Living Critic

For some time a double click of the home button would bring up iPod music controls from anywhere in the iPod/iPhone OS. Now the tool appears to be working inconsistently.

While locked out a double click will work. But if not the double click will only work if a track is already playing. The behavior may be even more inconsistent apparently depending on what app is open at the time.

iPod Touch generation 1 owners are even more in a bind because that without independent audio controls, the old system provided the only way to quickly adjust the system volume.

Apple’s support forums are now lighting up with customers who are upset about the issue and hoping Apple takes notice and fixes it.

Forums discussing the issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151495&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10210314
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151438&start=0&tstart=0

Well I was right about just  a few things in my predictions. 

1.  iLife ‘09 was introduced.
2. 17″ Macbook was updated.
3. Changes came to the iTunes Store.  

I am surprised about the company  hasn’t expanded their quad-core reach, but I suspect that we’ll be seeing more regular changes and updates from Apple going forward.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see a February press event.

There were some welcomed changes for iPhoto, and iMovie.

I found the most interesting feature of today announcements was the lack of Mobile  Me attention.  Now both Flickr and Facebook get a prominent position into the iPhoto UI. Interestingly photo tagging is now updated live from the web if you share your photos through those services.

I’m looking forward to checking out the “faces” feature.  Picasa has this for web albums, but iPhoto is now letting me also do this locally.  Being someone who already goes through to make albums for individuals, it’ll be handy to have a tool that tries to identify people automatically. 

Both apps are now taking advantage of geocoding integrating it into the presentation tools as well as the navigation interface.  If I tell iPhoto I’m at the Pike Place Market, it’ll automatically categorize my photo into a USA-Washington State-Seattle designation.

I won’t go too far into the changes made to iMovie, except to say that it’s got many improvements that should satisfy many of those who were upset with the transition from iMovie ‘06 to ‘08.  The editing features are much improved so that a person has much more control over how edits are made.  One thing I haven’t heard, and I’m wondering about is if the program will accept plugins as previous versions to ‘08 had.  

Garageband looks like it’s trying to connect with the burgeoning market of Music Video games.  The product now connects you to popular artists who, through the program, can teach you to play.  Additionally you can rock-out  along side a virtual band.

iWeb gets some minor updates, including Facebook notifications.

iDvd looks like it might be on its way out.  I’d like to see the product do a better job on working to integrate with third parties via plugins and extensions that would enable greater internet and application integration.

Oh and most interesting, for those who’ve yet to upgrade to Leopard, Apple is  going to be offering a “Mac Box Set.”  This will include Leopard, iMovie, and iWork, all for $169, or $229 for multiple machines.

With the transition to Intel based chips, Apple has put itself closer to it’s non-OSX-based competition.  Now, as competitors integrate new technologies into their systems the pressure on Apple to make updates is greater.

MacWorld (along with the Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference) has historically been a place for Apple to make major announcements.  It was Macworld 2007 wherein the iPhone was announced.

In my experience it’s done a lot for the company, and I don’t have enough information, but I’m not sure I’m in favor of the company leaving the expo. 

There may be many reasons for dropping out of Macworld.  I think one of the benefits would be to allow the company to move faster and make announcements on a more fluid product release cycle.

My predictions for Apple’s coming attractions this January:

• Preview of OSX 10.6 Snow-Leopard with March/April release date announced.
• Updated Mac mini with NVIDIA’s 9400M Chipset.  I would consider this a major upgrade for the mini, making it a much more competitive product (there will be no version with an intel chipset as others have speculated).
• iMac updated with Core i7 and faster graphics and compatibility.
• 17″ Macbook Pro introduced with unibody construction.
• Displayport transition complete for the entire Mac line.
• iLife ‘09 introduced.
• I suspect changes are coming for the iTunes store and Apple TV, but probably not in time for January.

I thought this was fun and had to post it.  Today’s Black Friday Ad for Apple, shows the $229 iPod Touch for $378.

Forget BlueRay, Apple’s produced it’s’ own bag of hurt.

In yet another blow to consumers, and ultimately the viability of DRM’d content, purchasers of Apple’s new MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s are finding they are unable to play many of their movies onto external displays that are not HDCP compliant, essentially any DVI or VGA connections.

From ARSTechnica.com:

“When my friend John, a high school teacher, attempted to play Hellboy 2 on his classroom’s projector with a new aluminum MacBook over lunch, he was denied by the error …(This movie cannot be played because a display that is not authorized to play protected movies is connected).” John’s using a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter…”

The complaints are also running through Apple’s forums.

DRM like this makes the illegal downloads better than the legally purchased ones. I’m not as excited to upgrade now computers now, and I’m definitely not buying movies from iTunes, or any similar source.

ARSTechnica via Gizmodo.

Since making the Intel switch the Idea of the Mac tax has been more readily tested. Apple seems to have been wary of this and has been sure to put together hardware packages that are compelling for their price points.

The recently launched MacBooks appear to be a good value when compared to the competition.

Electornista has a terrific chart breaking down a comparison with Dell, HP, and Sony.

Gizmodo also has one of the best reviews I’ve seen of the new MacBooks.

And for a while they last time pick up a great deal on the previous generation MackBook at Amazon. For $1600 you can pick up a machine with specs that are in some cases better than the current generation.

Oh and Apple is Killing firewire. At the introduction of the new MacBooks it was noted that these are some of the top selling machines in the world. Since Apple has cut firewire support for them it could mean some major hurts for those who are still using the standard. I’m not happy about it. I would have much preferred if Apple could have included some kind of mini-firewire port in the new machines. I’d pay extra if it was at least an option.

About a year ago but hey it works.

Microsoft’s latest ad campaign has received a lot of buzz thanks to a reported $300 million budget that included hiring Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million.

While the campaign itself has received a lot of buzz, the ads have been rather terrible. Positioning Gates and Seinfeld together was a really bad idea. Gates is best when he’s talking about his passions, or here.

Microsoft Thinks We’re Idiots
The second of the Gates Seinfeld ads was just ill conceived. The ad put Seinfeld and Gates together with ‘the people,’ Microsoft’s customers, in this case an idiot family.

Microsoft, if that’s how you see your customers then you’re clearly out of touch. The ad above is an insult.

Apple’s ad is turned against Apple.
The latest ad however is very good. They’ve co-opted Apple’s PC meme shifting Apple’s clunky and buggy PC image to a computer user.   This could effectively shut apple up. Co-opting the meme gave Microsoft a lot of options for presenting assumably real PC users as at least as cool and functional as the fictional ‘Mac’ character in Apple’s commercials.

Now, with this new advertisement the ‘PC’ caricature will no longer represent the clunky buggy computer metaphor, but it will now represent those ‘real’ people from the Apple ads.

With this change, the Apple ads are the ones that would come off as insulting. They can’t insult PC if PC is a user and no longer a box. This could effectively ’shut Apple up in terms of it’s current ad campaign.

Apple could bring the meme back to being about a box, but that may be difficult if Microsoft is effective it’s going to be hard to put this cat back in the bag.

See Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ad here:

Update:  I hadn’t seen this image before, but it shows clearly that Microsoft is trying to turn Apple’s PC the box, into PC, the computer user.

How an app goes through the App Store.

Joy of Tech VIA [Gizmodo]

Just wanted to post an update to say that MobileMe now lets Linux Firefox users in.  I haven’t made extensive use of it yet, but so far everything has worked great.   Thanks Apple!