Apr 14, 2012
Books: Bits vs. Atoms —
Jeff Atwood recently wrote a fantastic piece on the current standard of eBooks:
Because I love words, I want to love eBooks. I want to buy lots and lots of eBooks. But unless the publishers are willing to treat eBooks with the same respect and care that they give to their printed books – and most importantly of all, adjust their pricing to reflect the brave new economy of bits, and not an antiquated economy of atoms – they’re destined to eventually suffer the same fate as the Encyclopedia Britannica.…
Apr 9, 2012
iTunes in the Cloud vs iTunes Match —
John Gruber added an update to this post in which he explained that he had mixed the terms iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud. I think the easiest way to differentiate is as follows:
iCloud: this is Apple’s overall cloud strategy that encompasses the ability to store application data and a media locker in the cloud; iTunes in the Cloud: this is the iCloud component that allows you to re-download material from your media locker.…
Apr 9, 2012
Keeping a Clean Desktop —
While listening to the recent Mac Power Users podcast on using Hazel I got the impression that host Katie Floyd wasn’t a fan of using the Mac Desktop as a storage location for files.1 I’ve heard this opinion before - often accompanied with disparaging remarks suggesting that it is an uncouth and savage practice, befitting more of Windows users than of elegant and refined Mac users. This just isn’t the case - for a start Windows users are people too, and just think about it: if we weren’t supposed to use the Desktop, why would Apple have made it just a regular folder?…
Apr 8, 2012
Give Up GitHub (sort of) —
GitHub is an amazing place. There are so many diverse projects hosted there, and it’s fantastic to be able to quickly create a repo and share code with the world. I’ve been a member for just under a year, and in that time I’ve gone from just downloading other people’s projects, to forking and contributing to Open Source projects, to creating my own public and private repositories.
If you’re familiar with GitHub and it’s pricing plans, you’ll know that you can create unlimited public projects with an unlimited number of contributors for free.…
Apr 8, 2012
Shifting the blame won't help —
In a recent article about the Flashback Trojan that’s been infecting many Macs Arik Hesseldahl at AllThingsD led off with the title What’s This? A Mac Virus? No, Actually It’s a Weakness in Java. Intentional or not, this title contains the suggestion that it’s not Apple’s fault, it’s Oracle’s (with a hint of “Macs are still invulnerable” thrown in for good measure).
He’s right of course - it’s not a Mac virus.…
Apr 6, 2012
Well said, Viticci —
…of all the people I have talked to in the past two years about the iPad no one ever asked me about a smaller version.
Federico Viticci briefly responds to MG Siegler’s article Seven.
I was surprised when Siegler wrote that people were saying they wished there was a smaller version of the iPad. I hang around with a lot of nerds, and even they haven’t really been “wishing” for a smaller iPad until the rumour mill started cranking recently.…
Mar 28, 2012
Asymmetrical was so last decade —
DSL is the most popular broadband Internet access method in the UK as it is one of the few methods available across the majority of the country. Cable services are largely restricted to the cities, and high speed wireless is often a disappointment in reality.
While symmetric DSL is available in some areas, the sensible decision was taken during the late nineties/early “noughties” to use asymmetric DSL as the default (and often only) option.…
Mar 22, 2012
Step 1: Admitting you have a problem —
So when does the intervention take place?…
Mar 12, 2012
"You Want How Much?" —
I made the decision recently that I was going to stop buying physical media and make digital purchases where possible. By where possible I mean that I will buy the digital media under the following circumstances:
when I can not buy a physical CD for a reasonable price; when I can get the digital media in a lossless format1. The new album from Vince Clarke and Martin Gore (collectively known as VCMG) was released today.…
Mar 9, 2012
Keeping gestures intuitive —
Reeder for Mac is one of my favourite and most used pieces of software. It came out around the time that Apple started emphasising the use of gestures for OS X and Reeder for Mac was not shy about incorporating these amazing features, and even making them customisable. I particularly like the ability to swipe1 left to open the article in the in-app browser view and use it regularly.
Swiping gestures have a feeling of “pushing” layers about.…