The thing that surprised me the most since getting the MacBook has been the wealth of quality software available. I had been content using the same cross platform software and online apps that I had on Windows to do my day to day stuff but have found myself using superior native applications more and more. So without further ado here are some of my favourites.
CSSEdit - Holy cow this is good. I have always found CSS a bit of a chore especially when dealing with multiple stylesheets but this makes it crystal clear. X-ray mode and the selector builder are lifesavers that actually make me think I can go for more extravagant designs for my sites. Awesome.
Textmate - Hands down the best text/script editor I have used. Great bundles for every language under the sun with appropriate shortcuts and text styling for each make it really powerful. It’s not an IDE but even without code completion I find myself getting stuff done quicker.
CocoaMySQL - Fast and simple MySQL database GUI. Have been looking for something to replace phpMySQL for a while now and this is it.
Adium - Multi network IM client featuring a big green duck that squawks in my dock - whats not to love about that. Also uses growl which I had never heard about before but find incredibly useful.
Transmit - Great FTP client supporting all encryption standards I use.
FlickrExport for iPhoto - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Makes the already stupidly easy to use iPhoto even more useful by removing the gap between it and Flickr.
When Steve Jobs proudly proclaimed the iPhone was widescreen we all assumed he meant real widescreen aka 16:9 aka what you get on all TVs. Finally the ability to watch TV shows in their native aspect ratio without letter-boxing or cropping.
As it turns out after a little investigation over at Cnet’s Crave the iPhone actually has an aspect ratio of 1.5:1, putting it firmly in proprietary, non-standard family of screens. Why do we have to keep going through this? Its been hard enough controlling content and displays in the move to 16:9, so why can’t Apple who are overlords of all the content and all the displays on their platform get it right?
It really pisses me off when these manufacturers flaunt the standards and formats in place by just completely ignoring them and doing their own thing. When you say widescreen you better mean it instead of fobbing us off with this half arsed attempt, hell even Sony can do it. Do you really want to become more notorious than Sony for this sort of thing?
Until we get a proper, true, authentic widescreen iPod with decent battery life and a larger storage capacity this is a non starter. No sale Apple!
[via Engadget]
Finally caved in this week and bought an iPod, more specifically the brand spanking new 8GB nano you see on the right. Once I finally got over the fact I dont actually want to watch videos or need the extra space there was only one choice. The new ‘pods’ coming out and my new commute starting just happend to cross paths on the same week :-D.
Much better than the old nano due to its scratch resistance but sadly that doesn’t extend to the click wheel which is already showing some damage. From what I have seen of other ipods that goes virtually smooth after heavy use so it may be an inevitable problem.
In my opinion this is THE device for podcasts. I got so used to the way I used to do things (nomad/phone) I had no idea how the iPod handled podcasts. The fact I can listen to something then whack it in the dock and carry on listening in iTunes from where I left off is a godsend.
iTunes 7 has come a long way but it’s still handling video like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s fine for audio but I’m sticking with Democracy for that side of things now.
All in all highly recommended and a good update to the range.
If the buzz around the new Microsoft iPod competitor strangely named Zune is true then we could see the player out by next year. The specs seems pretty tasty (aside from the 30 gig drive) but most of the speculation centres around the possibilities of a WiFi connection. The possibilities of streaming media, Live Anywhere and just hands down wire free file transfer would make it a very atractive alternative.
It’s about time the iPod had some legitimate competition and with Apple’s lack of new models this year it may be the perfect for Microsoft to strike.
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