Mountain Lion & Safari 6 Review and OS Giveaway

As Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion into the App Store yesterday for an all time low of $19.99, there was a special thing about this release: it's only available in the App Store. No other ways. Back in the days of Snow Leopard, OS installation/upgrade was still available in CD form. As Apple progresses to eliminate optical drives for their entire line of computers, Lion (or technically, OS X 10.7) became only available in two forms: App Store or an obnoxiously expensive $69. Despite the change in download options, the adoption rate soared through the roof when compared to it's only competitor, really, Windows 7. Within 9 month, 40% of Mac users have adopted Lion whereas it took Microsoft 3 times as long to get to the 40% mark. Coming on 2012, Apple's release of Mountain Lion is now only available in one form: App Store download. Will this hurt adoption rates? I truly doubt it. Mountain Lion takes the world's simplest and easiest operating system to a whole new level. It improves on the little quirks that Lion failed in certain aspects and it added features primed to make your lives easier. I'm not certainly not going to write a whole review of Mountain Lion itself since most other technology websites went into a OS-review frenzy the moment Mountain Lion was released. However, what I'm going to do is point out the best bits from some of my favorite reviews of Mountain Lion. 

If you're the kind of person who appreciates the tiny details in Apple's new operating software, you might want to read John Siracusa's review for Ars Technica. Trust me when I say this, but you'll need a hell lot of perseverance to get through the entire review. It's spread out of 24 pages with each page containing an average of 1,083 words. The total word count is in the ball-park of 26,000 words. It blows me away how John can write so much for what I would call an incremental upgrade. It covers every single intricate detail in Mountain Lion and a little more. It took me slightly more than 2 hours to read the entire review, which I'll admit, is the first time I've read spent so long reading a review in the 3 years I've been in the industry. If you plan on reading this, then I would say that this is probably the only review you need to read. Yes, it is that good. And yes, it is that long. 

However, if you're not into that kind of thing, I get why. I really do. You would be more interested in some parts but not others. Sometimes, it is those other details that John drones on and on. A few of the other technology reviewers did a stellar job and I'm going to quote the best parts of their reviews below. For those of you asking, yes, I did read all of the reviews which I've quoted. That's some 50,000 words, I'm guessing. All of their take seems to be almost identical: It is an essential improvement over Lion. Let's take a look at the best bits from the reviews around the web.

MG Siegler, reviewing for TechCrunch

If you liked Lion, you’ll love Mountain Lion. If you didn’t like Lion, you’ll probably love Mountain Lion even more because it seems to fix a lot of the performance/quirkiness issues that some folks were having with the last version of OS X.

Nilay Patel, reviewing for The Verge

But there’s something else going on here beyond a simple purchasing decision: we’re witnessing a dramatic change in how desktop operating systems are fundamentally conceived. Mountain Lion is the first version of OS X to deeply integrate network services at every level, from storing documents to sharing photos to connecting external displays, and it seems that much lighter for it — as though Apple’s relentless charge into its post-PC era has allowed the OS X team to rethink exactly what a PC is and should be. Mountain Lion isn’t perfect, but it’s a confident, thoughtful step towards the future of desktop computing.

Jim Dalrymple, reviewing for The Loop (I'm not too sure if this is a review or not - but it can pass off as one.)

One thing that many people have been confused about since Mountain Lion was first introduced is its association with iOS. Is Mountain Lion becoming more like iOS? I asked Apple that question and the answer was “no.”

So there you have it. Mountain Lion is not trying to become like iOS, nor does it intend to. All in all, most, if not all of the changes made in Mountain Lion point to one direction Apple is heading for in the future: the cloud. Everything will be so tightly integrated through the cloud that your Mac (sorry PC people) suddenly no longer becomes the hub for all your media. It's no longer where you store most of your photos, songs, memories. It's going to be the cloud. Mountain Lion is definitely an affirmative step towards Steve Job's goal of the post-PC era. 

While I've debated on whether to include a Safari 6 review in this piece or make it a seperate piece, I've decided on the former. Truth be told, I uninstalled Chrome from my applications folder the moment I loaded Mountain Lion into my mid-2011 top of the line 13-inch MacBook Air. There are a few annoyances which I've discovered during my 3-4 hour of testing the browser that have prevented me from moving on to Safari 6 as my main browser. I'm going to some of them together with the things I like about Safari 6 in bullet point format:

• Integrated URL/Search bar. Finally. This was a glaring mistake and omission from Safari 5.
• Serious lack of extensions, which makes Safari look miniscule when compared to Chrome. Some of the most essential ones aren't even there. If you're a huge extensions junkie, you might want to hold off from using Safari 6 as your main browser, at least until it catches on to Chrome. 
• It is incredibly speedy and smooth with no lags apparent when zooming in/out and sliding two fingers to the left or right ti forward and backward, respectively. However there is a limit to that smoothness and for my machine, it's 21 tabs. From there on, it starts to slow down and the fan speeds up to around 5970 rpm. Depending on how powerful your machine is, the "tabs limit" might be more or less.
• Safari 6 pretty much forces you to use Reader from Apple, Apple's very own half-baked read it later service which they completely invented on their own. As I typically use Pocket for my read it later service, it is almost impossible to save pages from the Safari browser straight to Pocket. Emailing yourselves articles all over again. 
• It did not crash during my testing. 
• One major downside I felt was when I'm trying to bookmark a page that I like. When bookmarking something, I like to recognize stuff through their favicons, which also helps me save space on my Bookmarks bar. In Apple's attempt to simplify and minimalize their bookmarks bar, you can now only modify the name of the page you want to save. Their favicons will not appear on the Bookmarks bar.
• Apple added a new, pretty cool "Show All Tabs" feature which allows you to glance at all your open tabs,a la iOS Safari. 
• An added feature in Safari is the ability to iMessage or Tweet an article or page you found interesting straight from the browser. 

Overall, it's a major improvement from Safari 5, but not quite where it's supposed to be yet. Guess I'll still have to live with the Chromebugs. 

In conclusion, while Mountain Lion is possibly the best and most refined operating system for the Mac just yet (I'd argue for computers in general, too), Safari 6 falls short. While Microsoft have decided to radically change an operating system people have trusted and used for years, Apple decides to continuously refine their operating system until it is perfect. An analogy I can think off at the top of my head is how Apple tried, slowly yet consistently, improve their iPhones with the "S" versions, which is always an improvement from the ones without the "S" (think: iPhone 4 antenna and iPhone 4S antenna). As John Gruber pointed out in his conclusion,

That mindset and development schedule — “What can we do to make this nicer by next year?” — may well be the most important thing from iOS that Apple has taken back to the Mac.

Again, Mountain Lion isn't perfect. I'm fairly sure that we'll still discover more hidden bugs as we use Mountain Lion in our daily lives. But for now, it's as good as it gets. Frankly, it is probably the best way to spend $19.99 today, if you have a compatible machine. If you don't, too bad. 

PS: You just read 1581 words. That is 1/16 of John Siracusa's.

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Giveaway informations are here, at the bottom of the post. 

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The World that Forgot About BlackBerry

In the midst of the new tablet rush, I completely forgot about RIM and when I came home today to see that they had released a tablet, I was stunned. Let me just start off by saying that I am completely blown away by the Blackberry Playbook. When I read the specs, I found out that this thing was a monster. A tablet packing a dual-core processor? Jeez. Two HD cameras, HDMI out, and much more. I think RIM made the right choice by waiting to enter the tablet market, because they just took features everyone wanted in the iPad, and put it in their product. And that new Blackberry Tablet OS, it looks great.

For people like me who don't want the size of the iPad, but also do not want a horrible Android tablet, this product is going to be a huge hit. I personally decided that if it is affordable for me, I will purchase one. I hope RIM releases more hands-on videos with the Playbook soon, and that when the SDK comes out in a couple weeks, developers flood in and create some high-quality applications that will be ready come launch in early 2011. So do you think that this could be an iPad killer? I personally do not think it will "kill" the iPad, but it will add some good competition in the tablet market. Let me know what you think.

This Week in Phones #2 - The KIN Phones

Microsoft’s newest entries into the cell phone market are the KIN phones: Kin 1 and Kin 2. Today these phones became available on Verizon Wireless’s online store only, but will soon be available in their retail stores. When these phones were announced, many bloggers criticized the KIN, saying this phone would fail soon after it came out. In this article, I would like to share with you some of the specs of the KIN.

First off, Microsoft makes two KINs: One with a vertical sliding QWERTY keyboard and one with a vertical sliding keyboard. Both phones have a touchscreen and an impressive camera. The Kin 1 has a 2.6” inch touchscreen and the Kin 2 has a 3.4” inch touchscreen. The Kin 1 has a 5 megapixel camera and the Kin 2 has an 8 megapixel camera. Both phones have Wi-Fi and a custom Windows OS. On paper that sounds like a good phone, but the phone does have some short comings.

Both Kins have 8GB of unexpandable memory, which is unfortunate. The second short coming is the price. The phones are technically “smart phones” and are priced competitively. Microsoft claims these phones are smart phones, but are aimed at teens and early 20’s users. That means you need to have a data plan, which starts at $30 per month. So if you’re a teen buying this phone, convincing your parents to pay $30 per month for data might be kind of tough for some people.

In conclusion, this phone should really be marketed as a multimedia phone since they’re trying to go after young people. I am interested to see where this phone goes. I think it has an interesting design and feature set, so I’m really interested to see what owners do with their Kins and whether they’ll like it or not.

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iPhone OS 4 Beta Hands On & Preview

What's up guys? This is my preview of the iPhone OS 4 Developer Beta that was released a couple days ago on April 8th 2010 (Consumer release date is Summer 2010). There was a lot of new and cool features released with this new version of the iPhone software, and I am really excited to see where developers take some of the new API's they have been given.

Just a quick reminder, never - NEVER download the iPhone 4 Beta firmware from a torrent or third party site unless your are an Apple developer. If you update your iPhone to the new firmware and your device isn't registered for development with Apple, your iPhone will no longer work and your warranty doesn't cover it.

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iPhone OS 4.0

Hey guys I know it has been awhile since my last post. I have just been really busy with everything but today I am really excited to share with you iPhone OS 4.0 and my thoughts on it. Yes, I know this was released yesterday but I had some previous jobs I had to do. So here it is.

First I will go over the 4 major new features that were gone over in the keynote because I just don't have time to write about all 100 new features. The first new feature I will go over is multitasking. This is a real big addition to the iPhone OS. One reason for this is because their biggest competitors have been able to multitask on their devices for a long time. Apple claims that they haven't had it on their platform until now because they wanted to wait until they had it just right. What they mean by this is not only the interface of it but while using multitasking you wont kill your battery or lose a lot of the phones power. Multitasking will let the customer play music from other apps while they go into another app. For example a user could be listening to their Pandora account and then close out of it and go into another app and the music wouldn't stop like it use to. Another way to use multitasking is by using VOIP or Voice over IP. This is like taking a skype call and then closing out and staying on the call and being able to go play a game. This is a real big thing for many people. The next big feature that was added is folders. Folders will let the user put all the apps they want in one place. With a simple drop one app on top of another app you will be making folders. You will even be able to name the folders. For those of you that ran out of space because you could only have 180 apps on your device you will now be able to have 2,160 apps with these new folders. The next big feature that was added is an even better mail app. With this new mail app you will be able to have multiple exchange accounts hooked up to the same device. You will also have the option to show all your email accounts in one big inbox so you don't have to keep switching back and fourth between the different inbox. Other parts of the new mail app include being able to open attachments in third party apps, organizing messages by thread, and switching between inbox faster. The last major feature that they showed off was iBooks. Now yes iBooks was released with the iPad but now Apple has brought that same app, book store, and all the other books you have bought to the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can even do this while listening to music. One other cool new thing they talked about and showed but didn't go into much detail was about being able to change you home screen background. You now will be able to have what ever picture you want as your background and it doesn't have to stay black. At the keynote that also went over a new thing called iAD and Enterprise. They also went over the fact that there is now over 1,500 new APIs for developers to use and make their apps do what we just talked about. iAD in a quick little description is Apples new way to put ads in developers apps so that they can keep them free and still make money.It is a really cool and interactive way to put ads in apps. Enterprise is for companies. This will let companies easily deploy many iPhones through out their company. This will also let them make and distribute apps just for their company very easily to every one. A cool new thing about that for them is that they wont even need to plug in their phones and sync the apps they will be able to do it wireless. Now here is the catch this is a direct quote for apple.com " Phone OS 4 will work with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the second- and third-generation iPod touch this summer, and with iPad in the fall. Not all features are compatible with all devices. For example, multitasking is available only with iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch (32GB and 64GB models from late 2009)."

Now for my feelings and impressions about the new iPhone OS. Over all I am very happy about all the new features and will love to have them on my iPod Touch. The only downfall is that I wont be able to multitask on it because I have the 2nd Generation. This disappoints me very much because this is something that I have been looking forward to for a long time. Now if we put that aside I am extremely happy. I will be able to set one of my own pictures as the background and these new folders will let my organize my minimal app collection. I will also be able to merge my inbox and for me this isn't the biggest thing because I really only get mail in one inbox but when I do get mail from the other mail box I wont have to spend the time to switch to it. Another feature that was talked about but I wont be using is the feature of being able to have multiple exchange accounts. The first and the biggest reason is that I don't even have one exchange account so this doesn't effect me. Now for the iBooks app. I'm not the biggest reader and for that I rarely read at all. When I do read it is in school and during school I cant pull out my iPod and claim to be reading so I most likely won't be using this app but if for some reason I do decide to download a book and read it using this app from what I know the experience will be great. Over all as you can tell I am very happy with the turn out of iPhone OS 4.0 and can't wait to use it this summer.

iPhone OS 4.0 will be available this summer for the iPhone and iPod Touch and then later this fall for the iPad. There is no price that it will be going for at the time. For more information on iPhone OS 4.0 go to http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/. You can also download the keynote or watch it one apple.com for more information and demos of everything talked about.

For more of my work go to http://applman02-appleworld.blogspot.com/. Thanks.