On Your Desk
In Part 1 of this post, I highlighted some of the news coming from Apple which I feel hold clues to the company's next moves. While CEO Steve Jobs and his cohorts always have plenty of surprises up their sleeves - fans and critics alike still relish in making (often wild) predictions on what their next trick will be. Continuing that time honored tradition of Apple speculation - here are my predictions on what they may have in store for us in 2011.
I invite you to share your own conclusions by submitting a comment below. Keeping in mind that everyone's speculations are as reliable as earthquake predictions - your odds of being right are as good as any. Here's a peak at the predictions I'll elaborate on after the jump...
- Steve Jobs will do some big ticket shopping
- Apple TV becomes an actual Apple TV
- iPad v2.0 in your hands for iPad's 1st birthday
- iPhone (finally) comes to Verizon
- Back to the Mac with Lion
- Rest of MacBooks join their little brother in dumping their hard drives
Plus...
- What do YOU think?
At 11:34 AM EDT Saturday I received an iPad. It took awhile to get my data sync'd and even longer to download and update apps; yet the end result is pretty outstanding. Ok, yes, it's a big iPod Touch, but saying that doesn't do it justice. I believe that you have to hold it appreciate how different that it is, especially when dealing with apps that are written for the device. In fact, it is notable enough that I felt the need to write about it and finally revive Homotron.
GayGamers may want to check it out. It's my opinion that it will be an incredible platform for games. Even iPhone games seem to work fairly well. I know that many people complain about the 2x enlargement, but I find that that is only annoying on text-based apps. Graphical apps do get a little jaggy, but overall it's not too terrible, especially if you have any history playing the 8 or 16 bit games of yore.
I have spent much of the day exploring the iPad, and I have not yet encountered the problem of it not having support for Flash. I know that I will encounter it eventually, and I expect that to be a bummer when it happens. Until then, there is plenty to keep me entertained.
Like the iPhone, learning to type well is going to take some time. It's still not the same as a regular keyboard, but I know that I got much faster typing on my iPhone, so I'm expecting that I will get the feel for how to type quickly with the iPad.
The number of iPad apps is still a bit limited at the moment, but now that independent developers have the device in their hands, you can expect to see an explosion of iPad apps just like happened for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
It seems that Conficker's ultimate purpose has finally been revealed!
Drum roll please!
.
.
.
It's a spam bot!
Yes, that's right. Despite huge amounts of hysteria painting Conficker as some world destroying super spy doomsday botnet, it seems Conficker's makers are a little more practical and therefore... money driven.
According to a report by Karpersky Labs, the purpose of the mysterious download by Conficker machines on April 1 has been revealed as a directive to send out spam offering users a fake anti virus programme for $49.95.
Yep, it's peddling snake oil spam.
How anticlimactic, but money makes the world go round, neh?
Conficker Doomsday Worm Sells Out For $49.95 [Wired]
Unfortunately for those of us who've enjoyed beta testing Windows 7, Microsoft is making life difficult for beta testers to upgrade their copy of Windows 7 to the new release candidate version - and that includes a lot of folks at Microsoft itself.
Microsoft needs feedback from users upgrading from Windows Vista to Win 7, because that's what will happen when Win 7 is indeed released into the wild - it doesn't need data on thousands of beta testers upgrading, it needs data on thousands of Vista users upgrading. So it's fair for Microsoft to recommend that the new build be installed from Vista rather than a current Win 7 beta build, but where's that leave loyal beta testers, including those working on the project at Microsoft?
The Windows 7 blog addresses that question for the millions of people it says are using Win 7 beta as their full-time OS:
Again, we know many people (including tens of thousands at Microsoft) are relying on the pre-release builds of Windows 7 for mission critical and daily work, making this step less than convenient. We're working hard to provide the highest quality release we can and so we'd like to make sure for this final phase of testing we're supporting the most real world scenarios possible, which incremental build to build upgrades are not. At the same time everyone on the beta has been so great we wanted to make sure we at least offered an opportunity to make your own expert and informed choice about how to handle the upgrade.
Read the full post here to find out what hoops you'll need to jump through to upgrade your trusty Win 7 beta to the RC build.
Engineering Windows 7 [Windows 7 Blog]
If you're a Mac user looking to add 16 apps worth over $981 dollars to your Mac for the price of $39, then you're in luck! The MacHeist 3 bundle has just reached the $500K level of charity fundraising, meaning that all the apps in the bundle have been unlocked!
You many not need all the apps in the bundle (I mean, there's 3 different photo editing apps within the bundle), but just a few together already add up to a deal. For you gamers out there, there's World of Goo, Multiwinia and Cro Mag Rally, which already make the bundle a deal for $39 together. Add to that Delicious Library 2 (my favourite media library application that I should make a Homotron recommendation in the future, it's amazing) and the deal is even sweeter. Check out all the apps you get for $39:
- Delicious Library 2
- Multiwinia
- World of Goo
- Cro Mag Rally
- Espresso
- Acorn
- BoinxTV
- iSale
- Picturesque
- SousChef
- PhoneView
- LittleSnapper
- Kinemac
- WireTap Studio
- The Hit List
- Times
And the best part is that 25% of the purchase price goes to the charity of your choice from a list of 10, including the AIDS Research Alliance and the World Wildlife Fund.
If you want in on the MacHeist action, you only have 1 day left to buy the bundle!
Gadget get!
MacHeist 3 Bundle [MacHeist]
I have a confession to make.
I HATE April Fool's Day.
April Fool's Day is the bane of any tech news writer, because it's basically a useless news day. Nothing can be believed on or even around this day, so it makes finding actual news a minefield one just isn't able to cross.
For this reason, I hate the blown up jokes most people try to tell or make up.
It's only the subtle jokes on April Fool's that I like. The ones that don't really poison the well of news, but are still grin inducing nonetheless, and the folks at the iTunes store have nailed it down in the subtlety department: This week's free Discovery Download for April Fool's Day is John Cage's 4'33", a piano piece famous for it's single instruction to the pianist - don't play any notes.
Listen carefully, and you can hear traffic outside, creaking floorboards and a clock ticking somewhere in the building.
That's right, it's a piece of silence. The only sounds you hear are those of the environment and the audience.
Well played, iTunes. Well played.
iTunes Free Discovery Download
[Thanks to Adam Weiss for the heads up on Twitter!]
Before the digital rights power grab, Facebook users were up in arms about something a little less threatening but just as annoying: Facebook's recent redesign.
Facebook has been facing a torrent of negative feedback ever since the redesign, with hundreds of thousands of people giving the new look a "thumbs down" in a user poll. And according to a blog post by Facebook Product Director Christopher Cox, Facebook is taking action - not by reverting to the old design but by adding new features to address specific complaints:
- Live updating: Users will have the ability to turn on auto updating so they don't have to refresh the page to see what's new.
- Photo tags: Facebook will add photos tagged with a person's friends to her stream.
- Applications: Users will have the ability to cut down on the application-related content that's showing up in streams.
- Highlights: This section in the right-hand column will update more frequently and show more content so it'll be more like the old News Feed.
- Requests: Friend requests and event invites will be moved to the top of the right-hand column so they're more prominent.
- Friends lists: Users will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter their streams.
Facebook gave no timeframe for the changes other than to say the photo tag update would happen "in the coming weeks.
When the latest version of iTunes dropped two weeks ago, it was with a glaring omission: a promised feature, the activation of the Genius engine for videos.
That omission appears to have been rectified (hehe, rectified...I'm a child), and now iTunes will recommend movies and/or television shows that you might like based upon the makeup of your iTunes video library. It only works with videos purchased from Apple, apparently, which isn't a terrible surprise - after all, most video files lack a standardized information tag like the ID3 tags on music files.
(Except, in my experience, for French porn. Go figure.)
From the sound of it, the video Genius feature could be a great way to spend money on iTunes, which I'm sure sounds lovely to everyone. On the other hand, if you've given up or are considering giving up subscription television, this is just one more reason why tracking your shows on iTunes might be a viable alternative.
Apple activates Genius feature for iTunes videos [CNet]
Google has done the seemingly-impossible and added a recall button to Gmail, finally giving drunk emailers and those, like myself, who may occasionally engage in what I like to call "Email rage," only to have their righteous fury dissolve into horror upon clicking "Send." While the feature isn't a new idea - AOL had it over a decade ago - it's the first time I've seen the feature in a product that's actually relevant, let alone one so widely adapted as Gmail.
As you might expect, you don't have forever to decide to unsend your email - but for about five seconds after you click "Send" in Gmail, you'll have the option to "Undo Send."
And that's about right, methinks; if it takes you much longer than five seconds to regret sending an email, you're just not second-guessing yourself fast enough! Also, the lion's share of emails that one wants to unsend will be immediately recognizable mistakes like clicking "Send" too soon or sending messages to the wrong addresses.
Gmail's Undo Send lets you recall your temper tantrums, no harm done [DVICE]
Psystar's day-themed product naming system just reached Wednesday: despite its wrangling with Apple over the legality of its very existence, Psystar isn't backing down. In fact, the Open(3) Wednesday replaces the full-sized, original Open Computer with a slimline desktop chassis and, for $599, a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 500GB of hard drive space.
As usual, OS X comes preinstalled.
I'll mention two things: it's fun to see a company muss up Apple's perfectly-coiffed upperclass hairdo with good old fashioned American competition; and I love saying and typing the word 'chassis.' Feels good. Chassis.
Psystar adds new Mac OS desktop [CNet]
Today you'll find Internet Explorer 8 ready for download from Microsoft for various operating systems, replete with security improvements, private browsing, and of course better adherence to common Web standards.
The update is available for download as of a few hours ago (9am PDT) but won't be pushed to Windows Update right away, presumably to allow the launch process to proceed as smoothly as possible.
Let us know what you think of Microsoft's latest browser!
I've been participating in the GrandCentral Beta for a little while now, and I've been mostly impressed by the service. The amount of customization is spectacular, with the ability to set up various voice mail messages for different groups and people, and setting who can call what phone and when, are just a few of the options that you get to play around with in GrandCentral, and are just a few of the reasons I really like the service.
Recently, Google moved GrandCentral over to the mother ship and officially made the property they acquired a while back part of the big Google family. Now, putting aside that at this point Google really does know way too much about me, I'm mostly happy about this. The interface for the "new" Google Voice is drastically different than what GrandCentral offered, but I'm adjusting pretty well to the new Interface. I'm slightly disappointed though that my contacts list and voicemails did not make the transition from GrandCentral to Google Voice, but I suppose that's what I get for Beta testing a product like this.
One of the things I've noticed is that, unlike most Google products that reduce the amount of clicks it takes to do something, Google Voice actually increase the amount of clicks it takes to do many actions. For example, creating a group in GrandCentral involved hitting a Create button and setting everything up on the next screen, including selecting contacts to be in that group and what phones ring when those contacts call. Now I have to scroll to settings to create a group, then back to the group page to add contacts, then back to settings to select which phones get the message and click the advanced tab to do further customization. Same end result, just a bit more involved than previously.
I also enjoy that they are doing their best to pimp all their products, and it saddened me to realize how deep I am into Google's fold. Take this screen grab for example. This is their screen to demonstrate the changed Call Me Button (a widget you can add to any website that allows people to call you right from the site). If you'll notice, in one screen Google is pimping their Blogger Service, their Chrome Browser and their Google Voice service. That's pretty impressive all-in-all. The sad part? I use all of those. All I need now is a Android phone and I'll be completely entrenched in Google.
The move to Google Voice means a few good things though. First, if it's a "Google" labeled product, it will most likely stay free. The big G will subsidize the cost through advertising most likely, which is fine by me... I think. I was afraid of what GrandCentral would cost when it went Release, so I did not go all in on it, but now that it's looking to remain the same I'm leaning more toward relying on my Google Voice number. Also, the move means that there should be another round of beta invites soon, or maybe even a soft launch. If you're interested in the service, you can sign up to get notified for the next round of invites or check out all it can do.
I'm really excited to see where Google goes with this service, as I think it has a lot of potential. If you get in, let us know what you think. If you've been involved with GrandCentral and recently switched to Google Voice, make sure to drop us a line with your impressions.
And girls who like girls who like fembots!
Gadget of the Week
3D iPhone glasses. Why?
Links
The Homotron Store
- Help support Homotron by purchasing your items through our store!
All rights reserved © 2007-2010 FAD Media, Inc.
