The Author – Bart Busschots
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Oct
16
The iPhone on the Go
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I’m on my way literally clean across the country as I type this. This is my first real test of the iPhone ok the go. First impressions are very good. GPS is working better than I expected and 3G coverage is a lot more common than I’d expected. I just downloaded the WorsPress app I’m posting this from over 3G in Litrim of all places! Definitely better than I’d dared hope. Also, the iPhone’s auto correction REALY comes into it’s own when you’re typing in a moving car!
Oct
12
Switching to the iPhone from the iPod Touch
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 12, 2008 | 13 Comments
I’ve been an iPod Touch user from day one, and simply love the little devices. With the various updates and the App Store they really have evolved into small pocket computers. The touch interface is fantastic, and although it has been imitated by other vendors, it has yet to be equalled. On Friday I switched from a very old Nokia cell phone and an iPod Touch, to an iPhone. I want to have a look at how the iPhone compares to the iPod Touch, and in particular, how it is as a phone. The iPhone really is an iPod Touch with a phone, so all that’s really new to me is the phone, SMS, and the ability to access the net when away from WiFi.
My iPhone next to my old Nokia Brick
Sep
17
Apple – Don’t Defecate on Your Developers!
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Software Development on September 17, 2008 | 7 Comments
When Apple announced the app store I was a little nervous, but I could see the positive side and was prepared to believe that Apple would be good gate-keepers. It soon because clear I was too optimistic. I was already annoyed with Apple when they started to impose their taste on the world by banning joke apps they didn’t approve of like Slasher and Pull my Finger. Myself and Allison had a big argument about it a little over a month ago on NosillaCast Episode 164. Allison felt that Apple should be allowed to choose what to sell in their store, and she has a point, however, when you block all other options and make yourself the sole distributor of software for an entire platform it’s not wise to go all Victorian with your policies. Obviously Apple CAN block what ever they want, I just think they shouldn’t because it’s bad for users, bad for developers, bad for the platform, and hence, bad for Apple. My solution was simple, have a rating system. If you think something is rude or in poor taste give it an explicit rating! At that stage we were just talking about matters of taste, this week things have taken a very different turn and Apple have moved on from Victorian prudishness to anti-competitive and anti-use practices. They have denied a better podcatcher access to the store because it competes with Apple software. Granted, Apple use the word “duplicate”, but it comes to the same thing in my mind, if you’re not allowed to duplicate any functionality Apple implement then you’re not allowed to compete and that’s bad. To be honest I’m shocked Apple were so blatant about this. When you start creating monopolies for yourself and then banning competition it’s hardly a massive leap to jump to “anti-trust”.
[tags]Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, App Store, developers[/tags]
Aug
27
Mobile Me – A Polished Turd?
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 27, 2008 | 5 Comments
The problem with .Mac (the previous name for Mobile Me) was never the concept, nor was it what was promised, the problem was always the implementation. I expressed my views on .Mac back in January 2007 in a post entitled “.Mac – The Devil is in the Implementation”, and nothing has really changed since. I had high hopes that Mobile Me would finally give us the .Mac we’d always wanted. If all Mobile Me had been was a working version of .Mac without any new functionality it would have been great! However, since it’s launch Mobile Me has just been one disappointment after another. Things started badly when it took them days to get the system even remotely stable, got worse when they permanently lost thousands of people’s email, and didn’t improve at all when we found out Apple had lied to us about push.
[tags]Apple, Mobile Me, .Mac, iDisk, security[/tags]
Jul
30
OS X Users Vulnerable – Apple Still Don’t Get Security
Filed Under Security, Computers & Tech on July 30, 2008 | 26 Comments
One of the things I really love about OS X is its Unix underpinnings. Under the hood we get all the *nix tools and utilities I’ve come to know and love. Printing with CUPS, remote shell with OpenSSH, Windows sharing with SAMBA, web publishing with Apache, and so on and so forth. This gives OS X great power, but it also places a great responsibility on Apple. Just like with any other software, vulnerabilities surface in open source programs. In general the open source community is very responsive to security issues, and patches are released quickly. Those patches protect those who update, but they leave those who don’t even more vulnerable. The reason for this is that the patches can generally be reverse engineered, making it easy for the bad guys to attack un-patched machines. In order to keep OS X secure Apple need to push out patches in the open source components in OS X to users as quickly as possible. This is where Apple fall down, they are notoriously slow at getting patches out.
[tags]Security, OS X, Apple, DNS, open source, BIND[/tags]
Jun
15
Pondering the Snow Leopard
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 15, 2008 | 1 Comment
The details released by Apple are sparse at best, but we know that the next version of OS X (10.6) will be called Snow Leopard. The name is very fitting precisely because it’s so similar to the current OS name, Leopard. Snow Leopard won’t be wedged full of new end-user features like Leopard was, instead the big changes will be under the hood, with a strong focus on efficiency and stability. This release would appear to be about consolidating what’s in Leopard already as well as laying the foundations for future big cats from Apple.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Mac, Snow Leopard[/tags]
Jun
11
Reflections on WWDC 2008 Key Note
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 11, 2008 | 3 Comments
Another WWDC Steve-Note has come and gone, and my predictions were right in some ways, and totally wrong in others. I’d expected the keynote to be iPhone heavy, but not iPhone only! The fact that OS X 10.6 got no more than a passing mention is a little disappointing. As expected, we got to see lots of cool demos of apps for the App Store, as well as a demo of the new features in the new iPhone 2.0 software. The biggest surprise there was how cheap the new software will be for iPod Touch owners, just $9.95! Unsurprisingly, half the planet was right about there being a 3G iPhone, however I’m pleased to have been wrong about GPS. Mobile Me is roughly what I’d expected, but not all I’d hoped for, the lack if iDisk access from the iPhone is disappointing. The continued lack of any sort of access to files for iPhone apps limits what developers can do with the SDK. Un-surprisingly we didn’t get a BlueTooth keyboard for the iPhone, or a Mac Tablet. The biggest disappointment of all is that iPhone 2.0 software still seems to be missing basic text-manipulation functions like select, cut, copy & paste, and that Notes on the iPhone still don’t seem to sync to anywhere.
[tags]Apple, Steve Jobs, WWDC 2008, WWDC, iPhone, Mobile Me[/tags]
Jun
11
OS X 10.5.3 Playing Havoc with iTunes
Filed Under Computers & Tech on | Leave a Comment
Since upgrading to OS X 10.5.3 iTunes has developed a very annoying bug. When I’m in work I cannot download podcasts. Every time I do iTunes quits unexpectedly. Happens 100% of the time, without fail. At home, it works perfectly. The only difference I can see is that at work I use both a Proxy server and a VPN to get to the internet. It would seem that iTunes can’t deal with that setup anymore on 10.5.3. No solution found as of yet, if I find one I’ll post again.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, 10.5.3, iTunes, crash[/tags]
Jun
7
My Predictions for WWDC 2008
Filed Under Computers & Tech on June 7, 2008 | 6 Comments
It’s become a little tradition on this blog that I post my predictions for all Steve Jobs’ big keynote events. In some ways this isn’t quite as much fun as it used to be because big Apple news tends to leak out these days. In the past making WWDC predictions was much more about imagining what Apple might do, rather than analysing rumours which is really what it’s about now. That’s still fun, but it’s more about logic than it is about imagination.
[tags]Apple, WWDC, WWDC 2008, Developers, Steve Jobs, Keynote, iPhone, predictions[/tags]
May
31
Spaces Finally Achieves its Potential
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 31, 2008 | 1 Comment
This week’s 10.5.3 OS X Leopard update has finally injected some much-needed common-sense into Spaces. Spaces is one of the new features in Leopard and had amazing potential from the start, however, it had one massive flaw. Spaces is basically a re-implementation of a very very old idea, virtual desktops. The idea is simple, you have a different work-space for each of your separate tasks and switch between them as you move from task to task. This idea’s been around in the Unix and Linux world for decades. Apple just implemented it in a more user-friendly and sensible way. With the older implementations you had to do the switching yourself, in Leopard the idea is that the vast majority if your switches will be automatic so you don’t have to think about it. The other innovate Apple added is massive concerted effort to evoke the idea of a virtual grid of desktops which you move around in. Everything about the implementation re-inforces this metaphor and it works very well.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, Spaces, virtual desktops, 10.5.3[/tags]