512 Pixels

The Horny One:

Clearly, CNet has no bias. Well, other than the bias for conventional wisdom.

Crothers, it should be noted, famously declared that the iPad had “met its match in the [HP] TouchPad”. If this is the analysis that a supposed lack of bias brings, give the Macalope bias every time.

Dan Frakes over at Macworld:

While I understand Apple’s motives here—I’ve had to troubleshoot more than a few Macs on which an inexperienced user had munged the contents of ~/Library—there are plenty of valid reasons a user might need to access their personal Library folder.

Thankfully, there are tons of ways to get it back.

On the SuperSite for Windows:

RIM stands as a warning for any tech industry Goliath that once owned a market only to watch it get snatched away by smaller, faster moving rivals with better products and better strategies. This is a fate that could befall any company–Microsoft, Apple, Google, whatever. Though I have a hard time imagining any of them being as poorly run as is RIM.

RIM is dead. I’m glad I never wasted time covering this junk.

[Jamie Lendino at PCMag.com](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397729,00.asp has the shocking news) has the shocking news.

28 years of history just got unplugged.

Coming to an iPad or iPhone near you in 2012.

I’m sure that when these do come to market, RIM will be saved.

Joanna Stern at the Verge:

While very few are still buying netbooks, many manufacturers have continued to release the small Intel Atom-powered computers (see Asus, Toshiba, etc.). However, Dell isn’t going to be one of those companies.

[…]

Not only are the Inspiron Minis being put in the grave, but the company confirmed for us that it will not be releasing new netbooks based on Intel’s forthcoming Cedar Trail platform. In other words, it is done with the category.

To be honest, I wasn’t aware anyone was still making netbooks.

via The Loop

Ben Brooks:

For the most part I am an over one shoulder bag type of guy. Since my freshman year in high school I have been using a messenger style bag of some sort — that was 1998.

In his post, Ben outlines his usage of his new backpack — a Tom Bihn Smart Alec.

I — like Ben (and Michael Lopp) — switched from a messenger bag to a backpack this year.

I use an older¹ STM Revolution. Mine is the small version, in graphite with orange highlights.

It’s got a large back pocket with a laptop sleeve that easily fits my 13-inch MacBook Pro and iPad 2, with another pocket up front with a zippered section and a spot for cables. The bag has two water bottle pockets and a built-in rain cover. The shoulder straps are wide and comfortable. The zippers and handles

Here’s what is normally in my backpack on any given weekday:

• 13-inch MacBook Pro
• iPad 2 with Smart Cover
• Kindle 4 in carrying case
• Laptop and iPhone chargers
• Miscellaneous cords and cables
• Two USB thumb drives
• Thinline ESV Bible
• Field Notes brand notebook
• Manila folders for current projects
• Two blue Pilot G2 .07 pens
• Wallet & Keys

With a messenger bag, this just wouldn’t be possible. Ben, Michael and I might not be the coolest kids on the block with our backpacks, but I don’t mind one bit.

Joshua Schnell at Macgasm:

Google has published a listing of their top keyword searches from 2011. Out of the 10 fastest-rising global search trends, Apple holds three spots. At number six was the iPhone 5, number nine Steve Jobs, and number 10 is the iPad 2. Other lists also have Apple products, including the iPhone 4S and iPad 3 on the Fastest Rising Consumer Electronics list.

There are a number of things we can take away from the findings. The first thing is that the general population is genuinely curious about what’s going on at Apple these days. That’s a great thing for Apple, and us, obviously. The second, and probably more important thing to point out here is that people eat up Apple rumors with an appetite that’s much bigger than the competitors’ audiences. Devices like the iPad 3 and iPhone 5, not even released yet, are on these lists.

MG Siegler:

Google has done some very nice work here. Both the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich are a new pinnacle of the Android platform. But in the end, it still comes down to something very simple: which device do I want to use day-to-day? Which phone do I reach for when I’m not doing a review? It’s still the iPhone. Without question.

Keep at it, Google.

With every release of Android, I always get the feeling that the operating system is almost there. It seems that Ice Cream Sandwich may suffer from the same problem as its predecessors.

Editor’s Note: This month’s entry is by Garrick Anson. He blogs and tweets while not working or enjoying time with his wife and two sons.

The Christmas season of 1994 was a special time in my life. As with many kids, I had a bad habit of snooping around the house to try to get a glimpse of any unwrapped presents my parents had hidden. We had an old darkroom built-in our basement (my father had been a photographer for years) that had a lockable door to keep people from exposing any film or paper that might be out in the open. This room also served as a perfect place for my parents to lock up those unwrapped gifts each year. After pushing my conscience aside, I went looking for the key to the dark room in my father’s desk. One day after school, and before my parents got home from work, I went in.

Sitting on the small table in front of me was a shiny (OK, beige) new Apple Macintosh Performa 637CD.

Our first Apple Computer.

It was such a hard distinction from the grey, sharp cornered, bulky IBM and Tandy machines I was used to. The corners were lightly rounded, the colors of the beige case were slightly more pleasant, the mouse only had one button. It was amazing.

Not being able to leave well enough alone, I plugged it in and fired it up. I was grateful I hadn’t tried this while my family was upstairs because the System 7 start-up chime was deafening in that small darkroom, and I’m pretty sure you could have heard it from outside. The monitor lit up with the Happy Mac icon, something I had never seen before (all my previous Apple experience was with the Color Classic my school library had). There was no crude BIOS, no DOS command prompt, no MS-DOS Shell, just a graphical screen as it loaded extensions and then a desktop. So there it was, all 33mhz, 8MB of RAM, and a whopping 350MB of hard drive space running Mac OS 7.5.

I was hooked, and for the better part of a month I managed to sneak down quite a few more times to play around with the Mac I wasn’t even supposed to know about.

Of course, I was not as sneaky as I thought, and my parents found out what I had been doing. I watched as my parents packed up the computer and put it in the car to “return” it to the store. As you can guess the Performa still ended up under the Christmas tree (I think my dad was more excited about the purchase than I was), and I learned a valuable lesson about not getting caught…er…not snooping.

We were a house of early adopters, and had many things before other people knew that they wanted or needed them. We had various computers in the house for as long as I can remember. IBM, Tandy, Commodore, etc. We had internet access for years before that Mac (Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, etc…), and it still seems weird to think I was using the internet before there was a World Wide Web.

I spent countless hours playing games like Myst, Glider, Escape Velocity, and Doom on that Performa.

I messed around with a copy of Adobe Photoshop (version 3.0 if I remember right) that my dad brought home from work. I would edit photos and make custom icons for hours on end. I wasted more time than I care to imagine messing with ResEdit customizing the look and feel of the System various apps. I learned basic HTML and made a few small personal web pages, and even learned how to set up an Apache server. That computer gave me my love of both tinkering and technology.

Since then I have owned a couple old SE/30’s, a Luxo iMac G4, a Powermac G5, first generation Black Macbook, mid 2009 Macbook Pro, not to mention a slew of iPods, iPhones, Apple TVs, and an iPad. I even just recently ordered a new Macbook Pro.

I’d love to tell you that because of that first Mac, I pursued a field in computers, design, photography, or communication. That would be a great way to end this tale, but in reality I sit daily in a cubicle farm, in a small windowless office, plugging away at Microsoft Word and PowerPoint on and outdated HP running Windows XP.

Macs have been my escape. I write, design, game, and communicate on them every chance I get. I’m grateful for my past experiences with them, and look forward to the future.

Want to write about an old Mac you love? Get in touch! In your initial email, please indicate which Mac model you are planning to write about, so I don’t have systems covered more than once.

After we talk, please submit your work in Markdown or HTML. I will be editing posts to conform to AP style, and will link to your site or Twitter account in the Editor’s Note at the top of the post.