» This is the difference
The Wall Street Journal:
Advertising may be coming to your thermostat and lots of other strange places, courtesy of Google.
In a December letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was disclosed Tuesday, the search giant said that it could be serving ads and other content on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”
This is a key differentiator for people who prefer Apple’s offerings to Google’s. We don’t like ads. So please stop trying to tell us there’s no difference and the only reason we buy Apple products is because we’re mindless zealots.
(Just kidding. I know people won’t stop saying that.)
» Microsoft Surface Pro 3
The Verge:
Microsoft made one thing clear: it wants its new Surface Pro 3 to be able to replace your laptop.
At $929 with a keyboard it darn well better. At that price you get 4 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage and an i3 processor. The $899 11-inch MacBook Air is a 4 GB / 128 GB / i5 configuration. The Surface 3 has a better screen, but Apple’s base offering is faster, has more storage and is $30 cheaper.
Microsoft made a show of how the 12-inch Surface 3 is lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air when you compare the two without the Surface’s keyboard attached. With the keyboard, it still weighs less than the 13-inch Air but (assuming the Surface 3’s Typecover weighs the same as that of the Surface 2) it weighs more than the 11.6-inch Air. So, it weighs exactly what it should weigh.
I just don’t see how this moves the bar much.
No Surface RT mini was announced which is probably a good thing.
» Steady on
Game Oven on the delay of the Android version of Bounden, a dancing game coming on May 21st to iOS:
In the Vine above are 7 devices all running the same compass app (ironically named Steady Compass) on Android. Yet, all compasses indicate that North is somewhere else. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with electromagnetic fields confusing the compass; it has everything to do with the diversity of hardware inside these devices.
So, it’s not just screen size.
(Via Ryan Bateman)
» ‘Time’s Up’
I really don’t understand how Trip Chowdhry thinks the things he says about Apple are going to make people want to give him their money to manage.
» Writing tools
Minimalist writing tools hit their logical conclusion with Earnest, a text editor which… does not let you edit. You can’t delete. Or even move the caret.
Watts Martin, as they say, nails it:
Okay. Look. Stop. Just stop.
Update trouble
Sometimes updates go wrong. Like this time for me, anyway. I wasn’t worried because I had a backup that was less than 24 hours old, but I was angry. “Stupid computer! You update now!”
First, it’s important to realize that your Mac may just lie to you, possibly because it hates you. I don’t know. Who knows what motivates a computer? Mine repeatedly insisted that the update “was corrupted or may have been tampered with”. That seemed unlikely, particularly after I downloaded it five times.
But you don’t have to get these updates from the Mac App Store. They’re also available as stand-alone installers from Apple’s download page. In my case that didn’t work either.
Time to check the disk. To run Disk Utility in full repair mode on your Mac, restart and hold down command-R. Then select Disk Utility from the list of options that appear.
Oh, and pro tip on that: if you’re using a Bluetooth keyboard with a MacBook, hold down command-R on the MacBook, not the Bluetooth keyboard.
Yeaaah.
Once I repaired the disk, the update worked fine. Now I can enjoy not being able to access the Users folder.
» You don’t need to see that
Dave Hamilton:
Turns out that hidden /Users folder has nothing to do with OS X 10.9.3. Your /Users and /Users/Shared folders will be hidden by OS X upon every reboot of your Mac if you have updated to iTunes 11.2 and have Find My Mac enabled.
The list of Terminal commands I have to run after a clean install is growing.
» Comcast could mandate data caps
The Verge:
Comcast says it could begin capping monthly data for all its customers within the next five years, a change that could potentially end up costing some heavy internet users additional fees.
Fast lanes, slow lanes and tolls based on the number of axles. Sounds like someone’s taking that whole “information superhighway” thing too literally.
» FCC still out to kill net neutrality
Wired’s Art Brodsky:
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, despite weeks of backlash, still wants to allow Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon to “offer” different levels of service to internet companies, although he refused to call them a “fast lane” and a “slow lane” and refused to recognize how those arrangements up the food chain affect consumers and a neutral internet.
He is refusing to recognize reality.
The wolf doesn’t need to be told by the hens to recognize reality.