Yearly Archives: 2010

Will Mac OS X 10.7 Have Integrated Cloud Sync?

Apple has been passing out media invitations for an October 20th “Back to the Mac” event. The invite, featuring a picture of a Lion hiding behind the Apple logo, implies that we will be seeing a new OS X release. After all, each release of OS X (from 10.0 to 10.6) has been nicknamed after a large feline.

The question is: what are the big features going to be? 10.6 was named Snow Leopard because it was mainly under-the-hood improvements, lacking many big flashy new features. A new cat entirely should mean we’ll be seeing some major changes.

The overly-popular tech blogs are all hyping-up their uncreative touchscreen angle, predicting everything from a smaller MacBook Air that exists in the space between a notebook an iPad to the unification of iOS and OS X.

I don’t particularly care for that rumor. I like mine better. There isn’t much evidence to support it, but it’s the perfect next step for Apple.

I think Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” will have built-in cloud syncing. Leveraging their new North Carolina datacenter, Apple will integrate Dropbox-like functionality into the Finder itself. They already have MobileMe, why not take it to the next step? Your data would be accessible on any device, and you would no longer have to worry about backing it up.

It makes perfect sense. Nobody ever backs up their data, so Apple does it for them. Everyone with an iPhone or iPad wants to be able to access and edit their files on it, so you make it easy for them.

The OS X interface is fine the way it is. It doesn’t need to be touch-enabled. It might be nice if app developers could build-in (non-touch) Mac interfaces so a universal app could run on OS X and the various iOS devices, but cloud syncing would probably be more beneficial to users overall.

BlogBuzz October 16, 2010

Why Are People So Irrational About the Price of iPhone Apps?

Why is it that iPhone/iPod owners can be so picky about the prices of apps after they fork over $300 on an iPod Touch or a few thousand for a 2-year iPhone contract? I see it all the time. People complain about a useful…

Less is More: BuySellAds Launches AdPacks

Instead of having a bunch of banner ads, wouldn’t it be better to have just one high quality one in a prominent place? That’s the premise of networks like Fusion Ads and The Deck. Now BuySellAds, the large ad marketplace that I use here…

Generate QR Codes On-the-Fly With the Google Chart API

You’ve probably seen a QR code before, even if you didn’t know what it was at the time. It’s a little square matrix barcode that can be read by either a specialized scanner or a cellphone with the right software. UPS puts QR codes…

BlogBuzz October 9, 2010

Design Spotlight: New Twitter

Twitter is slowly rolling out their new, more application-like interface. Some of you may already have had a chance to give it a test drive, but there are still plenty of tweets along the lines of “I want New Twitter! Why does everyone have…

Top 10 CSS3 Button Tutorials

Cats Who Code has posted a useful list of CSS3 button tutorials. There are some really nice ones, such as the “Google Buttons” and “Super Awesome Buttons.” It’s nice to finally see an alternative to the somewhat tedious “sliding doors” method that has been…

What is the Best Comment in Source Code You Have Ever Encountered?

Here’s a fun Stack Overflow thread from last year: What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? It’s eighteen pages of code snippets with amusing comments, ranging from simple warnings like “// Magic. Do not touch.” to cleverly-named objects: It’s…

BlogBuzz October 2, 2010