Tag Archives: Apple

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OS X Mountain Lion First Thoughts

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I was a bit surprised today to find out that Apple had announced another new OS only 7 months after they launched Lion. As you would expect though, Mountain Lion is more of the same in terms of new additions being heavily inspired by their incredibly successful mobile operating system, iOS.Probably the most useful new additions are notifications, notes and airplay mirroring. There’s no real reason to explain what any of these apps do as it’ll be very clear to any iOS  and Mac users what is being done with them, but there are still some things to mention.

While it’s hardly revolutionary, Notification Centre has its place in Mountain Lion. It should prove to be pretty useful and it’s just nice that Apple have finally got an official notification app, as in the past, a lot of OS X users have turned to an app called Growl for this functionality. It would be unfortunate if this rendered that software obsolete, but it definitely makes OS X a more complete operating system right out of the box for the general consumer.

Notes was already a part of Mac OS for a number of years, but until now it’s been nestled away as part of the Mail app. It still synced with iCloud, (mobile me originally) but it wasn’t the most simple of experiences which Apple have clearly picked up on and wanted to rectify now. If you weren’t a fan of the Mail app, or just prefered Gmail or another web based service as I do, you probably would go elsewhere for your note taking service. As a standalone app, Notes is far more appealing due to its simplicity, desktop pinning options and stylish layout as well as the clear benefit of iCloud syncing to your other devices. Like most of the other Mountain Lion features, it’s an obvious addition, but a good one.

AirPlay Mirroring is something that we’ve all wanted in the past. Connecting your laptop to a TV with a cable in order to watch a streaming service of some kind has never been as easy as it should have been. AirPlay mirroring on iPhone 4S and iPad 2 went some way towards that goal but with a mobile OS you’re always hampered from doing certain things due to the limitation of the browser or apps not letting you stream content. With AirPlay Mirroring on Mac OS you’ll have the most freedom in connecting a computer to a TV ever. A cable-free experience that is extremely simple to set up, all the while being unrestricted as to what content you can display on the biggest screen in your house.

It also just goes to further enhance the viability and usefulness of the Apple TV. I love what I can do with mine. I stream NBA games from the iPod app to the TV with Airplay, watch movies with Netflix, stream music and so many other things. It’s a fantastic little box if you understand how to use it to its full potential.

And if Apple overhaul the software at some point and add an app store, the potential is practically limitless for what you could do with it. It could even be used for gaming if you had a bluetooth controller to pair it with. Having said that, we’ve already seen real racing 2 adopt AirPlay to stream the picture to the TV and play the game using the tilt function of the iPod, iPad or iPhone. This concept could be taken so much further in future.

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WWDC 2011 – Part 3: iOS5

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The main new features of iOS5 are the new notification centre, wi-fi syncing and the ability to be PC free and iMessage among others.

Notification centre is definitely the biggest and most significant update. I got my first smartphone a while back, a Sony Ericsson Android phone. It doesn’t run the most up to date version of Android but you can immediately see the difference in notifications between it and the iPhone. You swipe down from the top of the screen and see all of your notifications. Apple have clearly neglected this important area of the device for some time now but thankfully they look to have done a great job in updating it.

Now, instead of being greeted by one notification at a time, each in a big blue bubble, now you see a sleek list of individual notifications. Each of which you can swipe to go straight to the corresponding app. It’s so much more functional now especially if you get a lot of notifications that you don’t want to miss. Like android, you can access the list when the device is awake by sliding your finger down from the top of the screen. It’s far from revolutionary, but to be fair, they do implement it well even if they did copy from Google.

PC free and wi-fi syncing is also a great addition. It, combined with all of the iCloud features will finally stop the critics who say that the iPad is not a true tablet computer but an oversized iPod Touch. It can now plainly go head to head with any traditional tablet in terms of functionality. This also is available on iPhone and iPod Touch, where it’s welcome but not as necessary as it is for iPad.

The wi-fi syncing is also welcome. If you can plug it in to charge using any device or better yet unplugged, then this could be very useful for me, but regardless, it’s nice to see something people have been requesting for a long time now being added.

iMessage is an interesting one. On one hand, surely we already have enough methods of communcation. Texting, email, twitter, facebook etc. You would be forgiven for thinking “why do we need another one?” I’m struggling with this question myself. It would be nice to have a method of communication between iDevices, but how confusing will it be for iPhone users who already have an identical looking texting app? It takes away the simplicity and speed of texting, as you’re relying on 3G or wi-fi, both battery draining. The jury is out on this app I think. We’ll just have to see how it pans out when we get to use it.

News Stand is an interesting idea, and looks to be the fourth separate store Apple are starting, this time dedicated to all newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I like the idea of integrating it directly into the home screen. It makes you wonder why they didn’t do that with iBooks but are here. It’s a bit inconsistent. If it is built into the OS by default as opposed to a download like iBooks then it would be further adding to that inconsistency.

Other improvements of note include Safari, which now has an instapaper clone built in that syncs with iCloud, the reader feature that the desktop version has had for a while and tabbed browsing on iPad, all nice improvements but not earth shattering.

Reminders is pretty self explanatory and looks nice, although I’m so used to Google tasks by this point. You can now use the volume up key to take photos and it’s quicker to jump into the camera app which is a nice touch. The photos app allows simple editing such as cropping, red-eye removal and auto-enhance. Again, all welcome additions.

There are other new features, but most are not really worth talking about, especially Twitter, which seems a bit pointless from where I’m sitting, since you can do all of the things they advertise, albeit slightly less well integrated, by using the official Twitter app which many have already.

Overall though, I think iOS5 is a pretty impressive update and a step forward in many ways. WWDC in general was a triumph. I love iCloud and iOS5 especially and I don’t think they could have done much better with anything they showed on that day.

I’m keenly looking forward to the next Apple event to hear about new iPods, that new iPhone everyone’s speculating about and of course some new computers.