nathan jara

Watching a recent episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the cloud computing craze during his popular The Word segment. It’s worth a watch : )

So after watching Apple’s video describing all the new kick butt features of its latest operating system upgrade, OS X Lion, you can’t help but get excited. I couldn’t either and bought the upgrade not too long after it was released. Many of the new features I really am pleased with, including the Mac Mail revamp with conversations, full-screen view in applications, and the overall new look of icons and such. I even like the seemingly drastic change Apple made to scrolling in the OS by “inverting” the scroll as in iOS and mobile devices. Of course this is totally screwing me up when I go to use my work machine, which doesn’t have the update, and I have to scroll the “old” way : P However, I think Apple may have really dropped the ball on some things with the new cat. For one, I’ve noticed significant lag and delay when opening programs and moving through different applications; something I didn’t have at all with Snow Leopard. Another issue I have is the significant change to multiple desktop management. Even the simple task of changing your background wallpaper on all your desktops has become more complicated. While they’ve given you the ability to have different wallpapers per desktop, there is no option to change all wallpapers at once, as others have clearly had issues with as well. I realize this change isn’t the end of the world; it just doesn’t seem very logical, which is something that Mac UIs have always done well. Reading reviews of Lion, you’ll find similar complaints. While writing this post I read a few reviews that pointed out some features that calmed some of my initial qualms, including Engadget’s review. The Ars Technica review is particularly thorough and uncovered some more things that made me feel better about the upgrade. Clearly, Apple is moving in a new direction with some of the new features, or lack thereof. As noted in the Ars Technica article, Steve Jobs said we’re entering the “post-PC era” and as Apple has driven the technology train before, maybe they know something we don’t. In the end, though, they need to always remember to be like Tron. He fights for the users.

All the biggies, Amazon, Google and Apple, are heading skyward with their own implementations of cloud computing. I recently experienced the approach through Apple’s iCloud beta service with iTunes, and honestly I didn’t even realize it at first. After hearing about Apple’s iCloud service, I turned on the sync option on my Mac and iPhone. I mean, it’s free, why not, right? Forgetting that I turned it on and with one of my latest music purchases from iTunes on my Mac, I found that my new music automagically appeared on my iPhone. Now, when all the talk about cloud computing, syncing, downloading, et cetera et cetera began, I honestly wasn’t that carried away with the idea. It hasn’t really bothered me to have to plug in to update, charge, load up more music. But after having my music synced up without having to do anything, well, I guess I’m jumping on the cloud train. Other services like Google’s music streaming service and Amazon’s cloud storage sound more interesting than before and I think it’ll be fascinating to see how cloud computing evolves. One of my biggest questions lies in the sustainability of the physical space that will be needed as the “clouds” grow. In Apple’ recent announcement of iCloud, they provided images of their ginormous new data centers. If everyone’s going to eventually have their desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets in the clouds, I think they’re going to need to buy some more land. From a privacy perspective though, I don’t believe we’ll have everything floating around on company servers. I don’t really care if Apple, Google, or Amazon know that I like Dave Matthews Band or even a little Bluegrass, but I’ll be keeping my personal docs in my own cloud.

If you haven’t heard the latest Buzz, Google recently released its Facebook killer, Google+. The Google Plus Project is the technology giant’s all encompassing foray into the dangerous world of social networking. If you were lucky enough to get an invite to the initial beta testing period, you’ve already monkeyed around with Circles, Sparks, and Hangouts. While I haven’t jumped into all the new fancy pants features, I have to say I’m liking, no Facebook pun intended, the Circles feature most. Circles basically allow you to group your Google+ friends into different categories of your choosing. You can place all your closest chums in your Friends circles while keeping work buddies in a Coworkers circle. The best part about this feature is that when sharing a post, comment or message, you can select the particular person or persons with whom you want to share that post with and not always everyone under the Facebook sun. I think the customization and personal choice of who gets to see what with Circles is an awesome move by Google. As one who has complained about Facebook’s approach in the past, it’s good to see a company taking the user’s choice into account from the get-go.

I am surprised, however, that there hasn’t been more hullabaloo about this categorization aspect of Circles. I thought for sure we’d be hearing people complaining that this “putting people into circles” business (insert whiny voice here) is unfair and will hurt people’s feelings because everyone should be equal. I’m glad there hasn’t been such comments, or at least I haven’t seen any, because I think this feature is needed. When it comes to social groups, we all have people we’re closer to and not so close to. People we want to share more personal things with and those that we just want to say “hey!” to every now and then. I think Google+’s Circles reflects more realistically our offline social lives.

If you agree, ask around and demand an invite from a pal. It’ll be interesting to see how Google+ progresses and grows over the next few months and if any Facebookers will jump ship for the new web hotness or just double up their social worlds. I doubt the Madelaine Zammits of the web will be coming aboard, but I’ve definitely tested the waters and am feeling much more relaxed. Heck, even the Zuck-man himself took a dip. +1 Google, +1.

This past week, Netflix announced to subscribers via email that the company will be changing its movie plans starting in September. As a current subscriber, I receive unlimited online movie streaming along with 1 DVD rental at a time for $9.99 per month. Beginning in September, streaming and DVD rentals will be permanently split into separate plan options, each service costing $7.99. In other words my monthly bill will be going up $6 a month. I was annoyed at the change mainly because I know others who have been long-time Netflix subscribers who have gotten grandfathered in to new plan changes without this significant of a price increase. And it just kinda stinks. There’s been a lot of comments and complaints about the change over the internets, but in the end I won’t be canceling either of the services to which I’m subscribed. So, in conclusion, Netflix must be pretty smart. They’re going to make another $72 from me every year :P