Monthly Archive for October, 2010

What to think about the new MacBook Air

Ulysse Sabbag | October 30, 2010

Since it seems that Apple wasn’t clear enough while unveiling the MacBook air and explaining its purposes, if you feel curious today, here’s a batch of interesting reads to clearly understand its raison d’être.

Gizmodo thinks (and rightfully so) that the new MacBook Air is the death of the MacBook Pro.

No, I’m not trying to attract visitors by saying this (it’s not my headline) but I think that in the future, there will be a clear separation between portable Macs. We will have portable workstations and light notebooks. The 13-inch MacBook Pro will be radically changed and the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros will become the aforementioned workstations.

Marco Arment has another vision.

And if you want to know everything about these notebooks, just follow AppleInsider’s exhaustive review.

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On Samsung and design

Ulysse Sabbag | October 25, 2010

There is something they have to understand rather quickly.

Attention to detail is essential. I am deeply sorry, but I have to make the connection with Apple. It seems that Apple has no problem in designing things; what they produce is widely as being at the edge of industrial design. And what they produce is bought by millions. Although Apple is growing, day after day, this attention to detail continues to be one of the brand’s signature.

Samsung does not know how to design stuff. Let’s not talk about how they name their products—before the Galaxy S, they named the Player: SGH-F480—and talk about the way they design their products.

This is the Samsung Player. It was released in June 2008. One year after the iPhone. Why am I talking about this?

 

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Let’s it rotate it and place the iPhone 3G next to it.

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Ok. Now, let’s view their invitation to their November event.

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What’s with the stocks? This is such a flawed invitation I can’t even talk about it.

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Palm Pre 2 and Web OS 2.0 arrive: rejoice

Ulysse Sabbag | October 20, 2010

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Finally. Great looking phone, great looking OS. It only needs developers. So please guys, develop for Web OS.

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Back to the Mac: Now what?

Ulysse Sabbag | October 20, 2010

Apple announced a new MacBook Air, a new version of Mac OS X and iLife ’11. But they also announced a new philosophy.

Their hardware vision of the future is the MacBook Air they made. Flash storage, (lighter, safer) high-resolution display, important graphics processor and so forth. My first impression is that it is great, but I don’t like the MacBook Air. They aren’t powerful. Steve, we didn’t ask for an iPad with an actual keyboard, we asked for a multitasking-capable machine. We’ll see. I don’t think that the next MacBook Pros are going to go through the flash memory treatment, but it’s just an early opinion.

Their software vision of the future is iOS. iOS meets OS X. Multi-touch gestures, on the trackpad and the Mouse—which has finally become useful. As you probably think, the Mac App Store is a broken promise. It’s not because Steve said that there won’t be a Mac App Store that only allows approved apps. So, the Mac App Store (MAS) will probably be a great experience and more certainly a place where you can buy quality software for relatively low prices.

The real thing is the trackpad. The future is there. Both hardware and software use it and this is where everything will happen.

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Is this FaceTime for Mac?

Ulysse Sabbag | October 20, 2010

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And the whole OS UI is more than probably Lion.

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iPad retail price index

Ulysse Sabbag | October 18, 2010

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This is funny. The Economist has published an interesting chart showing iPad’s retail price throughout the world. Just like the Big Mac index. With Apples.

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‘Back to the Mac’ Apple keynote on October 20

Ulysse Sabbag | October 13, 2010

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Mac OS 10.7 and what else? A lion, of course people.

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Google is developing self-driving cars

Ulysse Sabbag | October 10, 2010

It everything works as they say, this would be one great, great innovation.

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Motorola Droid Pro: game-changing device?

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

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Three days ago, Motorola unveiled the Droid Pro. And why is this important?

Finally, Android surpassed Apple in the U.S.

I strongly believe that we can foresee what will happen between the iPhone and Android. Android will definitely surpass the iPhone and the iPhone will become the Mac of smartphones but it will still have its intrinsic shininess—with advantages related to this position.

Now, Motorola takes the first step in the right, new direction, attack RIM. And apparently, they did well.

 

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Instapaper becomes a start-up, it may be a bad idea

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

After leaving the responsibility of being the lead developer for Tumblr, Marco Arment decided to spend his time working for his own projects. And the most famous one is surely Instapaper, one of the greatest service ever.

Instapaper does one thing in such a great manner, it is quite incredible.

You place a Read Later bookmark in your bookmarks bar on your browser and when you’re on a web page, say, a long article, you click Read Later and it saves it in your bookmarks directory on Instapaper’s website.

Instapaper is a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.

Now, Marco will dedicate his time to updating, maintaining and enhancing Instapaper and this could be a bad idea. Sometimes, things are useful the way they are and success makes you think that change will make things even better.

You may say I’m not open-minded but I truly cannot see what could Marco do to make it better. No, I’m lying. I can. He can make an Android app—even though it seems like he does not want to craft one but instead make an HTML5 web-app compatible for all Android phones, which, of course, with the screen resolution proper to each phone, is the best idea. He can update the app to speed things up, on my iPhone, the app is quite slow. But these things are not impossible to make along with a job, say, leading Tumblr’s development.

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Is Android a threat to the iPhone?

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

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The blogosphere is all warmed up today because of the latest Nielsen research results. Android is the most popular operating system in the US among recent smartphone buyers.

Though RIM and iPhone OS are close, Android is on the rise.

Now, the very serious Bits blog from the New York Times posted an article stating that the iPhone has a real fight on its hands?

We must ask ourselves, is that true?

It seems that nobody noticed Apple’s policy change. It’s not called iPhone OS anymore, people, it’s called iOS and Apple doesn’t care anymore about iPhone-centric statistics. Apple is surely losing momentum. But they know things happen very fast and they know the iPhone cannot be king forever. Just like for the Mac. So they launch new products.

Please do not forget: Android is available on more than twenty (20) phones. Apple is aware of this fact.

For them, the iPad is the most important device. With billions of dollars in the tablet industry, the iPhone is starting to lose its luster. But it’s OK for Apple.

So, yes, Android is a threat to the iPhone, but right now, Apple has the innovation momentum and not the product momentum. Which is way more important.

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When it drops: cultural releases.

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

When it drops is a great new service—startup?—which was launched this week.

After almost a year of on-again-off-again development, I’m really excited to announce When It Drops! Now you can easily find what new movies, music, DVDs, games, and books are coming out each week. Ryan Sims came up with the original concept and did a smashing job on the design. Special thanks to Noah Stokes who has not only been doing a great job as our one and only user, but also for getting the ball rolling on this. Finally, you can also follow us on Tumblr if that’s more your thing!

I think they ought to open-source their code and share it internationally rather quickly, in order to meet a tremendous success.

The website is really well-designed. Check it out now.

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Next year for Palm: greatly improved Pre

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

It seems that the next Palm device, when it will be released, will play in the same league than his dear Android and iPhone friends.

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Google celebrates John Lennon’s birthday

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

Lennon, known to me as the second best song-writer of the 20th century would have been 70 today if M. Chapman controlled his emotions.

The nice thing is that Google put a YouTube video instead of its logo, on the front page, featuring an animation with Imagine as a soundtrack.

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Firefox Mobile goes live—Android wins

Ulysse Sabbag | October 8, 2010

Another good reason to go for Android.

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