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>> Postings for August 2011

Simon Jary - Apple's N of the road

Wed, 17 Aug 2011

Nano   Apple shocked the gadget world in 2005 when it scrapped its best-selling iPod, the iPod mini, for an altogether different product, the iPod nano. Apple probably thought ‘mini’ was just not small enough to describe the new miniscule – I mean nanoscule – MP3 player. The nano was smaller than the mini – although it was only 0.1in shorter.

Newton   Fourteen years before the iPhone and 17 before the iPad Apple threatened to turn computing on its head by releasing a handheld PC that you could fit in your pocket – if you had really big pockets.

Simon Jary | Read more...


Ted Landau - Mac OS X Lion compatability problems continue

Mon, 15 Aug 2011

As Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” That’s my current reaction to Mac OS X Lion compatibility problems. After devoting my three previous columns to this topic, I was ready to move on. But new issues continue to demand attention. Here’s the latest:

iWow for iTunes If you use SRS’s iWOW for iTunes, SRS confirms that there is an issue “with the latest iTunes and OS X Lion updates. The SRS engineering team is quickly addressing the problem and a fix will be available shortly.” The symptom (at least on my Mac) is that, when you launch iTunes, an error message appears stating “iWow Error! Internal Error: Could not insert menu bar item.. Error code = 5603.”

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Andy Ihnatko - The invisible Mac

Fri, 12 Aug 2011

Nearly every tech company in the world tries to sell parachutes to people who are already falling. The only reason PC makers can’t sell their parachutes for $25,000 is that during free-fall there are about forty other companies in jetboots hovering around the consumer vying for the sale.

Apple’s different. It’s in the parachute business, yes, but it’s taken the unusual tack of selling them to people on the ground. Even more impressive: they convince these people that throwing themselves out of aeroplanes for fun is the greatest thing ever.

Andy Ihnatko | Read more...


Andy Ihnatko - In the eye of the iCloud storm

Thu, 04 Aug 2011

We’re now in the calm, cozy eye of the iCloud storm. The anticipation and speculation period was followed by the day of the announcement and the Getting of the Facts, which was followed by the analysis of the announcement and the grinding but not-at-all necessary process of converting one’s initial enthusiasm into an endless list of reasons to be deeply concerned about the future of our great Republic.

Each of these things is stressful. The next step after this is the most stressful yet: it’s the bit when iOS 5 actually ships and we get our first chance to see how iCloud might destroy our day-to-day lives for real, instead of just hypothetically.

Andy Ihnatko | Read more...