When Apple did their annual phone hardware announce last year, I couldn’t have been less excited. I was reasonably happy with my 6s, but it wasn’t acting ideal. A replacement I got under AppleCare after my original 6s started having problems charging, this one worked alright, but was having some weird performance problems. After the close of last year’s event, I felt no urge to get any of the three new phones. If you follow me on Twitter, you likely…
As soon as I saw today’s news, I thought that there would be confusion about what “Office for tablets and smartphones going free” would mean. There certainly has been. Office for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets is indeed free, within certain bounds. I’m going to attempt to succinctly delinate the cases under which it is, and is not, free. Office is free for you to use on your smartphone or tablet if, and only if: You are not using…
I want you to think for a second about the key you use most. Whether it’s for your house, your apartment, your car, or your office, just think about it for a moment. Now, this key you’re thinking of is going to have a few basic properties. It consists of metal, has a blade extending out of it that has grooves along one or both sides, and either a single set of teeth cut into the bottom, or two sets…
For some reason, there appears to be confusion – still (even among some Apple press) – about why this year’s phone is not called the iPhone 6, and is instead called the iPhone 5s. Outside of the original year, a very predictable pattern exists – so far. In even-numbered years, a completely new phone arrives, with a redesigned chassis. In odd-numbered years, a revised “S” (now “s”) phone arrives, which carries over most of the chassis of the previous year,…
A friend was telling me the other day about his new Mac. He bought it, took it home, and said it was like Christmas; opening it up, the ease of getting started, and the look and feel of the hardware, as well as the software. Normally a buyer of PCs, he decided to buy a Mac. A few months before, another friend said the same about buying his first iPhone. What’s unusual is that these two, like me, are ex-Microsoft…
I happened to bring up the Clipper chip in a conversation with a colleague today, where we were discussing the latest NSA-related news, communication privacy, (and of course the Apple 5s). Looking back at it now, it’s fascinating how much advice the past gives us today. I encourage you to read the words of Whitfield Diffie in his testimony to the US House of Representatives on May 11, 1993: “I submit to you that the most valuable secret in the world…
Earlier in July, Microsoft announced OWA for iPad and OWA for iPhone. Available only for Office 365 subscribers for now (available for Exchange 2013 at an undisclosed point in the future), OWA for iOS originally left me a bit confused. You see, at a glance, there’s really nothing that OWA for iOS does that you can’t do with the built in mail app on iOS. The one benefit I arrived at upfront was that with Exchange’s autodiscover, configuration for novice…
In my wife’s family, there is a term used to describe how many people can comfortably work in a kitchen at the same time. The measurement is described in “butts”, as in “this is a one-butt kitchen”, or the common, but not very helpful “1.5 butt kitchen”. Most American kitchens aren’t more than 2 butts. But I digress. I bring this up for the following reason. There is a certain level of utility that you can exploit in a kitchen as it…
A few weeks ago I wrote about gestures on the Mac vs. Windows 8. By and large, I’ve shifted to using my Mac with most apps in full-screen, and really making the most of the gestures included in OS X 10.8. It isn’t always easy, as certain apps (looking at you, Word 2011), don’t optimally use full-screen. Word has Focus mode (its own full-screen model) and now supports OS X’s full-screen mode – but not together. Meaning if you shift…
Alright – shake out the giggles from the title, and let me show you why I said that. Until recently I had been using Windows 8 every day – and recently switched to a Mac (running 10.8 Mountain Lion) as my primary computing device. The more I have used Mountain Lion – especially with apps in full-screen mode – the more certain things felt subtly similar to Windows 8. I believe that Mountain Lion is yet another step in Apple’s gradual…