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Weekly Poll
For the most part, Apple’s prices on its main products are fairly static (at least for individual purchasers). Students and teachers can get an education discount, and occasionally Apple will toss in an iPod or a printer for free, but generally Apple is a retailer that avoids the idea of frequent sales and discounts.
For this reason, the annual Black Friday sale is a pretty big deal for Apple fans looking to either get someone a gift or pick up a new computer for the office and score another deduction before the tax year ends. This year Apple didn’t really pull out any surprises with the sale: $101 off Macs, $41 off iPads, $21 off iPod touches; nothing too different from last year. These discounts might not seem like much compared to those offered by competitors, but for many Apple customers, it’s a rare opportunity that’s not to be missed.
According to 9to5Mac, the strategy paid off and led to the biggest sales day in Apple history. I’d definitely mark that one up in the success category! Today we want to know if you were a part of that success for Apple. Did you purchase anything on Black Friday? Vote in the poll on the right and then leave a comment below to let us know what new toys you picked up!
By now many or even most of you have gotten a chance to really dig into Apple’s latest operating system: OS X Lion. This update was a significant one and brought about tons of changes from both a visual and functional standpoint. With this in mind, we already can’t help but to look toward the next iteration and wonder what’s in store, not just from a new feature standpoint but regarding which existing features Apple will decide to refine.
Today we want to know what you would like Apple to take another run at designing. Whether it’s a brand new feature like Mission control or something that’s been there since the beginning like Finder, which piece of OS X are you really hoping will see a major facelift next time around?
Vote in the poll and then leave a comment below telling us what you would change and why.
One of the features that people seemed most excited about getting their hands on in Lion was fullscreen apps. Plenty of apps jumped on this trend well before Apple built in support for doing so, but for the most part, having a distinctly fullscreen mode is a fairly new development to the Mac app world. Even with Lion’s release being months past, many developers are only just now starting to adopt this feature. Odds are most of your apps don’t yet possess a fullscreen mode.
Today we want to know if the reality lived up to the hype. Do you enjoy using apps in fullscreen mode? Vote in the poll and tell us how many you currently use this way, then leave a comment below and let us know which apps specifically you like to operate in fullscreen.
A big thanks to Scott Danielson for submitting this poll idea via Twitter. Shoot us a tweet at @MacAppStorm with the hashtag “#appstormpoll” if you have a poll idea you’d like to see published.
As of 1 March, 2012, all new apps/updates submitted to the Mac App Store will be forced to implement a security feature called sandboxing. In brief, sandboxing limits the scope of each application by restricting how much of your system that app has access to. Developers will have to go through Apple and request specific entitlements in order to receive permission to stretch the limits a little further and give their apps access to certain information.
The benefit here is obvious, your system will be much safer given the restricted access that apps will have. The downside though is a big one for seasoned Mac users and developers of particularly powerful utilities as this restriction has serious potential to limit features. As Techworld.com reports, Alfred’s developers have hesitated to submit the Alfred Powerpack to the Mac App Store for this very reason.
Back in June, I wrote and published an article titled“1984 and the Future of Mac Software” containing a fairly gloomy outlook on the future of the Mac should it continue down its current road towards heavier developer regulation. It seems fairly obvious that Apple wants control over every aspect of what does and doesn’t make its way onto your Mac. That’s not inherently a bad thing though, iOS serves as a great example of a successful system (that users love) which happens to be very tightly controlled by Apple.
Ultimately, whether or not sandboxing is a good thing is completely up to you. We want to hear what you think. Vote in the poll above and leave a comment explaining your answer.
Hat tip to SmileyKeith for submitting this poll idea via Twitter. Shoot us a tweet at @MacAppStorm with the hashtag “#appstormpoll” if you have a poll idea you’d like to see published.
AppleInsider recent published an interesting article that doesn’t bode well for Mac Pro fans. Supposedly, diminishing sales of the Mac Pro have led to considerable discussions at Apple over whether or not it will be profitable to continue the line further.
Though there will always be users who need more processing muscle than your average Mac owner, iMacs have become such powerful machines that many users are more than happy forgoing the Mac Pro’s high price tag when shopping for a workstation. It’s not a giant leap of logic to see the Mac Pro today as the Xserve of yesterday. The question is, will it reach a similar fate?
Vote in the poll and let us know what you think will happen to the Mac Pro. Is this overhyped doom and gloom? Is the Mac Pro here to stay? Or will it disappear, perhaps in favor of an even more powerful iMac? Let us know what you think and leave a comment below telling us why!
After at least a year of rumors about an Apple cloud service and months of anticipation after the official announcement was made, we’ve finally gotten our hands on iCloud. It’s the perfect example of how Apple doesn’t always get things right from the start. They started with .Mac, evolved that into the train wreck that was MobileMe and have hopefully finally gotten things right this time around with iCloud.
Now that you’ve had a little while to kick the tires, it’s time to weigh in. What do you think of iCloud? Is it everything you hoped it would be or did all that hype lead to a disappointing reality? We want to know!
After you vote in the poll, leave a comment below telling us about your iCloud experience. Tell us your horror stories and your raving praise, let’s hear it all.
Though several of us had dreams of lining up in bookstores and having Steve personally sign a copy of his upcoming biography, sadly we know now that day will never come. Though you can still hope to catch author Walter Isaacson and thank him for his work in penning the stories of the father of modern computing.
If you’re like me, you’ve been looking forward to this book for quite a while. The official release date, October 24th, is quickly approaching and today’s poll question asks whether or not you plan on picking up your own copy. Will you preorder it? Wait for it to hit bookstores? Reserve it at the library? We want to know.
After you vote, leave a comment below and let us know whether you’ll be grabbing the hard copy or perhaps reading it on your iPad as a tribute to those amazing devices Steve spent the latter half of his career perfecting.
I’m a fortunate soul who hasn’t really been forced to use a Windows PC since elementary school. For the most part, I get by entirely on Macs both for home and work use.
I recently had the realization though that not every Mac user is quite so lucky. I know several people who love Macs, own Macs and would prefer to use them 100% of the time, but are still forced to use the standard issue Dell or HP provided their employer.
Today we want to know what your situation is with Macs and PCs. Do you use a Mac at home, work or both? For the sake of simplicity, we’ll lump student work and schools in with work.
After you vote in the poll, leave a comment and tell us if you ever use a Windows PC and why. Do you personally find a need to use Windows frequently? Are you being forced? Do you like it just as much or better for certain tasks?
Last week while researching an introduction to Disk Utility I came across some extremely varied arguments regarding the usefulness of repairing permissions (check out that article for a discussion of what repairing permissions actually does).
I’ve personally long seen “Repair Permissions” as a nice little troubleshooting tool that I turn to when nothing else seems to solve a given issue. If something isn’t working quite right and I can’t hunt down the source of the problem, I repair my permissions to see if the situation improves. Sometimes it does, many times it doesn’t. Either way, it’s always worth a shot!
In my research, I came across tons of other people who seem to share this sort of “cure all” mentality towards repairing permissions. Some go so far as to recommend repairing permissions as part of setting up daily maintenance scripts.
On the other side of the argument though there are folks that don’t see much, if any, value in this action. There’s an old blog post on the Unsanity site actually titled “Repairing Permissions is Useless,” which makes a very informed case against the idea that repairing permissions is a solution to a wide variety of problems, though the author does in fact accept that it should be tried as a last resort.
Today I want to know what you think. Help me decide whether or not to keep repairing permissions on my list of go-to strategies for troubleshooting. Vote in the poll and let us know how often you repair permissions, then leave a comment below with your argument for or against the action!
Last week we published an article that got a lot of meaningful discussion going about menu bar apps. In it we outlined the all too common problem of the overflowing menu bar for MacBook users and discussed whether or not the best solution to the problem was to tell users that they are being overzealous or present developers with the request to give us more control over whether a given app appears in the menu or dock.
Today we’re following that up with a poll that simply asks how many third party menu bar apps you typically run at any given time. Are you picky about what earns a spot in your menu bar or are you a menu bar app addict who simply can’t get enough? We want to know!
After you vote, leave a comment below and let us know which menu bar apps you currently have open. Don’t cheat and take the time to open or close any, just take a gander at the top of your screen and give an honest account of what’s currently up there. Which are your favorites? Which do you think you could live without?
