Technology | James Foley

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Google Chrome, a confession.

My boss, is a die hard Chrome user.

This irks me.

We both use Macs, both love OS X, both appreciate and adore the stark, minimalist brilliance that is the Aqua UI, but when it comes to our choice of browser the differences are on the level of Holy War.

“Chrome is hideous”, “Safari is a pretty boy” “Chrome couldn’t render HTML-5 even if Google weren’t evil Web-M Loving hypocrits” “Safari couldn’t render your Ma!” etc, etc. As you can see this difference of opinion escalated rapidly, and in our offices where we spend literally every productivity fueled moment in front of a browser window, this was clearly going to become a problem. As such, a peace process was devised, we each spend a week using the others object-orientated object of affection and compare notes afterwards to see who was right.

So, hello Chrome.google.com, and hello my first problem with Chrome. Google, as amazing and talented and generous as you are, UI design always seems to be bottom on your list of priorities. Why? Come on, you’ve got at $200 Billion market cap, hire a UI guy or two. Please? With Larry cleaning out the Big Bad Schmidt’s closet no one will even notice.

And unfortunately thats about where my issues with Chrome end. Sure the Auto-Fill sucks, but it sucks on Safari as well. Chrome is a multi-platform browser, and as such you can’t expect it to look as good on a Mac as Safari does. No one does UI like Apple does, and everyone knows that no one at Google does UI. It’s fast, has never crashed on me in a week of use, has some great extensions and doesn’t rape your system the way Firefox does. I can see why people use chrome, why people enjoy it, why people get all religious about it. If Safari didn’t exist, I’d be using Chrome in a heartbeat to be honest.

But, as I write this post, there’s a familiar feeling at my fingertips. It’s kinda like that one pair of jeans that feels better than all the others, like driving your car after a long journey in someone else’s, like coming home after a good holiday. Sure, the experience was great, and you feel better and more cultured after it all, but nothing beats coming home.

And opening Safari.

P.S As I write this post, I got this message on twitter.

Old habits die hard

2011: 01/31
CATEGORY: Internet
Technology
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iPhone 4.0

Sometime’s I have to wonder how compartmentalized an organization Apple is, the lock screen orientation feature in the iPad is fantastically handy, and yet it remains absent from (at least the first beta) 4.0. What gives?

We’ve discussed multi tasking here before, and I praise you by sticking to your guns and not implementing “real” multi tasking, the fast app switching and app freezing is nigh on perfect, and having played with it a bit over the past few days, it feels natural, fast and elegant in use.

Background wallpapers? Meh. I can see the iPod touch crowd using this feature, but personally I like my black background.

Limited iPhone 3g (and ZERO iPhone 2g) support. Computers age, your g4 cant run snow leopard and your original iPhone can’t run OS 4, deal with it.

Folders. Rock. That is all.

The game centre depending on who you listen to either is the future of mobile gaming, or just killed the innovation and individuality of the sector. Bullshit to both, the game centre simply gets rid of the multitude of different log ins, passwords and friend lists in each separate iPhone game and replace it with one centralized database that each and every game can access. Makes it easier for gamers, makes it easier for developers. Win, Win.

The unified mailbox should’ve been present on the iPhone day one.

The addition of Web search in spotlight makes me think Apple want users to search more, or get used to the mechanic of searching more often in the iPhone OS, how long until we see this jump to the main home screen?

Bluetooth keyboards. They work, you look like a douche using a bluetooth keyboard to type on your phone. Yay.

5X digital zoom says one thing and one thing only, theres a MUCH better camera coming in the next iPhone, because 5x at 3MP sucks.

And then theres iBooks, which I really, really, really wanted to test out, but couldn’t because it doesnt ship at the OS level, it’s going to be released as a 4.0 launch app it looks like, but I really like the idea of sync between iPad and iPhone copies of the book (I know the kindle has this too), and seeing as the iPad keeps getting delayed, maybe I’ll get to read all those eBooks I’ve been stocking up on on my phone before my shiny new iPad.

All in all, an evolution of the iPhone, not a revolution (and in case you’re wondering, I think that is a good thing)

2010: 04/19
CATEGORY: Dear Apple
Technology
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Stanza

Hmmm…. Stanza

Stanza is the kind of App that makes you smile.

First of all it’s free. Zero dollars, euro or whatever your currency of choice is.

Secondly it works well, really well! It’s so simple, with direct access to project gutenburg and desktop app that allows you to easily sync any other books that may have, um, fallen off the back of a truck.

Third, and most important, is that it’s gotten me reading more often and in more places than I ever imagined. Just waiting in line skimming through a page or two would’ve been unwieldily and something I never would have considered.

I just can’t wait for the iPad version! Get it.

2010: 03/25
CATEGORY: Technology
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Jaw. Dropping.

This is quite simply the most incredible feature I’ve ever seen in a piece of image manipulation software.

2010: 03/24
CATEGORY: Photography
Technology
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Listening

I recently got a great set of headphones. A really, really good set of headphones. I won’t go into detail, but they’re a pretty high end pair of sony cans, the big over ear type. Once I took them home I started listening to some of my favorite songs just to get a feel for them, the bass was rich, warm and enveloping, the mids were full and powerful and the top end was bright, airy and full of detail.

And then my iTunes library skipped to the next song and I thought my brand new headphones had failed spectacularly. The sound was all of a sudden muddy, as if from another room, the warmth and depth was gone, replaced with a flat dull monotone.

I panicked and got a huge sense of relief when I saw that the song playing was encoded at 128 kbps. The majority of my library is 320 kbps, a few favorites are lossless, but theres still a few relics that are in really low bit rates. This got me thinking, mainly about audio quality, the way I experience music and the expectations I have for fidelity. But then another thought hit me, I know good sounding music when I hear it, I appreciate high bit rates and good speakers, but just how many people of my generation can tell the difference any more?

Everyone’s seen kids on busses listening to songs on their mobile phones. Mono, 64 kbps with a colossal amount of background noise. They then go home, maybe take out their iPod, 128 kbps stereo, crappy 50c headphones that came with the player. The closest thing these people ever come to hearing their music as it was meant to be experienced is on TV on one of the music channels through their TV’s built in speakers. The number of people that listen to music as it was meant to be heard, on large 3 driver speakers, with enough room for the tones to mingle and allow harmonics to grow and enough bass to rattle your fillings is dwindling, most people just don’t see quality as a factor anymore unfortunately. A friend of mine laughed at me recently when I suggested buying a good, moderately expensive set of headphones, despite him having gone through 4 pairs of cheap, crap sounding earbuds in the past 12 months.

Now I know the tone of this piece is coming across as elitist, snobby, whatever. Peoples ability to perceive good music is dying and it’s scary. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but for someone who’s interested in pursuing a career in the Music Business, someone who is particular about their work in a studio, someone who will slave away for hours over a mixing desk to make sure a musicians work sounds the absolute best it can. When it comes down to it, music is a business and if more and more people can’t tell the difference between a good quality track and a low quality track, will engineers, producers even artists themselves, make the effort they would have in the CD era?

2010: 03/23
CATEGORY: Technology
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Installing an Intel x-25 SSD in a Mac Pro

The Drive as it arrived from CompuB in limerick, the best Apple reseller I’ve come across. 240 euros for the 80GB, rev2 Intel X25-M.

The contents of the box, the Drive (make sure you get one of these in your box haha), a sticker to proclaim the awesomness of your new drive, and a handy sled that converts your 2.5″ SSD to fit typical 3.5″ Sata ports.

The sticker

The brand new shiny drive. Now, time to open up your Mac.

Take out your first two drives, this will give you access to the super drive bay.

Grab the super drive bay and pull, hard. Don’t worry, you wont break it.

Place your SSD in here, theres no moving parts so don’t worry about lying it flat etc. Connect it to the spare SATA cable hanging down, push back in the superdrive bay, pop back in any other hard drives, close up, and boot your Mac Pro, preferably with a copy of snow leopard in the disc drive.

Once the installer loads, choose disc utility form the menu bar and format your drive, then install Mac OS X as usual, and come back in about 15 minutes to the quickest Mac experience you’ll ever have.

In a while I’m going to do a little post on how to manage logic and final cuts libraries over multiple drives, a real headache for anyone with a small drive.

2010: 03/15
CATEGORY: Technology
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What we believe in.

What we believe in

What we dont

I just can’t get my head around these netbook manufacturers that are trying to turn their products into desktop replacements. You’re design brief was to build a small, elegant portable device for people to use in places and situations when a traditional laptop doesn’t make sense. The external GPU pictured above basically turns a 10″ netbook into a desktop computer, why the hell would you want that?

“So you can play games”

Oh yeah, crysis on a 9.7″ screen with a trackpad and tiny keyboard. Nice

“But you could plug in an external monitor, mouse and keyboard”

It’s a netbook you idiot. If you want a big monitor, a mouse and a keyboard, buy a desktop.

“Netbooks are cheap! I can’t afford a desktop”

Hmm.. 300-500 for a netbook, 200 for the XGPU, 300 for a good monitor. Yeah, you’re broke. Idiot.

“STFU you’re just an Apple Fanboy”

True, but I also believe that any device, be it from Apple, Asus, Acer or Amazon, should have a clear idea of the role it should play in a consumers life. The jack of all trades but master of none just isn’t good enough anymore, doing ONE thing better than everyone else on the market is infinitely more important than simply doing MORE things than everyone else on the market.

2010: 02/09
CATEGORY: Technology
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Multitasking on the iPhone

Sometimes I feel really let down by the people I trust. I love reading engadget, gizmodo, wired etc. and yet for the past year or so one thing has pissed me off all over the web.

“Why has the iphone/ipod touch/ipad not got multitasking?”

I’ve read so many bitches, moans, rants, musing and editorials giving out and belittling apple for not including “even the most basic features” on it’s mobile devices. Multitasking, or at least multitasking as I understand it, simply doesn’t apply in the mobile space.

Right now on my desktop I’ve got adium open for IM, mail running in the background, iTunes playing a podcast and safari open writing this post. My attention is held solely by safari, the other apps are ancillary, I don’t need them front and centre, merely be notified when they NEED my attention. Now, translate this experience to a 3.5″ screen. Screen real estate is at a premium, I do not want to run windowed apps on something that small!

The current eco system is nigh on perfect, developers can add push notifications to their apps, simple pop ups to tell you something else needs your attention. What pisses me off is that people miss the whole point of the mobile experience, apps run full screen! Assume today apple flip a big switch and enable multitasking. Hmm, what changes in your workflow?

App 1 is open.

You need to switch to App 2.

Tap home button then open App 2.

Does that sound familiar?

The only difference from what we’ve got right now, is that App 1 continues to suck power and CPU cycles from App 2. Can people still really not see why multitasking just shouldn’t be in the mobile space??

When Apple set about designing the iPhone they had some very clear design goals. They put in the foremost of their mind the User experience, battery life and fast operation. The worked from the ground up, building as they went, creating a new mobile computing paradigm, not copying and pasting bits and pieces from traditional computers and mobile phones. The sooner people do the same with their expectations the better

Est. 1990

Google Chrome, a confession.

iPhone 4.0

Stanza

Jaw. Dropping.

Listening

Installing an Intel x-25 SSD in a Mac Pro

What we believe in.

Multitasking on the iPhone

Attention iPad Haters

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