Mac OS X Lion

Today, Apple shipped MacOS X Lion via the Mac AppStore. It sells for $29.99 USD, and it is topping the charts at the store.
This is the first time Apple went with a complete Internet-based approach to dealing with an OS upgrade. In fact, it’s the only time I have ever heard of an OS being sold strictly via digital download. Words on the street seem to suggest that if you go to an Apple retail store, they will install Lion for you through a local cached version of the OS. Thus, saving you the hassle of downloading 3.5GB over the net. It’s not really a life saver if you ask me, but it’s interesting to see how Apple is handling things for now, and the days to come.

My initial impression of Lion was fairly positive, but not overly impressed with the changes.

Pros:

1. No major compatibility issues with applications. Everything minus a few utility apps works fine on Lion out of the box, or requires a quick downloadable update. I’m guessing since most apps these days were written in Cocoa already, it wasn’t much of an hassle to fix the few kinks in Lion.
2. New Mail app is great! New UI with an option to switch back to the classic view if you want to.
3. System icons are mono-toned. This may be my personal preference, but I think colours can sometimes look a bit messy and disorganized.
4. System pop-ups, and transitions are super fast and smooth. Apple really took everything they learned from making efficient 2D effects on iOS to the desktop.
5. iTunes was rewritten for Lion in 64-bit! This is not really a Lion feature, but it sure has been a long wait.
6. New features – Air Drop, Versions, Resume , Full Screen, FaceTime etc.
7. No notable increase in disk space usage. It didn’t bloat unlike many Windows Service Pack updates.

Cons:

1. 

   No support for legacy authentication method in SMB or AFP

   Major compatibility issues with accessing Samba and AFP shares! This was certainly bad news for us who are using my FreeNAS build guide and are accessing files through either SMB or AFP. Apple decided that the authentication method – DHCAST128 was insufficient and they disabled support for it in Lion! This will break compatibility with all over-the-counter NAS boxes, including our DIY NAS. However, there are remedies that you can follow to work around it. Check out my later post.

2. Time Machine does not work over non-Apple network shares! This is a huge deal for people who use a thirdparty NAS box to host Time Machine backups. Unless your box can support the latest AFP stack in Lion, Time Machine will NOT work! You can put a sparsebundle on it… but it simply will not work. Time Machine only works through the latest AFP stack.
3. New features.
• Air Drop is Lion-only. There is no Air Drop app for previous versions of Mac OS.
• Versions is only an API that apps can be written on. It is not a system wide feature, and it is up to the developer to implement.
• Resume can be really annoying if you are using Safari and don’t want your web page views saved all the time! The setting to turn it off is also very hidden. You have to go to System Preferences -> General -> uncheck Restore Windows when quitting and re-opening apps.
• Full Screen is also app specific and requires the developer to provide support. Don’t know why they could just implement it some other way to resize the window to full screen.
4. Mail database took a good 15min. It was surprisingly slow! Maybe I had too much stuff in there.
5. No Java runtime in the OS. But the OS is smart enough to automatically download it when you need it, through Software Updates.
6. 

   Multi-touch gestures in Lion

   Super weird scrolling and gesture changes! The scrolling direction by default in Lion is the complete opposite of what you are used to. Apple call this the “natural” direction. But it’s really not so nature to me – natural is what I am used to. Don’t fancy me Apple. Thankfully, you can change this through System Preferences -> Touchpad -> uncheck scrolling directions. Apple also changed gesture to do Expose (now known as Mission Control), honestly this will need some getting used to. There are no settings to give you back the familiar Expose gestures. (ex. four finger down = show desktop, up = expose all windows, no more 3 finger scroll to get to the top of bottom of a page)

7. Minor annoyance – Launchpad shows all the uninstaller apps as well. This is terrible if you have Adobe CS installed. You will get a bunch of uninstallers listed with the apps and it’s almost impossible to find your apps! Yes you can do folders, but if you have a lot of apps… good luck sorting all of them. Launchpad is especially useless in this situation when a Spotlight search can open you any app with a few keystrokes.

To sum up, I’m not overly impressed with Lion. Especially the decision to drop legacy SMB/AFP authentication! I think if Apple didn’t sell it for $29.99 I wouldn’t even recommend it to people. Some of the changes are certainly nice, but nothing groundbreaking as you would expect from a major OS release. In fact, many of the neat features you saw during WWDC are app-specific and it will only benefit you if the developers choose to use it. Apple likes to build only the API and leave the rest to the developers, where from a customer’s perspective we like Apple to implement it in the system so all apps may take advantage of it. This is especially true regarding Versions. Apple could have improved the filesystem to support version control natively.

Having said that, I do think it is worth the $29.99 it sells for and Apple is certainly on the right path of revamping its OSes to stay ahead of the curve.

Antennagate
The story of “antennagate” has died down ever since Apple’s press conference where CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged the iPhone 4′s alleged weak spots in its antenna system.

The myth of “antennagate” states that when you touch the bottom left side of the phone, especially where the black strip is… your signal goes way down and may cause you to drop a call. The science behind it is that the human body is a natural conductor, and once you bridge the two pieces of the antennas (as separated by the black plastic strip) you effectively change the length of the antenna. That length is crucial when you are trying to receive a specific wavelength of energy. People also found by putting a layer of insulation over the antenna joint will ease the problem. Therefore, cases and the so-called “Antenna-aid” methods came to play, and eventually forced Apple into giving out free cases to all iPhone 4 users.

I got my iPhone 4 on August 13th, and went home and began testing these myths of “antennagate”. I found some very interesting results that I would like to share.

1. “antennagate” certainly exists in Canada as well, despite other reports.
2. One may lose 2-3 bars in an area with mediocre signal strength by bridging the antennas.
3. A simple tape or band-aid does not solve the problem. Only a case can effectively eliminate it.
4. Myths about Apple applying a non-conductive coating to the phone to solve the problem is bogus.
5. I have yet to drop a single call despite numerous attempts to “death-grip” my phone.
6. While calls did not drop… 3G data throughput did die.
7. I was getting 2-3 bars with my iPhone 3G in this area, but now with the iPhone 4 I get 3-4 bars. The new antenna really is better than the old generation… well when it works.

Before we get into the details one must understand that “antennagate” can only be produce under certain conditions where the signal strength is at around 3-4 bars. When you are in an area where you receive 5 bars (and possibly even more but the phone does not display) you do not experience any noticeable degradation in signal strength. Therefore, you cannot antennagate in all areas and it is true that when you “death-grip” any phone the signal will indeed drop by a certain amount. While it is true that you can ease the effect by sticking a piece of non-conductive tape on the antennas, the tapes are simply too thin to create a radio-penetrable space for the antenna to work efficiently. Therefore, only a case with measurable thickness will eliminate the effect of “antennagate”. The claims and wishes that a non-conductive coating on the phone will help with the issue is completely false. Unless Apple will spray on half inch thick of coating… it will not work.

However, even if you use the phone without a case the drop in bars will probably not cause a drop in calls. I have tried numerous way to bridge the antenna with my finger, my palm… my palms (both my hands)… I simply could not get the call to drop! The phone would work perfectly fine with one bar of signal. The same thing could not be said for the data connection. Once you “death-grip” the iPhone or simply touch the antenna joint, the data throughput goes way down and virtually dies. This drop in throughput was more noticeable with 3G than EDGE.

Lastly, the antenna on the iPhone 4 is noticeably better than the previous generations of iPhones. After updating to firmware 4.0.1, I could not get my iPhone 3G pass 3 bars, in fact most of the time it stays at 2 bars. On the same firmware, the iPhone 4 always get 3-4 bars very consistently in the same area. I don’t think Apple was lying that the phone’s antenna is in fact a better one… at least better when it’s insulated and not obstructed. In addition to signal strength, the data throughput on 3G has improved quite a bit as well. See the screen shot of my speed test: this was done with only 4 bars. However, I was a bit surprised about the awesome upstream speed, but other users in Canada and the US have confirmed to have seen the same thing.

Battery Life
There are many conflicting claims about the iPhone 4′s battery life. Aside from Apple’s official claims of up to 40% improvement over the 3GS, review sites like Engadget claim that the iPhone 4 can live for 38 hours without recharging and that’s under heavy use. However, numerous users claim to have much shorter battery lives than either Apple or Engadget.

From my personal experience, the battery on the iPhone 4 needs some burn-in to reach maximum capacity. When I first got the phone, its battery life was mediocre at best. After 4 cycles of complete discharge and recharge, it got significantly better. Right now it lasts about 30 hours before running down to 5% or lower.
I have:

• 3 Exchange accounts on push email and calendar.
• 1 account on hourly fetch.
• I usually play about 2-3 hours of games.
• Check the web regularly for stock updates.
• Send and receive about 50 text messages per day.
• 5 min or less of talk time per day.
• Network is on 3G and occasionally WiFi.

The battery life improvement over the 3G and 3GS here is definitely not as prominent as Apple had promised. However, it is definitely not bad. If you are experiencing significant lower battery life, I would suggest you do a couple of complete recharge cycles or take your phone back to Apple for a replacement.

Lastly, watch the signal strength on the phone. When you are in a low to no signal area, you might consider turning the phone off or into “Airplane Mode” to save it from constantly searching for network. You may also try to reset your network settings to resolve any conflicts by going into: Settings – general – reset – reset network settings (be sure not to hit any other command there).

Cases
Apple is offering every iPhone 4 user a free case through their Case Program at least through the end of September. For my phone I already ordered the InvisibleShield which is by far my favourite brand for iPhone cases. I also got a free Apple’s iPhone 4 Bumper, which goes super well with the InvisibleShield.

The Bumper is really the best case Apple’s free case program has to offer. In my opinion it perfectly preserves the iPhone 4′s essence of design by overlaying metal buttons for “ON/OFF” and volume controls. That way you still get the great responsiveness of the phone’s buttons and the buttons are not obstructed by the casing.

While the Bumper offers minimal protection of the phone’s front and back, the InvisibleShield effectively compensate for the shortcoming.  At last… it looks awesome!
InvisibleShield also gives out pretty decent discounts on a regular basis.
Visit http://www.zagg.com/community/contest.php to get not only a coupon up to 50%, but a chance to win an iPad.

Please feel free to share your experience with this phone in the comment area. I’ll will keep this posted updated as I discover more interesting facts about the new iPhone 4. =)

I think the guys from gdgt just compiled the source from the Chromium OS project… and using this as bait to increase traffic to their site. Anyway, they did an ok job and you do have to register on gdgt to download it.

Here are some screenshots of Chrome OS.

The OS looks extremely similar to the Chrome browser, and it is basically a complete standalone version of Google Chrome. This early developer build has very little configurable options… actually apart from those security and web related options you get from the Chrome browser there are only options to enable Tap to Click, and some mouse/touchpad sensitivity settings.

From the screenshots you will notice that ChromeOS detected that it is running on a laptop computer and it has a space to display battery levels. You can also config timezone settings. The only problem was that the screen resolution was locked to 1024 x 768 and could not be changed.

Page rendering performance was also quite poor, possibly due to the lack of 3D acceleration from the VM. This is very noticeable as you scroll up and down, and when you have a Flash movie loaded.

That’s right, Flash is supported! Youtube works… but the performance is horrible, and again probably due to the lack of graphic acceleration.

From what I can tell from this early development version of Chrome OS, I’d say that Google has done a great job of moving from desktop computing to cloud computing, and bringing desktop applications to web applications. From the start, you login with your Google ID and everything you see is generated and supported by the cloud… and of course the courtesy of an active connection to the Internet.

Aside from the buzz it has generated, Chrome OS is not going to be too useful to the average user right now. Especially when you have Windows or MacOS preinstalled on your machine already. Maybe it will make more sense for low-power netbooks, but even then it will be useless without access to the Internet.