Macgasm

The self imposed deadline was September of 2008.  When the deadline began to slide people started speculating that we would see push notifications in the 2.2 firmware update for the iPhone. September turned to November, November turned to January, and here we are with nothing left to go on, but speculation. Where did our push notifications go, and more importantly, will we be seeing it any time in the future?

You might be wondering what push notification is at this point.  Push notifications is a technology that would allow applications on your iPhone to get updates from a server while the phone is in sleep mode or inactive, or more importantly, while you’re using another application on the phone.

If history is any indication, and past failures provide any insight into Apple’s release schedules, we know that they’ve jumped the gun on releasing products before they’re fully operational.  I’ve speculated that this was a primary reason for Apple Inc. leaving Macworld behind in the past, and have a sneaking suspicion that they’re a little more gun shy this time around.  Does Apple really need another failed launch?

Conspiracies are starting to pile up, and they range from the complete asinine to faulty logic.  My favourite one is that push notifications kill battery life, and given the state of the current iPhone battery issues, it’s unlikely that push notifications would ever work.  They say it’s a great concept in “theory”, and that Apple didn’t think the technology through completely.

I get a hearty chuckle out of that argument from journalists.  They should clearly spend some time watching the WWDC keynote from ’08 again.  Scott Forstall spends a great deal of time explaining the reasons why Apple is developing the push notifications.  The primary reason? Stopping applications from having to run on the phone constantly and eating up all of our precious battery life.  Programs running in the background constantly to get your updates will eat up your battery life…getting push notifications…not so much.

The second major conspiracy theory abound on the internet is a pretty huge broken record, but hold more water than that other “theory” I mentioned.  AT&T. If you can’t guess what I’m about to write, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to the state of cellphones and service providers.  Push notifications mean that more data needs to be pushed across the network. It means that text messaging plans are slowly being rendered useless.  It means that the AT&Ts and Rogers of the world could be getting a look at a new revenue model.  There’s no hard evidence to indicate that the Telcos are the ones holding up the push notifications, but it’s certainly a possibility worth exploring. If we can’t get tethering from them, why would we get push notifications?

Scientists have a saying that can easily be applied to the technology sector. The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation.  The simpliest answer–It’s still not ready for the primetime, and instead of having a mobile me  2.0 situation on their hands, they’ve decided to hold onto it until they can make sure it’s bug free and ready for consumption.

I’m always ready to listen to conspiracy theories, but I have a hard time seeing how they apply in this case. But I still want to know, like the rest of you, where the hell is my push notifications, and when can I expect to get them?

I just stumbled across a pretty awesome flickr tag.  There’s only 26 pictures associated with the tag, but I’d love to get some more photos for the tag (that’s just how cool it is!)  A group of people took pictures of themselves with the phone they had previous to the iPhone, and added the tag ditchingforiphone. If you have access to your old phone or the one you’ll be switching out for an iPhone, and a camera, go snap a couple of pics and upload them to flickr and add the tag.  While you’re at it add them to the Macgasm group as well.

Some would wonder why anybody would want more than one monitor. Well, it’s quite simple, at least in my case. I have way too many windows open at any one time, and in order to efficiently be able to see if something needs my attention I need more screen real estate.

Let me explain. Right now in my Dock I have 14 application open, not including Finder. I have anything from iTunes to JungleDisk, to Preview and terminal open. I need to make sure that I have these open in order to actually be able to do any work.

With developing a webapp, the ability to have your code in one screen and the web browser in another helps tremendously when you need to try and see if a particular aspect of the code is actually working. It is quite handy.

The other major reason to have two (or more monitors) is for those who work with applications that can truly benefit from this. Applications that might fall into this category are Dreamweaver, Aperature, Lightroom, Photoshop, Vector Designer and other similar applications.

The final, more personal and probably more general user, is social networking applications. I have Adium and Twhirl up right now. Within Twhirl I have friendfeed, Twit army and twitter. These end up taking up approximately 25 percent of the screen. Some would say, that you do not need all of these up, or you need only one screen for this. Well, to them I say “you try switching back and forth all the time, and see if you get anything done”. You cannot accomplish much if you keep having to switch back and forth between applications.

Now, enough about the case, how about actually setting it all up. Well this is about as difficult as most other things are within OS X. Depending on your Mac you might need an adapter (Mini DVI, Mini DisplayPort or otherwise) to actually hook up a second monitor. Once you have determined the adapter and have acquired that. All you need is the monitor. I’d recommend getting one that is DVI, but that’s entirely up to you. DVI has a higher throughput and can produce a better quality signal.

Once you connect your adapter to your mac, and then the monitor to the adapter all you have to do is open up System Preferences and go to the ‘Displays’ and click on the ‘Arrangement’ tab. This is where you will be able to select which monitor is considered your primary. As soon as you make a selection it’s saved. You are all set to get going.

There are a few things to keep in mind. The first being that it will take time to adjust to your new screen real estate. Having more screen can be nice, but it does take some time to adjust. I just plugged in my second monitor tonight, and I’ve already found that it is useful. Now I just want a bigger second monitor.

Second thing to remember is that if you power off your second monitor, items just stay in the same place. So items on your second monitor will still be on the second monitor, they will not transfer over to your primary monitor.

Third item to remember that if you use spaces, guess what, your second monitor can be used in each. It’s not just limited to a single space. So it can be even more effective in terms of organization and screen real estate. Here’s how my setup looks in spaces.

Fourth item to keep in mind is that the menu bar will not stretch across both monitors. I know there are ‘hacks’ and ways to do this with certain applications, but it will not do this in any of the Apple applications that I’ve used thus far. I would like to see Apple add this ability. This also extends to the dock. It is only on your primary monitor and you cannot change this. You can see which monitor will have your menu bar by taking a look at this screenshot. I’ve highlighted where the menu bar is shown.

Fifth, and final thing to keep in mind. Once you get into the groove and habit of using more than one monitor, you may be resistant to go back. For me, not having two monitors with my macbook is going to be difficult. But, considering the type of work I do on my macbook I hope it’s not too bad, otherwise I’ll have to get a new case and monitor that’ll fit in my case.

I’ll have to report back in a few weeks to see if I’m still using this setup. I don’t see why I wouldn’t. I’m too much of a geek to go back. Like I said before though, the Monitor may change to a bigger one (maybe a 24″ monitor, but we’ll see).

Apple has released firmware version 2.2.1 today for both the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Some would think that this upgrade might add something cool. Well, sorry to disappoint.  The only thing added is ‘safari stability,’ which is nice and all, but doesn’t really mean a whole lot in terms of functionality.

For those with Jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, I’d wait before applying the firmware, just to let the jailbreak community verify that all is working before upgrading.

Look for the update in iTunes, but clicking on the ‘update’ button after your iPhone or iPod touch is connected.

 

Sure, the best way to make money is to  work in a money industry, but given the current economic situation and the fact that banks everywhere are going “broke”, is creating an iBank really all that smart?  I love the thought of revolutionizing the banking system, and I’m sure everyone can get behind overthrowing the archaic concepts of charging people to get at their own money, but Apple isn’t stupid, and they are very skeptical as company on a whole about getting into new “markets”.  I mean, they do not plan on getting into the netbook market, or the “cheap” phone market, does anyone really believe they would risk everything and jump on the banking bandwagon? Apple has a history of only doing things they can be the absolute best at. They don’t take second very well, and they certainly don’t risk their future on emerging markets.  They wait for them to be stable and full of growth. The banking system is neither, and anyone who suggests that a move into the banking industry is a smart move, doesn’t see that it not only runs counter to those aforementioned ideologies, but also can’t see that it’s flat out retarded.  Someone needs to lay off the crack pipe.  Just because they changed their corporate identity to Apple Inc recently doesn’t mean they’re looking into dominating the financial industry.

QuickTime hits 7.6 and includes various patches and tweaks to the H.264 encoding, AAC encoding, and compatibility with iChat and Photobooth.  The relase can be found below:

Summary

• QuickTime 7.6 includes changes that increase reliability, improve compatibility and enhance security. This release is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.

What’s in this update?

Video:

• Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality
• Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media

Audio:

• Improves AAC encoding fidelity
• Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently
• Application Support:
• Improves compatibility with iChat and Photo Booth

 

Security:

• For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

Some time in the middle of the night, much like the tooth fairy, Apple snuck into our internets and took away the new-old Macbook, and replaced with with a shinier new-old Macbook.  Confused?  Well, essentially the white Macbooks were upgraded quite substantially overnight.  Better?

We’ve heard reports of upgraded videocards, more RAM, and newer bluetooth specs.  If you were holding out for a polycarbonte reworking for Apple’s bad boy $999.00 laptop, now would be the time to upgrade, because frankly, who knows when Apple will get around to updating their best selling laptop model ever.

I listened in on the Q1 financial report today given by Apple, and there were some real “boring” questions.  Not boring as in financial questions are boring, but boring as in insanely obvious questions that were being asked.  You’ll never guess what the first question was… “How’s Steve?”  I mean really?  You haven’t heard that question asked a bazillion times in the last two months? You haven’t heard the same response over and over?  Anyway.

One pretty exciting snippet of news to come out of the announcement was that Apple expects to open 25 more stores over the course of the year.  Tim Cook was quick to place an emphasis on the fact that the Apple stores are predominantly going to open overseas, and that a great deal of work has been placed into ensuring that the real estate locations were optimal to their sales models.

Another really interesting question was posed by Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray about subsidized markets and the sales numbers in those areas.  Tim Cook noted that they sold substantially less iPhones in those markets, but that they are looking to reevaluate their approach in countries such as India and try to gain more substantial market share there.  He was also quick to give the marketing pitch that Apple’s primary objective is to build the worlds best phone, and not be the worlds most “sold” phone.  They aren’t in the business of creating a cheap phone and music player to become the most sold phone on the market.

Those are just a couple of topics that seemed to really grab my attention outside of the numbers and revenue levels that have come to pass in the first Quarter, but i’ll save you all that math.