I used to highly respect Apple. I bought an iBook, a few iPods, an iMac, and an iPhone. I’ve purchased several songs on iTunes, and I’ve used the Safari beta. They’re trying to remove DRM from iTunes music. They were a good company.
But as of today, I’ve lost all respect for them. Let me explain.
Today, Apple realized Microsoft’s success, and decided to follow them as a role model. They forced their Safari web browser on Windows users of iTunes, QuickTime, or Bonjour.
Sneakily, the Apple Software Updater will run and pop-up automatically on the screens of Windows users who have iTunes installed. This is fine. The problem is that it now has Safari, and it’s checked to install by default.
Even if you have never installed Safari before. Continue reading ‘Today, I Lose All Respect For Apple: Software “Updater” Installs Safari’
Chinese company Lenovo, which acquired IBM’s computing division in 2005, today is throwing around the word “perfection.” And I think this could very well be the closest a laptop has ever come. They have released the ThinkPad X300, a 2.9 lb. wonder. Far less than an inch thick, it’s the lightest and thinnest ThinkPad ever made. Amazingly, it has not only a TrackPoint, but a TouchPad as well - which is the signature ThinkPad “UltraNav.”
Naturally, when thinking of extremely thin laptops, the recently-released MacBook Air comes to mind. Here’s a head-to-head comparison, which shows clear ways in which the X300 wins out:
Continue reading ‘Lenovo ThinkPad X300 vs Apple MacBook Air’
On my birthday, Apple released a new software update for iPhone. Thankfully, it’s free. Apple really does treat their iPhone users well 
Continue reading ‘iPhone “GPS” Location - Software Update’
Apple announced today (my birthday the release of the MacBook Air, which they claim is the world’s thinnest notebook. What I’d like to know is: what was the thinnest notebook before today?
The MacBook Air is 0.76″ at its thickest point. There is a hard drive option (80 GB 1.8″ hard drive) and flash memory drive option (64 GB), which would make it the first mainstream OS X computer running on flash memory. I suppose you can count the iPhone, but it’s not really a full-blown computer.
Since the new laptop doesn’t have an optical drive, you can use a new product called “Time Capsule” with it to backup files wirelessly. Time Capsule is a wireless router with a 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive, which looks like the Apple TV and will probably be a popular accessory for the MacBook Air.
Overall, the MacBook Air reminds me of the canceled Palm Foleo. I’d like to get an Air when the price comes down. Or would someone like to give me a review unit? Update: The X300 seems more suited to me. Continue reading ‘MacBook Air: World’s Thinnest Notebook’
I hand my iPhone to a friend and invite her to try the web browser, Safari. What’s the first site she visits?
Facebook, of course.
When I was at the movie theatre, and I wanted to tell people where I was, what was my only choice?
Facebook, of course.
Unfortunately, the Facebook interface is not iPhone Safari compatible. I couldn’t set my status, either from the Home page or my Profile.
Luckily, I was able to set my status by using Facebook mobile and sending an SMS message to Facebook’s phone number. But this is a hack at best, when really I should be getting a much richer experience on the iPhone. Additionally, I only get 200 SMS messages a month, so I need to be careful how much I use it.
So it was good news when I saw that Facebook was finally going to be optimized for the iPhone:
Continue reading ‘Facebook on the iPhone’
How to type punctuation on the iPhone with just one gesture.
Click and hold .?123, then slide that same finger over to a punctuation mark. Lift your finger.
The punctuation mark is typed and you’re back to your alphabetical keyboard. Continue reading ‘iPhone Typing Tips’
This seems to be a factual error in an otherwise very excellent review of the Apple iPhone: Continue reading ‘Rearranging Bookmarks on the iPhone’
The feature is there. The interface is slick. My default mail account is setup. But I’ve tried it three (3) times now, and I still have yet to see any email from my iPhone. What’s going on? Am I just missing the email, or has anyone else had trouble with sending photos with the iPhone?
One of people’s big complaints is that the iPhone doesn’t have MMS. This isn’t a problem for me because I don’t use MMS. But can MMS be added in firmware/software? I don’t really know MMS, so I don’t know whether it has hardware requirements the iPhone doesn’t have.
Continue reading ‘iPhone MMS and iPod’
I have two iPhone complaints for the moment:
- Google Maps, Safari, and the iPod app have crashed on me multiple times.
- There are no games.
Even the iPod nano has games on it. Why not the more advanced iPhone?
While attempting to multitask between Google Maps and Safari, those apps would occassionally crash. On the first day I got the iPhone– Friday– it crashed maybe once, but I didn’t remember it because the iPhone doesn’t handle it like a crash. There’s no error message at all. The screen turns black and, usually, it takes me back to the Home screen. Safari will attempt to save state, so when I open it, it navigates to the same website I had open when it crashed. Often, this state info is old, so it’ll be a page or two back from where I was. The back and forward history is lost. The cache seems to be lost. Safari on the iPhone has bad caching, by the way. I feel like it’s loading each page when I go to it, rather than loading parts of the pages from cache, like it should.
Continue reading ‘iPhone Crashes’
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