AirPods.

Ich war schon immer Fan der Apple Earpods. Die ganz einfachen, die bei jedem iPhone mitgeliefert werden. Sie haben schon immer gut in meine Ohren gepasst und sind nie rausgefallen. Der Klang war immer gut genug für mich und jedes Jahr gab es mit einem iPhone einfach ein paar Neue. Irgendwann habe ich dann sogar angefangen sie am Schreibtisch am MacBook zu benutzen weil das meinem Tinnitus irgendwie besser gefällt als andere Kopfhörer. Aber je nachdem wo das MacBook auf dem Tisch stand, war das Kabel zu kurz. Ein Verlängerungskabel hat das Problem gelöst bis dann mit dem iPhone 7 die Earpods keinen Klinkenstecker mehr hatten und ich sie einfach nicht mehr ans MacBook anschliessen konnte.

Als letztes Jahr dann AirPods, also Earpods ohne Kabel vorgestellt wurden, war ich sofort begeistert. Endlich wieder Earpods beim Arbeiten tragen und dann auch noch kabellos. Leider dauerte es ja dann relativ lange bis sie wirklich auf den Markt kamen und ich hätte das Vorbestellen auch fast noch verpasst. Am Ende wurde aber alles gut und ich bekam meine AirPods so früh es ging.

Und was soll ich sagen? Sie sind alles was ich mir davon erhofft habe. Meine Ohren sind offenbar perfekt für AirPods geschaffen. Ich vergesse irgendwann, dass ich sie trage und es ist als würde Musik einfach direkt in meinem Kopf spielen. Das Verbinden und hin und her wechseln zwischen MacBook, iPhone und iPad funktioniert tadellos. Selbst das Verbinden mit dem Apple TV ist relativ schmerzlos. Insgesamt ist die ganze Erfahrung die Apple Magie, die ich in der jüngsten Vergangenheit etwas vermisst habe.

Klar, es gibt Details, die ich mir als Software Update oder in Version 2 wünschen würde, aber ich bin absolut begeistert und freue mich jeden Tag wieder über diese kleinen Geräte. Absolute Kaufempfehlung!

Weekly Recap

Hello and welcome to another Weekly Recap. This week is a nice mix of CSS, Javascript and general topics. Let’s dive in:

  • Responsive Javascript
    Most of us know a lot more about responsive CSS than about responsive Javascript. So go ahead and have a look at this one-pager that answers questions like „What is Responsive Javascript?“ and „What are the Browser APIs?“.

  • Use zero-width spaces to stop annoying Twitter users
    Harry Roberts has a simple trick for you how to write @import or other @-statements in tweets without mentioning users.

  • CSS animation-fill-mode
    I recently searched for exactly that: Being able to stop an animation at 100% and don’t have it going back to 0%. Works in IE10 and newer and all the cool kids on the block. I also created a CodePen.

  • Adaptive Backgrounds
    Cool jQuery plugin that extracts dominant colors from images and applies them to their parent elements.

  • Single Line Comments (//) in CSS
    I’m writing CSS on a daily basis for years now and I wasn’t aware of CSS not really supporting single line comments. Probably because it always worked for me because I either didn’t minify my CSS in the past or Sass is now doing some magic for me which allows me to use single line comments. Either way, necessary read.

  • DevSwag
    Need some new webdev related stickers or T-Shirts? Here you go.

  • 30 years of Macintosh
    On Friday, January 24th 2013, the Macintosh turned 30. This is the video and page Apple put together to celebrate. Well done.

  • Sitespeed.io
    This is an awesome tool to analyze your sites performance and get helpful tips how to improve it. You need to handle it via the command line but it’s really worth to learn it.

Fluid Apple.com Homepage for iPhone 5

Apple made a subtle vertical responsive Design for the iPhone 5 homepage on apple.com. Nice.

Retina, a Reading List

You know, the word Retina is in everyones mouth at the moment. It began with the iPhone 4, continued with the iPad 3 and has now arrived in the MacBook line with the Retina MacBook Pro. Apple is pushing the boundaries of display technology and it looks great. Sadly a lot of things don’t look so great because the majority apps and websites is not updated, yet. That’s because on the one hand the percentage of visitors with retina displays is still very small and that on the other there isn’t a really good solution to serve the right images to the right devices.
The last few days I read a lot about the Retina MacBook Pro because I wanted to know more about it and I also stumbled upon some other interesting articles along the way. So here I present my second Reading List on the retina topic:

Apple May Add Interchangeable Lenses to Future iPhones

PetaPixel:

Published earlier today and already discovered by AppleInsider, a new patent from Apple seems to show that the Cupertino company would like to put swappable lenses in future iPhones.

Doesn’t seem like something Apple would do, but we never know. I wouldn’t like that because I’m very happy with the one lens the iPhone provides. I can just shoot and don’t have to think about which lens to attach. Simplicity.

Besides that, a patent doesn’t even mean that they want to do this.

Heat and fan noise from the Retina MacBook Pro

Marco Arment:

Effectively, heat and fan volume are the same as the previous model, but the fan noise has a less irritating tone. If the previous 15” MacBook Pro design was too hot or loud for your preferences, the Retina model probably will be, too.

Here it goes: I will not buy the new Retina MacBook Pro.

Wildlife photographer’s image used in Apple’s new MacBook ad

Steve Bloom:

The picture has always been one of Bloom’s most popular, he explains. „It’s one of these pictures you can’t predict, because when you’re doing that kind of wildlife photography, you have no control over what’s happening. The moment you see it through your viewfinder, you have to react quickly and instinctively. It’s the sort of picture that has good commercial potential.“

Steve Bloom talks about the origin of the photo which is used as a wallpaper on the new retina MacBook Pro ads.

gfxCardStatus

codykrieger:

gfxCardStatus is a menu bar application for OS X that allows users of late 2008 — 2011 MacBook Pros (15″ and 17″) to view which GPU is in use at a glance, and switch between them on-demand.

Switching to the integrated graphics card seems to drastically cool down my current MacBook Pro. The battery life also gets better. I’ll simply always switch the graphics card if the MacBook isn’t plugged-in (can be done automatically) or I work with it on my lap while it’s still plugged-in.
Great, so I’ll probably don’t have to buy the new one. Thanks to Kim for the tip.

Web Inspector for iOS 6 Safari

I just installed the iOS6 Developer Beta and found this little gem for Web Developers:

This means that you can connect your Mac Safari to your iOS Safari and use the Developer Tools on your Mac to inspected the Website shown on your iOS device. This will help very much with developing responsive Designs. Love it!

Brydge + iPad: Do more.

Brydge:

Is it just us, or does it feel like the options for iPad keyboards and accessories are excessive in quantity, yet lacking in quality? This is why we created Brydge, which simply transforms your iPad into a laptop worthy of Apple. 

This idea of turning your iPad into a high quality laptop seemed obvious to us and we were shocked when we could not find any accessory that accomplished this. So we set out to make such a product from the highest quality materials that would compliment your iPad perfectly.

Of all the iPad-laptop solutions I’ve seen this is the best one, but I really don’t know if I like the whole concept. Why not use the iPad as it is and if you need more, use a laptop? With an iPad-laptop I can type better/faster and have a different viewing angle, but that’s it, right? I still have to touch the screen for navigation, so for coding for example, I still would be much slower than on an 11″ MacBook Air. And the next day I would have muscles soreness.