Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"One of the more interesting ideas in the new wave of cloud-computing services is the music locker. This is a service that lets consumers store their music collections on a remote server and access them from any device, either by streaming the tunes or downloading them."

And Mossberg appears to like it, having all the music in his collection available on all his devices by using MusicMatch. I've subscribed and I too am pretty pleased with it. In my opinion, especially with all the various tips that are coming out from a variety of sources to make it even more useable, it is well worth the convenience to pay roughly 30 bucks per year for this service. What are your thoughts on MusicMatch?

"The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg best products of 2010 list ranks Apple's iPad in the top spot with the iPhone 4 tied in third place with the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. His best of list also included 4G wireless networks."

In his words, the iPad was "amazing for a 1.0 product." So what was on his worst of list? The Dell streak and Google TV, along with the TiVO Premier. You can check out the list for yourself right here.

"Technology journalist Walt Mossberg has reviewed Apple's new MacBook Air notebooks, and has given both the 11-inch and 13-inch models high praise for offering the long battery life and instant-on capabilities found in the iPad."

The consensus among all the reviews I've seen is that this machine is very fast with the flash system it uses, and some have even said this can be a replacement for your primary computer. Walt Mossberg on the other hand, while he notes that unlike the past MacBook Air you can run seven or eight programs at once with the new ones, still thinks they are only replacements for light-duty users. What to buy, what to buy.

"Lots of people are wondering whether a touch-based tablet computer that doesn't have a physical keyboard or run a traditional operating system can replace their laptops on the road. So I decided to find out."

And so begins Mossberg's vacation to Paris, sans laptop, to see if he truly can make a working vacation "work" with just his iPad, smartphone and digital camera. For his purposes it worked fine, but it may not be for everyone.

"WSJ's Walt Mossberg, NYT's David Carr and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington discussed the iPad on TV under the aegis of Charlie Rose this weekend."

"If you're a fan of the popular technology news and commentary web site All Things Digital (and you should be), then you'll be glad to know there's a new app available from the App Store today that optimizes the site for your iPhone. Use it to access the site's daily columns, blog posts, or videos on the fly, and stay informed of breaking tech news 24/7."

The app is free and has some cool features, such as being able to post stories from the app to your twitter or facebook accounts, or access your contact list from within the app and email someone a story you like. I like the All Things Digital website because of the variety, so if you do as well, this is a great app to add to your collection.

"I have just spent a few weeks testing [Apple's MobileMe] again on multiple Windows and Mac computers, and an iPhone," Walter S. Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal."

And what did Mr. Mossberg conclude? I'll let him tell you.

According to Mossberg, "Apple has fixed all of the speed and reliability issues I encountered last year. In my new tests, MobileMe's email was prompt and reliable. I was able to add, delete or edit a contact or calendar entry on one device, and see these changes almost immediately on all the others, and on the MobileMe Web site. The Web-based photo gallery, which can also house videos, worked fine on both Windows and Mac, and I was able to upload photos to it from my iPhone. The file storage also worked well, and now has a feature that allows you to share files too large to email. And each MobileMe account works with an unlimited number of computers, iPhones and Touches."

Sounds like he likes it. You can read his review over at All Things Digital. Oh one caveat though, it does work better with Macs than it does with Windows.