These days, it’s hard to argue in favor of dedicated devices.
Smartphones have taken the place of consumer video recorders, point-n-shoot cameras and even the iPod.
Fitness bands — despite several recent product announcements from Jawbone, Fitbit and Microsoft — will seem silly once the Apple Watch hits shelves early next year.
In this world, Amazon continues to release e-ink Kindles each year, despite themselves making an entire line of iPad-style tablets.
Every summer, Apple takes the wraps off a new version of OS X. This past June, Craig Federighi introduced Yosemite. 1 His performance was electrifying, and throughout the week, he was seen taking selfies with developers, telling jokes and being the overall cool guy from Apple.
Beyond the flashiness of the keynote, however, there was real substance. OS X Yosemite is a big leap forward for OS X’s user interface and the way it interacts with iOS.
I wanted to follow up on some open items that have come up since I published my iPhone 6 review.
I — like many of you — am now carrying a space grey 64 GB iPhone 6.
In many ways, this is a hard device to review. Not only is my feedback limited to one of the two new devices, but by making the difference between the two basically a physical one, Apple has introduced choice and personal preference into the equation.
Of course, that something that Jobs-era Apple did, but in small ways. The iPod nano has been sold in about two dozen different shades, but always one size. With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (not to mention the endlessly-customizable Apple Watch), Apple is putting more control in the consumer’s hands than ever before.
Quote keeping is a problem with a thousand possible solutions.
Quotes can be stored in apps like Vesper, Simplenote, Evernote or even Google Docs. But the data entry sucks, and there’s no relationships built across pieces of data. There’s no structure to the data, leading to messy storage.
Take Evernote for example. I rely on it daily as my Anything Bucket. It does a good job at doing lots of things. It’s a generalist.
When Unread for iPhone launched back in February, it earned a spot on my home screen.
Today, it’s big brother, Unread for iPad is here.
The tablet version brings the same great gesture-based controls and clean design that Unread users are used to, but the reading experience is even better.
Because of its sliding panel design, Unread only ever shows one type of content at a time. For example, tapping on a list or filtered set slides in that content, one screen at at time, creating a clear hierarchy and path of action for the user.
I’ve used OmniFocus on and off over the years, but I’ve never used it to its full potential. I don’t use Contexts or Start Dates. I use one custom Perspective that has been replaced entirely by the app’s excellent Forecast mode.
All of that aside, I’ve been keenly interested in OmniFocus 2 for Mac’s development. When the initial beta phase ended, I was discouraged. OmniFocus 1 for Mac was aging, but once the betas fired back up, I jumped back in head-first.
Two years ago, I reviewed Phraseology, an iPad writing app, and was impressed with it.
Version 1 of the app offered powerful tools, including paragraph re-arranging, URL schemes, TextExapander, Markdown previews and lots of export options.
In my review, I came to this:
This app was built for writers, and it shows.
For a period of time, Phraseology was the writing app for iPad, in my opinion, but today, the landscape is very different. Byword is great, and Editorial brings a level of power that is nearly impossible to match.
Since iOS 7 landed last year, several venerable iOS apps have seen their place eroded by newcomers. The new UI and APIs have given countless developers new ways to tackle old ideas.
When I find an app I like, I stick with it. Heck, I rarely change where apps sit on my homescreen. I’ve used the same RSS client on my iPhone for years — Reeder. Reeder is great. In the wake of Google Reader, the developer has supports a ton of account types, and the UI overhaul for iOS 7 is pretty good.
Sharing things between the Mac and iOS devices has never been as easy as it should be. Even Apple’s own AirDrop can’t cross the platform boundary. Pastebot used to be the go-to application for slinging text and images from the iPhone to the Mac, and back again.
However, Tapbots seems to have forgotten about the app. While it’s still for sale, Pastebot hasn’t been optimized for the iPhone 5’s taller screen, and its website still boasts iOS 4 compatibility.
I’m no stranger to the iPad. I’ve had the original, the iPad 2, the iPad with Retina display and the iPad mini.
Over the years and through the generational changes, I’ve used my iPads for the same core set of tasks:
When the iPad mini came out last year, I jumped on it, excited to be able to do these things with something I could put in a coat pocket. In fact, I closed my iPad mini review this way:
WWDC 2013 was crazy: iOS 7, OS X Mavericks and a new, magical insane Mac Pro were all unveiled on stage, after one of the weirdest keynote moments I can remember seeing in a long time.
I was fortunate enough to be in San Francisco this year for the event. As one might imagine, iOS 7 dominated every conversation I had — and overheard — the rest of the week.
iOS 7 was the star of the show for good reason. The release is an insanely significant jump forward for Apple’s mobile operating system. From the re-vamped design to the new backgrounding APIs, it is clear that Apple had been hard at work on the release for some time. While the fact that iOS 7 has been re-built for the 64-bit A7 didn’t break until months later, the amount of work Apple showed off in June was impressive.
Today however, Apple’s other, much less popular operating system is the star: the one that powers things called “desktop computers” and “notebooks.”
I’m being a little sarcastic, but there’s no getting around it: Mac OS X is getting old. The first public beta landed on September 13, 2000, with Mac OS X 10.0 going on sale on March 24, 2001. While Mavericks is very different than Cheetah, there’s no doubt that the two are related.
The bones haven’t changed all that much over the last 13 years, but every time Apple updates OS X, it continues to improve and refine features and the underlying technologies that make them possible.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I firmly believe that OS X is the best consumer desktop operating system on the planet. It has undergone some major changes over the years, but it’s the same OS under the hood. OS X is still as stable, powerful and resilient to viruses and other malware as it has always been.
As with other OS X releases I’ve reviewed over the last few years, Mavericks packs features I’ve become attached to after using the first time.
However, features aren’t always enough to keep a nerd like me happy. In fact, I closed my Mountain Lion review with this:
Mountain Lion smoothes over most of the issues I’ve had with 10.7, but that isn’t enough to make me want to throw Mountain Lion a parade. The truth of the matter is this: Mountain Lion is a feature release. No matter how great or useful those features may be to the masses of iCloud users, it feels a little lazy. The new operating system is nice, but it’s not ground-breaking.
So how does Mavericks fit in with recent releases of OS X? Does it drive OS X further down the road Apple started on in 2011 with Lion? Or, like Mountain Lion, is it more about refinement? How many more rhetorical questions can I ask about things? Let’s dive in to Mavericks and see what all of the waves are about.
Sorry. I won’t make that joke again.