Like all the best upgrades, iOS 6 is almost entirely invisible. It works just like iOS 5 — which is to say, pretty well most of the time — but with some convenient new additions. Also, unlike version five, it’s been relatively stable throughout the beta process.
What’s new and what will you like? I’ve grown so accustomed to most of them that I had to look up the “What’s new” page on Apple’s website. Really, that’s a good thing. Invisibility is the fate of a feature that’s quickly integrated with how you use a device. (The thing that makes it tricky is that it’s also the fate of a completely useless feature that you never use.)
A couple of minor “admin” changes:
- If you want to get an email subscription, you can do so by using the “Subscribe to Blog via Email” option at the bottom of each page. Or, if you leave a comment, you can simply check the “Notify me of new posts by email” box. If you’re currently using the old system, please try to switch over to this new variant. Long story short: I can’t access the Feedburner service that I used to use
- For the same reason, I have switched the RSS feed. It should point to — indeed it may already do so — but please check and update if you use it
- I’ve added “Share” links on many of the pages. Some sites are a bit too in-your-face, practically demanding that you share posts. I’ve tried to add the functionality without being too obnoxious. Having said that, please do share my posts!
Today marks “Juniors” nine month “birthday,” so, unless you want to be pedantic and count the exact number of weeks, he’s been “out” for as long as he was in utero.
His progress has been well documented elsewhere so I won’t go into detail, but it’s fair to say that it’s been an eventful few months.
For most of the last year I have been in an office with no natural light. Well, I say office. It was really a conference room with a dozen of us crammed in, two to a desk in my case. Cables everywhere; at one point they almost shut the project room down for health and safety violations.
But — getting to the point — a couple of months ago we moved. And not only was there natural light but I got a window seat. And what a view.
This amused me but didn’t quite fit in with the “story” I was trying to tell in my blog about Oslo…
I Have really fond memories of summer 1994 when I did a summer job in Ipswich. (Yes, I’m talking about Ipswich in a blog entitled “Oslo.” Bear with me.) Now Suffolk isn’t a glamorous location necessarily but it was a good time for me and it was a great, hot summer. A few years ago I stopped back in the town on the way back from a wedding. I really wish I hadn’t. Maybe it was the grey and the rain or maybe the years had not been kind, but Ipswich just wasn’t what I remembered.
I’ve been using Mountain Lion, the new version of the Macintosh operating system, for less than a day so this isn’t intended to be detailed (see John Siracua’s review) or thorough. I have, however, kicked the proverbial tyres so here are a few, quick thoughts.
Good
- Probably the most stable 10.x.0 release I’ve used
- Little earth shattering but lots of really nice improvements, not all of which I’ve seen documented (for example, attachments in Mail now appear in the “All My Files” view in the Finder, multiple Time Machine disks)
- Notification Center works well; AirPlay mirroring is going to be really useful
- I’ve not found any software that worked in Lion that no longer works. That includes stuff like VMWare (scary because it’s low-level) and Photoshop Elements 6 which is not listed on Roaring Apps compatibility list
Bad
The difficulty with this weeks challenge, “Countryside,” was which picture to use? I’m not really patient enough to be a great landscape photographer but I’ve got lucky a few times, including this time in Ireland.
I’ve not posted an entry for the last week or two, so there’s no suggestion to vote for my entry this week!
This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Clothing.”I had a few options for this one — including a few people dressed in outrageous clothes at the “Protest the Pope” rally in London — but in the end I went for this picture of drying clothes in Havana, Cuba.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Geometric.” I’m entry number 142.