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Writers I Read: Thomas Brand
For this interview, I talked with Thomas Brand, the fine-looking young man behind Egg Freckles, a well-written technology blog that is themed to like like an Apple Newton. Seriously, it’s freaking awesome. Stephen: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. You and I have a lot in common, as it turns out. Can you give our lovely readers a little of your background? Thomas: Stephen, you are one of my favorite bloggers to read, because we are both of a similar age, and appear to have a similar history using Macs. I grew up with a Macintosh in the house. My Dad says it was a 512k, but I always thought it was the original 128k Mac. I learned to write and paint on that Mac before I could even held a pencil or a brush. It was not until elementary school that I experienced an Apple IIe, Logo, or the command line. Born in 1983 I am a child of the GUI.
I studied graphic arts in college because I didn’t know what to do with myself, but knew I wanted to use Macs in my profession. I was constantly distracted by people asking me for technical advice, or help fixing their computers. I took my school through the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, Netbooting the computer labs in between classes to make use of a limited set of software licenses. Mid way through college Apple made plans to open a new retail store down the street. The year was 2003 and I dropped out of college to become a Mac Genius.
From what I am told the first Mac Genius were all Apple engineers. The second generation were die-hard Apple fans like myself. I don’t know what generation Apple is on today, but when I worked behind the bar a Mac Genius could help you with Classic Mac OS extensions conflicts, or Unix file permission errors. We were not afraid to fix beige boxed Macs, or multi-processor G5 towers. A lot has changed behind Apple’s Genius Bar support model. When I worked the bar their was no concierge. You were supposed to help everyone who came in the door with a question, and keep track of the queue in your head. There were no Creatives or One-to-One Specialists. No Genius Bar admins with an iPad in hand maintaining order. We were the face of Apple customer service, and I loved it.
‘Not Playing Games’
I joined Patrick and Myke for episode 90 of the Enough podcast. We talked about why I don’t play games on my iPhone.
Firefox to Drop Leopard Support? [UPDATED]
Mozilla engineering manager Josh Aas proposed ending support for OS X Leopard in six months. It lets Mozilla address any final bug or security fixes and gives Leopard owners time to upgrade if they want. Leopard owners don’t have to upgrade as the current version of Firefox will continue to work. They just won’t receive any supplemental security fixes or enhancements to the browser.
While Hodgkins doesn’t mention this, dropping Leopard will mean PPC-based Mac users will be left behind as well.
Read & Trust Welcomes Brett Terpstra & Matt Gemell
Capture Form — Reworked in TextExpander
Back in September, I shared the “Capture Form” I created to take notes in meetings.
I’ve been using this form consistently, but have come to a point where my system breaks down when moving from the paper to my computer. Things aren’t making it in to OmniFocus, iCal, etc. Additionally, in some meetings, I have to have my laptop or iPad with me, so bringing paper and pen seemed like too much to carry.
I Know I’m Cranky, But Munster Always Bothers Me
Dear Business Insider,
Gene Munster is hardly an “Apple Guru.” A monkey could make these predictions, probably with the same — or better — accuracy.
Love,
Stephen
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime
It’s cool. When the tablet is in the keyboard dock, it looks like an iPad 1 attached to a MacBook Pro.
Wait, is cool the right word?
I hate the world.
‘A Great Coaster’
I’ll be with you in just a minute, I’m just finishing some online holiday shopping. There’s nice deal on a Kindle Fire. That would make a great coaster for my iPad.
Millions of Smartphones Tracking Users’ Every Move
The Android developer who raised the ire of a mobile-phone monitoring company last week is on the attack again, producing a video of how the Carrier IQ software secretly installed on millions of mobile phones reports most everything a user does on a phone.
Though the software is installed on most modern Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones, Carrier IQ was virtually unknown until 25-year-old Trevor Eckhart of Connecticut analyzed its workings, revealing that the software secretly chronicles a user’s phone experience — ostensibly so carriers and phone manufacturers can do quality control.
‘Cooking With Brett And Myke’
My pals Brett Kelly and Myke Hurley have a new podcast. It really is very, very funny. Go check it out.
The Fire Loses Round One
Vivek Gowri, Anand Lal Shimpi:
I’m curious to see how this plays out. The e-ink Kindle has a unique (perfect?) form factor and delivers a pretty good experience. The Kindle Fire has a more generic form factor (perhaps too small for certain uses?) and delivers a varied experience depending on what you’re doing. I appreciate what Amazon is trying to do here: good tablet experiences shouldn’t cost as much as much higher performing computing devices, and cheap tablets shouldn’t sacrifice everything to get there. The Kindle Fire is Amazon’s first attempt at bridging the gap between those two extremes. It’s the best out today given its price point, but it’s not the best Amazon could have done. I’m waiting for round two.