Tag Archives: apple

March 29, 2010

The Joy Of Tech Does It Again!

By Dave M.

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Once again, The Joy Of Tech has “hit the nail on the head” when it comes to Apple zealots. I don’t consider myself one of these zealots because I don’t read every little rumor piece and try to speculate what it all means.

In the run up to the iPad’s announcement. Everyone and their brother was speculating that there would be a “true” Mac Tablet. Boy were they ever wrong. However, they still feel a Mac Tablet is in Apple’s future.

So now all this noise about Jobs and Schmidt talking… So sad really.

Still, here is the comic panel for [Today's The Joy Of Tech](http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1372.html):

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Enjoy!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Humor

February 9, 2010

Magic Mouse Pretty Darn Magic!

By Dave M.

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I must say that I am pretty impressed with Apple’s Magic Mouse. It’s sleek, with a good 3/5 of it’s surface being available for multiple-touch functions. Being made from aluminum, it’s sturdy, solid feeling, and clicks like you would expect a mouse with real buttons.

Unlike the “Mighty Mouse”, when you click and drag with the Magic Mouse, it doesn’t feel like you are trying to hold the mouse so that the ‘whole mouse button’ doesn’t release.

Also a great feature of this mouse is that when you scroll windows by sliding you finger down or up the center of the mouse, you can tell the Mouse Preference Pane to glide just like you were flicking your finger across the iPhone/iPod touch’s screen.

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There is also a great $5 shareware program called MouseWizard that adds all kinds of great functionality to the multi-touch abilities of the Magic Mouse.

MouseWizard is a great supplement to the System Preference Mouse Pane. It’s a program that can reside in the MenuBar, Dock, or both, not in System Preferences, so it won’t conflict with Apple’s Mouse Preference Pane.

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The Menubar items include battery status, 3 settings entries as well as the standard application menu items.

MouseWizard lets you set tapping instead on clicking the mouse for both the right and left clicks. Two finger gestures include: Middle Click, Fourth Click, Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Swipe Left, Swipe Right, Zoom / Shrink. Three finger Click and Whole Hand Click. All can be configured to do one of many functions:
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I’m currently waiting for a D-Link DBT-120 Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 USB Adapter from Amazon to hook it up to my Mac Pro. When I purchased the beast 3 1/2 years ago, I didn’t see the need to have Bluetooth and WiFi in the box. I now realize that I should have configured the order with both. A hindsight… Apple has tested their wireless keyboards and mice with the D-Link adapter which is why I ordered it rather than the many others to choose from.

Back in the days of the Mighty Mouse, I would never have suggested to anyone to use it. With the Magic Mouse, I have to say that so far, I have to problems suggesting the mouse. Mind you, I have only just started to use it, and there might still be some issues with both left and right buttons down in games. However, what I have seen so far is darn amazing and I’m very pleased I got one.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Hardware, Review

February 3, 2010

The Joy Of Tech Hit The Nail Right On The Head!

By Dave M.

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Today’s “The Joy Of Tech” hit the whole rumor/speculation/hype thing perfectly on the head! I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Thanks ‘Joy of Tech‘ guys, your humor always makes my day!

 

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1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Humor

February 2, 2010

Will Apple Fanboy's Ever Relax?

By Dave M.

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No sooner than the iPad news is released than rumors of yet another “real” Mac Tablet computer are floating around again!

Don’t get me wrong here, I consider myself to be a pretty faithful Apple Fanboy. I have quite a few iPods (3G, 4G, 5G and an iPod touch), two iPhones (myself and my wife), and two Macs (MacBook and Mac Pro). I lust for the new Unibody MacBook’s, I would love to have that new trackpad. I would also love to get the new iPad when it comes out and I am pretty much planning on getting the next-gen iPhone when it comes out.

However, I think all this speculation and rumor business is totally over the top and ridiculous. For probably a year, there has been nothing but rumor, speculation, and lust over a nonexistent Mac Tablet that finally turned out to be the iPad. We still haven’t heard the end of that damn thing. Why does the 3G cost so much more than the hardware ($500 vrs. $630), will it be able to make phone calls?, will it be able to record movies?, etc… Not to mention all the humor that has arisen from the whole feminine product name: iPad.

Will Apple come out with a real Tablet computer? Who the F**K cares! Oh My God people? You all are worse than stalkers! Unbelievable! You monitor web log files for browser types that could mean that a new device from Apple is coming. You even figure out that there were 50 iPad devices in Apple with various types of applications on them before the announcement.

Do you people have lives? I used to work for a company that makes MMORPG’s. In one of the games, the GM’s created a vine that started growing outside the main cities gates. Once someone noticed it (about 10 minutes after it was put into the game), players started watching the vine to see what would happen next to it. They organized watch schedules so that there was at least a couple of people watching that vine ever minute of every day. We’re not talking a graphical MMORPG either here. We are talking text based, so they had to “Look” at the room and the vine repetitively over and over again. That went on for over a month!

With Apple, it seems that I am seeing that behavior all over again. When the store closes for 5 seconds, blogs post about the closure as if something wonderful is going to happen. If a store that sells Apple products make a mistake, the blogs post an image of the mistake within seconds, if Steve Jobs blinks out of pattern, he’s either going to announce something or he’s dying! Just look at the over analysis of the invitation to the iPad announcement. Every paint splotch was analyzed trying to make heads or tails of what the announcement was going to have in it. Because they all knew that one of the announcements was going to be an Apple Tablet. (Which it wasn’t)

TUAW, even scored themselves over the predictions they made and way over scored themselves. They pretty much had all the predictions wrong, yet the worst they did was 5 out of 12 or something like that.

My God people, get over it. Get on with your lives. As William Shatner once said: “Get a life!”

If Apple comes out with new hardware, you will hear about it when Apple announces/leaks it, not a moment sooner. You can speculate all you want, but that is not going to make Apple/Jobs create a device that you folks have been having wet dreams about for over a year.

Just be happy that your favoriate computer company is making money and doing pretty darn well for itself. They are not likely to die anytime soon, and a real Tablet will not put them over the edge and become the new Dell/HP.

Sheesh!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Rant

January 27, 2010

Real Impressions Of Apple's New iPad…

By Dave M.

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Interesting…

Really! That’s about all I can muster. It’s really just a very large iPod touch with 3G and “assisted GPS” (what exactly is “assisted”?). It’s probably pretty fast. However, it’s hard to tell with a processor called A4. What exactly is an A4? What does it compare to?

The iLifeiLife suite of applications that will run on it sound pretty cool. Plus, $30 for the suite is way better than $80.

If I were getting a computer for my parents now, I would probably get them this iPad. It will be way easier to maintain since they would have a much harder time messing it up than the Mac Mini they have now. It would be way faster than the Mac Mini. My mother only does email and web surfing so she would be fine with it. My father plays games so would probably find most the casual games on it perfect for him.

As a “netbook” it’s severely lacking. No USB port or any expansion capabilities at all. No CD/DVD drive. No physical keyboard, but I suspect the on screen keyboard is probably just fine. The biggest problem, the AppStore and Apple’s censorship/review policy. Programs for the iPad will be vetted just like for the iPhone/iPod touch. This means that it’s not, I repeat, NOT a laptop/netbook at all. It’s a very large iPod touch!

That said, if I were getting a portable computing device (notebook, netbook, etc…), I would seriously be looking at an iPad. It’s really lite at 1.5lbs yet still pretty large for screen space. 10 hour battery life is pretty nice, but lack of expansion and the AppPrison AppStore makes it a tough option to fully decide on.

Also, as an ebook reader, I would have to say that Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble, don’t have a lot to worry about. The reason e-ink was invented was to make a display that was easy on a readers eyes. Back-lit screens, no matter how they are back-lit, are not easy on a readers eyes. Otherwise, reading books with notebook computers would be way more popular. That said, the fact that the iPad can do so much more than just be an ebook reader, that Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble probably should worry a bit.

So, all that said, will I be running out to buy one when they are available? Even if I had the money to get one? Probably not. I’ll play with someone else’s iPad and if some generous relative gives me one for Christmas, I certainly won’t return it. However, I’m not all that excited about it.

I also, don’t see this being the “tablet computer” that will attract current tablet computer users. I’m thinking of doctors here. I could be wrong, but it just doesn’t seem like a device that they would want to switch to. Even if all the software that they currently use were available.

So, good luck Apple. I hope you do well with it. I just don’t see this being the iPod/iPhone device you are hoping it will be.

9 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Opinion

January 27, 2010

Hilarious!!! Apple's New iPad!

By Dave M.

Absolutely Perfect!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Humor

November 27, 2009

Started a Podcast: My Apple and Me

By Dave M.

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So a friend and I have started a new podcast called My Apple and Me. It’s basically just Steve and I shooting the breeze about Apple news and applications. We have actually been recording for a couple of months now, but we think we finally have a couple of good shows and decided it was time to publicize it.

My Apple and Me is a weekly show (mostly, there might be a break in that schedule on occasion) with Steve Hargrove and myself. We try to keep in around 30 minutes long and typically talk about Apple news and applications that we like both Desktop and iPhone/iPod touch apps.

It’s no “This Week In Tech”, but it’s not bad. The main idea is that we have fun recording it and hope that others have fun listening to it.

If you like it too, please post comments on the site. We would love to hear from our listeners and any suggestions will more than likely be taken.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in News, Site News

August 28, 2009

Bulk Apps: Apple Created The Problem Themselves

By Dave M.

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“Bulk Apps” or Mass Produced Applications have been an increasing problem with Apple’s AppStore for quite some time now. More and more developers are finding that they can “bulk up” their application catalog or portfolio by simply taking a simple template app, applying different data and publishing the application as a totally separate app.

They started out simply as e-books published to the AppStore one book as one application. Usually a book that is in the public domain. Then, actual book publishers saw that iPhone e-books were becoming popular and decided that they would join in and publish their books as e-books. At the time there were a couple of pretty good e-book reader apps out there for publishers to attach to and before you knew it, there were hundreds of e-books in the AppStore.

e-books have become a huge segment of the AppStore comprising over 9,500 titles ranging in price from Free to $20 and more. e-books are an acceptable “bulk” app because Apple gave developers little choice when it came to applications. Sure, you could put 10, 100, even 10,000 books in a single application. However, a book publisher wouldn’t want to because they would have to sell the application for hundreds if not the maximum $999.99.

The real problem started with a new type of application. Location-based apps as well as fan apps. Location-based applications pull data from RSS feeds, flickr, and other sources to create an application that doesn’t require an internet connection to get to the data. A developer pulls the data for a specific region together, creates an application for the AppStore, and published it. Before long, that developer has 100+ apps all using the same code base.

There are currently 71,617 published applications in the AppStore. This number is based on AppShopper.com’s tally. Games comprise the bulk of that number at nearly 20%. e-books take a good 13% and Entertainment another 13%. The rest of the AppStore categories are less than 10% each, the biggest of which is over 7% in the Travel category.

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Interestingly, one developer holds just over 13% (that’s equal to all the e-books that are published!) of the 71,617 published applications with a whopping 9,500+ applications. One developer! Brighthouse Labs currently holds the record for the largest collection of applications in the AppStore. Clearly, this is a lucrative business for Brighthouse Labs. It’s probably safe to say that there is more than one person behind this developer. I would even venture to guess that we are talking between 50 to 100 people work for Brighthouse Labs.

Update: Whoops, I don’t know where I came up with 9,500 apps for Brighthouse, that number should be 2,280 which is 3.2% of all the apps published, still an impressive number. 2,280 comes out to about 6 apps a day since the store was opened. Not inconceivable for a one or two developer shop to produce. However, from information garnered from other bulk application developers, it’s probable that Brighthouse employees around 20 or so people to turn out the apps that they do. Consider that Brighthouse didn’t start creating their apps back on July of last year. they have probably been punching out apps for about 8 months which equates to about 10 apps a day, 7 days a week, for 8 months.

Thanks Frank for pointing out my mistake there. I don’t know where the 9,500 came from unless I read the number of e-books as being the number from Brighthouse. I’m leaving the old text in but crossed out to show that I had made the mistake and corrected it.

I would also venture to guess that 95% or more are minimum wage or possibly even “sweat shop” labor that do the bulk of the work, no pun intended. In order for Brighthouse labs to have 9,500+ applications in the store, they would have had to submit to Apple, 24 applications a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year! That’s assuming they started submitting apps the day the AppStore opened!

Brighthouse Labs isn’t the only developer out there creating Bulk apps either. One such developer, Khalid Shaikh, was booted from the AppStore and their privileges to the iPhone development program revoked. At the time, he was the 3rd most prolific developer with over 900 applications published. Apple pulled the developer, not because he was a bulk developer, but because he was publishing copyrighted material in his apps.

Apple made a change to the way developers could sell their wares when they released OS 3.0 not long ago. A new feature called In-App Purchasing allows developers to combine their content into one application and still make money for their separate content. Comixology is taking advantage of this feature with their application “Comics“. Comics is a $0.99 application that allows you to download comics to your iPhone. They have a large collection of comics from 15+ publishers as well as creater-owned titles. There are several comics that are free, but the bulk of the titles cost $0.99. You don’t have to find these titles in the AppStore, you go into the Comics application, find a title you want, and tap a Buy button. You are charged through Apple for the purchase, but no new applications are downloaded to your iPhone/iPod touch. Its downloaded into the Comics application where you can read it at your leisure.

Game developers are taking advantage of this feature to offer new downloadable content for their games like the PS3 and XBOX-360 have done for years. Developers as well as patrons benefit from this since patrons don’t have to buy whole new applications for 3-5 times the price and the new content doesn’t take up extra space on their device. Developers benefit since they don’t have to charge 3-5 times the price which makes the content that more appealing to patrons.

The problem though, and the reason for the headline to this article, is that Apple should have thought of this before opening up the AppStore to developers back in 2008. Now, to be fair, no one predicted the rise of bulk apps back in 2008, so it’s hardly fair to blame Apple for this. However, if Apple had given developers the ability for In-App purchasing back in 2008, would we be seeing the Bulk application problem we are seeing today?

6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Opinion

July 31, 2009

FCC Looking Into GV Mobile and Google Voice Application Rejections

By Dave M.

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So the proverbial shit has hit the fan! Yep, the FCC is looking into the suspicious situation with Apple removing the AppStore applications GV Mobile and VoiceCentral as well as Googles unreleased Google Voice app.

A story posted on TechCrunch:

FCC Takes On Apple And AT&T Over Google Voice Rejection: “Earlier this week, we learned that Apple had suddenly begun to pull third party iPhone applications for Google Voice, citing the unconvincing rationale that they “duplicated” some of the iPhone’s functionality. We then broke the news that Apple had also rejected Google’s own official Google Voice application six weeks prior, sparking a din of complaints from developers and users alike over the arbitrary and possibly anti-competitive restrictions being imposed by Apple. AT&T, too, has been a target of frequent criticism as many of us believe it too may have also played a part in the decision.”

This is really really big news. According to TechCrunch, three letters were sent from the FCC. One to Apple, one to Google and the last to AT&T. They are trying to determine exactly what is going on and I would guess to see if AT&T had anything at all to do with the applications being removes/rejected.

If anyone can get to the bottom of this fiasco, the FCC can. I’m going to be glued to the news feeds for a couple of months to see how this plays out. Hopefully, the outcome will be a more public policy on AppStore rules and what exactly was the reason for the removal/rejection of the Google Voice applications.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in iPhone/iPod touch, News

July 24, 2009

Palm Testing Apple And It's Lawyers

By Dave M.

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I’m not sure what is going on in the minds of the executives of Palm. I can see Palm “trying” the idea of configuring the Pre’s USB presence to fool iTunes into thinking that a Pre plugged into a Windows box or Mac box with iTunes installed is actually an iPod. They tried it, Apple didn’t like it and changed iTunes to not allow the trick. That should have been the end of the story.

Nope, what a surprise, Palm released new OS software to circumvent the adjustments Apple made and now the Pre’s USB port says that it’s an Apple device and an iPod.

In fact Palm seems to think that Apple is violating the Vender ID that Apple was issued by not allowing other companies to take advantage of Apple’s hard work (albeit, the purchase of the iTunes software. Still, they have made significant changes to that software since it was purchased).

“Palm has released webOS 1.1, which, along with offering more robust EAS support for business users, re-enables Palm media sync,” said company spokesperson Lynn Fox. “Palm believes that openness and interoperability offer better experiences for users by allowing them the freedom to use the content they own without interference across devices and services, so on behalf of consumers, we have notified the USB Implementers Forum of what we believe is improper use of the Vendor ID number by another member.” – MacRumors.com

It almost looks like Palm is trying to use it’s user base as a “human shield” for what will inevitably be one heck of a lawsuit in the near future. Hiding behind such well intentioned beliefs is not going to save Palm in the courts. At least it had better not.

Now, Apple has every right to protect its Intellectual Property. The next step will be Apple adjusting iTunes yet again to disallow the Pre from syncing with iTunes. Will the next step after that be Palm updating it’s WebOS to circumvent Apple change again? Or will the next step be Apple sicking it’s bank of lawyers on Pre?

Come to think of it. Isn’t there a law, something like the DMCA that should protect Apple from such attacks to it’s IP? Well, in fact, it’s “strictly prohibited” by the USB Implementers Forum for a start.

When you apply for a USB Vendor ID, you sign a form that explicitly states that:

“Unauthorized use of assigned or unassigned USB Vendor ID Numbers and associated Product ID Numbers are strictly prohibited.” – Also from MacRumors.com

Who knows what the future holds here, but I can say that I hope it’s resolved soon. I really don’t like the idea of installing several iTunes updates a month just because Palm is too damn lazy to write it’s own software for syncing music with it’s newest device.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in News

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