One of the unfortunate aspects of my business life is the need to keep Microsoft Office running on my Macs (ditto for Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of graphic apps). Why? Standards. Word, Excel, PowerPoint. A chunk of the … Continue Reading »
Archives for March 2015
Apple, The Mac, And The Halo Effect
A funny thing happened to Apple along the way to the 21st century. Despite millions of loyal fans, the company almost folded. Despite the iMac, the PowerBook, and a lean and mean product lineup, Apple’s marketshare dropped at … Continue Reading »
Free: Album Art For Mac From iTunes
Do you like album art on iTunes? Why? Alright, album art is free, and it makes iTunes look good when every song or album has art attached. That’s about it. It looks good. It’s salves the OCD gene … Continue Reading »
One Mac App Prints Almost Everything
Printing is dead. Well, maybe not completely dead. But certainly on life support, waiting for the priest to perform the Last Rites. What killed (or, if you prefer, maimed) printing? It all started with email, but Apple helps … Continue Reading »
Why Is It Always About Hardware Specs?
My husband stopped by a Microsoft Store and looked at the new Surface Pro running Windows and a cheap little ASUS notebook that cost less than $300. For awhile he rattled off the specifications of each device and … Continue Reading »
Your Mac Needs Gum Sized Storage
For Mac, iPhone, and iPad users, one of the problems we face these days is an age old problem. Storage. Disk drives are cheap and come with massive storage, but they’re also huge, heavy, hot, and have too … Continue Reading »
Guess Who Is Chasing Apple’s iCloud?
As cloud services go, Apple, as always, is late to the game. Cloud storage options flourished and proliferated long before Apple’s first major attempt with MobileMe (remember iTools?). Typical of Apple, even iCloud started life a bit bumpy, … Continue Reading »
Apple Rumors: A 4-inch iPhone 6c And A Competitor Trade-in Program
Despite Apple Watch and MacBook dominating the company’s news recently, there are plenty of below-the-surface topics to talk about. The iPhone. Apple customers and Apple critics alike have called for the company to produce a smaller iPhone 6; … Continue Reading »
A New Way To Sync And Manage Browser Bookmarks On Your Mac
Browser bookmarks are a pain. They’re painful to manage and curate. They’re painful to sync between browsers. A few years ago I ran into an app developer who specializes in browser bookmarks. In the years since then, the … Continue Reading »
Find New TV Shows On Your Mac
As a certified, card-carrying member of the boomer generation, I can attest to the nature of change. Change may be slow, maybe subtle, but it is an inexorable fact of life. Things change. Unfortunately, I remember growing up … Continue Reading »
Apple Loves Money More Than Microsoft
It’s both common and easy to bash Apple nemesis Microsoft as a greedy, money-loving corporate enterprise with no shame, ethics, or conscience. There’s little doubt that Microsoft, as a corporation run by smart, experienced people, is a highly … Continue Reading »
Android To iPhone, Windows To Mac: Why People Switch
Generally speaking people are fickle, yours truly included. So I had one bad experience with an organ grinder’s monkey at a McDonald’s in Manhattan. Is that a good reason to switch to Burger King? The truth of switching … Continue Reading »
Apple And Microsoft’s Dueling Strategies
The smartphone industry is made up of three heavyweights. Google’s Android, which commands the most marketshare. Then, Apple’s iPhone, which commands the most profit share. The third heavyweight is Microsoft which mostly missed the mobile industry revolution but … Continue Reading »
Fail: What Watch Does Not Have
The more I look at every piece of information about the Watch the more I realize how far off base Apple’s design and engineering teams really are. There should be little question that Apple has jumped the product … Continue Reading »
What Watch People Think Of Watch
Somehow I recall seeing this story unfold in the past. An upstart company introduces a new gadget which upends an industry. Sound familiar, Apple watchers? The Mac changed the course of personal computing. The iPod changed how, when, … Continue Reading »
Internet TV: We Know It’s Coming, But Will Apple Be The One To Bring It?
If ever there was handwriting on the wall and handwringing among cable TV executives, it’s what’s happening now in the good old U.S. of A. Internet TV is coming and what it promises to be is what we … Continue Reading »
Got Little Kids? Get This Mac App
My life as a teacher spans a few generations already, and I’m not really sure whether the current crop of kids has it better or worse than my generation. Here’s what I mean. We didn’t have the learning … Continue Reading »
Snail Mail Is Alive And Well On A Mac
Sure, we’ve lived in the internet age for a few years, and we’re on the cusp of a new age, too, the Internet of Things age where everything gets connected. Guess what? We still have a postal delivery … Continue Reading »