Sunday, July 25, 2010

First of the eggrolls with my homemade dipping sauce

Jack & 7, the pause that refreshes. Going to be frying eggrolls for awhile

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Franconia Dunkel - an awesome dark beer with a dark chocolate finish

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

iPhone 4 Gyroscope Brings Silky Smooth Augmented Reality - in my experience GPS etc kicks my 3G's butt

Friday, July 16, 2010

My prediction FaceTime would show commercial value came true faster than I thought - Sitting for a portrait with FaceTime on iPhone 4

Wow, strong words! "No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money." Windows Phone 7: Don't bother with this disaster | InfoWorld

July 15, 2010

Windows Phone 7: Don't bother with this disaster

Microsoft's demos of its great mobile hope shows Windows Phone 7 to be only a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone

By Galen Gruman | InfoWorld
| Print | 12 comments|

182 Recommendations

There's no kind way to say it: Windows Phone 7 will be a failure. Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft's mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw -- with the caveat "so far."

No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It's a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it's out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.

[ How easily can you fit each major mobile platform in your corporate environment? Find out in InfoWorld's "How to say yes to (almost) any smartphone." | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]

The early demos were intriguing due to the use of the card metaphor to organize apps and information, providing a possible fluidity among apps and information that would let users swim through their business and social activities. And the distinct UI -- though based on the unsuccessful Zune media player -- looked as if it would stand out from the crowd of mobile devices that have largely copied the iPhone UI, such as Google's Android, RIM's touch-oriented BlackBerry Storm, and Palm's WebOS.

But that was just the lipstick. Now, in Microsoft's in-depth demo this week at the Mobile Beat conference, there's no mistaking the big pig behind the gloss. Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is -- I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess. A pig, in fact.

And it's not just the UI: Under the hood, Windows Phone 7 rests on creakingly old technology that the main competitors have all moved past.

I was appalled, flummoxed, and stupefied by what I saw and the answers to the questions from the 15 or so developers in the audience. Also, it should be noted that minuscule attendance and the utter lack of passion in the room spoke volumes about Windows Phone 7's ultimate fate as well. By comparison, about five times as many people attended a session on WebOS.

The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It's as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don't realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era's iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.

An awkward UI that recalls Microsoft's history of clunky design
Let's start with that Zune-based UI, called Metro, as that is the first thing users will see.

Now that I've seen it more in action, all I can say is how clunky it is. You will scroll and scroll to find what you want, thanks to how Microsoft has oversimplified all tasks. Each tile has just a little bit of information -- often just three items -- and you're supposed to scroll sideways via finger gestures to see details on each option in full, then click the one you want to get more details. But if you have more than a few apps in a tile, for example, this approach quickly gets too ungainly, hiding most options and requiring navigation down (and up) several layers of interface. It will be the gesture version of spinning your wheels.

The developers at Mobile Beat quickly recognized the labor-intensity of this UI method and one asked the Microsoft rep if anyone had bothered to test it with users. The answer was essentially "no" -- a scary thought indeed.

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Thursday, July 15, 2010

Consumer Reports: Apple's Bumper fixes iPhone 4 antenna issue - seems they were seeking publicity by announcing this so much later

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Every man knows this is true

Monday, July 12, 2010

This 6+ hour con call is a great time to set up the new iPhone. #fb

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Untitled

On our blanket waiting for the fireworks

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Exclusive: Apple iTunes in the cloud definitely happening soon, wireless syncing!

Exclusive: Apple iTunes in the cloud definitely happening soon, wireless syncing!

by Boy Genius on July 1st, 2010 at 11:39am
Filed under: Apple, Breaking News, Exclusives, Featured, Wireless 16 Comments

itunes-logo

One of our reliable Apple sources has just filled us in on some of the company’s iTunes plans, and they’re exciting. We have been told iTunes will be getting a huge cloud capability that many people have been asking for (and logically thought would happen sooner or later). These new capabilities are broken down into three groups:

  1. Streaming music and movies from Apple’s servers to your computers, devices, etc.
  2. Streaming music and movies from your home computers to your other computers, remote devices, etc.
  3. Wireless iTunes syncing with devices

For the first point, we have been told that this will work pretty much like you’d expect it to… pretty much any Apple device with wireless capability will have te ability to stream purchased content directly from Apple’s servers, thus eliminating the need for a lot of local storage. With the second point, Apple will reportedly let you be the content distributor to your own computers and devices, as any purchased content that’s locally on your computer will be able to be streamed using your internet connection out to your devices. Lastly, yes, wireless syncing of iTunes for devices.

For wireless syncing, we are told it will work pretty seamlessly. Any apps you buy for instance on your iPhone will immediately sync to your computer, changes to your calendar, or notes, or contacts will also automatically update on your computer as well. What good would all these new features be without some new devices? Apple’s traditional fall event (or maybe even before it) should bring at least “two new devices with camera/camcorder capabilities.” Well, there you have it!

Thanks, Lindsey S.!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

16 Responses to “Exclusive: Apple iTunes in the cloud definitely happening soon, wireless syncing!”

  1. 1
    JHUK says:

    This pleases me. My media centre is built around apple tech and presented to my tv using Apple TV.

    I like the sound of this

    Thumb up Thumb down +1

  2. 2
    FriarNurgle says:

    Congrats on the recent exclusives.

    Thumb up Thumb down +2

  3. 3
    JHUK says:

    “pretty much any Apple device with wireless capability will have te ability to stream purchased content directly from Apple’s servers, thus eliminating the need for a lot of local storage. ”

    This bothers me slightly. I still want to download files that I have bought in addition to having the streaming option

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  4. 4
    Mark says:

    As long as wireless syncing is for music too this will be very good. Dont see the point of syncing the other stuff really..

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  5. 5
    iamjoel5 says:

    will this “wireless syncing” work on the iPhone 4?
    …its jokes…its jokes…

    Thumb up Thumb down +1

  6. 6
    gamer24 says:

    So basically iTunes is getting what Zune and other platforms have had for years

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

    • 6.1
      bonesb says:

      Funny. Let’s see how many years it’s going to take to get Zune sales numbers up to match iPod/iPhone numbers, check back then…

      Thumb up Thumb down 0

  7. 7
    gamer24 says:

    So basically iTunes is getting what Zune and other platforms have had for years, nothing really special about it. Though this just adds one more thing for the government to look into.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  8. 8
    JimK says:

    I’m going to say that we’ll see this in September (announcement and/or release). It’ll coincide with the usual iPod update (annually in September) and will probably also include an updated iPad (the original 4GB iPhone was discontinued in September following a June launch) where the current low-end iPad is dropped, the 32GB bumped down and a newer model perhaps (I hope) with Retina display, camera, and iOS4 announced in the 32GB and 64GB sizes (with a release somewhere between September and November).

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  9. 9
    boogalooboy says:

    Thats going to really push those 2GB limits on at&t…..

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

    • 9.1
      whaaaa!!! says:

      Ugh…. F*ck AT&T. I feel sorry for the new AT&T customers. You cant even use your new smart phone like it was meant to be used, without getting raped in the ass.

      Thumb up Thumb down 0

  10. 10
    Dream says:

    As long as they keep support for The Itouch 2g after ther new ipod is release, ill be happy

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  11. 11
    Tom says:

    So this will let me stream media so I don’t need to store it locally, but to stream local content from my computer to my devices I need it locally on my computer. What gives?

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  12. 12
    Faalkor says:

    This will be a great new feature to all those iTunes enabled devices. This isn’t new and this has all been done before. However, iTunes cloud services + iPod touch/iPhone + iPad + ATV is a pretty compelling feature set.

    Now if they could just add DLNA support to their hardware so I don’t need a PC to access my iTunes library.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

  13. 13
    AD says:

    So nice but all I care about is to unlock those old iPhones legally without the cat and mouse game. Apple and ATT will not do it – Apple and ATT are not my vendor of choice since I have every “i” piece of **** they made and now they are collecting dust in my drawer. So more proprietary technology and stuck with one vendor – diversification is the name of my game.

    Thumb up Thumb down 0

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