posts

The iBooks Author Conference brings together the growing, diverse community of content creators using iBooks Author to create interactive, multimedia-driven digital books.

iBooks Author is Apple’s digital publishing software, originally created by Steve Jobs to “digitally destroy” the bloated educational textbook market. Today, iBooks Author is used around the world (well outside of just education) to create compelling content and, in many cases, publish it into Apple’s iBooks Store for nearly a billion devices worldwide.

Continue reading ⇢

2016 collecting goal: every color of iMac G3. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

— Stephen Hackett (@ismh) March 17, 2016

I want to put together a video on the Mac that saved Apple.

The problem is that there are a lot of iMac G3s. While many of the colors are present on multiple generations, I’m not worried about those details for this project. I just am looking for one each case type.

Here’s where I am so far:

Continue reading ⇢

While I didn’t outline Apple’s history in glorious detail, Joe Rossignol ove at MacRumors has. What an amazing four decades.

Continue reading ⇢

Jason Snell:

I first touched an Apple product in the early 1980s. The father of my best friend in elementary school was a technology enthusiast, and when I visited their house, I got to lay hands on their Apple II+. What I remember most about it was that you could play video games on it that were more sophisticated than anything you’d find on the Atari console I had at home.

Continue reading ⇢

40 years ago, Apple Computer, Inc. was born. While I certainly could wind a path through four decades of computers and products, software and services, I think that today is more about the why of all of it.

Why do we obsess over tiny design and development changes and decisions?

Why do we get into spats on Twitter about mobile operating systems?

Why do we care so much about an enormous, publicly traded company?

Continue reading ⇢

It’s better to be a pirate than join the navy.

Happy 40th, Apple.

Continue reading ⇢

Lot of people wave their hands and complain about Apple’s lineup in the late 90s, but Riccardo Mori has done the hard work of listing all of the various Macintosh models that were for sale in 1996:

In a nutshell: there was some level of organisation in what many have called the chaos of Macs available back then, and despite the long list of Mac models, the families and form factors were just a few; one of the main causes that generated confusion in the Macintosh product line was the frequent rebranding, and the progressive meaninglessness of the Performa line as the consumer choice versus the Power Macintosh as synonymous of ‘Pro’ machine.

Continue reading ⇢

Sorry if I just spammed your RSS reader; I am doing a little behind-the-scenes stuff tonight and it was inevitable. Here’s a cool GIF.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple:

Safari is the best way to see the sites on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Safari Technology Preview gives you an early look at upcoming web technologies in OS X and iOS including the latest layout technologies, visual effects, and developer tools so you can provide input on how they are implemented and deliver a best-in-class user experience on all Apple devices.

As Jason Snell points out, Apple previously released “nightly builds” of WebKit, but this new program looks to offer a more structured testing platform.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple:

The Podcast Producer service can support different methods of authentication depending on the version of Mac OS X Server. This article explains how to enable or disable specific authentication methods in different versions of Mac OS X 10.5 Server.

You may be asking yourself, “What the hell is Podcast Producer?” I’ve got you covered:

Podcast Producer is a complete, end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing high-quality podcasts. Ideal for employee training, university lectures, presentations — or whatever audio or video podcasts your organization requires — Podcast Producer simplifies the process of recording content, encoding, and publishing podcasts for playback in iTunes and on iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Continue reading ⇢

Back in February, I wondered if a smaller Smart Keyboard could be any good. Jason Snell has gotten some time with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and its keyboard. Here’s what he writes:

Since the new-model Smart Keyboard must double as a cover for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, it’s necessarily scaled down from its 12.9-inch equivalent. The larger Smart Keyboard is 12 inches wide, enough space for a full-sized set of keys. The new, smaller model is only 9.4 inches wide, and that 2.6 inches of lost space does take a toll.

Continue reading ⇢

This month, in my column over at iMore:

This month’s old Mac is the weird cousin of the iMac G4 we looked at in February. Introduced only months after the iMac G4, the eMac mashed up old ideas with new tech: It retained the all-in-one design defined by the iMac G3, but it shipped with a larger 17-inch CRT display and used the same G4 chipset found in the LCD-equipped iMacs.

Continue reading ⇢