I've been using the new OSX 10.7 "Lion" for about 12 hours, and there's one feature that really busts my balls. Scroll bars still work the way they always did. Move it up, the window goes down. Move it down, the window goes up. But the default behavior for mouse wheels and two-finger scrolling is reversed ( Read more... )

In a previous post I was discouraged that the iPod Nano was getting "iPhone-ified". I wrote:

I think Apple is going too far with this iPhone thing. The original was and still is a great product. But then they made the iPad - which still just seems like an iPhone for clowns - and now they've made the Nano into an iPhone for dwarves. I don't ( Read more... )

I've previously explained the value of nonmodal controls for partial attention situations. If you're driving, or biking, or jogging, or doing anything where 90% of your time is on the thing you ought to be doing you really don't want to be looking down at your hands.

I've got an iPod Touch, but for the above situations I prefer my Nano. I can ( Read more... )

Being an underdog an advantage in the diminished expectations department. Your failures are diminished because you're the underdog. You're expected to fail. Your successes are magnified into even bigger successes because you're the underdog. You're beating the big guys at their own game. It's win-win ( Read more... )

Last November I told you to wait for the next update before buying a Macbook Pro, since the new ones were definitely coming out any day now. Since then, after half a year of messing around with giant iPhones, Apple finally shipped an open mobile device that I'm actually interested in buying. The MacBook Pro line has finally been updated after 11 ( Read more... )

I was thinking about the iPad a little more, and I think its success is far less certain than the iPhone or MacBook ( Read more... )

Apple's iPhone launch did not allow developers to write apps, with some saying this might never happen. I complained that they were missing a huge draw - an ecosystem of developers that could fill every niche that Apple's own developers couldn't anticipate. I heard various excuses for why we couldn't have apps from security issues and concerns ( Read more... )

ikkyu2 asked me to weigh in on his purchase of a fancy new MacBook Pro and I figured now's a good time to talk about where the hardware is right now. Short summary: not a lot has changed, you can still get the same stuff as cheap last-gen refurbs, there's an imminent hardware update, and when the update comes it'll be relatively significant ( Read more... )

The new trackpad on my MacBook is driving me nuts ( Read more... )

Apple's most recent 15" MacBook Pro is not too much different than the old one. Same chipset, same CPUs, same graphics card, same ports, same generous 8GB/ $700 memory limit. The two are similar enough that even after the new model was announced, Apple wasn't offering a discount on the last models: the 2.66Ghz is $2000 either way. I decided to buy ( Read more... )