Macstories has the story on this excellent app, that I have been a fan of for sometime, which has been rechristened Documents, and made even more powerful, with the ability to play audio and video.I have used this app for sometime, and pretty much use it and iBooks for my document needs.
So with the iPhone 5 Apple updated and downgraded it's connector to the new lightning connector. The good news is it is smaller, and will work in either direction. The bad news is it is the same speed as the old adapter, sends less data, so many old accessories won't work, and for those that do it requires an adapter at $28 for a direct or $39 for a cable.Youch! Honestly i would rather have had the old adapter still so all my old devices would work. Especially since Apple said they won't make docks for the iPhone 5, and i prefer my iPhone and iPods in docks!
Sure I have an iPhone and an iPad, but even with the largest models of their generations and a bunch of apps 64 GB doesn't leave much room for music. Not only that but I rip all my CD's at Apple Lossless, which is about half the size of CD quality with no loss of quality. That leaves me with my venerable iPod Classic with 120 GB harddrive (there was once a bigger model, but it is no more). Still not huge, especially with hard drives growing every year, but sans a plethora of apps it can store quite a bit of music. And there is nothing else that matches it's size. Sure eventually static memory will get larger, but so does app size as screens get better. And don't even get me started in how much space large photos take up on the new iPad!?!?!And streaming music doesn't work for me as long as data plans have caps. And even most unlimited plans are not even close to unlimited! As streaming could be the future, but only if it can be all your songs just as they are in your computer!I know it will never happen, but i would love a new hard drive based ipod, say 320GB, with an updated interface. It can still be scroll wheel, but playlists needs a fast scroll like artists have! It could store most of my music and mean i can just worry about apps on my iOS devices!
So far there is a new MacBook Air which is faster and faster MacBook Pro 13 and 15" models and the 15" gets an NVIDIA GeForce 650M, so say hello to Mercury playback from Adobe, nice.And a new MacBook Pro, which is super thin, but not like an Air and has a Retina Display. Only .71 inches thick and only 4.46 pounds, lighter than current 13" MacBook Pro, and it has a 15.4 inch screen, with a 200 ppi pixel density or 5,184,00 pixels! No Optical drive in this model of course. And an updated version of lion with Safari, iMovie, iPhoto made for Retina, as well the pro-apps including Aperature and Final Cut Pro X (yipee fucking do), though being able to see full 1080p in the viewing window is pretty cool, but must take a serious video card! And Photoshop has been updated (or will be soon). Yup it has a GeForce GT 650M with 1 GB of Video Ram. Nice! And up to 768GB of internal flash storage. And up to 7 hours of battery life (that screen has to be a major draw on power). For ports it has SD card, HDMI, USB3 and 2, Magsafe 2, 2 thunderbolt ports and headphone.It seems the magsafe has been made thinner, nice!And Firewire 800 and gigabit ethernet adapters for thunderbolt, though I would rather have the ports!And no word on the 17" MacBook Pro so it is likely EOL.Uh Oh, now OS X, does that mean no MacPro. I sure hope not!Onto Mountain Lion. And 8 new features.•iCloud built in. With Apps updated for iCloud, so your documents can live in the cloud (hurray can we use Pages docs with iPad and Pages on the Mac? Looks like it ). And a final version of messages for the Mac, which will also send SMS (How does that work, do you pay via your phone?).•Notification Center, banners are top right (just like Growl) or can slide notification center our from right. And can support from other services like Twitter.•Dictation to the Mac. Probably need something to replace my old iSight though!•Sharing, now built in to share to twitter from everywhere, and an SDK for any app to support it.•New Safari, unified top search and url bar like Chrome. Share tabs across iCloud to mac and iOS, and can see what tabs you have open in what place. And Visual Tab View.•Power Nap. Keeps Mac up to date while it sleeps, fetching e-mail and keeping track of calenders. Still backup to time capsule, download from app store and automatic software updates, and doesn't spin up fans and goes easy on battery.•Airplay mirroring, display your mac onto your TV with an Apple TV and up to 1080 content (how does that work with the new retina display?).•Game Center makes it to the Mac. Can even play Mac to iOS on certain games.And Mountain Lion is released next Month for only $19.99! WOW! And that is from Lion and Snow Leopard! And…
I just needed to add a little rant here. It is the difference between using iOS and a Mac, and specifically iTunes. Now I have way too much to even be allowed to join the iCloud and have my music there. I have 35531 music tracks and 1091 movies.It is easy to sort within iTunes, as first off I have a trackball and a scroll wheel so I can move through my playlists and movies very quickly on my mac, but it is way too much scrolling in iOS. Sure in some apps you can click on the letter to jump, but there needs to be a quicker way to scroll.This is even worse in Apple TV. I have an Apple TV to be able to watch the movies on my HDTV instead of my Mac. To find a movie on my Apple TV I have to scroll through my 1091 items, which is slow and not very efficient. They need a quick ability to search or a way to easily pick starting letters.On my iPad there needs to be a faster to jump pages. I have way too many apps, but I use them, and have them very well organized, but to get from the first to the last page takes a whole lot of scrolling. I want a way to quickly see all the pages and jump to where I want to go instead of just having to scroll.iOS is great, but it needs work, and honestly it needs more functionality like Mission Control. Instead of the MacOS being more like iOS, iOS needs to be more like the Mac.Honestly for me in an ideal world I would have a very powerful MacPro, that was expandable and more upgradeable. I am talking even new Motherboards and processors, so it could last years. I would be able to access it in my office for screaming fast speed and video editing especially, but it would have an online portion where I could access it all the time from other computers, say my iPad and a laptop. So I could use the apps there, and basically have dumb portals as my laptops and iPad that could access my main computer and run it’s apps and use it’s documents. And honestly I don’t want everything stored in the cloud, because I don’t trust it, I would rather have the main storage local for me.Now that is a best case scenario, but that way I could have one computer and one file system, and I could use it from anything with an internet connection. Now this would require fast internet everywhere, and the end of all these internet caps on broadband and wireless.Now I might not be able to edit completely remotely, but I should be able to do all of the basic things on my computer and work with my computer, and even do basic editing.Who knows when the technology will be there, but hopefully before too long.