Interesting Links, December 27, 2012

Here are links I found interesting on December 27, 2012:

  • We’re Puny, Insignificant, and Doomed – and That’s the Good News – "For all we know, we may be the only living beings in the universe, or at least the only ones with consciousness. How remarkable that on this remote planet, we’ve got the ability to ask questions, to write blog posts, to seek cures for cancer. If all we have is one another, our brief life spans, and the things we’re able to discover and create, then we’ve got the power and responsibility to make our lives meaningful."
  • Why must the nation grieve with God? – "We are told the Lord works in mysterious ways but, for many people, to suggest there might be an intelligent deity who could rationally act in such a fashion and that that deity is worth praying to and thanking for 'calling them home' seems beyond the pale." Why can't more people see this? Who are they worshiping and why?
  • The Linkblog Cancer – "There’s a cancer spreading through the indie tech blogger community: the blockquote + link post." I absolutely detest blogs that rely on this method of generating "content." What they're doing is taking advantage of the hard work of other content creators to generate hits to their own blogs. Shame on them!
  • This Is How Facebook Tried to Make Money Off You – "For better or worse, this will go down as the year that Facebook really put a dollar sign in front of its users."
  • What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? – "Lanier was one of the creators of our current digital reality and now he wants to subvert the 'hive mind,' as the web world’s been called, before it engulfs us all, destroys political discourse, economic stability, the dignity of personhood and leads to 'social catastrophe.'"
  • Enough! – "Between the humiliating and chaotic collapse of Speaker Boehner's already ludicrously extreme Plan B and Wayne La Pierre's deranged proposal to put government agents in schools with guns, the Republican slide into total epistemic closure and political marginalization has now become a free-fall. This party, not to mince words, is unfit for government." Yeah, and?
  • The Room for iPad – "A physical puzzler, wrapped in a mystery game, inside a beautifully tactile 3D world." Also, a welcome break from the word games I've been playing on my iPad.

Interesting Links, December 10, 2012

Here are links I found interesting on December 10, 2012:

Interesting Links, October 15, 2012

Here are links I found interesting on October 15, 2012:

Interesting Links, June 15, 2012

Here are links I found interesting on June 15, 2012:

Retina Display Updates for Computers that Don’t Support Retina Displays?

Really, Apple?

Fellow author Jeff Carlson recently commented on Twitter:

The Retina Display is a new feature of certain Macintosh computers announced the other day at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). While it’s nice to know that my next Macs will have a better display, there’s really nothing wrong with the displays on my current Macs: a 27″ iMac, a 11″ MacBook Air, and a 13″ MacBook Pro. The oldest of these computers (the MacBook Pro) is only about two years old and I have no plans to buy a new Mac for at least a year. Indeed, my desktop Mac, which is less than a year old, probably won’t be replaced for at least 2 years.

Unfortunately, in order for the folks who buy these new Macs to take advantage of their hot new displays, Mac OS applications have to be rewritten to support them. Apple, of course, is leading the pack by updating its apps. Jeff, who writes about iMovie, was pointing out the size difference between the old and new versions of that app.

Wow is a pretty good way to sum up the 179% increase in the app’s size.

Software Update Woes
Great! Now I can use iMovie in Thai!

I wondered whether the update would be pushed through to all Macs, regardless of whether they supported the new Retina Display. My answer came this morning, when I ran Software Update. If I wanted to update the Mac OS apps on my iMac with the software announced at WWDC, I’d need to download almost 2 GB of updates — most of which would not benefit me in the least.

Really, Apple?

This is the best way you can come up with to roll out updates for new hardware features? You can’t create an “HD” version of your apps and let the folks with new machines upgrade to that version? You can’t have Software Update distinguish between computer models and roll out the updates specific to that model?

Really?

I’m on the road this summer. I get all my Internet access for my desktop Mac through a hotspot connection to my New iPad. It’s 3G here and I pay roughly $10 per gigabyte of data. That means these “free” updates — which will not benefit me at all — will cost me $20.

Ouch.

And if I don’t update, I won’t be able to take advantage of new features in those apps as they’re rolled out.

I’m fortunate that I can take my two laptops to a nearby coffee shop for updates. At least the $20 I’ll spend there will buy me lunch. Still, a portion of the limited disk space on my MacBook Air will be gobbled up with assets I don’t need.

Thanks, Apple. You might not have as many updates as Microsoft does for Windows, but yours certainly hurt more.