Happy birthday iPad

Since a year the iPad is on the market. It's been available here for slightly over eight months. And still I get lots of questions about it from people who show interest, but who do not know what to do with it. And every time I have to explain that, yes, it's just a big iPhone, without the phone, and no, it is something very different.
Apple got mocked for calling it magical, but that seems the correct term for it. The big screen size, combined with the responsiveness of the touch interface, combined with the fact that the screen shows the app in full, without any UI element of the OS, allows you to be immersed into your app. This effect is so much stronger on the iPad than on the iPhone that it seems magical.
I've been trying to figure out where that difference comes from. And to me, it stems from the bigger screen, combined with the fact that I use it with one app at the time. This gives such focus to what I'm doing with it, that I feel immersed in the app. Whether it's reading e-mail, e-books, tweets, or the Economist, or when it's 'just' a simple game like Doodle Jump or Sudoku, the iPad morphs into that app. And it's this morphing quality that makes it special and that somehow lacks on the iPhone. The specs of the iPad help here, especially the battery life. But it's the absence of any sign of anything other than the current app that makes this possible. And that is thanks to the operating system. iOS gets out of your way and lets you get on with your things.

The iPad 2 seems to have everything that makes it even more immersive: more ram, faster processor, thinner and lighter. Combined with a unobtrusive OS, it is a must buy for any doubter.

Zaaf

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Impala,Huizen,The Netherlands

Steve Jobs

I just watched a rerun of the 2007 Macworld Keynote, the one where Steve announces the iPhone. Since that time, Steve's weight has been dropping slowly but steadily. The reason behind Steve's weight loss is perfectly captured in this comic:


Zaaf

Snow Leopard is hot

Apple made a good move by announcing that their upcoming version of Mac OS X will be named Snow Leopard. The snow leopard is already earning prices!

Zaaf

iPhone App Store exclusion policy

Apple's application store for the iPhone and iPod Touch has some nice things about it: One central point for the developer to promote his app, one central point where the billing and accounting is done. For me as a user it has some nice points as well in that it is the only place I need to look if I want to find an app or an app update.

However, since Apple is also the one allowing or disallowing applications based on their functionality, this single point of entry is not so shiny. In the past, Apple removed the I'm Rich app that cost $999,- because it did not have any functionality. The other thay, a genuine podcatcher application with more functionality than the iTunes / iPhone combination was rejected because it duplicated Apple functionality. Read about it here. Ultimately this will lead to the Worst Case Scenario Extrapolating From the iTunes App Store, Fully-Expressed in the Form of a Single Tweet by Steven Frank

(For those to lazy to click):

Scenario: Apple makes code-signing mandatory for desktop Mac applications. You can now only buy them through iTunes. Think it can't happen?

Scary isn't it? When that happens, the Mac-platform as we know and love it will be dead.

Zaaf

Reduce Mac Pricing?

In a recent article, ars technica suggests that Apple should reduce the prices of their products in order to gain market share. In my non-statistically sound experience of buying two high-end Apple-branded laptops I can definitely state that macs have become a lot cheaper.
My first ever Macintosh computer was an Apple Titanium Powerbook G4 667MHz with 30GBytes of hard drive and 512MBytes of RAM, which I bought for € 3229 (excluding 19% sales tax) on March 30th, 2002. I recently bought a MacBook Pro 2.5GHz core 2 duo with 250GBytes of hard drive and 4GBytes of RAM for € 1995 (excluding 19% sales tax). My TiBook had only half of its maximum RAM where the MacBook Pro has its full RAM allotment. So over the course of six and a half years, the high end Apple Macintosh laptop has become 38% cheaper.

I wouldn't mind if Apple dropped their prices even more, but I'm not complaining about their current prices.

Zaaf

From Subject to Object

A few weeks ago Apple introduced MobileMe as a replacement for .Mac. As has been noted, Apple, with this change, went from a Subject based i approach, to a Object based me approach. As noted in the above linked article this means the following:

Signs do, however, point clearly to Apple steering away from consumer as creator of data and toward consumer as data itself. I no longer create the data I sync, the data is me and it syncs on its own.

For the past seven years, I've been heavily involved in defining relationship types with a Subject Type and Object Type. And therefor I feel that I can add my own two cents to it. The way I see it is that the subject attributes something to the object. That something is normally either described by a role or by a verb phrase. For example, the i in for example iPhoto attributes photos to iPhoto. Now for MobileMe. Here we have an Object Type: Me and a role description: Mobile. The trick is now to find out what is attributing to the mobile me. Is that the I from the apps in iCal, iTunes, iMovie et cetera? Or can it be Apple? Or the notorious Cloud?

In my opinion, it is I that is contributing to me. And to which me? I'm quite sure that I can have multiple Me's because I have multiple I's. For example, when asked at a party where my car is, I might answer I'm parked over there, at the end of the parking lot. And, since I can have multiple I's, I'm sure I can have multiple me's too. In this case it would be a Mobile Me. This leads me to the fact that I am contributing to the Me that is on the road, or at least away from my PC. In this light, MobileMe can be seen as part of the ongoing evolution that removes the ties to the home PC and enables mobility.
This evolution started with the need for remote access and dumb terminals via teletype. Then the home PC came cutting the ties with the work environment and the mainframe computers. After the home PC became the central server of all personal data, a further tie was cut with the increased popularity of notebook and laptop computers. As technology advanced, the PDA's and mobile phones became more and more popular. Now we have the combination of internet access via cloud computing and an able wireless infrastructure that allows true mobile access. It is exactly this that is enabled by the introduction of MobileMe. It fits both with the description on Apple's pages and with the naming of the service: MobileMe.

In short, the move from Subject to Object in the name is based upon the shift from home computing to wireless access everywhere with small personal devices like the iPhone.

Zaaf

MacBook Air, is it here to stay?

The MacBook Air by Apple is a nice piece of engineering. In the Macworld 2008 Keynote, Steve Jobs went into detail on what was needed to make it so thin. Leave out an optical drive, flatten the battery, use an iPod hard-drive and shrink the connector-board of the cpu. This last bit concerns me a bit. The CEO and Chairman of Intel, Paul Otellini came on stage telling that it was a big headache for them to make it so small, that it took them over half a year, but that they're pleased with the outcome. If it took them so long to make it, will they put in that same effort when the MacBook Air is due for a cpu upgrade? Or, given the worse than expected results of Intel in 2007, will Intel forgo on the needed R&D?

My prediction is that the MacBook Air will receive fewer cpu upgrades than the other Apple computers. And that it will be taken out of production within two years.

Zaaf

5 September Apple Announcements

Well, Apple suprised me again. The did refresh the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic to something much more visually appealing. I did not expect that. Nor did I expect the inclusion of WiFi and Safari in the iPod Touch. And neither did I expect the iPhone price to be cut so drastically. $200 of from $600, that's 33% price cut.
But what about the total cost of iPhone ownership? The AT&T subscription? Did that come down too? I just checked, but I could not find any information about it. The cheapest rate is still $59.99 per month for a two year contract. So that's $1439.76 for two years. Add the $599 iPhone to it and you get $2038.76 which is now down to 1838.76, which is slightly more than 10%.

You might argue that all iPhone buyers already have a mobile telephone that would cost them something similar, but I disagree. I'm currently paying €10 per month for my mobile telephone contract and I still have minutes left after each month. So the price of the iPhone has not come down significantly enough for me to buy it. The iPod Touch on the other hand, that's a different story. There are a few things about it that I need to further investigate before I will invest in it.
First of all, it's only 16 GB in capacity, minus the storage for OS X. Currently I've used 53 GB of the 80 GB available on my iPod. And given my preference for album shuffle, I'll only buy one when I'm sure that it will pick out whole albums at random for me to listen to. Although I'm very tempted with the built in browser.

So in the end, the Steve's Reality Distortion Field, which I alluded to in the previous post, did not prove strong enough to wipe out my credit card and buy an iPod Touch.

Zaaf

September 5th speculation

September 5th 2007, what will Apple show the world? And will the rdf prove strong enough for me to buy it?
I've seen speculation on Apple bringing out a new iPod, or even an new iPod line, based on OS X. Some even speculate that Apple brings out an iPhone without the phone part and the main reason given is that such would both be cool and technically feasible. However, Apple has a tradition of focusing on its customers, instead of focusing on the Apple Geeks that want everything. Just compare the features of an iPhone to a Nokia N95 and see that the N95 is a much better phone feature wise. However, having played briefly with both phones, it's clear that the iPhone is way more attractive than the N95.
Or look at the video iPod. It does pictures really well, but you cannot store them directly onto your iPod. It does video very well, but it only supports one video format. And it does audio very well, but you cannot record on it. And the same goes for the AppleTV. All lack things that to a geek would seem basic functionality, but that most Apple customers don't care about.

So far this year, Apple had special events for both the iPhone and the iMac. Neither the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, nor the iPod were the centre of attention this year. And since the MacBook was refreshed in May and the MacBook Pro in June, it is time for Apple to focus on its iPod business.

Keeping the above in mind, I predict here that Apple will announce

1. New iPods
2. Based on OSX
3. Without WiFi
4. possibly prepackaged with Beatles music
5. New colour on the iPod Shuffle
6. Price drop on the Shuffle

Of course, it's always possible that Apple will astonish us with a very thin 12" sub note book based on flash, but somehow I doubt that.

Zaaf

Mac Pro even screams Rosetta

Rosetta, named after the famous Stone of Rosetta, is the emulation layer that allows applications written for the PowerPC architecture to run on an intel processor. And every emulation layer is more code to process for the processor, so most of the time the emulated program runs slower than the native program.

However, on switching from a 1.42GHz DP PowerPC PowerMac, to a Quad-core 2.66GHz intel Mac Pro, the rosetta applications run noticeably faster on the Mac Pro than on the PowerMac. In fact, I would even say that their performance is screaming. (Now I know what Steve Jobs meant when he said that the Intel macs are 'screamers').

Zaaf

Mac Pro screams the sound of silence

Last night, I was working on transferring some data from my Powermac to my new Mac Pro, so both my computers were on. And only when I shutdown my Powermac to see if all was transferred correctly, I was engulfed by this quiet sensation, which washed over me like a warm blanket. This new Mac is so much quieter than the previous one, it is unbelievable.

Zaaf

Mac Pro: Here and back again

Friday morning I finally received the phone call that my Mac Pro is ready. I spent most of the afternoon remodelling the desk to fit the Mac Pro. To make it fit I had to mount the shelf above it after the Mac Pro is mounted on the desk. This means that I have to unmount the shelf when I have to move the Mac Pro. Next to the computer is a new 23" Cinema display. Because a bigger computer needs a bigger screen and since I was in a spending mood I threw caution into the wind and decided to replace my new 20" Cinema display.

After finally fitting and connecting everything I fired up my brand-new computer. I was greeted by the Tiger intro and the setup wizard which asked me to pair my bluetooth mouse and keyboard. After entering my Apple / iTunes ID, most of my personal details were filled in. Next it asked whether I wanted to transfer information from my previous mac. I booted the PowerMac, as per instructions, into Target FireWire mode and connected the two together. The setup wizard found all my accounts and asked me what I wanted to transfer. Selecting everything, it seemingly went ahead to transfer information. Hereupon I went downstairs to provide lunch for the kids. After lunch I went back to check, only to see that the Mac Pro had gone asleep without tranfering anything. Mmm. Having tried it one more time I just booted into the new admin account to take care of things manually. Here the Migration Assistant worked well. All four accounts were set up correctly and e-mail et cetera worked flawlessly.

However, I noticed that somehow too much PowerPC architecture information was transferred to the intel Mac Pro. After rebooting twice, it stopped working. So I did an Archive-and-Install from the setup disks. The installer showed that there were too many kernel extentions without intel code in them. And after a few more hours, it died on me too. While going through the errors, I noticed that I had only 2GB RAM available where I had bought 4. System profiler told me that there was only one module installed. But when I looked at the memory there where two banks inserted, only the faulty one had a big red marker dot on it. By this time it was 2 'o clock at night so I called it a day.

The next morning I was awoken at seven by our lovely kids. Seeing this as a good sign, I decided to install Tiger from scratch, apply all updates and sent it back to the store to have them look at the memory. The store opened at 10, so there was plenty of time to do it. At the store, they immediately swapped both memory banks for new ones, tested them and handed me the computer back. There techician told me that since a Mac Pro is supposed to have two equal banks of memory side by side, the source of my problems could well lay in the fact that one of the banks was faulty. Well, we'll see.

However, we had already decided to spend the weekend at my in-laws so, here I am, somewhere in the middle of nowhere with a powerful Mac Pro in the back of my car dying for a change to get back home to re-create the mess I had on my PowerMac. The only consolations I have are that the weather is nice and warm and that my father-in-law has broadband internet and an Apple eMac which I'm now using.

Zaaf

Mac Pro is on its way

When seeing that the special Apple event of last Tuesday did not yield anything about Mac Pros, I decided to order one. It is due later this week. All I need to do now is to prepare the computer corner in my home-office and prepare the data on my Powermac for transfer to the Mac Pro.

Currently my desk houses a Powermac and it just fits on the desk, under the shelf above it. The Mac Pro is, with its 51 cm in height, almost 9 centimeters taller than the Powermac and it will not fit. So some remodelling needs to be done there.

In the three years of its life, my Powermac acquired a lot of applications. Most of them I do not need and some of them I've never used. Moving towards a new computer is a nice moment to do some belated spring-cleaning. And since the Powermac uses ATA-100 drives and the Mac Pro uses S-ATA drives, I can't just put the drives of the old computer into the new one. So we'll see how it will go.

Zaaf

Do the Album Shuffle

For the past twenty years or so, I've been carrying my music with me. First I had cassette tapes on various walkmans, then I carried CDs with me on portable CD players. Five years ago I bought my first iPod. The big change was that in the years BiP (Before iPod), I had to choose which music to take with me. AiP I could have it all. Every morning BiP I stood in front of my CD collection, or my cassette collection before that, and chose the albums to take with me. I've always been an album person and I rarely bought best-of albums. The main reason for this is that I like to hear all the numbers in the context the artist intended them to be. That's also the reason why I do not like shuffle mode on CD players. It messes with the artist intent. And so, BiP, I listened to complete albums sequentially before changing them in my player. AiP, after I switched everything to my iPod, I continued to listen to complete albums, manually selecting them from the menu. That is until I discovered that I could select shuffle per album. Now the tedious task of standing in front of my CD collection was taken over by the iPod. When I now click shuffle songs on my iPod, I get a randomly selected album which I then can enjoy. And because I have only my music on my iPod, its all good music. So it doesn't matter what album it selects.

In the past week I received my Apple-TV. This device contains everything that iTunes contains plus all my pictures. In fact it contains everything my 5.5G iPod has. It has my movies, TV-shows, podcasts, pictures and of course, it has all my music. And naturally it has shuffle. Unfortunately, I cannot shuffle per album. So now I run the risk of getting Led Zeppelin straight after a Bach recital. Hopefully Apple will address this issue soon.

Zaaf

Safari for Windows

Why would Apple Inc. make their web-browser Safari available for Windows? Apple is a hardware company that makes great software. Their income is from the hardware they make. So when Apple releases software it is with the expectation that it will sell them more hardware and thus make them a bigger profit. That is why they created Mac OS X: to sell computers. That is why they created iTunes: to sell iPods. That is why iTunes is a windows programme, so they can sell iPods to Windows users.

So if Apple creates software to sell more hardware, the question is then: "Why do they release Safari for Windows?" Do they have a new hardware product that will sell better because of the fact that Safari is available for Windows? The only new hardware on the horizon is the iPhone and one of its key selling points is that it runs the full version of Safari. However, the biggest problem with Safari is compatibility with some websites. This is because the web and especially the corporate web is geared towards Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. My guess is that by releasing Safari for Windows, Apple is trying to get a higher market share for its browser. This will then cause companies to hopefully make their website more standards compliant, so that it runs perfectly in Safari.

Because it would be great if you could use your Internet Banking site straight from your iPhone while walking in the Mall?

Zaaf

iPod Lost

I just noticed on the iTunes Store that there is a Lost game available for my iPod. I've made a mental note to self: Self by that game.

It's odd that I can buy the game, but can't buy the series from iTunes. The series is available with subtitles in my language, because they were broadcasted here. And even if they weren't available, I'm perfectly capable of understanding the series in English. I know, because I've seen the first 23 episodes of season one in English without the subtitles.

Zaaf

Encore for the G4

My G4 desktop computer is back and working fine. And although the technician working on it promised the repair would be a €560,- logic board replace, it turned out to be a €120,- power supply swap. I was so happy with this result, that on a whim, I decided to buy myself a 23" Cinema display. Unfortunately, the customer just before me had the last one, so I settled for a 20" display. And let me tell you, even though it is the smallest of the Cinema Display line, at 1680 x 1050 this is a grand display! It swaps out the old 17" CRT I have had for the last nine years and whose screen at 1280 x 1024 was definitely getting blurry. The machine looks so good and fresh now that I think I can live with it for at least another year, maybe even two. By then it is 5 years old and it will for sure need to be replaced with something bright and shiny. So the PowerMac G4 gets a new leash of live: G4 Encore!

By the way, the screen is much bigger than I expected when put in its place on my desk. I don't think that the 23" display would have fit. This showed me again that everything in the shop looks smaller than it is, getting you to buy bigger than needed. Which is something to keep in mind when we replace our TV-set.

Zaaf

No Computer, No Cry?

I've always understood the Bob Marley lyric "No Woman, No Cry" to mean something like: "Please dear woman of mine, don't cry, everything will be alright." So now I'm without a real desktop I'm testing to see if this can be extended from women to computers.

First of all, I'm happy to report that my G4 is undergoing some major surgery and is supposed to be up and running end of next week with a complete new logic board. So the "everything will be alright" part of the lyric should turn out just fine.

However, currently I'm using my rather ageing TiBook G4 667MHz (aka Gigabit Ethernet), which I purchased in March 2002 and there are things I sorely miss on this setup, so there is some reason for prolonged sadness. For starters, I can't take it with me, because my wife is now using it too. She brought home some Excel files from work and proclaimed that this computer was faster than the one she uses at work.
The main reason for my sadness though, is iTunes. I have a large list of podcasts that I listen to on a weekly basis and I have my subscriptions tuned just so that I can listen to (or view for that matter) all podcasts during the four days I commute to work. I sorely miss watching Happy Slip, or GeekBrief. And I miss listening to Anji Bees multiple podcasts, CC Chapmans Accident Hash and Adam Curry's Daily Source Code. I provided me with ample opportunity to listen to my own music catalogue. I cannot wait to get the play count and skip count synced with iTunes again to do some music library re-factoring on it. I don't know how other people do it, but every time I listen to a song and I find something is wrong with it, I make a mental note to update it in iTunes. And in at least 10% of the cases I do something about it. Here's a list of mental notes I've made:

1. See which of the skipped items can be removed
2. Make sure that Kate Bush's Aerial CD is one cd. Currently the numbers from the first CD are labeled "Aerial CD1" and those from the second CD are labelled "Aerial Disc 2".
3. Make sure that the numbers of the Jimmy Hendrix BBC Sessions CD are in the correct order.
4. Make a blog-post of the wide variety of songs played during the lapse in podcast listening.

I'm very sure that I've forgotten at least half of it. So being without a working desktop computer certainly has its drawbacks.

No Computer, No Cry (but only just).

Zaaf

G-four no more :-(

Yesterday afternoon, my son came down to call me to the family computer which was acting weird. And sure enough all his running programs (Safari and Finder) were showing me the Spinning Pizza Of Death. Nothing worked. No Command-Option-Eject to put it into sleep, no clicking anywhere, no Command-Tab, nothing. And then, suddenly, the computer shut itself down.
The weirdest thing was that nothing could persuade it to turn back on. The only thing happening was that the light in the power button started to glow. No problems, thinks me. I've had this before. It is just a matter of opening this machine up and pressing the PMU-reset. So disconnect everything, move the PowerMac G4 to another table for easy access, open it up, press the button, wait a full minute, close the computer reconnect everything and then presto: Nothing, only the light in the button.
Hmm that's weird. Try disconnecting the battery. Without battery same results. But the battery in after 12 minutes and try again: Same result, nothing happens.

So now the machine is at the Macintosh repair shop and I'm hoping it is nothing too serious. But you know the thing I miss the most is my iTunes library of which I have no backups. (Backups, come-on this is a consumer machine, why should I need backups). No iTunes library means no new podcasts and how am I going to get my daily podcast fix now?

The shop will call me Monday or Tuesday with the results of their inspection. I hope they can fix it. Then I'll donate the machine to someone else and buy myself a brand new 24" iMac.

Zaaf