ios

Yeah, so I'm not sure why they didn't mention this at the keynote. I've already spent $10 in the first five minutes.

Fantastic "research" by Joshua Topolsky. I'm looking forward to all of the people walking around the streets saying things like this out loud trying to get a clever response from Siri. Of course that would be a normal situation on the T.

Here's an idea. Check the server before making me wait for 30 minutes to do a full backup.

You might be an OmniFocus guru or a Things aficionado. But the Due app for iOS is a valuable addition to any toolbox (TUAW review). It's not for scheduling your life or planning a project. It's for those times when you really don't want to forget something but it's just not going to make it into your task list. Those unplanned imminent tasks. Due is more of a timer than a scheduler.

There's been a good amount of discussion about Siri on the new iPhone 4S. I for one, can not wait for better voice recognition. It's unclear if Siri will be available on the iPad 2 even though it contains the same A5 processor as the iPhone 4S. My guess is that the iPhone 4S has more than just an improved processor and RAM to handle Siri. I'm betting (and could easily be wrong) that the iPhone 4S comes with improved microphones and audio processors.

If everything works according to plan, iCloud should arrive next week. The only immediate actions are to get ready to download several application updates. iWork for Mac and iOS is likely to be released at the same time that iCloud goes live. In addition to the applications from Apple, I’m sure there are a number of top-tier developers ready to start using the iCloud syncing (for example the Omni Group).

My current 32GB iPhone 4: This is after moving photos and video off of the phone. Earlier in the week Instacast could not download anymore podcasts since I had run out of available space. Many of those 160 apps are single use tools, like IMDb, Hipmunk and AroundMe. I don't use them everyday, but then again, when I need them, I'm glad I have them on my phone.

David Sparks' book is officially official. I’ve had mine for about a week and it’s great. If you thought paper books were dead, this book proves otherwise. It’s printed on high-quality paper with full color images. There are QR Codes to look-up any apps he mentions. Even if you’re Scott Forstall, get the book just for the high-quality content. I plan to give this as a gift to several people this holiday.

Beer Tracking Trilogy Episode 4 See this post for the introduction and ground rules Bento I started this project in Bento. A couple of years ago, I created a Bento database for cataloging beers I drank. The purpose was to know what to buy again, and what to avoid at all costs. Bento worked moderately well but had some frustrating rough edges. Bento on the Mac has two different views into the data.

The Trilogy This is the opening crawl to a trilogy. Like any good trilogy, it will begin with episode 4 and never, ever speak of episodes 1–3. The trilogy will describe a quest to find the ideal solution for curating my collection of micro-brewery beers. The quest spans several suites of applications: Bento, OmniOutliner and iWork Numbers. I’ve learned a lot about how I can use these tools and I hope someone else gets something out of this series.