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

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market that didn’t have a touch screen or had a touch screen that required the use of a stylus was simply awkward and outdated.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 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.

So the HP Slate that Balmer so proudly showed off at CES this year has gone from “it’s running Windows 7″ to “it’s canceled” to now, HP Slate no longer a consumer product, will arrive for enterprise this fall. What a freaking joke.

via – http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/macpaint/

“When the Lisa team was pushing to finalize their software in 1982, project managers started requiring programmers to submit weekly forms reporting on the number of lines of code they had written. Bill Atkinson thought that was silly. For the week in which he had rewritten QuickDraw’s region calculation routines to be six times faster and 2000 lines shorter, he put “-2000″ on the form. After a few more weeks the managers stopped asking him to fill out the form, and he gladly complied.”

This is a simple one. There are a number of menu bar items that aren’t easily accessed through system preferences that can be found in System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras. Double click an interesting item that you find in that folder. To remove the menu bar item simply command drag the menu bar item away from the menu bar.

Found out about this app in a magazine. It allows you to drag a window to the top, left or right and have it expand to fill the screen or the left or right half just like Aero Snap.

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/

As pointed out by this article on Slashdot.org a good number of Linux based tablets are also on their way and set to compete with Apple’s iPad. Of the mentioned tablets I think Android based ones hold the most potential simply because Android was designed from the ground up around the idea of touch input.

The other interesting thing, as always, are the comments on the Slashdot post. I just can’t help but feel the majority of tech savvy people simply don’t understand what the iPad is and why it will be a success. According to a large number of the tech savvy, people want a device they can tinker with, install whatever they choose on and is open. Anything else is evil and you’re dumb if you don’t agree. What they tend to forget is there is a large market of people who just don’t care about openness. They just want a device that works without the need to tinker.

My wife isn’t someone who wants to tinker. She wants results. As a tech savvy person myself, it took me a number of years before I fully understood why turning on the TV, stereo, selecting the right input, turning on the DVD player and selecting the right remote for each device in order to watch a movie simply wasn’t acceptable to her. It had to be simpler. The entire setup was so simple in my mind and I had complete control over the system, it all seemed perfect to me. Getting everything turned on so we could watch a movie together seemed like a small accomplishment each and every time. To her it was a complete chore. The answer, in the end, was a Logitech Harmony remote. One button turns on the needed equipment, automatically selects the correct input and the one remote then correctly controls each device without further work. Turning it all off is equally easy. Today I’d never give up that remote because of how it simplified the entire process.

My point is that eventually, getting things done becomes more important than openness or the ability to tinker. I’m more than willing to give some of that up for a more pleasurable experience. I think Android based devices, including phones and tablets, will be successful, but in the area of tablets the iPad will lead because it provides solutions with the least amount of resistance.

As a followup to my previous post I thought touching on how to get the most out of the Mac keyboard and mouse or trackpad would be a good idea. Although the keyboard and mouse are mostly the same between a Mac and a PC there are a few key differences that can really get a guy hung up.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Watch a long time Mac user and you’ll undoubtedly see them using a large number of keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts let you perform actions that would normally require the use of a mouse but switching from the keyboard to mouse is a time consuming task.

If you’re coming from Windows then you probably know at least some keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+c for copy, ctrl+v for paste. You know that most keyboard shortcuts using the ctrl key plus some other key to get something done. You might also know that the Windows key plus some other key on the keyboard will fire off something completely different. On the Mac the majority of the keyboard shortcuts are fired off using the command key. Below I have a list of some of the most common keyboard shortcuts on the Mac. It is not an exhaustive list

Shortcuts that work nearly anywhere

• command+x, command+c, command+v: cut, copy, paste
• command+space bar: spotlight search. Really useful for launching apps
• command+left or right arrow: One area I’d fault the Mac on, poor use of home/end. This shortcut replicates home/end in most situations. In some apps they are remapped to change tabs, like in iTerm
• fn+delete: On laptops, fn+delete will act like the delete key on a PC keyboard, deleting the character in front of the cursor.
• command+tab: Switch between apps
• command+~: Switch between windows of the current app
• F3: On the newer Mac laptops and the aluminum keyboard, F3 initiates the all windows exposé.
• option+e and then the letter: Gets you that thing above the e
• ctrl+click: Right click
• command+q: Closes all windows of the current app and quits the app
• command+w: Closes the current window (or tab in some apps)
• command+m: Minimize current window
• command+h: Hide the current application. Similar to minimizing an app but doesn’t require Dock space
• command+option+h: Hide all windows other than the current window
• option+mute,volume up/down: Open audio preferences
• option+F3: Exposé preferences

Discovering More
If you want to know about more keyboard shortcuts look no further than the menu bar. Just click a menu and look at the symbols shown to the right of a menu item. The ⌘ is the command key, ⇧ is shift, ⌥ is option, ⎋ is your power button and ⌫ is your backspace (delete) key. ⌥⌘T will usually bring up a special characters palette allowing you to find these symbols and more.

Also know that the option key serves as a modifier for a lot of things. For example, if you hold down the option key and then click the AirPort icon in the menu bar (by the clock) you’ll additional information about the wireless network you’re connected to. If you hold option while clicking the apple menu, the usual “About This Mac” will become a shortcut to the System Profiler.

The Trackpad
While the keyboard is fun and all, the trackpad is where the real magic is. Using the multi-touch trackpad found on the latest generation of Mac laptops will make any other trackpad nearly impossible to use. The trackpad, made of glass with the perfect texture, is large and also serves as the button. You can click using just about any part of the trackpad which actually comes in handy more often than you’d think.

A favorite sticking point of Windows users is that Macs don’t have mice or trackpads with multiple buttons. They then assume that OS X doesn’t understand the venerable right click. This couldn’t be further from the truth. OS X has supported context based right click menus from day one. Accessing them was just different, in the beginning. You’ll find that control+click will produce a right click menu, but so will clicking the trackpad with two fingers. If you’re a fan of tap to click as I am, then you’ll you can find that setting in System Preferences. Once enabled, tapping on the trackpad with two fingers will produce the right click menu. Over time, I’ve found this to be much more useful than a dedicated button because I can get the menu from anywhere on the trackpad.

Here’s a list of the other capabilities of the multi-touch trackpad:

• Two fingers slid up or down: Scrolling, just like the wheel mouse
• Four fingers slid up: Show desktop
• Four fingers slid down: Exposé

For more visit the trackpad preferences in System Preferences. Apple also provides a lot of good information on this topic at http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/work/

Think I missed something? Leave it in the comments!