To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that ‘upgradability’ ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.
Tag: Tech
MacBook Pro: The Next Generation
Apple SVP Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller took to the stage at Worldwide Developer Conference earlier today to introduce the new MacBooks with Intel’s latest processors. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro received the usual and expected regular internal upgrades, but Apple’s biggest notebook announcement was the next generation MacBook Pro.
The new MacBook Pro is a 15.4 inch notebook weighing only 4.5 pounds and only 0.71 inch thick. The screen is a retina display with 2880 * 1800 pixels for 220 ppi, roughly double the sharpness of the screens on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
The next generation MacBook Pro is powered by a 2.3 GHz quad core i7 Intel processor, 8GB of RAM, GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of video RAM, 256 GB of flash storage, upgradable to 768GB. As far as ports are concerned, it has MagSafe 2, HDMI out, USB 2 and USB 3 ports, and two Thunderbolt ports. Firewire 800 and Ethernet ports have been relegated to dongle status. With this update it looks like Apple is quietly discontinuing the 17-inch MacBook Pro.
As expected, there is no longer an optical drive and since this is the next generation MacBook Pro, don’t expect optical drives in future MacBook Pro updates. Apple has been known to keep legacy models though, such as the white MacBook which Apple quietly discontinued earlier this year but it remains to be seen if Apple will keep selling MacBook Pros with optical drive once the next generation model become the standard, and if so, for how long.
To support the new MacBook Pro’s retina display, Apple has updated its built in Mac OS X Lion, the iWork and iLife suites as well as its professional apps. Adobe and AutoDesk are also updating their apps to support the retina display.
This introduction of the new MacBook Pro marks the end of the monstrous 17" model. The next generation MacBook Pro starts from $2199.
So Twitter updated its logo today and did the whole fancy video to introduce it. Probably not that important but I just found it amusing that of all places, Twitter hasn’t updated the favicon on its blog and logo guideline page when even TweetDeck’s favicon was already updated.
Rock Band for iOS’s cancelation canceled?
EA sent a notice to all owners of Rock Band for iOS that the company was going to shut down the game on May 31st and thanked them for having been part of it. This naturally drew the fury of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Rock Band players on Twitter even though many are less likely to be still playing the game after years after it was released. Rock Band has been a successful franchise for EA. The series featured additional songs that gamers can acquire through in-app purchases.
When an online game becomes too much of a burden to support or has too few players, it’s natural to expect the company behind it to discontinue the game. Unfortunately for EA, the game apparently still has its fans and they flooded EA’s Twitter accounts in protest.
These players have paid for both the game and the additional content and the decision to pull support for the game when it was still on sale on the App Store was certainly baffling. As it turned out, EA later turned the decision around in a statement released to the public. The company isn’t shutting down Rock Band for iOS after all.
Despite the reversal, this highlights the peril of online games. In the past, video games that have been purchased can still be played years, or even decades later provided that the console set and the game cartridge are still operational. With online games, players are at the mercy of the publishers or the operators of the games’ networks. When the network is retired, so is the game.
On the other hand, most online games have offline elements as well that should still be playable long after the online component had been turned off and Rock Band is one of them. Having yanked support for the entire game when the offline part should still be playable is an odd choice to make.
Touch Arcade pointed out that EA’s support page does list Rock Band to be among the discontinued games but only for the online features. Polygon, The Verge’s Gaming blog even went further to highlight a part of the licensing agreement for the game which states that those who purchase the game only licenses the game and all elements contained within and if EA terminates the game, all licensed elements would cease to function. In other words, if EA decides to shut down the game, it is within its rights to shut down the entire game, not just parts of it.
As pointed out by Guardian, another online game publisher, ngmoco, is shutting down its own online game, Eliminate, which was one of the company’s first online games with in-app purchase elements.
All these simply serve to point out that online games are different from video games of old, which are isolated in nature from the rest of the world, not just in game play and enjoyment but also in its operation. Players of online games no longer own copies of the games that they have spent money on, instead, they only own a license to play them.
Google Drive terms and conditions lets Google use your files even if you stop using Google’s services
From the terms and conditions:
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)
Zack Whittaker on ZDNet takes this paragraph to mean that Google may own your files. I don’t quite agree on that, but of course, terms of service documents can be as clear or vague as the reader makes it out to be. I think the key in the last sentence is the word stop. Does stop simply mean ceasing to login or does it mean after you delete the account? Even further, does it mean Google can use your files even after you delete them from Google Drive?
A statement from Google doesn’t exactly answer my questions.
Oh the irony:
Apple had to mow down an awful lot of trees in order to build its environmentally friendly 100-acre solar array, right across the street from its data center.
Finding features in iPhoto for iOS
In delivering software user interfaces, there has always been differing lines of thought. One major thinking is to provide absolutely everything in full view, regardless of usefulness or practicality. This allows users to be aware of everything that the software is capable of doing, providing them with complete visible access to its features. Another is to only show the features that are most likely to be used and hiding the rest for users to discover as they become more familiar with the software.
The user interface in iPhoto for iOS seems lie somewhere between the two. Visually it’s a bit of a clutter but it also still has hidden features not accessible through the on-screen buttons and icons. Unfortunately those hidden features are very unlikely to be discovered unless people had seen the on stage demo when the app was introduced or that they read reviews and guides for the app on the Internet.
Apple has had a habit of hiding operational functions but in most cases, there are two ways to access them. One is through the standard visible interface elements such as buttons or other visual cues, another is through keyboard shortcuts on Macs or touch gestures on iDevices. Rarely would an operational feature be accessible only through one non-obvious mean of access and when it is, it tends to be pro features that the majority of users won’t likely to use in the first place.
Lukas Mathis put forward a number of hidden actions on iPhoto for iOS that may seem intuitive for Apple’s engineers and designers but not so much to unsuspecting users. Apple’s apps are supposed to be intuitive for new users but some of these hidden actions seem like they’re not meant to be discovered. Mathis has a pretty damning sentence for iPhoto for iOS:
Almost nothing you learn in iPhoto can be applied to Photos, or to any other iOS app. In fact, being proficient at using iPhoto will probably make you worse at using Photos.
Regis McKenna thinks Apple’s 1984 ad is overrated
He has his reasons and if you know the follow up to 1984, which was called Lemmings, it rings even more true to his criticism and remarks about Apple being shunned by the enterprise market. Lemmings carried a much stronger message than 1984 and because of it, it fell flat. It was a disaster.
The article though, resonated with me not because of his criticism of the ad but for how Apple handled the iPhone 4 antenna issue. It never was bigger than most other problems with the phone but due to the media beat up, it felt worse. As it turned out, within 10 days the issue disappeared. Apple did redesign the antenna for the 4S but to me it had always felt like Apple was doing it more for the public relations effect than for strictly technical reasons.
Oh and it’s yet another claim over the inaccuracies of Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs.
Windows Phone cannot maintain a Skype call in background
I downloaded Skype for Windows Phone as soon as I found out about the app. Although I don’t use Skype that much, it’s one of those apps that you just have to have on your phone. Funny that somehow Skype is beginning to be forgotten in this part of the world thanks to mobile text messaging apps like BlackBerry Messenger and WhatsApp. Skype is much more flexible and has a desktop interface, something that iMessage also has.
Anyway, the article on Ars Technica points out one flaw in Windows Phone’s app switching ability which is the lack of a persistent VoIP support. Apparently if you’re on a Skype call and you need to switch away to another application, say to look at a map or refer to an email, the call gets dropped.
This and the lack of USSD support are significant omissions from Windows Phone that needs to be remedied quickly. It is surprising that Microsoft had not included support from the beginning.
Samsung lied in its latest Galaxy Note video
Samsung Mobile USA put up a video this week showing several tasks that supposedly the iPhone can’t do but can be easily done on a big ass 5-inch Galaxy note with a stylus. A STYLUS! How 1994.
Of course, when Tap Magazine found out about it, they went to work on rebutting every point in the video by doing everything it said the iPhone can’t do, on an iPhone. Including shooting and editing the video.
AuliaSays 