Dear iTunes—

Mike

Update: Sorry iTunes, it seems with another click of the “Albums” column and I can organize by “Album by Artist” and Album by Artist/Year”.

Sorry about that.

taken from The Combustion Chamber

Pulled from Everything Is a Remix

Realization: After using an iPhone for ~4 years, I find the ability to work, particularly type, in landscape mode more and more insignificant.

Playing games and shooting photos are a different story.

taken from The Combustion Chamber

Jesus Diaz on the new Google Maps app for iOS:

After some intensive testing since its yesternight release, there’s no doubt about it: Google Maps for iOS is, hands down, the best maps application, perhaps on any platform. So good, so fast, and so clean. There’s really no contest. They nailed it, and shamed Apple in the process.

It’s not the snarky tone that bothers be. You can dig up a whole bunch of my pro-Apple snark on this site. What strikes me is the irony of the snark used by Jesus.

Let’s be clear what just happened—Google delivered a best-of-breed maps app for iOS. It features more accurate map data, Street View (oh how I missed you, Street View) and turn-by-turn directions (which I still can’t get on my iPhone 4 running iOS 6). In building their Maps app, Google has improved the overall experience of iOS and made a lot of people happy.

Google has also lit a much-needed fire under Apple’s ass to improve their own Maps app. Forget what Tim Cook says about, “If you think what are customers’ expectations are high, you should see our own internal expectations…” Yes, we know Apple expects the best, but there’s nothing like another car in the race to make things interesting.

So did Google just school Apple? Oh snap, oh no they di-int!!! Did Apple just get directions on where to get its ass handed to them?

Hell yeah they did, and I got a better iPhone for it.

More and more people are choosing to use iPads instead of “PCs” because of shit like this.

When’s the last time your iPad had to do an ‘Automatic Repair’?

Yesterday a friend posted something great on Facebook:

First I decided to turn myself into an 8-bit character, and then illustrate what this might look like:

img alt=”Michael_Mulvey_Coffee_PowerUP.gif” src=”/images/Michael_Mulvey_Coffee_PowerUP.gif” />

It’s great to see RIM validating Apple’s product design strategy.

Influencer: iPhone 5, launched September 2012

Influenced: BlackBerry 10 L-Series, leaked December 2012

There’s many places in my life where I need more organization. My desk. My closet. The stacks of books accumulating in my office.

The opposite is true for my computers (read: MacBook, iPad, iPhone).

My digital life wasn’t always organized, but now I border on obsessive-compulsive. When I see people’s iPhones scattered with banks and banks of unordered app icons I start to twitch. It takes all my mental strength to not grab their phone from them and organize their icons. “It’s for your own good!”

Last night I reorganized my own iPhone. The first home screen contains only apps I use on a daily basis. My essential apps. The second bank of apps are folders of apps labels with verbs indicating the action applied to those apps: Buy, Play, Help, Read, Look, Listen, Travel, Socialize, Note (and Newsstand).

Update: Hat tip to Shawn Blanc for the slick, subtle wallpapers of Marcelo Marfil.

Peter Bright at Ars Technica on Microsoft bringing Office to the iPad:

It’s still not official, but the evidence that Microsoft is bringing Office to the iPad and iPhone is growing in abundance. At this point, it seems to be an inevitability that Redmond will release Office apps for iOS in some form in early 2013, with Android apps following soon after.

In so doing, the company stands a good chance of cementing the role of the iPad as a business tool, eroding the advantages of Windows Phone 8 and undermining the entire value proposition of Windows RT. It will also hole Microsoft’s argument that the iPad is “just” for content consumption below the waterline. The upside of Office on iOS? That’s harder to fathom.

You know when you’re playing chess and it you realize you only have one more move left before you’re checkmated?

Microsoft is already there.

They can release Office for iOS and further cement the iPad’s position as the tablet contender with the upper hand (No, I don’t think there will be one marketshare winner in tablets like the Mac/PC war with a 95-to-5-percent ratio) and let Surface fall to the wayside…

or

…not release Office for the iPad and continue to watch Surface not become the hit that Windows was and fall to the wayside.

Either way, Apple is going to follow them around the board until they lose their king.

And Microsoft has run out of moves.

How stupid is Comcast for appending the NBC peacock to their logo?

As stupid as Volkswagen appending the Lamborghini emblem to their logo (VW owns Lamborghini, Ducati, Audi, Porsche, Bentley and others).

Or as stupid as Pepsico slapping mister Quaker Oats dude on top of their logo:

*Note: The Comcast logo is the only real logo in this post. If you didn’t figure it out, I made up the Volkswagen and Pepsico versions for demonstration purposes.

taken from The Combustion Chamber