A couple of days ago I made some predictions surrounding what Apple would be announcing for its latest version of the iPhone OS 4.0. Not to toot my own horn, but I was right on more than a few of them (including my prediction that Jobs would wear a turtleneck were he in attendance). So let’s get right to it and take a look at the 7 announcements regarding the latest iPhone OS and how they’ll affect us as iPhone die-hards.
Hot on the heels of the iPad release, Apple has revealed that they’ll be making an announcement this week regarding iPhone OS 4.0. While not much more information has come forth beyond that, I’m going to go ahead and make a handful of predictions regarding the event:
Some of these are obviously a given, but I’m totally pumped to see what type of upgrades will be ready for my iPhone hopefully sometime this summer. What features are you anticipating?
I just wanted to share this as I ran across it yesterday. I never gave much thought to an alternative browser on the iPhone. Safari’s kind of right there and it just never occurred to me how unhappy I was with it. But then a few things came to mind. Things like:
Incredibly, it turns out there’s been a an App Store approved browser, Vanilla Surf (iTunes link) that boasts all of these features and more such as:
I’ve only spent a little bit of time with it so far, but it seems like a winner. I will say I did have it crash on me once, but that may be due to my iPhone being jailbroken and eating up more memory than it ought to rather than a problem with the app. My understanding is that all 3rd party browsers in the App Store are required to be built upon the Safari framework, but with a boatload of features that probably should have been in Safari, it’s easy to recommend Vanilla Surf so far. I mean, we no longer have to be forced to use an operating system’s browser on a PC, so why should we tolerate it on a mobile platform? So enjoy your tab-switching, non-forced-refreshy goodness!
For all of you switchers out there or if you’re just new to OS X environment entirely. You may have run into a pesky problem when using tab to navigate through forms as you’ll notice OS X, by default, will only tab to text fields and list boxes. This is fairly retarded as it forces you to reach for the mouse over and over again if you’re navigating a large number of UI elements. So, in an effort to keep you informed and hopefully keep you from smashing your skull into the keyboard frustratedly, below are the steps needed to enable tabbing between all controls and not just text fields and list boxes.
1. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard
2. Make sure that the All Controls radiobox is checked (which, again you can’t tab to until this is turned on) under the ‘Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:‘ section.
Why, you’ll be a tabbing fool with this little tidbit! So go on, go file your taxes or something and make sure you think of me in gratitude every time you don’t have to reach for the mouse.
Apple launched their much talked about tablet yesterday, iPad. As I’m sure most of you know, Nicole and I are big fans of Apple products and had been reading the rumors of the fabled device over the past 6 months, eagerly anticipating the launch of the next hot gadget. While I’d very much been considering building a hackintosh netbook leading up to yesterday, I kept holding out to see if Apple could deliver a comparable experience in an official Apple product. Did they deliver? Read on to find out.
Before I launch into what’s holding me back from running out to grab an iPad in a couple of months at launch, let’s take a look at the raw specs-
iPad is a tablet with a 9.7″ screen, integrated microphone and speaker, weighing in at a mere 1.5 pounds. The screen features capacitive multitouch powered by a custom-built CPU from Apple, the A4 (1GHz). Storage capacity is either 16, 32, or 64GB. As for connectivity, the iPad boasts integrated WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and optional 3G connectivity should you want to sign up for a data plan with AT&T. There is also a 30-pin dock connector and Apple projects over a month of standby time with an average of 10 hours of battery life.
All of this starts at $499, though if you got the 64GB, 3G-enabled version you’ll be looking to spend over $800.
So what does this all amount to? Effectively an over-sized iPod Touch. Yes, there are some differences. For example, Apple has overhauled their default applications to take advantage of the extended screen real estate and many of them (the Calendar in particular) look quite good! Also, the iBooks application which allows you to purchase books online and have them immediately displayed on a very slick looking digital bookshelf the Kindle look decidedly bland.
However, before I can throw my support behind this product, I need to examine who it’s intended for and what market it’s attempting to conquer. The answer is a difficult one, as Apple appears to be defining this new market as the middle ground between the netbook and the mobile phone. However, with their emphasis on iBooks now, they’re clearly looking to make headway in the e-reader market as well. Trying to conquer all of these at once with the iPad is an undertaking indeed.
At first glance their all-in-oneder device looks impressive, though there are some glaring caveats that I just can’t shake at present. Chief among them is again the locked-down nature of the platform. Apple claims nearly all of the apps for the iPhone will work on the iPad, it’s still crippled in terms of serving as a legitimate computing platform. If Apple says you can put an app on there, great! If you want software that isn’t approved though, you’re out of luck (unless of course, you’re into jailbreaking).
Perhaps more than just the locked out software base, the internet’s cries for full-blown multitasking on Apple’s family of touch-based devices have again fallen on deaf ears. Could battery life be impacted by this? Most certainly, but the option should at least be there should we desire. The Android platform is already making headway in this area and it’s a shame to see Apple falling behind in such a basic area of modern computing.
I suppose after considering all Apple has to offer with the iPad, I’m just not completely sure if it’s for me. Sure I’ve been wanting an e-reader for a while and this device clearly outshines the Kindle imho, but I can’t help but think that buyer’s remorse would stalk me down post-purchase, reminding me of all of the tiny missed opportunities for such a sexy device.
What about you all? Will you be picking up an iPad?
Copy. Paste. How many times would you say you do that in any given day? If you work at all with a computer (and really, who doesn’t?), then you likely perform those actions constantly. It’s an old, old computing concept that many of us likely take for granted that really hasn’t changed much since its inception. However, while I certainly love Apple products, they were a little late to the copy and paste party until iPhone OS 3.0 came out. But what would happen if your iPhone’s copy and paste functionality were taken a step further, allowing you the functionality of a clipboard manager to save commonly used text and images? More still, what if you could organize those clippings into a folder structure for quick access on your phone and extend that functionality further by syncing your clippings with your Mac? Well, as it turns out thanks to the fine people over at Tapbots now you can!
Aaaaaand unfortunately, GeeksPodcast didn’t receive one. However, we do have a picture of the invite from one of those bigger, hipper, more frequented sites and it certainly looks tasty.
The invitation is for January 27th which is when hopefully we can all expect the announcement of Apple’s newest contraption. There’s already been some speculation on the design of the invite, but personally I think that’s reading a little too deep into the fancy graphics.
What do you think we can expect from Apple at the presentation?
via TUAW
I love iPhoto. The fact that it’s included with every Mac makes me all the more happy. However, while I much enjoy a streamlined and feature-rich application to manage the wealth of photos that I’ve taken in the past year (nearly 10 thousand), I’ve reached an impasse of sorts with the software.
You see, iPhoto stores all of your photos, both originals and modified, within an iPhoto Library package that’s stored within the Photos folder of your home directory. When I first came to this discovery in my ‘honeymoon’ phase of enjoying my iMac, I thought this was fantastic! All of my photos were clearly being kept track of by iPhoto in one neat container that I could navigate to easily should iPhoto ever go belly-up for whatever reason. However, while Time Machine does a great job of keeping all of this data securely backed up with its periodic jobs, I’m more concerned with space than the security of data at this point.
My iMac, regrettably, has only a 320GB drive while I’m taxing a 1.5TB external for larger files such as video or software packages. My original plan was to backup the iPhoto library package in its entirety at the end of each year to the external drive, wipe the existing photo data in iPhoto and start clean amassing what would at the end of the year be another yearly iPhoto backup.
While this seemed like it would work without a hitch, now that 2009 is at it’s end I find myself scratching my head. If, in the future I have a new Mac with a much larger internal drive and I want to see all of the photos I’ve gathered over the years, will iPhoto choke if I try to import multiple libraries? Will they cause a conflict or overwrite each other?
As much as I’ve learned about working with the Macintosh platform I’m still fairly new to the Apple tea party. Have any of you experienced similar problems in sorting out your data storage? What methods did you use to refrain from eating up all of your local storage?
While Apple’s always been big in the education sector, especially with its iTunes U service, the below video from Coursemart shows a whole slew of new possibilities for students that are Apple-savvy. Everything showcased in the below ‘concept’ video impressed me, from the iCal integration to on-the-fly textbook purchases which makes sense for people like Nicole who begrudgingly braves the winter cold every morning now with a backpack that is nearly literally bursting at the seams.
What about you other college kids out there? Would the forthcoming Apple tablet interest you as a one-stop shop for your textbook management, or would you prefer the regular paper approach?
Via TUAW
If so, you might wanna check out NewerTech’s USB 2.0 Display Adapter. It’s Intel Mac compatible and will allow you to add multiple monitors to your Mac via USB and has selections available for DVI, HDMI, and VGA interfaces supporting up to 2048 x 1152 resolution. Right now I’m doing dandy with just two, but for those of you that demand an embarrassing amount of screen real estate, this is totally worth checking out.
via TUAW