Archive for April, 2009
Switching to a Mac: One Month In [Mac Vs Pc]
April 30th, 2009 | 
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About a month ago, after multiple laptop disasters that in all likelihood were my fault, I decided to switch to a Mac after a lifetime of PC use. How's it been?
It's been pretty good. Here's a quick rundown of some of my experiences.
• Expose and Spaces are great for someone who usually has over a dozen windows and programs open at once. Having Photoshop isolated to its own space to reduce clutter is great, and being able to swipe down and see everything at once is also really nice. One issue I've run into, however, is that spaces makes dragging and dropping across programs harder. Sure, you can drag down to the icon, but if I want to drag album artwork from Firefox into the proper section of iTunes rather than importing the image, I can't do it across spaces. Not a huge deal, however.
• I really like the multitouch trackpad...most of the time. It's great for using expose and for right-clicking with two fingers, but it also often misfires, especially in programs like Photoshop. Photoshop thinks I want to rotate the image every damned time I put more than one finger on the trackpad. This gets very annoying.
• Some functions and options are just buried way too deep. For example, whenever I plug my iPhone in, iPhoto opens. I in no way want this to happen. In order to turn this off, I had to Google it and get instructions from a message board. It involved fiddling with the Image Capture app, which is not really that intuitive. How would a non-expert figure this out?
• One of my favorite programs is Connect 360, which serves media to my Xbox 360 from my MBP. It's actually amazingly ironic that this works so much better on a Mac, seeing that Microsoft makes the Xbox 360. But I tried multiple times to do this on my PC, and it always involved downloading new versions of Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player, getting codes from my Xbox and putting them into my computer and multiple restarts. Even then, it never worked. For $20 I bought Connect 360 and it was working in 3 minutes. Microsoft, what the hell are you doing that this is the case?
• Growl is a nice little notification service that lets programs deliver pop-up messages in a way that's unified across the system. It's great for stuff like the Gmail notifier, but a lot of apps abuse this thing. No, Last.fm, I don't want a pop-up notification every time a new song starts. Annoyingly enough, you can't control these notifications inside the preferences of the apps that use it. Instead, you need to go to System Preferences and go to Growl's pane. Not a huge annoyance, but I had to search around through all of Last.fm's menus before trying a different approach. Not too intuitive.
• Every single Mac app costs money. Where's the freeware on Macs? On the PC, I used Texter to create macros for things I type a lot, which is free. On the Mac, there's TextExpander, and it's $30. There are loads of free FTP clients for the PC. On Mac, you use Transmit, and it's $30. Tweetie is a nice enough Twitter client, but it sure isn't $15 worth of nice. TextMate is a great, robust text editor, but no text editor is worth $54.
Paying $30 for one app that provides a great value is fine, but paying $30 each for 10 basic apps that aren't all that important on their own adds up pretty fast.
Overall, the learning curve on the switch was really gentle. I feel like I've figured out most of the important stuff, and I've been enjoying my experience for the most part. But the fact remains that this was a damned expensive computer. MacBook Pros start at a solid $2,000. Is it worth it in this recession?
I'd say that if you are happy with your PC and don't have any serious issues, no. There's no real reason to justify the switch and the difference in price. But if you're sick of your PC, are curious or just feel like switching things up, I haven't run across any dealbreakers that would make a former Windows user run for the hills. It's a slick machine that's very stable and has lots of nice perks, but switching isn't going to change anybody's life all that much.
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Apple Is Serious About Gaming: Steals Xbox Senior Director of Strategy [Apple]
Anybody who said Apple wasn't serious about gaming can swallow their pundit nuggets right now: They just hired Richard Teversham, Xbox Europe's (now former) senior director of business, insights and strategy.
It's especially interesting when you take into consideration Apple's other recent major hire, ATI's former graphics CTO, the guy who designed the GameCube's graphics card.
For the love of all that is holy and Jobsian, however, it doesn't mean they're going to make a MacBoxStationCube 1080—the iPhone (and maybe that tablet/pad thing) is Apple's gaming platform. 15 of the top 20 paid apps of all time are games. There are over 9,000 games in the App Store. And there are 37 million iPod touches and iPhone out there—still below the PSP's 50 million and the DS's 100 million, but consider these are consoles that have been out at least twice as long as the iPhone platform.
It's not just the numbers, either. The argument that the production value of games doesn't match those on on the PSP or DS, is slowly becoming more irrelevant—not simply because extremely short-form gaming, which the iPhone handily beats the PSP and DS at, is becoming more interesting, but because the iPhone is picking up fare like Metal Gear Solid Touch, even if hardcore gamers can't replace their dedicated portable consoles yet. (Bad sign though: I'm a huge gamer, but haven't touched my DS Lite in months. I do play an iPhone game at least a couple minutes every day I'm on the move.)
Apple's got a very real gaming platform, they've got their own chips in place, and now they have a legit gaming strategist. If Nintendo and Sony weren't concerned at all previously, I imagine at least a bead or two of sweat is dripping down their forehead now, even if direct, bloody conflict between their consoles and the iPhone is still a generation or two away. [MCV via 9to5Mac]
Apple takes steps towards designing its own chips - USA Today
 AFP | Apple takes steps towards designing its own chips USA Today A chip for a portable device, such as the iPhone, could be designed to preserve battery life, for example. There's big money at stake. Researcher iSuppli estimates that each iPhone 3G costs about $174 to make. Apple spends most of that money on ... Apple's proprietary iPhone chips may not surface till next year Apple Insider Apple's exclusive iPhone chips plan may materialize some time next ... TopNews United States Jobs' Gambit: Apple to Design Its Own Cell Phone Chips DailyTech ZDNet - Computerworld all 156 news articles |
The Missing Sync 2.0 for IPhone, IPod Touch Released - PC World
The Missing Sync 2.0 for IPhone, IPod Touch Released PC World The Missing Sync for iPhone 2.0 helps syncs notes, tasks, documents and files between your Mac and iPhone or iPod touch. The latest 2.0 version, adds true, two-way syncing between the Mac and iPhone or iPod touch via Wi-Fi. ... |
Apple's proprietary iphone chips may not surface till next year - Apple Insider
AFP | Apple's proprietary iphone chips may not surface till next year Apple Insider, VA By Katie Marsal Apple's fairly public plans to design a family of exclusive chips to power its next-generation iphone and multi-touch handheld products may not fully materialize until sometime next year, according to the Wall Street Journal, ... Apple's exclusive iPhone chips plan may materialize some time next ... TopNews United States Apple takes steps towards designing its own chips USA Today Jobs' Gambit: Apple to Design Its Own Cell Phone Chips DailyTech Computerworld - TechRadar UK all 63 news articles |
mocoNews - Apple Building Its Own Chip For iPhone? - Washington Post
 Reuters | mocoNews - Apple Building Its Own Chip For iPhone? Washington Post, United States When news surfaced that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had hired Bob Drebin, former CTO of chipmaker AMD's Graphic Products Group, it kicked off speculation that the iPhone maker is planning on designing its own chips. It's not hard to see why the WSJ.com, ... Apple Hiring Chip Designers for iPhone, iPod eWeek Apple's proprietary iPhone chips may not surface till next year Apple Insider Apple is building a moat (of semiconductors) ZDNet Reuters - TechRadar UK all 108 news articles |
Microsoft: We're Not Making A Phone - InformationWeek
 TrustedReviews | Microsoft: We're Not Making A Phone InformationWeek, NY It's not the first or the last time the software vendor has been at the center of speculation when it comes to backing its own breed of iPhone or BlackBerry. The company adds new features to its V1 wireless headset that lets the user issue voice ... With No Microsoft Phone In Site, Verizon Needs The iPhone dBTechno Verizon iPhone Rumor Gives Way to Microsoft Team-Up Talk xchange Magazine Verizon talking to Microsoft about iPhone rival partnership? Here ... BloggingStocks WinInformant.com - Geek.com all 87 news articles |
Motorola to make Microsoft challenger to iphone? - Chicago Sun-Times
 Cnet Asia | Motorola to make Microsoft challenger to iphone? Chicago Sun-Times, United States The Microsoft "Pink," the reported code name for Microsoft's planned multimedia cell phone aimed at challenging the popular Apple iphone, could be manufactured by Samsung, HTC or even Motorola, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Motley Fool ... Verizon iPhone Rumor Gives Way to Microsoft Team-Up Talk xchange Magazine Verizon talking to Microsoft about iPhone rival partnership? Here ... BloggingStocks Is Verizon Running Scared of the iPhone and Pre? Extreme Tech Geek.com - Motley Fool all 84 news articles |
Apple Assembles Chip Design Team, Plans Custom iPhone Guts [Apple]
The WSJ reports that Apple is putting together an all-star chip design team, starting with the former CTO of AMD, to work on in-house chips for mobile devices. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Apple is prone to occasional fits of vertical integration, and has never been terribly reluctant to run counter to the prevailing hardware winds, but this doesn't sound like some Jobsian act of contrarianism. The report indicates that it's the iPhone's unique power and performance demands that are driving this move, at least ostensibly:
Apple could use the internally developed chips to sharply reduce the power consumption of its hit iPhone and iPod touch devices, and possibly add graphics circuitry to help its hardware play realistic game software and high-definition videos, people familiar with its plans say.
Apple already works with Samsung, the manufacturer of the ARM-based processors used in the iPhone and iPod Touch, to design chip suited to their specific needs, and Apple is a large enough company that it doesn't have trouble coaxing tailor-made hardware out of its suppliers. But totally in-house chip design boasts the huge advantage of secrecy; removing Samsung from the equation ensures that any power-saving, graphics-boosting chip features Apple manages to conjure for their next iWhatever don't eventually find their way into chips available to other industry giants like HTC or RIM.
So don't confuse Apple's latest move with an effort to spur innovation—from here, this looks like technology-hoarding, pure and simple; a bid to further insulate their mobile devices from competition by locking down their hardware as hard as they do their software. [WSJ]
The Daily Roundup: here’s what you might’ve missed
 | Sony unveiling UMD-less PSP with slide-out buttons at E3? Whispers of a new or revised PSP have been growing decidedly louder as of late, and now 1UP's gotten a ton of new details from what it claims are "sources directly involved with the new system" -- our favorite kind of people, actually. |  | iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4, iTunes 8.2 pre-release now live Just two weeks after the last revision went up, Apple's released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to the developer community alongside an iTunes 8.2 pre-release. |
 | Windows 7's virtual XP has intangible system requirements Microsoft tickled our meta-OS fancies last week by talking up the virtualized version of Windows XP included with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate Edition. | Other news of import | |
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|---|---|---|---|
 | Samsung's 23-inch OLED TV coming in 2010, others following suit Given just how long we've been looking at prototype OLED panels at trade shows (and trade shows alone), we're understandably skeptical about a few new claims regarding availability. |  | Motorola's first Android phone(s) to have sliding QWERTY? Motorola needed to release an Android set about six months ago, but we know these things take time -- and if it's any consolation, it sounds like the first fruits of the labor could be pretty awesome. |
The Daily Roundup: here's what you might've missed originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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