If, for some reason, you don’t want to run Lion on your new Mac Mini, it appears that using a clone of a recent MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard will boot and operate the Mac Mini. MacBidoulle cautions the Ethernet hasn’t been properly tested and the new Radeon Video cards in the high end model may need some hacking to get 3D working. Read more
Today was Microsoft’s Windows Tablet 8 unveiling. The product on the surface looks cool, people are hyped, but alas it will be a year before real products are given to real people. The iPad 3 with its Retina Display will have been on the market for months and Google will have iterated 10,000 Beta releases of Android before then on 200 different pieces of tablet hardware.
On top of that, this new OS is really just smashing together Windows Phone 7 Metro UI Windowing (some admittedly nice UI features) with Windows 7 applications. Real world use of Windows 7 apps in tablet form isn’t going to be fun. I’ve tried using Windows on the Parallels iPad app – and it is OK in a pinch, but apps need to be redesigned 100% to work in tablet mode effectively. Try entering data into Excel on a tablet for instance. Then try Numbers on an iPad – it is slightly better.
Luckily, just about every iOS app was designed or redesigned first for touch over the past four years. Microsoft is, today, telling its developers to do the same for their Windows apps.
How long can Microsoft keep up its “next year” strategy? Windows 8 tablet isn’t the only thing coming “Next Year”.
Two years ago, Microsoft made the decision to scrap Windows Mobile and said: “Next year we’ll have Windows Phone 7″. When Windows Phone didn’t grab much attention at the end of last year, Microsoft ‘bought Nokia’ and said, by the end of this year we’ll have some top quality phones from Nokia. We’re waiting to see how that pans out, but by the time Nokia can produce anything with a Windows logo on it, it will have fallen from #1 in the world in smartphones to #4 or #5 behind Apple, Samsung and probably HTC and RIM. But Windows Mango devices are coming to AT&T, have you heard?
How did this “wait until next year” thing become business as usual for Microsoft? Read more
TechCrunch points us to this amusing Microsoft blog post articulating the decision to put just about every possible item in the future Windows Explorer 8 bar.
This is clearly an example of trying to put everything somewhere with no regard for clutter or usability or design. It is hard to imagine a better example of why Apple’s ability to say no to extraneous features is better for usage.
Reader Elaine sends us this scene from a Costco
So I imagine there is a marketing meeting at the Sony Bravia offices a few months ago where they are brainstorming new ways to market this 46″ TV.
Someone steps up and says Apple is about to release a new OS and all of their boxes are going to have this ‘Galaxy Swirl’ thing on the cover. Perhaps we can confuse a few people into thinking this is Apple/type/quality products.
Sure, its a different angle and view, but it is pretty clear what the intention was. While this is probably legal and will certainly fool a certain part of the population, those who follow tech have to feel a little sorry for the once-great Sony, which is rapidly turning into an also-ran knock-off artist.
Lifehacker has conducted a series of tests to see which is faster: Lion or Snow Leopard. As you can see in the video above, the two operating systems do about the same in almost every category tested, but Snow Leopard weasels out the win almost every time. To be fair, most categories were won by a very small margin. Lifehacker summarizes:
Boot 1:32 1:25 Compress a ~900MB File 0:51 0:59 Decompress a ~900MB File 0:10 0:09 Duplicate a ~900MB File 0:09 0:09 Encoder a Movie for iPhone in Quicktime X 0:56 0:53 Launch 9 Applications 0:59 0:37 Open 10 Tabs in Safari 0:15 0:17 Total Time 4:43+ 4:29
Snow Leopard was built for speed and Lion was built to add functionality. It’s great to see Lion isn’t exactly slipping away on the speed end of things. How’s the speed on your end?
Lion just hit the Mac App Store!! Ladies and Gentlemen, start your downloads!
The $29.99 download is 3.5GB so your download times may vary. After Lion downloads we are expecting an update to iWork shortly as well. On the hardware side we are expecting some new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs, new Mac Minis and a new Thunderbolt Display as well.
How fast is your download? Are you getting the good speed? Full specs and details below:
