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Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' |
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Written by David Jackson
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Saturday, 22 March 2008 |
 My wife was on the way to work this week and hit a patch of black ice. Off the road, through the ditch and then rolled three time through a field. Now thank goodness she is allright. A mild concussion, and bumps and bruises. She was wearing her seatbelt. Her iBook was not. It started out on the seat next to her. When a couple of highschool kids helped her crawl out the passenger side window, (the SUV was laying on the drivers side) one of them found the iBook stuck in the mud about 10 feet from the truck. When I took her home from the hospital she still had it with her. She told me where it was when found.
I was sure it was as totaled as the SUV was. I popped open the lid and hit the power button, not expecting much. Then I hear the start chime and the screen lights up! The iBook lives! What a tough little computer!
 Comments (3)
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Is Safari a good browser? |
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Friday, 21 March 2008 |
 So, as you all know by now, Safari version 3.1 is out on the Software Updates. Apple says it's faster than other browsers, and it encorporates lots of the HTML 5 code. Apple feels Safari is such a good browser that it is pushing Safari on Windows users via the Apple Software Updates on Windows. FireFox version 3 beta 4 is out also, and it is having some pretty fast numbers itself. So in a time like this, which browser do you go with?
One of the key points in the browser debate has been the anti-phishing capabilities of Safari, specifically the lack of. One of the Safari beta's had an anti-phishing feature tied into Google, but alas the anti-phishing feature did not make it to the final product. At MacMod there is a small debate going on if it is the responsibility of the software developer or the user to weed out fradualent sites (phishing sites). While the more savvy users can identify obvious phishing sites, there are still plenty of users that can not. FireFox has built-in anti-phishing functionality, and the beta 4 is boasting some fast speeds as well. So with FireFox v3 imenent release, is Safari as good of a choice as Apple says it is?
Mozilla Developer Page
More on Safari 3 Speed
FireFox 3 Beta 4 vs. Safari 3.1
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Tuesday, 18 March 2008 |
 While it's not official, Radar Online has announced that Justin Long will no longer be the "Mac" in the Apple advertisements. No official word is out from Apple, but we could see a new "Mac" or a completely new line of advertisements.
Apple has been criticized for the image of Justin in the commercials, and this may be the time that Apple moves on from the artist and younger image it has in the media. I personally see them having a businessman stand up there saying "I'm a Mac", and then having a real "artist", and then a kid, etc. That is the only way I see the "I'm A Mac" ad continuing. But hey, maybe Steve can turn on the reality distortion field and make a virtual "Mac".
- From Radar Online via commercial-archives -
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HP drops Leopard support. |
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Sunday, 16 March 2008 |
 We all have probably ran into this. You have an older printer or other peripheral, and when you upgrade your OS the device doesn't work anymore. Matt (a recent switcher) has a 4 year old HP all-in-one that won't work with Leopard. It works fine with Ubuntu, but not on the latest Mac OS. Sometimes it takes a while for drivers to be written, but in this case HP says that it is not going to support Leopard for the scanning feature of the all-in-one.
The part that bugs me is HP's response. They told him to go buy a new printer and offered him $16 trade in value for his 4-year-old HP all-in-one. $16? That's just a slap in the face in my opinion. But the real point of posting this is the dual obsolescence and it's impact on the environment. HP could easily upgrade the drivers for legacy all-in-one's, even if they came up with a default for older products. This is annoying for modders as well, since often times older devices are re-purposed through a mod.
HP Won't Issue New Drivers For Leopard, Tells You To Buy A New Printer
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Intel SSD's in new Apple products? |
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 |
 Intel hinted that they will be releasing a Solid State Drive (SSD) that will go from 80GB to 160GB in April of this year. They did not disclose if the drives would be available for retail or through a PC manufacturer though. This beats out Toshiba's and Samsung's estimates or SSD drives for the beginning of the year and will really help Intel. Intel has had poor performance in the SSD area, mainly because they have been focusing on the USB protocol with mobile devices. Their SATA 3.0 technology claims to decrease power consumption by 4.5 times and to increase read-write speed by 2 times.
Samsung and Toshiba hold 70% of the flash memory in 2007. Intel wants in and so does everyone else. Intel is also banking on SATA 3.0 to relieve any transfer bottlenecks, so alot of this is up in the 'Air'. But, if Intel is going to release an 80 or 160 GB SSD hard drive, and their Atom processor, it looks like there could be some really cool, really low power hardware coming out with an Apple logo soon, like say, April?
Intel's pre-announcement
NAND figures for 2007
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Why the iPhone was a success |
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Saturday, 08 March 2008 |
 While searching for things to post I came across a good rational for why the iPhone has been so successful. c|net's news.com sums it up best. Apple didn't sell the iPhone to the IT or industrial groups, they went for the consumers. All other smart phones have been built around the enterprise, but Apple built it around the end user.
"Despite sitting out the first few years, Apple has arguably vaulted
ahead of its competition in just 12 months. The other players in this
industry came into smartphones building them for businesspeople and
their IT masters. Then they tried to woo the consumer."
Another interesting read on the iPhone and the SDK.
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Friday, 07 March 2008 |
 Guy Kawasaki made a special appearance at Microsoft's MIX '08 this year. He kicked off the show by interviewing Microsoft CEO and head monkey Steve Balmer. The two were casual and the conversations are actually pretty funny. A few "bullsh1ts" are heard throughout and Guy pokes fun of Steve by telling him he is canning out PR responses. Seriously though, it is interesting to hear how Microsoft sees themselves and where they think they are going. Best part :
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To me the strangest part is the intro by Ray Winninger. Check out his title during the intro, "Senior Director, Platform Evanelism, Microsoft Corporation". Really? Evangelism? And they call Mac Fans Fanatics. Microsoft has Senor Directors for Evangelism. I wonder what the other titles are, "Assistant Evangelism Director", "Secretary to the Evangelism Directore", etc.
Key frames : 27 minutes in Steve acts like the MacBook Air sucks. 56 minutes the Monkey is set loose.
Kawasaki vs. The Monkey
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
 If you haven't heard already, Greenpead has a campaign called "Green My Apple". They are trying to get Apple to lead the IT industry to a green pasture, one with more accountability for the toxins and waste of modern gadgets. Another of their innitiatives is a survey of current products and how they rate, they also made an e-waste video. That is where it gets interesting.
As soon as you start the video you hear a familiar voice, Vicki. It seems like Greenpeace used a Mac with the voice of Vicki to translate it's intro into a comptuer voice. It's not the default Vicki voice, but if you slightly change her pitch, it sounds like the Vicki voice in text to speech. So Greenpeace or their video company uses a Mac. If you watch the video, you'll also see a familiar red yellow and green ball when they are talking about their initiatives. They look just like the one on top of this window, or any Mac window.
Greenpeace's e-waste video.
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