Geoff's Random Thoughts

Like many people, I read of Google's plans to shutter their reader product with a mixture of sadness and disappointment. I've also read a few opinion pieces such as Marco Arment's 'delight' at Reader's demise http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html (BTW, that's sarcasm. Marco has a great point) Others have sat wailing because their favourite (free) RSS reader is disappearing. My opinion is somewhere in between. I rarely use the web interface of Google Reader. Occasionally, I go to clean out abandoned RSS feeds through the use of the last updated attribute. For me, Google's reader was an invisible server which allowed me to choose any client which supported it on the Mac, Windows, iPad or iPhone, and that is what I'll miss. I have over 100 feeds I like to keep up to date with, and it's not easy to move from one client to another manually. People offering web based alternatives are, on the whole, missing my usage. I ...

Before I start, there are some things I want to make clear I've not played with Omnifocus 2 so this post is based on reviews of the launch event and blog posts from others. Most of the posts I've read are consistent in what they say so I've based my thoughts around confirmed changes I respect Omni as a company they are driven and focused. Omni engage with their customers (not users) and provide quality products at a fully justified premium price. This article is not a criticism of the decisions they've made. just my take on Omnifocus 2. I use Omnifocus all of the time Of that usage 95% is on the iPad, 4% on the iPhone and 1% is on the Mac. unfortunately I use a windows computer at work. I love Omnifocus it's a brilliant product which helps me out several times a day to ensure I get everything done that I need to. I've used it exclusively for the past two and a half years Omni have worked incredibly hard on Omnifocus 2, this article is not in any wa...

The rumour is that the iPhone 5 will have a 4" Retina Display, why would Apple make the display larger? Assuming that the number of pixels on the larger display stays the same as the iPhone 4 (good for developers), this means that pixels per inch would reduce and that the display would be 'poorer' and should be cheaper to make. Is this either a way for Apple to get more profit, or for them to bring the price down a little while possibly easing the pressure on their supply chain as a lower pixel count per inch should be easier to produce. The Quality question would be whether the pixels be visible to the naked eye, if so, that's a backwards step for a company which prides itself on raising the bar.

Anything which isn't a simple webpage is being branded with the buzzphrase of being 'in the cloud'. 5 years ago it was called Software as a service and 10 years ago it was a webpage. I'm seeing a heck of a lot of advertisements, articles and sales pitches for pushing applications into the cloud. The idea is that you use an application like Salesforce.com instead of an application installed on your computer. All of the articles are positive and sell cloud / Web based applications as the perfect solution, and they really can be. CRM, HR and Finance Systems can cost a heck of a lot of money for Small and Medium sized businesses. A lot of the articles I'm reading do not portray the flip side of the argument. Yes, there's a huge upside to Cloud based computing, but there are also some downsides which should be taken into account. The first thing you should always consider, is that you're trusting someone else with your data, be that your own company's files, ...

After Blogging about the iPad a few days ago Here , I need to bring up one of my biggest bugbears with the iPad. While the iPad is a good platform for basic research, it's not the tool to research and write from that research at the same time. Switching between safari tabs, safari and Email and anything else, evernote, dropbox, ibooks any few apps quickly becomes annoying as does the cutting and pasting. cut and paste works ok on the ipad for the odd operation, but as a regular thing, it's a pain. Blogger's 'create post' page does not work very well, failing to even scroll the main window and there are very few clients you can test. Yes, yes, I know it's for consumption, the iPad's not for creating, but why shouldn't it be. We don't all do what Steve Jobs tells us.

Back in August, I posted about my experience with the ipad after a Month. http://geoffsrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/ipad-week-in.html But I realised that I'd never followed up, so here's a longer term view. Do I use it much? I still take the iPad to lots of places, it's light, the battery life is great and with some of the apps, it's really, really useful What's the software keyboard like? Now I'm up to speed, I notice it more than I did previously, I frequently press C or V instead of space and click on shift instead of A.It's usable, but I go far to fast on it. How's safari for browsing? The experience is still very immersive, but I wish that other browsers were available, this would push Apple to improve Safari. Don't you miss Adobe Flash when browsing? No, I really don't. What's Ibooks like? My only reservation has been removed, but I don't use ibooks a lot. Is it heavy, how is it to handle? Occasionally ...

The Mac app store has made a splash this week for lots of good reasons, unfortunately one developer has dropped the ball in the transition and caused a huge problem both for herself and for her customers. Sophie of Sophiestication took the reasonable view that if she was going to move Coversutra over to the Mac App Store (MAS) she did not have the time and resources to maintain two separate code branches and would go exclusively to the MAS, She posted to her company blog at the start of this week that this was going to be the case and this is when the backlash started.  In the MAS, Cover Sutra costs $5 for version 2.5 therefore if anyone with an earlier version wants an upgrade, they have to buy the version from the MAS. Unfortunately, what sophie forgot (and I genuinely believe that she forgot) was that in the coversutra license agreement between Sophiestication and any customer who bought version 2, it promises free upgrades up until version 3.0 is released. So by releasing 2.5...