Category Archives: Mac

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How does iThoughtsHD have this and Apple doesn’t?

Posted on July 12, 2010 | 4 Comments

One of my biggest complaints with the iPad is it’s complete lack of usefulness for content creators. I understand, creators are not Apple’s biggest market, or even a group the ever seem to care about, Shoot, they make “Consumer electronics” LOL.

Still there’s so little that would have to be done to make the iPad SO incredibly awesome for creators, and open doors left and right. I know it’s possible, iThoughtsHD (iTunes Link), a great mind mapping app has already done it!

When building a mind map, like many tools on the iPad, you can save off to the cloud somewhere, box.net, dropbox,etc. Unlike many apps, and all Apple apps. You can load from cloud.

It’s that easy. They did why didn’t/hasn’t Apple?

I caved, and paid $10 for Pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Please Apple here my plea! The iPad is great for games and consumer shit, hook those of us who create up! It can’t be hard, a third party did it! You can too!

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Posted in Business, I am a Creator, Mac, Random, Technology, Travel, Work, Writing

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hulu +, Not the Droids I was looking for

Posted on June 30, 2010 | 1 Comment

I hope for many, hulu + is a huge WIN. For me, in the short term, it’s not.

When I heard the announcement, my first thought was, “ok this is the final nail in Cable’s coffin for our house”

Very quickly though the coffin shrugged the nail off.

What would make hulu + the killer app for me? Not a lot above what they’re offering, but enough that I’ll be waiting before switching our family over.

1. The Archive. That’s a nice feature. Nicole decided to watch Angel, yet currently hulu only has like 1 season, or part of 1 season. So when we find programs we’d like to explore from the beginning, the archive is a good option, assuming the show is in there.

2. We watch a lot of Discovery and History channel, which don’t seem to be available on hulu. Bummer, will have to wait and see if they get that content or if there’s another avenue for it’s consumption.

3. iPad and iPhone apps are awesome (and the quality is insane!), but much like the Netflix app, when I’m in the mood to use those apps is when I’m traveling. hulu and Netflix really should allow the apps to cache content. It’s all DRM protected by the apps, etc, so caching shouldn’t be an issue. Putting in hard restrictions shouldn’t be hard either, like 3 shows, for 2 days, etc. Frankly when I’m at home wanting to watch something I have a really big TV with Netflix and hulu on it, I’m not reaching for my iPad.

Sure if I’m in a hotel room, I could stream content and watch on my iPad, and that’s a valid example and a use I’d likely engage in, but for me, and I assume a lot of other travelers, the bigger need is in the air. Unfortunately I don’t see Frontier adding in flight wifi anytime soon, and when they do it’ll be too expensive. Plus if Wil‘s experience is an indicator, as more and more people start to stream content, inflight wifi is likely to break down. I suspect it’s not that fat of a pipe to begin with.

4. This is kind of a “good to have” it sounds as if hulu plus doesn’t reduce the number of ads I have to see. Don’t get me wrong, i pay for cable, and without TiVo I’d see far more ads than on hulu, but it feels weird to move to a premium model, and not at least reduce the number of ads + users will see. Shoot, just go from 3-4 to 2-3 during a show. Something to make me feel like my $10 is buying something more than archive access.

I think the reason hulu + wasn’t a home run for me is because we’re fairly casual watchers. Access to the archive, while nice isn’t huge for us. We have a small number of shows we watch on hulu and we’re pretty good at watching them before they expire. The lack of caching content for air travel, or say, camping or other off the grid activities, makes hulu + even less interesting. I have a ton of content in the “videos” app on my iPad, it’s available whenever, whereever. hulu + didn’t come close enough to beating that for me.

I hope as they roll the service out, they add some features. I really do want to support hulu and stop paying for cable service, but that doesn’t appear to be today.

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Posted in Business, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Mac, Technology

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So the ATT caps don’t affect you huh?

Posted on June 4, 2010 | 1 Comment

I was watching all the tweets about “looks like I only use 400mb so AT&T’s new caps won’t affect me.” earlier this week, and got to thinking.

I’m wondering how much all these folks are considering the future. Not 2044 when we have iPhones in our heads, but a 2 months from now, maybe 3. Clearly AT&T had a plan beyond “Making data plans more affordable and available for all. 98% of our users don’t even use close to 2g” and all. I mean we’ve met AT&T right? When have they done something for their customers, beyond send cease and desist letters when we email them.

So here’s what I’m wondering..

Skype on 3G… how much are we gonna use that? How much will that impact data use? I can see 2gb going fast with a couple business calls a week.

Front facing camera and some sort of iChat for iPhone… Will we get it? Who knows, rumors (again) say yes. How much will video chatting use up your data use?

Backgrounding of Pandora? How much data do you think you’ll use streaming pandora at work every day? On your jog? at the gym? at your desk?

There’s a lot (possibly) coming soon that will hugely impact data usage. Surprised AT&T pre-empted all that with a change in rates?

A change that by next week we’ll have mostly forgotten in the euphoria of a steve-note, new devices, and mac pros, and robot unicorns. AT&T for their cluelessness in dealing with customers, isn’t stupid, and they just roped a ton of schmoes into very restrictive plans.

Take a long the view… it’s a different picture. I’ll be keeping my unlimited plan thank you.

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Posted in 360|iDev, Business, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Mac, Random, Technology

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Dropbox as Anecdotal evidence of Mobile platform strength?

Posted on May 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

I was cruising around the dropbox blog and saw that they have a public voting site for feature requests. As I scrolled through the list, I noticed the mobile device requests.

It pretty much supports my assumptions on the mobile platform space right now.

iPhone, iPad, and Android are all already supported, WinMo (unclear, but I assume phone 7, but it was 6 months ago) is the next highest demanded platform, by a large margin. Pre and Crackberry bring up the final two spots.

Sure it’s anecdotal, but I can’t help but wonder if dropbox doesn’t serve as a microcosm of the mobile space? Clearly with their business on the line dropbox is pursuing the most demanded platforms first, sorry Pre folks, I know you love your phones, but you bet a lame horse.

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Posted in Business, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Mac, Technology

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