This week, Myke and I talk about his new secret night job, the new Iron Man 3 trailer, the loss of one family’s LEGO collection and Andy Ihnatko’s new phone.
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As someone with zero public bookmarks on the service, but almost 11,000 private ones, I’m excited.
Edgar Alvarez at Engadget:
Apple’s pricing its newly redesigned iMac starting at $1,099 instead of $999 – and that includes Intel’s 3.3GHz, dual-core i3 CPU alongside HD Graphics 4000, a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM.
The educational machine is not as beefy as the i5-powered public-facing model, but I’m sure schools will appreciate the price break.
Unless they’re all buying iPads now.
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Lee Hutchinson has a really cool, in-depth look at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the 6.2 million gallon pool the agency uses to train astronauts for spacewalk missions.
John Siracusa, in 2005, for Ars Technica:
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the xMac. My xMac. The Mac that I want to buy. Reduced to one sentence, it’s a completely configurable, headless Mac that trades expandability for reduced size and cost.
The idea of the xMac is older than this article, as John explains, but it’s pretty simple: a Mac that trades some of the flexibility of the Mac Pro for a big reduction in price. A Mac mini-priced system with a few PCI Express 2.0 slots, a nice RAM ceiling would tickle the fancy of many Mac nerds who dislike the iMac’s severe lack of upgradability.
Turns out the dream didn’t just live in John’s heart. Here’s Dan Frakes at Macworld in 2006:
What I‘d like to see is a minitower design with—and this is just one possible configuration that would fulfill my wish—a reasonably powerful processor (perhaps a higher-end Core 2 Duo or a single Xeon); a good graphics card in an upgradeable slot; a decent amount of RAM and hard-drive space; a single free PCI Express slot; and room for one additional hard drive. The ability to swap out the optical drive would be a nice touch…And in my ongoing daydream, the MMMM would sell for a relatively reasonable $1499 to $1599.
While Dan’s name for this machine stinks compared to John’s, the idea is basically the same.
And the idea is still alive. Here’s Dan, writing just this week:
What if that Mac minitower isn’t just a new Mac Pro, but the new Mac Pro? It sounds crazy, but thanks to both technological advances and shifts in the pro market, Apple could conceivably offer a “pro” minitower and drop the full-size Mac Pro completely. I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on such a move, but for the first time, the technology is there—and Apple has a penchant for making bold, “We know better than you—trust us” moves.
Won’t high-end pro users abandon the Mac platform without a “true” Mac Pro? Some will, there’s no doubt. But many already have, arguing that it’s Apple that has been slowly abandoning the high-end market over the past half decade.
As a weird side effect of knowing a lot of nerds both in real life and on the Internet, I can tell you that most people don’t ever fill their Mac Pros with additional cards. Many, however, add tons of RAM and additional hard drives.
So, what if the xMac were just the Mac Pro that kept a high RAM ceiling, but cut back some of the other options. Does anyone need two optical drives? Besides rigs set up for audio recording, I’m not sure who has a machine full of PCI cards.
All of this, of course, is conjecture. While Tim Cook has made statements about the Mac Pro and 2013 in the past, nothing’s been announced yet. Will Apple ditch the Mac Pro in favor of a smaller, slightly less configurable machine? My gut says yes, that the next Mac Pro will be less configurable, but make up for it with Thunderbolt, all while retaining the ability to add several hard drives and lots of RAM.
I could get behind that.
The subhead to a story written by Austin Carr:
Six years and five iPhones later, Fast Company tracks down the recipient of Steve Jobs’s groundbreaking prank call, the first ever made from Apple’s original iPhone to the outside world.
James Dowd at The Commercial Appeal:
Beginning Monday, the price of Monday through Saturday single copy editions of The Commercial Appeal — found in racks and at retailers — increases to $1, but the change will not affect Sunday editions or subscription rates.
As part of the increase, a portion of every non-subscription copy sold will be deposited in The Commercial Appeal Children’s Fund, a newly established program to benefit nonprofit organizations dealing with children’s and women’s issues.
Memphis is a hurting city, and I’m all for just about any group working on the front lines on “children’s and women’s issues.”
So, let’s go check out The Commercial Appeal Children’s Fund. Here’s George H. Cogswell, president and publisher of The CA:
With the launch of the program in March of 2013, The Commercial Appeal donates five percent of every weekday newspaper sold at stores, racks and street hawker locations to a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve children.
Initially, organizations will receive funds based on two months’ of newspaper sales. In March and April, sales benefit LeBonheur Children’s Hospital. Other organizations will be named to receive funds for a two-month period.
Now, I’m sure over the course of two months, five percent of all daily, non-subscription sales is a reasonable amount of money, but as someone who loves Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital (and I’m sure all the other, not-yet-named groups), if I want to support them, I’d rather just write them a check or volunteer, and not launder my money through our local newspaper first, just to see one nickel of my dollar help someone in need. This could have been a great move for The CA, but it just feels like a way to move the conversation away from the paper’s price increase.
Clara Moskowitz at Space.com, on the Mars rover:
The computer problem is related to a glitch in flash memory on the A-side computer caused by corrupted memory files, Cook said. Scientists are still looking into the root cause the corrupted memory, but it’s possible the memory files were damaged by high-energy space particles called cosmic rays, which are always a danger beyond the protective atmosphere of Earth.
NASA says the rover should be good to go, as it can run on the B-side computer for some time.
In all my time at the Genius Bar, I never saw anything damaged by cosmic rays. So, yay atmosphere!
Dave Engberg at Evernote:
While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data remains secure. This means that, in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords. Please create a new password by signing into your account on evernote.com.
Good on Evernote.
Don’t tell Josiah, but we’re headed to Disney World with Make-A-Wish.
Many of you know that our son has been in a fight with brain cancer since turning six months old. Now, at four and a half years old, we’ve been extremely blessed that his cancer has been stable for two years.
See, Josiah’s type of cancer doesn’t go in to remission. Here’s how the American Cancer Society defines the term:
When a treatment completely gets rid of all tumors that could be measured or seen on a test, it’s called a complete response or complete remission.
Or:
A partial response or partial remission means the cancer partly responded to treatment, but still did not go away. A partial response is most often defined as at least a 50% reduction in measurable tumor. Here, when we refer to a remission it will generally mean a partial remission.
Today, Josiah’s tumor is the exact size it was after his resection surgery back in the summer of 2009. 18 rounds of chemotherapy stopped it in its tracks, but the truth is Josiah will never live cancer-free, or in remission. “Stable” is the best term we can hope for.
Josiah’s cancer being classified stable is the result of the millions of dollars that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital here in Memphis has poured in to his care.
It is the result of of research in to his type of cancer, thanks to the parents of children before Josiah.
It is the result of our hard-working medical care team.
It is the result of hours and hours of prayer on his behalf, and the concern and compassion shown to our family from around the world.
All any of us are given is today. When your kid has cancer, this truth is hammered in to your very being every single day. I’ve lost a lot of days with Josiah to work, this website and other things in my life, but for a week in April, none of that will get in the way. We’re elated to get to have this opportunity to have a week of fun with our family; we’re humbled, however, as well, knowing that many of our friends haven’t had this chance.
I wish they had. I wish that the new families that land in Memphis every day with the crushing weight of cancer on their souls get to enjoy time like we will.
We’ve watched countless families come to St. Jude over the last few years and leave, after their children have lost their battle with brain cancer, but we’ve also seen many, many “little friends” emerge victorious from the fight of their lives. I’m thankful for the time and memories Make-A-Wish is giving us, and I know I’ll treasure them, now matter how long Josiah is with us.
It’s a shame that EA’s ruined what was such a great title for iOS.