As I previously posted, we have found out our son has brain cancer. He just underwent his first round of chemo and we’re back home now. Thank you for the kind emails, and rest assured we will continue to update on our “Josiah Updates” page.
That said, Merri advised me the other night to “give the people what they want.” So ForkBombr is back up and running.
Dear Readers,
I wanted to drop a quick line and let you know updating on ForkBombr is coming to a screeching halt for a while. On Friday, May 8, we found out our 6-month old son has a brain tumor. He’s at St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Needless to say, I’m focused on my family alone right now - nothing else really matters right now.
I appreciate your dedication and support, and will be back soon - probably by the end of the month. Definitely by WWDC.
Sincerely,
Stephen
Update: Merri and I will be posting updates here concerning Josiah.
Looks like it may give Tweetie a run for its money.
For newspaper delivery via the Kindle to have appeal, I do not want a rehash of the print edition or the Web version. Instead, I want flexibility and customization that matches my preferences. I want to be able to customize the types of stories I see and the frequency with which they’re sent. I want to be able to clip and save stories for posterity-both on the device and in the cloud so I can re-download them to another Kindle (or my Kindle iPhone app) or access them via the Web.
But the danger for Kindle DX, and other Kindle-clone devices, is that the aforementioned advantages only apply to a dwindling subset of the population that still subscribe or buy newspapers. The rest of us will need more convincing to start paying again for news and for a hardware device.
Of course, if a publication wants to subsidize my device purchase, in exchange for a subscription commitment, that could sweeten the deal.
I think this is how most people 50 and younger feel about the matter.
Perhaps the best thing I’ve read on the Jobs/Woz relationship, written by John Siracusa:
By all accounts, Steve Jobs is no engineer. He was never a programming maven like Bill, nor was he a hardware wiz like Woz. On his own, Jobs could not create much of anything. But that’s not his superpower.
Though a good critic can influence the community of creators, in the end, he does not create anything himself. But take that critic and put him in charge of the creators. Make him, let’s say, the founder, CEO, and spiritual leader of several thousand of the most talented engineers and artists in the computer industry. What might happen then?
I’ll tell you what happens: the iMac, the iPod, iTunes, Mac OS X, iLife, the iPhone.
The video is set in 2011.
May 4 - 8 is ’Roid Week 2009. My contributions will be collected here.
Even if you’re not the type of person who uses Facebook or Twitter yourself, there’s no denying that these new forms of connection and communication are powerful and becoming increasingly important. That’s why your business should be on Twitter now.
Haven’t we already covered this?
Twitter tips are not included in the list of reasons I read Macworld.
The man’s “blogging” is just an extension of his work for the big companies that have hired him as a consultant.
So I was shocked when I actually agreed with him about something:
The company has Al Gore on its board and could lead in efforts to prevent global warming, but there is no effort to take Apple to solar power on record – or any other global warming program that I can find – and when it comes to green products, Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make changes. Granted, that was mostly Greenpeace using Apple as a lightning rod, but Apple should have been leading there.
Steve killed all of Apple’s philanthropic efforts shortly after he rejoined the company. Even though he promised to reverse that decision once Apple became profitable, it has been in the black for some time, and apparently he hasn’t reinstated the programs. How do any of these actions change the world? It actually seems as though Steve went out of his way not to do that.
With so much now at stake, some experts suggest the iPhone will soon become the most important technology Apple’s empire has produced, even, potentially, eclipsing the computer business that revolutionised our lives in the 1980s. There are an estimated 1bn personal computers in use worldwide, but that many mobile phones are sold every year and for many people their first experience of computing will be through a mobile phone.
But while Apple caused a revolution, it is unlikely to become dominant in the market. It has sold just over 20m iPhones since the first device appeared in 2007; in that time more than 1.5bn phones have been shipped by everyone else. A similar thing happened with the personal computer market. The concept was championed by Apple when it launched Apple II, the world’s first personal computer, in 1977, and the first Macintosh in 1984, but other players now lead the market.
Sure, they are way ahead of anyone else in the digital music space, but when it comes to Macs and iPhones, all I think Apple is okay with just making a dent in the market.
Check out this 1997 post by Shane F. Iseminger about the pros and cons of having Apple computers in the newsroom:
Apple is far from going out of business if you look at their stats - the mainstream press tech articles, which have decided they can’t say “Apple” without using the words “beleagured”, “ailing”, “ and ”struggling", aren’t always accurate. The mumblings that Apple will be gone in six months have been circulating for a year and a half. They have problems to solve, but they’ve solved most all of the ones threatening their welfare. They aren’t losing much money, if any, and have consistently produced some very high-quality hardware and software over the past 9 months. Many companies have been worse off than Apple ever was and come back. And secondly, Apple still has close to $1 billion in cash and lots of assets that can be transformed into cash should it be needed, and that’s doubtful. Thirdly, if Apple were to go anywhere, the Mac OS and the upcoming NT-class Rhapsody OS will be picked up by someone. And the new G3 machines, which generally outperform Pentium II machines of the same clock speed, are selling well as is Mac OS 8. Short answer: the Mac OS isn’t going to die soon. Not a concern.
Statistically there are fewer programs for the Mac OS, but in the real world you will rarely run into problems because you can’t get software for the Mac OS unless you are dealing in a specific niche market. Publishing has been one of the Mac’s strongholds and software developers know that to maximize profits they need to develop for both platforms.
NT is a powerful and stable OS but it is not the only answer. As I mentioned before the Mac OS is still popular and being developed at a fast rate. Mac OS 8 is the most stable OS Apple has produced in years. I run it for days on end without a crash. From observing several Windows and Mac OS systems I would say that the Mac OS crashes less than Windows 95 but a little more than NT. The Mac OS is also scheduled for integration of several NT-class technologies within the next 6–9 months. Also, Apple’s UNIX-based OS, code-named Rhapsody, is scheduled for release next summer and promises to be a direct competitor for NT. It also promises some excellent distributed-computing capabilities.
Hope in Rhapsody is one thing that kept the Mac faithful the Mac faithful. By 1997, the Mac OS was limping along, as Microsoft’s Windows NT was kicking its ass in terms of marketshare. I agree with Shane that OS 8 was the best to date (OS 9 was only marginally better in my opinion, but it did bring several nice updates related to the Internet), but it was still a 10-year old OS with 10-year old problems. After struggling for years with Rhapsody, Apple realized that buying out NeXT (and their Unix-based OPENSTEP operating system) was the only way to break clean from the past and roll out a OS that was stable and expandable enough to take on NT. If Apple hadn’t moved to OS X, I’m not sure Apple would have survived. Being viable only in certain niches only pays the bills for so long.
Today, the Apple Store apparently when offline for a bit. TUAW:
Apple Store down on a Sunday? Well, that’s unusual. Price drops? New gear? Regular maintenance? We’ll know soon enough.
The Boy Genius Report also reported it. Honestly, I’m surprised the bigger blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo didn’t post something as well. The Internet gets all crazy when Apple pulls their online store down. Nothing new, of course, but this comes to mind:
When someone has experienced just too much nerdiness at one time, they are saidto have a nerdgasm. The person usually goes into a state of shock and can’t speak for up to 1 hour. Never distured a someone who as recently nerdgasmed because the person is prone to just spurt out random nerdy things that regular people could never comprehend.