Apple must get better, sometimes good is not good enough

After all innovations, Apple is pretty bad with file management. My wife has a MacBook Pro with a 120GB hard drive. I know this does not sound big, but for her usage it should be enough. She has around 12 GB of music, a few office applications and some movies. All together should not be more than 60GB, however her hard drive is full. I told her to use our server for her music but she does not trust it. I was in charge to make her notebook faster and free of disc space, because she had only 1 GB left and I needed at least 5 to install Lion. First I looked in her trash and she really never empties her trash. There were deleted files from over one year and at least 300 iPhone apps which got deleted when she did sync and a new update was available. Empty the trash gave me 2 GB. I could not believe.
Then I deleted her download folder, there were another 6 GB. I deleted as well some files, I knew she would not use anymore. After one hour I had 11 GB left. Enough to install Lion. After Lion install we had actually 13 GB left because some software got deleted because they don't run under Lion.

Today she decided to update the OS of her iPhone. But it crashed during upgrade. She went to restore and tried it again, it crashed again. And she tried again and so on. After 8 attempts the restore did mot work anymore, because her HD had only 64 MB left. What happened?
Itunes makes a backup, every time when you try to make a restore. She had at the end 12 backups.




The backups made her HD full each backup was between 1 and 2 GB. Apple does compress the data really well but still, it is a lot.
Deleting the backup gave her a lot of disc space back. Then I looked how many apps she has in iTunes. I could not believe what is saw, she had over 200 apps. No wonder the HD was full. Imagine an app is between 20MB to a few hundred like Pages.
All apps together are, in her case, over 10 GB. Some games are really big.
we deleted the apps from iTunes, but when she synced most of the apps came back. We had first to deselect them from iTunes, sync the phone to get them from the phone deleted and then we could delete them from iTunes.

Now we have enough disc space available but I think I end up to buy her a 250 GB hard rive, which costs just $50 at Macsales.com.

Apple is not anymore just for geeks, it is mainstream, but I feel the file management is too bad for users like my wife who is a typical end user. Especially now where the new Macs are coming with SSD drive which are as low 64GB. I understand that the new iOS 5 will allow update over the air and maybe the backup is stored in the cloud, but if not, a lot of people will be in trouble.

If Apple wants to get number one computer and OS company then they need to change a lot. They should take an example from the automobile industry. When we buy a car, we don't need to know when and how to change oil. The car is telling us we need an oil change and then we just go around the corner and get it done for a few bugs.

Apple PCs should work the same. It should tell us to empty the trash, or warn us to delete some backups or apps which we don't use. Windows is not perfect but at least it asks us every so often if we want delete certain apps we did not use of a year.

All the time when she downloads something from a website, even of it is just a pfd, will be saved in a download folder. Why is Apple not asking us to empty the download folder once a while. Why does a PDF need to be saved on the computer? Windows asks us at least if we want to save or not. Her safari does download the file and open It.

Apple could easily have in default settings that 3 GB of storage must be free or the user will be warned. Something like this.

Let us compare the MacBook Air and iPad. Both can have 64 GB of memory. The iPad as maximum and the MacBook Air as minimum. For the iPad it is plenty, because I can sync with my iMac. Therefore I don't need to have all my music or video on the iPad. And I can delete apps I don't need and have them still on my big computer. And the biggest apps, I did find so far were only pages, numbers and keynote each of them multiple hundred MB.



The MacBook Air, the most beautiful notebook starts for $999 with 64 GB. This sounds enough, if we consider that 3 years ago 40GB was common in a notebook.

But I believe it is not. People who are buying MacBook Airs don't have usually an iMac or a server at home. But they might have an iPad, learned that they need more and ended up to get the MacBook Air (like my wife wants). Most apps for OS X are much bigger than for iOs and we still will sync out iPad and iPhone with the MacBook Air. 64 GB are just as fast full as we needed to decide if we get 64 GB or 128 GB. Another problem is the build in autosave. Lion and certain Apple apps are cool. You open pages and it opens the last document you worked on. You even never need to save a document. Apple does it for you. Not only this, Apple has build in version control. Which is very awesome. However all this is eating HD space.

I am starting to wonder in which category the MacBook Air is going to be. Is it a notebook replacement or an iPad replacement? Does Apple expect iPad users will move to McBook Air and then to MacBook Pro? Or are they aware of the bad file management and are working on the perfect cloud? To keep most of the data in the cloud and only sync what is necessary?

Everybody who has a full HD should do what i did.

1. Empty trash at least once a week. Every sync with iPhone or iPad will pit a lot apps into trash.

2. Delete through iTunes iPhone and iPad backups which you don't need.

3. Clean your iPhone, ipad and ipod touch apps from you device and then delete them from your computer.

4. Empty once a month your download folder.

5. Don't buy a MacBook Air with 64GB. If you really want, then buy as well a time capsule or an mac mini for your music, movies and other files. Use either of them as a file server. This will help you a lot in the long run.


- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Lion without Java and Flash

Two weeks ago Apple presented the new Lion OS on the WWDC. If you watched the keynote you might have noticed thar on some webpages shown, when the presenter flipped through the presentation, had small blue Lego blocks on it. The reason is that Lion comes out of the box without Flash. You still can download flash for Safari but will not be included with Safari and OS. Apple will as well not deliver the OS with Java, but can be downloaded from the web if needed.

The OS will be only available as download, you can't buy it on a DVD, this means you don't have an optical disc to boot from in case the OS is failing when booting. However Lion does install a clean 600MB boot version which can be accesses when booting the computer.
This 600MB 'Restore HD'partition is accessed when you depress the option key while booting your machine. It then shows up beside your other partitions, select it and you'll be straight into recovery mode, which lets you restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup, reinstall Mac OS X, run Disk Utility or use Safari. If this new system works, it looks like Mac repair could be made a little easier.
Some more of the functions for the upcoming Lion OS.

Macs run Safari, no log-in required

Lion lets guest users launch Safari even when they are not logged into the system, reports claim. In the most recent beta, OS X's login screen began offering the option to "Restart to Safari" rather than logging in.

This means anyone should be able to use any Mac to access browser-based services, such as Web apps, online services -- iWork.com -- or email.

We keep hearing that iCloud won't offer Web-based access to previously available services such as Bookmarks, Contacts or Mail. This seems strange, as offering access to some iCloud services via a browser on a Mac would (theoretically) mean any users could use any Mac to get to their online lives.

This also trounces Google's Chrome, by making any Mac an Internet-connected device, which, given the move to make things such as Pages documents available in their most recent form to multiple products via iCloud makes for a more compelling connected computing experience.

Instant wipe

Some very interesting data within Apple's online description of FileVault 2. For a start, FileVault 2 now supports encryption of external USB and FireWire drives; beyond this, Apple's notes state:

"With FileVault 2, instant wipe removes the encryption key from your Mac instantaneously, making the data completely inaccessible. Then your Mac performs an entire wipe of the data from the disk."

In conjunction with the Find My Mac feature I'm expecting, the Mac will become one of the world's more data secure platforms -- straight out of the box!

Screen sharing

Screen sharing in Lion is much more useful than before. You can now log into a remote Mac user account even while someone on that remote machine is logged into a different user account. You can also log in with your Apple ID, the person on the other end can authorize you for access, and you'll be able to connect to that remote machine just as if using a local user account. Then there's an observation mode. This will be highly useful in many ways. Particularly if you get to use this feature from a mobile device (iPhone, iPad).

Apple melts Rosetta

No big surprise really, but Rosetta support will not feature within Lion. Already an optional install in Snow Leopard, Rosetta lets Mac users access PowerPC apps on their Intel machines. The Intel transition was five years ago so a move to abandon PowerPC completely seems appropriate enough. Built-in Java and Flash support also disappear in Lion, though you'll be able to install the most up-to-date Mac versions from their respective developers, if you need them.

A reader noted that Quicken requires Rosetta, a MacObserver report tells us that while this may be a problem at first, an unusual solution is planned.

Looking ahead, July's Apple news focuses on the Mac: MacBook Air, Mac Pro and Mac mini upgrades are all being discussed (some say new Mac launches are delayed until Lion ships), Final Cut Pro X is also expected to hit the Mac App Store as soon as next week.

One thing is to mention that upgrading to Lion works the best with the MacBook Air because it has a SSD drive. Normal hard drives might be sometimes too slow to take advantage of the new cool features from Apple like instant opening apps in last used state.

We tested Lion on my wife's old MacBook Pro. It is 4 years old and Lion seems sometimes a little bit slow but it might be because it is the developer version. We will see when the final version is out.

So far I have to admit that Lion is a big improvement of Snow Leopard. The low price of the OS should be a no brainer for people to update their computer but older systems might not take full advantage of the new OS.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

New MacBook Pro and Lion OS Preview

Apple released today Lion for developers. The OS will be available mid 2011 for the consumer.


Most interesting part is the touch gesture functions. Which is not far away anymore of gestures captured through build in camera, which might come faster than we think (sure a developer will write a plug in for this)

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Apple introduced today as well the new MacBook Pro. I have been a little disappointed. IT still has no SSD (you can upgrade to SSD for $1,100 a 500GB hard drive) just normal hard drive and still has built in CD Drive. Most of the software is now available in the app store, so why the need of a CD / DVD drive built in.

I would like to have seen the MacBook Pro in similar design like the MacBook Air.

Otherwise the new MacBook Pro is fast, very fast with i7 quadcore processors and a new I/O technology called Thunderbold developed from Intel.

The 17inch (2.2GHz quad-core, Intel Core i7 , 8GB 1333MHz, 750GB 5400-rpm1, Intel HD Graphics 3000, AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5) does not come cheap. It costs you around $2,699 and with SSD 500GB even $3,799, but it is a high tech professional Notebook which is more than just a desktop replacement.

Read more what is new in the MacBook Pro at the WSJ.

So you think Apple computers are expensive?

I hear all the time how expensive Apple is and that there is no reason to switch just to pay a premium. And if we don't look deeper the price of Apple is in average 30% more.

IPhone:
The iPhone 4G 32GB is $299 which is around $100 more than other smart phones, however none of them in the lower price range have as much build in memory. Example: HTC EVO 4G, the price is $199 and same features like the iPhone (plus 4G), however the internal memory is only 1 GB, extra micro SD card with 32GB costs another $70. But the big difference is the quality of the camera, nobody yet could match the photo quality of the iPhone.

iPad:
The iPad costs between $499 and $829. All are 10 inch the only difference is to have it with 3G and the memory size between 16GB and 64GB. All other high quality tablets running on Android are not cheaper, they are even more expensive and have mostly only 7inch screen.
Example: Motorla - XOOM Tablet 3G with 10 inch screen. This tablet runs on Android and is available at Best Buy for $799,99 but has only 32GB memory. The iPad with 3G and 32GB is only $729.

Notebooks:
The cheapest notebook from Apple is the MacBook Air or just the MacBook starting at $999. Notebooks from other vendors are starting in average at $500. This is half of the price, but unfortunately as well half of the quality and speed.
Let us compare a notebook which is almost identical to the MacBook air in speed, size, design and quality. The Samsung 9 Series.
MacBook Air:

Samsung Series 9:

This notebook comes very close to Apple, but unfortunately the price is far from a competition. The notebook will be priced around $2200, twice than the MacBook Air.
The Specifications of Samsung 9 series laptop:



Samsung 9 Series Specs ($2230):


CPU: Second Generation Intel® CoreTM i5 Processor 2537M (1.40 GHz, 3MB; turbo up to 2.3 GHz)
Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 bit) / Windows® 7 Professional (64 bit)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 * Storage (max): 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
Screen: 13.3-inch HD LED-backlit SuperBright Plus display (400 nit)
Resolution: 1366×768
Graphics: Intel HD GT2 Integrated Graphics
Speakers: 3 watt (1.5W x 2) stereo speakers and 1.5 watt sub-woofer
Battery: Lithium Polymer; up to 6.5 hours
Wireless: 802.11b/g/n; WiMaxi
Weight: 2.89 lbs.

Apple MacBook Air Specs ($1299):

Product Height 0.7"

Product Width 12.8" Product Weight 2.9 lbs.

Product Depth 8.9"

Processor Brand Intel® Processor Intel® Core™2 Duo

Processor Speed 1.86GHz

Battery Type Lithium-polymer

Display Type Widescreen LED-backlit (1440 x 900)

Screen Size (Measured Diagonally) 13.3"

System Bus 1066MHz

Cache Memory 6MB shared on die Level 2

System Memory (RAM) 2GB

System Memory (RAM) Expandable To 4GB

Type of Memory (RAM) DDR3 SDRAM

Computer Hard Drive Size 128GB

Digital Media Reader or Slots Yes, select memory card slots

Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 320M

Video Memory 256MB (shared)

Built-in Webcam Yes

Wireless Networking Wireless-A+B+G+N

Bluetooth-Enabled Yes

Speakers Internal

USB 2.0 Ports 2

Laptop Weight Ultraportable (5.5 lbs. or less)

Operating System Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Included Software iLife '11 and more

ENERGY STAR Qualified Yes

Drive Capacity 128GB flash storage

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 320M

There must be a reason that Apple is now Number 1 mobile PC manufacture in the World.

Yes Apple seems to pricey, but when we compare competition with same features then Apple is not more expensive. But one thing almost none of the competition has is the the beauty and aesthetic and ease of use with almost no viruses. Only Apple can offer this at the moment.