From All Things Digital…

With Verizon beginning to accept pre-orders for the iPhone on Thursday and about ready to put the device on sale to all, AT&T has been pulling out all the stops in its efforts to maintain its base of iPhone customers.

Although it has been preparing to lose its iPhone exclusive for months, the carrier has made a few eleventh-hour moves aimed at stemming as many defections as possible.

• Improved tethering with extra data
• Quiet “unofficial” upgrades
• An advertising blitz
• iOS upgrade reminders

For a company that isn’t worried, they’re sure spending a lot of time and money trying to keep their current subscribers.

From Macworld…

But, according to AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel, the mobile hotspot plan will replace the existing tethering option, which AT&T began offering for iPhone users the middle of last year. Like its predecessor, the new mobile hotspot feature will cost an additional $20 per month in addition to requiring AT&T’s $25 per month Data Pro plan.

It’s a start. Personally, I think the hotspot should be free until the user reaches their monthly data quota. After that, charge whatever you like.

Until then, it’s just another reason people are jailbreaking.

News Corp’s new iPad “newspaper”, The Daily, launched today.

At $0.99 per week or $40 per year, it’s the first publication to offer in-app subscriptions on an iOS device. I watched the press conference[1. Mostly News Corp executives dodging questions by telling people to subscribe and see for themself.], and then downloaded the app.

Following are my initial impressions.

• The app itself is free because you pay once you get inside. An initial two-week subscription is supplied, sponsored by Verizon[2. Take that, AT&T! Verizon is doing everything possible at the moment to get their logo in-front of Apple users.].
• It weighs in at 46.5MB. I wonder how much of this is template, and how much is content. More importantly, I wonder how long it will take to refresh when it gets opened every morning[3. February 3 Update: It took around 5 minutes for mine to refresh this morning. ].
• It’s quite clean and is pleasant to look at, but there is a lot of animation. A lot. Certainly more than is required to differentiate it from a website, which I presume is the goal.
• It’s big. There is more content that I have time to read every morning. Having said that, it might be ideal for someone who commutes to and from their work on public transport.
• I like that it contains a sudoku puzzle and a crossword. Both are big-ticket items in my household. [4. Big enough to ensure daily use]. They aren’t easy to get to though – you need to scroll through the entire Apps & Games section to get to them. I found it faster to go to the Sports section and scroll backwards.
• Advertising! It’s not at all surprising considering the publisher, but to charge a subscription fee and also include advertising seems a bit rich.

I’m going to keep reading over the next two weeks of my free subscription, but at this point I very much doubt I’ll subscribe. I get most of my news from my web browser and RSS reader in small amounts throughout the day and this doesn’t suit me that way.

After following some random links yesterday, I stumbled across this post about making URLs easy for humans to read and remember.

Sure, these URLs look normal to us. They’re what we expect—what we’re accustomed to. But there’s really no logical reason why they need to be this way. They don’t add any particular value to the usability or personality of the website, and I see no compelling reason to stand on tradition for tradition’s sake.

It made a lot of sense to me. In fact, you could say it resonated. So I’ve now updated my permalink structure accordingly.

Articles I write myself now have links starting with kabijet.com/wrote-about/ while articles that are purely my own comment about someone else’s thoughts start with kabijet.com/added-to/

Some of my posts contain a little of both, so I may need to think of a third category soon.

Last week I wrote some thoughts about my 11 inch Macbook Air. On the latest Enough podcast, Patrick (of Minimal Mac fame) discusses his thoughts.

Let me tell you, this Air is a wonderful machine.

He’s right.

He’s also right about his “one app at a time” philosophy. I follow it on the Air and think it contributes to the beauty of using the machine. My work prevents me from doing that on my iMac a lot of the time, but I’m going to give it a try.

Get the podcast here.

A common problem I have is losing track of my Apple Magic Trackpad while I’m working because it has a nasty habit of floating around the desk. It gets especially annoying when I’m working in an application that requires constant trackpad use.

I’ve seriously thought about taping it to either my desk of my keyboard a few times now, but never took the plunge because I was scared of the resulting aesthetic.

Obviously somebody else shares my pain because I stumbled across this gem on Kickstarter today. It’s a block of aluminum that unobtrusively locks the wireless keyboard and magic trackpad together. Brilliant!

I’ll be backing this project and you should as well.

I received this text message this morning from AT&T.

Is this a rare proactive move by AT&T? Notifying their customers about an important software update seems like the sort of thing a customer-loving company might do. Although it may be a little late because iOS 4.2 has been out for quite some time now.

Or is it a typical reactive move? With the Verizon iPhone becoming available in just a few days, are they just reassuring their customers that they matter?

It has now been two months since I took delivery of my 11 inch MacBook Air.

There have already been several very good reviews of the current MacBook Air, so I’m not going to cover the basic items you’ve seen everywhere else. This is intended to add some feedback based on my experience to those who are thinking about making a purchase.

Keyboard

It’s a full size keyboard. Say no more.

Ports

Noticeably absent from the 11 inch model is an SD card slot. I preferred to have one because it means one less item in the luggage[1. No matter how small, an extra item is an extra item.], but wasn’t willing to purchase the 13 inch just for that one feature.

I took a lot of photos during my trip to Korea, and followed a process of uploading them to the iPad using the camera connection kit and then emailing any that I wanted immediately to myself. This process got old very, very quickly (less than 3 days) so I spent $10 on a USB dongle so I could transfer all of my photos directly to the Air.

Screen size

I enjoyed using the small screen. The main difference between the Air and the average netbook seems to be the very high resolution. The 1366 x 768 resolution is large enough that applications seem to fit nicely and I didn’t really notice the small screen size after a little while. Developing in Xcode was a breeze.

Travel

As somebody who travels frequently, the biggest selling point for me was the size and weight. The Air is incredibly light and the thickness (thinness?) means you don’t need a separate bag to carry it in. I purchased an excellent sleeve[2. This one.] from Waterfield Designs and keep the Air in my regular carry-on bag.

With a 5 hour battery life, short flights can easily be accommodated. The battery pack is so small though, that I throw it in the carry-on as well in case the airline gods are smiling on me and I get assigned a seat with power.

The small screen on the 11 inch model means that it isn’t very high when open, so has no problems at all fitting on an economy seat tray, even when the passenger in front reclines all the way back.[3. As they tend to do as soon as possible, and with no warning whatsoever.]

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