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Mac Word From the desk of Macworld Editorial Director Jason Snell
In Praise of iTunes Match
When Apple announced iTunes Match in June as a part of a raft of announcements related to iCloud, I was a little skeptical. I had just been released from my annual $99 payment to Apple for MobileMe, thanks to iCloud—I wasn’t excited about a new annual subscription taking its place.
Instead, I ended up figuring I’d pay $25 for iTunes Match, upgrade my tracks to higher-quality versions, and then never pay again. I heard a lot of other people saying the same thing.
Perhaps back then the details of iTunes Match weren’t quite clear enough, or perhaps I just wasn’t prepared to understand them. But after having used iTunes Match for a few weeks now, I’ve come to appreciate the service quite a bit… and have accepted that I’ll probably keep paying for it for years to come.
For me, it starts with keeping the integrity of my iTunes library across many different devices. I have an iMac on my desk at work, a Mac mini with all my music on it at home, and a MacBook Air with me just about everywhere I go. Plus an iPad and an iPhone. A lot of the features of iTunes were originally designed for the idea of a single jukebox on a single computer, and it showed. Syncing with iPods and iPhones was okay, but if you had a second Mac somewhere else, things started to fragment quickly. (Take the concept of play counts. I love personal statistics, and the idea of finding out exactly how many times I’ve played a song is great! But listening on a few different Macs—or losing the play count when you delete a song from your iTunes library for some reason—meant that the play count was never meaningful to me.)
Steve Jobs: Making a dent in the universe
I was in the third hour of a three-hour meeting on the afternoon of October 5, 2011, and I was feeling a bit punchy. The day before was an all-out sprint to cover Apple’s press conference and its fallout, along with plenty of technical snafus. So I was tired, the room was warm, and my mind was drifting.
Fatigue and stuffiness led to an inappropriately Deep Thought. And so I was struck by the fact that all of us has a bond that is unstated, obvious, and yet incredibly relevant: We’re all alive right now. We’re the people who lived through the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st. Not just the people in the conference room, but every single one of us. Despite all our differences, we share one huge bond: we are the people who are alive right now, right this very moment. We weren’t in the past, and we won’t be at some indeterminate point in the future, but right now we are all living in the world.
I walked back upstairs after the meeting and almost immediately got the news that Steve Jobs was gone from that world.
Life after Jobs: Why Apple isn't doomed
The factual statements are true, so far as they go. Steve Jobs did leave Apple in the mid-80s, and a succession of Apple CEOs named Sculley and Spindler and Amelio did manage to nearly run Apple into the ground over the next 12 years.
But the flaw in the History Repeats Itself storyline being promoted in some corners as Jobs steps down as CEO is that the Apple of today is nothing like the Apple of 1985.
When Steve Jobs left Apple the first time, I was finishing my freshman year of high school. As a result, I have no insider knowledge of that era. Eight years later, I was covering Apple… and Apple rapidly went through three CEOs who made numerous bad decisions that led Apple to the brink of disaster. Steve Jobs, meanwhile, was building a company (Next) that had created an interesting computer operating system that was being used by approximately nobody.
Snell: The shuttle and the stuff of dreams
Last week I was fortunate enough to watch from three miles away as 4.5 million pounds of spacecraft shot upward on a pillar of fire, piercing the clouds and heading for an orbital rendezvous with the International Space Station.
As I watched Atlantis make the final launch of the 30-year-old space shuttle program, I was struck by the intersection of technology and humanity that I had witnessed.
Of networks and people
Though the space shuttle did carry two iPhone 4s into orbit, that wasn’t why I was there. I was present at Kennedy Space Center for the launch of Atlantis as a part of the NASA Tweetup, an innovative program put on by NASA’s public affairs office. The NASA Tweetup program gives randomly selected followers of NASA’s Twitter streams the chance to visit the space agency’s facilities and even view launches. I was one of 150 Twitter users selected to visit Cape Canaveral (at our own expense) for the last shuttle launch.
Remains of the Day: By the numbers
One Apple employee finally got off iCloud. The iPhone 5 may or may not look different, and may or may not show up in a couple months. Speaking of iCloud and iPhones, most of us want to get our iPhones onto the former, and Israel wants a violence-encouraging app pulled fron the latter. The remainders for Tuesday, June 21, 2011 aren’t that good at math.
76% of iPhone users will adopt iCloud (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
A new survey by RBC Capital Markets concludes that 76 percent of iPhone owners will use iCloud. I just completed my own independent research, which shows that 97 percent of dopey surveys yield reliably bogus statistics. And the other three percent yield unicorns.
John Herbold has left the iCloud (9 to 5 Mac)
Weekly Wrap: Drooling over Lion, ruminating over iCloud
Father’s Day is coming! But let’s face it: If you haven’t gotten a gift for Dad at this point, you’re probably just not going to. Instead, sit back and let us catch you up on the Macworld week that was.
Lion in wait
We know how you love drooling over Lion features. Serenity Caldwell ran away with this week’s pageview crown by posting not one, but two Lion rundowns. So pop on some Elton John in iTunes and check out her pieces on five new Lion features and five new things your apps can do with Lion, too.
Not all Lion news is good news, though. Chris Breen pointed out that since Lion drops support for Rosetta, older PowerPC apps won’t run anymore. If the thought of losing access to an older version of your favorite accounting software makes your pulse Quicken, make sure you also read through Chris’s guide on what else might prevent you from making the Lion upgrade.
Server gurus should read up on John C. Welch’s analysis of Lion Server. Non-server gurus should run away screaming.
Weekly Wrap: Definitely covering WWDC
We started the Weekly Wrap a few weeks ago, to help you catch up on Macworld stories you may have missed. But if you missed the big stories this past week, you might want to see your doctor; this was the week of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple’s annual event wherein it makes all sorts of exciting tech announcements. Missing our big stories the week of WWDC is like a football fan forgetting about the Super Bowl, or an American accidentally forgetting not to watch soccer. You’re here now, though, so let’s get started.
Worldwide Load
Unsurprisingly, our WWDC coverage was tops this week. The incomparable (and The Incomparable’s) Dan Moren and Jason Snell hosted our live blog, sharing each new juicy tidbit as Apple executives unveiled it. Apple unveiled iOS 5 for the first time, and we wrote up everything you need to know about it. And because we’re just as excited about iOS 5 as you, our coverage didn’t stop there: We wrote up first looks at iOS 5’s new notifications system and Reminders app; checked in with developers for their feedback; and analyzed which features may now force some developers to rethink their iOS strategies. Oh, and yours truly devoted about 1600 words to drooling, in public, over what iOS 5 will bring. Macworld says I’m financially responsible for replacing my shorted-out keyboard.
WWDC wasn’t just about iOS, of course. No less than Steve Jobs himself formally introduced us to iCloud, and Macworld’s crack team of punsters worked overtime to figure out every cloud-related joke we could make. They were on cloud nine, with their heads in the clouds, as they figured out whether an “iCloud reigns supreme” joke might work. Fortunately, their view wasn’t clouded, because we’re very cirrus about knocking our cloud jokes into the stratus-phere. With that out of our system, we wrote up everything you need to know about iCloud, along with an analysis of what iCloud means for MobileMe subscribers. We told you just what iCloud means, and Chris Breen offered a first look at iTunes in the Cloud.
WWDC: Apple goes to the mattresses
Something about Apple’s presentation at its 2011 Worldwide Developer Conference in June reminded me of mob movies. No, I’m not likening Steve Jobs to the Godfather. But Apple’s keynote presentation addressed so many longstanding Apple weaknesses and took the company in so many ambitious new directions, that I was reminded of the relentlessness of movie tough guys.
Old business
Not the Godfather. But settling old business.
Apple’s Scott Forstall kicked off its announcement of iOS 5, the new version of the software that runs iPhones and iPads, with the humble explanation that he only had time to detail ten new iOS features. But that list addressed almost every major sore spot we’ve found in the iOS in the past few years. Forstall whacked notifications, cut the tether that tied iOS devices to computers, and sent the outmoded SMS text-messaging system to sleep with the fishes.
Sitting next to me during the event was Macworld Senior Associate Editor Dan Moren, with whom I collaborate on our live coverage of Apple events. Dan turned to me during the iOS presentation and said, “Wow, they’re really knocking them down today.”
Apple Design Awards recognize excellent iOS, Mac apps
Each year at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple hands out Apple Design Awards (ADAs) to recognize outstanding developer achievement. It’s like the Oscars, but nerdier, and with a far lesser chance of Ricky Gervais showing up. While last year’s event shut out Mac apps from consideration, the 2011 ADAs once again honored both Mac and iOS developers alike. Apple says ADAs go to developers who demonstrate excellence in the areas of design, innovation, and technnology. The award itself—a coveted cube—was accompanied this year by a MacBook Air, iPad 2, and iPod touch.
At Tuesday’s event, Apple presented awards in four categories: Student, iPhone, Mac, and iPad. In the Student category, Apple recognized Grades 2 by Tapity, Pennant by Vargatron, and Pulse News Reader by Alphonso Labs.
Awards in the iPhone category went to Chillingo for Cut the Rope, Shotzoom for Golfscape GPS Rangefinder, and Chair Entertainment for Infinity Blade.
Weekly Wrap: Macworld's top stories for the week of May 29, 2011
It feels like we kicked off our first-ever Weekly Wrap just a week ago, and that’s because it has been precisely that long. And we can imagine that—what with the Memorial Day holiday, and the catching up at work, and the alluring sunshine out your window—maybe you missed a few stories here on Macworld.com. Because every last word we publish here is nothing short of life-altering genius, we’re happy to help you catch up on the goods from the week gone by.
What Would Developers Conference?
Apple announced that Steve Jobs would indeed deliver WWDC’s keynote address, and even told us what Mr. Jobs would focus on: relaunching eWorld. Actually, the keynote will focus on unveiling Lion (the next iteration of the Mac OS), iOS 5, and something called iCloud. Since Apple hasn’t yet told us just what the heck iCloud is or does, we chose to guess instead. Chris Breen considered media in an iCloud, while I dreamed about the wonders iCloud might mean for syncing. If it turns out iCloud is a new iPhone game, we’re both going to look pretty daft.
Not content to speculate on iCloud, we also spilled some virtual ink on our ruminations about what iOS 5 might bring, and on a few Lion features we’d like to see. We also want to help you prep for our upcoming live-blog of the WWDC keynote, by ensuring you don’t hyperventilate in excitement at news that’s actually old hat; thus, we put together a primer on what we already know about Lion. Even Philip Michaels got into the iPhone speculation game. Really, the only WWDC prediction we didn’t shoot for was how Jobs would dress, which frankly strikes me as a missed opportunity. If you’re one of the few lucky folks attending WWDC, don’t forget to pick up Apple’s official app for the event.
Whatever surprises WWDC has in store, Apple apparently felt that iPhone/iPod touch-optimized versions of its iWork suite weren’t worth holding back on. Hot on the heels of releasing the now-universal versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, Apple broke down the nuances of importing documents onto your iOS devices. I, for one, won’t rest until I can update my spreadsheets using my iPod nano.
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