Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Apple event news (updated)

It's gotten late here, so just  a couple of tidbits from Monday's Apple event. (I haven't even watched it all yet.) They had a lot of very nice news.
Example: with the upcoming iOS 5,  iOS devices can now exist and operate without ever having to be connected to a Mac or PC! Not just convenient for most users, but many people want to own one without owning a computer.
Another example: a couple of sorely needed updates to Safari: it will now get tabbed browsing, so it'll be about ten times faster to switch between windows. And it has "Reader" now like on the desktop Safari, to get a highly readable and distraction-free version of an article on a web page. And it even combines parts of an article from many pages into one page! I don't think even Instapaper does that. Talking about Instapaper, Safari will also be inspired by that, in that you can save articles, and they will be saved across all your connected devices, so you can find an article on your Mac, read it on your iPad (even offline), and finish it on your iPhone, or the other way around. Very kool. Poor readability has been an issue with web browsers on the iPad.

Update:
As per Lion, I'm not sure. Mostly it seems expansions on Spaces and Exposé, two features I don't use much. But I must say the Auto-Save and the related Versions feature have me more excited than I thought I would be. I think once you get used to using them, they can be quite powerful. Lord only knows how much work has been lost over time because most people forget to save, and then the power goes... And the ability to fetch bits from earlier versions and paste them into later versions could come in quite handy too.

I remember in the nineties sitting with a good friend of mine. He was rather new to computers, he had bought my old Powerbook. He had been writing on an article for an hour, and I asked him how often he saved. "I've not saved it yet," he said. I almost spewed my cappuccino over his keyboard. Save!, I said, save now! I always save compulsively every couple of minutes, and in over ten years I have not lost a line. But Mac OS Lion should do away with the necessity for such compulsions. (Of course you can go back to earlier versions if you regret something.)

4 comments:

  1. You should try the "Flipboard" app for the iPad. It combines multiple articles and posts into a magazine-like format. Very, very readable and interesting.

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  2. Yes, that's pretty good.

    "Zine" is good too.

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  3. Hi Gordon, Eolake,

    Just surfing through, and the word verification stopped me "dingling",

    That's all, carry on.

    Bron

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  4. Careful, Eolake. You don't want to have paramedics and police break down your door to find you lying twitching on the floor and foaming at the mouth.

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