So if you're an iPhone user ... or an iPhone maybe going to be a user ... what features do you find lacking? This poll lists a number of possible features; it might be interesting to see what the results are if the sample size gets large enough.
Personally, iChat is the most-glaring omission on my list, with syncable notes a close second and a true third-party application API as the third (as that would solve pretty much everything else on my list :) ).
-rob.
Slowly, but surely, Apple's iWork is turning into a full-fledged office suite, as iWork '08 gains Numbers, Apple's latest foray into the world of spreadsheet programs. So what is Numbers? Is it at long last a replacement for the spreadsheet component of AppleWorks? Is it a direct competitor to Excel? Will it enable users looking for alternatives to finally move from either AppleWorks or Microsoft Office to iWork?
The answer to these questions is any of yes, no, and maybe, depending on your specific spreadsheet needs. Those with basic needs will be impressed with Numbers' ability to make short work of their projects. People with more complex requirements, and those hoping to migrate from Excel or AppleWorks, will find the transition more difficult. And some people—scientific users, students, and advanced Excel users in particular—may find that certain details in Numbers make it impossible to use the product in its current form.
Read my Macworld article, Review: Numbers, for the rest of the story...
In January 2003, Apple introduced Keynote, a fairly groundbreaking presentation application. Two years later, along came Pages, a mixed page layout/word processing tool.
Together, Keynote and Pages were sold as the $79 iWork'05 "suite." Compared to the venerable AppleWorks, though, iWork was missing both spreadsheet and database applications. With the release of the still-$79 iWork '08 (Best Current Price: $67.41), Apple has plugged the spreadsheet hole with Numbers.
Read my Macworld article, First Look: Numbers, for the rest of the story...
After Tuesday's announcements from Apple, I walked away both impressed and confused. The new iMac, with the possible exception of the glossy screen—more on that below—seems to be a solid design, and, at up to 2.8GHz, it should be screaming fast as well. iLife and iWork both look like solid upgrades, and I’m anxious to spend some time with Numbers, Keynote, iPhoto, the remade iMovie, and the rest of the collection. So much for the “impressed†side.
The "confused" side is curious about three decisions Apple has made regarding the following items...
Read my Macworld blog entry, Three things I don't understand about Apple's moves, for the rest of the story...
I was reading this overview of smart phone web browsers, and came across this interesting sentence about the iPhone's Safari browser:
The iPhone browser interface is a success not because it's intuitive, but because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought.
This didn't make much sense to me, so I looked up intuitive in the OS X dictionary, and found this definition:
using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive
So we have "...because the interface is discoverable at a level almost below conscious thought" and "...feels to be true even without conscious reasoning." Now I'm no rocket scientist, but it sure seems like intuitive is, in fact, the right word to describe the iPhone's Safari browser interface.
As promised, here's part three of three--the final installment of my personal favorite comedies. Note that there's a big difference between my favorite comedies and the best comedies ever made. I would never pretend that my list represents the best of the best in the art of comedic cinema. Instead, these are the movies that have made me laugh the most consistently over the years. Yes, it's true, I have a sick and twisted mind. Anyway, on with the list...
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By now, you've probably read that Apple's holding a "Mac-related" presentation on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific. You may have also read the predictions that we'll see a new iMac introduced at that meeting.
The prediction makes sense—the iMac is currently the "gray beard" of the Apple lineup, an aging-if-dependable workhorse that's made its way into many homes as the first Mac in the household. So predicting that Apple has chosen to upgrade this machine, and swath it in aluminum to match the mini, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro, is about as risky as predicting that Paris Hilton will make tabloid headlines or that George Steinbrenner will rant about his Yankees' poor performance at some point during the season.
Read my Macworld blog entry, My Apple event wishlist, for the rest of the story...
As promised, here's part two of three--more evidence of my complete lack of taste in movies follows the break!
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My friend Kirk and I were chatting the other day, and we got to talking about our favorite comedy movies. Both of us struggled to come up with just one, given the wide variety of comedy out there, and one's taste for the various comedic styles (dark, slapstick, etc.) may change as the years go by. Then there's the matter of era—comedies have been in production for nearly 100 years, so there's a huge body of work. How can one compare a film from the 1920s or 1930s with something made in the last five years?
After our chat, I got to thinking about my favorite comedies, and I thought I'd put together a list of my 10 favorites. To make things a bit easier on myself, I picked the somewhat arbitrary year of 1980 as the starting point, even though there are lots of comedies that I would include from prior to that date—The Blues Brothers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, anything by Charlie Chaplin, etc. But I didn't think I could do a credible job of choosing from movies in many different eras, so I used 1980 as the cutoff mainly because it was a nice round number.
As I started working on the list, I found that I couldn't trim it to just 10 without leaving off what I felt were some of my personal favorites, so I expanded it to 15 movies. Even at that, there are quite a few that fell just below the cut line—Airplane, Meet the Parents, LA Story, Austin Powers—that I still consider great comedies and are in my DVD collection. Still, the line had to be drawn somewhere.
So at the risk of losing the last few readers I still have (by revealing my poor taste in filmmaking), here are the 'bottom five' of my 15 favorite comedies, arranged from "just barely made the cut" (#15) to "absolute favorite" (#1). (I was going to run the list all at once, but the post was simply too long; look for parts two and three in the near future.)
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Last weekend, when I first noticed our hornet problem, I called a couple of national pest control chains on Sunday. Both chains answered (or had an answering service) and promised to get back to me "early next week." So on Monday, I waited until about noon. When I hadn't heard from either place by then, I got busy searching and found Pioneer Pest Control, who came out Tuesday and took care of the problem--and still, neither national chain had called me back.
On Thursday, the first chain called back, and I told their representative that they'd missed their opportunity. Tonight, fully nine days after I first called, the other chain called back. However, whatever small measure of credit I would have given them for at least returning the call was quickly lost, as this is what I heard when I picked up the phone:
[Obviously recorded voice] "Thank you for calling Orkin Pest Control. We're returning your call concerning a pest problem. Please stand by and an operator will be with you shortly." [Hold music commences]
Yes, that's right. They waited nine days to call me back to put me on hold! Needless to say, I didn't wait around for a human being to grace me with their presence. Now, it may be that Orkin is a great pest control service, and had I called a local office, perhaps I would have received a quicker call back. But as it was, the local offices were closed on Sunday, so I used the national number. Apparently the connection between that number and the local offices is quite poor--perhaps they're still using the Pony Express?
If you want my business, you're going to have to respond a little quicker than nine days--and have a person, not a robot, make the return call!