Archive for category Apple
Apple continues its march toward violating anti-trust laws
Apple has a Monopoly on the digital media player market. I’ll give them that. But as I continue to watch the scene unfold, I’ve begun to believe more and more that Apple has gotten just a little “too big for their britches.” The attitude coming from the relatively small computer hardware and software manufacturer continues to show that Apple is more concerned with hanging on to it’s bottom-line, driving competitors out of the market, and keeping all the toys to themselves. And what company wouldn’t?
Recent articles by AppleInsider and cnet made note of a “warning” issued by Apple this past week in regard to its popular iTunes music software. Recently Palm Inc. released it’s new Pre smartphone as a direct competitor to other smartphones like Google Android-based phones and Apple’s iPhone lineup. Included in the Pre’s software is the ability to synchronize music directly with the iTunes software; however, Apple made a statement implying that it may update the iTunes software in such a way that it would prevent devices such as the Palm Pre from being recognized or syncing properly. Clearly this shows an unwillingness to play by any set of rules but its own.
Since the Microsoft vs. Apple debate always seems to rage across the web, I’ll continue the tradition by contrasting Apple’s market moves with Microsoft’s. The Redmond-based company almost always exposes APIs in its products that allow 3rd party developers to write new software that integrates closely with Windows and other Microsoft products. So if Palm had wanted to make the Pre device able to sync with Windows Media Player, they would have simply needed to tap into the proper programming APIs and things would work as expected, guaranteed. In recent years, Microsoft has, in fact, gone out of its way to ensure that portions of their systems work and play well with others. Definitely not so with Apple and yet another reason to refuse to bow to Apple’s demands.
Almost 10 years after the introduction of the first iPod and we start to see a role-reversal. Apple is the dark side, and someone needs to step in to stop them. Greed never gets you anywhere…
There’s a reason Apple has taken more than 7 years to barely reach even 10% of the U.S. computer market, much less the world. If Macs were really so great, do you think 89% of the world would still be using Microsoft products?
Font smoothing in Windows (and why Mac users don’t like it)
Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a twit remarking that font smoothing in Windows 7 was not done properly and how Microsoft still hadn’t gotten it right. I hadn’t noticed any obvious issues of this nature in my usage and testing on Windows 7, so I was instantly curious to know why he thought as he did and if Microsoft, after all these years, still hadn’t mastered something as simple as font smoothing. So I set out to do the research.
Joel on Software has a great article thoroughly explaining the reasons behind the differences, but for those who want the digest version, I’ll give it to you here.
Apple and Microsoft use the same process for rendering fonts, a technology called “sub-pixel rendering.” The reason the two operating systems render text differently (specifically in web pages) is due to the algorithm behind the font rendering engine. Each character within a font is set to take up a certain amount of space measured in pixels–thus an “A” takes up more horizontal space than, say, an “I.” In addition to that, each typeface has it’s own style of letterform–that is each letter is designed to look a specific way and may, in some cases, slightly exceed the given letter-space when font smoothing is applied.
Apple, the company with a philosophy that the artistic and stylistic aspects of just about anything trumps everything else, wrote their font smoothing algorithm to allow type to exceed it’s allocated space, giving fonts more character at smaller sizes. This makes for a smoother looking font, but also is sometimes blurry and can be hard on the eyes. Microsoft on the other hand took a more practical approach and decided that each character must fit exactly within the available space and therefore “chisels” the characters to fit within that space. This creates a less-smoothed font, but makes things far easier to read on-screen. In fact, you can see this difference directly on a Windows machine by putting a Safari for Windows window and an Internet Explorer or Firefox window side-by-side. You’ll see what I mean.
So the question is now: Which company is correct?
The short answer is both. Apple’s OS will provide a more unified look between computer screen and printed output. This is yet another reason (whether they realize it or not) why designers often prefer OS X over Windows. Microsoft gives users a more readable on-screen experience at the expense of some character style (although at large font sizes, these differences become less noticeable.
All-in-all it’s pretty much just a matter of personal preference. Neither way is necessarily wrong–it’s all about what you like.
Apple re-invents the wheel, replaces keyboards
What will they think of next?? Have a look…
Macworld keynote = *shrug* (mostly)
It’s no secret that today’s keynote address by Apple’s Phil Schiller would be lower in excitement than previous years in which Steve Jobs took the spotlight, but that didn’t stop Apple fans around the globe from speculating on what new products and announcements might be unveiled once the presentation was over at 10:30am PT. For the most part, I think Schiller did a great job presenting his agenda and filling in for Jobs, whose health has been questionable as of late. Here are the highlights of today’s keynote (in descending order):
- iTunes goes (almost) DRM free
- New 17″ MacBook Pro
- iLife ‘09 announced
- iWork ‘09 announced
The most important announcement was definitely about iTunes and how Apple is making everything DRM free by the end of Q1 2009. I have been annoyed for a long time at Apple for not trying harder to get rid of DRM from all iTunes tracks. Sure, iTunes Plus has been around for awhile, but it included only a limited number of songs and they generally cost more than the $0.99 fee for their DRM-enabled counterparts. The new pricing structure (featuring songs at $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29) is also more lucrative. This move will probably bring back some customers who had gone looking elsewhere (like Amazon’s MP3 store) for their music, especially those who use Macs or really like iTunes. I, for one, hate the actual iTunes software product and refuse to use it except when absolutely necessary (which is about 0.01% of the time). It’s clunky interface really just needs a complete refresh and the Windows version needs to feel more like a Windows app. But I’ll save those comments for another day. I could see myself buying songs via the iTunes store (when they’re cheaper) and then converting them to MP3 so I can move them around to other places.
The latest MacBook Pro also deserves a mention. If you want the relative power and big-screen of a desktop but really need the portability options, then the 17″ MBP might be a good buy. Unfortunately, its caveats outweigh most of the benefits. First, you can’t replace the battery or swap it out with a second battery. I guess since they didn’t make this thing to be carried around everywhere, this might not be too bad, but for designers who want to hit the road, this could be a disaster. Sure, it has greater lifetime longevity and a supposedly more run-time (up to 7 hours?), but I think most users would gladly trade this for a removable battery. Plus, once the battery does die, you’ll most likely need to send your machine back to Apple for a costly replacement. Cheers! (Did they not learn their lesson with the iPod fiasco??) Second, Apple still isn’t allowing a matte screen and I really just don’t understand that. Glossy looks nice if you’re a casual user sitting at home, but for anyone who does serious work, they’re going to want the no-glare matte version. Apple’s $50 anti-glare coating option will help, but not alleviate this issue. Finally, it looks like this MBP does not have user-upgradable RAM or Hard Drive options. The 320GB (5400RPMs still…why won’t they go to 7200RPM!?!) drive will be fine for now, but many users would probably want higher capacity (if not higher speed) drives not too far down the road. Also with the growing demand for more and more RAM, upgrading that will be important. I give this machine a rating of 6/10 tops.
iLife ‘09 adds some pretty cool features. Faces and Places are two new and quite useful additions to iPhoto. Just tag a photo with a place and it’ll give you a map of that area. Also, with new facial recognition software, iPhoto can catalog people’s faces so you can search through an album by just typing in someones name. Search by as many people as you want to pull up only those pictures containing the specified individuals. This is pretty cool. GarageBand adds some new lessons/tutorials, but not much else. iWeb and iDVD were not represented at all during the keynote, so any new features won’t be seen till consumers get their hands on the actual software. iMovie 8 received many updates as well in attempt to quell the backlash from version 7–which was pretty much a step backward from version 6. I think Apple may have succeeded here.
Finally, we take a look at iWork ‘09 (all yawn). Basically they implemented better functions, charts, etc into Numbers, added some nice new transitions and effects into Keynote, and added full-screen editing and new dynamic outlines to Pages. Among all of the iWork apps, you get some new collaboration features that allow users to upload documents to iWork.com for viewing and sharing. This really isn’t anything new since Google Docs pretty much started this and Microsoft Office Online began offering this type of feature just a year or two after Google. It’s really nothing new or exciting. Probably the biggest announcement about iWork ‘09 is the new app for iPhone/iTouch. It allows the device to act as a wireless presenter, displaying either the presentation outline or the individual slides based on the device’s orientation. Very useful. Overall though, Apple is still playing catch-up with Microsoft Office, and while a few loyal Mac die-hards are using iWork, anyone trying to get real work done will just buy Office–the de-facto standard. Most of the big Apple players attend the Macworld keynote each year, and when they all but groan at the announcement, you know it really isn’t even worth mentioning. Those who believe Apple is the next great religion, on the other hand, will scoff at my words. Their loss.
Well, that pretty much sums up the Apple keynote at Macworld ‘09. Ultimately, I think Phil is a great speaker and should probably get more time in the spotlight, especially since Jobs won’t be around forever. I’m waiting to see what other goodies Apple will announce later this year, but for now, my sights are set on CES ‘09 starting Friday, where Steve Ballmer will concentrate much of the presentation on Windows 7. That’ll be an exciting event!
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: It appears on Apple’s website that the MacBook Pros (both 15″ and 17″ versions) now have optional 7200RPM drives available for an extra fee.
Zune glitch indicative of gaining popularity
Posted by Matt in Apple, Digital Media, Microsoft on January 1st, 2009
The recent Microsoft Zune glitch causing many 30GB models to lock up and require a complete erase/reset of the device may be more significant than many would initially believe. Microsoft certainly has some history of buggy software (e.g. the initial release of Windows Vista), and has had a rough year during 2008, but I suspect things may end up differently in 2009.
If, Microsoft truly “missed the boat” in the digital music market, as one analyst remarked, then why are there 20,000+ comments on one forum complaining of locked up 30GB Zunes? If Zunes are truly inferior to iPods or if Apple is not gradually losing market share to other media players, then why would this particular issue cause such a stir? In fact, the number of users with problems doesn’t include those with smaller flash-based Zune players, nor does the statistic indicate the number of people with 80GB (most likely one of the most popular) or 120GB models! My theory is that 2009 may be the year of the Zune. Certainly Apple won’t lose it’s footing in the digital music business overnight, but many users are expressing their disapproval of the iTunes software and the iTunes store, which attaches restrictions known as DRM to most of the available music. The software itself has shown little in the way of innovation over the past several versions. In fact, I’m not really sure iTunes 8 can be considered a major version upgrade (i.e. I think it should have been v7.8). It adds new DRM restrictions to certain types of video and includes the “Genius,” which attempts to suggest new artists and songs based on what the user is currently listening to. Unfortunately, it’s far from smart and just picks obvious alternatives. The Zune software is far more intelligent in this regard, which just provides yet another reason to ditch iTunes and switch to something better.
In conclusion, I’m waiting to see what Microsoft does this year, especially with the possibility of a Zune-based phone and Windows Mobile 7. Combined with the promising features and power of Windows 7, it could end up being a very good year indeed!