iOS 6 First Impressions (Sounds Like Hours of Fun)

iOS 6 Has Arrived.

Last night I updated my wife's iPhone and my iPad to iOS 6. I didn't really have much time playing with the new iOS as both of the devices finished the update process around 12 a.m. (and I am an early bird who needs to rush to work in the morning) and I desperately needed some sleep.

So it's not a review. I'm just sharing my very very first impressions.

First of all, while everybody is freaking out about maps I actually like the new maps app. The satellite images of where I live (Sofia) are of decent quality (at least as good as they are in Google Maps although they seem a little more out-of-date), the addresses database, search and directions also seem to work fine (or at least just as well as Google's solution does).

I guess for locations like Sofia, Bulgaria the difference between Apple and Google maps is smaller than it is for places like NY or London for example. I cannot tell much about that though.
The point, however is, that I like the Apple Maps app.

Plus, this flyover thing is like freaking amazing. I can see myself spending many hours flying over cities around the world in the next few months. It's just great. Period.

No YouTube app. No good. I used it a lot. I know it has been old and all but I am going to miss it. Google added a new YouTube app for iOS 6 which is great but it's iPhone-only for the time being. No dedicated iPad app so the only option that's left is to use YouTube mobile site which, thanks Lord, is gorgeous.

And most importantly…
Wait…
Still here?

The iPad got a clock. A clock, folks. Finally. Apple has put a preinstalled clock app on the iPad. And it has an alarm! What more could a geek want?

I couldn't help but remember the old Mac vs. PC ad…
"Sounds like hours of fun."
Remember that?

Update: and now the Swiss Federal Railways accused Apple of copying their clock design without permission.

A Month (or so) In the Air

It's been roughly a month since I got my MacBook Air. It's the 13" model with i7 processor and 256GB SSD drive. I am using this as my primary computer outside my day job.

During business hours I am a C# developer so I am pretty much tied in using Windows / Visual Studio for the most part of my working time. It's not that I complain, I actually like Windows 7 and find it a huge step into the right direction compared to both XP and Vista.

I have always been a heavy Windows and Linux (Red Hat and Ubuntu) user and have virtually zero experience in Mac OS X. And although I didn't anticipate any big problems, I was surprised how quickly I got used to the new environment and felt right at home in it.

In fact, it didn't really take long before catching myself trying to double-finger scroll (and in the 'wrong' direction) on my work's HP laptop touchpad. It was the same with trying to launch Mission Control and so on and so forth.

Mac OS X strikes me with how polished it feels when compared to Windows or Linux. How carefully every detail is crafted and well thought. And this is not limited to the operating system only. How do you remove a breakpoint in Xcode? You drag it outside of the sidebar. When you lift your finger, the breakpoint puffs out in a smoke cloud (with sound). I mean... you don't see this happening in Visual Studio anytime soon.

The machine feels really snappy. Boot time is around ten seconds and the shutdown takes even less. And by boot time I mean the time from when you hit the On button to the time you really can do something useful with the computer (like go to a web page or launch Xcode). Compare this to Windows, which is in a hurry to paint the desktop in front of you but then it takes another minute or so until it gets responsive and you really can do something.

There is only one thing to be said about the build quality. It's great. Period. Nothing else to see here, please move on. Thank you.

Xcode is a mixed bag. I like many things about it and I dislike many as well. At the same time I completely understand that many of the things in the latter category, I dislike simply because they lie outside of my zone of comfort. As a whole, it is a solid IDE, strange at some parts, but once you get used to it, it's OK. Again, this comes from a full-time Visual Studio user and Android enthusiast, so you should take it for what it's worth. If you ask me, I prefer Xcode to Eclipse. Did you ask? No? Uh, OK...

Cocoa / Objective-C: Weird at first if you are like me and come from a background in Java, C and C#. But once you complete the orientation tour, it actually stops feeling weird and I kinda like it. Seriously.

Conclusion: MacBook Air is a great computer that is a pure joy to use. Svelte, snappy and beautiful, I'm loving it.

Windows 7 on MacBook Air

Joanna Stern has quite a good review on how MacBook Air lines up with the competition when it comes to running Windows.

The verdict is that the machine is good but has some glitches like inferior battery life, higher price and not-very-natural keyboard layout for the Windows user. On the positive side of course stand the top-notch build quality, great performance, superior trackpad and beautiful display.

So far I have been using my Air almost exclusively on Lion. I have installed a copy of Windows 7 on Oracle's Virtual Box software and I am impressed how well it runs (and the fact that I have created the VM on an external hard drive makes things even more impressing). And judging from what everybody else says, Virtual Box is not the best option when it comes to run a virtual machine with Mac OS X as a host.

MacBook Air is a great computer. I enjoy every single minute using it. Read the review. It's a good one.