Documents To Go - the premiere mobile app for editing Office documents - has been released for the iPhone. This makes the iPhone even more attractive to businesses.
Category: Apple
’11 Million’ Safari Downloads: Fact, Fiction, or a Little of Both With a Side of PR Spin?
From Apple’s PR group:
“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”
11 million downloads sounds real, real impressive. And without a doubt, Safari 4 is one of - if not the best - browser out there, for either platform. But is the download count misleading? MacWorld’s Robert Strohmeyer thinks it may be:
New MacBook Pros Have Slower SATA?
From the MacRumors forums:
1.) It appears nearly certain that the new 13“ and 15” MacBook Pros are all reporting a SATA interface running at 1.5Gb and not the faster 3.0Gb rate that has been in pretty common use for the last few years. These new models have the Secure Digital (SD) slot and also appear to have redesigned motherboards.
2.) Those who are using standard hard disk drives will probably see no difference in performance. If that is you, you can stop reading now.
iPhone 3G S Rocking at 600Mhz
…the iPhone 3G S sports 256MB of RAM — up from 128 in the original iPhone and iPhone 3G — as well as a faster processor running at 600MHz, compared to 412MHz in the first two iterations of the device. The second-generation iPod touch also sports a faster processor than that found in the first two generations of iPhone, running at 532MHz.
Sweet.
Simulated Hard Drive Crashes Strike the Fear of Failure in the Hearts of Mortals
From a DriveSavers email blast:
DriveSavers just launched the first and only hard drive simulator for iPhone and iPod touch! Known as DriveSaver, the free hard drive simulator features a virtual environment that allows you to explore the inner workings of a common hard drive. It simulates various types of hard drive failures using ultra-realistic sounds and visuals and includes essential backup and data loss prevention tips.
DriveSaver is a fantastic demonstration tool to help illustrate hard drive data storage technology. It’s educational, it’s functional and it’s fun! It might even help you identify problems with a bad hard drive. Anyone who has ever wanted to see inside a hard drive or learn how drives work and why they fail, must try it!
The App Wall
Check out this post by Gizmodo, showing off part of Apple’s display at WWDC:
Apple stationed a little bit of eye candy in the Moscone Center lobby: a 5x4 matrix of Cinema Display monitors, set adorned with thousands iPhone app icons. The twist? Whenever someone purchases the app, it pulsates.
Apparently it’s not quite real-time, but the effect is extremely slick. Grouping the icons by their approximate colors creates a subtle gradient, which is a nice touch.
Going Pro
A few days ago, John Gruber wrote:
Also, in Mac news, I’d bet a small amount on a refresh to Apple’s notebook lineup, with a branding change where the “MacBook Pro” designation is used for all aluminum models,and just plain non-Pro “MacBook” is used for plastic models.
Gruber was right. The new 13-inch based notebooks both have backlit keyboards and FireWire 800 ports. The 15-inch got a new display panel, but lost its ExpressCard/34 Slot. All of the machines are faster, built-in batteries (like the 17-inch model) and all 3 sport lower prices.
Staggered Releases
Apple will be releasing the final version of the 3.0 software to exsiting iPhone and iPod touch customers on June 17, with the new iPhone - the iPhone 3GS - two days later on the 19th.
It’s a good thing. Last year - on July 11 - Apple released the iPhone 3G and OS 2.0 on the same day. Between all the new devices being activate in iTunes and everyone upgrading (and thus re-activating with iTunes), the iTunes servers bit the dust. Hopefully by spreading the pain out over a couple of days, Apple’s infrastructure won’t fail this time around.
From the Diary of a Keynote-Maker
Sunday, May 31
Dear Diary, Jill woke me up in the middle of the night, saying I was crying again in my sleep. I keep having the same dream. Phil’s on stage, and the clicker stops working. He makes a little joke, and retrieves the spare one from the table. We always have a spare one. But the extra clicker also fails. Instead of joking, he takes the clicker and chunks it into the Cinema Display on the table, then grabs the demo iPhone, smashing it into bits on the stage.
My Official WWDC Predictions
WWDC is set to start Monday with a keynote from Phil Schiller at 10 a.m. PST. Here’s what I think we will see.
Snow Leopard
• A refined GUI - darker, more like iLife ’09.
• A good look at how Exchange integration for iCal, Mail and Address Book will crush Entourage.
• Apple will show a bunch of graphs showing how much faster it is than Leopard.
• A quick tour of 10.6 Server. Expect updates to imaging and push mail/calendars/contacts. Think ‘MobileMe for Companies.’
Steve The ‘One More Thing?’
It’s great to hear that Jobs is doing well and is on track to return to full-time duty, but I don’t expect to see him at WWDC. Sure, it’d be a surprise, the audience (yours truly included) would go into conniptions, and the stock would jump five or ten points. But then what happens the next time there’s a keynote address where Jobs is not the scheduled speaker? Everyone will expect Jobs to show up as a “surprise.“ I’d love to proven wrong on this one, though.
File This One Under ‘Really Bad Ideas’
The Apple Cafe was to be a high-tech cybercafe where you could order healthy food while videoconferencing with people at nearby tables, surfing the Web, and pulling up movies or TV shows on a small kiosk screen at your table.