[MyAppleMenu] Dec 15, 2012

[applesurf at myapplemenu.com]

MyAppleMenu
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**** Apple's Maps: Good, Bad Or Just Dangerous To Know? ****
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/dec/14/apple-maps-good-or-not>
Charles Arthur, The Guardian


> So, I'm sorry that my review didn't pick up the fact that Apple's Maps fall short for a number of people. I called them "very good" because I was comparing them with what had gone before on the iPhone, and my experience was positive. Vectors beat rasters any day; similarly, free turn-by-turn voice-directed navigation beats none. Some of Apple's errors were egregious. But many were also well-hidden until a huge number of people started using them. Location and navigation is at least partly a search business, and if you don't try the right searches, you won't find the flaws in the arrangement of the data. I failed to find the right searches.



**** Walmart Now Offers iPhone 5 For $127, 4S For $47, And Third-gen iPad For $399; Target To Discount Virgin’s Prepaid 4S To $399 ****
<http://9to5mac.com/2012/12/14/walmart-to-offer-iphone-5-for-127-4s-for-47-and-ipad-3-for-399/>
Elyse Betters, 9 To 5 Mac



**** The Dock’s Hidden Treasures ****
<http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/the-docks-hidden-treasures/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mactuts+%28Mactuts%2B%29>
Jacob Penderworth, Mactuts+


> I’m going to take a look at all the little hidden features that the Dock has — things you probably never noticed or mistakenly discovered.



**** Google+ For iOS Updated With Communities, Profile Editing, Better Event Handling, And More ****
<http://www.imore.com/google-ios-updated-communities-profile-editing-better-event-handling-and-more>
Rene Ritchie, IMore



**** PDF Expert 4.4 With PDF Converter Integration ****
<http://www.macstories.net/links/pdf-expert-4-4-with-pdf-converter-integration/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+macstoriesnet+%28MacStories%29>
Federico Viticci, MacStories



**** An Early Video Peek At Apple’s New 3-Level Hong Kong Flagship Store ****
<http://micgadget.com/31914/an-early-video-peek-at-apple’s-new-3-level-hong-kong-flagship-store/>
Chris Chang, M.I.C. Gadget



**** Google Dropping ActiveSync Support For Gmail, Forcing New Connection To Go Through Their Shoddy IMAP Service ****
<http://www.imore.com/google-dropping-activesync-support-gmail-forcing-new-connection-go-through-their-shoddy-imap-service>
Rene Ritchie, IMore



**** Slow Feeds 2.0 Does “Fever For Google Reader” ****
<http://www.macstories.net/links/slow-feeds-2-0-does-fever-for-google-reader/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+macstoriesnet+%28MacStories%29>
Federico Viticci, MacStories


> For those who don’t know Slow Feeds, it’s a neat concept: the app analyzes your Google Reader account, and puts “slow feeds” — articles from blogs that don’t post 20 articles per day — in a separate section. 



**** Dropbox App Gets New Design, New Photo Tab ****
<http://www.imore.com/dropbox-app-gets-new-design-new-photo-tab>
Rene Ritchie, IMore



**** Comparing Apple’s Maps And Google Maps ****
<http://tidbits.com/article/13459?rss>
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS


> Apple’s mapping data undoubtedly isn’t as good as Google’s, overall, but in most cases, I doubt that it will make a significant difference. And it’s now easy enough — thanks to the “transit” trick — to compare routes in both apps, though I suppose that then raises the issue of which you want to believe.



**** EyeTV Mobile Offers Live TV On Your iOS Device ****
<http://www.macworld.com/article/2020501/eyetv-mobile-offers-live-tv-on-your-ios-device.html>
Joel Mathis, Macworld


> Elgato Systems, the maker of a number of well-received “digital media” hardware products, has introduced EyeTV Mobile, an antenna-based system that lets iPad and iPhone users watch live TV over the air, even if they don’t have Internet access.






MyAppleMenu Reader
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**** Learning To Speak American ****
<http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/14/learning-speak-american/>
Tim Parks, The New York Review Of Books


> Ninety-eight uses of a two-syllable “carriage” are not the same as ninety-eight occurrences of a single-syllable closed-o “coach.” This is why, statistically, assonance, alliteration, and rhythm tend to be weaker in translations than in original texts; consciously or otherwise a writer, even of the least ambitious prose, is guided by sound, while the language itself is constantly forming standard collocations of words around pleasantly assonant combinations—fast asleep, wide awake. Any intervention in these patterns, whether simply substituting words to suit a local use of the same language, or more radically translating into another language, disturbs the relationship between sound and semantics.



**** Subverting Our Expectations: The State Of The Short Story ****
<http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1247>
Johannes Lichtman, Los Angeles Review Of Books


> Both favor a kind of story that generally relies on a first page/first sentence hook, a second page circling back to explain how we came to this interesting place, and, after the necessary information has been dumped on the reader, a series of events that lead to some sort of change in the protagonist: a change which usually takes place epiphanically, when the story has, to paraphrase Stuart Dybek, shifted from the narrative to the lyrical mode.



**** Raffles And The Golden Opportunity By Victoria Glendinning - Review ****
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/05/raffles-victoria-glendinning-review>
Bernard Porter, The Guardian


> Of course he was an imperialist – no two ways about that – and imperialists aren't much loved in progressive circles these days. But if you have to have them – and colonial expansion of one kind or another has been the rule rather than the exception in world history right back to the Cro-Magnons – Raffles seems a decent sort. This is one of the reasons why he was considered such a failure, by and large, by other imperialists before his Singapore coup (1819).



**** Reading The Fine Print ****
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/books/review/reading-the-fine-print.html?ref=books&_r=0>
Oliver Sacks, New York Times


> Writing should be accessible in as many formats as possible — George Bernard Shaw called books the memory of the race. No one sort of book should be allowed to disappear, for we are all individuals, with highly individualized needs and preferences — preferences embedded in our brains at every level, our individual neural patterns and networks creating a deeply personal engagement between author and reader.



**** Reasons To Re-Joyce ****
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/reasons-to-re-joyce.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0>
Darin Strauss, New York Times


> I think the naysaying misses not only the fact that this has been a wildly good book year but also the emergence of a new trend. It’s less a school or a movement than a clutch of writers who share a really unlikely pedigree: “Ulysses.”



**** Double Life ****
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/familiar-by-j-robert-lennon.html?partner=rss&emc=rss>
Kevin Brockmeier, New York Times


> It runs deep in life, the feeling that we have wandered down some corridor just alongside the one where we truly belong. An inattentive step or two and already we have traveled too far. The door has disappeared. Our place in the world has become irrecoverable.



**** Doll's House ****
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/14/poetry?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29>
Jacob Polley, The Guardian



**** Oyster Safari ****
<http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article12141201.aspx>
Amy Serafin, The Smart Set


> When Denmark realized a few years ago that it had an oyster invasion, it turned the problem into a tourism opportunity, inciting people to gather up the pests and eat them. It wasn’t too difficult: Danes and oyster-eating go way back, at least to the Stone Age, as evidenced by ancient heaps of discarded shells called <i>kjökkenmödding</i>. In 1587, King Frederick II made oyster fishing a royal monopoly — those who broke the law three times risked the death penalty.