Don’t click on this link unless you’re a hardcore Apple geek and have lots of time on your hands. It includes high-resolution images of every Apple ad from 1976 to 2002. Including ads for things I didn’t know existed.
Category: General Tech
The Hottest Case Mod Ever
Flickr user wolphcry has posted some pics of his very slick MacBook, which now looks like a little Mac Pro.
Apple’s Lessons From the Newton
I ran across an article today on Roughly Drafted titled “Newton Lessons for Apple’s New Platform.” It’s an interesting read, especially considering it’s two years old.
The article discusses the failure of Apple’s Newton project of the early 1990s. The Newton was Apple’s first foray into the PDA/handheld computer, and frankly, it was not a bad attempt at all. The early models were plagued with slow hardware and rough software ( made famous forever in a comic strip), but at the end of the series (with the MessagePad 2000 & 2100 models), Apple had the kinks worked out.
Clarification on a Bad Idea
From the comments of the aforementioned Ars story:
- The Ars tip basically means blowing your redundancy, unless you have another backup drive somewhere. If the disk decides to bail out at that moment, your data is lost.
- I’ll tell you the biggest risk IMO - crashing hard drives… The second worst common problem I see is lost, deleted, or overwritten files… Compared to these, the “house burns up in a fire” risk is minuscule.
I agree. But my points were that my customer had balls and Time Machine’s biggest failure is the lack of physical security. Hard drives crash everyday. Thankfully, Time Machine has saved a lot of people who otherwise would never backup anything. But it’s not the perfect solution. This comment describes a great scenario:
iPhone Development... On Windows?
Ars, on the development of Besiegement ( iTunes Link), a tower defense game for the iPhone, made (mostly) on a PC:
The PC development side consisted of two OpenGL windows representing landscape and portrait views. These windows translated mouse movements into “touches,” similar to fingers. The right mouse button simulated a second finger, similar to the iPhone simulator on the Mac. In addition to touches, Randall added keystroke equivalents for standard system events including the Home button press, the lock button, low memory conditions, incoming calls and so forth. He used a pop-up dialog to stand in for the iPhone’s keyboard, and added other placeholders to represent iPhone UI elements. In the end, he not only matched the Simulator’s event suite, but built upon it to add events that Mac-based developers would love to see included.
DHL Pulls Out of US Shipping
Whoops:
DHL has lost nearly $10 billion in the U.S. in the five years since it purchased Airborne Express in an attempt to challenge FedEx and United Parcel Service. Despite its dominance in the rest of the world, DHL was never able to take enough share from the two major carriers in their home market. The company’s decision to largely withdraw from the U.S. will push parent Deutsche Post to an estimated $1 billion loss for the full year as it books writedowns totaling $3.9 million to cover severance payments to workers and other restructuring.
One Little Bug
Seems the build of Android (Google’s Open-Source phone OS) released on the G1 has a nasty, nasty bug. Engadget:
It turns out that G1 firmware revisions RC29 and earlier literally interpret everything you type as command-line operations, so if you happen across a legit command, it’s going to get executed – with superuser permissions, no less. No, seriously. Just go to the messaging app, the browser, or anywhere else a text box is convenient, type “reboot,” press the enter key, and watch magic happen.
More on Obama and the Web
The New York Times talked with Joe Trippi, a political consultant who ran Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004:
“This medium demands authenticity, and television for the most part demanded fake. Authenticity is something politicians haven’t been used to.”
Open Ballmer, Insert Foot
Steve Ballmer, on Android:
“They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, blah dee blah dee blah, but you know they start out way behind, in a certain sense.”
He also doesn’t think the iPhone is doing well. ( Source.)
The Current State of OS 9
In October 1999, Apple released OS 9.0, heralding it as “The Best Internet Operating System Ever.”
With Sherlock 2, Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac, iTools, improved TCP/IP, and more, OS 9 connected Mac users to the Web in a way that no OS had ever done before.
With all these features, OS 9 was still very closely tied to the previous revisions of the Mac OS, and thus, was riddled with bugs and legacy code. The dreaded bomb error, for example, endeared users to the OS for years. With no memory protection, application crashes would very often bring down the entire system. Fun stuff.
People Don’t Miss Firewire, Right?
Check out this 16 page thread over at Apple’s Discussion Boards. This is the longest thread I’ve ever seen there. Seems that people do miss it. Who knew?
Want iDisk Files from your iPhone? Okay.
MobileFiles ( iTunes link) is the first application (that I’ve seen) that allows MobileMe users access their iDisk from their iPhone/iPod Touch.
After briefly testing it tonight over EDGE (hey, we have a kid now), I have to say, I’m impressed. And it’s free, but that MobileMe membership is still $99/year.