journals

iPhone event roundup

By Nick, March 6, 2008

Earlier today Apple held an iPhone-oriented media event, covering topics including the iPhone in enterprise to the long-awaited SDK. Here are some of my initial thoughts on the announcements made today.

And yes, I wrote this as I followed the announcements, so they’re very, very early first impressions.

Enterprise

First of all, it seems strange to see Apple even discuss the enterprise market, considering their focus has been on the consumer for years and years. But considering almost every other smart phone out there is designed to be enterprise-friendly, it makes sense that Apple would do the same with the iPhone, especially since some corporate users are already using the iPhone.

Apple announced the addition of a good number of enterprise-friendly features for their next iPhone software, ranging from push email support and better calendar integration to better VPN support to the all-important Microsoft Exchange support. And as it turns out, Apple licensed the ActiveSync protocol for use on the iPhone. As Macworld reports, “With ActiveSync, the iPhone talks directly to Exchange. So the iPhone will get push e-mail, push calendaring, push contacts, global access lists, and remote wipe, all while talking to Exchange. And it’s built into the existing…
(Continue)

	2	1140
Nick	comments	views

Blu-ray wins, consumers lose

By UnnDunn, March 6, 2008

So now that Blu-ray Disc is poised to become the dominant next-generation movie format, it’s time to look to the future. A future that quite frankly, looks somewhat bleak for a number of reasons.

It’s been two weeks since Toshiba, creators and primary backers of the nascent next-generation movie disc format called HD DVD, ceased production and marketing of the technology, ceding defeat in a bitter format war raged between it and Blu-ray Disc, championed by a Sony-led consortium.

This move was widely expected following January’s announcement by Warner Home Video that it will be supporting Blu-ray Disc exclusively going forward. As the number one movie studio in the world, Warner Bros. commanded immense weight in deciding the outcome of this war, and once their announcement was made, it took less than two months for companies at every level of the home video distribution ecosystem to fall in line behind it, abandoning HD DVD in the process and leaving Toshiba holding the bag.

So now that Blu-ray Disc is poised to become the dominant next-generation movie format, it’s time to look to the future. A future that, quite frankly, looks somewhat bleak for a number of reasons.

In a Blu-ray dominated future, expect high prices, because everything about Blu-ray is far more expensive than its HD DVD counterparts. The players will be expensive thanks to costly laser pickups, complicated hardware and an even more…
(Continue)

	10	865
UnnDunn	comments	views

Quickies: Free newsreader roundup, Tetris for Dashboard

By Nick, March 5, 2008

A couple quick notes…

Free Mac newsreaders!

NetNewsWire is the undisputed king of the hill as far as Mac newsreaders go (especially since it went free), but there are a number of other free options out there. Fortunately for us, MacRecon published a short roundup of free Mac newsreaders. It’s worth a look, especially if you’re not too familiar with the other players in the field.

Tetris for Dashboard

Admit it. You spent hours upon hours of quality time with your original Game Boy playing Tetris. Since then you’ve moved on to bigger and batter games, but there’s still no going wrong with a game of Tetris now and then, especially if you have a few minutes of downtime. If this sounds like you, take a look at this Tetris game widget for Dashboard.

It’s Tetris as you know it (and in grayscale too!), but for your Dashboard. This widget allows you to pause and continue games, and as a nice touch, it pauses automatically when you hide Dashboard (Uh oh, boss coming! Hide it!)

The Tetris widget is still in beta, but is a free download from Apple’s Dashboard widget site. Check it out.

Do you follow Deep Thought’s Mac news on a regular basis? Subscribe to our Mac news feed.

	0	668
Nick	comments	views

Adventures in troubleshooting

By Nick, March 4, 2008

Well that was a fun evening. It was an evening of twists and turns, of drama, of troubleshooting.

So this afternoon I came home after running some errands, and switched on my MacBook. I used it earlier in the day and shut it down while I was gone. When I reached the login screen, I discovered that my MacBook’s built-in keyboard and trackpad weren’t responding. Neither would accept any input whatsoever. Thinking it was a one-time glitch, I plugged in a USB mouse and restarted.

It didn’t make a difference. Same result.

I logged in with a USB keyboard and mouse and checked System Profiler to see ifmy MacBook still recognized its own keyboard and trackpad. It did. Okay, at least the computer still knew the keyboard and trackpad still existed.

To narrow it down as a software problem or hardware problem, I grabbed my Leopard DVD and booted from it. Same result. Dead keyboard and trackpad. Sigh. Restart. Launch Safari, do a little searching, realize that others have experienced similar problems that required repair. Ugh.

At this point, thinking it was a hardware issue that would require a trip to the repair shop, I called Apple shortly before 5…
(Continue)

	0	741
Nick	comments	views

Microsoft Makes Standards Mode Default for IE8

By Liam, March 3, 2008

Microsoft today announced that, contrary to earlier plans, Internet Explorer 8 would default to its most standards compliant rendering mode. Early reports from the company’s Internet Explorer team stated that IE8 would default to a rendering mode identical to the standards support of IE7, with support for a meta tag placed in the header of the web’s source that could switch standards mode on. Now, plans have been reversed, with the engine’s most standards complient mode on for all web pages, and legacy support available for those who wish to avoid having to troubleshoot bugs that may appear in standards mode.

This decision appears to have been made in accordance with recently published Interoperability Principles from the company, in a push to become more standards friendly (see section II.) According to Internet Explorer’s General Manager Dean Hachamovitch,

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.
We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal…
(Continue)