Darrell Etherington at TechCrunch:
Before today, you needed a developer account to help test Apple’s upcoming software releases before they hit the general user population. You didn’t need to actually develop anything, but it would still cost you $99 per year to partake, and technically it was still sort of against the rules. Today, Apple introduced its OS X Beta Seed Program to make pre-release Mac operating system software available to all who want to help try it out.
Ben Thompson:
What kind of company is Apple, anyway?
They certainly have great technology, but to call them a technology company doesn’t seem quite right. They have great marketing, but to call them a marketing company isn’t true either. They have an incredible retail chain, but to call them a retailer is clearly off base as well.
You could ask a similar question about Nike.
With lots of hubbub around Nike and its Fuelband this weekend, Ben’s article is well worth the read.
Apple’s new environmental page is pretty cool, and I like Tim Cook as narrator.
Cleaning up OS X’s pesky “Open With” contextual menu isn’t hard.
Rumors continue to fly about a slim, 12-inch Retina MacBook Air that could be coming later this year. Here’s the gist of it:
…a new 12 inch notebook without fan assembly. It comes with a new trackpad design that doesn’t include the mechanical button, as we do on current MacBooks.
Here’s a mention of the machine from October of last year:
We expect the unprecedented 12” model will boast both the portability of the 11” model, and productivity of the 13” model. The high resolution display will also offer the outstanding visual experience of the Retina MacBook Pro. The offering will likely be lighter and slimmer than the existing MacBook Air to further highlight ease of portability in the cloud computing era. We think the form factor will showcase a much improved clamshell structure, and that it will redefine laptop computing once again following the milestone created by the MacBook Air.
Juli Clover:
Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Greg Christie is set to depart from the company after clashing with Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design who oversees and guides the Human Interface teams, reports 9to5Mac. Ive first took on a role “providing leadership” for the Human Interface teams in late 2012, following Scott Forstall’s departure from the company.
Christie has led much of Apple’s software design and reports to Craig Federighi, who oversees development of iOS and OS X, but Christie interacts with Ive during design meetings. Christie’s team was responsible for redesigning iOS 7, which reportedly led to disagreements with Ive.
Apple PR:
Apple today announced that it will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 2 through June 6 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. At this year’s five-day conference, developers from around the world will learn about the future of iOS and OS X, giving them the latest tools and technologies to continue creating the most innovative apps for the millions of iOS and Mac customers worldwide. WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions, over 1,000 Apple engineers, hands-on labs to help developers integrate new technologies and fine tune their apps, as well as the Apple Design Awards which showcase the best apps from the past year.
Dr. Drang:
There’s been a tendency in recent years for reviewers of Mac and iOS software to heap praise on “opinionated design.” This phrase can usually be translated as “software that doesn’t allow much user customization.” For software that isn’t used often or isn’t used for long stretches at a time, a lack of customization options is no problem—it’s not worth spending a lot of time tweaking a program you spend little time with. But for bread-and-butter applications, like text editors, mail clients, calendars, and web browsers, tweaking the settings is as important as adjusting the driver’s seat in your car. You want to be comfortable with things you spend a lot of time with.
Father Drang:
After using Macs exclusively from 1985 on, I reckoned it was time to light out for Linux territory near the end of 1996, just before Apple bought NeXT. But I didn’t leave because I thought Apple was about to go under, I left because the platform had turned to shit. The purchase of NeXT, and the courting of Be that came before it, was Apple finally admitting that it didn’t have the chops to fix an operating system that was in dire straits.
With Office for iPad being released this week and Microsoft reportedly backing away from its anti-iPad campaign, change is underway at the software giant.
There’s an obvious reason for this. The company’s new CEO Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air in Redmond.
Clearly Office for iPad was in the works before Nadella was promoted to CEO in February. There’s evidence of Office for iPad that surfaced (hrm!) back in October 2013 and December of 2012. Eric Slivka’s Mac Rumors post in October suggests that Microsoft was working on bringing a “touch-first” version of Office to its own Windows platform before iOS.
image via Federico
The epic burns aside — I chuckled at the Microsoft CEO’s use of the word magic — this exchange highlights something that’s bothered me for a while.
I really find Tim Cook’s approach to Twitter frustrating, despite the massive retweet numbers and blog posts spurred on by each tweet. The use of hashtags coupled with the grammatical errors make him seem unprofessional. While I appreciate that it’s probably Tim himself at the keyboard, having an employee or intern look over these things before they go out the door would be great.
Confession time. I changed my short name on my Titanium PowerBook running OS X Jaguar and blew everything up. It took hours to get my data back where it belonged, and I had to do some nasty things to file permissions to make it all work again.
While the retired Genius in me gets the shakes thinking about this, Dan Frakes is here to help.