May 4 - 8 is ’Roid Week 2009. My contributions will be collected here.
posts
More Twitter Tips
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.
Damn It, Rob Enderle
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.
Revolutionaries Get Overtaken
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.
On Macs in the Newsroom and Rhapsody
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.
On Unneeded Nerdgasms
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:
Still No 10.5.7 Update
Mac Rumors, on the most recent developer build of the next update to Leopard:
As with numerous previous developer builds, the inability to install Safari 4 Beta remains the only documented issue. Development on OS X 10.5.7 has been presumed to be wrapping up for several weeks now, but Apple appears to still be finding a few bugs that require their continued attention. The last developer release, Build 9J56, was seeded in the middle of last week.
Old Illustrator Video Brings Back The 80s’ Design Awesomeness
[via blogs.adobe.com]
More than 400 Milliseconds
Gizmodo has some info on how Windows 7 ought to be faster in ways that are, well, noticeable:
Microsoft obviously focused a lot on the user experience in Windows 7, so a lot of work went into improving desktop responsiveness—smoothing out the little snags or hangs up that made people feel like Vista was too slow. Which is apparently a hard thing to do, since a million different things can cause slowdown. But the most frequent cause of hangups is a bottleneck caused by one graphics device interface application—an app that taps your graphics card—waiting on another GDI app that’s being all slow and crappy.
400 Milliseconds
As Windows 7 moves closer to release, Microsoft seems ready for people to forget about Vista - and rightfully so. In an effort to swing the spotlight to Windows 7, Microsoft employees have been spending some time with the press. Here’s a bit from John Curran, Microsoft UK’s director, Windows Client Group, talking to the BBC:
We were able to shave 400 milliseconds off the shutdown time by slightly trimming the WAV file shutdown music. It’s indicative of really the level and detail and scrutiny on Windows 7.
Apple Building Custom Chipsets?
The Silicon Valley trend-setter has been hiring people from many different segments of the semiconductor industry, including engineers to create multifunction chips that are used in cellphones to run software and carry out other chores.
Apple could use the internally developed chips to sharply reduce the power consumption of its hit iPhone and iPod touch devices, and possibly add graphics circuitry to help its hardware play realistic game software and high-definition videos, people familiar with its plans say.
AOL, It’s Been a Painful 20 Years
PC World has taken a look back over the last 20 years of AOL:
As the 1990s progressed, the company lived up to the promise of its new moniker, doing more than any other to introduce the country to the online world. As the Internet took off, it served as the most important on-ramp to what was often called the Information Highway. And although today’s AOL is no longer the country’s dominant ISP, its services and sites add up to the fourth most popular property on the Web, from instant-messaging kingpin AIM to muckraker TMZ.com to video engine Truveo.