Apple Briefs

I feel obligated to say something about the Apple music event that took place yesterday. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has a good write-up of the event. I think he summed it up perfectly when he wrote:

A solid year’s worth of progress.

Nothing special was announced (unless you’re a BSG, Office, or Heroes addict), just solid progress.

One of the biggest surprises of the summer has to be Chrome, the open source web browser from Google. Chrome for Windows was released today, with versions for Mac and Linux coming later. Google put together a web comic describing their rationale behind Chrome and its major features (its also available as a Google Book).

The best way I can describe Chrome is to say that it’s designed for web applications, in contrast with other browsers which were designed primarily for web pages. Because of its architecture (described in quite a bit of detail in the comic), Chrome should be more stable and responsive when one tab or window gets a bit unruly.

I have downloaded and installed Chrome – a process which was surprisingly quick – but haven’t had a chance to put it through its paces. The few sites I did visit loaded quickly and everything seemed quite crisp. I look forward to the Mac version of Chrome.

PGP announced an upgrade to its encryption platform, which now includes whole disk encryption for Mac OS X. For anyone who works with confidential information, laptop security is an increasingly important issue. File Vault has been a decent solution, but not one that works well with backup applications like Time Machine. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it sounds like PGP whole disk encryption should play much better with Time Machine.

A free trial of PGP Desktop is available. The FAQ indicates that any disks encrypted with whole disk encryption will decrypt at the end of the trial. But, as with anything that messes with your data, I recommend caution before running it on a primary work computer.

A major release of Adium, a free multi-service chat application, hit the intertubes yesterday. In addition to numerous (261!) bug fixes, Adium 1.3 also includes Facebook chat support, better MSN support, and a much-improved contact inspector.

According to recent reports, the 3G iPhone has been quite the success in its first month: as many as 3 million 3G iPhones sold and 60 million applications downloaded. The top sales spot went to Super Monkey Ball (to the surprise of no one who had been following the blogosphere prior to the iPhone 2.0 launch).

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch seems to believe that this success will be short-lived because there are no killer apps on the iPhone:

While the initial impulse is to download as many apps as possible to try them out, there is a limit to how many apps you can juggle on your iPhone. It is not much different than a PC. You have tons of apps, but how many do you actually use on a regular basis? For most people, that number is probably no more than ten apps, and on a daily basis, maybe 3 or 4 tops.

I think we’re past the point where a single application will define the market and be the reason everyone buys into a platform. On the other hand, I don’t think an application has to be used every day to make a platform compelling. It certainly helps, though. For instance, I use OmniFocus on a pretty regular basis. But it’s applications like Shazam that have given me reasons to use a phone that I never thought I would have. Is that a killer app for the iPhone? Probably not, but it’s the total package that I am buying. And right now the iPhone has a total package that no other phone can compare to.

One month later, here is what is on my iPhone:

• OmniFocus
• WeatherBug
• NetNewsWire
• 1Password
• Ebay
• Shazam
• HoldEm
• Trism
• Morocco
• Labyrinth LE
• Koi Pond
• More Cowbell
• Remote

Whats on your iPhone?