introductions are usually blad, not at Apple

Many companies over the past 2 years have been trying desperately to appease the public, and most of all their shareholders during these financial times.  One company has been moved to display a calm and really serious valor for bringing innovation in times of hardship.  That company is apple with numerous consumer items at arms length it’s only fitting that they introduce one of the most anticipated items of the year.  On January 27th Apple let the world in on a secret that only the blogs were buzzing about for months.  Apple introduced the iPad which for lack of a better word seems “perfect”.

While some people look at these kind of events with one blind eye and deaf ears, when Apple speaks it’s like the old E.F. Hutton of the 80 “people listen”.  The keynote speech is up for anyone to download, and for those interested in Apple products I would say take a look at this Keynote.  While the CEO Steve Jobs looks surprisingly well, he is very thin, when you get past his lanky stance you get to the meat and potatoes of this event “The iPad”.

Simply "Perfect!"

What is it?

Apple says “It’s the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video. Hands down.”  It’s a multi-Touch computer that enables you to do all of the above and more.  It weights just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7 inch LED display.  Talk about beautiful products, this has to go down in history as just plan ass cool.  So many people have said that the iPad just looks like and over sized iTouch.  I will say it does have some cool features that allow you to surf the web, respond to emails, watch videos, and by all means even create & edit documents and presentations using iWork.  You get productivity in a small package that can make your life easier while traveling, having a client meeting, or just plain old surfing the web.

What does it do?

Well I think every person using a iPad will have an opportunity to decide how this question is solved.  We know you can surf the internet using safari no doubt (the build in browser in all apple products).  We also know the iPad has the capability to provide email in a small package, while so many of us are tied to our desk to read, and respond to email the iPad gives you a chance to come out of your email comfort zone.  Think about those photos that you have on your computer, say you want to organize them.  You can do that and more with the iPad, it gives you a chance to edit, move, and also watch some amazing slide shows right from the iPad.  It’s helps ease your access to pictures that you would normally have to display on a laptop.  No more, you now get a chance to show the best slide shows of your summer vacation at any time to anyone.  Think about, if your a photographer, and you want to show people more about photography and how you seem to capture the moment.  It’s all right here on the iPad.  We could talk about how well the device is tied to all the music you already own in iTunes, or the more than 140,000 apps in the iTunes app stores,  no need to buy your apps all over again, they work already out of the box on the iPad

Last, but not least the iPad has something very new to the Apple Store, iBooks.  Steve Jobs showed how effortlessly the iPad is able to display your books to be used as an e-book reader.  With a battery life of about 10 hours you could read most of a great novel during a trip overseas.  While there are other e-book readers out there, I don’t think you will find one that does so much more than just read books.  Lets be honest other e-readers only display in monochrome, but don’t we read in color?

Why should I want one?

I could sit hear and think of numerous reason why the iPad would be a great purchase, weather your a mac or windows fan.  Take these notes with you How much does it weigh? 1.5 pounds.  Can I surf the internet? Yes Am I able to listen to my music? Yes Do I get a chance to slow a slide presentation with out taking 10 minutes of messing around with the VGA cables and trying to get my laptop to display on the projector? Yes Do I get more precise use of Google Maps? Yes Notes and Contacts are included.  Honestly what more can you ask for in such a small package.  While netbooks have been making great strides, you need to understand the value of this new product.  I will never say that something fits all, I think its possible that Apple has created a product that’s not only pleasing to the eye but pleasing to the pocket book.

Take some time to get to know the iPad here at the Apple site, also everybody will have an opinion it’s not right for every occasion, but it’s damn close.  Congratulations Apple for being the true innovator we always knew you were, keep up the good work.

TBTR

Its amazing how my brain works and what seems to be just a post out of the sky about Dropbox on Monday has now turned into a second post about Dropbox.  So you might ask yourself why would I post another story about Dropbox one reason is because Dropbox is just flat out Cool.  The other reason is because Dropbox has launch an iPhone app which can be downloaded as of now.

• Access your Dropbox on the go
• Download files for offline viewing
• Sync photos and videos to your Dropbox
• Share links to files in your Dropbox

Just as I was about to download the Dropbox App I found out that you must have Ver 3.1 installed on your iPhone or iTouch.  I was using the iTouch, so since I can’t use the App at this time if any of my iPhone toting friends can let me know what they think in the comments I would appreciate it very much.

Tr.im is resurrected along with the fire storm that started it all, We discuss the new Microsoft Zune HD which is gonna try once again to compete with the Apple iPod, and last we discuss the New Mac OS X snow leopard software that hit shelves on 8/28/2009.

Thanks,

TBTR

Tweetgrid has created an accessible page for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  While it’s not a App Store application it does give those iPhone users access to the custom searches and real time updates that makes Tweetgrid a widely used website.

Look here for the iPhone site

Leave comments and tell me how you like it.

TBTR

Remember when I said this as a joke?

Just for shits and giggles lets assume your out somewhere ladies and you see a hot guy with an iPhone, tell him if he can cut, copy, and paste on his iPhone you will go home with him no questions asked and do all the things he likes… Then when he has racked his brain and figured out he can’t do it say, I’m going over to the guy with the blackberry curve cause he can cut, copy and paste… Full Post here

Well Copy and paste on the iPhone is here…well…sort of. It seems the feature should be coming to the iPhone pretty damn soon. Take are look at this article from GeekBrief.tv. For me this might mean I’ll finally buy one, not really but I’ll look at them more now when I’m in the apple store.

It seems that Zac White a college student has figured out how to implement copy and past on any iPhone App without violating the iPhone SDK agreement. He has started a website called Openclip.org to introduce it take a look here. Ah…. an you thought it was not there because of some coding crap when it turns out that Apple just said it wasn’t a priority.

Here is the Video Explaining how it works:

Cut and Paste for iPhone from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

So remember “Don’t play my little joke on anyone, you just might wake up next to them”

Enjoy,

TBTR

While I love technology I decided when the iphone came out not to even think about spending that kind of money to be what I called a “BETA tester”. If you were one of the lucky ones who was able to plop down the money then great for you, but I gotta ask how does it feel to pay Apple to test the iphone?

Fast Forward to last weeks introduction of the 3G iphone cost lower, but not really it’s hidden. Now I will not call the new iphone users “BETA testers” but I will say I envy you all and wish I could buy one but that’s a whole nother story.

Now to the problem yesterday I sent a co-worker here who has a new 3G iphone the corporate wifi key he wanted to connect with his new iphone. This wifi has the longest wireless key I have ever created about 63 characters and symbols long. Today I get an email from the users saying the key is wrong. I advised him it’s not wrong and if he paste and copy correctly he will then be able to use said wifi.

This is when I got the shocker…. he said he can’t copy and paste with the iphone. I was like WTF you got to be kidding me dude that’s some Bullshit. So I took a stroll down to his desk to see what the hell is wrong with this guy and I was about to caulk this up as another person with money that does not know how to use technology.

But to my surprise when I got there he was right I tried everything in the world to get this thing to copy and paste, well in the end it did not work. I guess this does not work because of the interface they use to make the screen touchable. To me I think they could have figured out a way to do it, but whateva.

While looking up how to cut and paste on the iphone I came across this video which shows you how this could work if they figured out a way to do it at Apple.

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

I guess when you pay all that money they have to figure out a way to keep you pissed off waiting for the next update release in hopes of new features.

You would think that something so simple would already be built into the iphone, oh well.

Just for shits and giggles lets assume your out somewhere ladies and you see a hot guy with an iphone, tell him if he can cut, copy, and paste on his iphone you will go home with him no questions asked and do all the things he likes… Then when he has racked his brain and figured out he can’t do it say, I’m going over to the guy with the blackberry curve cause he can cut, copy and paste…

Disclaimer one day they will figure it out and when they do, don’t blame me if you didn’t get the memo and your still using the above joke, the joke will be on you, or maybe not…

TBTR

I use itunes to purchase new music and to import my old cds on occasion. Well lately I have been wanting to concentrate on things at my computer weather its surfing the internet, blogging, or writing technical documents at work. Today I was sitting around and decided to look up white noise which is sort of noise canceling music. In itunes there are many tracks to choose from I will say that I never thought in a million years that I would purchase something like this but I did. In fact I purchased a track called “brown noise”. There were two versions one runs for 60 minutes and the other runs for 4 minutes. I started the track and then started to blog but noticed that at the end of the track the sound would always fade just enough to notice and throw my concentration off right before the track would repeat. I then decided to look around and saw a post from someone on how to stop this annoying thing from happening. Making this change to the track in itunes lets you loop the track to keep the brown noise playing for hours on end.

Here is where I share with you how to:

1. Right click the track, and click “get info”
2. Click options
3. If the track is showing for example 4:00 minutes in the stop time area and you notice the fade out starts at oh lets say 3:55 minutes change the time of the track in this window to 3:30 minutes. You could change it to 3:54 but that might be to close to the end and you might get some of the fade out.
4. Now set the track to loop by choosing to repeat the track and there you have it. Not only will it loop for hours on end but you also only paid $.99 for the short track instead of the $9.99 for the 60 minute version.

TBTR has helped save you $9.00 that could go towards a starbucks chi tea or soon a full gallon of gas.

TBTR

So you thought you got away with a nice new Mac and other stolen goods. Here is a story that speaks to the heart of the digital age. A Mac users apartment was burglarized, normally you fill out the police report information, file the insurance papers if you had insurance, wait for the premium to go up oh, and just caulk it up as a lost. But now days we have so many ways of finding our laptops with factory installed programs and with .Mac service from apple. This user was able to use back to my mac software. Which is like a screen sharing program it enabled her to use the photo booth application on her laptop to take a picture of the thieves. Then a little trip to the police station, with picture and evidence in hand an arrest was made. So the moral of the story is 1.) Hide your Mac when company comes over and 2.) Pay for the subscription to .mac service…

Read the rest of the story here

TBTR

First I wanna say thank you to all my friends on twitter without yall I might not have put all my RSS feeds in Google Reader. If that had not happened I would not then be telling you this story till tomorrow or next week. I’m just gonna say a little prayer for RSS Feeds……

Some of you may remember the beef between NBC and Apples iTunes service. I’m not 100% sure the reason for the falling out but it happened thus leading NBC to partner with FOX for hulu.com. Some of you might ask what is Hulu it’s a place to see TV shows from NBC and FOX online. The quality of the video is pretty good and while you do have to see some commercials in the videos there is only one commercial to watch and it’s not 3 minutes long. While hulu does have praise for what it’s providing to us at a cost thats free, the problem lies in the fact that you can’t download any of the videos to your ipod or other media device. Also it’s only available to IP addresses from the US, I don’t know what that’s all about but I guess they think someone’s gonna steal the videos or something… Or maybe they know outside the US they can do things put up other splash pages and make the site there own over in Israel or something, I’m still scratching my head on this one but whatever. In the long run this is what will cause problems for hulu but as it stand to be able to see your favorite shows online at no cost is just another way to get me away from the Boob Tube.

Oh the lunch of Hulu is scheduled for March 12, 2008 get ready to hear the news tonight about it somewhere other than here.

TBTR

Today I came across a story that seems to shed light on a long standing problem with Hollywood and MPAA. It seems that Lionsgate has signed up with itunes to provide a link to a download copy of the movie when you purchase a new DVD released movie. Now for those of us who live and breath the Internet and the possibilities this is amazing.

1. It provides a backup copy of the original movie with out the Law breathing down your neck.
2. You can now watch this movie without having to always open the case, or find it for that matter.

The full story is here

After the tremendous launch of the newest gadget from Apple I finally decided to drop a little science on the community at large. When Steve Jobs talks it’s like the old E. F. Hutton commercials “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen” well change that to “When Steve Jobs talks, geeks listen”. In my opinion he is a great visionary and he must eat and sleep innovation. Ok getting back to the topic at hand.While most are talking about how thin the new MacBook Air is 0.76 inch thick, we don’t really say ” has there ever been a thinner laptop” My understanding is that there was one created by Mitsubishi back in 1997 but we know where they are today in the computer industry. When this MacBook Air was introduced I knew it had great innovation but at the same time something has to be sacrificed. Everyone looks at how thin the laptop is and how beautiful the lines are and the design. Well don’t let that sheep’s wool fool you.Here are the problems I see with the new MacBook Air this is in no order so please get a life:

• The MacBook Air has one USB port, and guess what else No build in optical (CD-ROM drive), Firewire, Ethernet or Mobile Broadband. Also staying with the norm, no Media Card reader or expansion slot.
• No interchangeable battery, I guess that means you will be calling your local apple store for an appointment, more of your productive time gone in the wind.

I think you see where I’m going with this I guess if you only surf the net, and you live eat and sleep itunes, and the new movies you can download from apple, then by far this is the Laptop for you. Otherwise you might want to buy a real Mac, with real ports you can stick real things into and gain instant excitement. There is nothing finner then running 5 USB ports with 1 firewire and SD slots to boot.

The MacBook Air does have the iSight camera and mic attached, and also an LED-backlit display that seems to work with an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness and such. I am glad that the keyboard seems to be the same size as that found on the other MacBooks backlight keys and such also.

Well on another note there is something really cool with the trackpad from my understanding it works with multi touch gestures. I guess other Mac’s let you use two fingers to scroll through documents and this one lets you use three fingers, seem like a seen straight out of I,Robot or Minority Report.

Getting down to the meat and bones of it all the HD is only an 80GB HD and it’s slow as hell it’s only 4,200RPM, OMG talk about the dark ages, But hold the phone apple did this special for you, see you can upgrade to the 64GB SSD (solid state hard drive) which reduces heat and is a big faster but WTF it’s a $999 upgrade for less HD space, you have got to be kidding me. Let the hoodwinking begin for sure right here at this point.

Finally I guess I wanted to write this because I’m tired of all the talk about this unit, It’s pretty it sits on the slopes of innovation, and for most we would love to take a ride, but at what cost? I mean if you have $1,799 just sitting around and you wanna get a great machine to have while your sipping coffee at your local Starbucks then by all means go for the gusto with all the upgrades. But if you really want a Mac and it’s gonna be your first Mac don’t make a mistake and get this one, it will only disappoint you.

P.S. When I finally touch the Mac then I will repost and probably lick the screen, but until that day the MacBook Air is just over bloated like a Grandmother with water on her ankles. She can stand up to the best of them, but only for so long, then she gonna be hurting to sit her ass down.

Peace,

Jayson