John Gruber of Daring Fireball spoke at XOXO 2014 and they recently posted his talk on YouTube about content on the web, companies, Daring Fireball … and other things. The entire talk is really good (the most quotable stuff is near the end) and it is mostly clean (language-wise).
Enjoy.
Apple held an event that you might have heard of. They are releasing some larger phones, a payment system, and … a watch!?
Yes, a watch. I’ll cover my initial thoughts after watching the keynote (see the link above).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:55 — 13.7MB)
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I’ve been running with a desktop as my main computer for almost five months now and I am ready to give some thoughts on how it is going. This is going to be a list post again, so bear with me:
I’m definitely leaning toward picking up a new Apple laptop when it becomes doable and then moving the Mac mini that I have to a server role. OS X Server 4 looks to be an excellent release and I am looking forward to playing with it and seeing if I can fit it into my technology life in some way.
Being able to consolidate down to a single machine running OS X will happen, but I do not know when. With rumors about a 12″ MacBook Air swirling around, and (thanks @curtismchale) Henge Docks working on some amazing products for pseudo-docks, it looks to be doable for me soon. One decision that I will need to make is how important multiple monitors will be.
Then it would be a MacBook Pro with Retina display.
John Gruber over at his site, Daring Fireball, posted maybe my favorite piece on Apple from the post-WWDC maelstrom.
He titled it Only Apple.
If you like Apple, go ahead and read it. If you don’t, take it or leave it.
If you want the short version here it is:
I lasted about five days before I gave in and decided that I’m just going to give up with trying to do anything like this and continue to use the best tool for the job for me, or (as my friend Aaron Spike has said), the tool most familiar to me.
The longer answer starts here:
It is the same thing that always happens. When I need to get work done, I reach for my Apple products. If I need to do something quickly, I’ll reach for my iPad and/or iPhone and/or MacBook Air/mini because, frankly, they just work. They also work well together.
I also gave in because WWDC happened.
Why is that important? BECAUSE APPLE ANNOUNCED A LOT OF REALLY COOL STUFF!
So basically, I’m just really weak.
I’m still going to keep my Lenovo ThinkPad X220 with openSUSE around at work for doing the odd thing here and there (and for testing), but I think that I’m even more-firmly in Apple’s camp now than I was at the end of last month.
openSUSE still would serve my needs quite ably, but I enjoy using Apple’s devices and OS (on both desktop/notebooks and mobile devices) more than I enjoy using the laptop that I currently have openSUSE installed on.
The benefits still stand, as always. I really like having a dock available so that I can bounce between work and home with the same machine and have identical setups available to me with little-to-no fuss at all. I’m hoping that Apple can come up with something similar for their notebooks (a Thunderbolt dock with a power adapter comes about as close as possible right now … but that is still two cables).
The sheer amount of available hardware is great but it is impossible to find a great laptop anymore. Most of what is available does not entice me in the slightest. Apple’s hardware still, to and for me, is the best available. I’m hoping that rumored 12″ MacBook Air will actually happen one day.
Linux is still firmly with me every day, and that is not going to change. As for this challenge, I completely failed.