…we are a community. Let’s continue to fight for each other, encourage each other, and work together to make amazing things.

We are the 3rd-party family of Apple nerds. Let’s make a dent.

- Shawn Blanc: “3rd-Party Family”

So, it must be because they didn’t update the form factor to a really crappy teardrop concept that would be a pain in the ass to game on. Or, maybe it’s because they didn’t call it an iPhone 5? What a crime! It’s horrendous! Except it’s RIGHT IN LINE with what they’ve done for years. iPhone 3G → iPhone 3GS → iPhone 4 → iPhone 4S.

So, I ask, how can you be disappointed?

More on this from smarter people than me:

If you judge Apple’s products by the reaction of analysts and the press, you’re an idiot. Pure and simple. Apple doesn’t make products for analysts and the press. They make products for everyone.

- MG Siegler: “Apple’s ‘Fall From Grace’”

(via Judy)

That’s what people want to see when they go to Apple events: Steve Jobs holding up a rainbow-hued unicorn that you can purchase for your very own…

… this interconnected web of products is the thing that makes the continued development of the new and magical products possible.

- Kottke: “Unicorns and wheels: Apple’s two types of products”

Would as many people be disappointed if Apple had released the same device but called it the iPhone 5?

- Marco: “By any other name”

(via DF)

Top 10 Misused English Words – Please stop using these the wrong way. (via Judy)

Your idea sucks, now go and do it anyway (via MBN)

Unitasking — absolutely gorgeous site, as well

Glider Pro coming to iOS – SWEET! (and, yes, I’ve spent too much time playing the original this week)

Instagram 2.0 – Massive update. Instant filters. Instant tilt-shift. High-res photos.

iTunes Skip Feature – Exactly the solution I was looking for. I’m creating a smart list for these so I can remove them from my library entirely. (via DF)

“While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes. I don’t. I find it Patriotic.”

The Yoda Pie Chart – There is no try.

Hip-Checked — “For the past year HP has looked like a dog being tempted on opposite sides of the room by two treats. Constantly rushing back and forth so as to not lose either of the treats, but never actually getting either of the treats.”

Welcome to Macintosh

Charge money for your work. Don’t be a jerk to people. Repeat. (via Ben Brooks)

I’m not going to be coy about it. Steve Jobs has made things that have been part of my life since I was six years-old. The man, through his craft, influenced the man I’m still becoming.

- Aaron Silvers: “Influence“

A brilliant man has exited 1 Infinite Loop. But his influence will be felt for years to come. Just watch this.

Good marketing may get people in the door the first time, but good product design gets them in the door the second (and third, and fourth, and fifth) time.

- Shawn Blanc

Apple isn’t dominating because of clever marketing. They’re dominating because they make awesome products that people can’t wait to use. And when they roll out a new version, existing customers will wait in long lines again to upgrade, without thinking about it, because they know it will be great. They can buy sight-unseen because they trust Apple to deliver what only Apple can deliver, the perfect harmony between hardware and software.

And they know they’ll be able to simply turn it on and start using it.

In episode three, we discuss elearning development on a Mac, ZebraZapps and Articulate Storyline.

Until you eliminate those phrases, until you eliminate the confusion, you don’t have a system built for real people. Lion is a step in the right direction towards removing this confusion.

- Ben Brooks

Great review.

Shawn Blanc has a good one, too.

Here is my short review having never laid eyes on this thing… It’s great. How do I know? Apple doesn’t do less than great. If you have a Mac that can run it, get it.

- Minimal Mac

Exactly.

Get it.

$29? Ridiculous value!

So, is there anywhere you’ve been in the last year that you don’t want anyone to know about?
- Ars

Yeah, this is a little freaky.

The book also states that after Jobs found out about Android’s similarities to iOS, he felt betrayed enough to somehow keep the development of the iPad hidden from Eric Schmidt while he was still a board member of Apple.

- TUAW

Wow. Very interesting.

Stating the plain truth, that the iPad 2 has no serious competition as a mainstream consumer device, doesn’t make you biased. It makes you accurate.

- John Gruber – Daring Fireball

Any more, we don’t need quotes from the articles by these yahoos. Just reference Walt Mossberg and we know it’s going to be full of crap.

Also, his site is a horrible experience without the help of Readability or Instapaper.

Because who wants to drop $800 on a “work in progress?

- Ben Brooks

My thoughts, exactly. All these new tablets coming out seem to be rushed to market and considerably buggy. And, as Gruber asks, the most important question is, “why would anyone buy this instead of an iPad?”

** I wrote the above before the iPad 2 announcement last week, but didn’t get a chance to post it.

This morning, I noticed this article on Google News.

With the official release of the iPad 2 last week, Apple has managed to refresh its flagship product to provide a sensible match for rival tablets, including its most formidable one, the Motorola Xoom.

WTF?! Seriously?

From the same article:

The iPad 2 is also slimmer than the Xoom by around a third which makes a difference when you try to lift the tablet with one hand.

The iPad 2 is the one catching up?

And, then, this gem:

When it comes to pricing the Motorola Xoom is likely to win hands down because, like the Galaxy Tab, it is not the market leader; Apple will still sell loads of tablets at the current market price (£429 for the cheapest model and close to £700 for the most expensive one).

Wait. The Xoom wins hands down on price? How? When? Please tell me this is a typo.

Poor, poor reporting.

This is a sentence I never thought I would publish: Beginning the first week in April I will be writing shawnblanc.net as my full-time gig.

- Shawn Blanc

Shawn Blanc goes full time. I’ve been a reader for several years now. Shawn has excellent, detailed software reviews, and his “Sweet Mac Setups” series is addicting and informative.

Congrats to Shawn. This is every geek writer’s dream. A full time gig to write geek stuff online. Awesome.

He’s having a membership drive, something I’m undecided on, but I signed up for three months, at least. Cool prizes are involved.

I sold the Macbook Pro because I found I wasn’t using it much. It’s battery life was mediocre, so I pretty much used it as a desktop out in the office. Recently, I’d been using the Mini a lot more often, and the iPad for reading, research, social media and drafting blog posts. I determined the reason for this was that the Macbook Pro was just too bulky. I didn’t want to use it as a true laptop while watching TV, and I rarely needed it on client visits.

Now to the point of this post – the basics. When I put the SSD in the Macbook Pro, I didn’t install all my usual apps right away. I decided to install as needed. The SSD is ridiculously fast (I highly recommend this upgrade), so installing and launching apps is a quick job. It was also only 120GB, but I knew I wasn’t going to be installing iLife or using it as my iTunes library.

Here are the apps I installed on days one and two (out of necessity).

• 1Password
• Alfred
• Audio Hijack Pro
• Chrome
• Coda
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• Growl
• MarsEdit
• Numbers
• Skype
• SoundSource
• SuperDuper
• Transmit

What I found was that I didn’t use much of the drive space at all for the apps I use every day.

In fact, I was only using about 12GB!

Even after a month or two, I hadn’t used much more of the drive. My client files are mostly WordPress theme files and temporary archives.

This post is rambling on. I tried to edit it a couple times and reorganize it, but it’s just that kind of post, I suppose. So what’s the point?

For me, it’s that I don’t need much. With just the basics, I can do everything I need to do. I don’t need the larger screen. I don’t need 500GB of storage. What I need is a light, portable machine that’s a pleasure to type on and begs to be used anywhere and everywhere. Enter the Macbook Air. I’m not purchasing one right away – I’m going to wait for the refresh and OS X Lion this summer.

In the interim, I’ll continue to use the Mini and the iPad.

I encourage you to look at what you actually use. I understand most of you have a laptop as your main machine, and need the space for photos, videos, etc. However, if you do have a hub, take a look at your portable and see if you need half the apps/content you have on it. I’ve purposely limited the space I allow myself on Dropbox, on my laptop, and on my iPad. This forces me to be smart about what I save, where I save it, and how I process it.

I don’t think I’ll ever need more than 64 or 128GB on a laptop again. 12-16GB for the OS and core apps, and the rest as a temporary spot for client files, photos and videos if I’m traveling. I want speed. Instant on. Immediate productivity.

I’ve been tweaking my setup for years, trying to find the balance. With the introduction of the iPad, and the drop in cost for SSDs, that balance has arrived. The powerful home hub, an iPad (or two) and a ultra-portable (the Macbook Air).

It’s just too bad I have to wait until the summer to try out this new setup.

Like a full-featured VNC client + lightweight Finder + cloud-based file management. I think a future iPad with more powerful specs will be able to handle this kind of desktop -> iOS portability.

via Federico Viticci’s iPad Life — The Brooks Review.

Great info about Federico’s iPad usage. I just bought Omnifocus for the iPad. $40 is a bit steep, but it seems like it’s the way to go, even if I don’t pony up for the Mac version.

I would love to see better integration between my Macs and my iPad in version 2. A simple Finder app would be perfect. I asked today how people were accessing their Macs from their iPads, and, more importantly, how they were interacting with them once they were in.

Thoughts?

Perhaps I am the only one, but what the hell good is a rear facing camera on a device that weighs 1.5lbs and is the size of a sheet of paper?

- Ben Brooks

He’s not the only one. I’ll be shocked if I ever use a rear-facing camera on an iPad, if it’s ever a feature.

“Tapping a button, scrolling a list, or zooming a screen in and out should make the user feel as though they’re tapping that user interface element directly. It shouldn’t feel as though they’re tapping a domino that knocks over other dominoes inside device which ultimately causes something to happen.”

(via Daring Fireball)

“Apple is a software company that makes hardware out of necessity. The software side of a modern computing platform is far more difficult and expensive to create and maintain than the hardware. Anyone can cobble together the same processors, DRAM, flash, and radios as Apple, put them into a plastic case, and run a commodity OS on them with slight front-end customizations. But not everyone can create an entire software platform.”

Great article from Marco. If you don’t read his blog, you’re missing out.

This is not limited to torrent files. It’s anything. I will be setting up additional workflows for movie and image files. And music from old backups…Unfortunately, now I’ll be tempted to mess with Automator for hours this weekend.

Don’t want to mess with Automator (not sure why you wouldn’t, it’s pretty simple)? Take a gander at Hazel. Ben Brooks loves it. I love how he uses it to change file colors based on date last viewed. Brilliant.

Of course, all of this is made so much easier with Dropbox. What the hell did we ever do without this app/service?

This is the kind of problem that Apple simply doesn’t face in their products: by keeping it all under the same roof and having a ruthless dictator with high standards and great taste at the top, they would never release hardware that begs for software. They’d just hold the hardware back until the software was ready — and not just running, but thoughtfully tailored for the device.

getURL works in all browsers, but uses a more complicated communication system when sending data to your Captivate file from the LMS. It also makes a lot of clicking sounds.

Lucky Day – one of the best shorts I’ve seen. Ever.

Nerf Infrared Auto-Cannon – Brilliant.

Baylor Rugby Alumni Festival – Work (and life) is keeping me away, but should be another awesome event.

Just take an iPhone 4 – my thoughts exactly. So nice, now that I have HD video capability and a better camera in my pocket. I still use my DSLR for sporting events and some other shots, but I love the iPhone because it’s an all-in-one, for almost everyone and everything.

MiFi of Your Dreams – not exactly, but it’s close. I could do without the steep $150 entry price. However, $40 a month for an unlimited “wherever I am” hotspot? Not too shabby.