512 Pixels

Hadrmac:

Most Mac users will most likely remember comments made by Michael Dell during the black period of Apple. But the direction of the wind changed and it now fully blows into Apple sails, leaving Dell in the behind. The company has lost its leadership on the Pc market, and keeps going down, today Apple weights 7 times Dell on the market stocks exchange. But, let’s stop here the introduction to concentrate on this historical day. Apple announced to have acquired Dell for 10 billion USD, and in shares for the remaining capitals at a rate of 6 Dell for 1 Apple, giving a bonus of 12% for Dell shares.

Oh dear.

The Denver Post:

Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder not only documents the war in Afghanistan with traditional digital cameras, he also used an iPhone camera, carried in his flak jacket pocket, coupled with a Polaroid film filter application to photograph the daily lives of Marines, Afghan soldiers and fellow journalists during the military offensive in Marjah, Afghanistan.

Each shot is fascinating and gut-wrenching, all at the same time.

[via Gruber]

System Folder’s Riccardo Mori:

I wasn’t an eWorld subscriber, yet I remember the phenomenon fondly. I believe it was another Apple creation with potential, but the high costs of the service (and perhaps Apple’s lack of belief, too) prevented it from really taking off. Too bad it was just discontinued without morphing it into something that could survive on the Web, Apple could have taken advantage of the faithful eWorlders’ sense of community to expand it online and pioneering today’s social networks, for instance. But I guess it was not the right timeframe for Apple, not in its best of shapes financially.

Wikipedia has more on what led to it’s demise:

Apple’s marketing and promotion efforts were at best indifferent. The service was only available on the Macintosh, along with e-mail only support on the Newton handheld. Apple was in a challenging financial position at the time and CEO Michael Spindler told the Online Services Group that significant marketing for the service could not be provided so eWorld shipped on new Macs with only an icon on the desktop and a brochure in the box. There was also little if anything in the way of media marketing for the service. The promised Windows version of eWorld was not launched following a decision by Apple’s senior management to position eWorld as a unique service for Macintosh owners.

Apple’s management decided that the product was doomed to fail in a market where AOL had such a commanding lead. The company was also cutting costs. In June 1995, the company had over $1 billion in backorders and posted a $68 million loss in the fourth quarter of 1995. In January 1996, Spindler was asked to resign as CEO, replaced by former CEO of National Semiconductor Gil Amelio. Several products and projects were scrapped in an effort to put the company back into the black.

On March 31, 1996, at 12:01 am Pacific Time, the service was officially shut down. Remaining eWorld subscribers were offered incentives to switch to AOL, which began hosting Macintosh-oriented content developed with Apple. The eWorld/AppleLink technical support archives moved to Apple’s website. When the Online Services Group was disbanded, many of its members left Apple. Peter Friedman eventually formed TalkCity with Chris Christensen and Jenna Woodul. Scott Converse became a senior executive at Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment Division. James Issacs joined Danger Inc. (acquired by Microsoft in 2008). Richard Gingras and Jonathan Rosenberg joined the newly formed broadband access venture @Home Network.

Like so much at Apple in the mid-to-late 90s, eWorld was way ahead of its time.

Oh dear.

Man, it’s such a good-looking car. And while it’s not as revolutionary as Chevy would make it to be, I do think it’s the future of automobiles.

From the new iTunes 9.1:

So I guess iTunes isn’t going to server as an e-book reader after all. While I’m sure it has everything to do with licensing ebook content on multiple devices, I find it disappointing that the entire iBook experience is locked to the iPad at this point.

Reuters:

Apple store workers say they have yet to see or touch the iPad, even though the launch is just days away and they are being trained and encouraged to talk about Apple’s newest device with customers.

“We haven’t seen it; we never do” before a product is launched, said one employee, who asked not to be identified because workers are barred from speaking with the media. “Every store employee I know, including the managers, they haven’t seen it.”

With its notoriously secretive corporate culture, Apple is loathe to circulate any iPads among retail troops ahead of the debut. Even in-store Apple repair techs – known as “geniuses” – don’t yet know how to fix the gadget.

When the first iPhone was released in 2007, those of us in Apple retail saw it about an hour before launch (as the Reuters story explains). That was after all the windows in the store had been blacked out and management took our existing cell phones and locked them in the office.

I mean, have they ever read Apple’s interface guidelines?

Finally:

DNS server ordering as specified in Network Preferences and DNS reliability.

This was annoying in environments with on-site DNS.

Shawn Blanc:

I remember writing that first post as if I published it yesterday. I so clearly recall the first time I felt the novelty of writing something combined with the adrenaline rush of publishing it. Even now, four years later, I still feel that same novelty and that same rush every time I publish a new article.

[…]

Publishing a weblog has been the best thing I could have done for my writing. It is a format that really works for me: I enjoy it, I’m challenged by it, inspired by it, and frustrated by it. I love it and I hate it. Some days I cannot wait to sit down at my keyboard, while other days I consider quitting altogether and spending all that new free time building furniture. And but so the blend of emotion is sort of my proof that I ought to keep growing and writing.

But if I ever did quit, I know I would miss it. Blogging in its purest form — when I’m not being influenced by stats, etc. — is really enjoyable to me.

I am definitely in the same place as Blanc on this. Writing ForkBombr is both the easiest and the hardest creative project I’ve ever done.

No big surprises here.

Holy cow, my mind is blown.