Sometimes Dave Caolo thinks he was born with a genetic predisposition to love electronics. Dave can remember receiving his first Commodore 64 as a child, and spending hours writing simple routines in BASIC. In 1984 Dave saw his first computer mouse connected to a Macintosh and thought it was the most wondrous thing he had ever encountered, and he's been a Mac user since. Since then Dave's taken a job as IT director for a very Mac friendly private school where he gets to do all that good administrator stuff, play with new Macs and Apple products, perform repairs and offer general tech support. What more can a Mac geek ask for? In his spare time Dave can be found giving tutorials to his Mac-wielding family and friends, reading the Mac web and magazines and having fun with my kids, photography and music. It's Dave's belief that computers aren't intimidating automatons but simple tools that can make our lives more interesting and fun, and should be approachable and useful to anyone willing to pick up a mouse.
While Bill Gates looked on, Microsoft shareholders asked CEO Steve Ballmer about Apple at their annual meeting this morning. Steve's CEO-speak responses illustrate the larger problem.
Portfolio reports that one investor asked about the company's reputation with young customers:
"I'm just wondering why your marketing group can't do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you've got a real bad image out there."
He also said that Apple's ads make Microsoft look like "a buffoon." That's when the CEO-speak began.
"There's certainly always opportunities for improvement," Ballmer said. "[There is] ... a group of people with whom our market share is less."
When you hear "opportunity for improvement," you're screwed. Euphemistic language clouds meaning and hides the truth. Think "economic downturn" and "previously enjoyed" instead of "depression" and "used." Or "opportunity for improvement" instead of "problem."
Remember the Windows Mojave ads, in which producers tricked customers into thinking Vista was an unreleased version of Windows, only to then throw open the curtain and essentially say, "See? It's really Vista! You DO like it! There's nothing wrong here!"
Here's a great video assembled by applemctom that presents the history of Apple (more or less) in two minutes. There are some huge leaps in time and some obvious errors (Apple Mac II? MacIntosh?), but that's OK. It isn't easy to cram decades of history into 120 seconds.
There's much nostalgia for old-timers like me, as the Pippin and Newton make an appearance. Though I still use my Newt, I've never had the pleasure of a face-to-face meeting with a Pippin. The dark days described in the video (the early 90's after Steve left) is exactly when I started using Macs in earnest. It's amazing that I stayed a customer after bloodying my hands on a 7100's beastly innards.
The video ends with the introduction of the iPhone, so don't expect to see anything beyond that. Still, it's a bit of fun. Check it out.
Earlier today, Apple released version 2.2 of Boot Camp drivers for Windows. Installation requires Boot Camp 2.1 to have been previously installed as well as Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.
Boot Camp is included with Leopard and Snow Leopard and lets you install Windows on an Intel-based Mac. Shops or individuals who want to go Mac despite an unavoidable Windows-only application should consider Boot Camp along with virtualization options like VMWare and Parallels. For full information on installing Boot Camp as well as upgrade instructions, manuals, troubleshooting tips and more, look here.
Please note that Boot Camp Drivers Update 2.2 is for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only.
Earlier this week, South Korean officials gave Apple the go-ahead to sell the iPhone in South Korea. At this point, the ball is in Apple's court; the iPhone can launch at any time.
It was way back in December of 2008 that The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) dropped requirements that handsets use the locally-built WIPI mobile platform, and April of 2009 before those changes went into effect. In September Apple received permission to sell the iPhone in South Korea and just this week were formally issued a business license.
Since then, Korean carriers KTF and SK Telecom have been in talks with Apple regarding distribution, but no details of an official deal have been announced. We'll keep you posted with additional details as they become available.
Last August, China Unicom Ltd (CHU) announced a 3-year partnership to officially bring the iPhone to China. As predicted in July, the CHU's iPhone is sold with Wi-Fi disabled, in accordance with the Golden Shield Project. Additionally, 3GS hardware is still unavailable in China.
Despite these hindrances, handset and App Store sales have been doing well, AppleInsider reports. It's estimated that $1 million in legitimate app sales have been made this year, with a little over a month-and-a-half left in the quarter.
Black market phones are a huge problem in China, and it's been estimated nearly 2 million are in circulation, most of them jailbroken and running pirated apps. Apple hopes to sell 500,000 iPhones in China by the year's end.
Next year looks brighter: Wi-Fi regulations were relaxed back in May, and CHU hopes to have a Wi-Fi enabled model available soon.
Attention, New Englanders: Nashua, New Hampshire and Greenwich, Connecticut will host new Apple Stores as of this weekend. Apple Store Pheasant Lane will open at 310 Daniel Webster Highway in Nashua. You'll find it on the 1st floor of the Pheasant Lane Mall near the Food Court.
We're always happy to see your photos and hear your stories from Apple Store openings, so let us know how it went. Here's hoping a little shopping therapy will erase last week's Patriots loss from your memories.
It's always nice to own the latest and greatest Apple hardware, but some of us still use vintage machines. I've got a G3 All-In-One on my workbench that displays iFixIt PDFs while I work. I'll admit that I've wanted to tweet from that machine from a dedicated app, and now I can.
Grackle68k is a Twitter application for OS 9 through System 6. Yes, System 6! It's quite bare bones and low on bells and whistles, but it works. You'll have to enter your credentials every time you launch Grackle68k unless you're comfortable using ResEdit (if you're using this app, you likely are).
I played with this briefly on ny G3 and had fun. If you've also got a basement full of legacy Macs, give this a try. If only I still had that Powerbook 150...
Here in the USA we're preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving. The typical celebration includes a turkey dinner, family and football on television (and perhaps a drunken uncle or two). Before you set up the folding card table for the kids, check out these iPhone/iPod touch apps meant to make the day more enjoyable.
Serving the "perfect" dinner while dealing with annoying relatives is stressful, so cut the tension with corny jokes, courtesy of Thanksgiving Jokes [iTunes link]. This free app is based on Dustin Kirk's Stacks platform, which puts flash cards on your iPhone or iPod touch. There's a large variety of topics available from math to trivia: nearly 13,000 in total. Dustin breaks from academia with Thanksgiving Jokes and focuses on groan-inducing one-liners. And you thought the turkey was dry.
In my day, recipes were taped to cabinet doors. Today there's cooking software and even a dedicated television network. iPhone users can download Turkey Recipes [iTunes link] for $0.99 and pick from 27 recipes. Once you've selected the one you like (or added your own), you're a click away from generating a shopping list. Back in the kitchen, flick through the easy-to-read instructions (just wipe your hands first) and compare your finished product to the included photo. Just don't be too hard on yourself.
The Genius Bar is a popular feature of Apple's retail stores. Shoppers can schedule appointments with the resident Geniuses to request repairs, ask for help and so on. The tough part can be getting an appointment, as they fill up fast. AppleInsider is reporting that Apple will release a concierge app meant to make that process easier.
They say that the app will let users schedule appointments with both the Genius Bar and One-To-One and monitor their place in line. No other information was available. Recently, Apple added a service that lets people pick up Macs and iPods ordered online from retail stores, complete with gift wrapping.
We'll keep an eye on the App Store and let you know when this app lands.
Total Apps has published a nice guest post from Sal Soghoian, Apple's Production Manager for Automator, intended for teachers. He describes how educators have a limited amount of instruction time with the kids, and even less for maintenance tasks like making sure the proper software is installed, that students are on the proper web page, and so on.
Sal wants to help, and points out a number of links useful to anyone (not just teachers) who wants to automate these repetitive and often time-consuming tasks. Best of all, he shares a link to The Teacher's Helpers (scroll down a bit), which is a free collection of Automator actions specifically written to assist teachers with Macs in their classrooms.
If you've been put off by AppleScript, give Automator a try. Its drag-and-drop interface is much easier to use.
Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.
While Bill Gates looked on, Microsoft shareholders asked CEO Steve Ballmer about Apple at 
Earlier today, Apple released 
Earlier this week, South Korean officials 
Last August, China Unicom Ltd (CHU) 
Attention, New Englanders: Nashua, New Hampshire and Greenwich, Connecticut will host new Apple Stores as of this weekend. 
It's always nice to own the latest and greatest Apple hardware, but some of us still use vintage machines. I've got a G3 All-In-One on my workbench that displays 
Here in the USA we're preparing to celebrate 
The 
Total Apps has published 
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