Dustin's Blog

Apple announced yesterday that they will be streaming their September 1 event live. The catch? It’ll only work in Safari on Mac and on iOS devices. So in other words, only about 9/10′s of the internet will be able to view the live stream.

But that 9/10′s of the internet will be able to enjoy the exact same video stream no matter what device they are on, be it laptop or the tiny iPod touch. No need for a desktop optimized version and no need for a mobile optimized version. The same stream will play on any sized device.

Make no mistake, this is a giant stab at anyone who is arguing that flash is needed on Apple’s devices. If you need any further information about the state flash on Android you need only watch the video here and then read the comments. People love to rail on Apple while completely missing the point that having flash at all doesn’t mean flash works and a half-assed flash experience is not what Apple is willing to allow on their devices. Reading through the comments you’ll find a few people who argue that “at least it is there” and that “it doesn’t matter that flash sucks today because there are better phones coming out tomorrow.” That makes no sense.

This is something I’ve actually noticed on their machines and I’ve always wondered why nobody else bothers to make a computer look like it is actually “sleeping.”

http://floodlite.tumblr.com/post/1011047822/apples-attention-to-detail

AppleInsider is running a story about a possible iPhone 4 launch on the Verizon network in 2011. This seems to jive with a bit of information from I got from a Verizon worker on the roll out of LTE beginning sometime in the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012. In fact, towers in the Fargo ND area are being upgraded to LTE capable equipment right now. I have my doubts we’ll see a CDMA only version of the iPhone on Verizon’s network and I am betting on a simultaneous iPhone and LTE launch. iPhone being the first LTE capable phone on Verizon’s network would be big marketing win for both the iPhone and Verizon.

Since Steve Jobs came back to Apple there has been one thing Apple has done that nobody can really argue. Innovation in the PC industry. While everyone, including Apple at the time, was producing boring looking beige computers Apple decided to completely rethink how a computer can look and introduced iMac. Love it or hate it, the iMac was completely different than anything else at the time and soon other manufacturers tried to add some amount of flair to their PC lineup.

Skip a head a few years later and Apple did it again. While everyone else was basically creating incrementally different smart phones in 2007, Apple simply destroyed how everyone assumed a smart phone should look and work by bringing to market iPhone. They made it far easier, intuitive and beautiful and from that moment on, they made it so that any phone on the market that didn’t have a touch screen or had a touch screen that required the use of a stylus was simply awkward and outdated.

Apple’s most recent market disruption was none other than iPad. During the summer prior to iPad’s release the netbook craze was in full swing. Just a year later there are reports that sales on netbooks have slowed considerably and some reports even show netbooks are losing out because of iPad.

At iPads reveal in January of 2010 Steve Jobs quipped that netbooks weren’t better at anything, they were simply cheaper laptops. Many people argued that netbooks were most useful for consumption and were never really meant for creating content. Yet netbooks looked and worked just like any other ordinary PC. Apple changed this by creating something that looked and worked nothing like a PC. Note too that iPad was the first tablet device on the market. Microsoft has been trying to get consumers using tablet PCs for years but I don’t think anyone could argue they’ve been anything near the run away success that Apple has seen basically over night.

The inspiration for my post comes from Marco Arment’s recent post. He also poses the interesting question of, “How do you think the subcompact, inexpensive computer category will look in three years?”

AppleInsider has photos of what is believed to be the screen for the upcoming iPod touch. Photos show an opening for a front facing camera which too isn’t much of a surprise with the recent release of FaceTime. THe idea here is anyone with a WiFi connection, email address and compatible iPod/iPhone would be able to place calls to each other. It’s really nothing overly revolutionary except that unlike before where you’d need a full computer to do effective video chatting you can now use a much more portable device.

AppleInsider is reporting that ASUS will be shipping fewer netbooks in the third quarter of 2010 because of strong competition from Apple’s iPad. Anyone who has been reading this blog or following me on Twitter knows what I think of netbooks so this is hardly a surprise to me.

It’s being reported in a number of places, including Engadget, that some code has been found in the most recent firmware allowing a development phone to bypass the activation routine in iTunes. Some are thinking this is in reference to the rumored CDMA (Verizon) iPhone. Evidence is also there to support that a new type or updated version of the iPad is also in the works, though that should hardly be surprising.

AppleInsider is reporting that the latest build of Mac OS X 10.6.5 has been seeded to developers. One of the expected improvements is with 3D graphics support. As someone who as recently taken up the Steam habit this is welcome news for me.

According to this post on the AppleInsider forums it sounds promising:

From some I’ve the reports I’ve seen, Apple at the urging of Valve and others is really starting to get serious about their OpenGL implementation. With the drivers in development some willing to break the NDA have reported scores up to 3 times higher in OpenGL Viewer and significantly higher game performance on all cards.

I just can’t get over some of the stuff on Microsoft’s PC vs Mac argument page. Some of it is true, like the lack of Blu-Ray support. This is something that really irritates me about the Mac platform. Some of the other stuff is just simply stretching it such as the following:

Working smoothly.

Things just don’t work the same way on Macs if you’re used to a PC. For example, the mouse works differently. And many of the shortcuts you’re familiar with don’t work the same way on a Mac.

This statement really makes me want to wipe OS X off my laptop and install Windows 7, it really does. Then again, it really is amazing how I managed to adapt to the mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

But in the end, the thing that really makes me scratch my head is why the page exists at all, or rather, why it’s just so thin on real reasons to use Windows 7. Yes, Apple has been running a negative ad campaign for years poking fun at Microsoft and most of the time I thought they really did hit some of the weak points in Windows. Despite all of that, Apple still openly advertises that you can run Windows on a Mac and they even go so far as to provide the tools to do so. Their tools resize the OS X partition, create a new one for Windows and provide all of the drivers needed to get Windows running. You can then dual boot your Mac system between OS X and Windows. Point is, they’re not afraid to admit that sometimes a person really might want or need to run Windows for whatever function and they provide the tools to do so. Microsoft should be playing on this and attempting to convince people that they need Windows for whatever reason and that a Mac’s can also be a great PC.

Instead we have Microsoft making some incredibly weak arguments on how Windows 7 is superior to the OS X. Some of them are valid and some of them are simply wrong. Either way, Microsoft is primarily a software company and they shouldn’t be pissing on a potential platform. Microsoft has had Office on OS X for years but lets face it, it lags behind the Windows version and has never felt like a proper Mac application. The current 2008 version is incredibly slow even on the latest Macs. While Office 2011 may be set to change that it’s just too early to tell.

I’m a bit behind on my Mac tip of the week entries and these two tips won’t really make up for it but they’re interesting all the same.

First one is that you can manage applications from the application switcher. By pressing command tab you can then tab to different applications. Once an application is highlighted you can issue other command+? commands like command+q to quit or command+h to hide an application.

The second tip involves iCal. iCal in Snow Leopard now officially supports synchronizing with Google Calendar. Adding new accounts is simply done in iCal’s preferences area but adding addition calendars you have access to isn’t as obvious. To add additional calendars simply click on the delegates tab when editing your iCal accounts in preferences.