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Why I love my Apple stuff

October 13, 2011 By 2 Comments

Screen shot of a cell phone manual I took a photo over the week­end with my cheap phone, and wanted to share it with my friend who was in the picture.

I couldn’t.

Why? The image was about 25 pix­els square. Some­how when my daugh­ter was play­ing around with the phone’s cam­era, she changed the res­o­lu­tion. For me to find out how to change the res­o­lu­tion back, I had to find the box the phone came in, dig out the CD that had the man­ual on it, copy that file to my com­puter — and then search for the answer. (Man­ual is shown at the left.)

The phone set­tings area on the phone was not where the res­o­lu­tion set­ting was. It was buried deeper in another menu.

I’m not say­ing Apple is per­fect — often I can find an answer to my Mac ques­tion faster by doing a Google search than by using its built-in help files. But I am say­ing that Apple mostly gets it right, when it comes to usabil­ity issues like this.

If you haven’t tried an Apple prod­uct, I’d sug­gest you start with an iPod. You might be amazed.

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A very sad day

October 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

Steve Jobs RIPSteve died yes­ter­day (Octo­ber 5, 2011).

He made a huge impact on human­ity — and how we relate to technology.

Apolo­gies to Apple, who prob­a­bly won’t mind my re-posting their front page.

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It tastes better

October 14, 2010 By 3 Comments

...when you do it yourself.

We planted an apple tree in our back yard, maybe six years ago. This year is the first where we got any sig­nif­i­cant apples out of the deal. And though they were small, they tasted great.

What is some­thing that you did lately that gave more sat­is­fac­tion than if you had just bought it?

Filed Under: apple, Life

New iPod Nano Review

September 20, 2010 By 1 Comment

The new iPod Nano sur­prised me. I expected to dis­like it. How­ever, I was pleas­antly surprised.

It helps to think of this one as a dif­fer­ent class of iPod than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion Nano. If you try to com­pare it with the old one, you’ll be dis­ap­pointed. (This one loses a decent video cam­era and the abil­ity to play videos.)

Other than the high price for what you get, I con­sider this to sim­ply just be an amaz­ing iPod Shuf­fle. It plays music well — you can nav­i­gate songs. If you are a jog­ger with the Nike + kit, it will help you mea­sure your run. There’s a cool FM radio. Finally, there are some great acces­si­bilty fea­tures for those who need such.

If you don’t need all that the incred­i­ble new iPod Touch* offers — and can afford it — this one may be for you.

(I took the pho­tos at an Apple Store with my phone’s cam­era — thus the poor qual­ity. They don’t like any­one to take pho­tos with a real cam­era inside their stores. I know. I tried once. And Justin Bieber? I had never heard him before, so I took that oppor­tu­nity. I hope I don’t have to lis­ten to him again.)

Funny enough, while I was there I played with an iPod Clas­sic. I was amazed at how fossil-esque the inter­face now feels. (I had one before they were called the Classic.)

* My son Ben wanted the new Touch so much while we were at the store that he was will­ing to sac­ri­fice his right arm. I didn’t let him.

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Apple admits mistake

September 3, 2010 By 4 Comments

The new iPod Shuf­fle was released on Sep­tem­ber 1st. It might look famil­iar... it is nearly iden­ti­cal to the model two gen­er­a­tions back. (In the pho­tos, the next-to-latest is on top and the newest is on the bottom.)

You see, the gum-stick model was not easy to use. The con­trols were tiny — tucked onto the head­phone cord. Not a good idea. So Apple went back to the model that did (and does) work well.

I haven’t seen a pub­lic apol­ogy... yet.

Top photo is from Wikipedia and bot­tom photo is from Apple.

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They are selling a lifestyle

April 22, 2010 By 4 Comments

lifestyle-ipadOne evening, I watched all of Apple’s iPad videos. But then, I’m a fan­boy, so it was fun.

I noticed a few things — none of the mod­els were older than about 32. I remem­ber see­ing a kid in only one. The rooms that each video was shot in were per­fect. The mod­els rep­re­sented a lit­tle politically-correct eth­nic diver­sity. (I think the mix was fairly close to what their real life buy­ers might be — maybe the videos were a lit­tle heavy on the African-American side.)

None of this was sur­pris­ing to me.

Apple is sell­ing a lifestyle. “If you buy an iPad, you will look like this.”

Don’t buy that. (But if you can afford it and can actu­ally use one, do buy an iPad. Or at least buy and use a cof­fee press.)

And finally, since today is earth day, I would ask you to con­sider not buy­ing that next “thing” on your list, whether it’s an iPad or a cof­fee press. Instead, use the thing you already have and make it work. That choice will be very green, if you care about such matters.

Filed Under: apple, marketing Tagged With: , , ,

I lied

April 6, 2010 By 4 Comments

ipad-emailWell, not really.

But I was not able to stay away from the iPad. No, I didn’t buy one. But I did visit the Apple Store last night (sep­a­rate from the open­ing day, when I did not go in the store, as pre­vi­ously reported). My sons and I tried out the iPad. We all liked it a lot!

A few observations:

- It would not rotate from land­scape to por­trait in some apps. (The rota­tion lock switch could have been turned on and I didn’t know it. I dis­cov­ered its exis­tence after leav­ing the store.)

- The inter­face was not intu­itive on Pages (the Word equiv­a­lent). I couldn’t find tools in the page view.

- The key­board takes some get­ting used to. If I bought one, I’d grab a blue­tooth key­board right away.

- I guess I’m used to the tra­di­tional Mac inter­face — not hav­ing access to the Finder would take some get­ting used to. (I do a lot with files.)

Advan­tages of Amazon’s Kin­dle? You can read it in direct sun­light. It has longer bat­tery life. More titles are avail­able. Every­thing else? iPad.

I had fun mak­ing my site the home page for Safari on some of the demo units. (My web­site hits will go up arti­fi­cially till the store per­son­nel fix that.) Also, one of my sons made the screen back­ground on some of the demo units look like a page filled with app icons — stealth lit­tle trick! Alas, though — the Apple Store resets them every morn­ing, so our lit­tle tricks lasted just a few hours.

Ver­dict? It looks like a great new toy (and use­ful work device, for many). If I could afford one, I’d add it to my toy chest. Alas, not for a while! And finally, David Pogue has a great FAQ page on the iPad here. And don’t for­get to check out the great explana­tory videos on the Apple site.

Filed Under: apple, review, Technology Tagged With: ,

The scent of an iPad

April 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

ipad-launchI vis­ited the near­est Apple Store just before Saturday’s launch of the iPad.

I should clar­ify — I went to see how long the line was, a half an hour before the open­ing, so I could take this photo for you. Then I left.

What for? Some­how being that close to the launch was enough for me.

I can’t explain why.

(By the way, the secu­rity guard said some peo­ple had been wait­ing in line since around mid­night, the night before.)

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