It seems as if I’m the only person having issues with Lion–it’s like I am trapped in Brain Candy and I’m the only one not taking the happy pill. I’ve been a Mac user for a long time, and every new upgrade brought butterflies to my stomach. This time around I was so excited I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but the excitement wore off quite quickly. Since then I have turned into a ranting bitch.
Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is simply incredible. Of course you probably already knew this puppy was light, and gorgeous, but the power that this tiny machine packs is truly breathtaking. Optimized for speed and portability, the new MacBook Air improves on its predecessor to prove that it’s the best notebook computer Apple’s ever made.
Unlike the majority of my esteemed colleagues here at Cult of Mac – indeed, unlike almost everyone in my profession, it seems – I’ve not upgraded to Lion just yet.
Today is a huge day for Mac users. For the first time ever, Apple is offering a major Macintosh operating system upgrade exclusively over the Internet. The company has also discontinued much of the boxed software it offers in a clear signal that it hopes and expects to see the vast majority of applications for the Mac delivered through the App Store from this day forward. Just as it did with music (and to limited degree with DVDs), Apple wants to eliminate all physical artifacts from its computing experiences other than the hardware it makes.
But there are downsides to this. Immaterial purchases don’t carry all the same property rights that physical ones do. When the iTunes Music Store launched, users quickly learned that it’s a lot harder to return or resell an album bought from Apple than it is to do the same with a CD. With the iOS App Store, we all know that it’s not easy to get your money back if you make a foolish purchase.
Apple’s refreshed 2011 Mac minis are a tempting choice for users who want a roc solid, low-footprint desktop machine on a budget. But exactly how much of a budget do you need to allot yourself?
No matter which Mac mini you buy, you’ll be getting a deceptively small machine, absolutely packed with some top-of-the-line tech, like Thunderbolt. But if we had to recommend just one, we’d recommend the $799 Mac mini with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM.
Here’s why.
Today, Apple released new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards and all-around upped specs. Any MacBook Air you get will, in all likelihood, be the best laptop you’ve ever owned, but how do you know which MacBook Air is right for you?
After nine months of using and loving our last-gen MacBook Airs, we know which one we’d recommend to most people: the 128GB 11-inch MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM. Here’s why.
I’ve recently had the opportunity to carry a second phone (a while with Android, awhile with Windows Phone) in addition to my trusty and increasingly busted 3GS (missing volume buttons, broken lock button). I say “opportunity” largely because I’m kind of annoyed that I didn’t buy an iPhone 4 when I had the chance, and now it’s looking like the fall before I’ll get to upgrade to an iPhone 5 or whatever Apple chooses to call it. This makes now an ideal time to take a close look at what the competition is up to. The worst kind of fan is the unthinking, in my view, so I jumped at the chance to know whether my iOS admiration was warranted, and, if not, actually get to preview a handset I could contemplate switching to at some point (for obvious reasons, I would not run the same experiment with other tablets. The iPad really is the only game in town).
Join me, then, for the Apple maniac’s up-close tour of the distinguished competition, through peril, triumph, and confusion, as I take a long, hard look at life with a Nexus S 4G and an HTC HD7, representatives of the very mature Android (Nexus) and the practically beta Windows Phone 7.
Nokia’s N9 is an interesting new challenge to the iPhone. Its had a lot of criticism since it was announced a couple of days ago, but I want to concentrate on something I think it does pretty well: simplify the touch screen interface.
Over at GigaOm, Alex Layne asked the question: if Apple killed the Finder, would you miss it?
Hell yes. Yes I would.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a famous photographer say something like “it’s not your equipment, it’s how you use it”; but they love to trot out that phrase like a dog breeder trotting out a prize poodle. And of course, they’re right. In fact, one of the most important — if not the most important — feature is that the camera is actually around for you to take the shot with — or you’ll miss the moment. The second? That the damn thing doesn’t require much fumbling around with to operate.
The iPhone has never had any problem with the first one. And today, bam — Apple has just taken care of the second. In fact, the camera tweaks in iOS 5 should make the iPhone the most-used camera ever. Here’re the much-needed improvements, in order of grooviness.
As promised, Steve Jobs and Apple made sweeping software-related announcements at the WWDC keynote in San Francisco Monday.
While much of the functionality previewed by the Cupertino, CA technology behemoth will not be available to users until sometime this fall, several companies and technology purveyors have got to be quaking in their boots as a result of seeing Apple’s roadmap to the future.
Lion represents something of a landmark in the history of operating systems, for many reasons.
While much has been made over Apple’s uncharacteristic pre-conference spilling of the beans regarding the impending announcement of a new, web-based service called iCloud, no one really knows what this “amazing,” “fantastic” and “magical” new service is going to look, feel or sound like — and won’t — until Steve Jobs unveils it to the audience at San Francisco’s Moscone West auditorium next week.
Still, we can put together a reasonable idea of the service iCloud will provide based upon Lala, the streaming music service Apple bought back in 2009. Assuming that Apple is basing iCloud on Lala and filling in the blanks with the latest industry reports and rumors, here’s a complete overview of what we think iCloud will look like when it’s announced on Monday.
In the history of technology, most successful formats go from a nascent birth phase to market popularity with the assistance of a Killer App. A major program, activity or use for a new technology that drives rapid adoption of the medium.
The Apple II had VisiCalc. The IBM PC had Lotus 1-2-3. With the Macintosh came PageMaker and desktop publishing. Arcade Games had Space Invaders. Xbox had Halo. VHS had porn.
Many technologies have benefited from porn, actually. It’s a pre-internet fad.
But there is no one Killer App for the iPad. There are dozens of categories of uses, thousands of apps. The iPad started out popular, then became a phenomenon. But nobody can agree on what it’s best used for.
When the clocks go forwards or back, people from New Zealand to New York miss their appointments because their iPhone alarm does not go off on time. Every time I complete a 10km run using my iPod nano, TIger Woods congratulates me on having completed another 500km. And as you read this, thousands of backups are failing because Time Machines are freezing in time.
What do these seemingly disparate events having in common? They’re all presumably the handiwork of Apple’s “B-team”.
For some people, getting the chance to work for Apple seems like one of the coolest jobs on the planet. Being surrounded by everything Apple. Super discounts on iMacs. Talking to customers about how incredibly magical the products are. If that all sounds awesome to you, then go ahead and disregard the fact that it’s easier to get into Harvard University than to get a job at Apple.
Here is Cult of Mac’s first-hand look at how the Apple hiring process plays out.
This is a guest post by Mark Hosbein, a potential iPad 2 customer. Mark has been unable to get an iPad 2 after several days waiting in line. He expresses the frustration felt by many. As we’ve reported, Apple continues to see long lines for the iPad 2 a week after launch day. Mark’s piece was originally published here.
I just returned from the Apple Store at the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey. I arrived at the mall at 5.20 AM to wait in line for my chance to buy an iPad 2. I was number 27 in line. I did not get one. The line went to 81. My wife had been there for the past two days, and both days she was shut out. She was number 39 yesterday, with no luck.
For a revered brand, Apple is risking customer will in the way they are managing the iPad launch.
Will you pay to read the New York Times on your iPad under its new subscription plans?
Or will you try to game the system, getting free access through Twitter, Facebook or Google?
[polldaddy poll=4736679]
As we noted earlier, the weekend’s silliest headline came courtesy of hair product Jon Bon Jovi, who ranted to the Sunday Times of London that “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”
This statement is astoundingly ignorant. The iTunes Music Store is easily the most popular record store in the history of the world, having sold more than 10 billion songs in its eight years of existence. One can decry the very notion of digital distribution. It’s impossible to argue with business that big.
Moreover, when iTMS hit the scene in April 2003, it was a godsend to record labels. After all, Apple didn’t invent digital distribution of music. They invented legitimate digital distribution. Napster had hit the scene a full four years previous, making it possible for college students across the country (myself included, briefly) to readily share reasonably high-quality music files with one another over the Internet in simple fashion. As soon as Shawn Fanning flipped the switch in 1999, the music business needed to change itself or disappear.
For years, it chose to disappear, waging costly legal battles with Napster and its near-relatives Audiogalaxy, MP3.com, Gnutella, Kazaa, Morpheus, and LimeWire. Hilariously, the Recording Industry Association of America’s belief that they could sue file sharing out of existence did little but spur its growth and, more critically, its innovation. BitTorrent, the radically distributed and difficult-to-trace open file sharing protocol, hit in 2001, arguably a few years before it would have arrived had the record companies reached a deal to distribute music legally through Napster. Also, Metallica.
It was into this mix that Steve Jobs arrived. And with him, the record industry finally changed. A little. They finally signed on with a legitimate way to purchase music over the Internet, for just 99 cents a song. And it was revolutionary, driving unprecedented volumes and moving a lot of iPods in the process. But, like Bon Jovi, the record industry has a short memory, and immediately began demanding to sell songs for more money on iTunes, as well as demanding a higher percentage of revenue from each tune, even though, at 70:30, they were already doing better than a typical margin at a record store.
Anyway, they got what they wanted again, but still they rant and whine about devaluing music or killing the romance of the art form. Generally, they resent that the vast iTunes library has allowed indie bands to get more attention than they ever were when major labels controlled distribution. And those indie labels are doing great now (see what Merge Records has accomplished with Arcade Fire and Spoon), as are some of the independent record stores that thrive off of their albums.
Honestly, at the end of the day, the Web’s arrival in the early 1990s was a sign that all media would eventually be delivered differently than it previously had. It was obvious that early. But the entrenched media covered their eyes and their ears and hoped things could remain the same. And now that an inevitable reality of digital music, video, books, and periodicals have arrived, everyone wants to get mad at the one company that’s actually helped figure out how to make record labels some money in the last decade. Whether they like it or not.
In short, JonBon: “This Left Feels Right” killed music. Steve Jobs is the one who helped you profit from that murder.
The Sunday Times Magazine: LITD: Jon Bon Jovi, 48, rockstar (paywall)
When the Apple Store came back online yesterday after the announcement of the iPad 2, customers were a bit shocked to find out that Apple is not taking any pre-orders for the device until March 11th, the same day the product hits store shelves. Apple has always had a great track record of taking pre-orders on products after they’ve been announced, so we’ve been wondering just why they’ve changed policy this time. Could it be that they’re afraid they’re not going to have enough initial stock to satisfy store orders as well as online orders?
Rumors were flying around the web days before the event that Apple has been facing supply constraints for the iPad 2 and that the product was facing the serious possibility of being delayed until April or May. When Steve Jobs took the stage yesterday, he went out of his way to adamantly state that the iPad 2 would be launching worldwide in March, and not April or May. Is the move to eliminate pre-orders an effort to increase the lines at stores and build even more hype around the excitement of the launch? That could possibly be the answer but I think it’s a bit unlikely.
As the fervor surrounding tomorrow’s big announcement builds, fanboys and fangirls are eagerly sitting around their computers gulping down all the latest iPad 2 rumors that the Internet has to offer. One of the popular rumors out there is that tomorrows iPad 2 unveiling will be a disappointing spec bump and that the real grand daddy of tablet computers, the iPad 3, will be unveiled later in the year (possibly in September if Gruber and others are correct).
Cult of Mac has published a number of articles supporting the idea that Apple will be releasing two iPads in 2011. While there have been a significant amount of doubters to this theory of two iPads being launched, one must take into account that such a move wouldn’t be completely unprecedented. I’m referring to the iPod Mini 2G vs. the iPod Nano in 2005.
The broad application of Apple’s new App Store subscription guidelines to everything from magazines (sensible) to Kindle books (questionable) to Readability (delusional) to Tiny Grab and possibly DropBox (downright silly) could end up being the single-worst business decision the Cupertino Colossus has made in the last decade, for one very simple reason: it seeks to maximize App Store revenue at the expense of making iPhones and iPads the most attractive hardware platforms on the market. Getting 30% of Readability’s revenue cannot possibly justify the risk of making the iPad sell a few hundred thousand fewer units.
For people like me, and the other 28 million living with cancer, people like Steve Jobs are incredible role models. When I was undergoing chemotherapy three years ago, I was often tempted to think “why me?” But then I asked myself, “Why Steve Jobs? Why Lance Armstrong?” And I reflected on the remarkable things that they went on to achieve after their treatment. Their inspirational example helped me more than I can say.
Steve Jobs chooses not to talk about his cancer. He prefers to focus on his work. We should respect his choice.
In 1997, Apple was in deep financial trouble. Wired published a now-famous cover story: “101 Ways to Save Apple.”
Some of the advice was prescient, some was silly, but it was a fascinating list of suggestions. And what actually happened between now and then is even more interesting.
Here, for the first time, is a really detailed followup to each and every one of Wired‘s 101 suggestions.
Picture from EQueue
Friends, Romans, Applefans, I come to bury hard drives, not to praise them. The evil that poor technologies do live after them, and our good files are oft interred with their ashes. So let it be with hard drives.
Look at your MacBook Pro. It’s beautiful, no? Bright screen, thin body, buttonless trackpad, carefully engineered ports, MagSafe power port… it’s a master-work. Except for one thing. It carries a vestigial organ that all-too-often reveals itself to be the ruptured appendix of computing: a hard drive.
Yes, for all of our wonderful computing progress (spaghetti ports to USB; mobile dual-core processors, DDR3 DRAM, insanely fast GPUs), the lowly hard drive continues to exist based off of approximately the same technology it was back in the 1970s. Spinning magnetic platters with read/write heads, saving our entire digital lives in the process.
And while they have many wonderful qualities (massive storage capacity, more so than anything but TAPE; extremely low cost), they also have a fatal flaw, which is that they break and they break hard. Platters get warped, spindles get loose, heads get misaligned, and suddenly your computer stops working and you lose the project you’ve been slaving over for the last few months (see my wife’s recent calamity for evidence and a little solace in the iPhone).