The Tablet Craze

It seems as of late that everyone is rushing to get a tablet computer out to market. This has been tried before and never really went anywhere. There has been talk regarding the mythical Apple tablet for a very long time now, despite there being no solid evidence there even working on one. Well despite the maker, or the operating system it contains, I cannot help but feel that they are not going to catch on in any significant way.

Given the price for a tablet, especially from Apple, that will have enough punch be worthwhile why not just get a laptop? Now there are circumstances where a tablet would be nice, sort of a like a coffee table computer for the masses with more practical uses for some industries. For the average user, given the cost of these units, it would make more sense to get a small laptop in the 13" variety. Yes, they will lack the touch screen but likely have more power to play with.

In regards to Apple am I the only one that it feels they may have been forced into this market? The device is going to underwhelm no matter what no considering the extensive hype. It is going to be expensive and that again brings me back to my solution... buy a laptop.

So many Apps

I was reading the other day that the App Store for the iPhone reached the 100,000 mark and it got me thinking. Out of those 100,00,0 how many are actually useful? How many get only a very small handful of downloads? After all if you look through the catalog to any great length there are thousands and thousands of apps which are barely distinguishable from one another.

Yes there are some up and coming software companies which have done very well with the iPhone but how many exactly? Getting your application noticed in the sea of 100,000 can not be an easy task unless you have a secondary way to promote it.

After all I think many people, if not most people, find applications by accident, word of mouth or the Apple commercials themselves. Searching the store is not an easy task and while the Genius method added in 3.1 was a step in the right direction, more needs to be done.

How do you all find your hidden treasure applications?

Deauthorizing Computers with iTunes

Have you reached your limit of five computers authorized for iTunes? Do you no longer have access to the other machines to remove their authorization? While it should be a simple task of removing the computers from a list this is not the case.

The following will work ONLY if you have reached your limit. The option is not available otherwise.

• Login to your iTunes account
• You will see a new button called "Deauthorize All" in the account information screen.

Note that this can only be done once a year via this method. If for any other reason you need to do it later you will need to contact Apple directly.

Snow Leopard Days

I have been using Apple's new operating system now, "Snow Leopard", for a few days and have gotten a feel for what it is going to do for me. For now. That is the elephant in the room in regards to "Snow Leopard", in that much of the benefit for every day users is not there yet. Until applications really begin to take advantage of technologies such as "Grand Central Station" and "OpenCL" the benefits may not seem to spectacular.

Now I have an obsession about upgrading and trying out every bit of new technology that I can get my hands on. I fully understand that as a result I will have to occasionally battle with compatibility and other issues. So the question is if you are completely happy with how your computer works or you cannot risk downtime can you wait? The answer is yes.

Waiting for 10.6.1 or 10.6.2 likely will not impact anything that you are doing now. Given the price of Snow Leopard I can see developers requiring it in the future but that will not be in the immediate future. Not to mention some of those developers may not be so ready to cast off the PowerPC users such as Apple has done in "Snow Leopard".

Further Impressions

So far as the "new" features go I still have to say I like the new Quicktime but worry about the direction Apple is taking in removing so many high end features. I wonder if they have a card up their sleeve to release a new product to replace those features and leave Quicktime strictly for the masses?

Otherwise, to be honest, I am using my Mac the same as before. I liked the experience then and I still enjoy it now.

Snow Early Leopard Impressions

Apple's "Snow Leopard" has arrived and I installed it late last night on my Mac Pro without, so far, any ill effects. Pursuing through the Apple forums I can see that there are many people having problems and as with any big release of OS X we will see a 10.x.1 version released pretty soon. As for myself I had backed up my system three different ways, just in case, but it turned out to be for nothing.

Given that this is my first major upgrade to the Mac OS I have no overt opinions of the previous methods. It is obvious that Apple wanted the process to be as stream lined as possible. Just about anyone could install this OS as there are virtually no options given to you anyway. While there are ways to do a clean install there is no clear cut, click of a button method as there has been in the past. I decided to give the "over the top" installation a try and was very impressed.

One tip that I have seen in numerous posts is that upgrading Leopard to Snow Leopard from any version less than 10.5.8 has reported more issues than those who do. It may be nothing, but, all in all you should be keeping your system up to date anyway.

Just about every single release of an OS, regardless if it is a point release, a service pack or whatever you will see people raving about how much faster it is. Sometimes that may or may not be the case but with "Snow Leopard" it is noticeably faster. Some of my larger applications that took a few bounces to start pop up almost instantly now.

Program Compatibility

So far any of the applications that I used on my late 2008 Mac Pro have been working just fine. Many popular programs such as Growl have not yet updated for Snow Leopard but so far appear to be working just fine. Those programs Control Panel entries will cause it to restart into 32bit mode before launching, which is mildly annoying.

Possible Issues

I have been reading that in some cases Mac's which are capable of using the 64bit kernel are booting into the 32bit kernel. The easiest way to find out if you're capable is to drop to a prompt and paste in:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

If you are 64bit ready then you will see the following, if not then you are booted into 32big mode:

"firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">

Check out this page on 9to5 Mac for information on if you are 64bit capable and what to do about if you're for some reason booting into 32bit mode: click here.

Personally I do not think it is a terribly big deal, for most people, if you are not using the 64bit kernel.

Overall opinion

All in all "Snow Leopard" does exactly what it was supposed to do, improve and optimize your leopard experience. It was in my opinion a rather bold move to forgo the typical fancy, shiny new (and possibly useless) features that so many of us expect from an upgrade. This does, however, set the bar pretty high for 10.7 which people are going to expect to be a huge upgrade.

So if you are very happy with Leopard, unless you're using a PPC, there is little reason to rush out right away and get it. Yet, at $35cdn there is very little reason NOT to get it either.

Exclusivity Issues

While I am not a fan of any Governmental agency telling a company telling a company how to operate something has to be done re cell phone exclusivity. It is not, no matter how you look at it, good for consumers in the least.

Why?

Well, for example, if every carrier had the iPhone then it would be a matter of who provided the best coverage, plan and service. Carriers would be forced to clean up their act. Right now if you want to use an iPhone in Canada and the United states you have only one choice. Sure, if you are the unlocking and jail breaking type then there are ways around that, but, I am talking about the majority here.

Now, unless you have money to burn, all of these fancy phones everywhere will not allow you to dump from one to the other. In order to pay what we're all accustomed to contracts will be in order. But when our contracts are due, or close enough that we can pay a small premium to upgrade we can do so at will.

I am not sure if everyone agrees with this, surely the carriers will not, but cell phone exclusivity has to go and soon.