Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category
A Letter to Safari
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Apple
Look Safari, we need to talk.
Now, don’t get like that; you knew this was coming from when we started browsing together. The thing is–well, I mean, I’ve had fun. We’ve both had fun. And we agreed from the beginning that that’s all this was: just a fling. Just having some fun. And now that I’ve had fun with you, I…well, I think I’m going to go back to browsing with Firefox.
Wait, hear me out! I mean, it was great while it lasted. I can’t deny that you’re better looking than Firefox. Don’t tell her, but honestly, you’re sexier, and you seem right at home on my Mac. Sometimes, when I recall your sleek smooth-scrolling, your feisty WebKit engine, and the delicious native Cocoa that we enjoyed, I wonder if I’m making the right decision.
But the fact is, Safari, you’re high-maintenance: I have to hit three buttons just to switch tabs with you. Just becuase Firefox taught me how doesn’t mean you have to make it so difficult for us to do it. I admit it: I like tabbed browsing! It’s been so long since the days when that kind of thing would give you a bad reputation, though. There’s no shame in it.
Well, that’s just it though; you’re kind of behind the times. I like Google as much as the next guy, but using that as my only search engine? And what’s the deal with not being able to search straight from the location bar? And while I’m at it, why can’t I open links in new tabs when we’re on my iPhone?
Sorry, sorry. I’ve gotten a little overwrought. As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and well, I’m actually writing this with Firefox right now. Please don’t get angry, Safari. We’ll still see each other around on my phone, and possibly even sometimes on my Mac.
I’m just at the point in my life where I need a more stable browser. Someone who lets me organize my bookmarks easily, and change my search engine. Someone with full-page zoom (another thing that everyone’s doing but you!) and with a robust add-on architecture. Someone like Firefox.
See you around, Safari. Maybe we’ll give it another shot when you’re a bit older and more mature; 4, for example. Just don’t tell Firefox.
Sincerely,
Nirav
iTunes App Store Failwhales, Bodes Ill for the Future
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Apple, iPhone
(Sorry for another iPhone/Apple post.)
So basically, it’s all gone to hell. The iTunes App Store is down, meaning a couple things: new iPhone 3G owners can’t activate their phones, and more disastrously, old iPhone owners attempting to upgrade to version 2.0 will get their phones bricked.
As Merlin Mann notes, “this is not the Friday Apple had wanted.” I propose that in particular, it doesn’t bode well for the future. Apple, like Microsoft and many other companies, is moving towards a partial services model. But for this to work, consumers have to be able to trust that when they want a service from Apple, Apple will provide. These server failures and overloads don’t exactly give me faith that Apple can uphold its end of the push notification system that iPhone app developers were promised (releasing in September) and more than that, strengthens my already .Mac-fueled skepticism that MobileMe can indeed be my own personal Exchange server. MobileMe’s already failing, and it’s barely a couple days old; it’s almost seeming like Apple just dumped an additional load on its outage-prone .Mac servers (adding on push email, contacts, calendars and web service) and somehow, perhaps delusionally, expected them to grin, bear it, and work fine.
I’m reading blog posts now from TUAW and others that iPhone activations are again working, but the fact that buying a new phone or even merely updating your old, previously-working phone landed you with a very nicely designed paperweight scares me, and will also spook the enterprise customers that Apple has been courting lately. Businesses can’t trust iPhones for corporate use if there’s the potential they’re going to be bricked for a morning, and I certainly won’t trust MobileMe for my email, contacts, and calendars if it’s going to fall this close to the .Mac tree.
How to Hack Boingo WiFi
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Apple, Miscellaneous, iPhone
I’m currently at Oakland International Airport, with about an hour and a half to go until my flight, but I don’t want to pay Boingo Wireless $7.95 for 90 minutes of web access from my laptop. On a whim, I hopped onto the Boingo network from my iPhone to see if anything was different for phones. And it was: mobile browsers can gain internet access for 15 minutes if they watch a 15 second Flash ad.
Now, ironically enough, iPhone doesn’t support Flash, so on that device I’d see 15 seconds of a blank screen. However, I realized that I can spoof Mobile Safari (the iPhone browser) from Safari on my laptop. So I did, and voila, after sitting tight for 15 seconds, my laptop was granted internet access.
And of course, the first thing I did was hop on twitlive.tv to see Leo Laporte’s live streaming iPhone 3G coverage. If there’s someone monitoring this network, I want to see their face when they notice that some random cellphone is getting fullscreen video streamed to it.
Alphabetical App Store Listings
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Apple, iPhone
Given that the listing is in alphabetical order when you click “All Free Applications” in the iPhone App Store, I wonder if we’ll soon get a deluge of applications with ‘A’s, numbers, and special entities as their first character just to get on the front page.
iPhone 2.0 Launches, Kind Of
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Apple, iPhone
Planned obscolescence? Hardly. My original, non-3G, slow-as-a-dead-turtle iPhone is now running software version 2.0.
Caveat: as far as I know, nothing’s actually launched yet. I followed TechCrunch’s instructions to download the software update outside of iTunes and their link to the App Store, which still isn’t featured in the main iTunes store page. However, it all works (more or less, I’ll talk about that in a second).
I downloaded the Facebook, Google, Evernote, and Twitteriffic applications, and then a few random games. All of these were free, might I add. One small tidbit worth noting is that the Applications section in iTunes has a link to “Check for updates”, so I’m guessing developers can push updates through iTunes.
The Facebook app isn’t working yet; when I try to log in, it errors on “Can’t connect to Facebook”, so I wonder if their server’s aren’t ready yet (although the Facebook blog has a post this morning announcing the new app).
Google’s application simply makes it easier to search than using Safari, and can use your location for local search.
Evernote successfully synced down all of my notes. I haven’t played around with this application too much, but I suspect it’ll supplant Notes as my, well, notes app of choice.
Twitteriffic is still problematic. Scrolling isn’t smooth and there are some HTML tags that are being displayed instead of interpreted in the ads. Interestingly enough, it also doesn’t seem to utilize Apple’s push service to notify me when I get new tweets; i.e., I received tweets via SMS and not via Twitteriffic. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.
This stuff looks really good. I’m going to try buying some games soon (Bejeweled or Prism, probably) and see if I’m getting my $9.99’s worth. More soon.
Update: 2.0’s still not out yet, but here’s The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s coverage on how to get it. I’m also seriously considering switching to NetNewsWire as my feed reader, because the iPhone and Mac apps sync feed and read items. Mmm…sync.