Tag Archives: apple

7 Links I Know You’ll Enjoy

Continuing with the theme somewhat, here are 7 links I know you’ll enjoy. I’ve put them here for your satisfaction, but really, they’re just here so I can get them out of my webbrowser and make room for more news that I missed out on. I’m under 2000 RSS items (I started at 4000), so progress is being made! Enjoy.

So, in the list we have:

  • Dynomighty Mighty Wallets
    These things rock. I already own a tri-fold dot-matrix wallet which gets questioned frequently in public, and to stand out more, I’m going to get some more. They make great gifts, but really – if the Australian dollar wasn’t so sucky at the moment, I’d buy them in  a heartbeat. They’ll have to wait, however.
  • Glow Grafitti
    I’m no grafitti artist, but glow in the dark spray paint? That’s like any childhood dream! I found this on the internet – thanks Boing Boing Gadgets – a while ago, lost the link, but then found it again, so here it is for posterity. There’s probably nothing cooler than glow in the dark grafitti. Again – a little exxy at $59 a can, and when you convert that into Aussie dollars, well, it hurts.
  • Uma Doodlebook Frame
    A tradition photo frame (read: non-digital) with a twist – you can create your own borders simply by drawing them. It’s got 80 pages, so you can create up to 80 custom borders for any of your pictures. Again, how cool is that? I rekon I’ll just stick one photo in it, and then use it as a scratchpad for notes and stuff.
  • iTunes Music Store – the web version
    Yeah – again, props to df.net for this one – this one’s cool. It’s essentially a webbrowser-based version of the iTunes store. It’s a pretty good rendition of the actual store, but you need to open itunes to buy stuff from it anyway, so yeah. Handy if you don’t have iTunes on your current computer, or need to browse something quickly at the library or whatever.
  • Windows Shutdown Crapfest
    I had no idea Windows developement was this convoluted. It’s actually amazing that they manage to ship products at all, considering that they’re “the left hand cannot see what the right hand is doing” approach with regards to all their code. No wonder Vista was so bad – here’s to Windows 7, the start (hopefully) of a new era in Microsoft computing.

Update – here’s your seventh link, folks.

  • Palm, Google, and Apple

    Unlike Siegler, I think the large number of recent Apple employees now working at Palm on the Pre suggests that the relationship between the two companies is cold — ice cold. What I heard last month at Macworld Expo is that Palm has a standing offer for engineers at Apple to jump ship, with a starting salary of 1.5 times their current Apple salary.

When you’re done perusing the links – give us your comments below, yeah?

CES.Ars: Live blog of Microsoft keynote

-Steve Ballmer about to take the stage. This is the first time he is giving a keynote since taking over for Bill Gates

via CES.Ars: Live blog of Microsoft keynote.

Lulwut? That sentence pretty much summed up the entire MS Keynote… I didn’t even know such a thing existed.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that all the presentations (Palm, Microsoft) are all doing “Keynote” presentations.

They do know that Keynote is an Apple product right?

Or is Keynote just the industry name for presentation? 😀

Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

There was a glow on the face of every Palm employee we saw today, and deservedly so: the new Palm Pre is a hail mary product. It’s probably going to save the company.

And it is, in many ways, better than the iPhone.

via Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone – Boing Boing Gadgets.

UPDATE 3: Video courtesy Ars:

UPDATE 1: Oops, forget the all-important specs… Kudos to iLounge.

Palm today introduced its latest handset, named the Pre. Featuring a 3.1-inch, 480×320 touchscreen, a dedicated gesture area below the display, a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and more, the device is aimed at the same market as the iPhone. Other technical features include high-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on the model and carrier), GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB connector, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP, 8GB of internal storage, an accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensors, a removable rechargeable battery, and an optional wireless charger. Pre is exclusive at launch to Sprint.

Folks, I’m not going to kid you on this one – Apple actually have a real fight on their hands here, for these three reasons:

Firstly, it runs Linux. This, in and of itself, will silence all those “the iPhone is locked down, proprietary, user’s can’t do what they want without jailbreaking, etc, etc” people who think Apple is the worst thing since the drop toilet. SQLite features as the database here.

Secondly – it has all the “wow” features needed to knock the iPhone of it’s most gigantic pedestal. The menu bar *cough*DOCK*cough* apparently has this cool feature where you slide your finger up from below the screen, and the dock pops up with your finger. This is possible because the touchscreen (with built-in) multitouch actually extends BELOW the actual LCD – which makes for cool features like this. And you thought Shazam was cool… this feature blows Shazam out of the water. Like Shazam, it’s one of those “OMGZ THATS AWESOME” times when words escape you and you’re left with nothing but pure adoration.

And finally, Facebook and Gmail – the integration is said to be “top notch”. None of this “have facebook as a seperate app on another home screen” business like the iPhone – instead, imagine being able to send a photo or text to Facebook from withthin every photo management app, every mail application, every web page, with the same features being applied to Gmail. PLus, you can choose to pull down your contact’s Facebook’s profile pic, so that when they call you, you can see their lovely face as it shows on Facebook. ZOMG! AWESOME!

…and I lied, there are actually four things. System-wide COPY and PASTE is the last feature that will make this a serious “iPhone Killer”.

Hopefully, it’ll have the hardware to match up to the software. The only way I can see this becoming a massive fail is due to a sloppy processor, or a battery life that just doesn’t quite cut it.

It’s for these four reasons that Apple had better make iPhone OS 3.0 a dammmmed good release. A couple of things for them to work on: MobileMe (integration? Don’t make me laugh), iWork.Com (a mobile version is a good start, now we need more integration), App Store (it’s far from perfect), Push Notifications (please don’t make this into another MobileMe fiasco…), and FRIGGIN COPY AND PASTE! SRSLY!

…and hopefully, something awesome that will blow us all away, like battery life that doesn’t actually suck, full-bluetooth capabilities, a user-accessible file system (instead of each file storeage app having it’s own… wtf) or even a dash of multi-core iPhones…

I’m scared. Scared at how badly Apple could have just lost the smartphone war, especially after it was doing so well… Scared at how easily it was to expose and exploit the disadvantages of the iPhone… Scared at how much of a contender Palm have come back as. Scared of how Android will respond to this new opponent.

UPDATE 2:
Links for further reading:
gdgt’s Palm Keynote live blog (lots of pics)
Engadget’s Hands On with the Palm Pre
Engadget’s In-Depth Impressions on the Palm Pre
Engadget’s Ominously Titled “The Palm Pre”

Apple. Do us proud!

Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Dear Apple Community,

[…]

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

[…]

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

[…]

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

via Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs.