...AT&T remains sole iPhone carrier in US, revenue sharing axed (Updated) ... If you purchased the original iPhone on or after May 27 and want to swap it with the 3G iPhone, you will be able to do so without having to pay an additional handset charge. (There is, however, a 10 percent restocking fee on your old phone, apparently.)...So if I buy one today, can I swap it with the new one in July? Tempting, especially for a refurb.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Buy iPhone today, swap for new one?
Via Ars Technica
Why Firefox 3 is a great OS X browser
My impression is that for users of the Google tool suite, FF 3 is the best OS X browser.
One of the lead engineers explains how that came to be …
Firefox 3 for Mac OS X: Under the Hood « Boom Swagger Boom
Firefox 3 will be released soon (get the RC here). While the release contains a huge number of new features and performance improvements for all platforms, it is particularly significant for Mac OS X users. We rewrote most of the Mac OS X code that was behind Firefox 2 in order to benefit from modern Apple technologies and fix long-standing bugs. Once you try it I think you’ll agree that the results are astounding. I’d like to explain what exactly we did in this rewrite, how Firefox 3 for Mac OS X is different “under the hood.”…
So much better than FF 2!
Monday, June 09, 2008
My iPhone demands: How is Apple doing?
Almost a year ago I posted my iPhone demands.
Here's a status report (bold)
The only saving grace is the SDK and the Apple Store platform. I expect 3rd party developers will give me most of what I want. I'm buying iPhone 2.0, so I'll find out soon enough. Palm is dead one way or another, so I will have to work differently.
Still, pretty lousy score!
Here's a status report (bold)
Gordon's Notes: iPhone: my demandsCurrent score:
Non-negotiable:Wishes, not demands:
- Copy, Cut, Paste. (No)
- Search. (Contacts only)
- Tasks at least comparable to the 1994 PalmPilot tasks. (No)
- Synchronization with Outlook at least comparable to the modern Palm OS (in other words, flawed, but useable). A 256 character limit on contact comments is not acceptable. (No, not yet)
- Run FileMaker Remote. (No)
- Synchronize notes. (No)
- Multi select and process for email (Yes)
- Apple needs to fix the "international problem". It's ridiculously easy to run up a $1000 phone bill unintentionally when outside the US. (Partial)
- Let the iPhone bridge a computer to its net connection. (No)
- A real calculator. (Yes)
- Flatten the recessed headphone socket. (Yes)
- Site-selective synchronization - so can sync at both work and home, but not send home data to a work machine. (No)
- Support for a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. (No)
- Video out - so I can use a larger display. (No)
- Encrypted data stores. (No)
- Third party app support (Yes)
- Flash support, but not from Adobe. (No)
- GPS (Yes)
- Custom ring and alert tones (Yes)
- Allow file storage on the iPhone. (No)
- essential: 2/9
- nice: 5/9
The only saving grace is the SDK and the Apple Store platform. I expect 3rd party developers will give me most of what I want. I'm buying iPhone 2.0, so I'll find out soon enough. Palm is dead one way or another, so I will have to work differently.
Still, pretty lousy score!
MobileMe syncs with Outlook
There's no way on gaia's green earth that MobileMe syncs seamlessly with Outlook ...
Still, interesting.
Notice the absence of $%!$%!%# Task synchronization. No Notes either.
I'm looking for info on gCal syn.
Apple - MobileMe - Features - MobileMe on your PCNo way.
... On a PC, MobileMe works seamlessly with the applications you use every day. You can use Outlook, Outlook Express, and Windows Contacts on XP or Vista. MobileMe automatically pushes your email, contacts, and calendars — and even your Safari or Internet Explorer bookmarks — to your other computers, iPhone, and iPod touch. ...
Still, interesting.
Notice the absence of $%!$%!%# Task synchronization. No Notes either.
I'm looking for info on gCal syn.
An offbeat Apple keynote prediction
Well, not so much a prediction as an entertaining thought for WWDC.
Amazon's Kindle is at least marginally successful, though most of the people I like to read seem to think it's not an enormous success. It has, however, made a lot of people very nervous about Amazon's power over publishing.
So I think Barnes and Noble, the big publishers, and Google might be willing to get together around a response to Amazon. Book publishers are very slow to move on anything, so they'd have to be passive-aggressive partners at best. The energy would have to come from B&N and Google.
Apple has an interest in an always connected touchscreen slate device that will do video display and conferencing, does audio and has a data-revenue stream associated with it.
So Apple will do a touchscreen slate device with a subsidized price, AT&T 3G data services, a required subscription model including the dotMac successor, and books through the (to be rebranded) iTunes store in partnership with Google and Barnes and Noble.
You read it here first ...
Amazon's Kindle is at least marginally successful, though most of the people I like to read seem to think it's not an enormous success. It has, however, made a lot of people very nervous about Amazon's power over publishing.
So I think Barnes and Noble, the big publishers, and Google might be willing to get together around a response to Amazon. Book publishers are very slow to move on anything, so they'd have to be passive-aggressive partners at best. The energy would have to come from B&N and Google.
Apple has an interest in an always connected touchscreen slate device that will do video display and conferencing, does audio and has a data-revenue stream associated with it.
So Apple will do a touchscreen slate device with a subsidized price, AT&T 3G data services, a required subscription model including the dotMac successor, and books through the (to be rebranded) iTunes store in partnership with Google and Barnes and Noble.
You read it here first ...
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Burn CDs without the invisible .DS_Store (dot) files
This has been bugging me for years. I think I've finally figured it out.
The interesting bit, really, is why this problem is so mysterious. In think the mystery comes about because only old-timers wonder about this, for most people I suspect things just work (on CD anyway).
Long time OS X users remember when CDs were littered with .DS_Store and other OS X "dot" files holding file metadata. Some versions of OS X create these even when there's no extended attributes, resource fork, or other metadata for a particular file.
It's not just CDs. Thumb drives (USB mass storage media) got them too.
They're annoying as all get out. Media players that can manage AAC or MP3 files get confused by the dot files. At best they have to be skipped over.
So how do you get rid of 'em?
Well, in 10.0-10.2 you had to run use unix commands: macosxhints.com - Burn CDs without the invisible .DS_Store files.
In 10.2 or so the OS changed to burning hybrid CDs, a mixture of plain old Joliet and HFS+:
If you want to burn the simplest MP3 or AAC CDs for external devices, you need to specify PC Joliet as the Disc Type. In Disco ($20) and Burnz ($10) this is an option.
When you do this the PC view will not show any metadata or dot files.
Inexplicably, neither product explains why you'd want to do this. I guess they assume everyone understands that "PC Joliet" means no funky OS X metadata dot files.
Right.
Disco, by the way, has a problem in 10.4.11. When you insert a CD the finder blocks Disco's burn. No dialog is displayed, but nothing happens. I have to close all Finder windows to get it to work. I think there must be better options, I'm looking around.
Oh, and this is still a problem with thumb drives, at least in 10.4.
Update 6/9/08: I was really annoyed with Disco.app -- at one point it wouldn't burn no matter what windows I closed. Burnz didn't give me a simple enough control over what format I burned. Now I'm trying the free OSS app Burn.
The interesting bit, really, is why this problem is so mysterious. In think the mystery comes about because only old-timers wonder about this, for most people I suspect things just work (on CD anyway).
Long time OS X users remember when CDs were littered with .DS_Store and other OS X "dot" files holding file metadata. Some versions of OS X create these even when there's no extended attributes, resource fork, or other metadata for a particular file.
It's not just CDs. Thumb drives (USB mass storage media) got them too.
They're annoying as all get out. Media players that can manage AAC or MP3 files get confused by the dot files. At best they have to be skipped over.
So how do you get rid of 'em?
Well, in 10.0-10.2 you had to run use unix commands: macosxhints.com - Burn CDs without the invisible .DS_Store files.
In 10.2 or so the OS changed to burning hybrid CDs, a mixture of plain old Joliet and HFS+:
The .DS_Store (and many other mac-only metadata) files will be stripped from the crossplatform ISO/Joilet images. These files will still show up for the HFS side of hybrid images, so mac users will get them but other users on other platforms won't."Some media devices still have trouble with hybrid CDs. I don't know about 10.5, but in 10.4 I don't think you can control this.
If you want to burn the simplest MP3 or AAC CDs for external devices, you need to specify PC Joliet as the Disc Type. In Disco ($20) and Burnz ($10) this is an option.
When you do this the PC view will not show any metadata or dot files.
Inexplicably, neither product explains why you'd want to do this. I guess they assume everyone understands that "PC Joliet" means no funky OS X metadata dot files.
Right.
Disco, by the way, has a problem in 10.4.11. When you insert a CD the finder blocks Disco's burn. No dialog is displayed, but nothing happens. I have to close all Finder windows to get it to work. I think there must be better options, I'm looking around.
Oh, and this is still a problem with thumb drives, at least in 10.4.
Update 6/9/08: I was really annoyed with Disco.app -- at one point it wouldn't burn no matter what windows I closed. Burnz didn't give me a simple enough control over what format I burned. Now I'm trying the free OSS app Burn.
The new world of Firefox bookmarks
This morning I watched a brief screencast on FF3, with a focus on Advanced bookmarking and tagging.
It's a terrific screencast.
The FF 3 bookmark and security features are even better than I'd realized -- and I've been running FF3 on my macs for weeks.
This is one heck of a browser launch. We're spoiled on the OS X platform now, with both Firefox 3 (blessed by Google) and Safari 3 (blessed by Apple) as excellent choices. The primary drawbacks of FF 3 for OS X are the lack of Cocoa integration (no services, no dictionary lookups) and the lack of AppleScript support (even less, currently, than FF 2). (I use Camino on my aging 10.3.9 iBook and I very much love its Cocoa integration. I'd really like to see a future version of FF 3 and Camino merging, perhaps adapting the tab management features of OmniWeb.)
Firefox 3 beats Safari by a country mile though when it comes to bookmark management. No more of that silly filing and organizing -- unless you REALLY want to do it.
One click to add any site to the unsorted collection. A second click (or a double click) to change the default name and add tagging. Tag model is similar to bloggers, easy to type or select from an on-the-fly dictionary (flat ontology). It's easy to see how well with will work with bookmark synchronzation and integration with web bookmark services. The search model is seamlessly integrated into the url field.
This is the way I've been managing my Outlook email for about two years now -- tagging, renaming subject lines, minimal filing for special projects, full text search.
Brilliant design.
Update 6/8: More great FF 3 features.
It's a terrific screencast.
The FF 3 bookmark and security features are even better than I'd realized -- and I've been running FF3 on my macs for weeks.
This is one heck of a browser launch. We're spoiled on the OS X platform now, with both Firefox 3 (blessed by Google) and Safari 3 (blessed by Apple) as excellent choices. The primary drawbacks of FF 3 for OS X are the lack of Cocoa integration (no services, no dictionary lookups) and the lack of AppleScript support (even less, currently, than FF 2). (I use Camino on my aging 10.3.9 iBook and I very much love its Cocoa integration. I'd really like to see a future version of FF 3 and Camino merging, perhaps adapting the tab management features of OmniWeb.)
Firefox 3 beats Safari by a country mile though when it comes to bookmark management. No more of that silly filing and organizing -- unless you REALLY want to do it.
One click to add any site to the unsorted collection. A second click (or a double click) to change the default name and add tagging. Tag model is similar to bloggers, easy to type or select from an on-the-fly dictionary (flat ontology). It's easy to see how well with will work with bookmark synchronzation and integration with web bookmark services. The search model is seamlessly integrated into the url field.
This is the way I've been managing my Outlook email for about two years now -- tagging, renaming subject lines, minimal filing for special projects, full text search.
Brilliant design.
Update 6/8: More great FF 3 features.
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