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Rumors for Apple’s “Back to the Mac” – Results

October 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

So, how did I do for the event? Let’s revisit the predictions:

RumorResultRemarks
Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” :-)And a nice upgrade. Several things from the mobile (iOS) platform rolled into OS X.
Updated versions of iWork and iLife :-)Yay. Love the photo and movie editing and publishing capabilities. GarageBand has now stooped to the level of “any idiot can make music”.
A smaller version of the MacBook Air :-)Smaller, but also the old 13″. And improved battery life!
Facetime on Mac :-)Can’t wait for integration with the PC!
iPhone on the Verizon network :-(They’ll have another event for that.
The iMac Touch is announced :-|Well, sort of: Apple explained why they don’t think a touchscreen desktop is a good idea, and showed us the alternative.
Apple buys Facebook :-(They may have another event for that…

All in all, 4 1/2 out of 7. Not a bad score I think, considering the craziness of some of the rumors.

Filed Under: Macintosh Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Android Multi-Touch tablet prototype

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Zedomax blog has a preview of an Android tablet running Android at the Adobe exhibit at Web 2.0. Although the preview shows off a lot of the functions (including the ability to run Flash and Air applications on the tablet), there are two distinct disadvantages for an Android/Flash tablet:

  1. The number of apps available for Android versus the iPad
    Currently Apple has more than 180,000 apps, versus Android about 50,000 apps. I hate to quote Balmer, but “Developers! Developers! Developers!”. If I have a platform where the 1 millionth device just shipped, versus a new platform, I’d go with the 1 million device user base.
  2. The different user interface a (touch) tablet requires versus a mouse drive app.
    Examples of this are hover functions, double-click, etc., which have to be redesigned for a touch interface.
One of the big advantages would be the ability to put an app on an Android tablet without having to go through a vetting process at Apple that is less than transparent. Also, chances are the device will be cheaper, based on Google‘s philosophy that the more people use the web, the better it is for Google.
I guess we’ll have to wait until the end of the year to see what the Android tablet will look like, how much it will cost, and how it will perform.
Filed Under: Macintosh Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Google tasks available on mobile phone and desktop

March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Google tasks are now available on your mobile phone. With all the applications Google has available, they’re becoming a serious contender for my desktop Outlook.

Wish list for Tasks:

  1. Synchronize with Outlook Tasks
  2. Give me context ability (filter on @Calls, @Home, @Work, etc.)

Also, Google tasks is available as a stand-alone application by using the Chrome browser. Navigate to https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig in Chrome, use the Create Application Shortcuts in Chrome, and if needed resize the window. Alternative is to use the Adobe AIR version of Google Tasks.

Filed Under: Network, Productivity, Windows Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

2008 MacWorld round-up

January 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A hectic schedule at work and at home has prevented me from reporting on the MacWord announcements Steve Jobs made in his keynote. A quick round-up:

  • Office 2008 native on Intel
  • Time Capsule, an external hard drive companion to Time Machine, with a built-in Airport Extreme base station. Two versions, 500GB ($299) and 1TB ($499), ships in February.
  • iPhone update: SDK in late February, now maps with locations, SMS to multiple people, webclips
  • iPod Touch has upgrade to get all this. Existing users have to pay $20 to upgrade.
  • iTunes movie rentals. Regular $2.99 for library titles, $3.99 for new releases. HD costs a dollar more.
  • AppleTV take 2 – no computer required, but can sync to one. HD movie rentals. Integration with Flickr and YouTube. Price dropped to $229.
  • World’s thinnest notebook – the Apple MacBook Air. 13.3 inch widescreen, 3 pounds, 0.76 to 0.16 inches thick, iSight camera, full size LED backlit keyboard, large trackpad with multi touch gestures (like on the iPhone and iPod Touch), 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, 5 hours battery life, 1.8″ harddrive 80GB standard, 64GB SSD optional, 1.6GHz Core Duo. No optical drive – need to have it as USB connected drive, or borrow one from a PC or a Mac. Priced at $1799, and ships in two weeks.

Nice announcements, on top of the Mac Pro with 8 cores announced last week. The Apple Air is sexy and sharp, looks like you can cut someone with it. Time Capsule’s saving grace is the wireless base station, otherwise it’s just a high-priced USB drive. AppleTV v.2 might be just what AppleTV needed to take off, combined with the movie rentals. It sucks to have to pay $20 for an iPod touch upgrade, but it beats having your device obsoleted a couple of weeks after you purchase it.

Unfortunately, nothing earth shattering. Which seems to be reflected in the AAPL stock price: hovering around $177 beginning of this week, it now dipped down to about $163. That’s only a little higher than their three-month low of mid-November. I wonder what will Apple come up with around May (gut feeling they have “one more thing” up their sleeve)?

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