Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last several months and just woke up a few minutes ago, you’ve no doubt read all about everything Apple offered up at the September event yesterday. If you haven’t, I’m not going to re-hash it all here—maybe you can watch a 5-minute catch-up video.
The following are just a few of my thoughts on the major touch points of the presentation: (more…)
Ultimately, only you can answer that. Apple has chosen a direction with the Mac’s GUI that is quite a departure from even the recent past. Lots of people love it, and lots of people don’t like it at all. I find myself somewhere in the middle.
When I look at the icons above individually, I like all the new ones. But collectively, when compared to the old ones, they don’t work as well. First off, Apple has chosen to go decidedly whiter with their icons. In a crowded Dock, they all sort of blend together. None of them are easily recognizable at a quick glance. Second, some of them make no sense. Take the new Photos app icon—what in the heck do a bunch of color blobs represent? The old iPhoto icon was clear in what it represented.
But it doesn’t stop with icons. The entire GUI has gotten lighter, more “blended in,” and sometimes confusing. Overall, I still love the Mac’s interface. Lately though, I’m finding more and more “little things” that really bug me.
Nicholas Windsor Howard has a great two-part article about the subject (complete with plenty of screenshots) that’s worth the read. Part one can be found here, and part-two here. Take a look and see if you agree with his opinions.
The standard full-sized Apple keyboard is probably the best keyboard I’ve ever used. I just wish it was wireless. Unfortunately Apple’s wireless keyboard, like almost every other wireless keyboard, jettisons the numeric keypad, navigation keys and extra F-Keys.
This is where the Matias Wireless Aluminum Keyboard (MWAK) comes in to save the day. The MWAK looks and acts just like the Apple Full Sized Keyboard, including the handy function keys to control your Mac. But there are three more things that make this thing a real gem.
First off, you can choose the MWAK color to match your device. It comes in Silver, Space Gray, Gold and Rose Gold. FINALLY, a full sized wireless keyboard for the Mac that offers black keys instead of white! What is it that makes manufacturers think that just because we’re Mac users we want want everything to be white? And it’s aluminum instead of the cheap plastic virtually all other keyboards are made of.
Next, you can sync the keyboard with up to four Bluetooth devices, including Android and Windows devices, and easily switch between them with the press of a button.
And finally, the 1,600 man battery is huge in comparison to other wireless keyboards. After a full charge (which can take up to 5 hours from empty), you can safely put the included USB charging cable in a drawer somewhere—because you won’t need it for another year. That’s right, a single charge will last you an entire year, according to Matias. And that’s with having the keyboard on and connected at all times (no delay in connecting to the host computer like most keyboards do).
The Matias Wireless Aluminum Keyboard sells for $99, and can be purchased directly or from numerous retailers.
I don’t own one of these Matias keyboards, so I can’t vouch for them in any way. What is the build quality? Do the colors match Apple devices accurately (or even close)? How does the keyboard feel compared to the Apple keyboards? I don’t know the answers to any of those questions because…
I would have run out to the Fry’s Electronics store down the street, but the website doesn’t list any products from Matias—despite the fact that the Matias website claims to sell the keyboard there. Same goes for BestBuy.
You’ve definitely heard an Apple rumor before. Like, maybe there won’t be a headphone jack on the next iPhone? Or that iTunes is getting a major overhaul. They come from “unnamed,” “well-placed,” “reliable” sources who are “familiar with the company’s thinking,” or a blurry factory photo of unknown origin.
How does a piece of information from one of the world’s most secretive companies materialize online? It’s a much more opaque process than you might expect.
If you’ve followed Apple rumors online for any amount of time, none of this has escaped your notice. That being said, the last several years have seen “legit” media outlets jumping into the game, and quoting these sites as fact. As for me, I’ve found that 90% of “rumors” are little more than common sense guesses based on technology and past actions by Apple. The rest, well… I just wait for the official announcements before I get too excited about anything.
40 years of great products and services. Happy Birthday, Apple!
Blockhead, fixes something that drives me up the wall about Apple’s iDevice and Macbook chargers—they LITERALLY stick out like a sore thumb. Blockhead ($20 or two for $35, from Ten 1 Design) is the charger/adapter Apple should have designed to begin with.
It seems like every time I have to update an Apple application on my Mac (not an OS update) using the Mac App Store, I experience obnoxiously slow download speeds, and a plethora of update issues. The screenshot above shows off what happens almost every time I update iMove (it happens with Pages & Numbers as well, though not Keynote).
The fact that I’ve already endured a painfully slow download of a 2GB+ update to iMovie 10.1.1, and am able to launch the app and use it doesn’t seem to bother the App Store app. It continues to tell me that I have an iMovie update. It continues to try to download the 2GB+ iMovie update. It continues to suck donkey balls.
I’ve tried all manner of fixes, but the Mac App Store app just insists on sucking donkey balls.
What doesn’t fix it:
• Restart Mac App Store app
• Log out/in from App Store Account
• Log out/in from iCloud
• Log out/in from Mac
• Restart Mac
• Deleting all .plist files with the word ‘store’ in them
What does fix it:
• Re-downloading the giant and slow-downloading ‘update’ of iMovie
So to summarize… the Mac App Store sucks donkey balls. Phil Schiller (recently placed in charge of the Mac App Store at Apple) has his work cut out for him.
I had completely forgotten that I had downloaded the premiere issue of MyApple Magazine, a new English-language magazine about the world of Apple from the combined staff of Apple World Today and MyApple.pl.
Since I took the last week off for the holidays, I had some time to read through the free downloadable magazine. After reading through the first issue, I quickly downloaded the remaining new issues. Great stuff!
The articles aren’t just blog posts pulled from the website, they read easy—not too long, not too short. The photography is nice, and the layout is easy on the eyes.
Warning: This is a snarky opinion piece. If you would rather not be offended by the fact that I’m not offended, but am offended that you are; well then, this article probably isn’t for you. And I don’t care, but just know that you’ve been warned.
No, not an Ashley Madison type of sex problem. Not even a “mom found my stash of porno mags under the bed” type of problem. More of a “he-said, why didn’t she-said” type of problem. Apparently, it also has a race problem. Hell, Apple is just one giant problem… if you believe the Internet, that is.
Apple had barely completed yesterday’s “Hey Siri” event, arguably one of their largest product release events in recent history, when the Internet had one of its all-to-frequent It’s My Turn To Be Offended, Dammit! pile-ons. The sheer stupidity and linkbaitedness of the accusations made in the articles are so thick you can choke on them. And I nearly did.
The Verge posted this pathetic puddle of baboon piss about what I’ll call SmileGate. Apple invited representatives of Adobe to come on stage and demo their software’s image retouching power. And that was their big, huge, massive mistake.
Wait. That’s not quite accurate. Maybe they just had a photo of a woman, and used the software to make her red lipstick a little bit redder, and turn up the corners of her mouth to make her appear to be slightly smiling.
The horror. I mean… can you believe the audacity of Adobe to pull this kind of disgusting behavior toward women?
And the world blames Apple.
Not to be outdone, NextWeb decided to re-puke the previously mentioned article and add more semi-digested chunks to it.
According to the potato sack who wrote that piece of drivel, Apple needs to have one member of every race on Earth speak for at least 45 seconds at every Apple event, just to show that Apple is a company by the people, for the people… or something like that. I don’t know.
I have an image in my mind of Tim Cook in a sweat-soaked blue shirt, skipping and hopping around on stage while clapping and screaming DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. Of course, people would probably be offended by the blatant gimmick copying:
And then the entire frigging Internet pooped out Tweets and links to the same or similar articles. Because you know, nobody wants to be left out. I dunno. The race to the bottom of the ‘It’s My Turn To Be Offended’ barrel on the Internet is getting quite tired.
No matter what Apple does here, some people are going to find a way to be butt-hurt about it. If Apple had filled the entire keynote with female employees speaking about all the products, their would surely be a gaggle of loudmouths accusing Apple of conspiring to put one over on us, or ‘play to the crowd’ too much. One more African American, one more Asian, one more of any race, and the same people would probably sport their Confederate flag shirts and hold up signs that read ‘MERICA!
The world has a diversity problem, and it appears that if I wish to fit in with the hip crowd, I must blame Apple.