by ·0 Comments

Microsoft is already calling it quits with the Kin as reported by a number of places. I get this strange impression that Microsoft isn’t quite sure what its strategy is with anything these days.

It’s even being reported that the killing of the Kin could be the beginning of a number of shake ups at Microsoft. One can only hope they come out looking a lot more focused than they are right now. I can’t help but feel that Microsoft is doing as well as it is right now out of sheer momentum. Windows 7 is selling well, but it’s hard not to be when there is such a large user base to begin with. Then again, it really is a great OS. Windows Phone 7 sounds very promising but I don’t think anyone could say for sure where Microsoft is going from here.

by ·0 Comments

As Windows Phone 7 gets closer to release we keep hearing more and more about what Microsoft’s Phone operating system will and will not do. For the first time that I can remember, Microsoft appears to be incredibly focused on released a product that simply works and if that means not releasing features that everyone else has in 1.0 then so be it. And I applaud them for doing so.

Not everyone feels the same way however, pointing out some of the features Windows Phone 7 will initially lack such as copy and paste as well as multitasking. Although both are important features, neither are required for Microsoft to release a successful product.

It’s hard to argue that when the iPhone was introduced back in 2007 it destroyed everything else on the smart phone market, despite not having copy and paste or multitasking. It also didn’t have any way for developing native applications and developers were expected to build web applications to be run on the iPhone’s web browser. Speaking of the web browser, the iPhone still doesn’t have the ability to run flash which so many people claim is simply required for a proper web experience.

Apple’s iPhone of course has been a run away success, despite missing all of these “required” features. What the iPhone lacked in features it made up for with an as yet unseen level of polish, responsiveness and thoughtfulness in the smart phone market. With just two physical buttons it was incredibly easy to use and understand compared to other smart phones available at the time.

Unlike Google’s Android, which was already in development when the iPhone was released, Microsoft’s mobile phone OS was in no condition to compete with either and for Microsoft to compete properly in the smart phone market they really had to start from scratch. Windows Phone 7 is that from scratch effort and it makes sense that they’re going to have to cut some features in order to release a solid mobile OS in a timely fashion. Microsoft is always accused of simply buying or copy features from someone else and this time it is no different. Microsoft is clearly running the same plays from Apple’s play book and I don’t see anything wrong with that. When Microsoft releases Windows Phone 7 they’ll have a product that is neatly situated right between what iPhone OS, now known as iOS, offered initially and what it can do today. It should also be able to more quickly adapt and even out do its competitors in future releases. My only remaining concern for Microsoft is whether or not hardware makers can create new devices that can match or even rival that of Apple. That I think, will be the key to it’s success.

by ·0 Comments

Since about 2005, Apple laptops have had a feature that allows the laptop to sleep and wake quickly, but also be able to deal with the situation where the battery runs out of power or is removed. Basically the laptop writes out a hibernation file before going to sleep but then doesn’t actually enter hibernation. If the laptop is able to it will simply wake quickly from ram and mark the hibernation file as old. If the battery runs out of power or is remove, then the laptop will boot from the hibernation file instead. This is a fantastic feature because it nearly guarantees you won’t lose work if you’ve put your laptop to sleep.

There are times however that you might not want to use this feature. For example, I was out of town this weekend and my Macbook was spending a lot of time in sleep. Even though sleep uses very little power, it still uses more than it would if the power was completely off. In this situation I prefer that the laptop simply hibernate when I close the lid.

You can tell an Apple portable what kind of sleep mode to use using the command line tool called pmset or, better yet, you can use the very simple preference pane called SmartSleep. SmartSleep is a simple frontend to the pmset command allowing you to choose between a number of different sleep options. Best of all the utility is free and is available at http://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html

by ·2 Comments

In case anyone missed it, Apple revealed iPhone 4 yesterday along with all its improvements. There is a lot of coverage out there on it so I’ll just concentrate on my reactions to the device.

The new iPhone is thinner and made with glass on both the top and bottom. In between the two pieces of glass is a stainless steel bezel which also doubles as the antenna so in effect the antenna has been moved to the outside of the phone. Unfortunately, it does nothing to improve reception on the Verizon network.

Apple has also (finally) decided that iPhone OS isn’t a fitting name for their devices and instead of renamed it to iOS. It really should have been called this from the beginning because the iPod touch came out immediately after the iPhone and the iPad was already in the works. In fact, in a recent interview (D8) Jobs revealed that the iPad was in development before the iPhone and that the iPhone was created based from the iPad idea. At any rate, this is the first time I think of where Apple has renamed such a major product at this stage in the game. I always figured Microsoft was the only company that couldn’t stick with a name.

iPhone 4 also finally gets the forward facing camera everyone has been clamoring for and frankly, I just don’t see this being as big a deal as everyone claims. Of course, a front facing camera is useless unless you have a reason to use it and Apple’s reason is the new FaceTime app. FaceTime is really nothing more than iChat for iPhone but if you are to believe what you hear in Apple’s promotional video on their site it’s the second coming of Christ. I’m an Apple guy but they talk up FaceTime as if we haven’t been doing video chatting for over ten years. Am I the only one who remembers the black and white quikcam?. I just don’t see it catching on today any more than it has prior to iPhone 4.

by ·0 Comments

It’s possible to create a keyboard shortcut to nearly any menu item for any application. For example, lets say you’d like to create a keyboard shortcut to show extensions in Google Chrome.

To do so start System Preferences from the Apple menu in the upper left. Next, click the keyboard option and then click the Keyboard Shortcuts button.

Click the plus to add a new keyboard shortcut. Search for the application, enter in the name of the menu item, the keyboard shortcut you want to assign and click Add.

The shortcut will now have been added. You may need to close and reopen the application before it appears.

by ·0 Comments

In at least Snow Leopard, and possibly older versions, hot corners are nearly always hot. For example, if you setup a hot corner to show the desktop you can drag a file from a finder window to that hot corner and cause it to fire allowing you to place a file on the desktop or a folder on the desktop easily.

by ·0 Comments

Last week I helped someone rescue their computer. The striped disk set had gone wonky and would only occasionally boot properly. If it booted at all it would run fine, but getting it to boot was the tricky part. They wanted me to fix the issue and as long as I was doing so, upgrade the system to Windows 7.

After some effort, I got the computer to boot and promptly created an image of it using my favorite disk imaging software. I then broke the raid set and used the one drive that was still good to install Windows 7. Once installed I copied the appropriate data from the old Vista system on to the new Windows 7 system. All seemed well until I got an email claiming the computer wouldn’t download files or play flash videos.

While attempting to download a file they’d get the following error.

Internet Explorer cannot download from
Internet Explorer was not able to open the Internet site. The requested site
is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

After much trial and error I found the solution. Rename the Temp directory located at %userprofile%\AppData\Local. Once this was done IE was able to download files and play flash videos once again. I’m not sure what the real issue was but this fixed it.