Posts Tagged "apple"
All Google Location History Dashboard does is remind me how restrictive the iPhone is
Google’s location tracking service is quite interesting to me. Firstly, because it is private and cannot be shared – unlike Foursquare and the ilk. And secondly, because it is done as a side-effect of using the useful Google Maps for Mobile app, rather than as a distinct goal in its own right. This makes it a great way to capture extra data for lifelogging.
They’ve recently added a new dashboard which lets you view your location history in more detail. What mine basically tells me, is that as soon as I got my iPhone, I stopped broadcasting my location. Because I’m not a fan of purposeful checking in, I’d only published my location each time I did a maps search (which, being a user of public transport, is often).
And because Apple own the Maps app for iPhone (using Google Maps under license), they have disallowed Latitude from being an app on the iPhone (and it can’t background track until the new iPhone OS 4.0 anyway).
This is all very frustrating because even if Apple allow a Latitude app in iPhone OS 4.0, chances are they won’t integrate it with their Maps app, so it will have to be purposefully launched. One more reason to consider jailbreaking my iPhone…?
A different take on Apple iPad and the Apple Ecosystem
.. Thought-provoking. The downside of buying into the Apple ecosystem. More discussion on digg. More info about the Defective By Design organisation here.
Apple are busy
I see Apple have taken down their store ready to add the various new goodies being announced at the Apple worldwide developer conference (WWDC) such as iPhone 3GS, 13″ MacBook Pro and $29 Snow Leopard upgrade. (I just watched the news break live at http://www.macrumorslive.com.) Kind of surprising they can’t just directly switch the store over to new content at the flick of a switch. Or that they would choose not to do that.
Read MoreTake a bigger bite out of your Apple
How to get the most out of OS X
Recently I stumbled upon an article about Google’s latest desktop search interface, the Google Quick Search Box for Mac. This looks like an interesting new tool that could be of some use – and it’s quite refreshing after Chrome’s PC-only launch to see Google launch something only for the Mac. I was more intrigued to read though, that it’s made by the creator of the OS X quick launching application, Quicksilver. Quicksilver is something I’d read a little about before, and I soon started digging via some links on the page to find out more. Quicksilver is one of a growing set of applications that are designed to make your life easier, but are completely new types of application – and therefore very hard to get your head around. If you tell me you’ve got a great new spreadsheet or diary application, I can easily picture what that is, but if you say you’ve got a launcher, the thought that occurs is “What the heck is that? Why would I want one?”. Quicksilver had definitely caught my interest but I’d never quite got my head round it. Which brings me to the main point of this post:
I would like to highly recommend The Apple Blog if you’ve ever been interested to get more out of your Apple Mac. Myself, ever since I moved from Windows to Mac 2 years ago, I’ve thought that OS X offers far more effective ways of getting things done than Windows; unfortunately though, 15 years of using Windows has drummed the Windows way of thinking so heavily in to me that I find it hard to know how to do things “the Mac way”. I have had the nagging sense that I’m just using it like Windows and missing out on quite a lot. If you’ve ever had these kind of thoughts, or are just interested in moving from “beginner” to “power user” then I think you will find this site to be a veritable gold mine.