PC World has some fun examples of what to do with older Macs – including robots, car-puters and more.
Adobe Flash Murders Computers
Jon Armstrong of Blurbomat (he’s married to Heather of Dooce), has posted this jaw-dropping screenshot of his Mac Pro working way too hard. The culprit? Adobe Flash.
Steve Jobs, on the Television
Out of a Rolling Stone interview in 2003:
The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. Because the average American watches five hours a day of television, and television is a passive medium. Television doesn’t turn your brain on. Or, television can be used to turn your brain off, and that’s what it’s mostly used for. And that’s a wonderful thing sometimes – but not for five hours a day.
That’s why we don’t have a television in our house.
Computers in Media
Starring the Computer is a site dedicated to pointing out computers in TV shows and movies. Pretty fun to click through.
iPhoto 09’s Flickr Support Seems Half-Baked at Best
Fraser Speirs is the developer for the wonderful FlickrExport tools for iPhoto and Aperture (I use the Aperture plugin every day) and Darkslide, an iPhone app that allows an excellent Flickr experience on the handheld.
When Apple announce iPhoto 09 was going to have a built-in Flickr exporter, I was worried. Often times, when Apple “adopts” a technology that was available as a 3rd party add-on, usually that 3rd party add-on goes away, but Fraser Speirs’ own look at iPhoto ‘09 may prove that sometime the 3rd party guys get it right:
iPhoto ‘09 really, really wants to make Photosets for you. When you select even one photograph to upload, iPhoto will create a single-photo set for you. You have no way to stop this from happening. Do you put every photo you upload to Flickr in a Photoset? I certainly don’t. That said, I suppose this makes sense if you’re dumping an iPhoto “Event” en masse into Flickr.
[…]iPhoto’s sync connection to Flickr critically depends on you not deleting the photoset that iPhoto created for you when the photo was uploaded. If you delete that set from Flickr, the syncing is permanently and irretrievably broken as far as I can tell, since there’s no way to recreate the link from the Flickr source list item to another set on Flickr.
The iPhoto-creating-a-photoset thing is annoying. Real annoying, but Speirs’ review goes a lot deeper. Go take a look. I think I’ll be staying put with Aperture and FlickrExport.
‘The Pluto Files’
A hilarious interview on The Daily Show with Neil DeGrasse Tyson who wrote a book called The Pluto Files:
Photos of New Porsche Museum Makes Users Lick Their Screens
Dear CNET, you are why my iMac is now all slimy:
The museum building, designed by Roman Delugan from Delugan Meissl Associated Architects in Vienna, Austria, touches the ground at only three points and so appears to be floating.
Possible Future Uses of the ‘App Store’
With the advent of iPhone 2.0, Apple’s App Store has made it easy for users to find, purchase, and install software on their iPhone anywhere – adding programs is no longer dependent on a “host computer.” Macworld’s Ryan Faas ponders what could be next for the App Store:
Since netbooks essentially fit in between a smart phone and a full-featured computer, they’re a logical step for App Store-style software distribution. In fact, many of the constraints on netbooks and smart phones are the same: small screen size, limited memory and processing capabilities, and restricted storage for the applications themselves. Since many netbooks are designed to be easy to use and carry and often serve as a second computer, making app installation simple is an excellent idea.
[…]
Apple is probably in the best position to deliver a netbook with an App Store. The company is no stranger to creating stripped-down versions of its flagship Mac OS X operating system, and its upcoming Snow Leopard OS X update is designed to be more streamlined. In fact, the iPhone and iPod Touch both run a version of Mac OS X, as does the Apple TV. It wouldn’t take much for the company to create an operating system, the developer frameworks and an extension of the existing App Store for an Apple-based netbook.
Brilliant idea. My new HP Mini 1000 runs XP fairly well, but I am thinking of dumping Windows for Ubuntu (which is by far the most popular build of Linux for end users) but the lack of applications (and the work involved with compiling and installing applications) is worrisome. Apple could really knock it out of the park with a netbook attached to an App Store.
About Those ‘Push Notifications’
Back in June, Apple showed off its solution to the problem of iPhone apps not being able to run in the background – push notifications. Basically, Apple would relay updates from the Cloud and push them to the phone. The most obvious winners would be apps like AIM. Now, if I close the app, I have no way of knowing if someone tried to contact me via AIM unless I go open the app. The notification system would be able to update my iPhone – even with the app closed – and tell me that someone needed my attention.
Here at the end of January, there’s no push notification system. And Macworld’s Dan Moren is okay with it:
But what Apple didn’t necessarily take into account was the user. Right now, you might get text messages popping up dialog boxes when you’re browsing the Web or checking your e-mail, but imagine that everyapplication on the iPhone had the ability to interrupt you. Sure, you’d probably be able to turn the notifications on and off for individual apps, but all it takes is one irresponsible application, and you’re inundated with dialog boxes and literal bells and whistles.
[…]
Maybe that’s the simple answer: that people—to wit, users—just don’t care. They’ve learned to adapt to the iPhone’s way of doing things, and that way doesn’t include notifications or multitasking…at the moment, anyway. At some point in the future it seems likely that Apple will introduce a new feature that takes care of the issues that notifications would have addressed, and it appears that most users are content to wait until then.
While on one hand, it’s frustrating to see Apple’s idea turn into vaporware, on the other hand, Moren is on to something – all of our iPhones would be going crazy all the time. And all of us would be going crazy when the system (which seemed quite complicated) went down.
Honestly, I think the only two apps I would use it for would be Remember the Milk and Byline.
Made on an Apple II+
iDVD: The Kid Eating Lunch Alone in the Crowded School Cafeteria
At this year’s Macworld event, iDVD got no mention when marketing chief Phil Schiller took the wraps off iLife ’09. Even the iLife banners at the event excluded any mention of the product. Since then, Apple has issued two press releases on iLife ’09, and in both cases iDVD was relegated to one-off mentions as software capable of “creating DVDs.” Similarly, references to the software on the company’s iLife product page are anything but standout.
We’re one step closer to an Apple that believes optical media is dead.
Fighting the iPhone with the Cloud
I’ve always been a heavy-duty user of both iCal and Address Book. If something doesn’t get entered, it doesn’t happen. I put my wedding in iCal, for crying out loud – complete with an Event Reminder that morning (in case the hangover I would earn at my bachelor party was enough to erase my mind).
In college, I was a Newton user. It synced with iCal and Address Book very well, most of the time. I also used .Mac (sounds retro now) for email and backing up my contacts and calendars to my iDisk. After the Newton, I used a Treo in the 8 months leading up the iPhone launch. The Treo ran the now-defunct Palm OS on a Palm Treo 680. It synced with my Mac using mark/space’s Missing Sync software – again with .Mac in use for email and backups.
Then the iPhone launch. I jumped on board as soon as possible, and synced like everyone else for a long time – over USB.
When MobileMe came out in the summer of 2008, I started syncing over the air with my contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and of course, email. While rocky at the beginning, MobileMe eventually ran fairly smoothly for me, even as I added two more Macs to the mix.
In the past, I used my other devices to sync directly to iCal’s To Do list, but MobileMe doesn’t offer To-Do syncing. In fact, the iPhone (before 3rd party apps) had to no task management program, unless you count the pitifully weak Notes app (which doesn’t sync with Mail, even though Apple had said it would at one point).
When Apple announced the SDK, I was hoping someone would make a kick-ass task management program that would sync over the air with an on-line service. I settled on Remember the Milk. There are a handful of apps in the App Store that sync with it (including one written by the RTM gang, which I use) and their web interface is clean and easy. RTM has become the epicenter of what I do – in conjunction with iCal, I’m getting way more done and getting yelled at by fewer people.
Everything was smooth sailing for a while, until I had a couple of weeks of on-again/off-again service with MobileMe’s email that caused me some issues. So, I switched to Gmail, and set my MobileMe email to forward automatically. Gmail’s web interface is nice and simple, and the uptime is far better than MobileMe’s. Also, Address Book can sync with Google contacts, so I have my contacts on Gmail and my local machines.
Additionally, I can load “gadgets” in Gmail’s sidebar, so I can chat (with AIM and Google Chat), and manage my RTM tasks all looking at one place – my inbox. I’ve taken what used to be spread 4 applications (iChat, Safari, iCal and Mail) and put them all in one tab in Safari. And I live in that tab everyday.
So why even use MobileMe? If I could, I would drop MobileMe, setup iCal to sync with Google Calendar and save myself the $99/year. I could even use this method to sync my handful of Macs I use on a daily basis that are now tied together with MobileMe, and use the browser-based tools on my netbook and when I’m away from my machines. The only two things I would lose by moving to Google for all of this junk is bookmark syncing and iDisk – but with services like Dropbox, the loss iDisk would be no big deal. And I can live without bookmark syncing
There’s one thing keeping me from an all-Google fix: If you have an Exchange account setup on an iPhone, it disables USB syncing for data.
Yes, really. This means that I couldn’t sync locally with my machine. And there can only be one Exchange account at a time on the iPhone, so even a service like NuevaSync isn’t going to help me.
Effectively, since we use Exchange at work, I have to use MobileMe for syncing any personal data with my iPhone. So for now, I’m syncing my contacts with MobileMe to get them on my iPhone, and with Google to get them in Gmail. iCal just syncs with MobileMe – I can get to my events at me.com if needed.
Looks like I’ll be forking over another $99 when my MobileMe subscription expires in 2 weeks.