I stand by my earlier analysis that iBooks Author and iTunes U were the two most important parts of Apple’s recent education announcement. With iBooks Author, we now have a very simple way to make high-quality electronic texts for use in the classroom. It will be to course materials what Keynote was to presentations.
iTunes U is a massively powerful tool for running a classroom full of iOS devices. It’s extremely simple to use for teachers and the overhead of adoption is as close to zero as you can get: install iTunes U, upload some materials and post class messages and assignments as you go along.
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On Fraudulent iOS Apps
Recently there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of fraudulent apps getting attention — even top sales positions — in the iPhone and iPad App Store. Some scam apps are copy-cats that duplicate as closely as possible the name and icon of popular games in order to confuse consumers and get them to buy a scam app instead of the real thing. This costs the consumer money for the scam app and developers money for the lost sale. Others scam apps appear to be byte-for-byte copies, stolen whole-cloth and offered for sale side-by-side with the original. This still costs the developer money for the lost sale, and while consumers get a functioning app, it’s likely not one with any support going forward. Still other scam apps rip off the copyright of a popular brand (like Pokemon) for bogus apps that do nothing but cheat customers out of their money.
MacStories Interviews the Omni Group’s Ken Case
Mountain Lion Safety Tips
Old Mac Icon Wallpaper Pack
Mountain Lion Deprecates X11 and Carbon Core
Messages is Just iChat in Drag
On Scrup
For some time, I’ve been using Droplr, but I’ve always had a few reservations about it:
- I only ever use it for screen shots.
- I don’t have access to the files on my own server, as Droplr uses an S3 account they control.
This morning, in an attempt to avoid a big project I should be working on, I decided to try to find an alternative. I have, in Scrup.
Scrup in an open-source menubar app that — when coupled with your own FTP server — re-creates the main functionality of Droplr — easy sharing.
It’s All About the Experience, Baby
There’s been a lot of talk about if Apple is making OS X more like iOS or not. It’s gone from a debate to a philosophical battle, but I think everyone’s missing a big point:
Mountain Lion is all about the features, baby. 1
Just look at the new apps Apple is adding to OS X:
(And that’s without talking about AirPlay mirroring, Gatekeeper or other features that aren’t stand-alone apps.)
Comparing Mountain Lions
Apple gave the world a sneak peek at Mac OS X Mountain Lion. It boasts some impressive new features, integrating some of iOS 5’s most popular utilities. But instead of merely telling you what they are, we decided to also compare Apple’s Mountain Lion to … a REAL Mountain Lion!
Hilarious.
MathRumors
‘Moving In Together’
And then yesterday, OS X and iOS announced an impromptu decision. Many had already (reluctantly) seen it coming but most chose to ignore the possibility, hurt that OS X might do that to them (to them!). But now it’s real, the two are moving in together, and that means a lot of things for the end-user.
The only thing I dislike is the use of impromptu. Mountain Lion is the result of years of work and planning.