See if you can find what’s wrong in the pictures below. The first is from iTunes on my Mac:
Archive for July 2008
The People Have Spoken! By Popular Demand, a Full Text Feed.
In General on Wednesday, 30 July 2008 at 13:39Due to an overwhelming number of requests (alright, I’m lying, but it was more than one, ok?) my site feed now contains the full article text, not just a summary.
Enjoy.
Daring Fireball and the Power of Positive Linking.
In General on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 at 22:07Daring Fireball linked to an article of mine on Monday. What happened after that was rather interesting for me to observe.
My blog is a modest one, with subscribers in the low (really low) triple digits. I’ve been on WordPress since January and had established a pattern of traffic. To be sure, new articles varied in the amount of views they obtained, but overall my traffic pattern was quite predictable.
Then came The Link.
Microsoft Vista Adoption Survey is Flawed.
In General on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 at 14:25A recent survey of over a thousand IT pros reveals potential Vista deployments dropping from a similar survey performed a year ago. At first blush this looks like bad news for Microsoft.
However, the new survey is flawed. It specifically asked about Vista deployments. Obviously, these same IT pros would have fallen all over themselves in a rush to deploy Navajo.
Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App.
In General on Sunday, 27 July 2008 at 22:02Apple’s iPhone Remote application is great. It’s so convenient to control an entire iTunes library — and any AirTunes speakers — from any iPhone or iPod touch.
But instead of telling you how great it is I’d rather take the time to request that Apple add the Remote app’s interface improvements to the iPhone’s native iPod interface. In my opinion, the native iPod interface on the iPhone/iPod touch no longer makes it the best iPod ever. The Remote app’s interface supersedes it. Let’s take a look…
Apple Posts MobileMe Status Page With RSS Feed.
In General on Friday, 25 July 2008 at 22:32See it and subscribe here.
This was a good idea, and they seem to be “coming clean” with some details of the extent of the damage caused so far. For example, in referring to the infamous 1% of users with no email access:
As of today a team was able to restore limited web access to those accounts so the affected members can use their browsers to read mail that has arrived since last Friday (though not before) as well as send and receive new mail. The team has already begun rolling out restoration of full access for all the accounts and expect to finish by the end of next week. We particularly regret to report the loss in the affected accounts of approximately 10% of the messages received between July 16 and July 18.
Not the best of news, but better than Apple’s communicated so far. Another interesting tidbit is this:
We’ve since added server capacity and tuned our software to scale better — i.e. behave more gracefully when traffic spikes. The team has also fixed over 70 bugs…
They’ve already added server capacity? They only launched two weeks ago, yet they had servers sitting around available for adding? Either they got those servers in place very fast — and clearly miscalculated what was needed at launch — or they launched without all the servers online.
I’ve subscribed to the feed and am anxious to see what updates we get in the coming days.
Compared to the 1% above my problems are minor (but quite annoying), and in total they harm the MobileMe experience. Further, it’s hard to be comfortable with this system knowing that some people are getting rocked by it. Until the system truly settles down, there’s no particular reason to think any subscribed account couldn’t be next.
Microsoft Navajo (a.k.a. Vista): If you don’t install it, or configure it, or use peripherals, or care about performance, or aren’t bothered by dubious security warnings, and use it for just a few minutes in a controlled environment, then Vista is great!
In General on Friday, 25 July 2008 at 11:03Oh brother. Aside from the silly “flat earth” ad, Microsoft apparently has some simplistic ads in the pipeline about Vista.
Bottom line is that Microsoft took people who’d heard bad things about Vista, showed them a “new” OS called “Navajo” and they were impressed. Ta Da! Navajo is actually Vista!
The MobileMe Disaster Spreads.
In General on Thursday, 24 July 2008 at 12:45I’ve written about MobileMe’s horrid rollout on two separate occasions (more, if you consider the updates and comments of those posts). I’m happy to see some heavy hitters are now calling Apple on it as well.
Walt Mossberg and David Pogue both blasted Apple on this today. Even the extremely pro-Apple MacDailyNews site had this to say in their “take” on Pogue’s article (emphasis theirs):
Microsoft Vista’s New Ad Campaign: Bad Analogy.
In General on Tuesday, 22 July 2008 at 22:10Not sure what to make of Microsoft’s new ad strategy.
I do know one thing: They should have used a better analogy. This one’s too easy to make fun of. For example, I see it more like this:
WordPress iPhone Blog App.
In General on Monday, 21 July 2008 at 20:54Automattic released a WordPress blogging app for the iPhone today.
See the screenshot below for how it looks when writing.
Hmmm, you don’t see photos when you do a preview, so you have to take the app’s word for it. This throws a wrench into embedding Safari for live previews.
I deliberately quit the app and it saved my post, which was nice.
I don’t know how much I’ll use this, but if nothing else I can start posts here and save them as drafts. In the past if I had a blog idea I’d type them in the iPhone’s notes app and email it to me.
OK, these two paragraphs are being added from the WordPress blog on my iMac. This thing is actually pretty slick. After typing the above paragraph I looked for the draft on the web site and couldn’t find it. Duh! I guess it’s called a local draft for a reason. Anyway, you can bang it out and modify it all you want locally on the iPhone, and then either publish it or promote it to a draft on the web site. Which is what I did.
On the web site it shows in the draft folder, but on the iPhone it shows up in the list of the 30 most recent posts. In fact, in that list it’s impossible to know if it’s published or a draft unless you click the post and check the status (see below):
Sorry to keep switching on you, but the above picture and this paragraph are courtesy of the iPhone again. This is actually pretty sweet, considering I just installed it and haven’t read how to use it yet. Once it’s a draft on the web site the iPhone can still edit it, though there appears to be no way to make the draft local again.
OK, this final paragraph is courtesy of the iMac, and now I’ll publish it via the iPhone.
[UPDATE:] This update is from the iPhone, and as you can see it published just fine.
This app is going to be more useful than I thought. Biggest drawback is it’s not WYSIWYG, but it will be great for drafts and edits and inserting iPhone pictures without having to email them to me first.
[UPDATE #2:] Another update from the iPhone. In playing more with this app it’s clear local drafts are just meant for banging out rough ideas or text. Inserted pictures give no indication of being there, and in preview mode it just displays text that says a picture will be added to the bottom of the post.
Web drafts, however, are great. Though not WYSIWYG, when editing it shows the HTML code so you can verify the picture was placed where you wanted it. Further, preview mode displays the pictures beautifully. Embedding the Safari browser was a good idea after all. This is good stuff.
Stanza: The iPhone Becomes a Great E-book Reader.
In General on Sunday, 20 July 2008 at 22:04I doubt the folks making Amazon’s Kindle are scared, but I’m surprised at how much I’m reading books on the iPhone now that I have the 2.0 software and the Stanza application.
There are lots of books or readers for the iPhone, so why did I finally settle on Stanza? There are four reasons:
MobileMe: It Sucks When You’re That 1%.
In General on Saturday, 19 July 2008 at 16:22
I’ve made no secret of the fact that the MobileMe rollout was a disaster. It isn’t over yet.
Apple’s apologies (one to all users, another to trial subscribers erroneously billed early) were the right thing to do, and I appreciate Apple for doing it. And of course their 30-day subscriber extensions (one each to the two groups above) are also a great gesture.
The iPod Touch Needs a Speaker: What To Do With An Old iPhone.
In General on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 22:03I wrote earlier about why I’m not upgrading to and iPhone 3G at this time, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t given some thought as to what will become of my beloved original 8GB model.
After working with the 2.0 software and App Store for the last few days on my iPhone and my daughter’s iPod touch, I think I know…
One Reason Not To Upgrade To An iPhone 3G.
In General on Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 10:46I am not upgrading to an iPhone 3G at this time. The reason for this is one I haven’t seen mentioned before, so I’ll mention it for others to consider if they haven’t already.
Push From the iPhone, the Web, and the Mac: Well, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.
In General on Monday, 14 July 2008 at 22:22One thing I learned while determining how to share push calendars and contacts with one MobileMe account was that the iPhone will push, and the MobileMe web apps will push, but the Mac (and PC) does not push.
Bummer.
iPhone 2.0 and MobileMe: Shared Calendar and Contact Pushing.
In General on Monday, 14 July 2008 at 22:22I have two iPhones and two Macs that were sharing the same Calendar and Contacts. Each Mac/phone had unique email, bookmarks, music, etc., but the calendars and contacts were identical.
I have one .Mac account and purchased an additional email account, so how did I do it?
UPDATE: Dear Apple: You Can Shut MobileMe Down Again.
In General on Thursday, 10 July 2008 at 15:42See the end of this article (and the comments) for a couple of updates.
Soon I’ll write about how I put on the iPhone 2.0 software this morning, and have been running it all day. It went smoothly and works wonderfully.
I’ll write that Exchange sync works great (just email, I’m not using it for contacts or calendars).
I’ll write that the new MobileMe “push” services work great so far. Tried emails, contacts and calendars and it’s working just like it’s designed. That is, comparing the phone to my desktop apps I can see data entered in either place move back and forth.
I’ll write about the App store and how sweet it is, and that the new freebie Remote app is so cool.
But that will all come later, for now I just want to say to Apple that the MobileMe site was up early today, and then shut down (I didn’t try it then). Now it’s back up and, Apple, you should shut it down again. Quickly. Before you become the laughingstock of the industry.
S-L-O-W. Disgustingly and embarrassingly slow. Setting new world records in slowness. So slow that, for all practical purposes, it’s unusable. And that’s the good news, because at least when it’s slow it’s working. I have yet to get contacts to pull up on this thing. I get calendars — sometimes — but then get server crashes. Or Safari will tell me it can’t display the page. It’s a miserable experience
Apple, shut it down and fix it. Google and Microsoft are both laughing their asses off at your first real step into cloud computing. They may have been a little worried yesterday. Not now.
[UPDATE:] Not very long after I wrote this post the MobileMe site was shut down again. Good. Apple has stated that everything about MobileMe is working except the web aps, but the push features that worked for me all day today are no longer functioning, and other people are having issues as well. This is more than just the web apps.
Meanwhile, to keep informed about if MobileMe is up just check here.
[UPDATE #2:] As of noon on 7/11, things are no better with MobileMe than yesterday. Apple’s having a bad day today, what with their app store and activation servers getting barraged with requests. No surprise there, and I do not believe Apple should add hundreds of servers just to get over the peaks this weekend. All the issues related to activity will sort themselves out over time, and do not necessarily point to any bugs on Apple’s (or AT&T’s) part (though I think Apple should have staggered the 2.0 availability, i.e., roll out the iPhone 3G for a week and then make the 2.0 software available for the 2G unit).
However, the MobileMe fiasco does not fit into the above category of issues with the new iPhone, software, and App Store. This is not about server activity because only valid .Mac subscribers and trials would be accessing the servers. And yet Apple’s been at it now for over 40 hours!! There is a problem there. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big, and they can’t seem to find it.
Another Day, Another iMac Wannabe.
In General on Tuesday, 8 July 2008 at 22:04
There’s a new iMac competitor in town from Averatec. It’s name is incredibly bad if not descriptive: All-In-One PC.
Regarding other iMac wannabes, Gateway’s One was rather unimpressive in the specs department, but Dell’s One (yes, the same name as the Gateway) seemed to be a worthwhile machine. I wrote up the Dell here, but as you can see in that post’s subsequent updates it turned out to be a bit of a bust.
So let’s look at this latest entrant in the iMac ring…
Thurrott Fun With Headlines: Holiday iShill Edition.
In General on Friday, 4 July 2008 at 11:46Paul Thurrot’s occasional Fun With Headlines posts are usually pretty harmless. Sure, he uses them to get in one-sentence jabs at Apple now and then, but despite his claims to the contrary that’s his job, so no big deal.
Today, however, he must be unusually mad at Apple, so let’s see what his 4th of July Edition has to say:
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