Category: software

John Gruber spills 2000 words on the importance of pixels and typography and the awesomeness of the new MacBook Pro with Retina display without ever mentioning that most apps look like ass and relegating to a footnote that the fifteen inch laptop size is a jack of all trades master of none that fits few people’s needs

(Update: On September 19, a couple of months after the retina MacBook Pro came out, Microsoft updated its Office apps for the higher-resolution display. And then in December, Adobe finally updated Photoshop. Most other Adobe apps remained non-retina ready.) Along with all the usual crop of rave reviews from Apple publications of Apple’s latest flagship…

August 20, 2012
Reality Bites: DOJ takes down Apple, publishers ebook defenses

Since the Department of Justice stood up for fans of digital books a few months ago and sued the major publishers and Apple over their 2010 conspiracy to raise prices, the amount of whining, spin and flat out lies emanating from some of the publishers and Apple has been both impressive and depressing. That so…

July 24, 2012
The great Google storage price hike of 2012

(I wrote an updated discussion of online storage prices on December 18, 2012) The other day, I finally saw a unicorn crossing my lawn — no, not quite. Another almost as mythical a creature appeared on my computer, however: the Google Drive. It’s a long-rumored online storage space for any kind of digital files that…

May 5, 2012
Teenage wasteland? Defending the iPhone, dissing the Droid

(As promised, here’s my teenage daughter’s rebuttal to my iPhone 4S whining. Added bonus: she threw in a rant against her brother’s Droid 4) iPhone world Listen to your favorite new song by that British boy band you and your friends have become recently obsessed with stream out of your pocket. Fumble around in your…

March 13, 2012
A Day in the Life: iPhone versus Nexus

(People are wondering should I get the iPhone 4S or is the Galaxy Nexus better. Am I a man or am I a muppet, smartphone style. Everyone’s got their own needs and wants from their gadgets. Turns out, mine are best met by the Galaxy Nexus phone. The iPhone 4S? Tried it for a few…

March 10, 2012
Phone to Desktop Computing, Nexus style

I got a little excited by some recent experiments of folks hooking their Galaxy Nexus phones to desktop computer set-ups: big monitor, speakers, full keyboard and track pad. Pretty sure that within a few years, we’ll have just one computing device in a phone form factor that can hook up to different size screens and…

February 24, 2012
A true marketplace for privacy in mobile apps

A huge controversy erupted the other day when a savvy programmer discovered that an app on the iPhone called Path was secretly uploading the entire contents of users’ address books to Path’s own servers. Then stories spread that many apps on the iPhone uploaded the contents of the address book. Turned out Apple had left the barn door…

February 23, 2012
Using iTunes Match to get rid of DRM-protected music

Want to finally get rid of those low quality, DRM infested music tracks you bought from iTunes back before DRM free tracks arrived? Now you can. When the iTunes Store first opened for business back in 2003, all the music tracks were locked up with a digital rights management (or DRM) scheme called “Fairplay” to…

November 27, 2011
Without Siri, the iPhone reminder app stinks

One of the cool new features of the iPhone 4S — and the most hyped in Apple’s advertisements — is using the digital assistant Siri to set reminders. When you use Siri, you can usually speak as if you were talking to another person and Siri will figure out what you mean. Tell Siri “Make…

November 22, 2011
Review: First 24 hours with the Amazon Kindle Fire

It costs less than half what an iPad costs but it does more than half of what an iPad does. That’s the bottom line. The new Amazon Kindle Fire is no iPad but it is a slick little gadget that is frequently delightful and worth $199. Sure, the Fire has a smaller screen, slower processor…

November 16, 2011