Tablet, Shmablet. Will Steve Jobs Make History? Again?

Growing up in Houston as a huge baseball fan I was privileged to watch Nolan Ryan pitch for the Astros.  There was always a possibility of witnessing a no-hitter whenever he was the hurler.  Watching Mr. Jobs walk out on stage is a lot like that.  Any Apple announcement he presents is a potential history-maker.

If January 27th doesn’t get here pretty soon I fear many of the Apple technorati will suffer aneurisms from the anxiety and anticipation.  Whatever Mr. Jobs has up his sleeve, his company is the beneficiary of millions of words of free press speculating about it.  I’m continually amazed by Apple’s ability to virtually hypnotize its customers and tech pundits alike.  It’s hard to imagine any device living up to the hype of the past few weeks, but that’s what I thought before the iPhone was announced.  One thing is certain.  If any company is capable of exceeding the expectations of us mere mortals, its Apple.  Do they have one more home run in their bat? Are they capable of producing another industry-changing product?  If so, it would be number six.  Don’t believe me?

1. In 1984 Apple announced the Mac and changed the way people interacted with computers.  Before that, nobody knew what a mouse was or even an icon.  Operating a personal computer through a graphical user interface with sound and text-to-speech was completely foreign to PC users running DOS and ASCII-based applications like Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.  I know.  I was one of them.
2. In 1997 the first Bondi Blue iMac shattered everyone’s “beige box” concept of what a computer should look like and how easy they could be to set up, get on-line and operate.
3. 2001 was the year of the iPod.  Five cavernous gigs of storage, a unique click wheel and a UI that redefined how we consume digital content.  Yes, I know it wasn’t the first digital music player, but I’d argue it was the first good one.
4. October 16, 2003 is the real birthday of iTunes.  It was released in January 2001 for the Mac, but it languished in relative obscurity until Apple released version 4.1 on the Windows platform.  At the time, Macs only occupied about 1.5% of the personal computer market.  Releasing iTunes for Windows launched the iTunes/iPod ecosystem into the stratosphere where iTunes now enjoys the enviable position as the worlds largest music retailer with iPods controlling greater than 75% market share of digital music players.
5. 2007. The iPhone.  Enough said.

Great companies are built on just one accomplishment the size of any one of these.  Apple (more precisely, Mr. Jobs) has knocked five out of the park!  Rumor has it, he’s excited about this thingy he’ll announce on the 27th.  If this new product gives him a woody it must be something really special.

Maybe the press is justifiably chatty.  If any one of them had been this giddy about the iPod in 2001 they’d be considered a modern-day Nostradamus by now.  Back then CNET’s headline read “Apple’s iPod Spurs Mixed Reactions”.  No matter what Apple reveals in a couple of weeks, it will probably be a commercial success.  There are more than enough fanboys out there with $1000 tucked away who’ll buy anything Steve tells them to.  I would almost put myself in that category and my wife would certainly count me with the fanboys.  Right now, I can’t think of one reason why I might want some sort of tablet computer, but like everyone who isn’t Steve Jobs, I’m limited by my lack of vision.  The reports I read from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show indicate I’m not the only myopic.  Las Vegas seemed awash in prototype “slate” computers from a variety of companies all trying to jump the gun on Apple, no doubt.  Obviously, none succeeded or we’d all have pictures of their new device burned into our LCDs by now.  Apple, by comparison, is not satisfied to simply fill a perceived need, but tends to invent a new need (and a new market) by devising original and creative ways to utilize technology.  I guess we’ll all find out what we’ve been missing on January 27th.  It will be interesting to see if Mr. Jobs brings his “A” game.

5 Tools That Make Moving to a New Mac Easy

Monday my new 27”, Core i7 iMac arrived.  Christmas came 11 days early for me.  I held my breath for the unboxing after hearing all the horror stories about cracked screens, DOAs and screen flicker problems, but mine was perfect.

I laid it face-first on my bed and did the minor surgery required to upgrade the memory by adding two 2 GB sticks into the empty slots remaining from the stock (4 GB) configuration.  (TIP: Don’t pay $200 for Apple to do this.  Macsales.com offered the same memory for $112, including shipping and installation is a snap.)  The first thing I noticed after setting the big guy on my desk was just how neat and uncluttered the machine is.  The wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse™ make the power cord the only cable.  Apple even ships the input devices with the batteries installed.  The only setup is to plug it in and turn it on.  This type of user experience is what us Macheads pay Apple for and it starts right out of the box.  The last PC I bought from Dell required 30 minutes of unboxing and assembly before I got to the point where I could press the power button.  Then I spent another hour removing all the “crapplets” from the desktop.

After the standard five-minute OS X setup I was off to the races.  The screen I worried about looks beautiful and the performance of the i7 is very impressive.  I upgraded from a year-old 24” iMac and the first thing I noticed was how much bigger this new machine is.  Ergonomics aside, the screen real estate is well worth the extra desk space.  The 2560 X 1440 display feels like playing croquet on a football field.  Two browser windows, iChat and Apple Mail all fit quite comfortably and the Dock has enough room for as many apps as anyone would want without having to shrink the icons to the size of fleas.

I decided not to use the Migration Assistant for this machine, opting instead to take my time and install only what I needed.  My recently purchased MacBook Pro has apps on it from two machines ago, some of which I don’t even know what they do or why I thought I needed them.  This time I’m letting my normal workflow dictate what gets installed.  So far the list is: iWork, Dropbox, Quicksilver, Text Expander, 1Password, Evernote, Handbrake, VLC, Logic Studio and iStat Menus.  (I also installed MenuMeters because iStat’s network widget didn’t work on this machine.  iSlayer is aware of this problem that seems to be isolated to the Core i5 and i7 iMacs.)  I’m sure this list will grow over time.  It always does, but I’m at least trying to keep the clutter to a minimum.

This brings up the point of this diatribe.  Moving to a new machine always requires some transition time, but I’ve been using some tools that made this transition better than any I’ve done before.

Dropbox 

I’ve been using Dropbox for about a year now and it’s one of those programs I don’t know how I ever lived without.  I now keep virtually all my documents in the Dropbox folder (or one of its sub-folders) and I have Dropbox installed on every computer I own, Mac and Windows.  I only use the free version that gives me 2 GB of “cloud” storage, but if I exclude media files that’s more than enough.  In fact, I considered paying for more storage but decided to take a “wait and see” approach.  So far, in the Dropbox folder I have every Office and iWork document, text file, pdf and...well, everything except hi-res photos and video and I’m only using 327 MB of my allotted 2 gigs.  I’m talking 20 years worth!  I also keep copies of all the source code I develop, backups of all my web sites and most of the screenshots I take using Skitch, Snapz or whatever.  The point is, an entire career’s worth of data can be stored in the same space as 20 minutes of hi-res video.  If you’re careful to segregate your media, you can store a life’s worth of data for FREE.  The really beautiful feature of Dropbox is that it automatically synchronizes all these files to every machine I have it installed on, in the background with no intervention from me.

MobileMe

Apple has taken a lot of heat for the shortcomings of their on-line service.  I’ll admit that when they transitioned from .Mac it was a rocky ride for us users.  Synchronization was less than 100% accurate and Apple had trouble keeping the service running reliably.  Those issues have, for the most part, dissipated and if you’re looking for an on-line service to keep your Macs and all your “iDevices” synchronized, MobileMe is a good choice.  It does cost $100 per year, but it provides 10 gigs of e-mail storage, 10 gigs of iDisk storage and keeps all your e-mail accounts, keychains, bookmarks, notes, contacts, calendars and to-dos up-to-date on every computing device you own.  Change any item on any device and that change propagates to all your others.  As an iPhone and iPod Touch user, this is invaluable.  I use iDisk for backups mainly and share files occasionally in my public iDisk folder.  The iDisk portion of MobileMe works much the same as Dropbox, just not as well and does not sync at all on Windows PCs.  The beautiful thing about MobileMe is Apple has embedded it into OS X.  When you setup a new Mac for the first time it asks you for your MobileMe login and if you sync information using MobileMe on your other Mac(s), all your contacts, calendars, e-mail accounts, etc. appear on your new Mac automatically.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried duplicating hundreds of contacts to a new computer, but for me this feature alone is worth the $100 annual fee.  There are those who would argue that Google does the same thing for free.  I think Google is close, but they will never integrate as seamlessly with OS X as Apple’s own product.  If $100 per year is out of your price range what the hell are you doing buying a Mac?

1Password

If you spend any time on-line these days, some sort of password management is a must.  Firefox and Safari do a decent job of remembering your logins but that’s about it.  On a new machine, you may have to “train” your browser all over again. 1Password stores all your identities (home, work, business, etc.), credit card information and logins plus provides browser plugins for almost every browser so you can easily fill in those long web forms.  It also generates complex passwords that can’t be easily guessed and I never have to remember them. Every time I get a new Mac, 1Password is one of the first things I install.  It is without a doubt the one piece of software that saves me the most time over the course of owning a Mac.  Whenever I sign up for a new web service or purchase something on-line, 1Password fills in all the required information with just a couple of clicks.  I’m not a fan of letting web sites remember my personal or credit card information for “next time”.  1Password remembers it all for me and keeps it securely encrypted on my machine.  When you move to a different machine, 1Password’s export and import features make moving your saved data easy and if you use Dropbox, keeping your 1Password data in a Dropbox folder means all your machines stay in sync by default.  When you buy a new Mac, you simply tell 1Password to use the keychain stored in Dropbox.  1Password 3 is in beta and you can try it for free at http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password.  

Evernote

There’s lots of information I’ve gathered over the years that I never want to be without.  Things like software keys, terminal commands, code snippets and OS X hints and tips that I don’t use often (and would never remember) need someplace to reside where I can get to them easily.  Evernote is perfect for that and much more.  It’s easy to get things into and because all your notes are searchable, easy to find them once you do.  Evernote even indexes text inside of pictures.  There are add-ons for all the major browsers that make it easy to save things you clip from the web.  It works on Macs and PCs and like Dropbox, synchronizes across every machine you’ve installed it on.  For the “coffee shop” scenario the Evernote website is full-featured and responsive.  There’s also an iPhone app that keeps all my notes in my pocket.  Setting up a new Mac and installing software can be problematic without all my software keys in one place and for me, that place is Evernote.  You can get it for free at http://www.evernote.com.

Quicksilver

I hate to admit it, but I think OS X’s biggest failing is its inability to easily find and launch applications.  With no “Start” button like Windows, searching through your applications folder in Finder is about the only way to launch an app that isn’t in your Dock.  There are multiple apps that remedy this shortcoming, but I like Quicksilver the best.  First, it’s free and secondly because it remembers what I’ve launched and continues to make launching my favorite apps easier and easier.  To find something in Quicksilver you simply press the hotkey combination (^+space by default) to start Quicksilver listening then type the first few letters of an application or document name and Quicksilver presents you with a list of items in order of relevance.  Press enter and viola!  Your app launches.  That’s where Quicksilver’s intuitiveness shines.  The more you use it the better it gets at predicting what you want to do.  The only downside: when you use someone else’s Mac that doesn’t have Quicksilver installed, you feel a bit lost without it.  I keep a copy on my jump drive for just those occasions and I’ve made believers out of more than one Mac user by installing it and showing them what a timesaver it can be and how easy it is to use.  On my new iMac, Quicksilver was installed in the first hour and using it was instantly as easy as my previous machine.  You can download it free at http://www.blacktree.com/.

I know from Apple’s sales figures that people are buying lots of Macs these days.  Moving data and settings from one machine to another can be very time consuming.  While there’s no silver bullet for this problem, these five apps can make switching computers much less painful.

“Magic Mouse”, Finally, an Apple Mouse that Doesn’t Suck

I thought about writing this a few days ago when the UPS guy delivered my latest Apple purchase, a ”Magic Mouse”.  But then I thought it best to wait a few days until I had a little more experience with the device.  Aside from the truly stupid name (the worst since “MobileMe”), this thing is pretty nice.  Apple could have left the “Mighty Mouse” (another stupid name) out of the box for every Mac I’ve ever bought.  In fact, the only time I’ve ever used one is when one of my Logitechs’ batteries died and my last spare “AA” was in my daughter’s camera.  How can a company with such clearly superior industrial design even consider putting something as crappy as a Mighty Mouse in the box with one of their computers?  But I digress.

This new mouse is clearly a step above anything Apple has previously offered.  Borrowing from their MacBook trackpad, Apple incorporates gestures into the button-less glass surface of their new, sleek offering.  While not as extensive as their trackpad, the gestures Apple included in the mouse update 1.0 turn this one-button device into a five-button mouse with a scroll wheel.  More on that in a moment.

Opening the box reveals a clear top display case complete with a plastic hook for hanging in the Apple store.  Opening this packaging is problematic at best.  I think Apple used half a roll of clear tape to secure the new mouse in its packaging.  Opening it reminded me of trying to get a new DVD out of its wrapper complete with sticky residue on the bottom of the mouse that took more effort than necessary to clean off.  Once out of the package though I was initially impressed with the build quality and overall heft of the device.  Conversely, the Mighty Mouse feels like a light, cheap piece of plastic crap by comparison.  The Magic’s aluminum and glass construction is more like one would expect from Apple, a solidly built piece of hardware.

Setup was a snap and I immediately appreciated the bluetooth wireless with nothing to plug into my computer, a MacBook Pro.  The third law of Mac computing is: “No matter how many USB ports one has, it will always be one too few.”  Not a concern with this mouse.  After a few simple adjustments I had the new device working to my liking.  The first thing I noticed was how short (vertically) the device is so the body of the mouse never touches the palm of my average-sized hand.  Next, the technique for pressing the right button took some getting used to.  To do so requires lifting your left finger from the mouse.  The scroll works like you’d expect and since I selected “with momentum”, zinging to the bottom of a long web page is a snap.  The only real gesture is the two-fingered swipe left or right which navigates back and forth respectively.  I’ve tried it in Safari, Firefox and iPhoto and it works quite well.  The device's considerable heft is what makes this possible.  Swiping a lighter mouse might send it sliding unintentionally.  The Magic Mouse stays steady as your fingers swipe the surface.  Once I got used to it, the motions seemed quite natural.

I’m a huge Logitech fan and have been using a MX 1000 with my iMac and a VX 1000 with my MBP for about a year now.  I have every button and the wheel setup to my liking.  Both let you add quite a bit more functionality than the Magic Mouse.  After a week, I have to admit I don’t miss the extras.  I must not have used them very much, although I would like a way to invoke the Application Switcher.  I’m sure Apple will add functions in future software releases.  Maybe that will be one of them.

My advice:  If you like your existing pointing device, keep it.  The Magic Mouse doesn’t offer anything you can’t get elsewhere.  If you’re looking for a new mouse, the Magic may be worth a look.  At least now buying a new Mac won’t involve adding a third party pointing device to your purchase.  Apple finally includes one that isn’t an embarrassment.

The "Jailbreak" Mentality

I’m a BIG fan of jailbreaking my iPhone and iPod Touch.  I mainly like monkeying around with the GUI on the devices but there are tons of apps available through Cydia, Rock and Icy that, for whatever reason, are not “blessed” by the overlords at Apple.  I’ve found most of these to be reliable and safe, but there’s always the exception and I install them at my own risk.  I’ve been jailbreaking since the first jailbreak was available for the first-gen iPod Touch and have successfully jailbroken every iDevice I’ve owned including first and second generation iPod Touches, the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.  Every device I own is now jailbroken running the latest OS, 3.1.2.

I find I can do so much more with a jailbroken device that it is always a quandary when Apple releases an OS update.  I have to decide if Apple’s new features outweigh the features I enjoy with a jailbroken device.  I usually wait until a jailbreak is available before upgrading, but it is still a pain in the ass.  Call me stubborn, but I have a big problem with Apple’s attitude.  After all, I paid for these devices (which are really computers) and I don’t like anybody telling me what I can and can’t do with them.

I love my Macs, but I can’t imagine a scenario where I would even consider buying one if Apple were as onerous with them as they are with the iPhone and iPod touch.  All you Mac owners out there:  Can you imagine a world where you couldn’t even change the wallpaper on your computer?  Or browse for files?  How f*%^ked-up is that?  Apple will void the warranty on my iPod Touch if I jailbreak it.  I get that.  They shouldn’t be responsible for things out of their control.  But what if my device is out of warranty or I choose to tell Apple to shove their warranty?  I paid for this damned thing.  Why can’t I install whatever I want on it?  ITS MY COMPUTER!

Obviously, I’m not alone.  The jailbreak community is alive and well with new, quality software released every day.  My iPhone has a cool theme complete with custom rotating wallpaper, a five-icon dock and a bunch of cool sounds to replace the tired offerings from Apple.  Oh yeah, they don’t let you change them either.  A^#holes.

The word from GeoHot is jailbreaking is getting tougher with each OS release.  It has gotten to the point that the latest devices require tethering to reboot after they’re jailbroken.  That sucks.  Thankfully, even my 3GS (purchased in early July) is not in that group or I’d seriously consider towing the Apple line like a good little sheep.  As much as I love jailbreaking my iPhone, an un-jailbroken iPhone is still better than any other smartphone available.  That won’t be the case for long.  These new Android devices are looking mighty tasty.  I admit to being somewhat of an Apple fanboy but I don’t live under anybody’s boot!  I strongly suspect there are many others who share my opinion.  It will be interesting to see if Apple can continue putting up phenomenal numbers when the iPhone isn’t the only smartphone game in town.

The Apple Stores are Finally Cleansed (No Mo Win Mo)

Apple used the need Windows to sell Apple gearAccording to TUAW, our beloved Apple stores are getting some slight revamps for the holiday season.  No more color-coded “T”s for the employees.  (Does anyone know what the colors meant?)  Apple salespeople will now be able to accept cash and last but not least: No more Windows Mobile handheld point-of-sale devices.  Apple will be changing over to iPod Touches running POS software with some sort of scanner/printer attachment.  I always thought it strange that the entire Apple retail [store] enterprise was run on Windows POS systems.  I would always needle the store employees whenever they rang me up using one of those crappy Windows Mobile handhelds.

I mentioned this a while back and the comments were very defensive.  Now, the Apple apologists have nothing to apologize for.  Their beloved “Geniuses” will no longer soil their hands with Windows.