I can’t exactly say that I’m reading everything that ends up on The Verge, but I do find that it is a great site overall. If you like truly in-depth reviews, this is the place to look, but what really sets them apart is posts like the Android and iOS visual histories. Great content and lots of images, detailing how these two platforms have evolved over the years. Now if they would just get that whole text column left, text column right thing under control, I’d like them even more!
Archive for iPhone
Circumstances
I have ended up in my (well, not mine but anyway) lakeside home for the week, due to a broken down car that’s in the shop right now. This isn’t all bad, although I’m not looking forward to the mechanic’s verdict and what it’ll cost me. Since my lakeside home is free of anything resembling real broadband, which in my world is 100 Mbit in both directions, this means I’ll have to adapt to a different working style. I’ve got a decent 3G connection (1-2 Mbit) so I can get just about everything done that I otherwise would’ve done from home or the Odd Alice office in Stockholm, so no worries there. However, I don’t have all the equipment I usually rely on.
- No Apple 27″ LED display for massive screen real-estate
- No Wacom Intous 4 drawing pad for logos
- No ergonomically correct chair nor desk
- No 120+ GB of music
- No movies, TV series, nor the will to download it over 3G
- No Nespresso coffee machine
WordPress moves too fast for apps
One thing that my weekend using only my iPad reminded me of is how lacking the blogging apps are. Sure, the official WordPress app is starting to be useful and my newfound favorite Blogsy is just lovely. But both are behind, and so are desktop apps. I have yet to find an app, mobile or not, that lets me post to custom post types. As far as I know no apps support custom taxonomies, and they’ve been around for some time. Post formats are relatively new but a strong feature for blogging on the go, but again no app support.
This is a shame. As mobile devices in particular improve, I’d like to be able to update using them. This is only truly possible if I stay away from custom taxonomies, custom post types, and post formats. Or, in other words, if I stick to a pretty basic site built the way we did it before these CMS-like features came along. Continued →
BuddiPhone might be one to watch
A new plugin called BuddiPhone sets out to make your BuddyPress powered WordPress community more accessible on your iOS device (being iPads and iPhones). The teaser screenshot on the landing page certainly looks clean enough, albeit a bit too close to the official Facebook iPhone app in my opinion.
Might be one to watch. Props for the name are in order, no matter what!
What?! The netbook's not dead yet?
I was scanning the gadget blogs while waiting for the MacBook Pro to copy a bunch of files to my brand new Mac mini server and something struck me as odd. There are still posts about netbooks, as in brand new upcoming netbooks.
Wow.
Now, I wrote all those Apple gadgetary things to tell you I love Apple products. I work on a 17″ MacBook Pro, write on my beloved MacBook Air, own three (3) iPhones, and am totally in love with my iPad. In fact, the only non-Apple things on my home network are a gaming PC, the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360.
Apple does it best, the whole ecosystem product thing.
Which brings me back to the netbook. In my mind, the iPhone killed the netbook with the 3G edition. I’ve owned a bunch of netbooks, and the only thing that made me to actually keep one (I’ve had a bunch at the same time) when I got my iPhone 3GS was that coding on the go was just about impossible on the Apple phone, whereas it works well enough on the netbook. And it still had a reason to exist side by side with my Air, since the netbook still was smaller, albeit just as heavy/light.
But today? The iPad with a bluetooth keyboard is just about all I need when I’m on the go. Some widely quoted study, which I really can’t put too much weight on, says that a fourth of the Americans are planning on buying an iPad.
That will slash the netbook sales for sure.
So. Again. I was reading up on the gadget blogs, and saw a bunch of netbook posts. Two things:
- What decent computer company would release a netbook in the wake of the iPad?
- Gadget blogs earns money by getting a ton of readers, but who wants to read about the netbook today, post iPad?
The answer? A bunch, on both accounts.
The netbook’s not dead, but the craze is over. Apple’s iPad and all its upcoming competitors, along with more visual interfaces, will force the netbook makers to position their products even more as a low budget alternative.
That’s OK. I just don’t see a reason to buy one anymore. I used to have a bunch at the same time, as I said before. Not so anymore. In fact, even the Air is in question when it comes to the iPad and the needs when on the road.
Computing will be an interesting concept in the years to come.
My hopes and dreams for the Apple tablet
I’ll confess, at first I wasn’t particularly thrilled about an Apple tablet. Oven the months that have changed, along with the way my workflow have done the same. Today I don’t even want to imagine a day without the iPhone, in fact I’ve got two, not for the eventuality of one breaking down really but for other things. No matter what, it makes me a bit more calm.
You see, I write somewhere between 20 and 50 emails a day from my iPhone, I tweet and connect on Facebook, I read up on news and I entertain myself. It is a brilliant multi-purpose device that saves me time, something that is really valuable to me.
Realizing that, I would be a fool not to be the least curious, nay, thrilled about the prospect of an Apple tablet. Continued →
Kevin Rose demos Square, a sign of things to come
It’s about time anyone can charge a credit card, and while I’m not so sure if this albeit cool little iPhone accessory is the solution, it is surely a sign of things to come. After all, cash isn’t kind anymore, it is dirty and full of diseases, as well as a way to bypass taxes and do work outside of the prying eyes of the government. The only real concern really is that this will also work for muggers, which means that I don’t even have to be tricked to an ATM machine to extract the cash they want, they can just make me pay by credit card…! Then again, that leaves a trail easily followed, so it should be manageable.
Check out Kevin Rose’s demo of Square in the video below.
Really cool, as I said, but I think stand-alone devices doing this will be a bigger player in the personal charge by credit card field.
The game companies just don’t get it
Sometimes I stumble over things that just amazes me so much I have to vent. Like this thing with the game companies, which are, in what I only can see as a sign of stupidity, making YouTube remove their trailers because of copyright infringement. The latest one in the row to do that is Activision, but others (such as Ubisoft for example) have been enforcing their right to do so as well, or in other ways limited the video to non-embeddable or just viewable from the US, and so on.
The background is this. I’m running a Swedish game blog called Spelbloggen, which in turn has a YouTube channel where we upload trailers. These trailers are supplied by the game companies for us to share with our readers. Continued →
