Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use? | John Battelle’s Search BlogJohn Battelle’s Search Blog

A genius “rant” about Apple usability – I’m glad someone has actually said it. It’s been the elephant in the room for a couple of years. He’s certainly not an outlier! I have the same issues with iPhoto (really what’s the point?), iTunes (another UI, really?) and iOS (I am not fat fingered).

Quick excerpts below but you really need to go read the full article by  John Battelle here.

… the fact that Apple doesn’t respond in its forums about this (or any) issue? Ridonkulous.

iTunes

“… just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.

Without going into detail, my little rant about Calendar, iPhoto, Address Book, et al goes for iTunes as well. I even bought a piece of software to try to fix iTunes myriad issues (Rinse). I can’t figure out whether or not Rinse has fixed anything, to be honest, and so far, all it’s managed to do is marry the wrong album art to about 100 or so songs which previously didn’t have any imagery. Which is kind of funny, but a tad annoying. And just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.

iOS

“Seriously, how can an adult finger ever touch that little search icon without either hitting the “A” or the “+”????

Have you ever done a search in your iPhone contacts? You need the fingers of a poorly fed six-year-old to activate that search function. No, really, I must waste four or five minutes a day trying to make that damn thing work.

 

via Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use? | John Battelle’s Search BlogJohn Battelle’s Search Blog.

Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register

“Apple is a terrible Google, which is a terrible Amazon, which is a terrible Apple.”

It’s become a truism that the way to win in mobile is with an end-to-end, hardware-to-software-to-cloud strategy. I just wish this were as good for consumers as it seems to be for vendors. If I could get any wish fulfilled for 2013, it would be to have Apple and Google, in particular, go back to doing what they do best – rather than doing “all the things” in an attempt to squeeze out maximum value from a captive consumer.
via Hey, Apple and Google: Stop trying to wolf the whole mobile pie • The Register.

New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web

“If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.”

Late last year, the closure of the uber-popular Installous marked the end of a promiscuous era in iOS app piracy.

Now, several new services are on the rise that are filling the gap and offering easy installation of pirated apps, even on devices that have not been jailbroken.Updated with statement from Zeusmos’ developer below.The two that have risen to the forefront are Zeusmos and Kuaiyong. While the former has been around for a few months, it has gained significant steam since the exit of Installous. The latter has appeared seemingly from nowhere over the past couple of weeks.Both of these services are dangerous for app developers because they offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and do not require that devices have been jailbroken in order to do so. This is an enormous problem, as it opens up the arena for their use from the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices — as was the case with Installous — to any unscrupulous users of iPhones and iPads.

If you’re looking to steal apps from developers — lets not kid ourselves about what’s happening here — it is now easier than ever to do so.

via New services bypass Apple DRM to allow pirated iOS app installs without jailbreaking on iPhone, iPad – The Next Web.

Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age

Up to now, advertisers have talked about how iPads are typically used in a lean-back setting; Apple ads even pictured users’ feet up. That, in turn, has informed the type of ads that marketers distribute to tablets: often magazine-style, whole-screen takeovers and ads that drive people to e-commerce experiences made for browsing.

At the other side of the spectrum are advertising strategies for mobile phones, which are focusing more and more on location data, with the belief that the person viewing the phone is on the move and looking for something to do or buy.

via Apple Adds iPad Mini, its First Actually Mobile Tablet | Digital – Advertising Age.

The hoarder’s dilemma, or ‘Why can’t I throw anything away?’ • Reg Hardware

This is my problem with cables, old Apple gadgets and other electronics. VHS video player anyone?

“Now, I’ve not used it for 25 years but it still works and I have a vague notion that a science museum might want to acquire it one day, and that’s why I haven’t disposed of it yet. This symbolises my problem: in wanting to be zen, I am horrified by modern disposable culture. The promise of recycling isn’t enough when something isn’t actually broken beyond repair.”

via The hoarder’s dilemma, or ‘Why can’t I throw anything away?’ • Reg Hardware.

New Apple MacBook Pro 17″ from £1,949 or a Mac for £17,000

Mac Pro with all the options including two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Mac Pro with all the options including two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Mac Expo has started and I was hoping they might have brought out a new mid range MacBook or a lower price for the Aluminum MacBook but sadly not. So whilst checking out the new MacBook Pro’s with their 17″ screens and funky new built in battery with 8 hour span between charges I wondered idly how much one computer could cost. For the price of a small house in some less desirable neighbourhoods you can buy a top of the range Mac Pro with dual 30″ screens and lots of processors, RAM and terrabytes of storage. A snip at a little over £17k and yours for around £550 a month which is more than a lot of peoples mortgage payments!

Of course all of this is great but I haven’t won the lottery yet so I’ll make do with my trusty (although battered and bashed a bit) MacBook.

New Time Capsule with iTunes library sharing…

The pre-Macworld Expo rumour mill has not been as mad as usual – probably due to Steve Jobs not delivering the keynote – but 9to5Mac reckon there will be an internet-based media server from Apple.

The rumoured Apple media server, would be based on Apple’s existing Time Capsule, an ARM-based 802.11n WiFi base station and backup system. To which would be added AFP-based file sharing, iTunes library sharing, a MobileMe tie-in for remote access (possibly with personal MobileMe subdomain), and the ability to share media with a Mac, AppleTV, iPod Touch, and iPhone “both over the Internet and while at home.”

Of course most of us with an Apple TV and an iPhone and a Time Capsule have been trying to get this to work with third party applications since they got them so it’s nice to see Apple finally listening. Shame they will no doubt want us to shell out more for them as I doubt there will be a TimeCapsule software/firmware update to allow the extra functionality.

iPhone 3G jailbroken (beta)

The iPhone Dev Team released its iPhone 3G unlocking utility, yellowsn0w, on the first of the year although it’s still a beta.

If you’d like to crack your iPhone with the beta remember version 0.9.4 beta works only with iPhone baseband 02.28.00, that’s the version installed by iPhone 2.2 Software Update, Apple’s most recent firmware update. So before you start use yellowsn0w, make sure to use iTunes to upgrade your iPhone to 2.2.

If you’ve used QuickPwn to perform a basic jailbreak before and you use Installer to load apps then you should be able to use this beta with no problems – otherwise I’d advise waiting until the non beta version is ready as I’m sure there will be better support available then when they are not concentrating on the new version although there is some basic help available now

Allegedly you won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party SIM now works.

I’ve not tried it yet as I’m not going anywhere that needs a different SIM – always my big gripe when I am in Australia with the iPhone. I’m likely to wait to the 1.0 release.

Apple shares drop as Stevie pulls out of Macworld

Fears have grown about the health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs who will not deliver his customary keynote address at the Macworld trade show next month.

Apple shares were down 3% on the news as Apple sites buzzed with speculation that Jobs decision not to address one of the highlights of the Mac calendar was related to his health and possibly that Apple was behind on product delivery.

I’m hoping as a by-product the price of macs will also plummet as I’ve been coveting a new MacBook and I know Andrew would love one to replace his rather temperamental windows laptop.

Apple Store

Take That – The Circus only £3

I love the internet and just when you think it can’t get any better Amazon launch a new MP3 download service to compete with Apple iTunes store and sell albums from only £3 including Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns, Kings of Leon – Only By The Night, Mamma Mia! The Movie Soundtrack, Will Young – Let It Go, Girls Aloud – Tangled Up and of course not forgetting the man band currently fronting the M&S advertising campaign Take That – The Circus at Amazon for only £3