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MacStories Product Review: Jawbone JAMBOX Portable Speaker

In my review of the Sonos S5 wireless music system, I made the bold statement that I can’t live without music. It’s true, and apps for the iPhone and iPad are only making the need of music anywhere, anytime more ubiquitous than ever. With music accessible at any time, from any device, the need of high-quality portable gear becomes real.

The Sonos S5 is a top-notch music system that’s deeply integrated with iOS and Internet services, but you can’t carry it around. You can’t have it with you at your friend’s house (well, unless you plan on configuring it on his router and computers), you can’t have it at the beach, at the bar, wherever. The Sonos S5 is great, but it’s a “desktop system”. The Jawbone JAMBOX wireless speaker, which I was provided a review unit a few weeks ago, is a different story, and an original one: it’s a tiny, ultra-portable, hi-fi audio speaker and speakerphone that you can carry in you hand or throw in your bag / backpack. It’s really, really small yet it delivers impressive audio quality throughout small to medium rooms. It’s completely integrated with the iOS platform and can double as a speakerphone that’s, again, integrated with Apple’s Phone app.

After the break, you’ll find my review of the Jawbone JAMBOX after three weeks of testing in lots of different rooms and situations with different people and music genres. I really tried to make the JAMBOX fit with any possible scenario I could think of. But I can already say this small and user-friendly speaker is the best thing that ever happened to my mobile music. Read more

Macworld 2011: The Future of the Mac [Video]

Here’s a 48-minute video for your typical Sunday morning: at Macworld Expo 2011, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, Macworld’s Jason Snell and Dan Moren and Tidbits’ Adam Engst talk about the future of the Mac, the Mac App Store as the biggest innovation happening to the platform, the iOS influences on OS X and much more.

One argument that really made me think after watching the video is the idea of two kinds of Macs in the future: a “simplified Mac” with a closed system similar to iOS, and a Mac for advanced users. I don’t know how I would react to a closed, straightforward and really  simple Mac personally, but I do know that I would appreciate a new system for managing and deleting apps. Perhaps Launchpad will bring some fresh air on Lion. But then again, should Apple just make the Mac as simple as possible and let “power users” enable the features they want (like, say, the Finder) in the machine’s preferences? And how does the Mac App Store fit in all this? Great discussion in the video above.

The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform→

The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform

From a piece about Apple’s platform strategy on The New York Times:

Hit products like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad are fueling Apple’s logic-defying growth. The latest entry — the iPad, introduced in April — is on track to deliver $15 billion to $20 billion in revenue in its first full year of sales, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

At that size, if the iPad were a stand-alone company, it would rank within the top third of the Fortune 500.

Think about it: for any company on the planet, having a product like the iPad in its line-up would be the greatest success. Yet the iPad is one of the products in Apple’s chain, and like others is deeply integrated with software, MobileMe, the App Store. This platform strategy creates the following win-win situation:

The more people buy iPhones and iPads, the more software developers and media companies want to write applications for them, as various as games and digital magazines. And consumers are more likely to buy iPhones and iPads when more entertainment and information applications are available on them.

So the value of Apple’s products doesn’t lie in the products themselves, but in the platform that supports them all. This extends to internet services, App Stores, media management, support, accessories.

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Google Rolling Out “Instant Previews” for iOS Devices

In the past months, Google has been very busy improving the experience of iOS users on products like Gmail, Google Docs and the Google homepage: Google Docs editing came to Mobile Safari, then Google launched Instant for Mobile, which similarly to the desktop lets you see search results as you type. Most recently, Google has enabled Cloud Print support for Gmail in iOS Safari and improved the mobile weather widget on its homepage.

As noted by 9to5mac, Google has also begun testing a new feature for iOS browsers (and Android as well, we guess) which hasn’t been officially announced yet but was spotted by some users. Google “Instant Previews” will let you have a quick preview of a website by tapping on the magnifying glass icon – again, just like on desktop browsers you get a preview inside a popup menu on google.com. On iOS though, it looks like the feature will really be redesigned to sport a much better touch interaction: previews will open in a dedicated window that reminds of Safari’s tabs and you can flick through them to quickly preview search results.

It is unclear at this moment whether the feature is being tested among some users in the United States or worldwide, and when Google plans to launch it or at least announce it.

Coming Soon: iPhone Voice Control for Everything

Voice Control on the iPhone and iPod touch, in spite of the number of commands it supports, is far from “full-featured”. Sure you can ask the iPhone to play and pause music, even call people – but you can’t do more. A new tweak by developer chpwn, soon to be released in Cydia, will give more power to Voice Control by letting it open apps, launch URLs and perform any Activator action, like take a screenshot.

VoiceActivator will have a dedicated settings panel where you’ll be able to create the voice shortcuts you want, and have them recognized by iOS’ built-in support for voice command. So say you want to open MacStories in a new Safari page, assign “macstories” to a new action in VoiceActivator, speak it and Safari will launch. Just like that. Kind of fancy to show off to your friends, although I’m not really huge on the whole VoiceControl UI. Still, the possibilities VoiceActivator will open seem pretty neat.

The tweak will be released soon in Cydia. Demo video below. Read more

Omni Group’s Huge 2011: OmniFocus 2, New OmniPlan, OmniOutliner for iPad


Stronger than ever thanks to an incredibly successful launch of OmniFocus for iPad, the constantly increasing OmniFocus userbase on all platforms and the hype surrounding all their products, Omni Group’s CEO Ken Case gave some details of the company’s roadmap for 2011 at Macworld Expo. The three key products seem to be OmniFocus 2 for Mac, coming later this year and highly inspired by the iPad app, a brand new OmniPlan with cloud sync and collaboration features, a version of OmniOutliner for iPad. Personally, I’m really excited about the overhaul of OmniPlan, which will also get OmniFocus integration:

The new syncing back-end is also designed to work with OmniFocus, which will let individual team members sync tasks assigned to them with either the desktop, iPhone, or iPad versions. “All three versions use the same underlying engine, so once we have that update in place, we’ll be able to roll out OmniPlan syncing to all versions of OmniFocus,” Case told Ars.

The current version of OmniPlan allows syncing via CalDAV, but the new engine will offer much better integration with OmniFocus. For project team members who don’t need to see what all other team members are working on, they’ll be able to see just the tasks assigned to them. When tasks are marked as complete in OmniFocus, the project manager will get a notification of the change in OmniPlan.

We can’t wait to see what will the new OmniPlan look like, and the two-way sync with OmniFocus sounds like a killer feature to me. Not to mention OmniOutliner for iPad, which will be demoed for the first time at Macworld today and is set to ship sometime in the next few months. What you see above is a screenshot of an early build Ars Technica was provided, but I guess the UI will change come the final release (remember the first mockups of OmniFocus for iPad?).

Last, OmniFocus 2 for Mac will be released “later this year”, although the Omni Group (as usual) doesn’t set any deadline. When it’s ready, it’s ready. We just know the feedback for the iOS apps (especially the iPad version) has been huge, and OmniFocus 2 will be built on top of that.

Looks like the Omni Group is off to a great start in 2011.

Notational Velocity Update: Horizontal Layout, Tag Sync, New Icon

Notational Velocity is a free and open source text editor for the Mac that can read text files from anywhere on your computer and syncs with Simplenote. Thanks to its sync functionalities, Notational Velocity became popular among users who wanted to store notes in Dropbox (from where Notational can fetch files) and sync them back to Simplenote as well. With Notational in the middle, users can enjoy the power of Dropbox text editors in the App Store, and the beauty of Simplenote’s tools.

In the past months, we have covered a couple of interesting mods to the original Notational Velocity which aimed at extending the feature set of the app by adding fullscreen mode, horizontal layout, multiple note tagging, Markdown and Textile support and lots more. Those were unofficial mods (or “forks”) realized because of the open source nature of the application. An update to Notational Velocity was released last night, and it adds a number of features seen in unofficial forks: horizontal layout (simple, reminds me of iOS), tag syncing through Dropbox with OpenMeta standard, TaskPaper compatibility, support for inter-note linking. Tags can be entered in a dedicated column of the vertical view, but I haven’t found a way to show tags while in horizontal mode. These tags have full Spotlight support as they’re based on  OpenMeta (which means they’ll also work with other Mac apps like Tags and Leap). Lots of changes and small fixes are included in this update – I appreciate the fact that notes can now be created with the “nv://make/” URL syntax and AppleScript search support. I also find the new icon more elegant and unobtrusive than the previous one.

Overall, it’s the same Notational you know and love only with a few changes, a new layout and lots of minor improvements you can check out below. Download here. Read more

iPhone 4 Cases Now Available On Verizon’s Website

The Verizon iPhone is coming out on February 10th, and ahead of the official launch Verizon Wireless has updated its online store to feature new cases specifically made for the CDMA iPhone. After the announcement of the Verizon iPhone, many noticed some old cases for the GSM iPhone wouldn’t fit on the new unit; case makers were quick to announce CDMA counterparts would be released soon.

You can see some cases for the CDMA iPhone 4 on Verizon’s website here. There are cases from Griffin, Incipio, Belkin and InCase. Average prices seem to be around $24.99 and $29.99, similarly to the Bumpers Apple sells on its online stores. The cases available on Verizon’s website include leather ones, snap-in model and hard cover cases.

Apple is also making a new version of the bumper that fits both the GSM and CDMA iPhone.

[Thanks, Henry!] Read more

The AppSumo “Unleash The Beast!” Bundle Giveaway

The month of OS X has to come to an end, but not without a spectacular bang from the vaults of AppSumo awesomeness. Digging deep, they came up blazing with heavy hitters that’ll send non-power users crying over their slow Windows keyboards. The Beast will only strike once, and in its claws you can obtain Yummy FTP, deep discounts on Arq and ScreenFlow, as well as a one year subscription to the magical Skitch. We’re not done just yet: MacStories readers have a chance to win one of five copies of this final bundle in a month of OS X (and don’t forget that AppSumo’s MEGA bundle is still up for grabs).

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