The Mac’s strength is its usability
November 6th, 2000
While "user-friendly" and "Macintosh" have been used together for a long time, it is not the only thing that makes a Macintosh a Macintosh.—Continue reading....
Ultimate Re-cap: MacWorld Expo, San Francisco 2001
January 12th, 2001
Well, another MacWorld has come and gone, and left in its wake a ton of product litter-ature, six months' worth of t-shirts and enough tchotchkes to fund your retirement account through eBay sales.—Continue reading....
Apple releases new machines
January 28th, 2002
Apple released new machines today. Nothing significant, really. Intel and crowd have had machines with higher megahertz than what's now available on the Macintosh for a while. After all, what good is a dual-gigahertz Macintosh when you can get an Intel running Windows at 2.2 gigahertz, right?—Continue reading....
Media delays facts about Apple
February 13th, 2002
Apple's relationship with the mainstream press has always been one of love-to-hate: on the one hand, Apple is the underdog to Microsoft's homogeny, and a media darling, the company who creates stunningly-designed, easy-to-use computers. On the other, they're an arrogant, marginalized, ready-to-fold business with a sub-five-percent marketshare, which cares more about form than function; and the press revels in painting Apple in a bad light.—Continue reading....
This Is Not Mac OS 9
August 28th, 2002
I recently got into an, uh, discussion with an associate about Mac OS X. The gist was Mac OS X hides "useful" things from people. He was told to try (from the Terminal command-line):—Continue reading....
Taking Control
October 26th, 2004
I'm reading TidBITS, as I do every week, and they mention the desire to have their Take Control series of electronic books get a wider audience. Adam Engst (the publisher) mentioned that there are some 750,000 Macs sold per quarter, with perhaps 50% of those Macs to first-time Mac users. —Continue reading....
Apple releases software to run Windows™
April 5th, 2006
If I had written an entry with this headline on April 1, everyone would have assumed it was a big ol' joke for the geekerati. I may have even had people call me nuts for even suggesting such a thing. But no, it's not a joke, it is in fact exactly what Apple has gone and done: new software from my favorite company will allow you to run Windows XP™ on an Intel-based Mac, like the diminutive Mac mini. The software is named Boot Camp and is available as a public beta. —Continue reading....
Hi, I’m a Mac….
May 27th, 2006
You've probably seen them all over the place. They're the new commercials from Apple Computer, touting the benefits of owning a Macintosh over a generic "PC". There are six of them, and each highlights some benefit the Macs have, for example, the lack of thousands of viruses, or the easy connections to electronic devices. —Continue reading....
MacBook impressions
June 6th, 2006
Had a chance to play with a new MacBook (white) today. 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM. First impressions: —Continue reading....
Writing code into the night
June 7th, 2006
Every now and then I get into a code writing frenzy. Not that I'm much a programmer, but I enjoy the process (generally) and the satisfaction after a successful jaunt.—Continue reading....
Switch Different
July 4th, 2006
OK, so I haven't written much on this blog since it started, but I figured I'd toss an entry on the barbie on this Fourth of July. —Continue reading....
Switch Different, The Window Wars
July 15th, 2006
My buddy Cédric recently "reluctantly switched" to Mac OS X. In a followup post, he notes one of his biggest complaints is the task and window switching in Mac OS X. Actually, the biggest issue might be that there's no way in Mac OS X to switch to any window that's "open", because a window that's minimized to the Dock won't show up in Exposé. —Continue reading....
Universal binaries: They’re a Good Thing
November 21st, 2006
The authors at NodePoint.com claim they "provide Macintosh support services to high-profile clients". On their website, they write mostly about newly released software, with the occasional instructional material, and even more occasional opinion piece. One of their recent opinion pieces complains about Apple's "universal binary" applications, where one double-clickable application can run on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs —Continue reading....
Information Organizer Overload
November 29th, 2006
Where are all these information organizers for the Mac coming from these days? In the last few months or so, we got Yojimbo, EagleFiler and now Keep It Together. Did Apple release some API that makes creating these organizers so dead-simple that all that needs to happen is have a pretty interface wrapped around it? Or does the market really need this many applications that all pretty much do the same thing and look alike?—Continue reading....
iPod Shuffle Unboxing
December 1st, 2006
Apple employees were lucky enough to get a free second generation iPod shuffle; I picked mine up yesterday, and instead of tearing into it as I otherwise would, I decided to do an "unboxing"; I took a few pictures as I took the shuffle out of its case. The iPod is so small, there wasn't much to unbox. (Also, apologies for the bad lighting. Maybe I'll do a reshoot.)—Continue reading....
Circus Ponies doesn’t care about this user
December 20th, 2006
I'm a naturally paranoid person. I always check for the closed security lock in my browser window. I never click on email links to unsubscribe. After John Gruber talked at length on the hazards of Input Managers1, I keep an eye out for them, and remove them whenever I notice they're installed.—Continue reading....
TiVo doesn’t get it
January 8th, 2007
I've been a devout TiVo user for years: I've owned a TiVo since 2001, currently own two, have purchased TiVos for others, and have recommended them to dozens of folks. Now I'm considering whether there are alternatives for my TiVo. You must understand, this is like me looking for alternatives to the Macintosh. It's such a heretical idea, I'm thinking of flaming myself.—Continue reading....
Macworld is here! Macworld is here!
January 9th, 2007
Macworld San Francisco 2007 is here! The Mac community is excited. The anticipation of new hardware, software and unexpected news has everyone on the edge.—Continue reading....
Tracking 2007 Macworld Keynote and Stock prices
January 10th, 2007
Apple, as you no doubt know, held its annual Macworld Expo Keynote today, and if you're reading this, you already know about the iPhone and AppleTV. You probably also know that, historically, Apple's stock runs up before the keynote, Steve Jobs comes out and announces a bunch of cool new products, and the stock promptly takes a dive. It's pretty much a given: everyone buys AAPL until just before Steve walks out on stage, and then they sell. —Continue reading....
Problems I have with the Apple iPhone
January 12th, 2007
If you saw Apple's iPhone announcement, you're no doubt already thinking of ways to justify a $500-$600 purchase. I know I am. The Apple iPhone is beautiful, the interface looks amazing, and it will definitely be the "status item" of 2007, the way the Motorola RAZR was a few years back and the Motorola SLVR was for a few months last year.—Continue reading....
An Apple iPhone question
January 30th, 2007
Here's an Apple iPhone question for you: How does the iPhone charge?—Continue reading....
Protected: iTunes: Serious. Improvement. Needed.
March 7th, 2007
iPod virus claim full of holes
April 5th, 2007
The fine folks at Kaspersky Lab have claimed they have created a "proof of concept" virus for the iPod. Here's how you might get this virus:—Continue reading....
Apple sells 1.5 million Macs, 10.5 million iPods
April 25th, 2007
Every recent AAPL quarter has blown me away. This quarter, Apple sold 1.5 million Macs and 10.5 million iPods, and made $5.26 billion, with a profit of $770 million ($0.87 a share). That's three months of sales. Last year at this time, Apple had sold 1.1 million Macs and 8.5 million iPods, and made $4.36 billion and a profit of $410 million ($0.34 a share).—Continue reading....
AAPL second quarter breakdown, last five years
April 25th, 2007
Curious of AAPL's progress over the years, I did a quick review of Apple's last five 2nd quarter financials:—Continue reading....
Thwarting MacLockPick with two clicks?
April 27th, 2007
MacLockPick is a $500 USB flash drive from SubRosaSoft. It claims to be—Continue reading....
Recovering Ecto drafts
April 29th, 2007
Recently I moved Jasonian.org from the Mac behind my DSL line to a "real" webserver at Dreamhost. For some reason I don't remember, this required me to make a change in Ecto, the tool I use to write and publish to Jasonian.org, and in doing so, I lost all the drafts of articles or ideas I'd written but not published.—Continue reading....
A greener Apple, A lamer Greenpeace
May 2nd, 2007
Today Apple posted another Steve Jobs essay, this one about how Apple strives to create products that are environmentally friendly. Apple has been getting beat up in the press about the Mac and iPod maker's supposedly poor environmental policies, thanks in great part to Greenpeace's campaign against the company.—Continue reading....
Improving Your Mac OS X FTP Experience
May 21st, 2007
There are many ways of getting a file from your computer to someone else's computer: you can send it via email, from a web page, or upload it to .Mac's iDisk. But more basic than any of these is the aptly named File Transfer Protocol, or FTP. FTP is as integral to the internet as the web and for a long time was the primary way files were sent between computers.—Continue reading....
Targeting the AAPL millionaries
June 5th, 2007
Apple's stock has been on a major run-up the last few months (heck, the last few years). They been hitting new highs just about every day it seems, and I check about as often. Last night I plugged AAPL into Google, and nearly rolled out my bed laughing.—Continue reading....
iTunes Plus: All or Nothing Upgrades
June 8th, 2007
Apple released iTunes Plus a few days ago. The "Plus" is higher-quality songs (twice the quality of "regular" songs—256 kbps vs. 128 kbps), and without any "DRM" or Digital Rights Management, which, among other things, means you're no longer limited playing your music on five computers.—Continue reading....
Twelfth iPhone icon revealed
June 21st, 2007
Apple just released a new iPhone commercial showing YouTube integration. Great. What surprises me is that no one seems to have mentioned that there are now twelve icons on the iPhone home screen. No more wacky asymmetry.—Continue reading....
Getting TiVo online wirelessly via Airport
June 24th, 2007
Every now and then technology fazes me, especially when something had been working perfectly, and then, for no apparent reason, stops. Getting Y's TiVo online wirelessly via her AirPort Express
iPhone Day
June 29th, 2007
Yes, it's iPhone Day. Lines have been formed outside Apple and AT&T stores across America. Alas, no iPhone for me today: I just can't imagine standing in line for 24 or more hours to get a phone, even one I want. I'll get mine in a month or so, after Apple has shipped a few to customers and people aren't clamoring for them as much.—Continue reading....
iPhone activation
July 26th, 2007
Whoo hoo! I have in my grubby, nail-bitten hands an iPhone of my very own. Actually, since The New AT&T (which seems very much like The Old AT&T) hasn't managed to activate it yet, what I actually have is a brick.—Continue reading....
Getting ringtones on your iPhone for free
September 4th, 2007
Update: Now that Apple's updated GarageBand, you can make your own iPhone ringtones without any of the hackery below! Don't have GarageBand? It's part of iLife '08. It also comes for free with any new Mac, like the all-in-one 20" iMac.—Continue reading....
Ignoring Macs for parental controls
May 6th, 2008
I've long been frustrated by San Francisco Chronicle's "computer guy" column by David Einstein. He regularly ignores Macs in his columns, either willfully, through ignorance, or because he believes that his audience doesn't care about Macs.—Continue reading....
iTunes Plus DRM-free music price drop, still can’t upgrade individual songs
May 26th, 2008
Less than a year ago iTunes announced iTunes Plus, higher quality songs for $1.29 instead of the regular $0.99. I loved the idea of better sounding music, but I was ticked off that I couldn't upgrade individual songs for the incremental cost ($0.30 per song). Instead I'd have to upgrade my entire library at once: not an inexpensive proposition.—Continue reading....
MotionX Poker: Fun with great touches
July 16th, 2008
Heading to dinner tonight with Torrey, he mentioned how much he's been enjoying the MotionX Poker (dice) game for his iPhone. It was also getting favorable reviews on the App Store (4 1/2 stars) so when I got home I went online and bought a copy.—Continue reading....
