Bakari Chavanu's Profile

Thanks, Chris, for your feedback. I’m not sure if you saw my previous article on the Air and iPad, but I can say you will experience some overlap between both devices. I’ve actually laid in bed and switched back and forth between the two—using the iPad for reading and browsing, and the Air for writing. My PowerBook finally died out on me over a year ago. I thought I’d be able to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, though I knew of its limitations. But it just wasn’t happening. Writing on the iPad sucks. So at first I started to get a bottom line MBP which is about the same price as the 11” Air, but boy am I glad I didn’t. The form factor of the Air is just amazing. Though I think the Air should be a few hundred dollars cheaper, I seriously enjoy using it and taking it with me. When you get used to the iPad, carrying around and using a netbook like the Air only makes sense. I would hate carrying around a heavier MBP. But like I said, you will feel some overlap, to the point of thinking, why can’t Apple just somehow combine the two into one machine, incorporating both the iOS and OS X systems. That is what my previous article is about.

James, you make a point. I think my bias comes from not really being a tv watcher, but at the same time, I just think Apple could have easily created an similar app to ZumoCast by now.

Kris, sorry to hear that app isn’t what you expected. If it’s any consultation, I actually purchased myself. I didn’t get review license for it. As for the Google feeds, I wasn’t annoyed by that because I didn’t want to add all of them to the Pulse reader. Nevertheless, thanks for your comments. Hopefully they will give other possible readers something to think about.

Beeblebrox, I agree that there are advantages to a netbook. I purchased one for my daughter, but for the life of me, I can never spend more than 10 minutes on her netbook. Though the screen is larger than my iPhone, the size of the iPad screen is more comfortable to me. If you read my first articles about the iPad here on AppleMatters, you’d see that I recommended to readers to only purchase the base model of the iPad and/or wait until the second gen to see what type of improvements will be made. I think Jobs ever tried to sell the iPad as a laptop replacement. He would sound silly doing, given that he has a solid line of MacBooks and MacBook pros to sell. But as I have written in still other articles for this site, I’ve felt it was shameful that Apple hadn’t produced some sort of netbook device that would fulfill simple computing needs. I think the iPad comes close to what I and other user users were looking for, but there’s of course areas that need improving, which this latest article tries to point out. Thanks for your feedback. Great to have you as a regular reader of the site.

Turleymuller, yeah I had forgotten about the pop-up option in Safari. But even that option doesn’t compare with Atomic Web’s options. It’s almost embarrassing to compare the two. And I agree somewhat that Apple tries to keep its apps simple for a wide range of users. But in this case, most Mac users are probably very familiar with tabbing in the desktop version of Safari, so it only makes sense to bring that same feature and user interface to the mobile app versions. RayCon, there are many apps that duplicate the function of Apple‘s programs, so I think Apple really has to be flexible enough to allow third-party developers to produce programs that are going enhance the mobile devices; otherwise, advance Mac users are simply going to get frustrated by the lack of features that should exist to make the devices more productive.

I downloaded Opera Mini last night and tested it out for a few minutes. It definitely contains features that need to be put into Safari, especially when it comes to Safari on the iPad. Opera’s tap feature and full page view bring a better user experience to browsing on the iPhone. However, I don’t see this 3rd party app shifting enough users away from Safari. Mainly because Safari is the default app that other apps will link to. Secondly, many users simply don’t get involved enough with their iPhone to learn about alternatives to many of Apple‘s default apps. I mean seriously, my sister-in-law’s husband has had his iPhone for several months now and he still doesn’t know how to copy and paste. On the contrary, the best thing about many these third-party coming online is that challenges Apple to include more features in its future updates. For those of us who want t take advantage of advance features, we seek them and use them, while most users are content with the basic stuff.

Yep, sounds like you can do this. Create an iCal workflow that runs (as an alarm) every week. Here’s a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/N2ZlNDE3