Eagerly awaiting the new Apple tablet? Me too. With dozens of stories on newspaper sites and in blogs every day however, the wait is becoming tiresome. You’ve got hand it to Apple for marketing smarts.
So, before it exists anywhere outside of our collective imagination, step into Tablet Sutra, the at-times-awkward position-by-position walkthrough of tablet handling…
That’s a legitimate point. How are we going to handle the tablet? If it’s around ten inches in size, that’s tiny to rest comfortably on your lap, as the image above shows.
I think we’re about to see the launch of an entire new industry, in Apple tablet accessories, like trays. No doubt the tray will double as a hard case for the tablet. Gimme one in purple, with a silver Apple logo, please…
If you pre-ordered Snow Leopard, the big day has arrived. I pre-ordered, and at 9.10 AM on Friday August 28, the courier arrived. Snow Leopard was installed, and working great so far, at 11.10 AM.
The install (I used the default installation option) took one hour, and didn’t require any intervention from me at all.
Preparations I made for the big install
In the week leading up to “Install Day” I tidied up my hard drive, and checked for Snow Leopard-ready versions of the software I use every day.
Two of my favourite programs, 1Password and RapidWeaver had beta versions, so I downloaded those and installed them. (I installed 1Password after I installed Snow Leopard, because it’s SL-only.)
Just before I ran the installation, I ran Time Machine to back up, and Super Duper as well, so that I had a bootable copy of my hard drive.
Am I happy? Yes! I’m pleased I’ve done it. I can now relax. Happy installation to you, too.
“The newest release of Curio (5.4) now has seamless integration with Evernote. All of your Evernote items appear within the Curio sidebar, where they can easily be dragged into your Curio workspace. The two programs complement each other well…Evernote is excellent for collecting information and ideas, while Curio is suited to engage and develop those ideas.”
Here’s what makes the Curio/ Evernote combo sizzle — when you use the Evernote iPhone app. You can take photos in the iPhone Evernote app, and then use them in Curio as soon as Evernote syncs. I use this to take photos of bibliographies in books at the library, in the supermarket to photograph labels (a family member has allergies), as well as in stores to take quick snaps of products I want to tell friends about.
“‘I look at it like Apple paid me $10 million to show my application on every single major network, every major television show — no, I can’t even put a figure on it,’ Mr. Waite said.”
It’s a lovely story: instant stardom, and of course, instant money.
“Siri is a virtual assistant that is focused on helping consumers complete tasks in their online lives, particularly in the mobile context. The version I looked at runs on the iPhone.
Typical use cases are booking dinner reservations, buying movie tickets, getting local information, or finding things to do in your local area.”
If you’re like me, you think visually, and create lots of mind maps.
I rely on mind maps for just about everything, and although I have all the major commercial mind mapping applications like MindManager and NovaMind Pro, I nevertheless like to use index cards for real-time mind maps that no one else sees.
I’ll record my index card creations by snapping a photo with iSight, from the indispensable EverNote application — this is free if you use the basic service; I’ve opted for the Premium.
Now there’s another way to mind map casually — on your iPhone. I’ve just started using iBlueSky, which is fun, because it sends my creations to any email address.
“iBlueSky (iTunes link) takes things a small step further (and costs a little more at $7.99USD). While the basic interface is the same, there are multiple benefits to this one. First, it adds landscape mode, which is an improvement for both editing and viewing.”
“The Mac Observer speculates that Psystar may have had some financial backers who hoped to see the limitations in the Mac OS X EULA ruled invalid. Those financial backers could have pulled out after deciding that Apple is likely to prevail in court. In fact, Apple has long suspected there were others behind Psystar’s rather brash attempt to market generic PCs with Mac OS preinstalled, naming them as Joe Does in the lawsuit. If such parties exist, they will have to be revealed in further bankruptcy filings due June 5.”
If there were financial backers, it will be interesting to see who they are.
“Apple may have a smaller-footprint, sub-$1000 notebook in the works after all, despite COO Tim Cook’s poo-pooing of typical netbooks during last week’s quarterly earnings call. Why do we say that? A reference to a computer model identified as a ‘MacBookMini’ has shown up in stat logs for the Mac OS X chat client Adium X.”
Excellent. I love my iPod touch, but I can’t type on it — my fingers keep hitting the wrong keys. Nor do I like reading on it, so a tiny MacBook that I could slip into my pocket or purse and take everywhere with me would be very welcome.
As long as it has an iSight camera, and a microphone, as well as a keyboard, I’ll be thrilled.
I love my Macs. I work on my machines 12 to 14 hours a day, but if I had to use a Mac keyboard and mouse, I’d have to go back to using PCs. How can Apple create the BEST computers and the absolute worst input devices?
When I came back to Macs in 2005 after using PCs for a couple of decades, I tried using a Mac keyboard and mouse. At the end of two weeks, the pain in my arms and hands was too severe… I ended up using Microsoft’s Natural keyboard and wireless mouse.
Apple’s input devices are torture for anyone who works at a computer all day.
“Let’s go over the problems. First of all, the thing is shaped quite oddly. While it looks nice and can work for both left and right-handed users, people don’t have hands shaped like pebbles. There are a lot of natural contours on the insider of the hand, and the Mighty Mouse neglects them for a stylish look.”
Yes, please FIX your woeful input devices Apple… for goodness sake, if you can create wonderful computers and iPods and phones, why not a mouse and keyboard build for users, not for aesthetics?
I’m not short of organizers on my Mac. I have Yojimbo, EagleFiler, DevonThink Pro, and several others. But… here’s the thing. I tend to store information in them, and then 99 per cent of the time, that’s the last I see of the information, unless I have a sudden need for a piece of information and I remember where I put it.
So I didn’t want to buy yet another organizer. Until ShoveBox came along. Yes, it’s just an organizer, but it’s so much more, too.
“Basically, what Shovebox does is help you to manage all your files, notes and ideas. It can store documents, links, images, pretty much anything. A little inbox icon sits up on the menu bar and when you drag a file to it, it gets instantly copied into your shovebox database. If that’s all the organization you care to do then you’re done.”
I like ShoveBox. It’s useful… try it, you might like it too.
Happy installation to you, too.
