Just wanted to give warm wishes to Steve Jobs, who has been quite the influence on my life. The products he and his team at Apple have made over the years have become essential in my daily life. There literally isn't a day that goes by that I don't use something from Apple. Thanks, Steve, for helping make insanely great stuff. Happy birthday, and good health to you.
One year ago today, I relaunched my previous efforts in blogging as techēse. To celebrate, some changes are going into effect.
The site is a work in progress. I am constantly polishing ambiguities in the design, optimizing for making the content stand out. If you have any suggestions, please write in.
Just a quick note: when I renamed /journal to /articles I also broke the RSS feed. Please resubscribe using http://www.techese.net/articles/rss.xml in your feed reader of choice.
Thanks.
24 January, 1984. The day the Macintosh computer was introduced. It had an 8 MHz processor and 128k of RAM. It also had a 3.5” diskette drive (remember those?). It had a screen resolution of 512 x 384 pixels.
Compared to today’s iMac, things sure have come a long way. Heck, the specs of the iPhone 4 really show how far technology has come, comparatively. Nonetheless, the Macintosh undeniably started a new era of personal computing. The world may have looked completely different without it.
Happy 27th birthday, Macintosh.
P.S. For a bit of fun, Apple still has the specifications listed for the original Macintosh.
Finally, the Mac App Store opened for business today (though far earlier than the rumored noon release). It is bundled with the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, so you’ll need to run Software Update. Once you reboot after the update, you’ll have a shiny new blue icon in your Dock — App Store.
You’ll have to log in with your Apple ID — the same credentials you use for iTunes — and then you can be on your merry way to purchasing apps. And it has never been easier.
Installing apps has never been, well, all that easy. That’s not to say one couldn’t learn the procedure and just go through the menial steps, but there has been room for improvement for quite some time. I have seen many people running their apps from inside disk images (.dmg) because they didn’t know they needed to move the app into their Applications folder. Also, try explaining what a disk image is to someone that doesn’t know much about computing. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
The App Store makes installing apps as easy as two clicks. You click Install (or if the app is paid, you click its price), enter your password, click Buy to confirm, and the app literally zooms off the App Store page and into your Dock. It is also automatically delivered to your Applications folder. Honestly, installation doesn’t get a great deal simpler than this.
Another great feature is the App Store will notify when any of your apps have updates available, along with a list of the changes. Many third-party apps prior to today utilized Sparkle to notify and install updates, but Sparkle requires that a user opens the app for the updater to run. (By the way, it appears the developer of Sparkle “designed and implemented exciting new technology for the Installer that will be employed throughout Mac OS X” when he interned at Apple a while back, according to his resume).
Fact is, it’s easy to go for some time without an app, and you could miss out on some updates, even ones that introduce new features that might interest you in using the app again. The App Store should help mitigate those lapses. Either way, update notifications are welcome in my book.
I have no doubt about the Mac App Store being a wild success. I imagine the App Store will be the way most folks (read non-techy) discover new apps from here on out. Especially switchers. They’ll be introduced to it when they buy a new Mac at the Apple Store, and may not ever know that there is another way to get apps on the Mac (kind of unlikely, but you never know).
At the end of the day, I am all for making user experience easier.
This morning Apple provided a new service for users to make things easier if support and service is ever needed. The Apple Support Profile is a central hub of information for you to keep track of your past and current Apple computers and devices, their serial numbers, warranties, and records of any service performed on those products.
Another nice feature is VoicePass. If you register your phone number(s) with Apple and allow them to use the number for VoicePass, the next time you need to call Apple, they will know who you are straight away.
Also, if you choose, you can have Apple send you a text message for service updates.
All in all, Support Profile looks to be a great resource for both the user and Apple.
;)
As you prepare to unwrap shiny, happy presents, and help your family with their new toys, I just wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Happy Christmas. I hope you are all surrounded by loved ones and enjoy celebrating this wonderful occasion!
As the official Family Geek™, I often find myself performing system updates and the such for computers belonging to my various family members. Admittedly, sometimes this can be a long and frustrating process, yet other things are easy. For instance, I upgraded my parents’ MacBook to 4GB of memory earlier, an easy task; whereas later I will be upgrading my mother-in-law’s MacBook pro with the latest iLife, another easy task, and then fielding questions on the new iPhoto interface, a less than easy task.
It can be difficult to remain frustration-free with less tech-savvy family members, which is why I am thankful for a couple articles I’ve read in the past 24 hours.
First, Chris Breen gives tips of how to give of yourself, explaining various things you can do for your family’s technological needs. Second, Ben Brooks’ Giving the Gift of iOS gives tips on how to interact cordially with family while teaching them to understand their gadgets and quit being afraid of them.
If you are the Family Geek™, I highly recommend you read both articles before Christmas morning.
The amazing syncing utility Dropbox has finally left beta and entered the land of 1.0! I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time now, and really do love it. Dropbox, to me, is what Apple’s iDisk should be. By far, one of my favorite uses of Dropbox is the ability for apps to sync their databases to it (like the very wonderful 1Password), which is great for apps that have both Mac & iOS versions.
If you want to become a Dropbox user, please follow my referral link. By doing so, you’ll get an extra 250 MB of storage, even on a free account, and I’ll get the same little bump in storage. Now, get to syncing!
If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, and Apple’s free iBooks app, and a desire to learn about iOS programming, you may want to fire up the iBookstore and search for “Apple Developer Publications.”
The results should be six iBooks published by — you guessed it — Apple Developer Publications. The titles include:
Needless to say, these looks like great resources for a budding iOS developer, and they’re free.
Apple announced this morning that they will be live-streaming their “Back to the Mac” event later this morning. Late notice, but better late than never. I really enjoyed watching the live-stream of September’s iPod event.
Apple will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com.
Two hours to go, folks.
