Posts tagged Apple
Who Knew that iTunes was so cool?
Dec 12th
Perhaps it was just me, but I had no idea how cool iTunes was until last night. I’ve used iTunes exclusively for my master music collection for about 5 years now, and, in that time, I’ve been very focused with my music collection. I can’t say the same for my video collection. Only recently, as I began working with my AppleTV, did I actually allow video into my iTunes library.
However, I’ve got a brilliant combination working now. iSquint, the gorgeous free video editor, converts my files into high quality mp4/m4v files and adds them to iTunes. iTunes then pushes them to my AppleTV. It’s incredible to tell iSquint to covert several dozen videos and then the next morning they are waiting on my AppleTV.
In the meantime, I just discovered something on iTunes that I hadn’t realized existed. I went into the overcrowded “Movies” section of my iTunes library and found that you can convert “Movies” to “TV Shows.” Here’s the best part, by filling in the metadata – by adding the TV show title, the season, the episode, iTunes will properly group and organize them. Whereas before, I had a huge section of movies, randomly plunked down in the same view, now I have a view of many logically grouped subsets, much the way iTunes handles artists and albums in grid view.
Furthermore, AppleTV obeys the organization as well! Instead of a silly, long list of movies, I go to TV Shows and then drill down by show, where they are sorted by season and episode.
Using iTunes just got much better. I had been thinking, lately, about how well music organization works in iTunes and how poorly video organization does. I still think that’s the case – Videos are a mess. But TV Shows and Music Videos work well.
Install From Time Machine
Nov 19th
I got my new iMac in late last week – the 24″ 3.06 Ghz aluminum one with 4GB RAM – and it *is* sweet. I’ve set up a Mac fresh, I’ve set up a machine using the Migration Assistant, and I’ve used target disk mode, but I’ve not yet had the chance to rebuild from a time machine backup. Did it work?
Suffice it to say it was incredible. Using just my external hard drive, it read my backup, asked me what I wanted to restore (it found 4 things: Users, Network Settings, Applications, and “Files and Folders”). I checked them all. After a few simple questions, it told me that it would take just shy of 4 hours to complete. Surprisingly, it was done a scant 150 minutes later. When I booted up, I was amazed. Not only did everything come over, it was almost as if it was my exact machine. Barely a noticeable difference, save speed and size.
A few things slipped by, for example, I had changed /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg to a custom image, which it did not preserve. I had changed some system icons, and those new icons did not preseve, but, for example, my external time machine drive had a custom icon, and it did remain. The new install also required many updates I had already applied to my old OS X installation.
Time Machine Restore: Incroyable!
All in all, though, I’ve never seen a smoother or faster migration. The power of UNIX – everything living in predictable directories and segregated into “Library” folders, means that both backing up and restoring have a power that the Windows Registry simply can’t match. In fact, in wading through all of this, it has a severe handicap when it comes to system migration due to the fact that data is mashed into so many inconsistent places.
Apple has pissed me off quite a bit recently. But – oh boy! – did they re-energize me with this one!
Update: worth noting, here is a great article on restoring from a time machine backup.
Stop Dicking Around
Nov 11th
Apple needs to stop dicking around with these updates. Stop adding in things that are completely superfluous, and focus on the core functions: phone, SMS, email. Give us individual SMS timestamps and deleting, a unified email inbox, lock screen email notifications, more reliable email fetch, user profiles (for sounds and network settings), etc.
CrzyCanuck72, on forums.macrumors.com, discussing iPhone firmware version 2.2
Apple Support
Nov 10th
Today is NOT my day when it comes to Apple products. I bought Mobile Me, the ridciulously overpriced service Apple offers, specificaly for its photo album capabilities, but I cannot activate it. Although I am logged into iTunes using my AppleID, and I am registered with my iPhone, AppleTV, etc, for me.com, it says there is no such user. So I figured that I could very quickly get this fixed by calling 1-800-MY-APPLE.
But Apple offers no phone support for MobileMe. When you dial and tell the comoputer you want to discuss “Mobile Me”, it says “Our support is now available online at me.com/help. Thank you. Goodbye.” Then it promptly hangs up on you. Fail.
My solution? Call and just ram through any menu prompt until I get to an operator and force them to help me. Apple support is generally pretty decent, but aside from the fact that Mobile Me is priced about 5 times too high, they have the audacity to provide no real manner of support other than the massively un-realtime web.
Boo, Apple, boo! You’ve let me down a lot recently. I hope my new iMac makes me happy, or it may be my last Apple product (for awhile, at least).
iPhone 2.2: More Stuff We Don’t Need
Nov 10th
I posted an article recently called “Apple’s Jobs Gives iPhone Customers What They Don’t Want” that discussed the upcoming 2.2 firmware and its new features. iPhone firmware appears to give us Google Maps’ “Street view” and several other “features.” It does not, however, make available any of the most requested features: MMS, copy & paste, Flash, voice dialing, bluetooth/wifi syncing, A2DP (stero bluetooth), landscape Mail view, video recording, text-message forwarding, or any of the over 1800 issues listed over at pleasefixtheiphone.com. So what gives? Why is Apple not giving us these things?
I should start by saying that MMS, or lack thereof, is the one things that bugs the crap out of me on the iPhone. I’ve detailed before how useless and silly viewmymessage.com is. I can’t believe it’s not even something that can be accessed via a clicked URL. But I don’t think the iPhone will ever have true MMS. If Steve Jobs wanted MMS on the iPhone, it would be here by now. No, they are phasing it out, which is arguably good in the long run, but at the expense of its usefulness today. I don’t mind paying the extra few pennies each month for MMS. Even just to receive the messages, but not send them. But stop making the decision for me.
I hate to say that the iPhone, a device that literally converted me from a mobile phone carrier to a smart phone carrier, as someone who sold more of these puppies in the last year than most Apple employees, is doing more to turn me off to Apple than anything else. The iPhone and AppleTV both have let me down. A lot. So much so that even though I recently bought a new iMac (the 24″), I considered a nice new PC at a fraction of the cost, as prep for Windows 7, which looks to be really cool.
Apple’s arrogance and inability to listen to its customers didn’t matter nearly as much when they were a tiny niche company. But they play in the big leagues now, and I suspect that now that they have serious market share in the laptop and education market, they will find a mass defection in a few years as people start to get wise to their control tactics.
I find the new iPhone firmware, even before I get my hands on it, a let down. My iPhone can’t do what phones from 3 years before the iPhone existed does without sweating. If Apple doesn’t start delivering, I suspect that the odds are very high that by the end of 2010 I’ll be carry an Android powered phone.
Overdue Thoughts on Apple
Sep 30th
It’s been a long time comin’. Apple has engaged in plenty of really lame behaviors lately, and it’s time I sound off on them. Let’s take it section by section, shall we?
I’ll break this down into the following parts: OS X, iPhone, App Store.
OS X
Apple’s operating system, OS X, is still the best OS on the market today. I’ve heard several claims that Apple is proprietary and closed and doesn’t contribute to the open source ecosystem, but here is OS X. It’s built on an open source core, which is good, if nothing else, for auditing code flaws.
OS X is still the most beautiful experience out there, and still gets in my way the least when I’m trying to do work. Webkit still sits as the default browser in the form of step-brother Safari, and Webkit is not only open source, it’s also the available on Windows, super compliant, super fast, and it’s the core of Google’s Chrome browser.
OS X also uses open formats for mail storage, standard XML for most configuration files (yes, some plists are not plain text, but they are trivial to open as well), their backup software produces a browsable volume. Their native office suite produces clean XML file formats. The server system uses Open Directory, RSS, Apache, Ruby on Rails, iCal, WebDAV, Wiki software, Tomcat, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, and more. SnowLeopard will implement CardDAV and ZFS. In fact, Apple has been pretty decent about using open source technologies. While they haven’t always given back in this form, certainly basing your apps and system around open formats is better than basing it on closed, proprietary systems, no?
I always say: “If you don’t want your open source work used in commercial derivatives, then don’t use a permissive license.” There’s no clause that says you have to give back when using the BSD license.
I Entrust My Data to… Microsoft?
Sep 24th
I used to love my iPhone, because it kept me all up-to-date and synced. See – on my mac, Address Book and iCal were fully matched up to my calendar. But then I realized that I really don’t need to sync very often, at first because syncing pre-version 2.1 was painful, but later because it’s just not needed. MobileMe syncs over the air, but I’m not paying $99/yr for that service, especially not after the well covered problems with it, and the fact that I don’t see myself migrating from Gmail anytime soon. IMAP, however, was handling my work mail. When iPhone firmware 2.1 came out, I began immediately using ActiveSync, which easily crawls through port 443 (or 80, I think, if you have no cert) on the firewall. I set it up to handle my email and calendar. Then I realized, now that my calendar was handled by ActiveSync and Exchange, iTunes wasn’t syncing it anymore. And by the way, it was seconds behind live data. And I had to sync my phone even less.
Fast forward a few weeks and I finally decided to sync my contacts. I backed up, then wiped my phone contacts and synced them with Exchange. My contacts all arrived in good shape with their pictures. But now iTunes doesn’t sync Contacts with my iPhone. So the backend is now complex, but only on the Apple side.
On the phone, email, contacts, and calendar are pushed to the phone, often times before they even show up in Outlook itself. I sync my calendar from Outlook to Google and I pull my Google calendar down to iCal, only when I open iCal, since I’m subscribed via an ical file on Google’s servers. I set up Address Book to sync with my Exchange server via the OWA interface that Address Book supports by default, but it only syncs every hour, and only when the Mac is running. So it seemlessly syncs with Windows/Exchange, for free. But it takes several programs to get to the Mac, and then, only once an hour.
I sync less and less these days, but if the iPhone included the ability to sync via Bluetooth or wifi – both of which should be fairly trivial to implement – I’d sync much more regularly and trust my Mac to be the master copy. Instead, due to Apple itself, I rely on Exchange.
All of this makes me wonder if one day in the not too distant future, I’ll be using a phone running Android. After all, if all of my core data is synced elsewhere anyway, why would I want a phone that has no voice dial, can’t do picture messaging, can’t view flash, can’t do copy and paste, doesn’t allow for any wifi syncing, permits apps seemingly at will with no guidelines, gets more closed every month, has shitty battery life, and drops calls randomly? Just because it has a pretty apple on it?
Time for the 3G iPhone Already
May 21st
Dear Steve,
It’s really time for the 3G iPhone. It’s getting to be ridiculous. Check out Engadget’s news on the 3G iPhone. The news is everywhere, everyone already expects it to be announced on June 9 at your WWDC keynote. I suspect, with the shortages of iPhones everywhere, that the phone is not truly ready. If it was, you would be silly not to release it and take advantage of all the people (a) who are actually looking to buy new iPhones and (b) the people just waiting to snap up a 3G, like I am.
But if it is actually ready and just sitting in a warehouse in China until some crafty worker snaps a spy photo and emails it to a site like ThinkSecret or EngadgetMobile, ship the dang things over here and let’s have at ‘em. We’re champing at the bit for a friggin snapshot of the damned thing, imagine the mass orgas celebration when it actually arrives. It looks like AT&T is going to have their HSPA network complete next month, but we’re ready now. So how about you just release it already so I can buy one and give my wife mine 1st gen? Ya dig?
Thanks,
Adam
Release Tuesday
Mar 18th
This week has already seen a slew of releases: first came an updated Airport Express (I want one). Then today, Apple unleased Safari 3.1, which vastly extends support for bleeding edge web standards like CSS3, HTML5, and expands support of ECMAscript.
Finally, not to have all headlines stolen this St. Patrick’s Day, Microsoft loosed Vista SP1 to Windows Update.
I have installed Safari 3.1/Win and this evening I will upgrade at home on the Mac. I am currently downloading Vista SP1 for my work PC. Reviews to follow, for certain.
The Apple iRack
Mar 19th
Posted by Adam S in [...]
Comments
Ah, the joy of humor. What do you get when you combine Apple and Steve Jobs with a little George Bush? Answer: comedy gold!