Greg In The Desert

Apple announced their worst kept secret, their Apple tablet computer called the iPad. It’s exactly what what it was rumored to be, a oversized iPod Touch. The iPad will run all the apps the iPhone and iPod touch will run but it’s missing a camera and GPS. Apple says they got 10 hours of use out of it, it will come with WiFi but a 3G cellular data option is available (and unlocked).

I think every rumor, including the prototype pictures at engadget and interview with McGraw-Hill’s CEO and President (Update: McGraw-Hill might have been punished for making the comments about the iPad before it was released), were all sanctioned by Apple. It was just enough to keep the hype and Steve Job’s reality distortion field in place but not enough to actually reveal the device.

I can’t imagine I will purchase an iPad as soon as it comes out (which is not for another 60 to 90 days) I do hope that parts of it make it into Apple’s laptops before my next laptop purchase. I also was hoping for an iPhone OS 4.0 and iLife 2010 announcement.

As I try to get back into posting interesting iPhone applications, I am still surprised at the amount of crap that is available to the iPhone store. Mac users always complained that sure, Windows has a more software available to it but most of it is crap. I think that is true with the iPhone.

The Wordpress App is not one of those crap applications (that is, is you have a Wordpress installation you can use it with). I’m not sure why they created an all new iTunes entry for the 2.0 app when both the 1.0 and 2.0 apps are free.

Although I find the iPhone to difficult to write entire blog posts on, the Wordpress app is great for creating basic drafts that get me started, fixing existing posts and managing comments.

Wordpress 2 is available on the iTunes store for free.

WordPress 2 is the only iPhone app that lets you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress, users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

What’s new in version 2.0:

- A new, more efficient user interface that makes it faster to switch between comments, posts, and pages.
- Various user interface refinements and bug fixes
- New Comments interface, with Gravatars and the author URL shown in the comment list
- Passwords are now stored in the keychain
- Posts are now automatically saved and restored if network connection is lost during publishing
- Added persistence, so the app re-opens in the blog you last used
- Added an interface for manually entering the XMLRPC endpoint for non-standard setups
- Fixed rotation-related visual glitches
- Fixed errors where malformed XML prevented access to XMLRPC endpoint
- Fixed edge case where local drafts were sometimes not saved
- Fixed the order of photos so that they’re displayed in the order they’re uploaded

For support, please visit our forums at http://iphone.forums.wordpress.org — we aren’t able to respond to support requests submitted in an iTunes review.

Apple has released a Safari 4 beta for Mac and Windows. Although I am forced to use Internet Explorer 6 at work for internal sites, I almost use Safari exclusively for non-internal sites.

The biggest change is the user interface. Apple has abandoned the Mac OS like metal look on the Windows version. Hallelujah! I have no problem with a Mac applicaltion looking like a Mac application on the Mac, it’s just out of place on Windows.

The menu bar is missing and is replaced with two icons. One icon looks like a document and the other looks like a gear. Tabs are now on top. There is no progress indicator in the URL text field.

I don’t have the Flash plugin installed on my Windows version of Safari and Safari 4 no longer pesters me about it ever time I go to a page that needs Flash.

I have the absolutely slowest T42 on the planet and I used to most applications loading slowly. Safari has always loaded faster than Internet Explorer, but that’s not saying much. Safari 4 does seem to be considerably faster.

So far I am happy with what I am seeing but the UI changes are going to take some time to get used to using them.

One of my favorite Mac programs is a Mosaic generating MacOsaix. The latest 2.0 beta has been released with some significant features. Not only is it Intel native it includes Flickr image search. I ran it over night and found it to be much more stable than the previous versions. Oh, and it’s still FREE!

Here’s a list of all the improvements:

• Improved user interface.
• MacOSaiX is now universal and will run on Intel-based Macs.
• Yahoo’s flickr photo-sharing service can now be searched for images.
• Mosaics can now be viewed full screen.
• A new kiosk mode is available.
• Added display options for the background of mosaics.
• Brought back and improved the puzzle piece tile shapes.
• The image crop limit can now be disabled.
• Autosaving can now be disabled.
• Mosaics can now be saved as PNG files.
• The resolution can now be set when saving as an JPEG, PNG or TIFF file.
• Mosaics can now be saved as web pages:
• A pop-up window follows the mouse and shows image detail. Live links to flickr images.
• The size of the Google and flickr disk caches can now be customized.