Apple released what is likely the last notable update to Snow Leopard yesterday. If you are wanting to upgrade to Lion next month this update is definitely for you, as it contains changes to the Mac App Store to prepare your Mac for the upgrade to Lion.
Yesterday Apple announced a lot of new things at WWDC. Frankly, it has been a lot to process and figure out what the highlights worthy of discussion are. So I thought I'd share some (hopefully) brief thoughts on OS X Lion, iOS 5, & iCloud.
Apple showed off a lot of the same things it did during the first preview months ago and also on its website since. Chief among those are things like Multi-Touch Gestures, Full-Screen Apps, Mission Control, Launchpad, Auto-Save and Versions.
The Lion part of the keynote was really just a recap to show off some polish, and give details on its release. I was very happy to see the price tag of $29.99, and that it will be distributed via the Mac App Store in July. I honestly was a little surprised to see Apple killing off the optical disc this aggressively. I knew it would happen sooner rather than later, but I expected it for the next iteration of OS X.
My only curiosity with the whole thing revolves around whether or not we'll be able to make some sort of bootable recovery, whether on disc or USB drive. I mean, what if your hard drive goes kaput? We'll find out in July.
I do highly recommend you peruse Apple's extensive information about OS X.
There were two things I have been wanting built into iOS recently, and those have been a better notification system and a ToDo List that would sync over the air with my Mac and iPad. I had bought a few apps to accomplish the latter, but none work as seamlessly as I expect out of my Apple devices.
Thankfully both of those items and more came to fruition.
Notifications have, honestly, taken a cue from Android. They pop in briefly from the top while you are doing something and quietly disappear for later inspection within the Notification Center, which can be accessed by dragging a finger down from the top of the screen. Here, notifications can be acted upon, left alone, or dismissed. Another nice touch regarding notifications is how they stack on the lock screen, and can be acted upon straight from there by sliding your finger across a particular notification, which unlocks the device and pops you into that app.
Reminders is your regular old task list, with a twist. It has the ability to use geolocation as a way to alert you to a task, when you either arrive somewhere, or leave. For instance, you could set a reminder pick up dinner when you leave your office. As you are walking to your car, your iPhone alerts you. It looks like everything I could want and more.
The improvements to the Camera app have me fairly excited. There will be a software button you can tap from the lock screen to jump immediately into the camera. From there, you can now pinch to zoom, tap & hold to lock auto-exposure and auto-focus, and even use the volume up button as a shutter release.
After you take a shot, you can also do basic editing, such as rotation, cropping, red-eye correction, and an automatic touch-up process.
iMessage is a new, free service, that allows you to send text, pictures, video, contacts, location data, etc to another iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It will be the default system in the Messages app, with SMS/MMS being a fallback if the recipient isn't an iOS user. This is definitely huge and I am sure the carriers aren't happy about Apple sucking away their precious overpriced texting plans.
By far the biggest announcement for iOS is tethering via USB will no longer be needed to sync and make backups. Heck, iTunes isn't even needed to set up your iDevice out of the box anymore. Just take it out, run through a set-up dialog, and you're on your way. This will be great for upgrading to a new device, and even more so, those buying an iPad as their only device.
Another perk is iOS updates will now occur over the air, and as delta updates. Delta updates are just the changes. Up until now, iOS updates have been the entire OS, which is kicking around 600+ MB these days.
iOS 5 is set for release this fall (I'd guess September). Check out the new features and a video.
iCloud is a new service from Apple that moves the focus of syncing off of iTunes and onto a server. Jobs said, "The cloud is the truth", meaning that all your devices — Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, & iPad — will be communicating with iCloud as their main source of information.
iCloud will store email, contacts, calendars, iTunes, App Store, & iBookstores purchases, documents, photos, and backups. The idea is that you make a change on one device, and it uploads to iCloud, and then is pushed to the other devices.
For example, take a picture on your iPhone, and it is on your iPad and within iPhoto on your Mac in mere moments.
iCloud looks to be a big deal, and it will be available this fall alongside iOS 5, free for everyone.
I was very glad to see iCloud is free, and MobileMe accounts are being rolled into it.
Like I said, it's a lot of information to absorb. The implications of iCloud are staggering, something I'll expound on in a later post. I am excited to get Lion in a month's time, and find myself impatient, as always, for the next version of iOS.
From Apple PR this morning:
Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.
It don't see how Apple could spell it out any more, but this year WWDC is all about software. Any next-gen iPhone hopefuls will have to wait until September, likely.
I'm glad to see Mr. Jobs will be on stage again. This medical leave has been very different than his previous ones. He is still very much involved during his absence.
Lastly, the iCloud rumor seems true. I can't remember the last time (if ever?) Apple pre-announced a product via press release. Needless to say, I have a feeling it will be big.
And who knows, maybe there will be "One More Thing".
In hardware and software, fragmentation is inevitable. Eventually newer software will demand too much of older hardware, and the older hardware will need to enter the realm of being unsupported. Sure, this can be caused artificially by the software or hardware maker not wanting to put forth the effort to support the past. The decision can also be made for the sake of not impacting the experience of a device. No one wants to run software that performs poorly because the hardware can't keep up.
Normally this retirement process takes years. But as technology moves forward at an ever increasing pace, the span between hardware debut and retirement is closing faster than ever. Sometimes it is done out of necessity, and other times artificially.
Let's take the Mac. Apple tends to support hardware with software on the Mac for about five years. This day and age, that is plenty reasonable in my book. Apple's approach is to support the hardware until it becomes a technological burden to the advancement of the software. The chief exhibit is the current version of Mac OS X — Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard cut off support for the old PowerPC architecture. Folks with PowerPC Macs are cut off using Leopard until they buy a modern Mac.
Why did Apple need to do this? Because supporting older hardware was eating up too many development resources for newer software. Eventually you have to stop supporting things you no longer make. When Apple cut off PowerPC support, Mac OS X went from an installed hard drive footprint of around 13 GBs to 6 or 7 GBs. The result was a faster, leaner operating system.
In the upcoming Mac OS X revision — Lion — Apple will be dropping support for 32-bit Intel processors, which were the first Intel Macs. Again, these Macs are 5 years old. And the reason this time is to cut out supporting 32-bit and 64-bit processors, especially at the kernel level. The goal is to be faster and leaner.
Now, let's look at iOS. This is a whole different ballgame, as mobile development is moving so much faster than desktop and notebook development. There have been 4 iPhone and iPod touch generations. The current generation of these devices are leaps and bounds faster and more efficient than the first generation models. Yet Apple supported first-generation devices through the third OS revision. With iOS 4, Apple finally pulled the plug on those first-generation devices, because the software had truly outstripped the hardware.
Here is where Apple made a bit of a mis-step though. They were still selling the second-generation devices as discount, entry-level prices just before iOS 4 shipped. So they felt obligated to support them. And that didn't work out so well because the second-generation of handheld iOS devices shared much of the same hardware as the first-generation. This caused these devices to perform poorly, and Apple scurried to optimize iOS 4 for performance on these older devices in 4.1 and 4.2. But it really wasn't enough. So with iOS 4.3, Apple pulled the plug on support for second-generation hardware, which I am sure they didn't want to do until iOS 5.
What I've described above for iOS is only one side of the coin. Those were necessary hardware retirements. That isn't to say that Apple hasn't artificially retired features improvements along the way. For instance, iOS 4 brought along Game Center integration. This was included in the second-generation iPod touch, but not the second-generation iPhone. I can't imagine that was truly a hardware limitation. Or how about this: iOS 4.3 brought Personal Hotspot to the iPhone 4's tethering ability, but not to the iPhone 3GS, despite the fact that jailbreakers can do Personal Hotspot on the iPhone 3GS. Are artificial limitations a jerk move? Yeah, they are. And everyone can be a jerk at times.
Finally, let's look at Android. Android has been the prime target of the fragmentation blame game. And it often seems like it has been earned. But who is really to blame? Google? Or the carriers? I say a little of both. Vlad Savov wrote on Engadget over the weekend:
Where the trouble arises is in the fact that not all Androids are born equal. The quality of user experience on Android fluctuates wildly from device to device, sometimes even within a single phone manufacturer's product portfolio, resulting in a frustratingly inconsistent landscape for the willing consumer. […]
The point is not that carrier or manufacturer customizations should be abandoned entirely (we know how much those guys hate standardization), it's that some of them are so poor that they actually detract from the Android experience. Going forward, it's entirely in Google's best interest to nix the pernicious effects of these contaminant devices and software builds. The average smartphone buyer is, ironically enough, quickly becoming a less savvy and geeky individual and he (or she) is not going to tolerate an inconsistent delivery on the promise contained in the word "Android."
And this is exactly how things are in the Android world. There isn't a uniform experience standard. Perhaps this is why, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, Google has started handpicking partners to showcase Android, and delaying the source code to everyone else:
Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Google has been demanding that Android licensees abide by "non-fragmentation clauses" that give Google the final say on how they can tweak the Android code—to make new interfaces and add services—and in some cases whom they can partner with. […]
Google has also started delaying the release of Android code to the public, putting smaller device makers and developers at a disadvantage. On Mar. 24, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Google won't widely release Honeycomb's source code for the foreseeable future.
The company's moves are hardly unprecedented in such a fast-moving industry. Google owes it to its partners and consumers to prevent Android from running amok.
Android has been running amok. It is saddening when I hear some friends — who are normal, non-geeky people — lament about how the phone they bought three months ago isn't getting the new features of so-and-so's phone from last week.
As I stated at the beginning, every platform will experience fragmentation. Apple does a pretty good job at mitigating that effect because they control the platform from top to bottom. Google let the main Android experience get out of hand because they have been controlling very little in the grand scheme of things. Why have they been controlling so little? Marco Arment writes:
Nobody “opens” the parts of their business that make them money, maintain barriers to competitive entry, or otherwise provides significant competitive advantages. That’s why Android’s basic infrastructure is “open”, but all of Google’s important applications and services for it aren’t — Google doesn’t care about the platform and doesn’t want it to matter. Google’s effectively asserting that the basic parts of a modern OS — the parts that are open in Android — are all good enough, relatively similar, and no longer competitively meaningful. Nobody’s going to steal marketshare from Google by making a better kernel or windowing API on their competing smartphone platform, regardless of whether they borrowed any of Android’s “open” components or ideas derived from them. But Google’s applications and services are locked down, because those are vulnerable to competition, do provide competitive advantages, and are nowhere near being commoditized.
Unfortunately, Google spent the last few years letting Android's core experience go unchecked, allowing the carriers to decide whether or not to use Google's applications and services, and whether a certain phone gets an update or not. Google hasn't been giving Android a chief place in their bottom line, they've let carriers use Android to pump up their bottom line, and have been sticking it to customers.
It all comes down to this: let the end-user be your customer, and use the carrier as the channel; or let the carrier be your customer, and the end-user is the channel.
Sometimes when you need to fire off a quick e-mail reply to someone you hit the Reply button… quickly. As you compose your brilliant reply you realize that what you really wanted to do was “Reply To All”. Instead of forcing you to close your composition window and start over, Mail.app features a handy “Reply To All” button right in your message composition window toolbar. Simply click to add the recipients and carry on with your brilliance.
I simply cannot believe I have been using Mail.app for the better part of a decade and never knew about this. Even if it is a new feature in Snow Leopard, shame on me for not seeing this for the past couple years.
I will be using this for nearly every "reply all" situation, as I've always ended up sending a message off to just the sender before today.
Patrick Rhone adds:
Also, it’s a toggle button. If you hit reply-all, then the button will switch it to reply and vice-versa. Also, the keyboard command equivalents work here as well.
[hat tip: Minimal Mac]
It's starting to feel like Iconfactory central around here, but the company has been on a roll these first few months of 2011. They've released a major overhaul of Twitterrific for Mac, a new photo app called Flare, the unveiling of their game-changing development kit called The Chameleon Project, and now one of their iOS originals has come to the Mac.
Take Five for Mac is a simple utility that pauses your music for 5 minutes (or whatever you set in preferences), then gracefully fades it back in when time is up.
You may be asking why anyone would need something like this. The answer is simple: we all have distractions. I can be on a roll working on something while listening to music or a podcast when my phone will ring, or my wife or son needs my attention for a moment. So I pause iTunes and deal with the issue at hand. And then, more often than not, I listen to absolutely nothing for the next 45 minutes (and often with my headphones attached to my ears). Take Five solves this.
I've been beta testing the Mac version for the past couple weeks and it works really well. I never did buy the iOS app because I didn't want to switch apps just to pause what I am listening to, especially since I often pause with the in-line remote on Apple's headphones.
The Mac app makes perfect sense, though, as it works as advertised while staying out of the way. An added bonus is that is pops up slightly with track info when tracks advance.
Take Five for Mac is available in the Mac App Store for $3.99. However, it is half off for a launch special of $1.99 for a short time.
If you listen to stuff via iTunes while sitting at your desk, you need this app.
Sometimes it's nice to see a hunch confirmed. Back in February, I defended Twitterrific for Mac against fellow writer Ben Brooks (whom I greatly respect and josh around with on Twitter). In that post, I wrote:
Side story: Popovers are an iPad UI element. They aren't native to Mac OS X (at least, not yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they are in Lion). If you rip open Twitterrific's app bundle (right click, Show Package Contents) and scope out their frameworks, you'll see UIKit. UIKit is an iOS framework. To me, that says Iconfactory rewrote Apple's UIKit framework for use on the Mac. That's pretty much amazing (and a lot of work).
In contrast, when you click an image link in Twitter for Mac, it appears a type of popover opens. You can dismiss this with Command-W. That tells me that Twitter for Mac is actually opening a standard window with a custom UI.
Iconfactory did the work to bring iOS popovers to OS X.
Well, that has been confirmed today, as the Iconfactory has revealed and open-sourced their implementation of UIKit, called Chameleon. Chameleon will allow iOS developers to reuse a great deal of their codebase if they are looking to port an app for the Mac App Store. The huge advantage of this, and one Iconfactory states they are doing themselves, is that major feature releases can be shipped simultaneously for both iOS and Mac.
This is a nice perk for consumers, and should make developers drool.
Fellow midwesterner and friend Sean Heber is the lead developer on the project, and I think he's pretty much a genius. Go give him a pat on the back.
Apple seeded developers with a preview of the next iteration of Mac OS X, dubbed Lion. They also put up a nice site for the rest of us to start drooling over.
Some of this we saw at Apple's media preview in October, and some of it is new. For instance, Launchpad, Mission Control, and full screen apps are things we knew about. Heck, the Mac App Store is listed as a feature, which is something we have now on Snow Leopard.
But the new stuff looks equally great.
Lion is bringing a system-wide ability to end manually saving a file. This is just one of those quality of life features. Here's how Apple describes it:
Say good-bye to manual saving. Auto Save in Mac OS X Lion automatically saves your work — while you work — so you don’t have to. Lion saves changes in the working document instead of creating additional copies, making the best use of available disk space. The lock feature prevents inadvertent changes from being saved and automatically locks documents after two weeks. And the revert feature returns you to the state the document was in when you last opened it, so you can feel free to experiment with confidence.
Tying into Auto Save is Versions, which records the evolution of document as you create it. It's kind of like Time Machine for an individual document. I like the idea of reverting to a previous state, but more so, being able to copy and paste from a past version. This would have been amazing to have in college for research papers.
You know when you install an update that requires a reboot, and you have to stop everything you are working on, save, quit apps, reboot, then reopen all those apps and documents back up? Yeah? Annoying, isn't it? Lion's Resume feature lets you restart your Mac to the state it was when you turned it off, with all your apps exactly where you left them.
In an even finer grain detail, Resume works for just closing an relaunching an app. Close Safari, reopen it, and it starts on the page you were on when you closed it, not back at Top Sites or your homepage. (I also noticed from the photos, the "active app" lights on the Dock are gone. It doesn't look like quitting an app will be a thing in Lion).
Can we say "hallelujah"? Mail is getting a major overhaul, losing a lot of visual bloat, and becoming a lot like the iPad Mail app. Looks absolutely stunning, especially in full screen mode.
I'm also digging the conversation view.
AirDrop lets you send files to anyone with Lion on your network. Click an AirDrop button in Finder, your Mac shows you who is around, then you drag a file onto their name. They are notified, and when they accept, the file zips to their computer wirelessly.
Typically, Mac OS X comes as either a client version (what most of us use) or a Server version. In Lion, Server is included, so anyone can set up a Mac as a server without anything extra.
I love gestures in Snow Leopard. The multitouch trackpad in my MacBook Pro is amazing. So amazing, that I immediately purchased the Magic Trackpad when it was released. Lion is what the Magic Trackpad was made for. Gestures are a huge focal point of Lion.
I am loving the idea of being able to tap or pinch to zoom content in my browser. Swiping between Spaces looks fantastic, and the animation of swiping back and forth between pages in Safari looks stellar. See for yourself. If you use a Magic Mouse now, I highly recommend moving to a Magic Trackpad for Lion.
All in all, Lion is shaping up to be amazing. I can hardly wait until summer.
FaceTime for Mac is out of beta as of today. Honestly, I didn't think it would leave beta until Mac OS X Lion's release this summer. The big new feature is HD video calling if you have a FaceTime HD camera (currently exclusive to the MacBook Pro line that was refreshed today).
FaceTime for Mac comes with the new MacBook Pro, or is available for 99¢ on the Mac App Store for the rest of us.
Some folks I've spoken with that had the beta installed say they are sticking with that. Your mileage may vary. Me? It's a buck, and I use it quite a bit.
It's no secret that I am a huge fan of the Iconfactory's wonderful twitter client Twitterrific. Back in October I wrote about an upcoming revamp of the Mac version of Twitterrific.
Today, the eagle has landed.
Apple's motto for the upcoming Mac OS X Lion is "Back to the Mac." Twitterrific 4 for Mac is exactly that. It is the iOS app brought "Back to the Mac." From popovers to fade-away scroll bars, Twitterrific 4 for Mac is a foreshadowing of Lion on Snow Leopard.
I've been beta testing Twitterrific 4 for the past month or so, and I wouldn't even think of using another Twitter app on my Mac. Where the new Twitter for Mac feels completely foreign on the Mac (in my opinion, it feels too much like an iOS app), Twitterrific is the perfect blend of the Mac and iOS worlds. It has many visual elements from the iOS version, but feels like it belongs on the Mac and operates accordingly.
My favorite thing about Twitterrific, for both the Mac and iOS, is that it covers the essentials of tweeting. The app is well-designed, and isn't bogged down by feature creep. Too often twitter clients throw in everything but the kitchen sink (and sometime even that). Not Twitterrific. It serves two main purposes: reading and writing tweets. You know, the good stuff.
Without further ado, I'd like to overview some of the features. Twitterrific has the ability to open multiple timelines, a collapsible sidebar that shows searches, lists, & trends. The sidebar also lets you switch between a the unified timeline, or filter between Mentions, Direct Messages, and Favorites. There are dark and light themes. Lastly, just to show them off, the tweet composer, and the info and photo viewer popovers.
There's even a fantastic little video walkthrough.
If you aren't convinced, give Twitterrific for Mac a try for free (ad-supported) from the Iconfactory directly. There is also paid version which is ad-free and supports multiple accounts for $9.99 either directly or on the Mac App Store.
I'd like to give a huge congratulations to Ged, Craig, Sean, David, and the rest of the Iconfactory team for bringing Ollie back to the Mac.
