Joke of the Year…Apple iJoke unleashed!

Apple, the iconic company has done it again! They released the biggest joke of the year already, but, not very many are aware of it. Maybe it’s subtle enough to be ignored in a casual read.

So, here it is…Apple announced a “Public” beta of not just OS X, but also of iOS now. It’s Apple hardware, Apple software and everything on it is Apple moderated by the Mac AppStore and iOS AppStore and now Apple needs to do public betas in order to get their software fixed and working.

While this would be perfectly understandable in Microsoft’s case or similar companies since the combinations in the PC world are practically endless, for Apple, this is the biggest joke of all time!

Command key on my iMac. Time to clean up.

 

So…What could be the reason behind this joke? The only logical reason would seem to be that no one at Apple uses any Apple hardware or software anymore and relies on the more robust hardware and software from other vendors. A company that never let out any details about what it was upto, now announces products in advance and fails to deliver over extended time periods.

Personally, I had signed up and participated in the OS X beta and never got any acknowledgements of any of the bugs I submitted or their status on release. This is just another eyewash from a directionless company after Steve Jobs.

Looking at it another way would be like saying; “It’s our hardware and software and we need others to check it out since we cannot do it ourselves”. Other companies do it, so, we must too…

I am still using a spotted, bad LCD, on my iMac like, possibly, many others. A common issue that was well-known. It was replaced once during warranty and spotted all over again after 3 months again. The replaced screen did not even carry a 6 month warranty. While I know Apple replaced the LCD vendor, it does not help me. At a paid replacement cost of over 30k, my next monitor would be accompanied by a PC.

I hope Microsoft gets its act together with Windows soon, otherwise it would be a Linux only PC. My Android phone is almost as usable as my iPhone now, so, the change seems to be coming…

So, what prompted me to actually write this post? Well…It was triggered by this video on YouTube where I think the laughter might be a bit overdone, but, I could add more points to it 🙂

This has English sub-titles and is fun to watch!

You can say iWatch or Apple Watch now…!

Apple – Let the Pain Begin!

After yet another flurry of untested and buggy software releases in the form of iOS and Yosemite, Apple was no longer concerned about the less than 50% adoption rate of iOS 8 at yet another boring event with lame jokes. They appeared to ignore the fact that even the close to 50% adoption rate for iOS 8 was primarily driven by the new iPhones.

The entire ecosystem that made Apple what it was while Steve Jobs was around is steadily crumbling. Personally, I think Apple made too much money to be bothered about quality, user experience or the identity the company had under Jobs.

iOS 8 Released – Best Avoided for now…

Well, as I had indicated in my earlier posts, Apple is releasing buggy and untested stuff all over the place. The iOS 8 final build is the same as the GM released to developers earlier. No surprises, it remains bug riddled at least in my brief tests.

Apple has already pulled Health Kit related apps as they “discovered” serious issues there. I probably have some ideas on one of the bugs since I ran into it with no additional, related, apps. I entered some data in iOS 8 beta 5 in the health app and the entire data was destroyed when the device was updated to the iOS 8 GM. Although I had emailed a backup of the health data from the app, there is no way to restore it in the GM version. There was another issue that I could not change units to suit my taste, it seemed to be fixed/hard-coded.

Telegram – Now with iPad support

The open source messaging app, Telegram, has been the new rage in messaging for some time now. Its secure and free (including ad free) nature, coupled with support for multiple platforms as well as desktops makes it a far better choice for messaging than most others including WhatsApp.

With group chats of upto 200 people and secret messaging, it beats most others on this count as well.

What makes it even better is that all the normal chat text and data (video, photo etc) is stored on the cloud automatically unlike other such messaging apps. There are no limits on the data sizes.

The recent release of Telegram HD for iOS supports the iPad as well. Android users can check out Telegram on the Google Play Store.

Telegram identifies you by your phone number, as before, for all the devices you install it on.

Wiper – Yet another private messaging & call app

We have yet another entry in the messaging arena on iOS and Android called Wiper.

Like most such apps, this is also an iPhone only app. Even though it claims compatibility with the iPad, but, is not a universal app. The name sounds very similar to a far better known app called Viber and some might get confused between the two names.

Tempo Calendar for iPhone seems promising

For those still searching for a better alternate to the stock iPhone calendar app, Tempo might be a very promising candidate. Tempo has combined calendars, reminders, maps, birthdays, Facebook posts, meeting email organisation and natural language processing to easily add events and more…All rolled into one usable app.

The best part is that Tempo is currently free on the App Store.

iTunes U 2.0 with custom classroom support released

Apple released iTunes U 2.0 with support for creating and sharing courses a few hours ago. Although it is too early to figure out the actual impact and overall usage and adoption given the high price of Apple devices, it does look promising.

To create a course, you need to have an iPad and have to register with an Institute name and profile, which, can be edited later. I guess details will emerge as and when people start using it.

A brief description from the application is as follows:

• The new iTunes U makes it simple for students participating in private courses to pose questions on the course or any post or assignment
• Other students in the class can jump into the discussion and ask more questions or provide answers
• Teachers and students can keep up with the conversation when they receive push notifications as the discussion progresses

Create courses on iPad

• Teachers can now create and update their courses using the iTunes U app on their iPad—getting started is fast, simple, and completely free
• Provide every student a course outline, write posts, distribute assignments, upload class materials, easily track participating students, and much more
• Take advantage of the built in camera on iPad to easily capture photos or videos and upload them for course assignments
• Create materials using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—or other apps from the App Store—and add them to your course by using “Open in iTunes U” from within each app
• Teachers affiliated with qualified institutions have the option to publish their courses to the iTunes U Catalog—making them available to everyone for free

 

iOS 7.1.2 and Mavericks 10.9.4 Released – A preliminary look!

Apple released iOS 7.1.2 and Mavericks 10.9.4 a few hours ago. Once again, at least the iOS update appears to be untried and untested. There is also an update for Apple TV, 6.2, although I did not see anything new or different in the brief look I had after the update.

Those attempting to update iOS using iTunes might be out of luck as the update might get stuck after a while. The OTA update seems to work fine on a few devices that I tried.

StreamNation Shutter – Unlimited Photos & Videos

StreamNation has released it’s new app called Shutter which offers unlimited cloud storage for mobile photos and videos upto a duration of an hour.

The app is currently iOS only and an Android version will be released soon.

Sounds good? So it seems. It works as advertised excepting for a few sticky points…

1. iPhone 5s SloMo will be converted to normal speed
2. No option to choose what to upload from your iOS photos app. It will upload all!

Other than the above points, it seems a viable alternate to Flickr. In fact, it seems to work a lot better than Flickr considering that this is just the initial release and Flickr leaves a lot to be desired even after the year or so it has already been around (after the free 1TB for all).

Shutter allows you to share the content either privately or over social networks. The organisation seems to be better than Flickr at first glance.

There is a catch…as always…unlimited storage is only for photos or videos taken from the mobile device. Any other content is limited to a 5 GB free limit.

Let’s see how this turns out…

WWDC 2014 – iOS 8, OS X 10.10 – Apple opens up iOS a bit more!

Well…Not a very exciting event from Apple, but, there are some points that could stretch Apple’s lead in the mobile and desktop market to some extent.

1. Apple has opened out more APIs on the iOS side allowing app functionality, officially, that was previously available only on jailbroken devices. Given the wide developer base, we could see some exciting apps coming up in the near future. iOS 8 Enterprise features have also been enhanced and could spur wider enterprise adoption.
2. The introduction of a new programming language, Swift, which could accelerate the development on iOS and OS X platforms far more than ever before.
3. The integration and extension of the functionality of the 10+ year old Nokia PC Suite into Yosemite is a welcome addition. Most people using iOS devices would probably understand that this could be quite useful on occasion. This page has details.

A word of caution for early adopters. Do not attempt to try iOS 8 just as yet on your primary phone. Most of the current applications will not work as expected and a vast majority would simply crash, including the stock apps. Yosemite, although usable, is quite laggy and slow, which is to be expected from a developer preview. The same applies to Xcode 6 beta.