A Million Lion Downloads

Apple says that a million copies of OS X 10.7 Lion were downloaded on its first day in the Mac App Store. I asked my Twitter pals who’d downloaded and installed it how the process went, and heard mostly positive reports. (And a couple of horror stories–I don’t think there was ever a new operating system that installed successfully on 100% of computers.)

Apple Speeds Up Plans To Ditch Boxed Software

No doubt, the launch of Mac OS X Lion through the Mac App Store has garnered the lion’s share of the tech headlines today. But buried deep within that news was something even more dramatic: the discontinuation of nearly every piece of boxed software Apple currently sells.

AppleInsider reports that resellers on Wednesday received “end of life” (layman’s definition: we’re not selling it anymore) notices for several boxed Apple software products including iWork ’09, Aperture 3, and iLife ’11, as well as the Apple Remote Desktop and Jam Packs for Apple’s GarageBand product.

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Music To Google’s Ears: Facebook Sucks, Say Survey Respondents

If you’re on Facebook, chances are that you don’t think it’s anywhere near perfect. At least that’s the findings of the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, which released its results for 2011 yesterday. Facebook scored a 66 out of 100. While that may not sound that low, it comparison to other sites it is.

Not only is Facebook the lowest ranked social networking site, but it also scored the lowest of any company in the technology business that ACSI studied. Can you say ouch?

Leading the pack in the social media category was Wikipedia, with a score of 78. YouTube came in second at 74, and a category called “Others” at 67. I guess it’s pretty bad when you’re even losing to unnamed services. Social networking in general doesn’t garner high satisfaction overall among consumers, ACSI says. With a group rating of 70, only airlines, newspapers, and subscription television services score lower.

It’s really too early to say whether Google+ may turn the fortunes of this sector around — the survey results were compiled before the site launched. However, researchers believe it may score high. “We do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI,” Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, creator of the ACSI said.

“An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience,” he argued. In other words, 2012 could be interesting.

Google Labs is Closing? That’s Unthinkable–Whether or Not It’s a Good Idea

Shock and sadness are not emotions I’m used to experiencing when I read the corporate blog of a large tech company. But those are the ones I felt as I read this post at Google’s official blog:

Last week we explained that we’re prioritizing our product efforts. As part of that process, we’ve decided to wind down Google Labs. While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.

In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments—in others we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market. We’ll update you on our progress via the Google Labs website.

We’ll continue to push speed and innovation—the driving forces behind Google Labs—across all our products, as the early launch of the Google+ field trial last month showed.

Google, a company that’s famous for letting engineers work on idiosyncratic side projects, has decided that idiosyncratic side projects are a bad idea? It’s unthinkable–as if Disney World decided to bulldoze Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or something. (Er, waitaminnit–it did that. In 1998.)

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A Look at Lion

Over at TIME.com, my weekly Technologizer column is up a day early–because I decided to write about Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion, which is now available on the Mac App Store. (Executive summary: I like it, and I love the price, a mere $29.99.)

China’s Fake Apple Stores

The first time I visited China, it had no official Apple Stores–but I did visit a mom-and-pop Apple retailer that reminded me of the independent ones here in the U.S. Times have changed: now there are real Apple Stores, and places that want you to think that they’re real Apple Stores.

New Mac Minis

The white MacBook Air may be a goner, but its spiritual brother the Mac Mini is still with us, and got updated by Apple today. It’s starting to feel Air-like, though–none of the new models have an optical drive.

Yep, Roku 2 is a Game Console, Too

Roku’s new streaming set-top boxes are smaller and sleeker than ever, but the bigger news is that the Roku 2 is the start of a serious push into home console gaming.

The high-end Roku 2 XS, which will launch later this month for $100, will include a Wii-like motion controller with a directional pad and two buttons (like an old-school Nintendo), plus a free copy of Angry Birds. The lower-tier Roku 2 HD ($60) and Roku 2 XD ($80) will also support the game controller, sold separately as a $30 bundle with Angry Birds and a 2 GB MicroSD card.

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The White MacBook, 2006-2011: An Elegy

Among the umpteen things that makes Apple different from other technology companies is this: it makes news by discontinuing products as well as introducing them. Today’s big announcements involve the arrival of OS X 10.7 Lion and updated MacBook Airs. But it’s also decided to stop producing the $999 white MacBook, a machine that had an uncommonly long life as the cheapest general-purpose Mac portable.

As recently as a week ago, the reliably unreliable Apple rumor mill said that an upgraded white MacBook was on its way. Then it decided that no update was imminent. And the truth turns out to be there won’t be an update because the machine is leaving the market.

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New MacBook Airs: Thin, Light, and Utterly Mainstream

When Steve Jobs unveiled the first MacBook Air at Macworld Expo back in January of 2008, he induced lots of oohs and aahs over its astoundingly thin case. I don’t, however, remember many people declaring that it was Apple’s first pass at building the garden-variety Mac of the future. I sure didn’t–in part because I was too busy bemoaning the things that it lacked, such as built-in Ethernet.

Super-thin laptops similar in concept to the Air have been around since at least Digital’s 1994 HiNote Ultra. People have usually assumed that they were aimed at well-heeled businesspeople with decidedly undemanding computing needs–or at least at folks whose real computer is something brawnier and more feature rich.

Today, Apple is releasing two new Airs, the successors to the much-improved ones it rolled out last October. It isn’t pitching the new models as specialty machines. Even more than with their predecessors from last year, it’s treating them as well-rounded, versatile computers that happen to be really thin and really light. In fact, a tagline it’s using–”The ultimate everyday notebook”–doesn’t even mention their lack of bulk. And just to clarify things, it’s discontinuing the last machine in its lineup that was simply called a MacBook. From now on, if you want a Mac portable, you’ll choose between a MacBook Air and  a MacBook Pro.

For the past few days, I’ve been reviewing a 13″ model loaned to me by Apple, but I didn’t need any arm-twisting to accept the notion of it as a mainstream notebook. I’ve already been using its predecessor as my primary system since last fall, dual-booting it between OS X and Windows 7. (And spending a fair amount of time explaining to curious passers-by that it really is the computer I spend most of my time on.)

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Google+: Celebrities Wanted

I liked Twitter most in its relatively early days–when people were popular there because they were interesting, not because they were rock musicians, movie stars, or law-breaking socialites. So I’m not thrilled to hear rumors that Google+ plans to go out of its way to attract the rich and famous.

Capcom’s Community Efforts Backfire With Mega Man Legends 3 Cancellation

Capcom enraged some of its biggest fans on Monday when it announced the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 for Nintendo 3DS.

This wasn’t just an ordinary cancellation. After revealing Mega Man Legends 3 last September, Capcom started soliciting feedback from its community on how to proceed with the game. An online forum allowed fans to communicate with developers as they worked on a prototype, which would eventually become a downloadable prologue to the main game.

Capcom now says that it won’t be releasing the prototype, and will stop updating the game’s development forum.

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Google+ App Hits the iPhone

Google+ had an Android app from day one, but the iPhone version was temporarily stuck in Apple approval limbo. Now it’s on the App Store. (I haven’t tried it yet, but am looking forward to it–I’m not that crazy about the mobile browser-based version of the service.)

Bloggingheads.tv: Let’s Talk About Google+

I had fun this morning recording a Bloggingheads.tv discussion about the techverse’s hottest topic of the moment, Google+.  My conversation partner was Slate’s Farhad Manjoo–and here we are. (Farhad’s a bit more of a Google+ skeptic than I am–but both of us see both promise and pitfalls in the service.)

Dolphin Browser Beefs Up for Mobile Battle

Here’s a pretty good indication that competition among mobile browsers is heating up: MoboTap, the company that makes Dolphin Browser HD for Android phones and tablets, just got a $10 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital. MoboTap will use the money to hire more people, make partnerships (to get pre-loaded on Android devices, most likely) and expand to new platforms including the iPhone, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid reports.

Those seem like worthy pursuits to me. First-party smartphone browsers tend to be stagnant, touting speed gains and little else with each new operating system version. It’s taken Apple two OS updates to add tabbed browsing to the iPad, and neither Apple nor Google have figured out faster ways to switch browser windows on smartphones. Extensions? Gesture commands? Custom home screens? Forget about it.

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All The News That Was Fit to, Um, Print

Eleven months of news as seen at NYTimes.com–all in five and a half minutes. (Via Phillip Mendonça-Vieira.)