Category: Apple

My thoughts exactly.

…but like all good fanboys, I followed along with the live blogs of Apple’s iPhone keynote this morning. I’m starting to fear that the era of “surprise and delight” along with the hallmark “one more thing” at the end of these presentations died with Jobs.

Apple’s control of their secrets is laughable and everything is leaked so far in advance these days, there are no surprises any more. Two models of iPhone, one with colorful polycarbonate cases? Check. Fingerprint scanner on the 5s? Check. Better, faster, system-on-a-chip? Check. Default wallpaper matches color of phone? Check.

As I watched the product videos on the Apple website afterward, it seemed that not even Jony Ivy, Apple’s chief product designer, was swallowing the bullshit.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the stuff Apple puts out and will continue to purchase it as needs arise, but they seem to be mired in their own past success and believing so much of their own hype that they’re afraid to truly think outside of the box any longer. This is sad.

Nothing I saw today made me want to run out and spend money. Nothing. I think that’s a first for me and Apple.

Work thankfully wasn’t terribly busy today, so I—along with probably every other Apple-lovin’ geek on the planet who was able to—watched the live feed of Apple’s WWDC keynote today. And like everyone else who saw it, I have a few opinions that—since this is my blog and I’ll write what I damn well please—you can take or leave as you want.

OS X 10.9

Mavericks? Really? I lived in northern California—on the coast, no less—for sixteen years and never even heard of Mavericks. Apple, you couldn’t have come up with just one more cat name before moving on to OS XI? In my opinion, that was just plain stupid, considering 10.9 doesn’t appear so radically different from 10.8 that it would justify a whole new naming convention. I think you jumped the gun here, guys.

I was secretly hoping that when Craig Federighi took the stage he’d look at the crowd and say, “I know a lot of you will be disappointed, but there will be no OS X 10.9.” After the huge  sigh of disappointment from the audience died down, he’d smile,  point his clicker at the screen and say, “Say hello to OS XI!” And then unveil the most amazingly redesigned OS since X itself appeared—and only then with a new naming convention in place. That would’ve been the Apple I’ve come to know and love.

Sadly that didn’t happen. I guess we’ll will have to wait until next year.

Needless to say, I was underwhelmed by 10.9. Yeah, there are a couple new features (including much-improved power management) that I’ll undoubtedly find useful, but on the whole the presentation was a major snooze-fest.

Will I upgrade? Duh!—if only for the better power management.

Mac Pro

“Can’t innovate any more, my ass!” ~ Phil Schiller

Amazing. Beautiful. I couldn’t decide if it was plucked from the core of a crashed UFO or if it’s a Cray Mini-Me. Once again, Apple does what Apple does best and it sort of made up for Maverick. I applaud their vision. But with the overall downturn in desktop PC sales, is anyone paying attention? Will the new Pro be a smashing success? Only time will tell—as evidenced by how quickly the cheap self-destructing knock-offs appear on the market running Windoze 8.

iOS7

I love my iPhone. I love my iPad. But like many have said lately, let’s face it—the OS that runs those amazing devices is looking a little long in the tooth. While iOS7’s fresh coat of paint—while undeniably beautiful—is less than the wholesale reimaging I was expecting, but the new feature set is everything I’d hoped for. I’ll be upgrading my devices the moment it’s available.

…I have to unbox some cheap-ass piece of black plastic Dell crap at work, I come to appreciate Apple and its aesthetic, quality, engineering, and packaging all the more.

 

…it ends up being something like this!

Say hello to my new little friend.

Why did I replace my MacBook Air with a MacBook Pro Retina after only about a year and a half of ownership? Most importantly, it was because I got tired of feeling like I had to treat the Air with kid gloves every time I picked it up, and worrying that the slightest little thing would crack the display panel (yeah, it really is that thin). Secondly, having come from a regular MacBook Pro, I was never completely happy with the quality of that ultra-thin display. In comparison to the Pro, the colors were washed out no matter how much I messed with the color profiles.

There was also issue of case noise. Almost from the very beginning, the Air suffered the most horrible squeaking from the bottom case whenever it was picked up. Some creative engineering on my part minimized it, but even then it still required periodic attention and was by no means a permanent fix.

When the display started developing small “oil slicks” under the glass a few weeks ago I knew I it was time to at least start considering a replacement for those other reasons, even if Apple Care would cover the replacement of the display because of the Newtonian Rings.

When I started looking at replacements, I wasn’t immediately sold on the retina display models per se; I just wanted something more robust than the Air. There was also the issue of image retention, or “ghosting” that plagued the first generation of Retina machines that came out. Additionally, at first blush my aging eyes really didn’t see that much of a difference in the display to justify the price difference, but when I priced out a regular MacBook Pro with a SSD (having had one in the Air it was now an absolute requirement for all future machines) it was actually cheaper to get the equivalent Retina model. (Apple ain’t stupid, people. They want to move these Retinas.)

Of course now that I have it, I love it.  I also appear to be among the lucky ones who have a flawless display. (Or maybe it’s because I have one of more recent models and the issue has been corrected.)

…it’s referred to as The Precious.

TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING CAPS LOCK, BEYOTCH!

But then I’m a heartless bastard who’s been doing tech support far too long and has very little patience left for whining users.

So the folks over at iFixit (the guys who snap up each new piece of hardware Apple releases and immediately tear it apart) have their panties in a bunch because the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) recently announced that Apple’s retina MacBook Pro meets their gold standard when it comes to environmental performance—and they are not amused.

While some of iFixit’s concerns may be legitimate, their latest screed reads like so many sour grapes. They’ve had a unapologetic bias against the Retina MacBook Pro since they first tore one apart and haven’t let up since.

Apple announced they were leaving the EPEAT registry soon after they released a slew of new laptops this summer, including the MacBook Pro with Retina display. We wondered why it was the first Apple laptop in recent memory not listed in the EPEAT registry: when we took it apart, we learned it was glued together and completely non-upgradeable. The RAM was soldered in, the SSD storage used a proprietary interface, the battery was secured to the case with impressively strong glue, and the case was held together using proprietary screws.

We know that Apple’s products aren’t green: iPods routinely fail after a couple years. Just about everyone I know has a dead iPod in a drawer somewhere. Apple’s design trend is toward glued-together products with batteries that may fail after 12-24 months—they make repair so difficult that people rarely replace the batteries, opting instead to buy a replacement device.

Creating products designed to require replacement every couple years has a substantial impact. Apple publicly discloses that 61% of their environmental impact comes from manufacturing—everything from mining the coltan in smartphones and the rare-earth elements in computers to factory workers cleaning display glass with toxic chemicals. The process of manufacturing electronics is incredibly damaging to the environment. The more products Apple makes, the larger its impact.

Given their penchant for throwaway product design, it seemed inevitable that Apple would leave the green computer registry. But when they announced their withdrawal, it sparked a fierce backlash. Institutional purchasers, including the City of San Francisco, announced they were banning the purchase of Apple laptops. During a recent trip to Washington, DC, I heard from reliable sources that numerous federal government agencies, including the Department of Defense, were prepared to ban procurement of Apple products.

In a nutshell, it seems they’re whining because you can’t open the RMPB up with a philips head screwdriver, swap out the internals or recycle the parts and because Apple might have “greased the wheels” of EPEAT in order to get the certification. Well guys, people who want to mess around with their devices don’t buy Retina MacBook Pros. They also don’t buy MacBook Airs. People buy these products because they’re thin and lightweight—and you’re not going to get that using off-the-shelf, swappable components.

Further, I dare say the majority of people who buy Apple products have no desire whatsoever to tinker with their equipment after the purchase. If you want to swap out RAM or processors, or upgrade your storage to the latest and greatest, you buy a Dell, or some other piece of disposable plastic crap—or build your own from parts—and then congratulate yourself and thump your chest for keeping the thing alive beyond the typical life span these things are designed for. That’s all well and good for a lot of people and I in no may mean to belittle that hobby (lord knows I did it for decades), but I’m now so far past any desire to do those kind of calisthenics in order to write, or do photo editing, or read my email or look at LOLcats I can’t be bothered. Give me something that works and will provide me 3-5 years of service and I’m happy. When the software progresses to the point it won’t run on the hardware I have (or you wow me with something new that’s so incredible I’m compelled to upgrade) then I’ll sell it and move on. The equipment I’ve outgrown could be someone else’s dream.

…and Apple had time to work out the scratched-right-out-of-the-box issues I’d been reading about and the general inability to actually buy one and get it before the Mayan Apocaplyse, but a combination of my current contact with Verizon being conveniently up for renewal and learning of a not widely advertised method of ordering one and getting it the next day changed my mind.

It works like this: you go onto Apple’s website and place your order between the hours of 10pm and 4am and then select in-store pickup for the next day. Apparently Apple has a certain percentage of phones held in reserve in each store for this very purpose. With even Verizon quoting me a delivery date well into November, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying this.

I really didn’t think it would work, so I was simultaneously surprised and elated when I placed the order last night and the configuration I wanted popped up as available for pickup in the Lakewood store.

I had previously arranged to take today off, so this morning, after receiving the confirmation email from Apple, I drove over to Lakewood and picked up the shiny new Precious. Not a scratch or nick on it. Relieved. Setup and transfer of all my apps was about as painless as possible, and while I had some initial buyers remorse when I hit that buy button last night, I’m quite happy with the purchase.

 

From TUAW:

Last week I wrote an article criticizing Apple’s new Maps capability explaining why it was a deal-breaker for me and why I was leaving the iPhone. That article generated hundreds of comments (in agreement and disagreement), tweets, and emails to me and TUAW, some going so far as calling for me to be fired. Since that article was published, the criticisms of Maps have exploded, so much so that Tim Cook released a rare public apology from Apple and pointed users to mapping apps from competitors. While that may help stem the bleeding until Apple can figure out how to fix its Maps mess, there are two things about Tim Cook’s statement I want to address.

The first is that Cook’s apology shows that Apple truly cares about its users. You know those times you mess up and realize how hard it is to apologize for your mistake? It’s usually pride or embarrassment that gets in the way of apologizing. Either way, it’s still incredibly hard to admit you were wrong. Now multiply that feeling by a million, knowing that your apology — the admission that you were wrong — will be reported by every major newspaper and tech blog in the world.

On top of that, when your company is almost always right in its business choices, admitting a mistake is a huge mark against it. Add to that the suggestion that some third-party companies products — some of them from your major competitors — might do the job of your mobile OS’s primary new feature better than your product does. Put those all together and you might have an idea of how monumental and significant Tim Cook’s apology was.

That shows just how mature Apple is and exactly how much the company cares about the user experience its customers enjoy. I’ve written in depth about Tim Cook before and this just solidifies my opinion about him. He is the best CEO on the planet and the person to lead Apple into the future.

But here’s the second thing: As much as I believe in Tim Cook and appreciate his acknowledgment of the Maps fiasco, his suggestions that users check out other mapping or web apps aren’t a real solution to the problem. Most of the mapping apps highlighted by Apple are really navigation apps. They get you from point A to point B. They can get you from St. Louis to Chicago. That’s not the problem with Maps. The real issue is the lack of extensive localized and accurate POIs and the ability to search thoroughly for them. A POI is a point-of-interest, which can be something major like a monument or a park, or something smaller like the corner drug store.

None of the apps suggested by Cook have the POI database that Google does and obviously, neither does Apple Maps. Also, none of the apps have the search capability for POIs that Google does. And if you’re one of the iPhone’s tens of millions of users living in a major city like New York or London or Singapore and don’t own a car, you don’t care about driving between cities — you care about being able to find any of the four dozen businesses that could be located on the single city block you’re on.

Another suggestion from Cook was to add the Google Maps web app to your home screen. The reason this isn’t a real fix is because a web app doesn’t have the fluidity, interactivity, or ease of use that a dedicated maps app does. If you think I’m wrong, I challenge you to use nothing but the Google Maps web app on your iPhone for a week. You’ll soon agree with me as to how much it hampers your iPhone experience.

Apple’s only solution—and I think they know this—is to return to Google. They need Google’s extensive POI database and its search capabilities. Whether that Google solution is getting a standalone app in the App Store or integrating Google Maps back into iOS while offering Apple Maps as a secondary option is something Apple needs to decide. But Apple needs to decide quickly, because it is not going to be able to build a POI database and map search capabilities that can compete with Google in just a few months, or even a few years.

I’ll close by saying that it’s a shame that the Maps mess overshadowed the iPhone 5 launch. From an engineering and design perspective, the iPhone 5 is the best smartphone ever made. It’s a work of art. It just needs for all of its core, built-in services to work, accurately and completely.

Apple unleashed both iOS6 and OS X 10.8.2 today.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about iOS6. My aging iPhone 4 is unable to take advantage of many of the new features the software is touting. With upgrades like this, I’m just happy if they don’t break anything. (Sadly, something I came to expect with Microsoft for the last twenty-plus years.) I’m sure I’ll have a more formed opinion of the OS once I replace the phone with the new model.

And as for OS X 10.8.2, it added Facebook integration to the Mac operating system and cleaned up a few stray bugs that were still plaguing some users who upgraded to Mountain Lion last July. Facebook integration—much like Mountain Lion’s Twitter integration—is something I’m not likely to use much. It’s no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, and if I want to waste time there, I’ll go onto the website itself. And frankly, there’s nothing I need to post there that’s so important that it can’t wait the additional two seconds it takes to do that.

Like a lot of users, my initial upgrade to Mountain Lion caused a precipitous drop in battery life. I think that was addressed in the .1 update a few weeks ago because yesterday I’d forgotten to plug my laptop into the mains and hadn’t realized it until nearly 5 hours later when the low battery level warning popped up. That is at least back to where it was under Lion, so if this .2 update gives me any more time, it’s gravy.

Perfect timing. The contract on my iPhone 4 ends next month.

I’ve had Apple’s latest big cat loaded now for one week, and I have to say that I’ve yet to have any real problem with it. While I know others have had nightmares upgrading their machines and are less than impressed (my experience a year ago), mine went off without a hitch. After using it for the last seven days, I can say the word that best describes it is snappier. Everything about it is faster, and I see a level of refinement that was sadly lacking in Lion.

The one feature I like the most is the Notification Center. Granted, I don’t get a whole lot of email these days, but it’s nice to see the emails pop up when they do arrive à la the notifications in Outlook on Windows. I also think Power Nap is pretty cool, although its function was something I erroneously believed had already been a part of the OS prior to this.

Another thing I really appreciate is the Twitter integration. I tweet a lot, so it’s pretty cool that it can be done from so many places within the OS.

Wired has a good rundown on some of the lesser-known features here and I highly recommend checking it out.

I haz.

To be honest, I was a little worried about upgrading after the fiasco I went through last summer when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, but the word that best describes today’s experience is anticlimactic.

This morning I fired up the App Store, paid my $19.99 and the download started. It took about 30 minutes, and after making a backup copy of the installer and closing everything I had open, I started the install and left to attend to a user who had to have nearly 3 GB worth of archived mail always available on her laptop (don’t ask). By the time I got back, my Mac was waiting at the login screen.

Everything works. This was one of the most painless OS updates I’ve ever gone through.

Microsoft who?

Good job, Apple.  Bravo!

 

…this is what our wedding will look like. Minus the dress.