iCloud won’t sync Keychain items or Email accounts between computers anymore. If you’re like me and have multiple machines, these features are really valuable and don’t have a viable replacement. Some users have started linking their Keychains files to a directory on Dropbox and using that as a cheap solution, but this doesn’t take merges into account. If you update your keychain on two computers at the same time, you’ll have to pick one or the other which means losing information.

MobileMe’s going to be active until June of 2012 which gives Apple plenty of time to create a solution, but I have a feeling they won’t. That leaves it up to a 3rd party. So far I’m not aware of any decent alternative. I know a lot of people are fans of 1Password but I gather they’re really targeted at saving your web passwords, which is still a useful feature but not really what I’m after.

So it’s kind of a weird thing. I’ve been a paying customer of a service I’ve gotten value out of for nearly 10 years. Now Apple is replacing this service with something free that doesn’t do what I originally paid for. Oh well, I hear iCloud supports Windows Vista.

• iTunes connectivity – it already hooks into the iTunes Music Store via wifi, why not allow it to browse and playback music from shared iTunes libraries on the LAN? I would love to be able to access my music or friends’ music when I’m visiting and don’t have a laptop around. Syncing tunes wirelessly and sharing tunes would also be fantastic additions.

It was probably the feature I most wanted back then, and the last one to arrive. This pleases me.

There was one other item on the list that never made it, and that’s having access to the radio channels in iTunes. That feature’s largely been supplanted by the availability of 3rd party radio apps. Just as well too, since Apple hasn’t really done much with their radio channels and I’m honestly surprised they’re still in there. Now hopefully Apple can keep itself from killing off third content providers entirely.

What do I want next? Here’s a short list:

• “Lossless” music downloads in the store. Even better would be HD audio, DVD-A or SACD quality music. Unlikely given how uninterested the recording industry (and, I guess consumers) seems to feel about it.
• Multiple encodings. Like video, it’d be neat if I could store a lossless version of a track and a lower-quality compressed version for carrying around on my ‘pods. iTunes can do it with video so audio should be easy.
• Alternate formats. WAV, FLAC, WMA, OGG. Unlikely at best.
• Separation of services from the core of iTunes. App, Music and Movie Stores, Ping (I predict Ping’ll disappear altogether in a year or so), Books (?), TV and Movies…

iTunes has gotten hugely complicated and is the cause of many slow-downs and beachballs during the course of the day. Most of the time, I just want a music player. I never actually watch movies or TV in iTunes preferring other players. I only use it to get video onto my iP*ds but I’d much prefer not having to clutter up my computer’s storage with the extra video copies. Hell, while I’m thinking wishfully, maybe it’d be nice if Apple would let me play AVI/XviD, WMVs and WebM video while we’re at it to save me the trouble of transcoding.

I won’t hold my breath. All signs point to Apple locking down iTunes even tighter (and bloating it even further). Talk of removing optical drives on all future Macs and forcing users to buy everything through the iTunes Store is not that far-off considering some of the recent money grabbing. Then again, maybe they’ll get broken up for anti-competitive practices. I give that a couple of years at their current rate.

Great tips and a couple of App recommendations from Phil Coffman on taking great pictures with your iPhone. At a minimum, you should get yourself Mill Color and Adobe Photoshop Mobile. (iTunes links)

Phil Coffman – Art Director + Photographer » iPhone Photography.

The setting to swap the Caps Lock key for an extra Control key was no longer working with my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. This is crippling for me, as I spend a lot of time in the Terminal and using Ctrl key combos are the only real way to get around and edit lines of text.

A search found this blog entry:

The problem turned out to be related to the wireless USB hub for Logitech’s MX Revolution (and others?) mouse. If you unplug it before you change the Modifier Keys the changes do take effect.

Thanks for the tip!

Installation is painless. They’re shipping Nambu as a zip file which you can drop in your Apps folder. Currently FriendFeed and Identi.ca support is disabled adding to the “beta-ey” feel of the app. It may be a little rough around the edges. Some other features seem unfinished. Twitter Groups, for example.

What does work is pretty cool. Nambu presents three different views. A combined view showing a straight-up list of tweets, an Outline view, with a tree on the left showing different types of communications, and a multi-column, browser-like view similar to that of tweetdeck. The People group in Outline view presents a list of thumbnails of profile pictures and hovering over them shows a dark iPhoto-styled palette with additional information about the person.

Another nice feature that should be built into Twitter itself is automatic short-url previews. Hovering over the domain name shows the full link and the link-shortening service in a popup. Nambu provides tr.im and pic.im as integrated options for link-shortening and pictures and calls these part of the “Nambu network”.

Searches show up as a new group in the Outline view or grouped with your friends tweets in the Combined view. A way to hide these would be useful as they can overwhelm your friends pretty easily. They get updated so it’s easy to track specific topics in real-time.

Growl support and badges on the dock icon provide ample notification options.

I don’t think I’m quite ready to replace Twittelator Pro on my iPhone yet, but I’m definitely going to give this a shot on my desktop.

Update: after a day, Nambu’s become inoperative on my laptop. I saw two entries in my Twitter accounts, possibly a result of my MobileMe preferences sync. Deleting my preferences file for Nambu had no effect. Maybe I’ll try it again in a month or so, though, after Neilio’s recommendation yesterday, I may just install Tweetie on Monday.

I’ve had my iPhone 3G for awhile now. When I first got it, I wanted to do a review of some of my favorite apps. Months passed. Summer turned to fall. There was still no review. But then, how could there be? I was still learning the territory, and there’s a lot to learn. iTunes for all its strengths and considerable weaknesses, is kind of a pain to use to find applications worth trying out. It’s slow. Recently, I discovered AppShopper which has greatly-improved my ability to find useful applications. There’s also 148Apps which lists and reviews the top 148(?) applications and was recently mentioned on LifeHacker.

Before I get into the meaty reviews, I should note that I haven’t paid for any iPhone apps yet. It’s not because I’m too cheap to pay 99¢ for a piece of software (honest!), I just haven’t found too many apps that I’d really consider necessary enough to pay for. There is one particular piece of software which I would love to buy, but haven’t yet because the developers haven’t released the final version of the desktop software yet. This is OmniFocus by the Omni Group which I use every day on my desktop but won’t trust the required beta software enough to make the jump to 1.1. C’mon guys, ship that sucker so I can give you some more money!

I think it’s also worth noting that the web, that much-maligned initial platform for application release easily fills the gaps left by software, and in many cases, makes stand-alone apps unecessary. I’ve played with Exposure (iTunes link) by Connected Flow and strongly-considered paying for it, but with flickr‘s recently-updated mobile site, the need for an external app is a lot less. Gtalk is another excellent example of a web application on the iPhone. There are many others I have on my homescreen.

Twittelator (iTunes) (free for Lite version, $4.99 for Pro)
by Stone Design Corp.

My favorite of the twitter clients, I’ve been a happy user of the lite version since my iPhone’s first week. It’s not without its quirks — location tweets are rarely on the mark though it’s not clear if that’s due to the GPS hardware in the iPhone itself or a software flaw. Hitting the “star” to mark a tweet as a favorite is hard to hit precisely, as is the reply button. It also includes TwitPic integration for sending pictures when you’re out and about, but the pictures often get oriented incorrectly, a problem I think is linked to the camera and accelerometers because I’ve seen it in other apps as well. If you’re not a twitter user, this is probably not that interesting to you. If you are, check it out.

Shazam (iTunes) (Free!)
by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.

Ever been in a bar or restaurant and heard something on the sound system and you and your friends couldn’t identify it? Now you can! Tap the “tag now” button and hold your iPhone up to a speaker and wait for a few seconds for it to listen to it. It’ll buzz when finished, briefly communicate with Shazam’s system and then tell you what you’re listening to. Honest. Excessive background noise confuses it occasionally, but the few times I’ve used it, I’ve had pretty good luck. Once identified, you have the option to buy the tune in iTunes (!), view related YouTube content (!!) or share the tag with your friends who might want to remember what it was too. Sharing sends an email with information like, “I’ve just used Shazam on my iPhone to identify Leif Erikson by Interpol. I thought you might like this track” including some useful links. Great fun, useful and cool.

AIM (iTunes) (Free!)
by AOL

There’s a real dearth of iPhone/iPod messenger apps, probably because of the lack of push support. AIM is pretty much a direct iChat clone for the iPhone. Works well, and if you leave it running in the background, you get buzzes or notifications when you receive a new message. Great for chatting with your friends when you’re on the road. I’d love to see a port of Adium/Pidgin to the iPhone, but don’t think that’ll happen for awhile. Maybe by the time Apple releases clipboard support. (Snide clipboard joke required for any and all discussion of iPhone applications. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on.)

Fring (iTunes) (Free!)
by fringland Ltd.

Speaking of messenger applications, I discovered Fring this week and gave it a quick whirl. I haven’t even tried the instant messenger applications yet, mostly because they’re implemented through a back-end service and I don’t usually like giving out my passwords to other companies. Especially ones that have 3 different EULAs for various terms of service – one for privacy, one for the terms of use and one for their license. I haven’t read them all yet, so that’s why I haven’t tried using the instant messenger parts. What I have read in their privacy page looks pretty innocuous and is there to inform the user that their IDs and information may be exchanged with the third parties running the services (e.g., Microsoft for MSN).

So why is this thing in my top five if I haven’t even used it fully? Because it includes Voice over IP support. That’s right, you can connect to Skype or another SIP network and use it for voice communications. With Skype-out credits (or a SIP connection) you can even dial out to land-lines. I tested this on our asterisk system at work and was able to talk to a colleague. Sound quality was adequate with only a bit of VoIP warble and latency. Definitely usable. If you’ve got wifi access, you’ve got unlimited voice minutes no matter where you are in the world.

Last.fm (iTunes) (Free!)
by Last.fm

If you’re reading this, chances are you like music. Do you wish iTunes had included streaming radio support into the iPod part of your phone? I know I do. So I was pretty pleased when I discovered Last.fm’s application. It lets you stream recommended tracks, tracks from your library or start a new station based on an artist, tag or user. You also have a somewhat limited view of your profile including your friends and recently played tracks. I’ve been enjoying Last.fm’s service more and more recently and started scrobbling my iTunes and iPod playback and building an online collection. It’s an interesting view into my own catalogue and has provided me with a few decent recommendations. Plus it’s fun.

Last.fm isn’t the only option for online streaming to an iPod/iPhone though. Pandora (available in the States) will hopefully  make it through their somewhat troubled recent months (and come to Canada). I also found an app called fStream which will play mms:// streams to your ‘pod. I don’t really have any good mms:// streams so I haven’t played with it much. If you have any good streams to recommend, please drop ‘em in the comments.

Big Endean
This is by no means a comprehensive list of available applications. I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here. Considering the app store is … less than 6 months old, there are a TON of great apps out there and an enthusiastic and talented developer community. It’s really a huge accomplishment and Apple deserves lots of kudos for it. There have been some growing pains, but I’m hoping the worst of it’s behind us. I’ll post a follow-up with some of the other useful apps I’ve found in the near future. peece.

Currently listening to Changes Are No Good by The Stills from the album Logic Will Break Your Heart

I know, the iPod touch isn’t as cool as the iPhone which by now, most people own and are busy twittering about how cool they are and making up romantic stories about how they saved their lives and cured their impotence and made food taste better, but I still adore my iPod, especially now that the 2.0 software upgrade has become available. It’s like a whole new device.

Let’s revisit my original wishlist for a second:

1. iTunes connectivity — not quite, but the Remote application is pretty close. It lets you control a running iTunes from your wifi network. This is especially excellent if you have an Airport Express in another room and you don’t want to run back to your computer to skip a tune. Navigation is excellent. I just wish I could select a remote speaker set from this app to send my music to whichever set of speakers I’m next to. A minor quibble.
2. Internet Radio — last.fm and, apparently pandora.com have apps available. Sadly, due to copyright restrictions(?) pandora.com won’t let me use their service here. In any case, I spent dinner listening to last.fm hooked up to my portable speakers in the dining room, enjoying some recommended tunes over the wifi. The ribs and corn were extra delicious as a result.
3. Podcasts — haven’t found an answer to this yet, though there’s no reason they couldn’t add these to the iTMS on the iPod. It probably hasn’t been done because they don’t want the bother of managing subscriptions on their end. I bet we’ll see some podcast-specific apps soon enough. TEDtalks anyone?
4. Airtunes — not really, though the Remote app in #1 comes damned close. It’d still be nice to listen to iTunes content on my iPod remotely though. I’ll give them half a point.
5. TV Shows — also no. But with the latest Apple TV updates it can only be a matter of time before we start getting video content through the iTMS on our iPods (and, I suppose, iPhones).

Really, 2.5 / 5 isn’t bad for 5 months. It gives me hope for the other 2.5 points to arrive in time for xmas! Keep up the great work Apple!

PS, screw you Rogers.

listening to Static: Terrible Canyons of Static; Chart #3; World Police and Friendly by Godspeed You Black Emperor! from the album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

Normally I do my blogging with Ecto. It’s decent software though still in beta for version 3.0. I like Ecto a lot and will likely continue to use it. I enjoy using external apps for writing – call me old-school. I can take it.

So it is with some interest that I’m trying out ScribeFire. This is not a simple “here’s your blogs post page in a sidebar” kind of extension. This is a full blog-editing application built in XUL and embedded within Firefox. It appears to have a bunch of other features as well, allowing you to publish web-pages to a variety of sharing services like Digg or Facebook. It also has del.icio.us integration allowing bookmarking bookmarking and tag-searching from within it. This feature alone is useful as del.icio.us hasn’t updated their Firefox add-ons as of this writing for version 3.0. That said, the del.icio.us integration in ScribeFire feels a little crude.

As a blog-editor, it seems pretty feature-ful. It supports editing pages in WordPress (a feature only recently added to Ecto) and embedding flickr or youtube links. The included search tools for grabbing images from flickr or videos from youtube does seem a bit limiting though. They are basic and you might do better to actually find the content you were interested in on those services yourself.

ScribeFire feels like a very reasonable blog-editing application. It gets the job done and seems to support most of the editing features I would want. Edits are easy (I’ve edited this twice now) and the sharing integration for Digg also feels pretty decent. Because it’s built on top of Firefox, a lot of the integration with third-party sites is essentially seamless, allowing you to use your login credentials for those sites right in Firefox. Awesome stuff!

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