Yoink! Reviewed

Yoink is a tiny app with a big place in my work flow. As applications go Yoink doesn’t do much but it is now something I recommend to everyone who uses Lion and likes running apps in Full Screen mode. To use Yoink simply download it from the App Store for the low price of $2.99 and launch it. I can’t stress enough you should put this in your login items so it starts every time you startup your Mac.

When you grab a file from your desktop or from Mail in full screen mode or anyplace where you click and drag a file a gray box will appear on the portion of the screen you designate in Yoink’s preferences. Drag the file to the gray box and Yoink will hold it for you while you move to different desktops or to different full screen apps. Then just grab the file and drag it to the app you want to use the file on.

For example you are working in email full screen and someone sends you a file attachment in Mail. Drag the file attachment to Yoink and move to the screen you want to use the file attachment on. Say you are going to your main desktop and dropping a photo on Pixelmator to do some editing. Once on your desktop just grab the file from Yoink and drop it on the Pixelmator icon.

Yoink even had a quick look button so you can preview your document if you have more than one being held by Yoink. Once you clear your files out of Yoink it quietly disappears. You can even set how long you want the window to appear when you grab a file. I opted to stick with the default 5 seconds.

The only thing I would change about Yoink is you only get two choices where to put the Yoink dock. Center left or Center right. I would love to be able to put it at the top, middle, or bottom of the sides of the desktop. Yoink was updated after I had written this to include additional positions for the Yoink Window. Top and bottom of the screen is now available! Great job and this is an app I can truly no longer live without. Everything else about this app is a perfect addition to my workflow as I start using more and more apps in full screen modes, Yoink will be the one application I absolutely cannot live without.

Note: The text in blue was added after the initial review was released.

The New iPad

The iPad is just starting its third year on the market and now the third iteration of the hottest tablet computer in the world. At first glance this revised iPad may seem a little ho-hum. But after a weekend of using it, I just can’t get over how amazing the graphics look. iOS 5 has made this not just a content consumption device but has made this a device that is just as capable at creating content. For most users they may not even need a laptop anymore.

In the announcement just over a week ago, Apple announced they had sold more iPads than HP, Dell, or Lenovo sold computers. This device is perfect for reading email, reading books, watching movies on the go, and creating content.

Equipped with a 42 watt hour battery almost double the battery of the previous generation we still get 10 hours on wifi or 9 hours on 4G. It does take longer to recharge this much larger battery. I just toss it not he charger when I am at my desk or whenever I think about it. I don’t want it to run totally dead anymore due to the amount of time recharging takes. For the enhanced graphics of the retina display and performance of the quad core graphics it is totally worth it.

The Retina display is just stunning making movies look crystal clear on the 9.7” display. Text looks as sharp as a printed page. You truly have to hold on in your hand and use apps that are designed with the new retina display in mind.

The camera while most people might feel silly holding up the iPad to take a picture has an astounding camera. Great if you are caring it along and you need to take a quick shot. The large screen really shows you immediately the quality of your image in a way a small screen on a pocket camera or smart phone just can’t seem to quiet capture. Who hasn’t taken a picture and thought it looked good on the camera screen or smart phone screen, only to load it on your computer and find something wrong with it? The lens process designed for the iPhone 4S paired with a 5 megapixel sensor makes just magnificent images.


Since the device is only 1mm thicker than the iPad 2 existing cases will still work with the tablet so there is no need to give up your favorite case to upgrade to the new iPad. Apple also delighted the press by announcing the 16 GB iPad 2 will be sticking around at a lower price point. People buying their first iPad can now get one for $350.00. I think this will pretty well kill most of the Android tablets slated to come out this year. If Apple shaved another hundred off the price they could likely kill off the Nook, and Fire tablets while they were at it.

Don’t get me wrong I want to see other tablets in the market and would like to see them do well. It pushes Apple to keep innovating and making a better tablet for those of us who use them. I am just not sure any other tablet maker has something ready that can compete with it.

The 4G LTE chipset is smoking fast with 10MB down and 5MB up speeds on Verizon. In a series of surprise tweets over the weekend I was pleased to learn that if you buy an AT&T or Verizon iPad you are not stuck with that carrier. A simple microSIM swap and you can use either carrier. If you happen to travel to Europe you will be relegated to 3G speeds since Europe’s LTE network uses different bands requiring different chips. Hopefully someone will come up with a Global Chip that can handle them all to solve that, perhaps in a future iPad.

In a test a few weeks ago I attempted to spend an entire work day while traveling to just spend it on my iPad and not breakout the laptop computer. I found that on the iPad 2 I was able to work a little over a 10 hour day. Keep up with my email, configure about a dozen airport extremes, remote control several computers, update support tickets, have a few Skype calls, do some writing, and iMessage with several people all throughout the day and had no problem doing it. Once I mastered the four finger swipe left and right to jump between apps or the four finger swipe up to select an app that was used several app switches ago, I got quiet quick at moving around and was able to get a lot of work done. WIth more AirPrint printers being made I was even able to print documents without my computer. During one trip the hotel printer on the wireless network had AirPrint and I was able to print my boarding pass right to it with no hassles at all. I was able to go the whole day without my laptop. With the new iPad this should be even easier.

As far as early reports of heating is concerned, I haven’t noticed a problem. I don’t play a lot of games on my iPad and when I do they tend to be casual games and not particularly graphics intensive. I may pick up a game for testing purposes of course and see if it really does heat up. But I have not yet noticed any such problem under normal usage in average temperature conditions.

So I would say the new iPad is a hit and Apple’s numbers today seemed to prove it. Over three million iPad’s sold on the opening weekend and availability in more countries in the next couple of weeks. It seems Apple is poised to break more records yet.

If you have an iPad 2 don’t worry. Unless you want the higher resolution screen or LTE network capability the iPad 2 is still supported and should remain popular at the lower price for a long time. The original iPad is still supported but with only 128MB of RAM may start seeming sluggish as newer apps demand more memory. So if you are on the iPad 1 this might be a good time to think about upgrading. If you are on the iPad 2 you could give it another year if you aren’t particularly eager for the new features.

Overall I am extremely pleased with my new iPad and look forward to what other announcements Apple has up their sleeves for us next.

One parting question for my readers today. How do you use your iPad? Is it a work tool? It is a toy? Does it replace your laptop? Feel free to leave your comments in the comments field below.

3/20 TechBits Podcast

TechBits Podcast         TechBits - Episode 34 March 19, 2012 at 7:27 PM   MIT Scientists Create 230% Efficient LED Bulbs, Apple Faces DOJ Lawsuit Over E-Book Pricing, The New, New iPad Media Files TechBits-Episode34.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 26.5 MB)         TechBits - Episode 33 March 18, 2012 at 4:58 PM   Behind the Google Googles Augmented Reality, Google+ users aren’t sticking around, Android activated 850,000 devices a day, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Available for download, Anonymous Gets hacked while hacking, Apple gives your snaps away to anyone, Google Enables Real Time Collaboration On Android Devices, Desktop Android         Techbits - Episode 33 March 18, 2012 at 4:58 PM   Media Files Techbits-Episode33.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 61.7 MB)         TechBits Episode 32 March 11, 2012 at 2:34 PM   Apple to release a "LION" this summer, what is this Gatekeeper and Good Bye Mac. All this and more.. Media Files TechBits-Episode32.mp3 (MP3 Audio, 46.7 MB)             This email was sent to . Delivered by Feed My Inbox PO Box 682532 Franklin, TN 37068 Account Login Unsubscribe Here

Lark Un-Alarm Clock

For the last couple of weeks I have been testing out the Lark Un-Alarm clock. This alarm clock consists of an iPhone app, a sensor and a wrist strap. Before going to bed simply pull the sensor from the charging dock, slip it in to the soft wrist band, open your iPhone app and set what time you want to be woke up. That is all there is to it for the alarm function. The advantage for those users who are not single it provides a silent alarm for waking you without disturbing your partner. I get the feeling this will be a popular gift for people who have to wake up early when they have a partner who doesn’t.

The sensor vibrates at wakeup time using a random pattern so you do not get used to it. Once you are awake just grab your iPhone and slide to turn off the alarm. Don’t worry if you are conceded you might take the Lark off in your sleep. The alarm has a backup audible alarm that causes your iPhone to emit soothing sounds to ease you back to consciousness if you do not turn off the vibrating alarm in a certain time period.

One you turn off the alarm is where the Lark starts getting cool. The Bluetooth connection between your phone and the Lark sensor allows the Lark to upload information to your phone to tell you about how you slept. How long did it take to fall asleep? How many times did you wake up in the night? How many hours of sleep did you get? All of this information is recorded and stored in your phone. The when and how much you moved about is displayed on a graph at the bottom of the screen. So users can start building a history of their sleep patterns.

I didn’t sign up for the sleep coach since it was an extra $60.00 and I apparently am already a pretty good sleeper.

My first night with Lark wasn’t quite successful I didn’t realize for the device to monitor your sleep patterns you must setup a wake up time. So for those that like to sleep in on the weekends until your eyes roll open it will not track how you sleep on those nights. By the second night I set an alarm time which I woke up before I reached but because I spent a sufficient amount of time sleeping the Lark sensor uploaded my sleep information to my iPhone and told me about my quality of sleep. I was surprised to say the least at how the software evaluated my sleep and said I slept well. I always imagined I had difficultly sleeping but apparently I do not. I fall asleep fairly quickly and wake up several times in the night most of which I never even remember.

I have not been able to find technical details on how the sensor works. Based on it’s size and the sleeve it fits it in the wrist band I believe that it is an accelerometer that measures movement to determine if you are asleep or not.

So for the $129 price tag it is a worthwhile purchase if you have a partner who isn’t on your sleep schedule. However for me it seems just to be a high priced toy. The second downfall of this device is if you want the Sleep Coach it raises the price another $60.00. The sleep coach should just come with the device for the $129.00 price point. This is an expensive alarm clock when your smartphone or iPod Touch sold separately provides most of the intelligence. It is an interesting device and it is fun but I just can’t justify the $129.00 price tag. If you or your partner has to get up much earlier then it is a worth while investment.

Apple's cool is no liberal triumph

I was just reading about this on Salon.com today. I thought it was interesting although a tad flawed in reasoning. So I wrote a letter to the editor explaining where I think he went wrong.

The Salon article is available here and link to my letter to the editor below.

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/08/23/apple_and_liberal_values/index.html


http://letters.salon.com/tech/htww/2011/08/23/apple_and_liberal_values/permalink/8ebb47008fa5d66431f8ea2a8e084667.html


Not a bad article but I don't totally agree
First Apple is forced to play the patent game or others will eat their lunch as is currently happening to Google. Google seemed to want to stay out of the patent game but after several court challenges went and bought Motorola undoubtedly for the patents.
As for Asian workers and plants there is not a computer company or a light bulb manufacturer that makes a product here. We don't make things in America anymore. Should it change why not it would be good for jobs but probably not good for low cost items like WalMart's bottom line. Are Americans willing to spend a little more for made in America on their consumer electronics? If they were businesses would be more likely to do it.
A company can be pro liberal and still make smart business decisions. Look take a look at where companies and individuals make political donations and that offers a lot of insight into their political leanings. Mostly liberal candidates you can bet the person or company leans liberal. Same for conservatives, if they split down the middle they are more interested in how government affects their business than their ideology.
Apple owes their success to innovating, to redefining the smartphone and the MP3 player, to building a better OS and sexier computer hardware. They also keeping inline with ideology found ways to make the computers greener using recyclable components and by insisting on better working conditions and pay for the people that make their hardware. When several suicides happened in a short period at the Foxconn plant Apple sent investigators to look into it and see what they could do to help.
Overall they are a company that tries to do the right thing and take care of their employees. Note when the earthquake in Japan occurred Apple stepped up to help their employees and families.
As to the companies software ecosystem, they make money on sales of apps they also shoulder the cost for bandwidth and credit card processing fees taking that off the shoulders of the small developer allowing smaller companies or individuals to publish apps. The vetting process for apps helps curtail malware from getting on smart phones and by building an integrated ecosystem it helps the end user by making sure things just work together. The Mac is stable because the company controls the hardware and the software.
—PaulTheMacGuyScott
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The MacGuy visits a Microsoft Store

Much to the surprise and amusement to my readers I checked in on FourSquare from the Microsoft Store at the Mall of America stating I went into the store and didn’t burst into flames. For those of you who don’t know me personally but read my writing here and in Apple Spotlight Magazine and listen to the TechBits podcast may not know is that your friendly neighborhood Apple Certified Support Professional and other affiliations is a mild mannered Support Engineer by day supporting both Mac and PC and my alter ego is the MacGuy writer, podcaster, and general Apple fanboy by night. It is sort of like being a super hero without the cape.

We have all heard the news about Microsoft’s 11 Retail Stores and the stories about 45 more coming in the next year across the US except for Alaska. Well, on a recent trip to Minneapolis I decided to visit the Mall of America to visit the Microsoft Store and its arch rival the Apple Store just across the hall.

The look of the two stores is very similar downtown the liberal use of white walls and generous lighting and light wood tables. Microsoft does throw in some splashes of orange and video monitors that wrap around the store instead of putting up ad banners. The MS store employees where red shirts to the Apple Store employees use of blue. Apparently the Microsoft Store designers never watched Star Trek.

I did notice in the hour I was there no one walked out with any snazzy new Microsoft gear. In fact the employees seemed a tad distant and didn’t talk to me unless I approached them and asked questions. Since Microsoft doesn’t sell much hardware except for the Xbox and keyboards and mice the store is loaded with Sony, Dell, Asus, and a few off brand looking machines. The store was adorned with four Microsoft Surface tables. Not for sale that I could tell and not as impressive in real life as in the videos.

Overall it was a poor imitation of the Apple Store experience. Although lots of Xbox’s and Connect systems scattered through the store provided hours of entertainment to kids of all ages. I supposed it is cheaper than the arcade around the corner.

A Microsoft store employee who spoke to me on condition on anonymity confided in me when I asked about the striking similarities between themselves and store across the hall stated “We like to take something that obviously works well and improve upon it.” Later in our conversation this employee pointed out something missing from the Microsoft Windows 7 computers stating the “Microsoft makes a deal with all vendors that put hardware in our stores. No bloatware is allowed on these computers. These machines only have Microsoft Windows software on them and Microsoft security software nothing extra.” I will note one of the Asus tablets that converts into a laptop they were showing did feel very sluggish when using it and the similar tablet right next to it for a few hundred more was a much better performer. Even in the Microsoft store they allowed under powered hardware in that makes their software look bad. Incidentally that under powered hardware was still more expensive than a Macbook Air which is much faster and more usable.

Nothing in the Microsoft store I looked at came close to the usability of the iPad, the elegance and speed of a MacBook Air and notably missing from the line up of tables of gear was a selection of Windows Phones. Maybe I missed that section of the store. There was a large window display reminiscent of the iPhone displays with a LCD monitor turned on its side showing video of what an iPhone can do. They had the Microsoft version in the front window of the store but I never noticed phones out to be touched or used. Also conspicuously missing was MP3 players. I guess Microsoft figures those will never catch on.

Finally putting the Microsoft store across the isle from an Apple Store and this was not an accident all of the 11 Microsoft Stores are in close proximity to an Apple Store. Just seems to highlight the deficiencies in Microsoft’s strategy. The one winning product they have the XBox is relegated to the back of the store and looks more like an arcade than a retail store. The employees aren’t engaged and don’t feel like they really believe in what they are doing. It seems as though Microsoft thinks if they make themselves look like the Apple Store that one of two things might happen. Either one they will confuse would be consumers into walking into the Microsoft Store instead of the Apple Store and selling them a computer. Or two if they make themselves look as much like Apple as possible somehow that will make them magically hip and competition for Apple.

The problem is the PC industry engaged in a race to the bottom on price and innovation suffered. Since Microsoft doesn’t control the hardware at all it makes it impossible for them to move in the direction they want to go. Apple can and does tie the hardware and the software together tightly to make a great experience. Something Microsoft does not have enough control over their vendors to accomplish.

In short after spending time their I have to agree with an analysis of the Microsoft Store by John C. Dvorak the Microsoft store is not a good idea. It seems as though Apple is the only one who has figured out how to make the experience work. Did any of you ever visit a Gateway Country Store? There is something going on in Apple that isn’t easily duplicated. Like typing the hardware and software together to create an experience the Apple Stores are more than just the decor, the computers, and the staff. There is something very carefully planned a secret sauce that has made these stores wildly successful in a way no other PC manufacturer has been able to duplicate. When the Apple Stores first opened It was universally accepted they would suffer the same fate as Gateway Country. However they have grown and flourished into one of the most profitable retail spaces on a per square foot basis. It is amazing.

For those wondering when I left the Microsoft Store I did walk straight over to the Apple Store to get a refill of that upbeat Apple energy and the force was in balance and all was right with the world again.

When Nerds Give Back!

Recently the following article was posted on my companies web page. Visit http://www.augustjackson.com/our-space to read this article and the musings of my other co-workers and check out our companies new web site, it is really stunning!

Like other programs such as Teach for America or Americorps Code for America is a way for Technologists, and other IT people to give back using our unique talents to help governments be more efficient and connected with its citizens.

By pairing city governments with technology people to develop scalable solutions to improve government transparency and communication, replace outdated technology with modern Web 2.0 technology.

Code for America is working to create open source software repositories so governments can share code and solutions to help them integrate platforms, reduce costs, and eliminate redundancy.

Geeks like to solve problems and create new software. So using those talents to serve the community is away for another group of Americans to give back to the community. Government has been historically slow to change and adopt new technology that businesses have used for years to remain competitive.

Code for America gives city governments a chance to catchup with larger organizations with bigger budgets and more human resources without having to spend the money.

Currently the city of Chicago is a finalist for the 2012 Code For America Fellowship to update the 311 system in Chicago. Making it more than just a phone based service to contact city government services. Open311 will extend the existing 311 service to the web and allow citizens to contact government services and track status updates through the web and smartphones.

Freedom Speaks LLC has created a program called City 311 that runs on Windows Phones, Android, iOS, and Blackberry and the web. Allowing participating city governments to receive reports from citizens for graffiti removal, report potholes, request bulky trash pickup, report illegal dumping, street light outages, or virtually anything else that might need to be reported to a city government. Allowing this to be done electronically of course makes it more efficient since someone isn’t required to be on the phone to take the report. The appropriate department can get the dispatch right away and the citizen can get feedback on the status of the report. Making us all just a little more connected.

Check out Code For America at www.codeforameica.com or take a look at the City 311 app on your smartphone or www.citysourced.com.

Lion Has Arrived!

First looks at the much anticipated big cat are popping up all over the place. I don’t think I have ever seen this much excitement surrounding a new OS release but this one has a lot to be excited about. While Apple called the event Back To The Mac and said they wanted to take what they learned from iOS and update Mac OS X in reality they did a whole lot more. Many people who had yet to touch the new OS complained about the very features they had yet to touch. I am here to tell you today the new OS feels much more powerful than all of its predecessors. It even seems to perform faster. I am feeling as though I am getting more work done in a day.

Let’s start with the Major Features that have been covered and my first impressions.

Full Screen Mode

Full screen mode is a bit of mixed bag. It does look great on my 17” Mac Book Pro and I am using it heavily there. However once I move to my 27” iMac Desktop with a second 24” screen attached I don’t use it anymore. The second screen is just covered in linen and is pretty useless. The screen is so large that full screen just doesn’t feel useful. If you get an app in full screen mode and want back out just go to the top right side of the screen and the menu bar will reappear and give you a button to click to return to windowed mode and you will be returned to your windowed desktop.

LaunchPad
LaunchPad I don’t currently hold out much hope for. I have spent hours setting it up and I just don’t seem to really use it yet. Normally when I launch apps I use the command and space keys and type the name of the program in spotlight. I can see when it would be useful at some point. When you have organized everything and you know you have a video app but just can’t remember the name of it, LaunchPad could be useful. It just takes a lot of time to get it organized and I finding a lot of programs like un-installers that are just hanging out there that should be hidden in a folder on the last page.

Mission Control
The rebirth of Spaces and Exposé into Mission Control was a great move by Apple. It still has all the power that the power users have come to know and love with a new simplicity that will make it useful even to the novice user. I have heard some complaints in the first couple of days that exposé features were lost. They really weren’t you just need to turn on the gesture in your trackpad settings. With a four finger swipe up your are in Mission Control and a four finger swipe down you are in Exposé. Now the documents below the line in Exposé are not just items minimized in the dock but recently opened documents as well to give you fast access to your documents.

Spotlight

Spotlight has been around for a while and not particularly smart but had limited use. Spotlight has gotten some nice improvements with this update like a preview feature that displays a thumbnail of a document so you can preview it before you open the document. The search seems a little more refined now and more useful than it has been in the past. Search the Web and search Wikipedia have now been added to Spotlight. I still use it the same way I did before as an app launcher but it is more useful now than it was before. Like in the Snow Leopard version of Spotlight you can still do quick math problems if you just need to solve an equation quickly by typing it right into the search.

Show All Files

Breaks up files by type and provides a CoverFlow view of document thumbnails to allow you to quickly flip through your most recently accessed documents. By default the left most document is what you most recently accessed. It is broken out into Spreadsheets, Developer and Documents. Any of these sections can be clicked to chosen to show all documents of that type if you are looking for something in particular. Also with the search bar on top you can search through all your files for any search term and it will automatically add extra categories like chats and emails. This coupled with Spotlight may make it much easier to find documents in the future. I am still getting used to getting to my files through Show All Files instead of opening Finder and digging through the file system. It will just take a little time to get used to the change.
Finder Enhancements

Preview Signature

This has to be one of my favorite new features. Frequently I have to sign PDF documents and now Preview can create a store your digital signature. To setup your signature open Preview and click on the Annotate button. Next click on the Signature button and sign your name to a white piece of paper. Finally hold the paper up to the camera with your signature lined up with the blue line. Preview will capture your signature and save it. Then in the future you can click on your signature and add it to any document.



I can’t speak to the security of this yet. As long as I am logged in to my account I can add a signature to any document. The Signatures Window does show a padlock next to the signature indicating their may be some sort of security on the signature but I don’t know much about it at the time of this writing. It is something I will continue to dig into and report on at a later date. It is a great feature though and it is making my work flow much faster when signing documents.

iChat
For the first time in years I haven’t felt the need to have Chax installed on my Mac. First the iChat Buddies is now all in one window making people I want to talk to easier to find and grouped by Co-Workers, Friends, Family, etc. Once I open a chat with two people I am now presented with a single chat window showing both peoples names and allowing me to click back and forth between users. If a message comes in from a person in the background a preview of the chat appears under their name until I click on them to return to the chat. The iChat changes were subtle and it is still missing the ability to get out a screen sharing and back to a video chat without ending the call. If anyone from Apple reads this please fix that it is really annoying.



The last odd bit with Lion is the default inclusion of FaceTime. It is in no way connected to iChat and it by default installed on your Mac. So for those of us early adopters that paid $.99 for the App when it went to version 1.0 we just made a small donation to the cause for Apple because it is free now. It runs in the back ground and if someone calls a FaceTime registered email address or iPhone number it will ring through to all of your computers and devices with FaceTime installed. It is useful but FaceTime doesn’t support screen sharing, special effects, or text chatting. So both products feel a little odd and incomplete.

I would like to see one chat product that integrates everything for communications and allows me to share my screen or the user to share their screen. One final oddity I noted about FaceTime is if you move between desktops in Mission Control the video call pauses. Audio conversation continues uninterrupted but the other side becomes a static grey picture with a giant pause in the middle of the screen indicating to the other person they may be on hold but audio continues both ways. If you mute yourself in FaceTime the video continues again greyed out with a big mute in the center of the screen but full motion video is still happening in the background.

Changing Your Password

Who hasn’t lost or forgotten a password from time to time? Well, with this new feature connecting your User Account to your iTunes account gives you a way to reset your User Login password with your iTunes ID. This will not reset your Keychain password so if you store passwords in your keychain they will be lost when you delete the keychain you no longer have access to anymore. However this is an easier process than getting out the boot disk (if your Mac has a DVD drive) rebooting from the disk and resetting the password.

iOS style auto correction

For someone who does a lot of writing and sometimes makes mistakes this is a great feature. If you misspell or the prediction pops up and your accept the correction the word is briefly underlined in blue. A person can start typing a word and use space to complete it or escape to cancel the word. For the words that OS X doesn’t pick up or common misspellings that are not picked up from iOS can be picked up by Text Expander from Smile Software.

Wifi-Diagnostics

Ok this one is for geeks and support people and it is pretty buried in the Operating System and it isn’t clear other than visiting the CoreServices System Folder I am not sure how to open this application yet. For those daring souls that like to dig into the OS and play with this new feature it is located under /Library/System/Core Services/Wi-Fi Diagnostics. A user can monitor the performance of the computers on the wi-fi network, Record Events, perform a raw packet capture, or turn on debugging information. I think this has been included but either isn’t ready for primetime yet or is automatically launched when a particular problem occurs that I haven’t encountered yet.



Programs resuming from their last state

This can be a mixed bag for some users. You don’t want to be visiting a client and open Keynote to another clients presentation. So the best thing a user can do is remember to close files when you are done with them to prevent potentially embarrassing situations from arising. That being said I do like the feature in general. As we all know sometimes Safari starts using up a lot of memory or running slow and needs to be restarted. If you leave you tabs open but close Safari when you reopen it the tabs will all reload just the way it was and take up less memory and improved performance. So no need to go back and reopen the dozen tabs I had open again.

Last week while being out and about I was using my computer and put it to sleep. When I opened it up again I was presented with my login and password screen. Upon entering my credentials all of my apps reopened and resumed where they were when I put the computer to sleep and informed me the Mac had experienced a crash and would like to send diagnostic information to Apple. Other than having to login and getting this dialog box I had not even noticed that the computer had an issue and I was able to resume working right where I left off quickly.

Versions

To date most of the apps I spend my greatest about of time in do not support Versions so I haven’t had much time to work with it yet. While Versions doesn’t totally rely on Time Machine it does seem to integrate with it to display data from documents older than the two weeks defaulted before the document locks. As more applications start to utilize versions I think this will become a huge feature in the future.

Visual Tweaks

Finder got a few nice visual tweaks like hiding the scroll bars when they are not in use. This is great for freeing up more space and if you want to see the scroll bar for a moment to get a feeling for where you are in a document just touch two fingers to the trackpad and move slightly to see where you are. Also with the loss of scroll bars the window moves resize button has gone away at the bottom of the screen. Now users can just grab any edge to resize a window and by holding the option key can resize opposite sides of a window or by grabbing the corner of the window the entire window.

Window graphics look more refined and the drop shadows around windows seem a little longer giving the desktop more of a sense of depth. It just makes the Windows environment feel a little more polished. Grabbing multiple files now adds a badge to show a user how many files they have grabbed so they know they got the right number of files. Finally when moving a file from one location to another the icon morphs into the shape of the view on the screen. Dragging from icon to list causes the icon to morph when it is over the destination window. It is not particularly useful but does make the OS feel a little more thought out and polished.

New Voices

With Lion users now get additional choices in natural sounding voices. These voices it is speculated came from a deal between Apple and Nuance Technologies. The voices now include many foreign languages and a variety of accents. To access these open the System Preferences, click speech, click text to speech, and under the voice choose customize. These additional voices are downloaded from the Internet and installed as a user requests them.

AirDrop

AirDrop there isn’t too much to say about it, it just works. It requires zero configuration and it is very secure. The only downside is you have to be on late 2008 or newer Mac hardware that takes advantage of Wi-Fi Cards that can support an Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure network at the same time. AirDrop is off until the user clicks on it in Finder then it locates other people with AirDrop on in the immediate area. They are represented by an icon with their login picture. If a user wishes to send a file just drag and drop it to the recipients picture and it asks the user to confirm they wish to send the file. Then on the recipients computer a dialog appears telling the user the sender wishes to send you a file do you wish to accept the file. If the recipient clicks yes then the file is transferred over an encrypted connection. The process couldn’t be any simpler.

So all in all Lion is a pretty major upgrade for users despite the $29.00 price tag. As long as you don’t have PowerPC apps you still need there is no reason not to upgrade to the latest version. It doesn’t feel any faster than Snow Leopard but it does give the end user quiet a few new features and ways to help save their work and alter their work flow to make them more efficient. It is a nice upgrade and fun to use.

This is also the first major OS release to be available by download only and there was a lot of hoopla over it when this was announced. My computers took about 20 minutes each to download the data and Apple stores have been letting people who have slow Internet drop in and use theirs. It was announced last week that a USB drive will be made available in August with the installer for $69.00 US for the bandwidth impaired. New Macbook Airs and MacMini’s come with a method to re-download and install Lion from the Firmware if a blank drive is installed in the machine and eventually this feature will make it across the complete line.

The future has arrived our computers have gotten smarter, easier to use, and our OS’s will be downloaded.