Suggestions and recommendations would be appreciated!
]]>There was a time, back in the mid 1990s, when I thought Apple might close down. Fortunately, the drama continues. Back then the predictions of Apple’s fate were fast and furious, a similar frenzy to how well Apple’s products will fare today. Are your predictions as stupid as these?
It’s a lot more fun to look back on a string of crazy wild predictions than it is to select which predictions will actually come true.
Back in 1997, Wired magazine published 101 Ways to Save Apple.
Some of the predictions were obviously adopted by Steve Jobs and the NeXT agents of change when they stormed Apple’s gates in 1997.
Others are just plain looney. For example, #1:
1. Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes.
We can be very glad Apple did not take that advice. #13 looks like the forerunner of Apple’s highly successful Get A Mac television commercial campaign.
13. Exploit every Wintel user’s secret fear that some day they’re going to be thrown into a black screen with a blinking C-prompt. Advertise the fact that Mac users never have to rewrite autoexec.bat or sys.ini files.
Others are more notable and on target. Get rid of the cables and go wireless. Create a new logo. Build a PDA for less than $250 that actually does something. Port the OS to Intel. Build a laptop that weighs 2 pounds. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants. Build a computer that doesn’t crash. Click Here for the full list.
It may not pay to prognosticate Apple’s future from the present, but it makes for wonderful reading in the present. Consider these choice gems from the past. From Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, 1998.
The iMac will only sell to some of the true believers. The iMac doesn’t include a floppy disk drive drive for doing file backups or sharing of data. It’s an astonishing lapse from Jobs, who should have learned better… the iMac is clean, elegant, floppy-free–and doomed.
Our old whipping boy, Rob Enderle is always good for a few laughs. Here’s what he said just before Apple switched to Intel chips and the Mac began to sell in record numbers.
The biggest long-term problem with moving to an Apple platform is that the company is in decline.” — Rob Enderle, in October 2003.
Rob is also the guy who said, “The expectation on the iPod is that HP’s version will probably outsell Apple’s version relatively quickly.” Obviously, HP’s Invent slogan didn’t apply to the iPod.
What about the Mac in the pocket, Apple’s hot-selling iPhone? Matthew Lynn:
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks.
Looks like there are about 50-million gadget freaks. Then, there’s the every inaccurate Dave Winer in 1997:
The idea that they’re going to go back to the past to hit a big home run… is delusional.
Of course, Apple’s home runs since 1997 include the iMac, the iPod, the iTunes Store, the Mac notebook line, the iPhone, record revenues, record stock price, record profits.
In fact, Wired’s The 15 Dumbest Apple Predictions Of All Time are just the tip of a very big iceberg.
What’s your success rate predicting Apple’s success or failures? Mine runs about 50-50. Half the time I’m wrong. The other half I’m simply not correct.
Will Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch be supplanted by Android-powered smart phones? Will the iPad succeed where other PC tablets have failed? If so, why? If not, why not? What about the Cloud? Will Apple finally make the move to online storage for everything—music, photos, movies, TV shows? If so, how? If not, why not?
]]>I found out that Colorbyte Software’s Imageprint is not happy when you try to upgrade with MacUpdate Desktop.
It took tech support 25 minutes to find out that Snow Leopard has a font problem with updates from MacUpdate Desktop.
Not a pretty sight.
I would recommend using MacUpdate to track your applications and then just go to the application homepage to upgrade.
]]>That brings up a logical question. Do Mac users need Adobe’s Flash player? If you enjoy crashing Safari, the answer is a qualified yes. Besides crashes, what does Flash really give to Mac users? Can we do without Flash on a Mac?
Adobe’s Flash is billed as an interactive multi-media platform that provides animation and interactivity to web pages.
Flash can run on Macs or PCs in a standalone mode. Browsers need the Flash plugin to display Flash files.
Many of the advertisements viewed on web pages are made using Flash. Some web sites feature an interactive Flash environment with visual capability beyond typical web sites of XHTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Flash video is the de factor video standard on the internet. So, why isn’t Flash available on the iPhone and iPad? Why do we need it on the Mac? Flash is considered the number one cause of crashes for Mac users.
The controversy surrounding Flash is growing. Google is slowly moving away from using Flash to stream videos in YouTube. No Flash anything on the iPhone or iPad.
Last week, TheFlashBlog put up a graphic which was designed to show how a bunch of popular web sites would look on Apple’s iPad. It wasn’t a pretty site sight. Each web site featured the prominent Plugin Needed block instead of the Flash animation.
Someone else actually bothered to look at those same web sites using an iPhone and the result was much different; posting the question, “Do you really need Flash for the Web?”
Web sites have Flash games, Flash interactive animation, and Flash advertisements. What else? If the iPhone and iPad don’t need Flash, do Mac users need Flash?
No. Flash is technology from the 20th century, a vestige from the 1990s, an eye candy salute to Java’s write once, run everywhere mantra. Mac users do not need Flash. Flash will go the Internet Explorer route—a slow fall from grace, a lingering and painful remembrance of the past.
Mac users run into Flash in three basic areas. Flash ads and effects. Flash games. Flash interactive sites. And probably in that order.
Flash ads can be defeated easily by Safari users with Click2Flash, a nifty utility which disguises Flash with a gray wall, and prevents them from running until you click the wall. Highly recommended if Flash ads annoy you.
Flash games are popular, though, compared to games on the iPod touch or iPhone, rather anemic and limited. Flash animated games are no match for standalone games on any platform, Mac, Windows, iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad. Good riddance.
That brings up Flash web sites. Here’s the Top 10 Flash Sites of 2010. Advertising agencies and many web designers love Flash because it offers an opportunity to bill clients lots of money to create an entertaining design.
The question is, can we do without all that eye candy and have an internet with open standards vs. proprietary requirements? There is a growing movement among web standards promoters to leave Flash behind and move on toward HTML 5, CSS, and Javascript.
My view is simple. The internet doesn’t need another proprietary standard like Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight (which does basically the same thing as Flash).
Apple, Google, and many others think the internet would do just fine without Flash. I’ve been running Click2Flash for a couple of months to block out Flash on Safari. Mac users will never miss it. Your Mac will run cooler and have fewer crashes. What’s not to like about Flash going away?
]]>Also, a lot of my photos are in .raw format. I have heard that iphoto turns them into .jpg for you automatically, is this true? Does it keep the original format of .raw? When I post them to other sites like facebook or flicker, does it post raw or jpg?
Thanks for any help! Love my mac so far!!
Scott
]]>And more. Love it, hate it, or just indifferent about it all, Apple may have finally created a device worthy of the monicker, “the computer for the rest of us.”
The noise you’re hearing and reading about the iPad seems to fall into a few basic camps. First, the question: “What will I use it for?” That’s a good question, because we know why we use our Macs and PCs, and we know why we use the iPhone. But what’s so special about a ‘tweener device?
After all, the iPad is missing so much. No Flash. No built-in keyboard. No video camera. No multi-tasking. No HDMI video port. No USB. The iPad can’t and won’t replace our iPhones (or any decent smart phone). It’s too big.
Yes, it might be fast and pretty and fun to hold, but it still cannot do all that a lowly MacBook can do, right? So, what’s the iPad good for?
Fraser Spiers covers it nicely using the term from Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock.
Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.
In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.
This is the hard part. There was a time when automobiles were all the rage. To own and use an automobile gave promised freedom—but that freedom came with a price. Automobiles required mechanic skills to keep it running (sounds like owning a Windows PC). Shifting and driving was difficult to learn for all except the adventurous.
Automobile owners needed to get under the hood and tinker, change oil, lube this or that, adjust that or this. Over time, just like anti-virus software publishers, stations and garages popped up to handle the maintenance needs of the growing automobile population.
Then, automatic transmissions and air conditioners came along to make driving easy and comfortable for the masses. Many people today have no idea how to use a standard stick shift automobile.
By creating a device that uses touch for navigation instead of a keyboard, mouse, or stylus, Apple has disrupted the smart phone market. Smart phones of just three years ago were not so smart. Today, in less than three years, any smart phone that doesn’t mimic Apple’s iPhone interface isn’t so smart.
The iPad is the future of computing for the masses. Why? Understand what’s happening already. The iPhone is missing the keyboard and mouse, missing Flash, missing USB, multi-tasking, and more. Just like the iPad. Yet, the iPhone was definitely a game-changer, and embarrassed technology pundits who thought otherwise.
The future isn’t always easy to understand when viewed from the past or the present.
At first glance, the iPad seems very limited. Remember, the iPhone was doomed because it was limited, too. No video camera. No MMS. No USB. No Flash. No 3G. Obviously, those who bought the iPhone didn’t care much about such PowerPoint bullet items. They wanted a cell phone that was smart, easy to use, fun to use, and did the basics very well.
How is the iPad not the same? Software provides functionality as sauce provides enhanced taste to a meal. For now, iPad software is iPhone software, but that won’t be the case in one year. The bigger screen means more functionality wrapped up in an easy, instantly understandable package.
In the past and present, Mac and PC users were handcuffed to complexity. Both had to be learned to be used. Most users didn’t bother to learn the intricacies of either, limiting tasks and usage to email, browsing, reading, writing, and only occasionally dipping the toe into deeper digital waters.
The iPhone’s sauce showed us that functionality could also be easy and fun, and somewhat liberating. How many of us, as Mac or Windows PC users, have ventured into mobility mode armed only with an iPhone? More and more, my MacBook Pro has been relegated to a lonely life on the desktop, rather than encased in a bag and weighing down my shoulder as I trudge from here to there with briefcase, purse, and Bag ‘o Mac™.
The iPad means there will be fewer and fewer times when the MacBook Pro makes a journey with me. An iPad will fit in a decent sized purse or handbag, negating the need for a traveling Mac.
Not much. Yet. Remember, the iPhone was a big hit for a whole year before there were 3rd party applications available for purchase. The iTunes App Store is barely 18 months old. Sometimes the future isn’t easy to see because we fixate so much on the present, and we’re too often guided by the past. Just as the iPhone 3GS is a remarkably improved device when compared to the original iPhone of 2007, does it not stand to reason that the same will be of the iPad in 2012?
What the iPhone did to disrupt the smart phone market is obvious. Similarly, the iPad will disrupt the low cost, casual computing market segment—older adults, students in school, mobile adults, non-technical computer users—those who want basics without complexity.
Most people who buy a netbook PC don’t buy it for all the things it can do. The price is acceptable for lightweight mobile computing which all too often is email, browsing, reading, writing, instant messaging, calendar, and a few other general tasks.
The netbook doesn’t address the market of Photoshop or Microsoft Office users. Neither will the iPad. Like an automatic transmission, the iPad will open computer functionality to masses of people who feel threatened and are inhibited by the complexity and maintenance requirements of the Macs and PCs.
When was the last time you opened the hood of your car and looked inside? My father used to change the car’s oil, give it tune-ups, and was constantly tinkering inside. These days, he just drives the car, washes it from time to time, but seldom looks under the hood, and definitely doesn’t worry about it.
The iPad may be a sealed hood device with an automatic transmission, but people will line up to buy it because the experience will be more pleasurable, productive, and efficient. It will not be long before the iPad replaces your Mac and PC.
]]>Instead of buying a camcorder with a mic jack for a shotgun microphone, I’ve read that I could record the audio on an MP3 player, then edit the video and audio files together using iMovie. I read that I should clap my hands in view of the recording camera to help with the syncing.
Now, rather than using an MP3 player for recording, couldn’t I simply use my computer with a decent microphone to capture the audio file?
Are there any warnings or comments you can give me about doing this? I’ve got a Macintosh PowerBook G4, 1 GHz processor, 512 RAM, OS 10.5.8, which is the highest I can go with my PowerPC processors.
On another topic: backup. I don’t understand why backup can’t be taken care of simply with a few flash drives, and perhaps the online storage services. Why all the talk about external drives?
Thanks very much!
]]>At the moment they are on dial-up and they’re going to go ADSL. First, there is a G3 Yosemite running Tiger, then a brand new MacBookPro on Snow Leopard. They want to be able to use the MBP around the house, in the garden etc, so it needs to work wirelessly, using the same ADSL account, but it would be best to have the G3 connected to ADSL via ethernet cable. Can this be done, and what’s the method of doing it?
If it can be done, it would also be good to add a Windows desktop to the mix; it would be on (or should I say “under”) the same desk as the G3; a KVM switch might be an idea but there should be space for a second monitor.
Thank you in advance.
]]>I would appreciate any and all suggestions from members of this forum. It is set up with comment buttons where your suggestions, opinions, may be posted.
This is my site http://www.the-archiving-grammy.com
If you have time, please take a look.
Thanks,
The Archiving Grammy