Permalink

Should you upgrade to Lion?

Not surprisingly, I have been getting this question since Mac OS X Lion 10.7 was released in July, and with the recent release of iOS 5, that has only increased the number of queries since iCloud is currently only supported on Lion, though I still hold out some hope for fuller support for Snow Leopard (10.6; iCal syncing seems to be working, but not Address Book).

My recommendation remains to wait.

Why? 

At first, there was still a lot of software that hadn't yet been updated for Lion and the significant changes under the hood made this release a little less predictable (than, say, Snow Leopard, which I enthusiastically recommended almost out of the gate because of the obvious improvements in speed and polish). While a lot of third-party software has been updated since the summer, there still remain apps and drivers that are not updated, so my caution still stands. If you have a question about Lion compatibility, check out the vendor's site or the crowdsourced RoaringApps site.

But the other, bigger reason has to do with lingering speed and stability issues. Safari (5.1) has been especially unstable, leading me to recommend Google Chrome as an alternative until Safari regains the stability it enjoyed under Snow Leopard. And overall, while there are many refinements in Lion, they are, in my mind, still offset by steps backward in speed.

Until a future release of Lion (hopefully 10.7.3!) fixes a majority of the issues I currently experience, I will continue to recommend waiting.

If you do want or need to upgrade (say, because of iCloud), I recommend upgrading your RAM to the maximum (8GB for most MacBooks since 2009). Solid state drives (SSD) continue to drop in price and are a great complement to Lion's hunger for resources.

Permalink

Permalink

Ever since VersionTracker started adding obnoxious ads, my go-to site when looking for Mac software has been MacUpdate. Periodically, they will offer a bundle of about 10–12 software titles for about $50. Their current bundle is by far the most useful set I have ever seen from them—I have purchased separately versions of every title they're offering this time (except for FX Photo Studio Pro and Concealer), and I use almost all of them on a regular basis.

Permalink

I keep hearing about people losing their iOS devices... so if you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you don't have Apple's free Find My iPhone app installed and configured, give yourself a fighting chance in case it gets lost or stolen by taking five minutes to install and configure.

Permalink

I love the pictures from my Canon PowerShot S95, but the new ELPH 500 HS (stands for High Sensitivity) looks like an amazing point-and-shoot.

Highlights: the wide 24 mm lens (vs. the S95's 28 mm wide angle), very good low light performance (both have a bright f/2.0 aperture at the wide end), and a burst mode (the ELPH doubles the S95's with up to 8 fps and also adds an insane 240 fps video mode). See the Canon site's dynamic comparison chart for more details.

Now if only they could get this kind of image quality into a rugged everything-proof body. #neverSatisfied

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

Permalink

See the full gallery on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink

Just got back from Mike Daisey's one-man show about Steve Jobs and Apple, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" at the Seattle Repertory Theatre (my first time to the venue). Thanks to my buddy Sage for the ticket! (And even though I do have a black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, I avoided wearing them to tonight's (April 26) performance.)

Though there was almost nothing new to me in the historical content of the two-hour show, it was well-done and the alternation of past and present and general tone kept my interest throughout. It was trenchant prophetic critique by a self-proclaimed "fanboy"—yet not preachy—of what is happening in Shenzhen at places like Foxconn. He takes exclusive aim at Apple, though by implication, the blood is also on everyone else's hands who depends on Chinese labor for their manufacturing.

Permalink

Permalink

Since I got a Kindle 3G last October, I have used it to read several books and have generally found the experience quite pleasing for all the commonly cited reasons: readability in many lighting conditions, portability, and battery life. I love the ability to email myself documents to read via my @free.kindle.com address, though I have given up on trying to read most PDFs because the 6" screen is just too small, even in landscape reading mode (I've been trawling Craigslist now for several weeks for a good deal on a 9.7" Kindle DX, mainly so I can read PDFs). The typography is not bad, though I wish it were sharper, and the keyboard is just serviceable. And I'm not sure how worrisome this should be, but I have had my Kindle replaced twice since I bought it in October, both times with the unit becoming unresponsive, even to a hard reset.

I have also tried reading content on the Kindle for iPad app and have enjoyed the benefit of the larger screen, but have found (as I feared even before I bought the iPad) that the weight of the iPad makes reading for long stretches more challenging.

There are two things I prefer about the iOS Kindle app to the hardware Kindle:

First, touch is a much more intuitive and smooth way to select and highlight than the click-tap-tap-tap...-click routine of the hardware Kindle. And since I do this frequently, I notice how much less friction there is on the iPad.

Second, and this may really seem petty, but I really do not like having a percent indicator at the bottom of the page. The iOS app shows a progress meter (and no percentage) when you tap on the page to reveal controls, but it is otherwise out of sight most of the time. The Kindle app always shows the percentage at the left and the progress bar at the bottom. I find the presence of that little number intrusive to the point that I now keep it covered with my left thumb. And there is in the current Kindle OS (version 3.1) no way to suppress it.

It's the little things.

Permalink

See the full gallery on Posterous

Pure magic! Wow.

Permalink

Because the storage on Apple iOS devices is not accessible like a conventional hard drive, it is even more critical that one keeps current backups of the data on there using iTunes, but for photos and videos which are usually more valuable than apps and cloud-synced data, there is no built-in mechanism for backing them up automatically.

Hence, I recommend CameraSync, an inexpensive Universal app that works on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and that syncs your devices photos to online repositories, including Dropbox, Flickr, Amazon S3, FTP, and other services. Requires iOS 4.

Permalink

Spicy miso tonkotsu ramen, from Samurai Noodle.

Permalink