512 Pixels

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 every application 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.

AppleInsider:

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.

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. A nd 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.

I took a photo this morning from my bathroom and played with it in Photoshop to make it all look tiny:

Macworld dug this up:

Instead of typing instructions, the user rolls the mouse on a desktop. As it moves, the cursor - an arrow that points to specific points on the screen - moves accordingly. The user can give instructions by pointing the mouse to pictures on the screen, such as a file cabinet or wastepaper basket. Or, by using a graphics package called MacPaint, he can draw his own creations.

A friend of mine reminded me of the Lynx text web browser tonight. Here’s a blurb from the download page:

Lynx has become quite popular as a “Universal Access” web browser for the Visually handicapped. Though Lynx is limited as it does not support JavaScript. Lynx was originally developed at the University of Kansas. In 1995 Lynx 2.4.2 was released under the GNU Public License by UKansas, since then it has been maintained and extended by a group of volunteers. This is the latest version, and has been compiled into an OS X package.

And here’s how it renders ForkBombr. Beautiful. Sometimes, I wish the tech world was still this simple.

Kbase Article TS2377:

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

TUAW’s Robert Palmer, on the best way to keep a Mac safe:

Also recommended: Not downloading pirated software (and their associated tools) on peer-to-peer networks. If you do choose to get your software that way, you have nobody to blame but yourself if your system gets infected.

I want to hug that man. This is one of those things that I would have bit my tongue to keep from saying while behind the Genius Bar.

Michael Miller of PC Mag looks back at his first interview with the Macintosh team:

Most of the time I was meeting with other members on the team, but I remember Jobs coming in – even then he was very charismatic: intense, proud of the work, and a bit prickly about any criticism. He and his folks were quick to put down the IBM PC and its clones for not pushing the envelope and instead settling for “mediocrity.”

[…]

The Mac team were the “renegades” of Apple, and proud of that status: the original units had the signatures of the 47 members of the Apple team inscribed on the inside of the case, even though most users would never see it.

Macworld’s Dan Moren, on 99-cent iPhone applications:

So what’s the solution? The right answer, I think, would be to retrain consumers to stop looking at the single metric of how cheap something is and reinforce the idea of goods costing what they’re worth. Unfortunately, we don’t have the hundred years and advanced brainwashing equipment that such a proposition would likely require.

The whole article is brilliant.

The New York Times has posted a slick little feature on the effect of Jobs on Apple, and they echo the point I made the other day:

Apple came up with some amazing products without Jobs, and will do so after he is long gone, but they have to keep the product line clean and clear.

The feature highlights a fact that I had forgotten: In 1993 alone, Apple releases 19 new machines. Here’s a bit from the Times in 1993:

The new machines include the first color model in the style of a single-unit computer and video monitor like the original Macintosh. The new Macintosh Color Classic model includes a 10-inch Sony Trinitron screen and will have a suggested retail price of $1,389. The line also includes the first color model in Apple’s popular line of portables, called the Powerbook 165C, which will sell for $3,395.

Apple will also show a new model in its LC line, the LC III, which is a lower-priced color machine primarily intended for education, home and small business; a new line called Centris, aimed at mainstream business users and intended to replace most of the Mac II line, and a new Quadra, the 800, aimed at people who use Macintoshes for demanding production work, like magazine layout.

Simple has always worked for Apple. And it will continue to work for them in the future.

Ars Technica has updated their look, their background software and hardware, ad placement and more as of this morning:

We also knew that we needed to slim our pages down quite a bit. Our old design was image heavy thanks to all the rounded corners and polish. With the new site, the preponderance of images we do serve will be associated with stories, and not the design. And thanks to increased CPU overhead again, we can gzip our content before serving it to you. All in all, Ars is lighter and faster than before. You can’t appreciate the full effects just yet, because we have tweaking to do now that the site is live, but hopefully you can already tell the difference.

Another factor adding into the increased speed is that we’ve actually eliminated 33 percent of our ad placements. At a time when other sites are cramming more and more ads on their pages, we went in the opposite direction. We now have two major display ad positions instead of three, and I hope you appreciate our efforts to keep things reasonable. None of you work for free, and we can’t either. But we don’t want to follow other sites and explode advertising everywhere just because of an economic downturn.