFI like the iPad 2, could an iPad 2 make a FaceTime call over 3G by connecting to an iPhone 4’s Personal Hotspot feature which is WIFI?” Absolutely. This already works on Jailbroken iPhones with MyWi installed. Um, that is, so I’ve heard. (via Daring Fireball)
It’s gotten better since it first launched — at least technologically — but I stopped reading it while it was still free. I don’t think this is going to be the subscription model for tablets that takes hold. (via paidcontent.org)
In what may be the only way anyone would notice, Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft is dropping its Zune media player, and would incorporate the technology into other devices such as phones and its XBox gaming platform. Microsoft introduced the Zune in 2006 as a competitor to Apple’s iPhone.
The Bloomberg article outlines the Zune’s reception as an “iPod killer,” including Talk Show Host Craig Ferguson’s observation that the device was Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’s bid to “loosen iPod’s stranglehold on the iPod market.”
If you read his explanation for that charge, what he really means is Jobs killed the experience of shopping for music by listening to it in record stores, and that’s not true — big retailers like Target and Walmart had already taken care of that. In fact, iTunes preserved that experience to a much greater extent than brick and mortar retailers. (via The Loop)
It’s that time of year again, but with some interesting differences. Last year’s Macworld Conference & Expo proved IDG could host a successful show without Apple’s presence; this year we’ll see if exhibitors and attendees got the word. This year’s conference also makes a break with the past by using a new venue — or more accurately — leaving an old one. The entire show — including conferences, feature presentations and exhibit hall — will be held within Moscone West with no elements of the show using the familiar North and South halls.
I’ll be at the show as usual. For those interested in catching up with me, here are your best shots:
Chances are excellent that I’ll also be Tweeting about interesting sessions, discoveries and sessions, so if you’re at the show, follow me at twitter.com/RandomMaccess. And if you see me, please make a point of saying hello. It’s the opportunity for real-world, face-to-face interaction that makes Macworld such an important aspect of the Mac (and technology) community.