Apple via press release:
>Users who do not have broadband access at home, work or school can download Lion at Apple retail stores and later this August, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) for $69 (US).
This is pretty much the kiss of death to the CD/DVD drives in all Macs.
David Sparks:
>Until today, FileVault was the ugly stepsister of the Mac OS X operating system. Nobody liked it and anybody with serious security concerns used other disk encryption options. I would have given it a different name since FileVault was such slug. Regardless, Mac OS X now ships with some real security teeth. It includes whole disk encryption, Time Machine disk encryption, remote wipe of your Mac, and sandboxing. So long PGP.
The last time I used FileVault it broke everything, but a few weeks ago my paranoia took hold and I turned it on in Lion. I didn’t talk about it in my review much because I honestly haven’t spent that much time with it. It is vastly improved from when I last used it.
To date I have seen no issues and no performance problems — I am quite impressed.
Charlie Sorrel:
>And if you want a white plastic MacBook, you’d better rush to your local reseller — Apple has discontinued it.
Along with Lion Apple released new, faster, Mac minis. Of note is that there are no longer optical drives in the Mac minis — a very telling move as the Mac mini is seen as a “desktop” computer. I would guess that the Mac Pro will be the last Mac to have an optical drive and the MacBook Pros are next to lose them.
There is also a [new display](http://www.apple.com/displays/) and new [MacBook Airs](http://www.apple.com/macbookair/) which are sure to be speed demons.
Everything got a Thunderbolt port, but alas my MacBook Air didn’t get magically upgraded while I slept.
Jordan Robertson, an AP Writer:
>Goldman Sachs calls tablets “one of the most disruptive forces in computing in nearly three decades.” It predicts that as many as 21 million people will buy tablets instead of laptops this year, jumping to 26.5 million next year.
Tablets and iPads are very different beasts. In the above quote it would be more appropriate to substitute ‘iPad’ where ever ‘tablet(s)’ is used. Remember that ‘tablets’ have been around for quite sometime — it is the iPad that is disrupting the market, not the generalized ‘tablet’. ((I freely admit this may not be the case long term, but is the case right now.))
Craig Grannell:
>I recommend before installing Lion that even if you’re using Time Machine you also create a working clone of your Mac. This is because while you can restore data from Time Machine, it’s faster and simpler to do so from a clone.
He offers a couple of pieces of software — ignore all but SuperDuper!. Small backup drives are pretty cheap, even at places like Best Buy and Fry’s. I picked up a 1TB LaCie drive from Best Buy that is USB 3 for like $80. Not a steal, but a good brand and worth the peace of mind.
Oh, and if you want to upgrade to Lion when it comes out, then I suggest you get cloning tonight.
*Ed. note: Many thanks to [Stephen M. Hackett](http://forkbombr.net/upgrading-to-lion/) for helping with my comma addiction. It is a real disease.*
Tom Loftus:
>The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is getting closer to inking a deal with China Mobile, the country’s largest cellular operator with 600 million subscriber accounts.
The U.S. has a *total* population of [311,799,978](http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html) people.
My MacBook Air has this issue too, but I can’t use Dr. Drang’s solution because I constantly use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I did try it out though and it solved my problem too. I hope it is a software issue that is fixed soon, ready: bug reporter.
A great article by Shawn on the (still) miserable state of magazine apps on the iPad. I subscribe to a bunch of them, but my favorite app to read in is Instapaper — every time. It’s more than the design, it’s the function and the content.
I know that what’s in Instapaper is something that I want to read — that I chose to read. I know that everything will look great and the same. I know that it will download stupidly fast over 3G and so I never worry about “updating” it before I leave.
Print is dead, Instapaper is the new print. Shawn seems to want better magazine apps, I just want better integration with Instapaper, let the magazine layout become a novelty.
Shawn:
>And while I appreciate the customization and care surrounding each article found in *Wired* or *The New Yorker*, wouldn’t it be something if the magazine industry took a few cues from Instapaper and Reeder?
Again I subscribe to a ton of magazines, I’d much prefer to just send a few of those magazine articles to Instapaper, because honesty there aren’t any publications left that I find worth reading from cover to cover. I’d argue a smart publisher might find a way to make Instapaper its iPad app. Admittedly, that probably would be too cutting edge for publishers.
A Twitter follower sent me a link to this excellent post and does a better job describing what I meant about patina on your gadgets.
Tom Armitage:
>Wear is, of course, both a noun and a verb. It’s the verb that inevitably happens through use, and it’s the noun that the verb leaves behind. Patina is the history of a product written into its skin.
Paul Kafasis:
>It seems like every time we start to care about soccer, it spits directly into our collective face, while handing us another devastating loss.
One of his ways for fixing soccer:
>Baseball doesn’t switch to a home run derby after the 12th inning. Basketball doesn’t switch to a game of H-O-R-S-E after the second OT. So from now on, we’re not deciding which team is the best in the world through what are effectively coin flips.
True that.
This is just a link to the Google Chrome web browser, which I link to because of something that happened this weekend. My Mom has one of those fancy Dell Inspiron Mini notebooks and she was showing it to me asking if I could make it faster. The machine was unbearably slow which was partially caused by a Windows update downloading in the background.
The other part that was slow was loading the web in general — my iPhone 4 was beating it to webpages with my phone on AT&T’s 3G network. Suspecting that it was in part IE’s fault ((The remainder of the fault goes to Windows 7 Starter and, well, Dell.)) I installed Chrome — what a difference that made.
If you are saddled with an under-powered computer you might take a look at Chrome, it sure sped up the machine that I was testing it on.
My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring the RSS feed this week, promoting their excellent Billings Pro software. I don’t know any reason why a Mac user needing to bill hourly, or just freelancing, wouldn’t use Billings Pro.
This software is so cool that I almost wish I was a freelancer just so that I could use it. Not only is the software beautiful and robust, but Billings Pro is loaded with great extras like automatic backups.
Killer software so be sure to check it out, there’s a free 30-day trial.
Tom Warren:
>Microsoft will also roll out a feature to prevent users from choosing a common password. Common passwords include password, 123456, ilovecats and gogiants. “This new feature will be rolling out soon, and will prevent you from choosing a very common password when you sign up for an account or when you change your password,” says Craddock. Hotmail users who currently use a weak and common password may be prompted to change it in the future.
Two things:
1. This is a great move and every company should follow suit.
2. ‘gogiants’ is really a common password?
MG Siegler:
>Thanks to the “openness” of Android, Google has handed Amazon the keys to the Android kingdom. Amazon is going to launch a tablet that runs Android, but it will be fully Amazon’d. It will use Amazon’s Appstore, it will use Amazon movies, it will use Amazon books, it will use Amazon music, etc. Google will have no control over this, even though it will be the seminal Android tablet. That would be terrifying for any brand.
I have no doubt that this would be bad for Google and a partnership with Microsoft for Bing search to be default would make a lot of sense for both companies. What I think may also be a big threat to Google is this bit from Siegler:
>Like $299 or less cheap. But can Amazon really make a 9-inch multi-touch screen color tablet for that cheap? Unless it’s an absolute piece of crap, that seems unlikely. There’s a reason why all other tablet manufacturers are having problems getting their tablets down to even the key $499 price point.
That would worry me if I made Android tablets, because if Amazon comes in an undercuts other tablet price points two things could happen:
1. Everyone loves it and now expects to get any other tablet at that price. Which, if Android tablet makers have a tough time getting to $499 — well this would be bad news.
2. Everyone hates it because the hardware is junky, but because it is from Amazon a great many bought it. Now everyone starts to get a very bad taste in their mouth about Android tablet quality.
It could also flop and not sell, thus none of this matters — being front and center on Amazon’s site though, I don’t see that as a likely outcome.
Horace Dediu:
>In Q2 2011 one million more Windows PCs were sold than in Q2 2010. In same time, 903k more OS X PCs and 5.5 million more iPads.
I read this and the first thought that popped into my head: I wonder if Microsoft knows that they are an ‘underdog’ now? They are so used to being *the* company, I wonder ((Whereby ‘wonder’ I mean assume.)) if part of the problem they are currently having is a result of still maintaining that mentality.
I use this almost daily and it is now on the Mac App Store. A phenomenally useful app.
I am not a big ‘streaming music’ kind of guy, but a reader (at least I assume) sent me an invite and I have to admit: I am liking it so far.
Before you ask, no I don’t have any invites.
Jonathan S. Geller reporting:
>He continued, “The fact that people are spending their own money to buy the iPhone, when their company is giving them a ‘free BlackBerry’ sends quite a message to RIM,” says one of our sources.”
I think that says all you need to know about RIM’s future.
Add to that the fact that most reports Geller got were along the lines: Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is very smart, but isn’t forward thinking. That paints a pretty nasty picture for RIM.