Archives / Tag: Apple

This little gem is going to become real annoying real quick. In Safari on iOS 7 clicking anywhere in the bottom ~40px of the screen does not register as a click on the web page as you would expect, instead it prompts Safari to reveal the ‘nav bar’, only then once the ‘nav bar’ has become visible and pushed your content up the page will clicks in that area register. I’ve logged a bug on Radar and Open Radar.

Of course by the time a user has clicked once (which apparently results in something other than that which was expected) and not gotten what they asked for they probably surmise that the link/website is broken and give up on the interaction they were attempting.

Genius!

And yes, I know… NDA.

Something occurred to me last night. The Apple TV is the perfect candidate for web based apps with home screen shortcuts…

— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013

… Apple TV apps don’t need to be downloaded and installed, they just exist in the cloud. The Apple TV is always connected.

— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013

Essentially Apple TV apps are a web view. The magic would be enabling interactions between these and a handheld iOS device. #2ndscreen

— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013

Apples ‘web apps only’ approach didn’t wash with the 1st iPhone because there wasn’t sufficient connectivity. Not an issue for Apple TV.

— Nathan Pitman (@nathanpitman) May 4, 2013

It’s interesting to note though how Apple are learning from the iPhone and iPad with the new Retina MacBook Pro and the imminent release of Mountain Lion. OS X releases are tumbling in price while devices are seemingly becoming more ‘fixed’ at the point if purchase. Just as you can’t upgrade the internals of your iPhone or iPad you can’t upgrade a new Retina MacBook once you commit to a configuration.

I think Apple are pursuing the model they’ve used in the mobile and tablet sector – working towards a scenario where OS X releases are free and devices are obsoleted not by the age of the hardware, but by incompatibility with the latest OS update. From Apples perspective it makes complete sense, it reduces the requirement of developers to support multiple OS versions (making OS X a more attractive development platform) and most importantly (for Apple) drives hardware sales.

I’ve never previously been convinced by the Apple TV, for me it always fell short of what I could do with a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV in the lounge. I tried numerous different packages for media playback but always found myself back with good old Front Row – it’s simplicity and wife/child compatability being the stamp of approval required to make it a long term solution for audio/video playback in our lounge. Eventually as with all good things it came to an end… stuttering and spluttering I put the Mac Mini out to pasture and decided to have a shot at replacing it with a 3rd gen Apple TV.

The Apple TV has no ‘accessible’ local storage so I was in part only convinced by the recent introduction of iTunes Match (£21.99 per annum) which would mean that we would be able to access and play any/all of our music collection without the need for another machine running iTunes somewhere else in the vicinity. I surmised that for £99 even if it didn’t do everything I wanted then I wouldn’t begrudge it.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Apple TV is it’s size (or lack of). This box of tricks is epic in it’s minimal proportions and silent running, a welcome change from the humming Mac Mini it replaced in our Lounge. Set up is super quick and easy, only slightly delayed by having to input text with a directional keypad.

Despite much ridicule on Twitter the revised ‘dashboard’ is quick and easy to use – however as you navigate down through the menus it very quickly becomes apparent this is the OS equivalent of a nose job. Elsewhere the menu system feels (and looks) exactly like Front Row did when it made it’s debut back in 2005. Hopefully future iterations of the operating system will see a more complete overhaul which makes better use of screen space to display more content at once.

The beauty of the Apple TV is it’s simplicity, it’s ‘Wife approved’ and that means a great deal if you don’t want to spend your life providing IT support when the other half wants to catch up on some Prison Break – or other dramas featuring men that might be marginally more attractive than yourself. Streaming of iTunes purchased (or otherwise acquired) movies from a nearby iTunes library works a treat (smooth as butter with HD content) and the built in video apps work as expected.

For me the biggest surprise of all is Netflix, a service that I’d never even considered previously had suddenly become the most used feature on our Apple TV. Yes the selection is mostly ‘older stuff’ but when you consider the cost (currently £6 per month / £72 per annum) it’s an absolute bargain. We’ve already watching 4 series of a particular ‘prison related tv drama’ which on iTunes at least would have set us back £80! Netflix has proved ‘very’ popular with the kids too, completely replacing what TV they did watch on cable with a great selection of classics (anyone remember Inspector Gadget?).

So, is it worth the £99 price tag? If you subscribe to iTunes Match and Netflix then it’s an absolute no brainer, if not then at this price it’s almost worth a punt anyway. Hopefully future iterations of the Apple TV will continue to make it more relevant to wider user base with the introduction of other streaming services (fingers crossed!).

Having lived day to day with a Mac now for a good few years I thought it was about time I documented some of my pet peeves as a one time Windows user. So here they are in the form of a brief wish list for OS X Snow Leopard. This is in the vein hope that Steve Jobs is a regular reader of my blog (pft – yea right!) and that he will do something about these very minor issues. :)

Fix the ‘Zoom’ button

Seriously what is up with that thing. As a Windows user the expected behavior of a button with a + on it is that it should maximize/zoom the application you are currently running with a single click. With OS X there is no consistency. Clicking + on a finder window reduces it in size (WTF?) and then proceeds to do nothing. Clicking + in iTunes switches between the full and minimal interface. Clicking + suggests to the user that the window will increase in size surely?

Make it easier to email files to contacts

Perhaps I’m missing something obvious, but there is simply no way to just option/right click a file and select to send it to a email recipient? On windows this is an item in the contextual menu, right click, send to email recipient, default mail client opens a new message and attaches said file. Easy. Ok so I know I can write an automator script carry out said task but that then requires a ridiculous number of clicks to execute (Right click > More > Automator > Email Files…).

Show Hidden Files

Please give us OS X users a way to have hidden files within specific folders revealed. I need to see hidden files by default on network shares and elsewhere – but not on my desktop. A simple option under Finder Preferences would be a step in the right direction.

A digital filmmaker named Dennis Liu has made an amazing video for The Bird And The Bee’s lovely song “Again & Again”. The set? His Mac desktop. You sort of have to see it for yourself to understand; luckily, Dennis has dropped it on YouTube so that the world can see it in low-res hi-res glory:

This is just awesome. Kudos to Dennis Liu for such a creative approach. (via TUAW and MacRumours Forum).

With my MacBook only being a couple of weeks old there are still a few kinks to iron out in the Nine Four IT infrastructure, one of those being printing to a shared printer on a Windows machine which I affectionately call ‘Oto’.

After having tried a number of drivers that are pre-installed with OS X and had no luck I decided to Google my problem and discovered a Tech note on the apple website which suggested that the drivers I needed could be installed from the OS X install disc. I followed the instructions and ran the installer, at this point OS X hangs completely, no access to the finder, no spinning ball of death, nothing. A few minutes pass with no further activity and I decide to force a hard reboot.

On restarting everything seems fine, I get the log-in prompt, enter my password and up pops my wallpaper, and then after a long wait, the spotlight and then after an even longer wait… nothing. I restart again, I get the same thing.

This is where the power of Google comes in handy, as does having a Windows machine called ‘Oto’ sitting around. I Google ‘spotlight appears doesn’t start up os x‘ and bam the first hit is a blog post by a guy called Philip McClure which talks about the exact same problem.

After a lengthy and very interesting read I take the advice of one of his commenters and download a little shareware app called Onyx. I drop it onto a USB drive, copy it across to the MacBook (To start in safe mode hold down the shift key on boot), install it and then use it to safely delete the Spotlight index, as this apparently is what is causing my problem.

I restart my MacBook, log-in, the wallpaper pops up then after an excruciating wait (which I can only assume is spotlight rebuilding it’s index) everything is back to normal. Panic over!

Update: Argh! It happened again on Wednesday night (11/07/07) but was easy to sure thanks to Onyx.

Update: The Spotlight index got corrupted ‘again’ today (31/07/07) but was again easy to fix with Onyx. Twice in one month is a bit much though. :/

Some time having passed, I thought that I should ‘come clean’ and clarify my position in the Mac vs PC debate. Back in August 2005 I blogged about the end of a short term relationship with a G5.

At that time I was well and truly convinced that I would never again be tempted by a Mac. However, back in October last year I took delivery of a shiny new MacBook.

My reasoning was that working with a number of clients who were Mac based, I needed to be able to verify the compatibility of any code I produced in Safari (The default Mac OS web browser). I had also for a long time been considering purchasing a laptop for use in client meetings and at training sessions. I weighed up the options and originally looked at purchasing a HP laptop and then bagging a 2nd hand Mac Mini off eBay for browser testing.

Balancing up the pro’s and con’s of each option it soon became clear that my investment would be much better made in a single machine and so the MacBook it was.

7 months later and I’m a total convert. I couldn’t love my MacBook more and I’m looking forward to replacing my Dell desktop which I use predominantly during the day with a higher spec Mac later this year.

There you go, I’m out of the closet.

Hoorah, after having to suffer a month as a ‘new media’ type working on a Apple Mac here at Bite CP I took delivery on Friday of a shiny new Dell PC. Now. I’ll be the first to admit that I kinda fancied the idea of working on a Mac. After all OSX is sooooo sexy, it simply blows XP away.

But, and this is the big one. I think it’s true to say that more than 90% of web users are PC based. So, why on earth would I go to all this effort to make life that much harder for myself. Testing, testing, testing… it’s all about the testing. When you have to deal with the likes of Internet Exploder it’s so much easier to be on a PC. So, it’s back to what I know best… where regardless of the annoyances I feel comfortable and warm.

The Mac is still there for testing on Safari (Not that is misbehaves that much) but beyond that my short lived time as a Mac user has come to and end.

On Friday I finished up at Mirashade and today was my first day at my new place, Bite CP.

The most significant change for me is that at Bite right now I’m using a Mac, I think it’s a dual G5 with about 1.5Gb of RAM, so not bad by any stretch of the imagination. However… as a Mac ‘OSX’ newbie I could really do with some tips. I’ve already sussed the whole ‘Exposé’ thing but I really need some more tricks up my sleeve if I’m going to make passers by go ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ as I work my magic (hmm).

Please help me. Tell me about the great shortcuts you use everyday, the software you just cannot live without for web development, which IM and Mail clients you use and finally… is it tricky to set up an IMAP server? Hmm… maybe that’s one for another day.