A walled garden with OS X

A nice take from somebody i know.

Apple recently announced, along with the release of OS 10.7 Lion, the new line of MacBook Air and Mac Mini. And, with that, now gone from the product line is the MacBook. A few of the details about the new products are very telling about what
Apple might have in mind for the coming months and years.

Not having had a chance to use it yet myself, I won't comment too much on Lion, beyond pointing out the obvious that Apple is looking to make it more similar to the iPad. It's clear they're looking to capitalize on the simplicity of an interface that has already won the hearts of millions. With that said, however, I don't think that will necessarily increase the popularity of the MacBook Air, either, as they are two different devices. Nonetheless, this does hint at plans to homogenize the product lines in some ways that give me cause for concern, as I'll get to below.

I won't delve into the details of the product specifications, because again, pointing out that they're now faster and more powerful is not only unsurprising, but in and of itself is also not very interesting. What is interesting, however,is that the Air comes standard with a 64 GB Solid State drive, and neither the Air nor the Mini includes an optical drive.

To get the obvious observations out of the way, that seems like a very small hard drive. And yes, it means you can't easily install software from a CD, or burn a DVD of your kids to send to grandma. To be fair, it is possible to wirelessly "share"
an optical drive from another desktop or laptop that is so-equipped. But, it seems more clear that Apple intends to do away with them almost entirely in due time.

But, let's consider for a moment the implications. The solid state drive is nice... it's very fast, it's very quiet, and is less prone to failure since it doesn't have moving parts. These are all great features, to be sure. But, one cannot escape
the fact that it's small. (Larger sizes are available, but at a substantial premium.) Clearly, Apple is banking on iCloud being the primary means of mass storage for users. While I agree that leveraging the cloud offers some excellent
possibilites, I also can't help but feel like Apple is forcing it down the throats of users.

Looking briefly at the lack of optical drives, one can see where this is going. There are obvious advantages to losing the optical drive, particularly in terms of battery life savings (one less motor running), cost savings (less hardware in the case),
and form factor (can make a thinner Air). End users may have mixed views on whether or not these advantages outweigh some of the lost functionality. The obvious alternative to optical drives, at least for software, is electronic distribution. The release of Lion is a perfect case in point. My feeling is that this is less to do with any of the above advantages--true as they may be--however, and more of a nudge for users to migrate to using the Mac AppStore.

Given the relative success of the iPhone/iPod/iPad AppStore, it's no surprise why Apple would like to duplicate that for OS X applications as well. Not only would this provide an entry point for more developers to produce apps for distribution,
but more importantly for Apple, it ensures they get a piece of the pie on every sale.

My big fear for this is that eventually Apple will setup a walled garden with OS X, much the same as they have for iOS, where everything is locked down in such a way that all software has to be purchased through the AppStore, and approved by Apple.

Now, this type of control is not always all bad, of course. It is exactly the reason why their products and software always feel so well put together, seemless integrated, and never in a state of conflict with one another. At the same time, I cannot help but think of a few examples where this has resulted in questionable behavior by Apple, ranging from the ban of iPhone apps created by cross-porting from flash (which has since been lifted), to features like WiFi Sync which are scheduled to be part of the standard platform but are suspected as having been ripped off from other developers.

I really hope this is not the ultimate path of the Mac product lines. At the same time, where Apple's approach has always been to maintain control over every aspect of their platform, I would not put it past them, either.


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Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Lion install -easy, using Lion -horrible.

Apple released this week Lion and within a few days 1 million people downloaded it. How nice is it to have a company which can make with one product in 3 days $30 million in revenue.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, it was easy to install Lion. But since then I got in many trouble and a lot of expenses. Lion is only $29 and I guess one reason why it is so cheap is that it is now 64bit and no Rosetta. Basically half of my programs got either deleted during install or did not work anymore. I had to buy a new transmit, a new version of parallels (Version 5 does not work with Lion). I had to install a flash beta version etc. People would be more frustrated if Lion would cost $100 and they would need to buy more apps. $29 is just the border line not to get pissed.

Safari as an example does not have flash anymore. Which I would really not care, because I don't like flash, but instead of not displaying the flash piece, the page loads and as soon it comes to the swf file, the page turns white. The Apple developer forum is full of complains.

I love a lot of the new features in Lion, but what the heck is natural scrolling? The standard setting for scrolling is "natural" (as Apple claims). This means when you move your hand down the page goes up, when you move your hand up the page moves down. This is natural when you have two wheels touching each other and one turns up then the other turns down, but guess what my hand is no wheel. And dear Apple developer, take your hand and try to turn a tire you will see that turning your hand down will make the tire turn down.

Folders are now without a scrollbar which irritated me. I first thought I lost files in a folder till i figured out I need to scroll. This is fine when looking at something in full screen, then we assume there might be more, but with a smaller window and no scrollbar, means not more content. But not for Apple.

I did spend another few hundreds to get adobe creative suit cs4 (to save money). Guess what CS3 got reinstalled because of Rosetta. CS4 does crash every other time. I just can't win.

Safari has now a download icon on top right. When you click on something to download it will not anymore open a download window, the only indicator that something is downloading is a blue bar in a mini small icon (at least with a 27 inch screen). Clicking on the download icon opens a bubble, but this bubble is empty, I was expecting to see exactly the download status or at least the files downloading or downloaded. I hope it is only a Safari bug.

To see how much space your hard drive has left is now involved with multiple clicks or you need to open info. Folders do not show anymore how much space is left.

Air drop, will drop from my radar. the idea behind airdrop is, that when two Lion devices are close to each other that they see each other and open a kind of shared volume. My wife has an older MacBook Pro from early 2008. This machine is too old to have air drop. And yes none of the iOS devices have yet neither airdrop.

Speaking older Apples, one good thing with the install was that we have now more hard drive space available on my wife's computer. In total 10GB, because Lion deleted all apps which needed Rosetta.

But Apple was friendly enough to leave the icons in the dock that we know what got deleted. However we don't know what other programs got deleted during install. I could not find a text document or something else to see what got deleted. Guys you can't do this. Inform the user or at least create a document.

Our MacBook Pro has not the multi touch mousepad, therefore it can not take advantage of all the features and Lion is even harder to use.

Apple moved a lot of things around and changed a lot. Lion sounds aggressive and the changes were as such.

When Apple presented Lion, they said that closing and open an app will be fast and the app will recognize what you had last open and will save all the time for you, that the user does not need to care where things get saved.

Unfortunate these features only work yet on Apple products like Safari, keynote etc.

However if you don't have an i5 processor and a SSD drive then you will not like it. A normal hard drive is just too slow and reopen an app takes time and it takes time till a page is loaded again. I closed Safari because a page did hang up. I had 12 tabs open and decided to close safari anyway and so I could get away from 12 tabs. Ten minutes later I opened safari again and guess what, it opened all 12 tabs. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. It is not always good to get to old status back.

LogMeIn has now problems with my computer (since the upgrade) I need to install the plugin every time when I use LogMeIn. It just can't remember that I already have the plugin.

Conclusion:
I love Lion on my iMac, especially new mail program, but I don't like that the OS is still a little in beta (I feel) and I don't like for sure that my wife's MacBook Pro is not powerful enough for Lion. The computer is clearly slower. But it is a 2.6Ghz dual core processor. It is still a power machine (I thought).

I liked that I could install Lion on both machines by paying only once, but I don't like that my wife's computer is now connected to my apple account and credit card. Pretty sure she will find it out soon. BTW this was the only way to buy Lion once and then to download it on her and my computer.


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Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Monday the big day - WWDC Apple keynote

Steve Jobs will open the keynote on Monday at the WWDC. Unlike like usual we already heard what it will be about. But we should not be so certain. Usually Apple keeps their topics as secret but not this time, or maybe there is still a secret.




The invite does indicate that iOS and Mac OS X will merge closer together.

That Steve Jobs is doing the keynote is a good indicator that something big will be shown. Steve is not working active because of his cancer and did not attend a few keynotes, because of this reason. He only comes to the stage when he believes he can give it more importance and bigger hype when he does the keynote. The keynote is mostly around the new OSX Lion, but we already heard that he will talk as well about iCloud. Apple's cloud music service or more. I cant wait to hear if iCloud might replace MobileMe. My subscription is ending end of June. I have a family account for $149 and would be happy to replace it with something more affordable. However Apple is a hardware and service company. I don't think I would get my service cheaper, but for sure more out of it. ICloud might be free with Lion OSX and/or starting as cheap as $30 a year.
Even if Apple has some software and two OS, I don't think I can define Apple as a software company. Apple will offer software cheap or free to support their services and to run their hardware. Software is just a necessity for Apple. Nothing they will make big money with it ($2 billion is mot much for Apple, which is now bigger than Microsoft and Intel together).
A lot of people are speculating that this time no new hardware will be presented. But maybe we get a sneak preview of the new upcoming iPhone or airport (airport could get iOS and could serve as your device to VPN with iPad perfectly with all your other Macs)

I am still not convinced we know everything which will come.

The best speculation I read was at the PcMac.com website (see below)
A few things I might not agree. Steve Jobs said many times a vertical screen is not build to be a touchscreen. But maybe Apple introduce a new iMac which the screen can be flipped to be horizontal like a patent Apple filed a while ago.
Or maybe we see Apple's entrance into fitness. Apple filed a few months ago for a patent using NFC for fitness centers. As soon you are on a workout machine your phone will recognize it and store important data or plays certain music to your workout.
It is really funny how much everybody (including me) is speculating about the keynote, nobody believes we know already what will be said. I am sure I am watching the keynote.


OS X Lion
Apple may give away parts of iCloud for free with its new Lion OS, Apple Insider's Hughes reports, citing unnamed sources.
"People familiar with Apple's plans indicated to AppleInsider that at least one of those secrets is expected to be that at least some of the services included in iCloud will be offered for free to Mac users who make the upgrade to Lion," he writes.
What's more, Lion itself could be pretty aggressively priced. Apple only charged $29 for Snow Leopard when it released its last major update to OS X, and Hughes reports that one source—albeit one with "an unproven track record"—claims Apple's planning to do the same for Lion.
"Whether Apple will choose to go with the same sub-$30 pricing of Snow Leopard when Lion goes on sale is unknown. But software now plays a very small part in Apple's bottom line, and the company is said to be interested in ensuring that users quickly upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X, through incentives and low barriers to entry," he writes.
Going forward, "Apple will announce that by early 2012 every screen they make will be touch-enabled, including the entire Mac line," prophesies veteran Apple developer Kevin Fox on his fox@fury blog.
"While it will be several years before OS X apps require touch, there will be universal gestures that will be useful in today's apps from day one, and more gestures that tomorrow's apps can choose to support to augment the pointer-and-keyboard model.
iCloud
Apple's iCloud venture could mark the beginning of the end of the personal computer as a major product line for the company, argues Brian Caulfield of Forbes.
"Far from being an offering that's a 'nice add-on,' to Apple's business, iCloud seems poised to replace the PC as the hub in Apple's 'digital hub,'" Caulfield writes.
Going forward, how much cash will Apple haul in with iCloud? Given reports that Apple will charge $25 a pop for the service (unless they give it away for free as per AppleInsider?) and sell ads around it as well, ZDNet's Larry Dignan calculates that the company could make $1.2 billion in iCloud revenue in a calendar year.
"That's not a huge deal for a company the size of Apple, but it's not chump change either," writes Dignan, who reached his revenue projection by assuming that a third of new iPod owners and half of new iPhone and iPad owners will sign up for iCloud.
But is $25 the right price? Apple Insider's Hughes indicates that the $99 Apple charges for its perhaps-soon-to-scuttled MobileMe service may be what the company charges for iCloud as well.
So will iCloud really be all that Apple is touting it as?
"My guess is that iCloud is to MobileMe as iPhone was to Newton: a complete, deep, polished solution after an underwhelming market failure," Fox writes on fox@fury.
Security
Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng thinks Apple's recent actions to defend Mac users from the MacDefender scareware attacks of recent weeks could signal that Apple will "be taking a more aggressive approach to integrating malware detection in Mac OS X."
It had better, says PCMag's John Dvorak, because MacDefender is a sign that "the Apple Macintosh is now subject to the same sort of abuse that the PC has endured and survived over the years."
iOS Devices
Fox has a ton to say about what he's hoping Apple will do for its iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices. A lot has to do with building bridges between Macs and iOS devices. Here's a sample of what he's looking for at WWDC:
- Realtime, continuous syncing of iOS devices will mean never having to plug your iPhone or iPad in to your computer again, or even the need for a computer for syncing at all.
- Built-in screen sharing of Mac OS to the iPad, to do lightweight actions on your Mac from your iPad.
- iOS runtime within Mac OS to allow iPhone apps to run as Dashboard widgets and iPad apps as first-class desktop apps.
- Task-level integration between iOS and Mac OS. If you have a spreadsheet open in Numbers on your Mac and you open Numbers on your iPad, the document you were working on will open up. Real-time synchronization will be integrated as an OS-level service available to developers.
- Unification of the App Store to encompass Mac, iPhone, iPod, AppleTV and iPad apps. Ability to make a single purchase for all the environments the app supports.
- Stripping out the App store from iTunes. iTunes will be the media storefront and the App Store will be the resource storefront.
- The only new devices announced at WWDC will be updates to facilitate the new software functionality. Some have speculated on new AirPort base stations built around iOS to make VPN easy and mainstream. This seems very likely. It will be important to have one device that is always on and available, and AirPort is a sensible bet.
- AppleTV + App Store updates probably aren't there yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear announcements in order to get developers building apps.


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Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States