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Charlie Sorrel: But the new X220 is also pretty on the inside, and its main selling point is a ridiculous 24 hour battery life. That’s enough to let you update Excel spreadsheets while a plane takes you anywhere on the planet. May also win the award for best battery life in the ugliest possible laptop.…
Charlie Sorrel:
But the new X220 is also pretty on the inside, and its main selling point is a ridiculous 24 hour battery life. That’s enough to let you update Excel spreadsheets while a plane takes you anywhere on the planet.
May also win the award for best battery life in the ugliest possible laptop. I mean good lord that thing is ugly.
Finally got around to googling this and luckily there is a way to get rid of that ugly WordPress admin bar that sticks itself to the top of your WP site. [Updated: 3.8.11 at 10:24 AM] Twitter follower @Preshit wrote to tell me you can disable this in your user options (in your user profile).…
Finally got around to googling this and luckily there is a way to get rid of that ugly WordPress admin bar that sticks itself to the top of your WP site.
[Updated: 3.8.11 at 10:24 AM]
Twitter follower @Preshit wrote to tell me you can disable this in your user options (in your user profile). I had no clue, that is way easier.
You have no idea how happy it makes me to get a link sent to me about a Facebook poll where 36.47% (the plurality ((Thanks to @rorycberger for the correction on the term.)) ) say they don’t have a Facebook account. Good stuff. [h/t @infodriveway]
You have no idea how happy it makes me to get a link sent to me about a Facebook poll where 36.47% (the plurality ((Thanks to @rorycberger for the correction on the term.)) ) say they don’t have a Facebook account. Good stuff.
Mathew Ingram: Although the company has since said that a new update is on its way that will make the feature less annoying, the outrage over the #dickbar is a symptom of a larger problem for Twitter: it wants to be a business, and users have gotten used to it being a utility. Well said.…
Mathew Ingram:
Although the company has since said that a new update is on its way that will make the feature less annoying, the outrage over the #dickbar is a symptom of a larger problem for Twitter: it wants to be a business, and users have gotten used to it being a utility.
Well said. The dickbar though goes one further and actually becomes as annoying as the flash based blinking ads found on low-rent sites.
There is an article that has been making the rounds on sites like Hacker News that has a very link-baity title: “If iPads are “post-pc devices” why must I sync with iTunes before I can use one?”. Fun. Here is the main point of Paul Hontz’s argument (as I see it): You can’t even turn…
There is an article that has been making the rounds on sites like Hacker News that has a very link-baity title: “If iPads are “post-pc devices” why must I sync with iTunes before I can use one?”. Fun.
Here is the main point of Paul Hontz’s argument (as I see it):
You can’t even turn your iPad on the first time without being tethered to iTunes.
Which is true, but paints an inaccurate picture. You see, you indeed can not turn on an iPad — for I don’t know what reason — without first connecting with iTunes, except that none of this means that you ever need to have iTunes on your home computer. If you walk into an Apple Store and buy an iPad you can have them do the initial sync to get your iPad up and going, thus you never have to have synced the iPad with your iTunes. I think Hontz’s argument is pretty silly, but let’s look at this new term more closely.
All of this depends on what your definition of “post-PC device” really is — Wikipedia (the aggregator of all that is relevant) doesn’t even have a page for this term just yet. I would define a post-PC device as a device that moves the user beyond the computer — a device that could/does replace a computer for the general consumer.
And the iPad is pretty damned close to that, if it is not already, the definition of the post-PC device.
Let’s take no further evidence than this video from April 22nd showing a 99 year-old woman using her first computer: the iPad. I don’t recall her having troubles with iTunes syncing. Sure you could say that we need an open platform, or that we need one that is completely detached from the computer — but if this is the argument that you hold, then you must also complain about the fact that 3G service must come through carriers that charge you and that to use WiFi means you need to setup a WiFi router.
Me? I just argue that a post-pc device is something that just works substantially better for most people than your typical PC/Mac would — and I think the iPad fits that bill rather nicely.
MG Siegler: I’m using too many apps of the same nature for any of them to actually be truly useful. And in fact, I now have too many apps in my life in general. I’ve hit the app wall. This entire article is very relatable for me and I can’t help but wonder how we…
MG Siegler:
I’m using too many apps of the same nature for any of them to actually be truly useful. And in fact, I now have too many apps in my life in general. I’ve hit the app wall.
This entire article is very relatable for me and I can’t help but wonder how we better curate our apps in the future. Personally I hope Apple does it for me.
“I think a career is something your father brings home in a briefcase every night, looking kind of tired.” — Sean Parker via transcript from John Gapper
I typically like to stay on topic here, but some of you may also know that by day I am a property manager and seeing this just frustrates me — it gives a bad name to property managers everywhere. If you are a renter (a lot of us are) the best thing you can do…
I typically like to stay on topic here, but some of you may also know that by day I am a property manager and seeing this just frustrates me — it gives a bad name to property managers everywhere. If you are a renter (a lot of us are) the best thing you can do is to know your lease and know the applicable laws in your state.
You will not believe some of your rights that you just always assumed you didn’t have.
One last tip — if your landlord isn’t getting something fixed that you want fixed, a written and mailed letter will do you wonders over repeated phone calls. Best thing you can do if you have called in the problem or submitted the maintenance request and have yet to see action: write a letter and mail it, be professional and concise — then once you sent the letter, call your landlord and let them know that you sent it to them.
These thoughts are coming to you as a tech geek to a tech reader, not in any professional real estate sense and therefore, you should take everything with a grain of salt.
Sven Fechner: You can now simply select to have OmniFocus projects show directly inside (and in addition to MailTags’ own projects) Mail.app’s tagging panel. Only caveat is that you need to have OmniFocus running to get access to it’s project list. You can do the same for CulturedCode’s Things or even for both if you…
Sven Fechner:
You can now simply select to have OmniFocus projects show directly inside (and in addition to MailTags’ own projects) Mail.app’s tagging panel. Only caveat is that you need to have OmniFocus running to get access to it’s project list. You can do the same for CulturedCode’s Things or even for both if you are one of these indecisive productivity nuts that can’t settle with one system.
What a nice update.
I’m back with another set of quick takes, check out the past posts here. CalendarBar (Mac OS X) A very handy menubar app that shows you upcoming appointments. I typically don’t like apps like this, but this one is done very well and I really have found it useful to me. I like that it…
I’m back with another set of quick takes, check out the past posts here.
A very handy menubar app that shows you upcoming appointments. I typically don’t like apps like this, but this one is done very well and I really have found it useful to me. I like that it can pull your information from multiple services at once and you Facebookers will like that it integrates with events you have in Facebook. Mostly though it is just a great way to see what is coming up.
I don’t like the name — in fact I don’t like the fact that “insta” has become so popular — but the app really is clever. Basically you can search for and browse podcasts that are in the iTunes directory and subscribe to them in the app. The app will then download episodes and allow you to watch and listen to them on your phone. This means no more plugging into your Mac to get the latest and greatest episodes of podcasts.
You should subscribe to The B&B Podcast when you are checking out the app. ((Shameless plug.))
You won’t like this app if you are not a podcast person, but if you are this is a great little app.
From the guys who made the excellent Canned app comes Canned Mail. Just like with the former you create precomposed messages that you can quickly send out when needed, this time with email instead of text messages. Great for creating responses that you have to send on a regular basis (mailing addresses and directions for me). Be sure to check it out — it’s nice to have in your arsenal.
That said I have only used it once since I installed it — unlike with text messages I rarely send that many of the same emails. This is definitely a niche app.
It’s like Photoshop without all the crashes and stupid UI design. It is a great Photoshop-ish replacement and I have been using it a lot lately for compressing down images and resizing them. It is fast and light and I really like the way it is laid out in comparison to Pixelmator. Check this out (free trail on their website) before you consider Photoshop — you will be surprised.
Having said that, Acorn is certainly not Photoshop — you can do a lot in Acorn, but not a lot as easily as you can in Photoshop. Where with Photoshop you get great tools like Background Eraser, you can do the same in Acorn — minus the automatic / easy part. My problem has always been that I have used Photoshop for as long as I can remember, so when a new tool comes about it is not as easy for me to think “outside” of the straightforward tools PS offers.
I know a lot of you don’t want to use Reeder, or simply don’t like the look of it. Have no fear NetNewsWire is back with a free Lite version for the Mac App Store. The looks are cleaned up, but the Lite version doesn’t offer Google Reader syncing. That maybe the deal breaker for most, but if you just read RSS feeds on your Mac this is a good place to start.
It’s not of any use to me without Google Reader syncing, but I really like the direction it is headed with the design of this Lite version. I can’t wait for the full version to come out (and it is coming with Google Reader syncing).
Om Malik: However, if iPad, the device, is more magical, the applications (apps) for the device are anything but. For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting (and waiting) for experiences befitting the device and its hardware capabilities. Sure, there’s Flipboard, but as the saying goes, one swallow don’t make a summer. And same goes for…
Om Malik:
However, if iPad, the device, is more magical, the applications (apps) for the device are anything but. For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting (and waiting) for experiences befitting the device and its hardware capabilities. Sure, there’s Flipboard, but as the saying goes, one swallow don’t make a summer. And same goes for the iPhone and other smart platforms.”
Malik has a good point here and furthers it by stating this:
And yet, we’ve seen application after application come to market as just an incremental improvement of the web or desktop versions of the same (or similar) application.
The problem is people wanting to adopt their website/service/product to the iPad instead of just designing it for the iPad. That is, throw away everything and think about what you want someone to be able to do on the iPad, then make that. All the good iPad apps I have used feel like this was the thought process behind them.
An interesting look at what it’s like to liveblog an event — sounds about how I would expect it to be.
An interesting look at what it’s like to liveblog an event — sounds about how I would expect it to be.
Marco Arment: The most compelling feature of the iPad 2 is its case.” The cover system that Amazon uses on Kindles is good, but the system that Apple has implemented seems far better.
Marco Arment:
The most compelling feature of the iPad 2 is its case.”
The cover system that Amazon uses on Kindles is good, but the system that Apple has implemented seems far better.
Karl Fogel via John D. Cook: His purpose was strategic: to show up at the meeting with something so substantive that everyone else would have to fall into the role of simply proposing modifications to it, so that the overall shape, and therefore schedule, of the project would be roughly as he wanted.” Now that…
Karl Fogel via John D. Cook:
His purpose was strategic: to show up at the meeting with something so substantive that everyone else would have to fall into the role of simply proposing modifications to it, so that the overall shape, and therefore schedule, of the project would be roughly as he wanted.”
Now that is a clever plan.
Reader Sam Simmons wrote in with this very smart reason why I shouldn’t get the white iPad 2: The decision is easy for me. Do you ever watch movies/netflix on your ipad? Of course you do, everyone does. Know those black borders you get on a TV when watching a widescreen movie? Now imagine them…
Reader Sam Simmons wrote in with this very smart reason why I shouldn’t get the white iPad 2:
The decision is easy for me. Do you ever watch movies/netflix on your ipad? Of course you do, everyone does.
Know those black borders you get on a TV when watching a widescreen movie?
Now imagine them in white.
That’s a damned good point and I hadn’t considered what the movie viewing experience would be with a white frame around it — likewise what viewing a slideshow would be like. I guess it comes down to how you use the iPad and for me I rarely use it for watching movies or for viewing slideshows.
For me the iPad is all about reading and most reading backgrounds are white. But that brings up another problem — Instapaper is white on black at night and that might look a bit out of sorts with a white iPad 2…
“It’s a shame, almost, that we squandered the term “personal computer” 30 years ago.” — John Gruber on the iPad
MG Siegler on Twitter for iPhone’s latest update: For the most part, people seem most upset because this feature being shoved in your face, and not necessarily the fact that ads are a part of it. (The fact that the feature is overlaid on Tweets themselves if you’re not at the top of the stream…
MG Siegler on Twitter for iPhone’s latest update:
For the most part, people seem most upset because this feature being shoved in your face, and not necessarily the fact that ads are a part of it. (The fact that the feature is overlaid on Tweets themselves if you’re not at the top of the stream is pretty annoying.)”
At first it didn’t seem that annoying, just less than ideal, then I tried to actually use the app. Yes it is annoying and constantly feels in the way and makes the entire app cramped feeling. For the first time I am thinking about getting a third party Twitter app on my iPhone.
Yesterday I posted about why I think the iPad 2 is the deathblow to all other tablets, today I want to talk about some of my thoughts surrounding the iPad 2 itself (instead of the tablet industry). I want to touch on why I want a 3G model, why the Smart Cover is a good…
Yesterday I posted about why I think the iPad 2 is the deathblow to all other tablets, today I want to talk about some of my thoughts surrounding the iPad 2 itself (instead of the tablet industry). I want to touch on why I want a 3G model, why the Smart Cover is a good thing for everyone, why you shouldn’t wait for the iPad 3, and the color choices.
The last time the iPad was launched I bought the WiFi only model for one reason: it was the first iPad available. This go around all signs point to a simultaneous release of both the WiFi and WiFi+3G models and I am buying the latter. I am buying it to save money and add a tremendous amount of convenience.
Let’s start with the money aspect first. It is $130 more to buy the 3G model over the comparable WiFi only model, so one would think that you can’t save money buying the 3G model — but I can. Currently I pay (roughly) $60/mo to Verizon for the 5GB of data on my MiFi. The times that I use the MiFi are all times that I could easily do the same work on the iPad (with exception of blog posting which we will ignore because I want to keep this post under 10,000 words). Effectively, in just a tick over two months time, I will have paid back the added cost of the 3G model by eliminating the MiFi bill — but that’s not fair because I still need to pay for data on the iPad.
Here is the great part though: 3G iPad data is pay as you go on a month-by-month basis. Therefore I can pay for the data only when I need it, and for the sake of argument I will assume that when I need data — I need data, and will go with the 2GB plan. Thus I will have to pay $25/per use when I want the 3G data. If I look at my expected travel plans for the next year and factor in how much I would use the data based on my MiFi usage (adding for convenience of built in 3G, I am upping the frequency of usage by 20% from what I used on the MiFi). I would guess that I will need to pay for data 8 months out of the next 12 months.
Or to buy the 3G iPad and pay for the expected data usage, for the next year, it will cost me: $330 for the year. By dropping the MiFi I will save: $720 for the same time period. Basically then I will come out $390 ahead, that is no small number — that’s presumably an iPhone 5.
Of course that is not the end of the story though, because as Shawn Blanc pointed out during our podcast yesterday I could use the personal hotspot feature on my iPhone. If the reports that I am seeing are right I would need to pay the $20/mo for tethering in addition to my normal iPhone data plan for the same 2GBs. That would seem to be an ideal solution because I wouldn’t also have to pay the $130 up front premium on the 3G iPads.
We also have to consider how these plans work though — I could certainly turn the tethering plan on and off for the iPhone, but not with the same ease I can with the iPad data. That means that I would effectively be paying for 12 months worth of data at $20 a month — or paying $240. Which is $90 less than I would be paying for the same data with the iPad 3G and the added bonus of being able to use that data connection with my Mac.
This is where the last factor comes into play: convenience. What is more convenient: having to pull out your iPhone and activate the hotspot feature, or just doing it all on your iPad. As someone who has had to effectively had to do that routine for almost a year now with my MiFi, I can tell you that there will be times that you won’t want to use your iPad when you could, because it is just too much of a hassle to get internet access. I want to eliminate that.
I want the future and the future is internet where you need it, when you need it.
A lot has been said about how great the new Smart Cover is for the iPad 2 and I would be lying if I didn’t say that it does look rather fantastic. There is no doubt in my mind that it will be a hit, especially since there is likely to be no other covers for the iPad 2 in the Apple Store when it launches on March 11th — a clever business trick Apple used with the iPhone 4.
John Gruber posted on Twitter when the Smart Cover was launched:
Third-party iPad case market is in trouble.
I can see where he is coming from on this thought: if Apple’s case is so fantastic, why would a consumer buy anybody else’s case? I think if one thing can be learned from the iPhone and the first iPad it is that consumers like cases and they like a huge diversity of them. What Apple did with the Smart Cover was to give every case manufacturer a killer way to secure their case to the iPad 2.
Everyone can copy the magnet trick to use with their cases and I don’t just mean for cases that cover the screen only.
I think the far more likely outcome is better cases across the board — which is a winning scenario for everyone. Third party case manufacturers should have no problems selling their versions.
Don’t wait for the iPad 3 because you think it will be better — I can tell you with 100% certainty that it will be better — otherwise why would Apple make it?
If you are waiting to get the iPad (whether you have one or not) because you think the next version will be better — then you will be waiting indefinitely. If you held off buying the first iPad and really want one — I don’t see any reason to keep denying yourself even if there is another new model in September — which is far from a guaranteed.
The big question is whether you should upgrade, or not — if you already have an iPad — to which I direct you to Patrick Rhone over at MinimalMac.com who hits the nail on the head:
I think if you were using and loving your iPad before today’s news, you can and should do so after it. It is still very much the magical and revolutionary […] device it was when you woke up this morning.
Indeed. The only people that should consider this a must upgrade immediately (outside of tech writers and enthusiasts) should be educators and presenters where the full HDMI mirroring is invaluable.
So Apple is assuring us that we can get the white iPad 2 on day one, along side the black model. The internet seems split on these models with a slight preference to the black model. Initially I was all about the black model, but I am starting to be swayed in the white models direction.
The white looks terrible when the screen is off, but when the screen is on it blends with the screen far better than the black does. Add to that the general idea that it may look cleaner in the long run — given that black surfaces show a lot more dirt and grime than white surfaces do.
It is a tough call and honestly I am really hoping that I can see them both in person before I decide which to buy. Right now though I am 52% in favor of black, but trending towards white. Damn this indecision.
Justin Blanton perfectly sums up my biggest fear: I kind of can’t wrap my head around how thin it is—just 8.8mm (that’s thinner than an iPhone 4!). Whether this helps or hurts its ability to be comfortably held over a protracted session remains to be seen; my guess is that, even with the lighter weight…
Justin Blanton perfectly sums up my biggest fear:
I kind of can’t wrap my head around how thin it is—just 8.8mm (that’s thinner than an iPhone 4!). Whether this helps or hurts its ability to be comfortably held over a protracted session remains to be seen; my guess is that, even with the lighter weight (1.33 pounds vs. 1.5 pounds), it will make it more difficult to hold, especially since it still has the same slippery aluminum back. I really wish they’d rubberize these things.”
I don’t agree with rubberizing it, I think that has a poor tactile feel and is prone to looking dirty. I can say though that I worry that this will fatigue your hands if you are holding it to read while laying in bed — a thin device like this requires a better grip to support the weight than a similar, but thicker, device would.
Justin has a great look at the iPad from one of the few people I know that sold theirs because they couldn’t find a use for it.