John Siracusa just posted his (canonical?) review of Mountain Lion to Ars Technica twenty minutes ago. Based on his past work, it’s going to be exhaustive, amazing, and well worth it for any Mac geek who wants to learn what’s different about the 10.8 release today.
Shawn Blanc reviewed the Nexus 7. He likes what he saw, but:
On a technical level, Jelly Bean is noticeable improvement over Ice Cream Sandwich. But I still do not see the appeal of an Android device over an iOS device unless your motives for using one are based solely on price, screen size, or a vendetta against Apple Inc.
For me, when it comes down to it, software will always trump hardware. When I’m using a device like the Nexus 7 I want to know where the details are. Where is the magic? The fun?
I’m a huge fan of Shawn’s writing, but I think he’s a bit too harsh on the Android tablet. I feel like lately there’s been some goal post shifting among big iPad defenders (myself potentially among them.) At first, the argument was that nobody could produce a quality tablet, and for years, that was the case. Now finally we’ve got a pretty universally praised device. Even the UI of Jelly Bean is rated as solid but…there’s still not enough good third party apps.
Give it time; I think the Nexus could finally be the device that Android developers are waiting for: a solid piece of hardware with good enough sales (we’ve yet to see this for a non-Apple device, but if I’d bet on any, it would be the Nexus) to really kick start better apps.
Jolie O’ Dell, Venture Beat:
Mayer told press that the title didn’t matter to her and that she really only cared about the products she was working on; however, Google stopped showing off Mayer’s work as well. While she continued to be a fan favorite at tech conferences, she stopped appearing at the company’s press conferences and developer showcases, including Google I/O, where the company displays its most important products of the year. When she showed up at the Crunchies, Silicon Valley’s self-congratulatory awards show, she was acting as a distinguished alumna, presenting an award rather than receiving one — that honor went to Gundotra for his Google+ work.
Excellent article and a forceful rebuke to all the “why would Meyer take such a downgrade move to Yahoo” vibe that I’ve seen elsewhere on the web and my Twitter feed (I admittedly jumped in at one point.)
I don’t question Meyer’s judgement on this any more and wish her the best; it’s also great to see more women in corporate leadership positions. But can she turn Yahoo around? I doubt it.
Gimme Bar takes various media you find online – photos, audio, video, text – and saves it to a cloud based library. Yes, been there, done that to some extent (e.g. ZooTool). But Gimme Bar has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve. First, it’s more inherently private than public. The last major bookmarking/tagging app I’ve seen do that is Pinboard, which I love.
Then there’s the extra features: a full API, optional auto backup of items to a Dropbox folder. The interface looks nice as well.
It’s free right now in beta. I plan on giving it a proper spin over the next few weeks.
UX designer Juraj Ivan takes a look at what’s new for visuals with iOS 6. Not too happy with some of what’s coming, especially the “new” linen and more forecefully colored navigation bar.
Rob Fahey, Gamesindustry International:
Zynga is no different – but it thought it was, and some investors believed it. Zynga is a games company. It’s important for it to keep its back catalogue healthy and thriving, but ultimately, if it wants to grow, it has to generate hits. Farmville is back catalogue – a comfortable set of laurels to rest on, and nothing other. Zynga, like any other media company, is only as good as its last release, and only as bankable as the strength of its forward release schedule. There is a sense that the company and its investors thought that the social graph and F2P business could change that reality, but they were utterly deluded in this.
I wouldn’t be too saddened about these guys taking a fall.
The Cleartrip author makes some excellent points about Chrome for iOS, most notably this:
The mobile browser is redundant. Being able to change your default browser would’ve certainly been in Chrome’s favour but does Chrome even need to worry about that? Tons of mobile web traffic is generated by Twitter and Facebook — which means that it is rendered within the respective webviews of those apps. When was the last time you launched a browser to read an article that someone shared on your timeline. So in a sense, UIWebviews, Chrome’s great weakness may just work in their favour.
It is true how often I end up pulling up a UIWebview in apps like Instapaper or Pulp.
I’ve given Chrome for iOS a heavy run and like a lot of what it has to offer, most notably tab syncing and opening tabs in the background. But because Chrome can’t be set as my default browser, I suspect within a week I’ll be back to Mobile Safari full time.
Dalton Caldwell:
Perhaps you think that Twitter today is a really cool and powerful company. Well, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been much, much more. I believe an API-centric Twitter could have enabled an ecosystem far more powerful than what Facebook is today. Perhaps you think that the API-centric model would have never worked, and that if the ad guys wouldn’t have won, Twitter would not be alive today. Maybe. But is the service we think of as Twitter today really the Twitter from a few years ago living up to its full potential?
Pretty damming. I’m not quite as bearish on Twitter; I suspect that too much API muzzling will deliver a significant enough backlash that the company will reverse course. Either way, it’s unquestionable Twitter is a very different, less progressive company than it was six months ago.
This is a slight departure from my usual tech/gaming/film coverage, but most developers and designers I know use headphones, at least occasionally. If you’re looking to buy a pair in the near future, check out this pdf guide. Admittedly it’s not for budget listeners – this tends to lean high end, anywhere from $90 all the way up to the thousands. Yet there’s great recommendations here, better on average than most tech blogs.
(For the record, I’ve used Sennheiser HD-25 IIs for years and been very satisfied.)
Tech writer Federico Viticci:
Apple will bring more iOS-inspired features to OS X. Or perhaps they will add OS X functionalities to iOS. The point is, in doing so, I have no doubt Apple will consider the unique traits of each platform, and they will develop the features accordingly. But splitting OS X in two just for the sake of easy profits (“It’s an iPad laptop!”) sounds like a step backwards and one towards fragmentation.
Agreed. There’s way too much speculation out there on the “merging” of iOS and Mac OS X. Yet they truly are two different markets with different use cases. Apple is too smart to move in the “one OS” direction that Microsoft has bet on. Both on a technology and consumer expectations level, we’re just not there yet.