Pro vs. Consumer: How iLife ’11 Blurs the Lines

As a musician, I’ll never forget seeing Apple’s professional music studio software Logic for the first time and thinking, “Here we go baby!” Back then, GarageBand paled in comparison, so any semi-pro audio technician would only use it for quick work. But iLife ’11 is blurring the line between the two programs.

Apple’s professional apps (Logic, Aperture, Final Cut) have had several complete makeovers and a dramatic drop in price since I first started using Logic. Ten years ago, could you have found a fully-loaded “Nashville-quality” recording suite with effects and tools galore for $499? Not a chance.

Even more surprising is that iLife is quietly creeping up the feature parity path. With the release of each new version of the media suite, starting especially with iLife ’08, I’ve noticed a trend: Apple is blurring the line between professional and consumer features. Remember when Faces first allowed you to automatically identity people in iPhoto? What a great feature! Did Aperture have it? Not for over a year. What about how easy it was to use iMovie? We had to wait a bit for Final Cut to catch up.
With the Wednesday release of iLife ’11, boasting movie trailers, advanced photo maps, and even more guitar effects than before, you have to wonder, is Apple breaking down the line between what we typically call professional and consumer software?

Flex Time, not just for Logic users anymore.

GarageBand ’11 boasts the Flex Time feature that lets you quickly make changes to timing and tempo. While you had to buy Logic only days ago to utilize this amazing tool, now Aunt Susie can fix her parakeet’s faulty rhythm on her iMac, too.

For now, I’m actually on board with Apple’s drive towards simplicity and ease of use. Logic 8? A pain to operate. GarageBand ’11? You’d be surprised how close it comes to Logic’s quality, minus the massive learning-curve headache. While Aperture has its place, iPhoto allows me seamless editing and organization. And Final Cut? Well, I can’t boast much knowledge there, but iMovie sure does the trick for my purposes.

Maybe the day will come when pro and consumer app divisions are no longer necessary. Will we lose some features we once considered vitally important? Probably. But how much more will we gain in terms of the quality of content produced? How many great creators will be given the chance to create without excessive time commitment and learning barriers?

No matter what you think about Apple’s growing influence over the software that appears on its platforms, iLife ’11 is one step further in the blurring of the pro/consumer line. But as that line fades, what do we lose in the bargain? Do high-end tools get cut to avoid confusing less skilled users? Do we trade the ability to do more things for less granular control over each thing we can do? Mac-based pros especially need to watch carefully as Apple software continues to evolve, and let the Mac-maker know if it swings too far in the direction of simplicity.

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Lion’s App Resume: How it Will Probably Work

In my coverage of the OS X Lion preview Wednesday, I wondered how the app resume feature would work. I noticed that in the preview, the activity indicators in the Dock (those white dots) were all gone. Poof. I squinted at the image below until I was certain that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I realized: You never see activity indicators in iOS.

See, no glowing white things!

If Apple’s goal is to bring the good from iOS into OS X, then this move makes sense. iOS’s multitasking behavior would allow you to open applications like normal until you run out of RAM, then the app resume model kicks in and applications will start suspending themselves in memory, available quickly if you need them, making activity indicators redundant.

This would give OS X a huge advantage over Windows. Imagine never running out of RAM again, and yet never having to quit an application again. The OS will manage it for you, just like in iOS. That’s what Apple’s aiming for here. The need to quit and start apps to begin with was only really a convention put in place because memory had to be managed in some way so that the user could control what got prioritized. An app resume feature eliminates that need.

The only problem is launching the applications fast enough to make the experience  perfectly mimic iOS. How would Apple do that? Using flash storage. Apple’s already using it exclusively in the MacBook Air, so I think we can expect a flash-only MacBook Pro in the future.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to an always-on future, or dreading it?

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How To: Restore iMovie’s Timeline Feature

Between iLife ’06 and ’08, the timeline view was removed from iMovie. Instead of being displayed in a timeline, the video wraps around like text on a page. If you have iMovie ’11, there’s a way to get back the original timeline view, where the video is in one scrollable line.

Fire up iMovie ’11 and open up a project. The first thing you’re going to want to do is swap the project view and the events view so that the video you’re editing is along the bottom of the screen. To do this, click the ‘Swap Events and Projects’ button on the middle toolbar — it’s the one that looks a bit like a refresh button.

Swap Events and Projects button

Once you’ve done that, there’s one more step. Just underneath the middle toolbar, on the right-hand side of the window, there’s a new button introduced in iMovie ’11 — it looks like a row of boxes. This is the ‘Single-Row View’ button. Click this and your project will rearrange itself into one long row which is scrollable to the left and right.

Single-Row View button

So there you have it, an emulation of the old timeline view in iMovie ’11. It seems Apple must listen to user requests after all, because iLife users have been complaining about the lack of a timeline view since it was removed two versions ago. It also suggests, along with the new audio editing features, that Apple is trying to make iMovie seem much more like its Final Cut products, which is great news for amateur videographers.

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Twitterific 4: The Tweetie Replacement We’ve Been Waiting For?

I use Tweetie on the Mac as my primary Twitter client, despite its long period of neglect. But now that it looks like it might actually become vaporware (despite assertions to the contrary), I’ve started to look elsewhere. That’s why I was thrilled when I saw the Iconfactory’s blog post today previewing Twitterific 4.

I’ve used Twitterific in the past, both on the iPhone and on the Mac, and I always appreciate the attention to detail Iconfactory puts into its UI design. But the app never felt robust enough for me, especially as a user who needs more features for managing multiple accounts. However, I’m not a fan of TweetDeck, which, though powerful, frankly just seems ugly and cluttered.

There are other candidates when it comes to Mac Twitter apps, including Nambu, Kiwi and Socialite. While each offers a decent experience, they all either lack the polish I’ve come to appreciate from companies like Atebits and Iconfactory, are missing key features, or just aren’t focused enough for my purposes.

Tweetie’s questionable future means that there’s a space to fill in the Mac Twitter arena. While there’s no firm release date for Twitterific 4, Iconfactory clearly wanted to stake its claim on that spot. And it looks like a strong claim, too. The screenshot they’ve released (yes, there’s only one) shows a window that looks clean and minimalistic, but seems to have multiple account support and easy access to all your basic features.

I’d still prefer a sidebar to a dropdown for account switching, but there’s no way of saying whether or not that might simply be an option not pictured. Either way, it looks promising, and it should at least be much more current in terms of Twitter’s recent changes to its API and features.

Twitterific is a promising start, but it’d be great to see others enter the arena. The gap left by Tweetie’s long hibernation could be the means by which another up-and-coming Mac dev studio makes a name for itself. Neither Twitter nor the Mac are markets lacking in growth potential, after all.

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New MacBook Air Hits the Web Working Sweet Spot

The iPad is a pretty nice mobile web working tool, especially if you don’t need to do any of your heavy lifting while on the road. But the new MacBook Air, with more processing muscle, better graphics and access to OS X and all the applications that go along with it, is the better tool for the road warrior.

Let’s talk about portability. The iPad is a great small computing device. A 9.7-inch screen is small enough to not take up much space in your bag, but also provides a decent amount of screen real estate so that you won’t find yourself squinting. And it only weighs 1.5 pounds (1.6 if you spring for the 3G-capable model). But, that weight doesn’t factor in a case, stand or keyboard, all of which are pretty much required if you plan to use it to do work on the road.

The new MacBook Air provides either a 11.6-inch or a 13.3-inch display, depending on which model you choose. Even the smaller display will make a big difference in terms of usability over the iPad, especially with long periods of use. It also comes with its own keyboard. The weight penalty for all this added convenience? Only an extra 0.8 pounds with the 11.6-inch Air, or 1.4 for the model with the larger display. Not bad at all when you consider that covers all your bases.

And how about price? I’m leaning towards the 11.6-inch MacBook Air, so I priced it out with the upgrades I’d need; the only one I really wanted was the extra 2GB of RAM. That brings the total cost, with shipping, to $1,099. If I wanted to get an iPad with the same storage capacity, I’d have to opt for one of the top-tier 64GB models. The Wi-Fi-only model is $699, but I can’t tether my iPhone to an iPad like I can with the MacBook Air, so I’d probably want to spring for the Wi-Fi + 3G model. That’s $829. Add in the cost of the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and we’re already at $889. Include a case that doubles as a stand, and you’re up to around $929.

For an additional $170, you get the convenience and software library of OS X, an easier design to work with on the road, more screen real estate and more muscle under the hood. I haven’t even mentioned how much better the Air is as an at-home solution, and it’s already looking like the better bargain.

Speaking of the home office, the MacBook Air works nicely there, too. With its new upgrades, it has almost as much power as the 13.3-inch MacBook, depending on the options you choose, and has video out capabilities via Mini DisplayPort. Plugging it into an Apple Cinema Display will provide all the desktop computing ability most web workers need (and you can add another screen using one of the two USB ports on the new Air, if you need it). And, as you would expect from an Apple product, it’s a very nicely designed and packaged device. Here’s Janko from our sister site NewTeeVee unboxing a 13-inch model:

The new Air looks like a great solution for web workers both at home and away, but that’s not what really makes it the best proposition for the forward-thinking web worker. No, the key differentiator with the Air is that it truly lets you create, unbridled. You can write without feeling hindered thanks to the full-size keyboard, and edit photos and do graphics work thanks to the NVIDIA 320M graphics and Intel Core 2 Duo processor. You don’t have to settle for just “the best you can do on the road” any more, as is the case with netbooks. At this price, and in this size, the Air will let you do the best you can do, period, no matter where you’re working from.

Are you thinking about getting a MacBook Air? Let us know what you think of the new models below.

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Apple’s Next MacBook: An $800 Mac for the Masses

The MacBook Air is a bold move forward in mobile computing. It has flash storage, and no real need for an optical drive. But Apple’s greatest achievement with the MacBook Air, and the thing that will have the strongest influence on its other notebooks, is the price.

The entry-level 11.6-inch MacBook Air, without upgrades, costs $999. That’s Apple’s second laptop under $1000, including the $999 MacBook. Offering two models that cost less than a grand provides more options for buyers looking for affordability. You no longer have only one choice from Apple if you’re looking for a sub-$1000 notebook.

The MacBook has a better processor and better battery life than the MacBook Air, but it has the same amount of RAM, same graphics card, and uses a traditional HDD instead of flash memory. Aside from a little more speed, and battery life that may or may not actually be better (Apple has new testing methods, announced last week) there isn’t much to recommend the MacBook over the air.

Apple’s entry-level consumer notebook is due for a refresh. In the past, it’s gotten an update in October alongside the rest of the Mac line, but this time around, Steve Jobs clearly wanted the focus to be firmly on the new Air. This Apple ultraportable will own the holiday shopping season.

But a new Apple MacBook is due soon, by spring 2011 at the absolute latest. And when it does arrive, it’ll be Apple’s ticket to a much broader Mac user base.

It may seem like Steve Jobs is being sarcastic whenever he issues one of his “We don’t know how to make a good [product x] for [price y]. When we do, we’ll let you know” decrees, but he’s actually revealing exactly how Apple pursued product development. Apple tries to hit lower price points for its products, it just doesn’t cut corners to get there, as do some of its primary competitors.

Apple has little to gain by pitting its two sub-$1000 laptops against each other. Instead, we can see a new, lower price point for the next iteration of the MacBook. Prices on Macs have been steadily dropping, as we’ve seen with the latest MacBook and MacBook Air. At this point, considering the price of components, how far Apple’s gone in terms of refining its manufacturing processes, and how much better of a negotiating position it holds with suppliers, there are few barriers to a $799 MacBook. And a sub-$800 Apple notebook will a huge hit with consumers (not to mention enterprise users) who’ve been priced out of a purchase till now.

But wait, what about the iPad? The most expensive iPad is $829. Won’t a cheaper MacBook mean fewer iPad sales? The answer is probably not. The sales data in Apple’s latest financials reveals that consumers look at the tablet as a supplemental device, rather than a notebook replacement. If people aren’t getting the iPad instead of a new Mac notebook, then logically, they wouldn’t buy notebook instead of an iPad, either. Especially if iPad prices fall, as some predict.

I don’t know whether Apple really will put in flash storage and take out optical drives in all of its next MacBooks. Maybe a few years from now, yes, but there are probably still a significant number of users out there who aren’t as willing to leave the past behind as prospective Air buyers are. No, the defining feature of Apple’s next MacBook will be its price tag.

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Screencast: New iPhoto and iMovie ’11 Features

iLife ’11 was announced on Wednesday at Apple’s press event. As it was immediately available (and not too expensive), I picked myself up a copy and got straight to checking out the new features. Here’s a peek at some of the suite’s most impressive new abilities.

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Has Apple Given Up on iWeb?

iLife ’11, unveiled at the latest Apple event, brings no update for iWeb. Users should rightly wonder what the fate of the app will be. It’s a shame iWeb is being ignored, because it made web design accessible to all levels of Mac users, but maybe it’s just time for a new model.

The design philosophy behind iWeb is summed up best in the Keynote slide pictured below, from Macworld 2006. According to Steve Jobs, software was either too simple for producing web sites that looked good, or too complex for the average consumer. Instead of HTML editing, iWeb used customizable themes and a WYSIWYG interface.

It was easy to use, and things looked good, but cross-browser compatibility proved to be difficult. iWeb’s solution caused immediate problems, most notably the creation of multi-megabyte webpages that substituted .png images for elements like text to ensure iWeb designs looked the same in all browsers. Even then, there were issues with compatibility, and the HTML iWeb generated was pretty ugly.

Not surprisingly, a large update was quickly issued that addressed complaints about generating and publishing pages. A year later, iWeb 2.0 in iLife ’08 added more themes, blog comments, photo gallery pages, widgets, user-generated “HTML snippets” on web pages, and integration with domain names hosted on MobileMe. This was a big update, and demonstrated a high level of commitment to the software on Apple’s part, but then something happened.

With iLife ’09, iWeb got… more widgets. Development had dropped off sharply. Now, with iLife ’11, the drop has ended with a splat, as any development efforts seem to have become simply code maintenance. So has the program indeed been abandoned?

It probably has, and it could be that Apple had no choice, since making iWeb work across all platforms would be nearly impossible. But it could also be the case that iWeb’s replacement will be even more elegant.

The main problem is the document model. In iWeb, a single bundle is created for all web pages and websites from which HTML pages are rendered when publishing. While this allows for an incredibly rich and easy-to-use development environment, it also means iWeb documents can balloon into huge files over time.

More importantly, the document file can only be accessed by iWeb from the Mac it resides on. That means you can’t create a gallery page with pictures just taken from your iPhone, or blog from your iPad. iWeb was created before these devices really became established as tools for producing content, and now its single-location model looks antiquated.

Somewhat ironically, the solution to iWeb’s computer-centric dilemma is also built into the program: MobileMe. While iWeb does not strictly require MobileMe, server-side features like blog comments, passwords, search, and domain name association require it. The future of iWeb development is to fully integrate it with MobileMe.

For photos, that future is already here, too. MobileMe Gallery already duplicates the functionality of photo galleries in iWeb. You can even create a Flash—don’t tell Steve—widget in iWeb that links to a MobileMe gallery.

Why can’t the same services be set up for blogs, podcasts, and web pages? Now that Apple has finally announced the end of .Mac HomePages, perhaps that’s what will happen. Instead of giant documents on one computer and spaghetti HTML, we could have HTML5, Ajax, H.264, all kept in the cloud and accessed via MobileMe from anywhere.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely there’d be a way to integrate current iWeb sites into that MobileMe future, so iWeb’s past would be lost, but at least there would be some way to create “beautiful websites, so simply, so easily” from Macs and other Apple devices.

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FaceTime for Mac Video Demo

For those without access to a computer that can use FaceTime, or if you just haven’t had a chance to test it out, here’s a demo by GigaOM’s Chris Albrecht. As you can see from the clip, it works pretty much exactly the way it should.

…See more”>

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Apple’s New North Carolina Data Center Ready to Roll

Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina made headlines when the project was revealed in May 2009. New reports indicate that the facility is set to open for business “any day now,” according to local officials talking to Data Center Knowledge. It also looks like additional construction might double the facility’s size, as recent rumors had suggested. But what is the size increase for?

The report assures readers that the data center, located in Maiden, a town of about 4,000 residents, is ready to “ramp up production.” The 500,000 square foot facility won’t actually be producing anything, but will instead operate as a server farm. The specific purpose of those servers isn’t yet known. During Apple’s recent conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said only that the data center was on schedule, with an expected completion (and usage) date of late 2010.

Apple’s plans for the facility must indeed be big, since aerial footage (see video below) seems to confirm the recent Digital Daily assertion that Apple was indeed thinking about doubling the size of the center, adding another 500,000 square feet to its already considerable footprint.

The site will be at least five times the size of Apple’s largest current server facility, located in Newark, California. Size alone suggests more than just an evolutionary upgrade in Apple’s server capacity. So why the sudden, massive capacity increase?

Apple TV: Well, most obviously, Apple just announced that it sold 250,000 Apple TVs in that device’s first three months on market. Since the new Apple TV is a streaming only product, offering on demand streams of video, that should translate into a much greater strain on Apple’s servers. But reports seem to indicate that iTunes rental service streaming to Apple TV has been largely without issue to date, which would suggest that capacity isn’t an issue yet. Taken alone, the Apple TV’s streaming demands can’t account for the need for a new data center this big, even if Apple had massively undersold its own expectations for the device, which doesn’t appear to be the case.

MobileMe: Apple also has MobileMe, its own cloud-based services including email, contact, bookmark and note syncing, and virtual cloud storage. The service allows subscribers to keep their information up-to-date and synchronized across multiple Macs and iOS devices. I doubt the MobileMe subscriber base is expanding exponentially, or we would’ve heard about it at the conference call, but there is another possibility: Apple is planning to open up the service to all Apple device owners. If Apple introduced a tiered system, with limited access for free users, it would be a huge incentive for prospective hardware buyers.

iTunes in the Cloud: Finally, there’s the old chestnut of Apple’s plans to bring iTunes to the cloud. A streaming music subscription service has often been rumored, but hasn’t yet materialized. Maybe Apple was simply lacking the infrastructure, and didn’t want to launch a service before quality could be assured.

Whatever the case with music, media streaming and cloud services seem to be written in stone for the future of computing, so Apple’s North Carolina data center, even at one million square feet, makes a lot of sense. And given Oppenheimer’s schedule for facility to become operational, we’ll see what Apple has planned for the site sooner rather than later.

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Apple Passes RIM in Global Smartphone Share

Despite Steve Job’s obvious distaste for the company, Research in Motion (RIM) has long remained ahead of Apple in the global smartphone market. Not any longer, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, which reported yesterday that the iPhone shipped more units than did BlackBerry during 2010's third quarter.

However, it wasn’t really a terrible loss for RIM, as the entire smartphone market grew 78 percent overall. Though Apple did surpass RIM in sales volume (and seems poised to ship even more in the future, since supply constraints provided a choke point in 2010), it still has a long way to go before it approaches Nokia, the reigning king of the smartphone hill.

Nokia shipped 26.5 million devices during the three-month period. Apple, by contrast, shipped only 14.5 million, almost half as much as its biggest rival. Nokia benefits from a much greater presence in Asia and Europe, and will be hard to shake from its lofty perch, though it’s losing ground. It held 34.4 percent of the market in this latest scan, down from 37.8 percent from the same period the previous year.

Apple’s market share grew from 17.0 to 18.3 percent over the year. The BlackBerry’s take dropped as much as Nokia’s, falling from 19.6 to 16.1 percent; RIM shipped 12.3 million devices during the quarter. The Canadian company is missing out in large part due to “a limited presence in the high-growth touchscreen segment” according to Strategy Analytics.

According to analysts from Canacord Genuity, a firm 0perating in RIM’s own backyard, Apple’s lead in the smartphone market may be insurmountable at this point, even for Google.

Following Monday’s conference call, the firm raised its target price on Apple stock to $421 and called Apple “unbeatable.” Analyst Micheal Walkley said simply, “We agree with his views,” referring to Jobs’ claim that “we’ve now passed RIM and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future.” Analysts also agreed that Android was too fragmented, and argued that the App Store’s head start in terms of its software library is a market-defining advantage.

Unbeatable is a strong word to use in a sector as prone to transformative change as mobile tech, but Apple is currently occupying a position in the market that almost no one would’ve predicted five years ago, so perhaps in this case, it’s merited.

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The New MacBook Air Is Underwhelming

Thinner, yes. But better?

I am one of the few, proud MacBook Air (MBA) owners in the world. Every article you’ve seen from me in the past was written on the petite beauty. In one last month, I wrote:

I’m only here to make a case that anyone that hasn’t used one should give it a shot and that Apple needs to throw some marketing dollars behind it so everyone else knows what we MacBook Air owners have known for a long time: It’s the best notebook Apple makes and it also happens to be the smallest.

This is exactly what Apple did yesterday, and yet, I was severely disappointed. It seems as if Apple is finally throwing marketing dollars behind the MBA, and I watched my Twitter stream as thousands of geeks’ heads exploded at how thin it is. But I felt a little weird reading this on my MacBook Air and thinking out loud, “I know. It’s been that way for years.” It’s thinner, yes, but not significantly. That’s the whole story in a nutshell.

On the whole, the reason Apple’s MacBook Air wasn’t a hit before now was price. Imagine the iPad started at $999. Fewer people would own one, and those that did and sang its praises it to friends would be immediately be greeted with the response that it was simply too expensive for a tablet. Basically, Apple just dropped the price. The MacBook Air of today is largely unchanged from what we had before, and that’s disappointing.

Consider Engadget’s live-blog from Macworld 2008, when the Macbook Air was introduced. Steve initially compared the MacBook Air to Sony’s TZ series. His biggest gripe was that the processor speed maxed out at 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, and the display was only 11 inches.

The 11.6-inch MacBook Air is “too cramped” and “too slow” according to the Steve of 2008. To be fair, the Air isn’t the same as the TZ in every way. I haven’t used the new keyboard, but Apple claims it’s full-size and the body is still a bit thinner.

Current MacBook Air owners won’t see a significant speed bump if they own the Revision C model (1.8/2.13GHz) released last year. In fact, not much has changed about the machine at all.

MacBook Air Revision C (Jun. 2009)

1.86 ($1499) or 2.13GHz ($1799)3.0 Pounds6MB of L2 Cache w/ 1066Mhz Frontside Bus120GB HDD or 128GB SSD2GB RAM (DDR3-8500 at 1066Mhz)13.3-inch screen w/ 1280×800 resolutionNVIDIA GeForce 9400 w/ 256Mb of VRAM (shared with main memory)

MacBook Air Revision D (October,2010)

1.86Ghz ($1,299) or 2.13Ghz ($1699)2.9 pounds6MB of L2 Cache w/ 1066Mhz Frontside Bus128GB SSD or 256GB SSD2GB/4GB RAM (DDR3-8500 at 1066MHz)13.13? screen w/ 1440×900 resolutionNVIDIA GeForce 320m w/ 256Mb of VRAM (shared with main memory)

Of course, I’m only comparing the 13-inch models, but you’re getting a machine that’s basically the same speed with an option to add more ram and more storage,  plus a high-resolution screen which isn’t something I’d recommend to everyone. Some (especially those over 50) will prefer a lower resolution. Even I had trouble using a 17-inch MacBook Pro and eventually sold it.

What you are getting is a drop in price. Last year, a 2.13GHz machine with 2GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD would cost $1799. Today, that same machine costs $1699 with double the storage, and it’s only $100 to upgrade to 4GB of RAM.

Will HD Flash movies on YouTube perform better? No. Will Photoshop CS5 filters apply faster? Maybe with a RAM upgrade. Nothing about this upgrade is impressive if you’re a current MacBook Air owner looking for more speed.

Why can’t Apple squeeze more juice out of this machine? Apple didn’t talk speed at all. They didn’t throw their famous “2x Faster” graphic up on the “buy now” page. Apple does tout the 2.9x faster graphics card, but I can guarantee you the Air released yesterday is only marginally faster than last year’s model, despite the introduction of the 320M, because that’s a video card using shared RAM, meaning the graphics performance goes down as you open more applications.

I was underwhelmed by today’s announcement, but the MBA was already a good notebook. I was hoping Apple would make it even better. It didn’t. “One more thing” was simply a minor evolutionary product refresh, and that’s too bad.

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Books and Video Win on the iPad, and Users Are Buying

Updated: Some of the figures in the original version of this post were incorrect, due to an error by Nielsen in the data they sent. We have noted where the new information is below, and replaced the original chart about iPad app purchases with a corrected version.

Although the iPad is still relatively new, early indications are that a majority of users are willing to pay for content on the tablet — whether it’s apps or games — and that books and video are the two most popular forms of media they choose to consume on the iPad, with magazines a close third. Those are the highlights of a Nielsen study on connected devices released today. The survey also found something that will likely pique the interest of advertisers looking to the iPad as a new opportunity: Users said they spent longer with the content they were reading, watching or listening to on the iPad vs. the iPhone (the survey didn’t compare content consumption on either device to offline behavior or content consumed on other devices).

Not surprisingly perhaps — given the iPad’s larger screen — users said they read books and watched video such as TV and movies on the device more than they do on the iPhone. Survey respondents said they read books 39 percent of the time on the iPad, compared with just 13 percent of the time on the iPhone, and they watched TV shows 33 percent of the time on the larger device vs. just 11 percent of the time on the phone. The iPhone won out for content such as news (53 percent of the time, vs. 44 percent on the iPad) and music (51 percent of the time on the iPhone vs. 41 percent on the iPad).

Watching movies was far more popular on the iPad in terms of time spent than the iPhone, with the largest group of respondents saying they spent between 1 and 2 hours doing this. The iPad appears to be an appealing way to spend more time with the news as well, which should be good news for magazine and newspaper publishers who are looking to the tablet as a way of boosting their fortunes; more than 30 percent of users said they spent as much as half an hour reading news on their iPad, compared with just 15 percent of iPhone users who said the same thing.

(click for larger version)

As far as paying for content is concerned, 63 percent of users have paid for and downloaded apps on their iPads (surprisingly, more than 30 percent have not downloaded a single app for their tablets, which makes you wonder what they’re using them for). Update: More than 90 percent of iPad owners reported that they had bought at least one app. The most paid-for apps and content are games, followed by books, then music. Shopping and news-related apps are also popular, as well as location-based apps and those having to do with movies.

(click for larger version)

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The Exciting Future of Apple’s MacBook Line

In 12 months, Apple’s notebook lineup will be so different, we’ll barely recognize it. Physically, the computers may look the same, but the teaser that is the MacBook Air makes very clear the changes we can expect to see rolled out across the entire MacBook line.

“MacBook Air. The next generation of MacBooks.”

This is Apple’s tagline for the new MacBook Air. I believe it means everything that’s good about the Air will make its way into the MacBook and MacBook Pro within the next year. Let’s look at what’s next for Apple’s notebooks.

The older Air I own has a claimed battery life of five hours, but I never see more than three and a half with brightness all the way down and Wi-Fi off. The new Air claims seven hours of battery life in Apple’s “Web-test” which, according to the company’s performance page, “measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%.”

We can expect this new test to become the standard for how Apple measures battery life specs across the board going forward and I expect seven hours to be the new minimum standard for the rest of the lineup. Most Macs meet this now, in fact, so 10-12 hours may be a more realistic expectation from next year’s MacBook Pro, as long as Intel continues increasing the efficiency of its chips at the current rate.

Solid State Drives (SSD) enable quick booting, instant on and faster launch times of applications. I believe every new MacBook Pro sold will come standard with an SSD, with an option to drop down to an HDD for $200 less if you just needs lots of storage (500GB+). For most users, 256GB is all they’ll ever need, and for huge media libraries, an external drive is always an option.

SSD is great, and it’s finally achieving a price point where Apple can include it as part of a base configuration. Remember, only a little over two years ago, a 128GB SSD add-on for the MacBook Air cost an additional $999. Now, the $1699 model comes with a 256GB drive standard.

I’ve talked to a lot of people in coffee shops, at conferences and even my less-techie friends and they all come to the same conclusion: Optical drives are kind of pointless. If all software manufacturers provided direct downloads or flash drives for physical installs, there’s be absolutely no issue.

The optical drive, as far as Apple is concerned, is dead. The company has the largest collection of digital media available for sale, and with the Mac App Store, Front Row and Apple TV, why would you ever need to burn content to a disc? The external Air Superdrive is still available, and it’ll probably gain compatibility with the rest of Apple’s notebooks as the internal drives disappear.

SSD and the lack of an optical drive will mean thinner cases across the board. The MacBook Air’s logic board in 2008 was a thing of beauty: smaller than the length of a pencil, and it powered the entire computer. I think the move to SSD flash storage that’s soldered to the logic board, paired with removing those gigantic optical drives, will mean most Mac laptops will slim down. We’ll see this in new revisions that come out in 2011.

As I said in July’s post about iPhone 4's Retina Display, Apple will be beefing up the resolution of all of its displays, starting with notebooks. The MacBook Air already has an improved display; the MacBook Pro is next. How high a resolution is too high? We’ll see how Apple navigates the line between display quality and the concerns of users with weaker vision or older eyes. Unlike on the iPhone, you can always change the resolution on your Mac if it makes for a better reading experience.

I’ve always been sure that the MacBook Air was a test bed for innovation, and a peek at what’s to come from Apple portables. Cupertino’s clearly gone “all in” techs like flash storage and battery improvements that it pioneered with the Air, and it’ll be genuinely exciting to see those developments trickle down to the rest of the line.

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Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac Now Available

It took BlackBerry a long, long time to release a proper media sync app for Mac. Microsoft seems much more keen to play nice. Today, it released Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac, which allows you to sync music, videos, photos and podcast from iTunes to your Windows Phone 7 device.

The platform itself only launched earlier this month, so it’s nice to see Microsoft moving so quickly to support Mac users. Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 also hits OS X tomorrow, and it’s a major improvement from previous incarnations from what I’ve seen so far. Maybe Redmond is tired of fighting against the tide, and just wants to ride the Apple wave. Though not everyone associated with Microsoft is embracing Cupertino.

Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac is a free download from the Windows Download Center, despite requiring Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) or higher.

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Chatroulette Clone for FaceTime Mac Already Here

FaceTime for Mac only came out yesterday as a beta download from Apple, but you can already get weird with it, Chatroulette style. A new app called Facelette, created by developer Zach Holman in about an hour, lets you chat randomly with strangers, on either your FaceTime-compatible iOS device or your Mac.

All it requires is your FaceTime ID, and it’ll connect you with random strangers. Take note of what’s going on here: You’re handing out your email or phone number for public dissemination. It’s probably a good idea to set up a separate account specifically for the purpose if you’re thinking about indulging. Luckily, Holman seems to have your privacy in mind, even if you don’t, so Facelette will render your ID inactive if you stop using it for two minutes. He also plans to purge inactive accounts regularly.

I doubt I’ll be trying this myself, since nothing about the Chatroulette experience seemed that appealing, but judging by the success of the original, something tells me more than a few of you will.

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Still More Victims Caught in Apple’s Wake

It’s inevitable. Each Apple event now changes the industry: sometimes for the better; other times… well, depends on who you ask. The latest Apple event may not be as obvious a game changer as others this past year, but its effects will be felt nonetheless.

It’s been a little over a month since the last Apple Media event. The aftershock in the tech industry from that has yet to be fully felt, and there are some additions to the casualties I listed in September.

If Apple and Facebook can work things out regarding Ping, the final nail in MySpace’s coffin may be struck. Some of the new features in iTunes, like the artwork viewer, make certain add-ons like Sophiestication’s CoverSutra a little less appealing. Rogue Amoeba is sitting on the fence waiting to see if it’ll be able to participate in the updates to iOS 4.2 regarding Apple’s new AirPlay. While competition is still healthy among GameCenter’s competing services, iAd is starting to pick up some steam as it continues to innovate in the smartphone advertising space.

That’s what happened last time around. Here’s a short list of what’s on the chopping block after yesterday’s revelations:

The End of Disks (and Discs, Too) — A Timeline

The floppy drive was the first to go in 1998 when Apple released the iMac G3. Rather than pursue disk-based alternates like the Ultra High Density Floppy disk, Zip disks or an Imation drive, Apple opted for a USB port.In the last several releases of iLife, one of the original cornerstone software programs, iDVD, has not seen any new features or updates.Apple has also been very vocal in its reluctance to support Blu-ray.Earlier this year, the icon for iTunes was updated, removing the disc from the icon entirely.When the iPod lineup was refreshed this year, the only model not updated was the iPod Classic, the one with an HDD inside.Then, following the quarterly earnings call where Steve proclaimed Apple’s love of flash, Apple announced an update to a drive-less MacBook Air: a MacBook which already lacks a SuperDrive.

See the pattern? Hard drive manufacturers sure do.  Western Digital has warned investors that with the advent of the iPad and the decline in low-end notebooks, the hard drive market is slowing drastically.  The MacBook Air announcement couldn’t have helped matters much.

Online Software Version Trackers for Mac

As developers flocked to iOS, many OS X development efforts were left high and dry. There was a notable dearth of new titles on the market, and bundle programs like MacHeist started offering wholesale pricing to boost sluggish sales. App discovery, purchase, download, install, and update are what Apple sees as missing. Yet that’s exactly what I use MacUpdate for. We’ll have to see how quickly developers adapt to Apple’s Mac App Store, and also what value-add sites like MacUpdate and CNET’s Downloads.com (formerly Version Tracker) can offer in order to stay afloat.

Apple Desktop Widgets

This one isn’t quite as clear as it could be. It appears as if iOS apps or something like an iOS app could run in some capacity on OS X. Changing the paradigm and allowing for multi-touch gestures and full screen apps could spell the eventual end of dashboard widgets as we know them today on OS X.

There’s a good reason everyone pays attention to Apple when they decide to speak to the media. Apple’s successes spell success for other companies as well. Samsung, a major flash supplier, no doubt benefits. And LG, supplier of the iPhone’s Retina Display, makes out pretty well. But not everyone comes away a winner when Steve Jobs opens his mouth. For some businesses, in fact, Apple’s idea of progress marks the end of the line.

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A Developer’s Take on the New Mac App Store

When Steve Jobs announced the Mac App Store yesterday, my first feeling wasn’t excitement, but rather worry. My concern is that the Mac App Store will, perhaps in two or three years, become the only effective channel through which Mac developers can sell their apps.

Jobs mentioned in yesterday’s announcement that the Mac App Store won’t be the only place to buy apps but that he “hopes it will be the best.” I’m sure it will be the best. Apple is providing a gorgeous storefront from which to browse and purchase apps, and it’ll ship with every new Mac once OS X Lion is introduced.

The whole process, from searching, to purchasing and downloading, to launching and later updating, will just work, like it does with Steam. Apps won’t merely be enhanced dashboard widgets, they’ll be full-blown desktop programs. The entire iLife and iWork suite were already up there during the demo.

The store will be an immense success, and Jobs will certainly be showing off the stats at one of next year’s Apple events. With that success will also come a shift in the app distribution landscape and a shift in the mindset of users. The Mac App Store — while it won’t be the only source to downloads apps — will most likely eclipse all others.

Here’s my worry: Two or three years down the line, Jobs will say, “The Mac App Store has been a massive success. It has revolutionized app distribution for developers and app purchasing for users. The best thing though is that we’ve seen the quality of apps for the Mac go through the roof. Apps for the Mac App Store look better, work better and feel better. And it’s good business for the developers too.”

Jobs would then go on to explain that on the new range of Macs and MacBooks, the App Store will be the location from which to download apps. The only location. The only escape will be upgrading to Apple’s Pro computers, which won’t require apps to be installed through the App Store.

From Apple’s point of view, this wouldn’t stifle development, as the Mac App Store would be a proven success (so why distribute on your own?) and, if you’re developing something for that niche Pro audience, you can still reach them with or without the Mac App Store.

Earlier this year, Cory Doctorow wrote an article over at Boing Boing titled,”Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t either).” I bought an iPad, and I dig my iPad. However, Cory’s article came to mind during yesterday’s announcement.

Cory talks about “infantalizing hardware.” With the iPad, you can’t physically open it. The idea is that you don’t improve your device by hacking or tweaking, but rather by purchasing. Purchase an app, and you improve your device.

Think about the new Macbook Air: a sealed box. Purchase apps from the Mac App Store and improve it. It’s not that great a leap to imagine the Mac App Store being the only channel through which you can purchase apps for all future Apple notebooks, too, which will likely be similarly closed.

Then there’s the “Wal-Martization of the software channel” as Cory puts it. I’ll skip over the whole DRM issue, and I’ll quote Cory on the thing that concerns me most, “… as a copyright holder and creator, I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable for me to create.”

I am a creator. I am a copyright holder. And I don’t want to see a future where I only have one option for distribution on a platform that was previously open. A future where I would have to seek approval from a central authority before my creations can be released.

For the record, I’ve released apps on iOS. I’ve been through Apple’s approval process before. That’s the nature of iOS though. It’s always been like that, and I’ve never known any different for that platform. OS X is different though, I can create anything I like and release through whatever channels I like. I don’t want to see that change.

If that does change, would we see amazing creative tools like Pure Data or Ableton Live anymore? I think we still would, but there’s a caveat. These apps would have to compromise on their features or functionality in order to gain Apple approval. It’s easy to see how this could stifle innovation.

But then, none of this has happened yet, and indeed it may never happen. Especially if developers make sure that Apple knows this isn’t what we want.

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Yojimbo 3 and Yojimbo for iPad Released

Yojimbo, the personal organizer for the Mac from Bare Bones, has been updated this week, alongside the introduction of a new companion app, Yojimbo for iPad. Yojimbo now lets you sync over Wi-Fi with the app for iPad, so you can view all your Yojimbo items on the go.

In case you’re new to Yojimbo, you can check out our coverage here at TheAppleBlog. The app lets you store and tag all the flotsam and jetsam of your digital life for later use. You can drag and drop files and clippings using a handy Drop Dock applet, paste your current selection into the app with keyboard shortcuts, or type content into a pop-up Quick Entry panel. You can also send PDFs to the application directly from any print dialog.

Bare Bones also introduced the ability to scan documents or images directly using TWAIN-compliant scanners in the latest release of Yojimbo.

The new iPad app has the quality and polish one would expect from any Bare Bones release. While the absence of the ability to add new items will disappoint some, many Yojimbo devotees will be thrilled to be able to carry their database with them. I had a chance to talk with Rich Siegel of Bare Bones just before the release, and he explained that adding items on the iPad is something they would like to do at some point in the future.

The lack of iPhone support is another gap for the time being, but it makes sense from a purely practical perspective; the iPad is great for viewing content now and the iPhone will be great for adding items when that feature gets added.

Yojimbo 3.0 is a free upgrade for 2.0 users, and a $20 upgrade for those with earlier versions. An individual license will run you $39. Family and educational pricing is also available. Yojimbo for iPad is $9.99 in the App Store.

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