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iOS 6 Maps
For better or worse, iOS 6 brings a new Maps app. The 3D button offers a cool three-dimensional view of nearby buildings. The feature is much more impressive when browsing around the City. The 3D effect is practically unnoticeable in burbs of Mountain View. I see two big changes in the new Maps app. First,…
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MacBook Pro with Retina Display Unboxing Photos
A MacBook Pro with Retina Display showed up this morning. First, the top cover of the box was removed. The MacBook Pro was wrapped in a transparent protective film. MacBook Pro out of the box. The MacBook Pro sits recessed in its box. Below, Apple carefully stored the power cord and other accessories. The svelte…
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iPhone 4s Impressions
Last Friday, I stopped by the Palo Alto Apple store during my lunch hour for the iPhone 4s launch. I guess everyone else must have ordered the iPhone online because the line out the door was surprisingly short. It reached just barely past the corner. The drink cart and loaner umbrellas kept everyone cool under…
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China Hotel Internet Access
First, the good news. When I visited China, all the hotels i stayed in had in-room broadband internet access. Now, the bad news. Unfortunately, only the hotel in Nanjing had in-room wireless internet access. For the rest, online access came in the form of an ethernet cable. If I was lugging around a MacBook Pro,…
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24 Hours with an iPad
I just spent 24 hours with the “magical and revolutionary” iPad. What’s so magical and revolutionary about the iPad? First, start with the battery life. Absolutely amazing! The iPad is still going strong 24 hours after its last charge. After a full day of browsing the Internet, watching videos, and running apps, the battery is…
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Pages: You Need a Newer Version of Pages to Open This Document
Today, a co-worker asked if I could open .pages document. Of course, I thought. Send me the document. After all. I have iWork installed on my MacBook Pro. See. Even though we have just entered 2010, the latest version of iWork is iWork ’09. And, my version is iWork ’08. Surely, a version of iWork…
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PowerBook Will Not Charge
My PowerBook G4 is on an unlucky streak. A few months ago, it developed a bulging battery problem. Since I always leave the PowerBook plugged in, I did not immediately notice the defective battery. What caught my attention was my sudden inability to close the PowerBook lid. After a bit of head scratching, I flipped…
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Snow Leopard and Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager
I finally came across an application that does not play well with Snow Leopard. The ScanSnap Manager application that came with the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M can crash under certain circumstances. For example, if I scan a document and select the Scan to Folder option, I will consistently see this unpleasant message: Fujitsu has a patch…
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Snow Leopard, BBEdit & QuicKeys
Because Snow Leopard does not install Rosetta by default, I’ve decided to abandon the last of my PowerPC applications: QuicKeys 2.1.1. I’ve been a fan of BBEdit for a long time. At first, I relied heavily on QuicKeys to handle a lot of my keystroke automation within BBEdit: Add pre-defined text / templates. Insert HTML…
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iTunes is Annoying Me
I rarely listen to the radio. When I do, I almost listen exclusively to KQED, which is not the best source for hearing new or old Chinese music. So, I pretty much depend on the Genius Just For You feature in iTunes to discover new music. iTunes seems to handle English artists and songs quite…