I just noticed this option this morning. Not sure how long its been on there. 4th one down from the upper left hand corner.
Hmmm.
Personal Hotspot Option on iPad?
Month: August 2012
Windows 8 Versus Mac OS X Thought
The Mac operating system has changed over the years but not in very dramatic ways. In fact, anyone who has used OS 9 will know exactly how to use OS X. If you have used Tiger (10.4) then you can use Mountain Lion (10.8) without much todo or fanfare.
Steve Jobs knew that tablets were the future of computing and built the entire Mac eco-system around that idea. The features you find in iOS are readily becoming available in Mac OS X. This is deliberate.
What Microsoft is doing with Windows 8 is try to bridge a gap that has been building over a period of years. They are trying to jump ahead to a point that they were not preparing for. While Windows dabbled in touch screen interfaces, they saw something that was really “cool” but didn't really know how to apply it and use it to their advantage. I remember seeing Vista for the first time and listening to Microsoft tell me how awesome it was and was going to become. I also remember yawning and noting that all of those “cool new features” had been in Mac OS X for months or even years.
I am willing to bet (without having read the entire Steve Jobs biography) that Steve saw an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation's use of the PADD and snapped his fingers. I don't doubt that for a second because after watching the show, I myself wanted such a device. Man, the things you could do with a tablet computer! Steve Jobs did the same thing with the Xerox interface. While Xerox may not have fully understood what they had, Steve Jobs did. That is vision.
That is what Microsoft doesn't have.
This version of Windows is such a big jump from Windows 7 and so confusing to such a large base of users that this whole thing simply “smells” bad. Big jumps in OS are usually bad for consumers. I haven't even mentioned IT folks that may end up abandoning Windows in the workplace all together. They will have to weigh training hours, troubleshooting time, and costs against other alternatives that are much cheaper and offer less of a shock to their users. Let's face it. Windows in the workplace is expensive.
Windows 8 is such a big jump that it would be like paying someone to shoot you in the face if you are an IT guy.
Just. Sayin'
Mountain Lion Issues
I was hoping that Mountain Lion Update 10.8.1 would fix my streaming audio/video issues on the latest iMac 27″ you can buy from Apple.
It does not.
I am fairly certain that my issues will pale in comparison to the legions of Windows users who believe what Microsoft tells them about how easy the upgrade to Windows 8 will be only to find that they can no longer find anything. (insert most family names you know here.)
Back to 10.7.4 where its safe.
Battleship Review
I have played Battleship as a kid and even as an adult many many times. I thought the iPhone app was awesome. Later, Hasbro introduced the iPad app. Heaven!
I heard they were making a movie based on the game. “Oh man! This is going to be great!”, I thought. In my own mind, I quickly came up with 5 ways they could have written this movie.
A few months later, I finally got to see the trailer.
Aliens? Wait. What? Wait. WTF?
What do aliens got to do with Battleship?
Answer = nothing.
Sometimes. Hollywood just doesn't get it. This is one of those times.
It is like they are using frog DNA to fill in the missing sequences to their plotlines. The frog DNA is this case is aliens. (If you've seen the original Jurassic Park movie, you'll understand the reference.)
You don't need the personal relationships. You don't need aliens to make a great movie.
Battleship The Movie should have been a “no brainer” and one of the easiest movies to write. Instead, Hollywood took a chance that you are all a bunch of morons who need to be entertained using the same formula over and over again.
Yuck.
Science Fiction or Not
Sometimes, we don't really need to involve aliens in a screenplay to make the story interesting. I bring this up because my current project is one that could have easily incorporated an alien element and I'm sure it would have made for an entertaining movie. I decided to take the much harder path and not involve anything “alien” in the plotline. In fact, this movie may be a science fiction piece but just barely.
Most things in life are best enjoyed by not taking the easy path. I continuously choose the more difficult paths in everything I do because I find the rewards to be much greater. I think writing fiction is no different.
Ahem. Ok. You can go back to doing whatever…
Photoshop JPG Problem Between Platforms
I recently downloaded a batch of pictures from the internet. The iMac refused to read those files as JPG so I did a little digging (actually Command-I on one of the files) and found that these particular files were saved with Photoshop CS5.1 for Windows. The following graphic shows what the files look like on OS X 10.8
The next question you're probably asking is “how to I fix this?” The solution is rather simple but will require a 3rd party program unless you like renaming multiple files by hand. Great, if you only have a couple of pictures to fix but if you have a whole bunch then I recommend Name Mangler. I'll explain why.
Simply changing the name of the file to say “waterfall.jpg” won't fix the problem or at least, it didn't for me. What we need to do is change the extension as well. So, instead of JPG we need it to be JPEG. Name Mangler will allow you to make that change. Once, you rename the files with an extension of JPEG..boom! You have your files in a completely readable format by OS X 10.8.
How about Adobe Bridge CS6? I've tried converting with Adobe Bridge and it just wouldn't cooperate. Sure, you could actually view the photos and see how they were saved originally but that's it. If anyone knows of a method that works in Adobe Bridge, please let me know (me at smpmike dot com)