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iCloudy with a 100% chance of stupidity

I use a lot of cloud services for file storage, primarily Dropbox, but also Box and (begrudgingly, for certain shared projects) Google Drive.

I also use iCloud, but not in any way that would be considered a true cloud file storage service. I use it strictly as a sync service for contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, Safari; I also use Back to My Mac.

But that's it; I don't use iCloud for cloud-based file management at all. Why not? Because iCloud in its current implementation is chock full of the stupid, at least for those of us who still use and rely on OS X.

Stupid #1: Not enough free space, and too costly for more

A quick comparison chart shows just how far out of line iCloud is with other cloud-based services:

ProviderFreeTier 1Tier 2Tier 3
GBGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yrGB$/Yr$/GB/yr
Box10100$60$0.6001000$180$0.180------
Dropbox2100$100$1.000200$199$0.995500$499$0.998
Google Drive15100$24$0.2401,000$120$0.12010,000$1,200$0.120
iCloud515$20$1.33325$40$1.60055$100$1.818
Pricing sources: Box • Dropbox • Google Drive • iCloud
Note that you can get additional free space on Dropbox through referrals and uploading images; Box occasionally offers a promo with 50GB of free space.

Kirk McElhearn covers this price and space issue in more detail in his blog post, Why Does Apple Only Offer 5 GB Storage with iCloud?.

I agree with him; if iCloud wants to attract more users, it needs more free space, and more competitively priced upgrade plans.

Read on for more of the stupid…

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Why didn’t Apple reveal iPad mini sales figures?

First, only Apple knows why they didn't share iPad mini sales figures, so what follows are just my thoughts. Instead of splitting the mini from the fourth-generation iPad, they reported a combined three million units for the iPad mini and fourth generation iPad. So why didn't they split it out? At the highest level, I think (again, only my thoughts) it's as simple as this:

Apple hasn't ever historically split out products by type within a family. In their annual report, they tell you how many Macs, iPods, iPhone, and iPads were sold, and that's it. Reporting a combined "total iPads sold" figure is perfectly in line with past behavior.

Beyond that simple explanation though, I believe that reporting a sales mix would be a lose-lose proposition for Apple. By way of example, here are some theoretical press headlines, based on a few mini/full-size iPad sales splits.

mini: 500,000; iPad: 2,500,000

  • "Apple's new mini a flop; sells only 500K units"
  • "Apple's lost the magic touch post-Jobs; new mini tanks"
  • "New fourth-generation iPad underwhelms; doesn't reach 3mil units mark"

mini: 1,500,000; iPad: 1,500,000

  • "Customers confused by iPad options; pick both equally"
  • "iPad mini cannibalizes iPad sales"
  • "Full size iPad sales impacted by release of mini; margins likely to dip"

mini: 2,500,000; iPad: 500,000

  • "New mini succeeds, at huge cost to full-size iPad"
  • "Margin impact of iPad mini sales success will harm profitability"
  • "iPad mini roars to life; is the full-size iPad dead?"
  • "Full-size iPad on life support after horrid opening weekend"

Clearly there's some (OK, a ton of) exaggeration in these fake headlines, but the summary level is certainly true:

  • If iPad mini sales exceeded iPad sales, then that's a margin hit, and a warning sign on full-size iPad's future.
  • If the sales were equally split, that's still a margin hit, and possibly a sign of customer confusion.
  • If iPad mini sales were substantially under iPad sales, then the new product's a flop, and Apple's lost their touch.

So even ignoring Apple's track record of reporting sales by family, it seems there's no upside to splitting the sales figures. Given the lack of a good interpretation for any split, as a shareholder I'm happy they're reporting a lump sum figure.

Note that this does not make the iPad the equivalent of Amazon's Kindle: Amazon has never, to my recollection, reported any exact Kindle sales figures.



Wireless routers vs. wireless charging

I recently made a snarky tweet about wireless charging:

If you're going to advertise "wireless charging," shouldn't you really offer wireless charging, not "wires to another device charging?"

I've had a few responses along the lines of "well, wireless networking still needs wires, and nobody complains about that!" While this is true, there's a key difference at work here.
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Troubleshooting a Mac CD tray that won’t stay closed

Recently, I placed my Mac Pro up for sale, both on the net in general and on eBay. The eBay auction closed with a successful bidder, so yesterday, I went to prep the machine for shipping. After wiping the drives and reinstalling OS X, I had but one thing to do: solve a small but annoying problem with one of the two installed disc burning SuperDrives (name used for simplification; one was an actual SuperDrive from Apple; the other a multi-format burning drive from Sony).

The stock drive, which I had mounted in the lower slot, worked fine. So did the after-market upper drive, as long as there was a disc in the slot. If I ejected the disc and then closed the tray, the drive would grind for a few seconds, then eject. It would then stay ejected for a few minutes, until (I believe) OS X noticed it was open. It would then close, and the grind-eject cycle would repeat.

I'm posting the sordid details of my experience in case anyone else is looking for help with a CD/DVD tray that won't stay closed on their own OS X machine; perhaps it'll show up in a Google Mac-specific search at some point in the future. Read on for the details…
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How to not upgrade to iOS5

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably familiar with my iOS5 installation difficulties. Two days into the process, and I've still not been able to update either my iPad (first generation) or iPhone 4. This is—by far—the most frustrated I've been with any Apple upgrade, ever…and that covers a lot of history!

Simply as a means of venting, and perhaps to save someone else from going through what I've gone through (though note that I haven't yet solved the problem), here's what I've gone through to try to upgrade my iPhone and iPad.

Update: On my 48th attempt, my iPhone 4 successfully updated to iOS5. Now, on to the iPad…

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11.6″ MacBook Air: Who needs a netbook?

As I'm really enjoying my new 11.6" MacBook Air, I thought it might be interesting to compare it with some other portables I currently own. Specifically, I wanted to compare the Air to my previous fave ultra-portable Mac (the 12" PowerBook G4), a Dell Mini 10 running Mac OS X, and my current fave Mac laptop, the high-res anti-glare 15" MacBook Pro.

What follows isn't a comprehensive set of benchmarks done under controlled conditions. It's more of a quick look at performance (and measurements and specifications) across a series of machines, three of which can be considered "ultra portables."

Read on for the table...

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My new favorite (for now) laptop Mac

A while back, I tweeted that my new MacBook Pro was my fave-ever portable Mac—this despite having only used the machine for under two weeks at that point. A few people asked me "why your fave-ever?," so I thought I'd use those queries as an excuse to post here on my near-silent blog.

The specific machine in question is a 2010 15" MacBook Pro with the 2.66GHz Core i7 processor, 4GB of RAM, and (when new) a 5400rpm 500GB hard drive...and, oh yes, the single most important spec: the anti-glare 1680x1050 high resolution screen.

This machine replaced a 2008 MacBook Pro (last of the non-unibody laptops) with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 7200rpm 200GB hard drive (and the only screen at the time, the standard 1440x900).

Comparing the two, the only area where I gave up anything at all was in the hard drive's speed. I took care of that problem by installing a new Seagate Momentus hybrid hard drive, the 500GB version, to be exact. (A hybrid drive is one that combines a small solid state drive—4GB in this case—with a traditional drive, and then uses its firmware to optimize performance on the fly. For more on the Seagate hybrid drive, see this excellent article at Anandtech.)
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Deals to be found at the Apple refurb store…

If you know me at all, you know how I feel about glossy screens, especially on laptops. As nice as the new MacBook and MacBook Pros are (and they are very nice, based on some early hands-on time with the new MacBook at the local store), the glossy screens are a deal breaker for me. I tried to use a MacBook for six months or so, but in the end, the glossy screen was too much for me, so I went up to the MacBook Pro and its nice matte display.

With the lack of a matte option on the new MacBook Pro line, I won't be buying another Mac laptop (of the 15" variety) until Apple comes out with some form of non-glossy screen--whether that's a true matte screen, or just an effective anti-glare coating, I don't really care. But until there's a solution, I'm going to use what I have for as long as I possibly can.

My current machine is a two-year-old 15" 2.33GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM--and it's a very nice machine. However, it's already two years old, and I want to get at least five more years out of my matte screened laptop...so I figured I'd go look on eBay for used last-gen 2.6GHz MacBook Pros--the fastest 15" machine with a matte screen available, basically.

On my way to eBay, though, I got sidetracked by the Special Deals section of the Apple Store--otherwise known as the Refurb Store.
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A look at how OS X tips spread via Google

When iTunes 8 came out, one very annoying change was the removal of the "Show iTunes Store arrow links" preference -- in previous versions of iTunes, you'd toggle this setting to remove the link arrows that appear when you select an item in your Library.

I never use these things, and they bother my eye, so as soon as I got my hands on iTunes 8, I started looking for a solution (here's how I do that). With some help from Kirk McElhearn, we soon found the solution in a hidden preference value -- a variable named show-store-arrow-links.

After a quick test, we confirmed that it worked, and I wrote it up as hint on Mac OS X Hints. At the same time, I ran a Google search for 'show-store-arrow-links', and came up with no matches.

Note that this does not mean Kirk and I were the first people to post about this workaround -- more than likely, it had already been posted elsewhere, but Google hadn't yet indexed those sites (we were doing this shortly after iTunes 8 was released).

Still, I thought this was a perfect chance to see how things propagate across the internet, as I could repeat my search for show-store-arrow-links over time, and see how quickly the hit count increased. Given the uniqueness of the term, any matches would definitely be people either linking to the hint on some other site, or actually posting their own version of the hint.

Within two hours of the original hint's posting, the hit count was up to five. After seven hours, 137. At 24 hours, 384. At that point, I grew bored with tracking the increases, and tabled the study. Today, though, after 12 days, I ran the search again, and there are now over 1,000 sites that contain the hint (or a link to it) on how to block the iTunes Store arrow links in iTunes 8.

I think that's a good measure of how many people dislike these arrows, and who really wish Apple would have left that preference in place. (Sorry iTunes for Windows users; preferences are stored differently in Windows, and I'm not sure anyone's figured out how to make similar modifications on that platform.)



Music in the new iPod nano ad…

Because I couldn't find this anywhere else on the net, here it is ... the music in the new iPod nano ad is a song called Bruises by Chairlift from an album called Does You Inspire You. I found this by doing a lyric search on the first line ("I tried to do handstands for you..."), which led me to this blog post [dead link removed] -- not directly about the iPod nano ad, but it does mention the song and the lyrics.

iTunes store link

The new nano may just get me to upgrade my original "tall" nano, which is one of my favorite iPods ... but the new one has some really nice sounding features; I'm going to try to go see one in person tomorrow.