Because those who need Mac Pros will always need Mac Pros, I don’t think we’ll see a significant drop in their pricing. But we should see a large increase in performance, if the machine is to justify its top spot in the Macintosh product matrix.
As for me, well, for the first time in my Mac-using history, I’m contemplating an iMac as my next Mac—the Core i7 looks to be exactly what I want (other than the glossy screen, of course, but I can work around that problem). I don’t need expansion slots (they sit empty in my Mac Pro), I don’t need 32GB of RAM, and I don’t need four drive bays. I do need speed, though, and the Core i7 iMac seems to have lots of that to go around.
Steve Jobs on the ‘Digital Hub’
Once again, Jobs’ prediction proved crazy accurate. Today — just 8 years later — the Mac is the machine of choice for people who care about photography, video editing and music. Looking back, it’s clear Jobs had things like iLife and Apple’s pro applications in mind even back in early 2001, before the iPod and OS X had even shipped. It’s pretty impressive the amount of vision the guy has — and how hard Apple works to make that vision a reality.
(Just as a side note, it’s always painful to see Apple using slides with Marker Felt instead of Helvetica.)
Droid Battery Covers Falling Off?
This isn’t cool for an otherwise well-designed piece of hardware.
On Vanishing
It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.
Wired offered a $5,000 bounty — $3,000 of which would come out of my own pocket — to anyone who could locate me between August 15 and September 15, say the password “fluke,” and take my picture. Nicholas Thompson, my editor, would have complete access to information that a private investigator hired to find me might uncover: my real bank accounts, credit cards, phone records, social networking accounts, and email. I’d give Thompson my friends’ contact information so he could conduct interviews. He would parcel out my personal details online, available to whichever amateur or professional investigators chose to hunt for me. To add a layer of intrigue, Wired hired the puzzle creators at Lone Shark Games to help structure the contest.
That link goes to a wonderful 8-page article about Ratliff’s escape from himself, being chased around the country by readers who turned a simple $5,000 bounty into a quest. It’s a fascinating look into what it would take to start over in this age of ATMs, GPS tracking and ubiquitous data networks. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
Things Apple Can Learn From Android: Better Tie-in with the Cloud
Being built by Google, it’s no surprise that Android integrates with Google’s suite of online services seamlessly. Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar are synced over-the-air to Android handsets with little setup. On the other end, Google’s web apps can be used from any computer, regardless of OS, giving users their data anytime, anywhere.
Apple offers MobileMe as a similar service, but with an emphasis on syncing with rich desktop applications, not web-based services. MobileMe works well, but at $100/year, is pricey for what it does. Like Google Sync, MobileMe pushes customers’ data over the air.
iPhone customers can use Google Sync to have their Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar pushed to their phones just like Android handsets. The problem is Google Sync for the iPhone uses Exchange, meaning corporate types — myself included — can’t use Google Sync and MobileMe at the same time, effectively locking people into MobileMe.
In short, Apple needs to offer customers options. There’s no reason the iPhone can’t have Google Sync built-in. There’s no reason the iPhone should be limited to just “grown-up” contact sources — Android devices can also hook into Facebook for contacts. As more things move to the cloud, iPhone customers want options. Options that the iPhone doesn’t offer in its present state. Cloud computing is the future, and Google’s services kick Apple’s services’ collective cloud asses. MobileMe is mediocre at best, and way too expensive. It simply can’t compete with Google’s offerings. Apple needs to embrace that.
Simplenote on the Desktop
I’ve preached the goodness of Simplenote before. It’s a great iPhone/web app combo that allows users to access text-only notes from anywhere.
Up until recently, the best option to run Simplenote as an application on the Mac was in Fluid.
Enter JustNotes. It’s a menubar app that syncs with Simplenote, but with a grace and styling that Fluid can’t match. I’ve been using it for several days and have no complaints. If you use Simplenote, check it out.
Developers Hesitant About Android Market?
“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference.
Rochefort said the company has cut back on investment mostly due to weaknesses of Android’s application store.
“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” Rochefort said.
Of course the iPhone’s App Store makes more money than Android Market. If anyone is surprised by this, they’ve been living under a rock. I think the money is what keeps most developers from leaving the platform over Apple’s stifling policies.
The Heart of Chrome OS
Ars has a great piece up about the guts behind Chrome OS. It’s pretty awesome how much Google has managed to remove from a normal OS. It’s brilliant.
‘Not That Big of a Deal’
Steve Jobs excels in writing succinct emails.
‘It’s Too Complicated’
They treat iPhone apps the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes. Apple is the channel; they own the user; if you want to reach users, you do it on their terms. The record labels agreed, reluctantly. But this model doesn’t work for software. It doesn’t work for an intermediary to own the user. The software business learned that in the early 1980s, when companies like VisiCorp showed that although the words “software” and “publisher” fit together, the underlying concepts don’t. Software isn’t like music or books. It’s too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that’s what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style.
What is Google Chrome OS?
Chrome OS Gets Previewed
The entire system is web-based and runs in the Chrome browser — right down to USB drive contents, which show up in a browser tab, and the notepad, which actually creates a Google Docs document. Web apps are launched from a persistent apps panel, which includes Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu, among others, and background apps like Google Talk can be minimized to “panels” that dock to the bottom of the screen.
Nifty, but nothing surprising here. The hardware bit is interesting, though:
As far as launch, Google’s not talking about specifics until next year, but Chrome OS won’t run on just anything — there’ll be specific reference hardware. That means you can’t just download Chrome OS and go, you’ll have to buy a Chrome OS device approved by Google.
This of course is all about drivers. By only sanctioning the OS to run on certain hardware, Google can ensure users get a great experience, and don’t have to fiddle with hardware drivers. Just like Apple does with the Mac and OS X.