512 Pixels

This is a good move.

Another sweet looking mail client for iOS is on its way. When will Apple let users change the default app?

This week, Myke and I return to their discussion of Apple’s new iMac, then talk more about the huge number of keyboard I have purchased and returned over the last few weeks. Finally, we talk about my first iPhoneless month, and the iPod touch I bought and might return.

Show Notes:

- Stephen’s office

- Stephen DON’T NEED NO SMARTPHONE

- Chair prank photo

- Wrapped desk prank photo

- Ars Reviews The New iMac

- Marco on the new iMac

- Thomas Brand on the new iMac

- Das Keyboard Model S Professional

- Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000

- Microsoft Keyboard Driver Image

- The Loop: On the pleasure of using a ‘dumb’ phone

- iPod touch

- iPod touch Camera Image

Lots of goodies for the popular CMS.

Wikipedia:

Star Trek was to be a version of the Macintosh operating system running as a GUI on Intel-compatible x86 personal computers on top of Novell’s next in-development version of the DR DOS operating system in a similar fashion as Microsoft Windows 3.x would run on top of DOS (including DR DOS). (At that time, the Mac OS ran only on Apple’s own computers based on the Motorola 68000 architecture.) The project was named after the Star Trek science fiction franchise with the slogan “To boldly go where no Mac has gone before.”

While work on the project was cancelled after just a year or so, but by the end of it, System 7.1 could be booted on an Intel 486 PC, albeit with no apps.

As cool as this project is to read about, when thought about in the context of what would happen with NeXT just a few years later, it’s pretty mind-blowing. What if Apple and Novell had succeeded in this?

James Galbraith at Macworld:

The new iMac steps into the future, with cutting-edge design (literally), updated processor and RAM, better sounding speakers, and reduced-glare (but still glossy!) screens. Unfortunately, the new iMac also follows Apple’s trend towards less repairable and upgradeable Macs and the elimination of useful features such as optical drives and FireWire 800 ports. I think it’s reasonable to drop the optical drive from laptops, where the benefit of reduced size and weight can be immediately appreciated when you walk around with a laptop in your bag. On a desktop computer like the iMac, it’s unclear what the benefits are of going without these conveniences in order to have a thinner and lighter iMac at your desk — unless you’re admiring the iMac from the side, of course.

If I hit my head against my desk any longer over these iMacs, I will be dead. JUST LIKE THE PLACE THE IMAC USED TO HAVE IN MY HEART.

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared in the third issue of The Magazine. My thanks to Glenn and Marco for giving me a shot at being in such a great publication.

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My worst interaction with technology most days had been a sick Windows laptop, and my best involved monkeying with a new audio system. Most of us view technology within the frame of our personal and professional lives: a company like Apple, an e-reader like the Kindle, or an operating system like Windows.

I had my view abruptly broadened three and a half years ago when my son Josiah was diagnosed with an invasive, mid-grade Astrocytoma Glioma brain tumor. Technology has never loomed larger in our lives, even though we felt surrounded by it before.

It was discovered after a six-month checkup when our pediatrician ordered an ultrasound of his head. Our doctor had some concerns about Josiah’s head size, coupled with the fact that he was a little behind on some milestones. Our pediatrician said this was just a test, and that he didn’t think anything was wrong. We went home worried, but it didn’t keep us up that night.

Sitting in a dark room the next day, watching the technician move the probe around, I was blown away by the uncluttered images on the screen. It seemed so much more advanced and clear than the ultrasounds we had seen just months before when my wife was pregnant with him.

Then the technician quickly left the room.

The next 72 hours blur together. A doctor who didn’t even take the time to introduce himself told us to drive across town to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital — and not to stop to pick up clothes or even lunch.

When we stormed through the ER doors, a team of doctors were waiting for us. In the ER, they struggled to get an IV placed, then rushed Josiah to get a CT scan.

The picture given by the scan wasn’t good. The mass found by the ultrasound on the right side of Josiah’s brain was more clearly seen, but a second, equally scary problem was present: increased intracranial pressure. When the brain is under stress, fluid often collects on the surface, and the ventricles — the gaps in the brain where this fluid normally resides — can expand. In Josiah’s case, both were issues.

All of this information, provided by advances in medical imaging, was coming in so fast that it was numbing. The following morning, Josiah had his first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan. For people with brain tumors, the MRI is the best imaging technology on the planet. It shows details that are missed on other scans.

After the scan, the doctors met with us armed with images and information gathered from their tests. They were incredibly nice. The head of the pediatric neurosurgery team was a middle-aged, balding, soft-spoken man who had to push his glasses up a little too often. The head nurse sat down next to my wife Merri, and was playing with Josiah as the doctors settled in, exchanging glances. None of them opened the folders of paperwork they brought with them. No jokes were cracked; no small talk was required.

The news was bad: the mass was a brain tumor, and it was a big one. According to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, roughly 700 children are diagnosed with astrocytomas each year.

Seven hundred.

Seven.

Hundred.

(That’s hard for me to swallow, even today. It’s a rare condition, but when your child gets the diagnosis, the low odds become your 100-percent reality.)

Less than 48 hours after getting the new scan, Josiah underwent a massive tumor resection surgery. The techniques and technology used by the surgeon were developed by his own father and his father’s colleagues, passed down and perfected through time.

After surgery, we were transferred to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in our hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Having the world’s best pediatric oncology hospital in your backyard is pretty handy sometimes. On our first day at St. Jude, we were asked if the hospital — which is really a research institution with a hospital out front — could keep samples of Josiah’s tumor and detailed records on his care for research.

I signed that paper without thinking twice. If not for the parents before us being willing to aid St. Jude in its research efforts, the doctors there would not know what they do about his disease. The cycle of information is in place to serve future waves of sick kids. I felt an obligation — no, a privilege — to help save those kids’ lives.

Over the next 18 months or so, Josiah underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy, numerous additional scans, and physical therapy. In this whirlwind of medication, leg braces, and worrying about the single germ that could bring it all to a screeching halt thanks to the toxic chemo destroying our baby’s immune system over and over, I saw the very best that modern medicine can offer.

Today, Josiah isn’t cancer-free, but his latest scans show that his tumor is stable, with no new growth in two years. Thanks to the millions of dollars of treatment St. Jude has given him (without charging us a dime, by the way), today he’s a mostly typical four-year-old. He runs around the yard, plays with his sister and loves books with animals in them.

These days, thankfully, the parenting challenges my wife and I face are far more pedestrian.

We try to limit the time our kids spend in front of the Mac mini watching movies or playing with toys that light up and make noise. We think there’s something healthy about them spending lots of time outside and building with blocks.

It drives me crazy to see a family out at dinner or a sporting event and seeing the kids head-down, glued to iPod touches or whatever other handheld gaming systems are out there. I want to interrupt their time “together” and tell the parents how much they are missing by letting their kids be entertained by something with a glowing screen.

Of course, even as I write that, I feel a pang of guilt. How many little moments have I missed in my kids’ lives by checking Twitter on my iPhone while they play in the yard? How many hours have I spent writing or hacking away on my Web site while I should have been reading books to Josiah?

Technology saved my son’s life, yet has left him with terrible scars. It allows me to work from the hospital on days when I need to, but distracts me from being engaged at home. Technology is wonderful, but terrible, all at once.

Chris Taylor for Reuters:

Americans are shelling out big bucks annually to outfit the entire household with Apple products. And they are spending hundreds - if not thousands of dollars - more each year for the unexpected Apple “taxes” – add-ons that lock them into the Apple system: iTunes downloads for music, movies and games, along with subscriptions and accessories.

Then there are the replacement costs for lost or broken equipment. For a family with multiple children, each with their own technological needs, the total annual bill can get downright ugly – like going over a familial “fiscal cliff.”

This is the biggest load of crap I’ve read in weeks. Comparing Apple customers to those in “indentured servitude” goes far beyond just bad editorial writing.

I used to spend a ton of time on the old site. It’s good to see an old name return to the Mac scene.

Shawn Blanc:

This is the first time I’ve ordered one of the photo books from Apple and I don’t think it will be the last. It’s a hardcover book, with 20 (or more if you want to add them) full-color pages, printed and shipped for about $32. The pages are full-bleed, the color is brilliant, and the construction quality is top notch.

We have one with some of our wedding photos in it, and I’ve given them as gifts. The quality is great, and they couldn’t be easier to build in iPhoto. That said, there is an issue. Here’s Shawn:

The photo book isn’t really an Apple product, it’s a product Apple makes. And I am embarrassed to give it as a gift which, when first opened, is an advertisement for Apple. It’s like Apple’s version of a product with “special offers“. People see this book and they see it’s “Made on a Mac” and maybe it gives them one more reason to buy Mac.

I understand why Apple plasters its logo on this stuff, but it’s annoying. These are great coffee table books, and somehow the company’s logo makes them feel cheaper. Thankfully, some of it can be turned off.

Thomas Brand:

The era of Genius turning screws is coming to an end. Macs are becoming harder to get into, and instead of being repaired at the Apple Store most of the computers Apple sells these days are being refurbished at a central repair facility. Faulty iPhones, iPods, and iPads are replaced at the Genius bar, and shipped off to be disassembled and remade into refurbished devices with new cases and batteries. These refurbished computers return to the Apple Store to be used as iPhone, iPod, and iPad replacements. The cycle of replace, repair, refurbish, and replace is made easier by services like iCloud that keep all of a user’s data safety backed up. Customers have no qualms about receiving a device many of them think is new, just as long as they get to keep all of their personal data, songs, movies, and apps. It may be some time until all of Apple’s machines are replaced this way, but the new 21.5 inch iMac shows that Apple is moving in that direction.