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Apple iPad

by patrick

The iPad? Really, Steve?

That is one epically bad choice of names. I over-heard one female colleague suggest that it may be the first pad that most males won’t feel ashamed to purchase. I’m not sure that I’m convinced…

Apple is making a bold statement about the viability of micro-niches with the iPad. Wedging open the position between the iPhone and the MacBook, Apple seems to want to take on the NetBook and Kindle markets in one fell swoop. One elegant and well-thought-out swoop.

The iPad hits most of the major sweet spots for such a device. It has the horse-power, the graphics capabilities, the form-factor, the user-interface, the extant 150K+ apps ready to go, the iBook Store, the provocative price-points, and Apple’s legendarily elegant industrial design and marketing prowess.

One would have to be a fool to bet against the iPad’s game-changing success.

Only one thing has irked my ire in regard to the iPad:

3-month wait

Oh, well, maybe also the name. Steve, call me next time you need to brainstorm product names, ok?

Snow Leopard – First Impressions

by patrick

Here kitty, kitty...

It’s been 4 days now with the new cat… so far, so good.

Right off, there’s a noticeable performance boost in startup, shutdown and general Finder tasks. That, along with the 7GB reclamation of disk space makes Snow Leopard worth the price.

The new QuickTime is slick, but lacks the export features of the previous version of QuickTime Pro. Thankfully, Apple anticipated this disappointment, and put the old QuickTime in the Utilities Folder in Applications.

Some folks will undoubtedly be using older applications which require Rosetta to run. Again, Apple found an elegant solution for those who chose not to initially install Rosetta. When starting an older application, a dialogue box appears asking if you’d like to install Rosetta. If yes, then your system connects to an Apple server, downloads and installs Rosetta, and launches your application. Pretty close to hassle-free.

There are still a few software developers racing to make their applications play nicely with Snow Leopard, but most of the major developers are already on board.

The Snow Leopard upgrade is highly recommended.

End of An Era? Or, Apple 2.0?

by patrick

With the recent news that Jobs will not be delivering the Keynote at this January’s MacWorld Expo, and that this will be Apple’s last appearance at MacWorld, we are left with a sense that a transition is near for the Mac world.

It seems that there’s more at work here than a weakened economy.

There has been much speculation about Job’s health, and what a change in leadership may bring to the direction of Apple.

Speculation and rumor aside, there is no doubt that this will an historic MacWorld Expo. I will be attending with a careful eye, and ear, to the trends and emotions of this event. I go with a hopeful and excited disposition. On many levels, I believe that Apple is ready for the next stage of evolution.

Are we about to see Apple 2.o?

1962 Porsche Roadster – Sold

by patrick

This car has been sold.

In the next few weeks, as time permits, I will write a brief piece about my experience in selling this car. This may be interesting to both buyers and sellers of these rare cars.

Stay tuned.

Macs Now Found in 8 of 10 Businesses

by patrick

A new survey conducted by Yankee Group Research Inc. of more than 700 senior IT administrators and C-level executives revealed that nearly 80% of businesses have Macs in-house. This number is up from the last survey in 2006 which indicated that 47% of businesses had in-house Macs.

Two interesting details of this survey are:

21% of the firms surveyed reported having delpoyed more than 50 Macs (some ranged into the thousands)
28% of the firms reported running Windows in a virtual machine on the Macs

Clearly, virtualization software has helped catalyze this trend towards Mac delpoyment. The two leaders in virtualization software are VMware Inc. (their product is Fusion) and Parallels.

In business and in education, there is an increasing trend towards making the Mac the platform of choice. The one unfortunate side-effect from this trend may be the increased (although minimal) exposure of the Mac OS to hackers’ efforts.

Mac Sage

Apple iPad

Snow Leopard – First Impressions

End of An Era? Or, Apple 2.0?

1962 Porsche Roadster – Sold

Macs Now Found in 8 of 10 Businesses

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