Das Tablet Apple iPad ist nach einem Bericht der Webseite AppleInsider basierend auf einer Studie der Marktforschungsfirma Comscore für 46,8 Prozent des Online-Traffics verantwortlich. Das Apple iPhone hat einen Anteil von 42,6 Prozent am Webtraffic. In den USA kommen 7 Prozent den Zahlen zufolge durch iOS-Geräte zustande und zwar werden entweder Nachrichten gelesen oder der eigene Status in sozialen Netzwerken aktualisiert. Die Tablets mit dem Betriebssystem Google Android scheinen auf dem US-Markt nur eine geringe Rolle zu spielen.
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Apple
Moving from a MacBook Pro to a MacBook Air
Is not easy! I upgraded my 17″ MacBook Pro to a 200GB 7200rpm drive, which gave me TONS of space, and it didn’t really matter what applications I installed or how much stuff got added in the form of data.
The second part is not as easy to solve and it largely depends on what you do – an accountant may be generating tons of Excel workbooks and PDF documents, while someone else *cough* could just be browsing RSS feeds and watching YouTube videos, and only touch Excel on ocasions.
In terms of apps, I was accustomed to large-size tools for my needs (coding web pages and PHP backends in Dreamweaver, PDFs would be edited in Acrobat, Photoshop would fill the graphic editing needs every now and then…). Here is a small table comparing various apps from the CS3 suite and some (admittedly not as powerful) alternatives:
Image editing: Photoshop (490MB) versus Pixelmator (113MB).
Web design: Dreamweaver (366MB) versus Coda (52MB).
PDF editing: Acrobat (832MB!) versus PDFPen PDFClerk Pro (12MB). I was going to mention PDFPen but after trying it and seeing how they totally ignore mouse input (you cannot use your mouse’s scroll wheel to browse through the PDF’s pages!!!) I’ve concluded it sucks.
These three apps alone are saving me 1.5GB of disk space without even starting to generate data!
Additionally, nothing like video or audio editing tools should be even installed, let alone used on this machine, as it’s drive only spins at 4200rpm, and basically grinds your system to a halt during drive-intensive tasks (such as opening or saving huge video files).
Another tip is to move as much of your data online as you can. Either using .Mac or a different free alternative, online music streaming, Flickr for photos, and so on – it will save you a ton of space.
Growl notifications with Entourage 2008
Having used Thunderbird on my Mac for a couple of years now, I grew accustomed to the Growl notifications it provided (via a plugin) when new email arrived. The time came to switch to an Exchange server, as our email host was getting worse and worse.
I’ve read different reviews on Entourage 2008, but none so bad as to totally put me off at least trying it out. I have to say it’s really good on a few aspects that Thunderbird lacks, but that’s a matter for another post. What really brought me to a spate of AppleScript and some graphics work was the so ugly default popup notifications provided by Entourage, and their position at the bottom of the screen. For a heavy Growl user, totally counter-intuitive. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a script that does the following:
- Generates a Growl notification with the default style for each new email that arrives (or those you want to – more on this later).
- Shows the email subject in the notification title, and below the sender’s name (or email address if the sender has no display name), and the first 80 characters of the email – enough to give you a feel of what’s in it.
- Shows a custom icon for high and highest priority emails, which also have their notifications made sticky.
Busted MacBook screen? No problem, create a FrankenBook
What is the merge between a MacBook with a busted screen and a desktop LCD panel?
I figured two names for it, a Macenstein or a FrankenBook (yeah I know, both are damn ugly, suggestions welcome!). I happened to drive over my one-week-old MacBook with my 30-minute-old Viano van as I tested the parking sensors at the dealer, and the screen cracked. Obviously, the Apple retailer refused to service it under warranty, and quoted around 700 Euro for a new LCD, when the entry-level MacBook costs 1000 Euro, it seems a pretty ridiculous price to pay.
Out of desperation, I had the idea of removing the screen entirely, and using the remaining portion of the MacBook as a desktop – after all, it still had a working hard drive, DVD drive, touchpad and keyboard, so a few dozen screws later, this was the result.
As you can see, the cables that connect to the display’s backlight and LCD circuit are still there, as are the three wires that come out of the Airport wireless card and lead to the patch antennas on the lid. I still have to put some connectors on these so I can drive external antennas.
A friend of mine just saw this thing, and wondered why they are not manufactured commercially – it’s an ideal space saver – computer, keyboard and mouse in one small piece that sits in front of a nice LCD display, and which comes with built-in UPS to save you from power failures.
Edit: Removed the Lapsktop name suggestion, it sound even more crappy than the others, and like a Finnish swear word.
Bug found on the new iPod Nano
I could not resist, having video on an iPod the size of the new Nano was just too tempting…so I got one. As soon as I connected it to iTunes, it prompted me to install the software update that was made available a couple of days ago, after that it synced music & videos, and off I went.
Much to my surprise, this afternoon it started behaving erratically – whenever I pressed the fast forward or rewind buttons, the iPod would keep skipping in the same direction until either the end or the start of the song was reached respectively. One annoying thing is that the skip steps are much bigger than on the previous Nano, and so it makes the process less accurate. Combined with this bug, it’s unusable. The only way to stop it is to pause, and resume playback, and since the steps are so large, it’s a hit-and-miss proposition.
Here is a short video showing the behavior.
The E on the iPhone does not necessarily indicate EDGE coverage
It actually indicates GPRS attachment status, the capability (or lack thereof) of sending and receiving data, be it over plain old GPRS, or the faster EDGE. I was going to comment on the original Engadget blog post, but after seeing a few pages of comments already, I doubt they would have noticed it. This is where they get it wrong:
You’ll notice the iTunes WiFi Store icon, and an O2-UK network symbol up top. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the E logo for EDGE is missing: we guess that 30% network coverage on O2 don’t quite stretch inside the Apple Store.
A bit further down, they mention this again:
O2 iPhone on the left, unlocked US iPhone on the right (running on T-Mobile’s UK network). Note that the O2 iPhone doesn’t show the EDGE logo, but the unlocked phone on T-Mobile does. You can probably guess at what we’re getting at here: O2’s EDGE coverage sucks.
In this particular side-by-side photo, T-Mobile’s coverage is marginally lower than O2’s, but they should both be capable of sending GPRS traffic. Another reason they get this wrong is that the waves icon ‘overwrites’ the E symbol while the iPhone is connected to a WiFi network, so you could still have GPRS/EDGE attachment in the background, so-to-speak. In my particular case, the iPhone is happily registered on Vodafone Spain, and is attached to GPRS (no EDGE here at all), showing the E while I’m not in range of WiFi.
The iPhone also does something very clever – when you open an application that requires a data connection, it will start a GPRS attach and session, while it asks you if you want to join any of the nearby WiFi networks (if any). In case you say no, the alternative data connection is already established, cutting down on extra waiting time before you start seeing content on your screen. This may seem stupid to Europeans, by default stuck with hugely expensive pay-as-you-go data (50 Euro cents per 250kB!!), but with the original AT&T voice + data plan, it does not really matter.