Web/Tech

Once again, this morning I found myself transfixed before my MacBook Pro, glued to Engadget's live blog of a Steve Jobs presentation of Apple's newest must-have techno-wonder.The iPhone 4. And this time it truly is a must-have for me. I was strongly attracted to the iPad when Jobs revealed its appealing features, but after the show was over I was left with a nagging feeling of "cool toy, yet what would I do with it that I can't already?"Different reaction to the iPhone 4, for sure.Currently I have an iPhone 3G which can't even capture video (unlike the 3Gs, a…

I love my iPhone. But it bugs me when I'm at home and I fire up some cool app, like Siri, which needs to know my current location to function correctly, and it thinks I'm many miles away -- down in Albany, Oregon -- rather than where I actually am, rural south Salem.A bit of Googling shows that my wi-fi router apparently is being mislocated. Turning wi-fi off results in accurate mapping, but our AT&T signal is crappy at our house. So now my location-based iPhone app won't work quickly or reliably.Here's a fix, which I learned about here.(1) Go…

Jeez. As non-religious as I am, I feel sort of funny reliving my long-lapsed Catholicism and confessing on a Sunday. But I feel that I have to, because I have been unfaithful... to Apple.I wasn't attracted to the iPad on the day it was announced. And yesterday, when the iPad was put in the hands of some 650,000 happy purchasers, I remained uncommitted to the newest persona of my Apple lover.I have an iPod Touch. And an iPhone. And a MacBook Pro laptop. When the rumors that Apple would produce a tablet started to fly, I was virtually certain that…

OK, my first lackadaisical impression of the iPad could be proven wrong. If Apple promotes an "explicit" App Store category, as seems likely, porn could turn out to be the iPad's killer application.By enabling developers to publish "explicit" software titles in the App Store, Apple will provide the potential for a new, unanticipated killer app for iPad: digital interactive magazines, comics, and games that present adult subject matter to audiences that want them while also enabling parents to prevent access to such content within iTunes' preferences. Access to adult content has long been credited with the success and popularity of…

Ah, I feel purified. Ever since Apple announced the release of its iPad tablet computer, which notably lacks support for the Adobe Flash Player, I've been wondering whether the ubiquitous Flash is as evil as Apple makes it out to be.But Apple’s support for Flash has been flagging. While Flash is present on nearly every Apple desktop and laptop computer, the company decided that Flash would not be used on the iPhone. Apple has argued that the Flash technology is too slow and unduly taxes laptops and netbooks. The company also has concerns over Flash’s vulnerability to viruses and other…

At 10 am yesterday I was glued to my MacBook Pro, watching Engadget's live-blog feed from the Apple event where the long-awaited iPad tablet was announced.I fell in love immediately. Or, was it just a passing lust?Today I'm trying to figure out whether iPad and me are going to have a long-term relationship, or whether my instant attraction to her was a passing thing. Ms. iPad is unavailable at the moment. Reportedly it's going to be a couple of months before I could bring her home and start feeling her up (the iPad is like an iPod Touch or iPhone…

Beautiful! Mark Morford nails his lust list of desirable features for the long-rumored and apparently about-to-be-announced Apple tablet. Bring it on!Here's some of Morford's entirely reasonable wishes (he's speaking directly to the tablet). On the topic of health and happiness, it would be tremendously helpful if I could, say, hold a given food item in front of your gleaming screen and have you instantly reveal, via an intricate array of special sensors, the exact nutrient value, fat quotient, caloric assessment, global carbon footprint, potential colonic damage and overall dietary necessity of said comestible, along with exactly how amped or sluggish,…

Yeah, I'm fickle. If something more desirable comes along, I'll break up in an instant with an attractive piece of technology even if I've had great times with it. So goodbye venerable Nuvi 350, who's been a part of my life since November 2006. Thanks to an after-Christmas Amazon sale, I'm now in an increasingly intimate relationship with a younger Nuvi, the 285W.Lots of people, including me, love the Nuvi 350 -- as evidenced by 3,140 mostly glowing reviews on Amazon.My only significant gripe with the 350 was how she mispronounced basic names, like "drive." We live on Lake Drive,…

Yes, my wife and I paid more for our Apple computers (MacBook Pro and an iMac) than a PC would have cost.But when something goes wrong with our machines, we're in capable hands with AppleCare tech support. It's by far the best in the business, according to Consumer Reports.Dream on, PC users, about what I experienced this morning when I made a call to figure out a couple of problems with my wife's new iMac.Within a few rings the 800 number was answered. OK, not by a real person. However, the automated voice recognition system was snazzy, crisp, and clear.…

What could CNN be thinking? It's in last place among cable news networks. Yet CNN changes the look of its web site to make it painful to look at and almost impossible to find any real news on.I used to spend quite a bit of time on CNN.com. Now I take a glance, get a headache, and quickly click over to the New York Times and Google News.Big red banner. Big ads. Big headlines about nothing important (current featured story, "Groggy: excess sleep could be reason"). Small type size. Small focus on hard news. This all adds up to a…

I haven't been shy about expressing unforbidden love for my MacBook Pro, a sleek aluminum clad beauty who came into my life about a year ago and has stimulated blog posts of adoration (here, here, here, and here).Now my love affair has broadened to include the Bridgeport Village Apple Store in suburban Portland (Tigard). Here's why.As lovely as my MacBook Pro is, she has a few flaws, as do all objects of passion. A few weeks ago my 13-inch laptop stopped speaking to me. More accurately, she started whispering in a high tinny voice. Something had gone wrong with the…

Yesterday I got excited when I heard about CNN's app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I forked my $1.99 over and started playing around with it. At first I liked it. Then the ads started popping up. And popping up some more.Hugely annoying. I didn't expect to get so many ads (or any ads) in a non-free iPhone app. Especially in the middle of reading something.CNN has updated its own story about the app with a lame acknowledgment of all the criticism it's been getting about the ads. Thanks for the feedback; we're not changing a thing.Usually people upgrade…

One of the few glitches I've found with my dearly beloved MacBook laptop is how the Apple web browser, Safari, fails to load all of a page much of the time.Sometimes it stalls and I have to reload the page to get any content. Sometimes it will download some images, but not others -- leaving Google News or Google Reader, for example, littered with annoying missing picture icons.Others have complained about the same problem. Today I found an easy solution that, so far, seems to be working.As the suggestion on that link said, I went to my Mac's system preferences…