You are here: Home / Archives for apple

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.

Filed Under: apple Tagged With:

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.

Filed Under: apple Tagged With:

Apple Design decisions

April 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

I’ve always thought it was strange that Apple went in oppo­site direc­tions for their iPad and iPhone lines.

Ver­sion 1 of the iPad has rec­tan­gu­lar edges. Ver­sion 2 has a clamshell design.

The iPhone? Ver­sion 3 has a clamshell design. Ver­sion 4 has rec­tan­gu­lar edges.

Apple is going diver­gent direc­tions with these two prod­uct lines.

Pref­er­ence for me? I like the clamshell.

Filed Under: design, Technology Tagged With: , ,

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.)

Filed Under: apple Tagged With: ,

It would be a stretch

February 18, 2010 By 5 Comments

10-billionApple sends me emails. I’m happy about that.

The most recent had a lit­tle fea­ture on the com­ing sale of their ten bil­lionth down­load. That in itself is amaz­ing. And I could preach about how the artists would be so much bet­ter off if Apple would give them just one cent more for each song they pro­vide! (But I won’t.)

My sin­gle com­ment is... if I won a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, I wouldn’t know what to do with it! In my wildest dreams, I might be able to burn through about $2,000 of iTunes songs and movies — but it would take me many hours to spend it! I could not afford the time it would take to do such a prize justice.

Filed Under: marketing Tagged With: ,

iPad review

January 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

ipadYes, Apple’s iPad was released yesterday.

I think it will sell a mas­sive amount. Basi­cally, it’s a Kin­dle, an iPod Touch, and a keyboard-less* Mac­Book, all rolled into one. It has a much pret­tier inter­face than the Kin­dle. You can do any­thing that requires the inter­net when you have a wifi con­nec­tion — or if you don’t (and spend more), you can do it cellular-ly via AT&T (in some parts of the USA). It sounds like there will be a rea­son­able deal on that too — $30 for one month’s unlim­ited data service.

Some of the apps look to be pushed even fur­ther than their Mac or iPhone equiv­a­lents. And they are rea­son­ably priced ($30 instead of $79 for the full iWork suite).

Prices range from $499 to $829, depend­ing on stor­age capac­ity (16–64 gb) and whether you add the 3G inter­net con­nec­tion capa­bil­ity. Sounds like a deal to me — for what you get! Avail­abil­ity? “Sign up here, and we’ll con­tact you when iPad is avail­able to order.” (Could be two weeks. But I’d guess a month-and-a-half.)

For me? I won’t be get­ting one any­time soon, because I can’t afford it — and because I’m too shy to be that cutting-edge. But if some­one gave me one? I’d suck up my pride and set­tle for being that cut­ting edge.

(Photo from the Apple site.) *You will be able to get an exter­nal key­board — but it will prob­a­bly cost some­thing out­ra­geous like $79.

Filed Under: review Tagged With: ,

Why Mac, part 237

October 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

decrapifier2

If a pro­gram exists called “Decrapi­fier” — then some­thing is wrong with the system.

Macs just don’t get auto­mat­i­cally slowed-down by mal­ware, spy­ware, spamware, etc.

Bear with me — my wife uses a Win­dows com­puter, so I am speak­ing from expe­ri­ence. Her com­puter is always get­ting slower and slower. If it were easy to do, she might rein­stall her soft­ware every week, just to keep things run­ning smoothly.

I’m not say­ing this to cre­ate a divi­sion in the ranks — I’m just ask­ing that if you are con­sid­er­ing a new com­puter, please look at Macs. Be sure to go with an Apple fac­tory refurb — full war­ranty and you save 15–20%.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: ,

Apple vs. Office Depot

October 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

apple-st-09-sepHave you ever tried to use a com­puter at an Office Depot (or Office Max, Best Buy or Sta­ples)? They have them locked up with some mar­ket­ing screen saver. Even if you can start to use it, most of the time they are not con­nected to the internet.

Go to an Apple Store. Aaahh! Any com­puter is ready for you to — well — actu­ally use it. If you scout around the store, you will prob­a­bly find a model that has your favorite pro­gram already loaded on. (Well, sorry to say — none will have Win­dows Movie Maker or Real Player loaded.)

Just more evi­dence that Apple means for humans to use their computers.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts