Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Before Railing Apple or AT&T, Do You Know What Google Voice Does?

I had to laugh while browsing through comments on one of the articles on Digg about how the Google Voice App for the iPhone was rejected. While I would totally agree with the consensus that Apple is treating its developers poorly and walking on thin ice with them (I said it very nicely..), I’m thinking that the majority of them don’t understand at all what Google Voice is.

Google Voice is not a replacement for your home phone, cell phone, or any other phone you happen to have. It’s not about using your cell phone provider’s network to make phone calls so you don’t have to pay for them. It’s an enhancement to your phone – allowing you to hand out a single phone number to reach you at multiple phones. The service might be a “VoIP” service, but it’s no more of a “VoIP service” than the backend of your local phone company that reaches your home either digitally or via analog signal. Neither Apple nor AT&T have nothing to lose should Google Voice take off as it’s merely a filter in front of your devices.

That being said, Apple needs to stop denying apps to its store without explaining why. It’s getting out of hand. In Apple’s defense, there’s definitely some overlap with contact management, the ability to make phone calls, voicemail, and text message management. However, the Google Voice app rejection is just yet another sign in a broken system.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Aug 4th, 2009

Five Reasons I Would Switch (Exclusively) to Linux

Yesterday I took a look at some of the applications that I’d miss if I decided to switch away from Mac OS X to using Linux exclusively. I felt that wasn’t quite fair as there are some really compelling reasons to switch to Linux and I really didn’t give it much chance (publicly that is). Here’s five reasons I do want to make the switch.

Aptitude
Good package management is absolutely critical on any OS that one is going to be developing or serving data off of. Sure, you can download and install packages as needed, but if those packages aren’t bundled up nicely (as often happens with open source software ported to OS X or Windows), installing those packages become a pain. Need to install an application with its dependencies? No problem! Just do an apt-get install (or use yum or yast, etc. pick your poison). Sure, there’s projects like Macports, but let’s face it, you can’t beat a good native package manager.

Usable OpenOffice.org
Yes, I know that OpenOffice.org runs on Mac OS X. However, every time I’ve seen it run on OS X it’s much slower than running it in Linux on slower hardware. Even using the NeoOffice product, it seems like it just isn’t as responsive or load nearly as fast as running OOo on Linux.

Gnome / KDE (i.e. choice)
One could argue that the Linux desktop managers offer too many options, but being able to theme (nicely, not like those lame underwater themes everyone ran on Windows 98) and tweak everything is definitely a bonus. One Linux box can look exactly the same or dramatically different than the next. The important thing is, it’s all up to the user. OS X looks beautiful, but freedom is worth something as well.

Hardware Freedom
I don’t violate the EULA by installing Linux on standard PC hardware. That’s a pretty compelling argument for Linux right there. I will agree that the Mac hardware is pretty dang slick and nice, but having the freedom to run my OS on the machine of my choice is a very important deciding factor in choosing which OS I will use. I also only have to mention virtualization and Apple loses out big-time there as it won’t allow OS X to be licensed to run in a virtualized environment (except for the server).

Native X11
I know that you can run X11-based applications on OS X, but what a pain in the butt. They’re slow to start, the keyboard options change and the window management is terrible. Seriously, run GIMP on a Mac and then use it on Linux. You won’t go back.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 31st, 2009

Five Apps That Are Keeping Me On OS X

I’ve been a Linux and OS X user for some time. Recently I’ve considered switching exclusively to Linux (Ubuntu specifically), but there’s a few applications that I need that are going to prevent me from doing so. If you’re a Mac user, be sure to check these applications out if you haven’t used them before as I find them invaluable.

Spotlight
Yes, I know that there are other multi-purpose search tools for Linux that have much more functionality, but none seem to be as fast or slick. Spotlight also integrates into other applications on my machine making it easy to search for applications, text in a document, text in an email, or even my web history very quickly and from one place.

Evernote
You can access Evernote in the browser, but it’s just not the same. The client in OS X does a great job of integrating with the iSight and
no matter how good the web app has gotten, it still can’t beat the thick client for speed and usability. The thick client also integrates with Spotlight (see above :) ) which adds an even better experience with both applications.

1Password
I’d hate to see what would happen if I tried to survive without 1Password. Just having my saved logins accessible to multiple browsers is enough to make it worth buying this little app. If you’re using an iPhone or iPod Touch the deal gets even sweeter with syncing to your device as well, but I don’t have that luxury.

iChat
On the surface it’s just a Jabber client, but iChat goes beyond that to offer a slick screen and file sharing capability that is second to none. Sure, there’s other products out there that work ok, but none seem to be nearly as easy or convenient.

iPhoto
When it comes to photo management for consumers, iPhoto can’t be beaten. The application looks great and has the features you’d expect from any photo management software. It can manage events, albums, etc.. However, the integration with other applications in the iLife suite as well as a few new features in iPhoto make it unbeatable. With iPhoto 09, Apple introduced its face recognition technology to allow you to search through photos for pictures of an individual person. It also allows direct uploads to Facebook and Flickr, making it much easier to publish photos online for free.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 30th, 2009

Have We Forgiven Microsoft for Vista or Changed Our Minds About Apple?

Have we forgotten about the Windows Vista release, or are we ready to give Microsoft another chance? Just a few short years ago, around this time, we were getting ready for the release of Windows Vista. Microsoft was hyping its new security model and consumers were busy complaining about changes they had made and how slow Windows had gotten. Meanwhile, Apple was busy with an advertising campaign slamming PCs for being virus ridden and not being “cool” among a few other things.

During the year that followed, Microsoft released Windows Vista. No matter the cause, it was a trainwreck of a release. It was too slow for consumers’ PCs, it had different locations for the same old buttons (not a bad thing, in my opinion, but people complained long and hard), and it wasn’t compatible with software that consumers were running.


Native Zimbra Syncing to OS X Snow Leopard, But Not The Way We All Thought

One of the biggest features that Apple is touting of the new version of OS X is native Exchange integration. Native Exchange integration is a great feature for Apple since not even Windows offers it. Being a Zimbra fan, I was hoping that Snow Leopard had implemented this via ActiveSync rather than Exchange’s Web Services. It turns out that this is not the case, but it looks like we may still get native syncing just not the way we all thought.

According to a Zimbra forum thread, this will likely happen via CardDAV and CalDAV. Zimbra has CardDAV support slated for version 6.01 which is supposedly scheduled around the same time as Snow Leopard. One of the new, not-so-hyped features of Snow Leopard is the use of CardDAV for Address Book Server along with (of course) support for CardDAV on the client side. OS X as well as Zimbra have supported CalDav for some time so calendar syncing. While it’s not quite as simple as we would have liked, it appears we’re still getting the native syncing that we were hoping for, just not the way that seemed obvious from the beginning.

Update: As @thebitnix points out, it’s not a bad thing that native sync with Zimbra isn’t happening via the Exchange protocols. It was just unexpected that it would happen via different methods.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Jun 19th, 2009

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