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Basically. It’s a feature that 90% of the people who buy an Air will never use. It makes much more sense to exclude it and sell an adapter to the 10% that need it.

2 days ago on MacBook Air review (13-inch, 2013)

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Yeah, I ordered one (i5, 256gb, 8gb RAM). I’m switching from a lone 15" Macbook Pro setup to a 27" iMac + Macbook Air setup. The iMac can do the heavy lifting now. That 12 hour battery life… I just can’t ignore that. I thought the 7 hours in my Pro was already pretty damn good, but this is just on a completely different level. I feel like I’ll finally be able to just pick up my laptop, go places, and not give the battery a second thought.

2 days ago on MacBook Air review (13-inch, 2013)

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As the owner of a 3DS, Vita, iPhone, and iPad… this. It’s a bit weird, actually. When I play Sonic 4 Episode 2 on either of my iOS devices, the graphics completely blow anything on the 3DS out of the water. Yet, touchscreens just can’t beat physical controls. Not yet, at least. While I think that smartphones and tablets are in a very good position to eat up the casual mobile gaming market, the dedicated consoles should still be able to survive on “bigger” games. I know most North American gamers would argue “I’d rather just get the big experience on my TV at home”… but, that doesn’t apply all over the world.

5 days ago on Can Mario save the Wii U? 1 reply 3 recommends

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It’s serviceable on my 4S. Definitely not as smooth and responsive as iOS 6. And, there are certainly bugs:

- When populating the music app with iTunes Match, not all of the artists are listed under the artist view. The content is there if I search for it, though.
- Some shared photostreams won’t load and will crash the app.
- The “Today” view in the Notification Centre doesn’t always update. Right now, it’s still showing my calendar events from yesterday.
- I’ve encountered a few instances when I’d take a photo, but it wouldn’t show up in camera roll until I reset it.

I dunno. I’m going to wait until the second beta comes out before I decide if I want to roll back. If it improves sufficiently, I’ll stick it out. If not, I’ll roll back.

6 days ago on What do you want to see? Installing iOS 7 now, will post screenshots.

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I’ve had it installed on my 4S for a day and a bit now. I’d say it’s a rather massive change, overall. Much more than I expected. Visually, I didn’t expect such a dramatic overhaul. And, it isn’t just a re-skinning. Interfaces that were sort of clunky and designed for earlier days of touchscreen smartphones have been completely updated.

In terms of functionality, I’d say the same. They’ve made some changes I wasn’t expecting, namely the Control Centre and its quick toggles. I rarely use the toggles, but the quick access to the music controls and the calculator, flashlight, and such are quite useful. And, I definitely wasn’t expecting the Notification Centre to be overhauled as significantly as it was. Ditto with the multitasking interface. That said, there are also a few changes I would’ve liked to see that didn’t happen: namely, general inter-app communication and shared data pools.

Even so, beta bugs aside, I’m loving the hell out of iOS 7.

6 days ago on Was the iOS 7 change bigger than you thought it would be? 1 reply

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Well, my beta version is downloading as I type this. So, I can only give impressions from the keynote and marketing material.

Overall, I like it. I’ll admit, some of the icons are a bit jarring. The Game Centre icon is the only one I don’t really care for. The bubble thing makes sense once you’re in the app, but… I just don’t mentally associated bubbles with games. Not that it really matters, as I never use Game Centre anyway. What bothers me more is the visual disconnect between the icons in OS X and iOS now. They were rarely full-on duplicates, but the visual style generally persisted. Now, iOS has taken a new direction, and OS X largely hasn’t…

Otherwise, aesthetically, I really like it. The transparency in general looks really good. Much better than Aero, I think. Where Microsoft always slapped on a crap load of gloss and glass effects, these transparencies are much softer and less “loud” overall. Really, like the menu bar in OS X. It isn’t in your face. And, the flatness of everything has worked out quite nicely, I think.

Functionally, I’m quite excited to start playing with this. I’ll hold off until I’ve actually used it before I address that, though.

8 days ago on The design of iOS 7: simply confusing

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Most immediately, I’m probably going to pick up a refurbished 27" iMac. I’m finding myself wanting that crazy screen real estate and power lately. It’ll take some of the load off my trusty MacBook Pro. After that, I will definitely be picking up the next iPhone. And, I’ll likely trade my iPad 3 for a retina Mini whenever that’s released.

The next few months may be expensive…

11 days ago on This is my next (Apple purchase) 1 reply

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Mobile is fairly easy:

Trade iPhone 4S for Nexus 4 (or HTC One Google Edition, if that’s actually a thing)
Trade iPad 3 for Nexus 7

I’d miss iOS for sure, but I do like Android as well, so things would hardly be dire.

If we’re throwing in desktop operating systems… this is a bit more difficult. Finding a single computer that can adequately replace my 15" Macbook Pro is rather difficult. So, it would likely have to be a combination of some ultrabook and self-built desktop (probably running Linux). Maybe if I’m feeling adventurous and wealthy, a Chromebook Pixel to cover the laptop end of things. In truth, I’d still miss the hell out of OS X.

16 days ago on If you had to leave Apple 1 reply