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John Glenn Pushes for Mars
“We’re accustomed to the new things and get used to them, and it’s hard to get excited about something new,” Glenn said today (Feb. 17) during a NASA event commemorating his orbital flight, citing the rapid march of technological innovation as a sort of numbing agent. “I’m sure if we establish bases someplace else, or if we make that flight to Mars, that’ll re-galvanize people again.”
Old Mac of the Month: Macintosh IIci
Editor’s Note: This month’s submission is written by Jeff Geerling. He writes a blog named Life is Prayer and hails from just north of me, up in St. Louis, MO. If you’d like to share about an old Mac that made a difference in your life, get in touch.
Imagine a time when computing was quickly becoming mainstream; computers with graphical user interfaces were becoming the norm, and expensive Macs were not doing entirely well in the market. Early Windows-based computers were obtrusive, buggy, and required more time setting IRQs and swapping hard drive ribbon cables than they offered uninterrupted uptime.
On Mountain Lion and iOS
If Apple were trying to make Mountain Lion more like iOS we would be touching the screen of our computers to interact with out apps instead of using the keyboard and mouse.
Agreed.
Google Tracking iPhone Users
To get around Safari’s default blocking, Google exploited a loophole in the browser’s privacy settings. While Safari does block most tracking, it makes an exception for websites with which a person interacts in some way—for instance, by filling out a form. So Google added coding to some of its ads that made Safari think that a person was submitting an invisible form to Google. Safari would then let Google install a cookie on the phone or computer.
26 Billion iMessages Sent
More iOS Devices Sold in 2011 Than All Macs ... Ever
The iOS platform as a whole reached 316 million cumulative units at the end of last year. The iOS platform overtook the OS X platform in under four years and more iOS devices were sold in 2011 (156 million) than all the Macs ever sold (122 million).
The graph says it all. Holy shit.
‘We’re Starting To Do Some Things Differently’
John Gruber, on Apple’s private briefings regarding Mountain Lion:
We were sitting in a comfortable hotel suite in Manhattan just over a week ago. I’d been summoned a few days earlier by Apple PR with the offer of a private “product briefing”. I had no idea heading into the meeting what it was about. I had no idea how it would be conducted. This was new territory for me, and I think, for Apple.
Mac OS X Mountain Lion
On Evernote
I’ve been playing around with Evernote for the first time in years, and I have to say, the app has come a long way. I’m really pleased with it as a place to catch random bits of information in a way I can get to easily from my Mac, iPhone or iPad.
Currently, I have some text notes, a bunch of images and a crapton of PDFs in there. While Evernote won’t replace writing in plaintext/Markdown for me, it is replacing a bunch of folders I had floating around on my Dropbox in a nicely-designed application.
Apple: Contact Sharing Notification Coming in Future Software Update
Motorola and Ice Cream Sandwich
Motorola has just updated its large chart with its Android 4.0 upgrade plans, including specifics on what part of the upgrade process each phone is at and rough availability dates by region. Unfortunately, it looks like there’s going to be quite a wait ahead, as most of the company’s phones still have a long way to go before they get updated: only the Xoom Family Edition, Atrix 2, Atrix 4G, Photon 4G, Xoom 2, Xoom 2 Media Edition, and the international variants of the RAZR, Xyboard 8.2 and Xyboard 10.1 have estimated release dates, and all of the updates are slated for Q3 of this year (other than the Xoom Family Edition and the RAZR, which are given a Q2 estimate).