As said by Apple in the iPhone 5 event, iOS 6 and OS X 10.8.2 has been released yesterday. iOS 6 kicks out both YouTube as well as Google Maps from the default apps list, though you can download them from the Appstore as always (Google Maps should be available soon on iOS).
Both iOS 6 and OSX 10.8.2 have deep Facebook integration, just like the Twitter integration introduced in the last iteration of iOS. Apart from that, iOS 6 sports a better Siri, Facetime over 3G, Safari tab sync, Panaroma and lot more.
The update is available for iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S and iPod Touch 4G, also for iPad 2 and 3. Apparently, older models like iPhone 3GS doesn’t get all the features – Turn by turn navigation for example. But still it’s getting the update, which is a lot better than the situation of Android phones.
Coming to OS X, Apple finally seems to fix the battery life issue with 10.8.2. I personally saw a drop of 80 minutes of battery when I upgraded to Mountain Lion from Lion. There are also updates for Gamecenter, iMessage and support for Passbook has been added.
There is also another update for mid-2012 Macbooks which fixes a OS hanging issue. The update is just 4MB in size.
Have you updated your iPhones or Macs? Make sure you do, because it’s free. 😉
While Facebook’s Timeline interface got a lot of criticism, the cover photo feature was pretty cool and Google+ grabbed it with the new design. Now, after Google+, here comes Twitter mimicking the feature.
Twitter calls it as ‘header photo’, to get yourself one, go to the Design tab of Twitter settings, scroll down to header section and you’ll be allowed to upload an image with a maximum resolution of 1252 X 626 px.
Apparently, there’s some default styling added to the image to increase readability of text on it.
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You’ll also notice a ‘Me’ tab in the navigation bar on Twitter web.
You can still add a custom background and header photos are visible everywhere even on official Twitter clients for Android/iOS.
Twitter for Android and iPhone/iPad got updated today with a bunch of features (along with support for header photos) – On Mobile, your Twitter photo stream will be shown below your tweets.
On a whole, this update for Twitter makes it for a richer experience, both on Mobile and desktop.
The updates must be rolling out for everyone soon.
Microsoft is all set to release Windows 8 for public in the coming weeks. Apparently, the biggest change in Windows 8 seems to be the Metro UI (I know it’s no more called Metro, but let’s keep it like that for simplicity) and apps.
I’ve been using this OS for a while now and the biggest disappointment seems to be the Appstore – The Windows 8 Appstore. Here’s why.
No 0.99$ apps
People love buying 99-cent apps, because that’s the cheapest an app can get. Browse the top paid apps on Mac Appstore, you’ll see apps like Shortcuts for Mac, Live Wallpaper in the top 10 paid apps – they all cost 0.99$.
I’m not sure if Microsoft is taking more time to approve apps on Windows store, but I don’t see any new titles in the Store. It hardly gets updated. The Windows store only allows Metro apps and I don’t think developers are OK with this.
I won’t be surprised if most of the developers prefer to host the apps on their websites and make them non-metro. If this continues, Windows 8 will get the same criticism Windows Phone got, i.e. less apps.
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Apps are less advanced
Metro is great on tablets, but on desktop, it looks like an OS with dumbed down apps. Take Skitch for example, it is an app for taking and editing screenshots and was previously a Mac-only app but recently came to Windows 8. Just compare these two apps and you’ll know what I meant.
Here’s how Skitch looks in Windows 8:
And now, this is the Mac version of Skitch:
Another example can be Newsmix, an app which will let you read stuff that matters to you – in a Magazine layout. Apparently, this app is a fail for someone like me who subscribe to 50+ blogs.
Sure, it will be great on a Windows slate, but not really on a PC/laptop.
No Games
The ‘dumbing down’ philosophy can be applied here too. Most of the games are just ported from Smartphones and that’s the actual problem.
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Fruit Ninja is one of such games, it’s great on Android/iOS, but on a 13″ screen of mine and using mouse/trackpad to cut the fruits? No way. Imagine how Doodle Jump would be without a motion sensor and playing with just arrow keys.
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I’m not expecting EA or Rockstar Games to suddenly start pushing games on Windows Store, but most of the games which are ported from Smartphones to Windows 8 suck.
Final Note
Here I don’t mean to say Mac Appstore is great, it is not, but it’s much better than what Windows Appstore is right now. Unless Microsoft fixes this, Windows 8 will not be a complete OS.
What are your thoughts on Windows Appstore and Windows 8 in general? Put that in the comments.
When Apple first released iCloud, it was only available on Apple devices and not on the web. After a few months they released a web app with iCloud.com and it was in beta.
Now that iOS 6 is going to available for download soon, they’ve removed the beta tag and the service is now public.
The service now features Notes and Reminders which have been added to OS X Mountain Lion, along with update to Find My iPhone – which has remote lock, remote wipe and play sound features.
Also, you will see notifications synced via Notification center on iOS 5 (or later) and OS X 10.8.
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The webapp is really neat in design, it will feel more like a native app instead. They should probably add iMessage to the list of apps, allowing you to send messages right from the website.
Getting your iCloud account hacked can be really nasty as the hacker can wipe out everything that’s there on each of your Apple devices, remember the story of Mat Honan?
You can setup an iCloud account with your existing Apple account via your iPhone/iPad or Mac’s settings.
Chances are you don’t really know web designing, but you want to create a little website for you – which can act as a landing page or even a resume/portfolio of you.
While there are many website builders available on the web, most of them aren’t simple or free or not quick. Striking.ly wants to change this.
Creating a webpage is really simple – to get started, you need to signup for a free account. After you do that, you’ll be shown around six predesigned templates (which are really neat) for your webpage.
Hit preview to see how the template looks, select it and you’ll be asked for details like page name, URL etc.
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You can edit pretty much anything on the template – including text, images, videos etc. Though, you won’t be able to edit the HTML source. You can also do some SEO like adding meta tags, page description etc.
The service is free, but there’s also a Pro version available which will let you access features like custom domain, Google Analytics, more bandwidth storage, etc. The free version will be enough for starters.
Writing apps are in plenty for Mac. In fact, almost every month a new distraction-free writing app will popup in the Mac Appstore. Grandview too is a writing app aiming at simplicity, but it’s different.
Grandview’s interface
When you launch Grandview, you get nothing but a white screen, and that is all. It lets you see what you’re typing, just one word at a time, that’s the biggest difference between any writing app and Grandview.
Showing one word at a time results in huge font size, so you concentrate in nothing but the text. Hit ⌘= (all keyboard shortcuts are customizable) to get the full view.
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There’s no spell correction or word count or markdown support or any other fancy features.
Grandview lives in your Mac’s menubar, and what ever you type in the app, gets copied to clipboard automatically.
Apparently, it is not a great word processor but can work very well with those. You can customize the font, background color and more in app settings. Just make sure you select a high quality font, because the text is huge in the app.
Grandview Demo
Here’s a demo video of the app.
The app is free (it was shareware previously) and can be downloaded from the Mac Appstore.
Continuing its spree of buying startups, Google gets their hands on Virus Total, a nice web service which checks files for viruses.
Virus Total checks files for viruses using over 42 different Anti-virus software and shows the result of each Anti-virus after the scanning gets completed. It’s a web app, so there’s nothing to download or install.
You can also check websites for viruses and they have a community rating the same. But I guess, WOT (Web of Trust) is a better tool if you want to check credibility of a website.
Apparently, as Google has now acquired them, they have access to better infrastructure. May be we’ll get to see better features like faster scanning, increasing the upload limit etc.
Google can even try integrating this into Google products like Drive or even Chrome/ChromeOS. But from what I understood from their blog post, Google won’t be shutting down this service, unlike what happened to previous acquisitions.
Microsoft is about to release Windows 8 for public – which is a change that not only affects the Windows OS, but literally every Microsoft product, i.e. it’s a full blown change for the company. On the other hand, Apple has lately introduced OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, attempting to add more iPhone-like features to Mac.
So how do these both compare? Read on.
Windows 8 Vs. OS X Mountain Lion
Note: Just to be clear, here I’m comparing Windows 8 Release Preview (which will be largely similar to the RTM version) and OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1.
Ease of use
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Like any other Apple product, Mac boasts a minimal and a simple interface, that’s something which has been there since years. Basics like app installation is very streamlined in Mac, simply dragging a .app file into the Application folder will install the app.
Windows 8 brings a mobile-focused interface to desktop – nope, it’s no more called Metro. There are two problems here – one, Windows Phone is not a popular OS and people hardly know anything about it. So it’ll be a real test for them to get adapt to something totally new.
Secondly. the mobile-inspired interface doesn’t go so well on a desktop – for example, there are so many invisible interface elements (on edges of screen), multi-tasking with apps seems to be more time consuming, etc. Heck, shutting down your system is a 4-step process.
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Winner: Mac
Features
Firstly, Mountain Lion has Notification center, a great addition to the OS. Next up, there’s Dictation built into literally every Mac app, just press the fn key twice and start speaking. There’s also built in sharing – integrating with Twitter and Facebook.
Though not specific to Mountain Lion, there are many unique OS X features like Mission control (for better multitasking), Writer tools (dictionary, grammer check, text substitution), customizing system-wide keyboard shortcuts, turning your Mac into a WiFi Hotspot (on Windows, you need Connectify), numerous trackpad gestures, setup hot corners, remapping keyboard keys and lot more. There is also Bootcamp which lets you install Windows on it, and this single feature can matter a lot if you’re someone who uses Multiple OSes.
On the other hand, Windows 8 does have some handy features like in-app search that lets you search content of any app from the charms bar. Then comes the Share feature allowing you to share to your social networks through Metro apps which are installed on your PC. In short, this works a bit like Android share intents. The downside? It only works in the Metro environment. So you got to use Google Chrome’s Metro version if you want to share.
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Windows To Go is one of those unique features which lets you boot into your WIndows from a USB, though the feature is only available in Windows 8 Pro. Syncing Windows settings to your Microsoft account is also a nifty feature.
While many of you might think Mac isn’t for power users (in fact I was one of them), the fact is Mac balances very well between interface and features.
Winner: Mac
Speed
I ran Lion for over 10 days on my new MBP, it was pretty fast, but Mountain Lion just ruined it. Be it booting or opening apps or shutting down – all these take more time. Apple seriously needs to release a fix for this.
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Speed is one of the major pros of Windows 8, it boots really fast and the OS is very responsive. As you’ve guessed, Metro apps are fluid and don’t lag at all. If you’ve got a Netbook, just blindly get this OS.
Winner: Windows
Interface
I won’t say much here, because it’s all about taste, which varies. But the reason I prefer Mac’s interface to that of Windows 8 is, here Apple isn’t shoving down your throat with a completely new thing which you’re not sure if you will adapt to. And if you want that ‘prettiness’, go to the Mac appstore and randomly checkout a few apps – most of them are very well designed.
Metro is beautiful, smooth and fast – that’s all the positive part of it. But there are many annoyances too, like – full screen apps, while I need a simple and small Twitter client, something like MetroTwit just won’t cut it for me. To close an app, you got to drag it from top and push it to bottom, I will prefer a simple exit button instead. Horizontal scrolling just feels weird.
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Winner: Mac
Apps
There is a reason why most of the designers, photographers, musicians use Mac. It’s the wide range of exclusive apps available for the OS – like, you have Coda for web design, Aperture for photos, Garageband for music, Cloudapp for sharing, etc. Especially, there are so many apps which come under Productivity category.
This is a part where WIndows 8 gets a big blow, simply put, the apps aren’t ready.The Windows store hardly gets updated, it is the same apps getting featured since months. Another valid question is, will developers come forward to write Metro apps or do they stick to desktop apps? This is all messy and can annoy the customers.
Of course, I’m not including Games here. If you’re a Gamer, then you should get a PC, but don’t forget that you can run Windows on a Mac (in fact, I use Windows on Bootcamp for gaming).
Winner: Mac
Choice of Hardware
With OS X, you’re restricted to a set of laptops and desktops, but with Windows you have hundreds of them to choose from. Apparently, you can even build your own PC with the hardware of your choice, if you’re a bit geeky. Freedom matters, so Windows wins.
Winner: Windows
Final comments
I’ve been using Windows for years and just recently switched to Mac – I love the OS and do prefer it to Windows. At the end of the day, it’s about choosing what works for you than anything.
Final Winner: Mac
Do you use a Mac? Or have you given Windows 8 a try? Hit up in the comments.
If you get a lot of Email daily, then you must also be spending a lot of time in reading and replying to them. The problem is, the constant stream of incoming Email make it hard to concentrate on doing that.
Inbox Pause is a nice little Chrome extension which solves this by adding a pause button in Gmail. Just hit the blue ‘Pause’ button in Gmail’s side bar, authorize the app through your Google account and the service will become active.
In short, it’ll aggregate all your incoming Email and show it when you resume it. You get to see a yellow bar on the top when the service goes active, notifying you to click the ‘Unpause’ button to stop the service.
You can also setup an automated message for incoming mail, but I think it hardly helps in any way, as people mostly end up sending a chat message if it’s urgent.
The extension is made by the same people who developed Boomerang for Gmail, a very popular plugin for scheduling Emails.
How do you handle Email overload? Put that in the comments.
Wolfram|Alpha, the impressive computational engine now can tell a lot about you by collecting data from your Facebook account. If you’re an over-sharer, it can get a little creepy too!
All you need is a Wolfram account and a Facebook account (obviously) and you’re good to go. Login to your Wolfram account, authenticate the app through Facebook and type “facebook report” in search box. It’ll take a bit of time depending on how much of your data is stored on Facebook.
You’ll get to see a lot of information like your most popular status, number of likes/comments, most contacted friends, your post frequency etc.
If you’re feeling a bit privacy deprived, note that Wolfram|Alpha will only store the data for one hour, deleting it afterwards. Also, you can always revoke apps through Facebook app settings.
You can also download the page if you’ve subscribed to Wolfram|Alpha pro, which also unlocks a lot of features.
