Apart from the barrel distortion we mentioned earlier, we were exceptionally pleased with the photos we took with the Olloclip. Sure, the compact, dual-sided, three-in-one lens won’t match the image quality of a pro rig, but considering its size and versatility, it may just become the next must-have accessory for Apple’s iPhone 4.
Olloclip is a clip-on 3-in-1 one lens for the iPhone 4 that has fisheye, wide-angle, and macro lenses. Priced at US$69.95.
The Olloclip, you see, goes for $69, while the iPro Len System will set you back almost three times that, at $199. With that significant price difference in mind, it all comes down to priorities. If you’re looking to get the most out of your iPhone’s camera and don’t mind a bulkier package or steeper price, the iPro’s the way to go. But for casual users who’d like to spice up their phone’s camera without breaking the bank or toting around extra hardware, the Olloclip’s just fine. In fact, it’s the newest addition to my arsenal.
Every time Apple comes out with a new product (the new Air! OSX Lion! the new iPad or iPhone!), we eagerly snatch it up, willingly waiting in line for the chance to pay a chunk of our lives — the time spent earning the money it costs to buy the product.
I could go on all day, and in fact, we all go on all day with this game.
Or instead, we could simply say, “I’m not playing that game.” Because honestly, there’s no way we can win.
Today, Apple put up its latest operating system, OS X Lion, on the Mac App Store for you to purchase for US$29.99. The who’s who of writers have put up their reviews of Lion and it has been impossible to hide from all the hoopla. At one point, just minutes ago in fact, I almost caved and started the 3.76GB download. But then, I thought:
I don’t need it.
I’m perfectly content with OS X Snow Leopard. The way the desktop looks, the tools that I use, and all the little tweaks over many months are all in harmony. When it comes to technology, I can change, rapidly in fact, but only when I see real value in the change. The biggest feature OS X Lion brings to the table is full screen modes for apps like Safari. Full screen allows me to focus on one thing at a time. But I already do that by limiting the number of windows, to one at times.
Mission Control integrates Spaces, Expose, etc. but doesn’t help me. My late brother, Don, was always wary of having more than one browser window open. I know why: he wanted to focus. One app. One window. Full Screen mode can help, but you can do that with a bit of self discipline right now without spending a penny.
Launch Pad lays out a grid of apps on the desktop. Well, that doesn’t help either. I like my desktop completely blank. And because I use only a handful of apps (Safari, Chrome for when Flash is needed, Seashore, iTunes, Spotify, and iMovie from time to time) the grid would be less efficient. The Dock, auto-hidden, can be directly accessed at any time from anywhere. With apps on the desktop, you have to dig down to get to it. Seems more work to me.
Resume, Autosave, Versions: When I’m done for the day, I like cleaning up. All apps are closed and I put my MacBook Pro to sleep. Pressing Command-S hasn’t been an issue for me. Versions store tens if not hundreds of different versions of my documents somewhere on my SSD? That doesn’t sound tidy to me. I’d rather have just one version, the version I’m working on.
Mail: I use webmail versions of Gmail and my work mail. I don’t see a need to setup an email client that requires setting up, additional resources, etc.
I try my best to be a minimalist when it comes to computer resources. I dislike apps that are unnecessarily large, apps that spew files all over the drive, apps that try to do too many things but can’t do anything really well, etc. From where I sit, OS X Lion is nice to have, but with Snow Leopard I already have everything I need to get work done, or relax.
This is Spotify. It will change how you enjoy music. Any track. Any time. On your computer. On you your cell phone. Search for it. Play it. Any artist. Any album. Any genre. Available instantly. It’s never been this easy to discover, to play, to share. All your favorite music, all your friends, all in one place. It’s how music was meant to be enjoyed. It’s free and only one click away. Check out Spotify today.
But those who have tried Spotify know it’s like a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world — and it’s free to use if you can put up with a 20-second ad every half an hour.
PHYSICAL ARTIFACT: High Point, North Carolina, 1980. At the time I was nine, an age when you soak up music. Every kind of music. Centerfold by J. Geils Band. PacMan Fever by Buckner & Garcia. The Tide Is High by Blondie. Marketing, even back then, knew how to sell. One day, in the mail was a music club solicitation. The deal: twelve albums for a penny. I thought, “Wow!” Excited, I checked off twelve albums and sent it off the next day.
Some of twelve: ACDC’s Back in Black, KISS, Styx, Air Supply, Rolling Stones. I still have ‘em.
A few weeks ago, my neighbor had a garage sale and I picked up a turntable for $10. As the albums turned, I read the album covers and listened to the songs I listened to more than 30 years ago. That afternoon I was back in 1980. My records, they physically connected me to my past.
DIGITAL ARTIFACT: Even before Napster, CDs were ripped. CDs were small enough to be portable and you could instantly jump from song to song, but only to about twelve of them. So we ripped them into MP3 files.
Soon enough MP3 CDs came around. Twelve become a hundred and twelve. And then became 1000 and twelve, thanks to the iPod.
We were drowning in a digital sea of MP3 files. Filing them was difficult, if not impossible. Apple threw us a line with iTunes. And we gladly entered Apple’s walled garden to get our share of ¢99 songs. We no longer wanted to get ripped off by having to buy an entire CD for the one song we really wanted. And some of us wanted to go legit and drop the Napster habit.
Maybe it’s because we have thousands of them. Or maybe it’s because we can’t physically hold them. Whatever the reason I have no attachment to my MP3 files. Instead, they feel like a bother: backed up in dozens of DVDs, stored in large hard drives.
I think it maybe time to step outside the garden of Apple, even with iCloud on the horizon, because iTunes isn’t working well for me.
NO ARTIFACT: Let me say this up front. Spotify decouples artifact ownership from the experience of listening to music. In my opinion, this is the future. I like it and I don’t like it.
I love good music. Good music makes me feel. And the world is filled with good music. With iTunes I was limited by the size of my wallet. Spotify lets me explore, all 15 million songs, for free.
You don’t know how much this means to me. I like a lot of music. It would have cost me a fortune to own them all. (A quick side note: I think Spotify could dramatically reduce music piracy. There really is no need. It’s all yours anyway.) From the moment I installed Spotify this morning music has filled my room, nonstop. This is good and I like it, very much.
Will Apple be part of this? Is Apple so entrenched in the way it sells music that it will overlook the power a service like Spotify gives to music lovers the world over?
I’m no fortuneteller, but if I were to guess, song downloads on iTunes and elsewhere will soon plateau, and eventually decline. The tipping point was today. I firmly believe the age of digital music artifacts will soon begin to fade. We have stepped into an age free of artifacts.
I’m not uneasy, but the experience of not owning the music I’m listening to is different. Thirty years later, I’ll remember this day and there’d be nothing to hold, nothing physical or even digital to connect me to this moment. And that’s what I think I don’t like.
But like it or not, Spotify is the future. I have experienced it today. And maybe it is the experience of music, free from artifacts, that matters.
PS: While typing this post I searched, double-clicked, and was instantly listening to: Centerfold, PacMan Fever, and The Tide Is High. Brilliant, simply brilliant!
Update 2011.09.26: Spotify PR rep Angela Watts viaAll Things D:
As an existing Spotify user, you can still use the service without actively using Facebook. However, from last Thursday, all new users will need to have a Facebook account to join Spotify. To us, this is all about creating an amazing new world of music discovery. To make this as good and simple as it possibly can be, we’ve integrated Spotify login with Facebook login. By adopting Facebook’s login, we’ve created a simple and seamless social experience.
I am one of 6.2 billion people that don’t have a Facebook account. Bad move.
What you see is my Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) desktop, in 960×600 HiDPI.
After reading about HiDPI modes in OS X Lion and how it handles HiDPI, I wanted to check it out for myself. My 17-inch MacBook Pro has a pixel format of 1920×1200. So what I could do is halve the pixels horizontally and vertically to see what HiDPI would look like.
I used Quartz Debug, set the User Interface Resolution to 2.0, and effectively doubled the resolution on my MacBook Pro. And when I say resolution, I am referring to pixel density, as in ppi. In OS X Lion the setting would be 960×600 HiDPI.
HiDPI used to be a tricky concept, but thanks to the iPhone 4 it is easier to understand and to explain. The iPhone 4 can be thought of as running in HiDPI. On iPhones prior to the iPhone 4, the 3.5-inch LCD had a pixel format of 480×320 (landscape). The LCD was upgraded to 960×640 in the iPhone 4. Everything stayed the same size, except they were all much much sharper. That’s what HiDPI offers on the Mac.
Without HiDPI, setting my MacBook Pro to 960×600 would result in icons and text that are very fuzzy. In 960×600 HiDPI everything, except for web text (I’ll get to this later), is crisp.
It seems parts of Snow Leopard is already tuned for HiDPI. Look at how sharp the menu items are compared to web text from DisplayBlog. Icons are razor sharp: the red, yellow, green buttons, the Safari icon, the Trash icon, etc. But if you look at the top right corner the Spotlight search icon, AirPort icon, and the clock text are not HiDPI ready: they “shrank” by one-half both horizontally and vertically. Same goes for the mouse pointer, the bottom-right window resize icon, and contents within the Finder window.
There is one other problem, and this is big: text on the web look horrible. Web text look identical to non-HiDPI 960×600 on my MacBook Pro. I’ve googled to find out how to make text on the web take advantage of HiDPI monitor settings without success. Even text on John Gruber’s excellent Daring Fireball isn’t HiDPI aware. Does anyone know of a way to take advantage of HiDPI for text on the web?
I’m sure Apple does. I’m certain because Apple makes web text look great on the iPhone 4. Sooner than later, Apple will need to apply that knowhow to web text on OS X. I’ve seen a glimpse of HiDPI on my MacBook Pro and the visual clarity is amazing. I look forward to iPhone 4-level clarity on my Mac in the not-so-distant future.
