512 Pixels

Benj Edwards at Macword:

The destiny of Apple changed drastically 10 years ago with the release of a deceptively simple digital music player.

The iMac may have saved Apple in 1999, but the iPod is why consumers fell in love the the company.

Thomas Watkins for the AP:

The elaborate mission to recover a moon rock led NASA agents to one of the most down-to-earth places: a Denny’s restaurant in Riverside County.

But at the end of the sting operation, agents were left holding a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice and a 74-year-old suspect who was terrified by armed officials.

[…]

The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

The whole story is just plain terrible.

Tim Cook’s company-wide address isn’t a speech given by a CEO — it’s a conversation from an old friend. Touching.

Well, at least in the “documents and data” arena.

I’m sure the iWork apps on the Mac will eventually have iCloud built-in like their iOS cousins do. Until then, Dropbox is still the way to go for many, including myself.

Since buying my Kindle, I have to admit that I’ve done a lot more reading. Here’s what’s been on my e-ink display this month:

• The Right Stuff by Thomas Wolfe looks at the build-up to NASA’s Mercury project, through the eyes of the original seven astronauts. It’s an excellent, excellent read for any nerd.
• Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox chronicles the Apollo space program. While the book dives fairly deep in to the politics inside and outside of NASA in the 1960s, it’s not at all boring. The names that history has forgotten live on in this book.
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl retells the author’s time spent in Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II. It discusses the psychiatric toll that living without a reason to live takes on someone. I’ve been reading the paperback off and on for months, and have yet to finish it. It is intense.

Editor’s Note: As always, links from 512 Pixels to Amazon are done as affiliate links. Kindle purchases aren’t eligible for Amazon’s affiliate program, so I’ve linked to the paperback versions above.

Why, hello there.

This is disgusting.

While the Occupy Wall Street guys have a point¹, the fact that half of Congress’ members are millionaires is a bigger problem, in my opinion. I’m not sure how these people can accurately represent the middle class, let alone the nation’s poorest members.

The free iPhone 3GS is doing very well on AT&T.

Order it from Amazon via this link and I get a kickback.

I ordered the hardcover version.

Apple has released the first TV ad for the iPhone 4S:

The company isn’t helping me with a little problem I’ve developed.

I keep trying to talk to my iPhone 4. I’ve caught myself trying to set reminders several times.

Maybe it is because I’ve spent a large amount of time playing with a coworker’s 4S. Maybe it is because my feed reader is full of 4S-related stories. Maybe it is because Siri seems like such a natural way to interact with a phone.

Maybe I’m just losing my mind a little bit.

Christina Bonnington over at Ars:

The C Spire announcement comes as a surprise to most Apple enthusiasts, as C Spire isn’t as well known as other national carriers, such as T-Mobile, or even Cricket Wireless. But maybe all the surprise stems from a likelihood that most Apple watchers are concentrated in large, metropolitan markets.

C Spire is pretty big here in Memphis. I know several people who are excited about this move. While C Spire is small, I think it will sell a ton of iPhones to its customers.¹