Tag Archives: Apple

Steve Jobs

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What can I say about the new Steve Jobs movie other than I really enjoyed it. I came to the Mac late in life so Jobs never had the god-like status he did/does for many. This movie will seem blasphemous for those folks (like The Last Temptation of Christ).

As Aaron Sorkin has said in almost every interview, this is not a cradle-to-grave biopic. If it’s not the Steve Jobs story, it’s i Steve Jobs story and, in my opinion, a damned good one.

I like the way Aaron Sorkin writes. (And make no mistake, this is a talky movie. Noting but talk) And while he could have tried to bunt and beat it out for a single; or pull one hard to left for a stand-up double; he swung for the fence and — again, in my opinion — knocked it out of the park.

If you think the man walked on water, don’t go see this movie. If you go nuts every time Apple sets a new sales record with a product launch (looking at you Android Boy), I don’t think you’ll like it either.

If you enjoyed West Wing or The Newsroom or Social Network, I think you’ll be entertained.

I’m going to again link to a good interview (of Sorkin) by Steven Levy. If you plan to see the movie, read this first.

The Shape of Things to Come

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Two — unrelated — thoughts about this article (The Shape of Things to Come) in The New Yorker: 1) This is, as far as I can recall, the longest magazine article I’ve ever read. 2) You will see more Apple Watches than you expected.

And a few excerpts:

  • Apple employs three recruiters whose sole task is to identify designers to join the group; they find perhaps one a year.
  • In fifteen years, only two designers have left the studio—one of them because of ill health.
  • The data that Apple now sends to a manufacturer include a tool’s tracking path, speed, and appropriate level of lubricant.
  • “What the competitors don’t seem to understand is you cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money.” – Bono on Apple design team

Chase Apple Pay ad with Bleachers

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“The ad — in which Apple was heavily involved according to AdAge — follows members of an indie band as they prepare for a show by making purchases with their Chase Freedom card through Apple Pay. One gets a haircut, for instance, while another has his guitar tuned.”

My first thought on watching this ad was, “Pretty cool for a bank.” Upon closer look I saw that Apple was “heavily involved” so… Wonder if someone at Chase went to Apple and said help us make this cool, or if Apple reached out to Chase and said why don’t you let us make this cool for you.

Been using Apple Pay here at The Coffee Zone for a week now and it reminds me a bit of using my key fob to unlock the MINI. When I approach my car I just automatically click the unlock button. When I approach cash registers, will I reach for my phone without thinking?

“Hey, Siri” hands-free

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hey-siriApple’s Siri gets lot of shit but not from me. I use it more all the time (and I like “Okay, Google” as well). But Siri became even more useful when I learned I could summon him/her just by saying, “Hey, Siri” as opposed to double tapping the home button. This only works when the phone is plugged in but that makes sense if you think about it.

When I’m reading in bed in the evening the phone is charging on the bed-side table and I might say “Hey, Siri… set alarm for 7:30 tomorrow” or “Hey, Siri… new reminder. Pick up dry cleaning tomorrow afternoon.”

This feature is even more useful in the car (I just started using a cradle). “Hey, Siri… Instant Message my location to Barb” or “Hey, Siri… how far am I from Nashville?”

While it’s not difficult to reach over and double-tap the home button, I find the “Hey, Siri” feature remarkably useful.

Apple Pay

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George Kopp and I went to Panera today for lunch and to try out Apple Pay. [The video is vertical because George thought it might get more of the transaction] This took a few extra seconds because I forgot to put my thumb on the Touch ID button. Had I done so it would have automatically used the first credit card in my Passbook app. As it was, I had to tap on my VISA card and then do Touch ID. I’m just not sure how paying for something is going to get easier/faster than this.

UPDATE: I stopped by Walgreen’s for a flu shot and on the way out picked up a bag of cookies to see if I could pay with Apple Pay. And, because nutrition is important to me, I swung by McDonald’s and got some fries. What I found most interesting is at both places, the person behind the counter had obviously never heard of Apple Pay. But when I passed my phone over the scanner, the registers made a happy beep and the transaction just happened. All the counter people did was enter the amount.

I see two possible futures for Apple Pay. (And I think we’ll know in six months) It will either be an unqualified success or it will go the way of the Amazon Phone, Microsoft’s Zune or Google’s Wallet. If it flops it will be because there was insufficient demand; retailers decided they didn’t want it (for reasons good and bad) and refused to make it an option; or some other combination of factors I’m not smart enough to see.

But it won’t be because people started getting their thumbs hacked off to fool TouchID or any other Mission Impossible bullshit.

Backup

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hero_2xThis was always a challenge during my Windows days. In part because there were no now high capacity external hard drives, but mostly because it was a tedious chore. And maybe I just wasn’t smart enough of disciplined enough. Best I could manage was to copy some documents and photos to some floppies and pray I didn’t the computer HD didn’t die.

That really changed for me when I switched to Mac and started using Time Machine. When I got to the office each morning I’d plug an external hard drive in and forget about. It did incremental back-ups in the background.

While I never had a hard drive failure, I frequently needed a file that I had mistakenly deleted. I don’t recall how we addressed this in the old Windows days but seems like you had to do a full restore (a major deal) to get that one file back. With Time Machine I just flip back through the backups until I find one where the missing file existed. Just drag the file to my desktop and it’s back.

[Allow me to stipulate that smarter folks than I probably had no trouble managing backups on Windows.]

Barb has less time for this kind of routine (but critical chore) so she doesn’t do backups as often as she should but I think we’ve solved that problem.

The AirPort Time Capsule is “a superfast Wi‑Fi base station and an easy-to-use backup device all in one.” No more plugging in external hard drives. When we fire up one of our MacBooks it periodically does the incremental backup. With two terabytes of storage, the Time Capsule manages backups for both Barb and me.

Because I’m a little paranoid about backups, I also run Carbon Copy Cloner once a week. And I’m going to start keeping a copy off site.

iMovie Themes

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I’m exactly the sort of amateur Apple’s iMovie was created for. A set of simple, easy-to-use tools for editing those home movies. And it has some nice features I rarely use. Like themes. Here’s a minute of video and stills from Singapore (that I might have posted already) with one of the iMovie themes. Adds a little class I could never do on my own.

Steve Jobs Schools

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“Some 1,000 children aged four to 12 will attend the schools, without notebooks, books or backpacks. Each of them, however, will have his or her own iPad. There will be no blackboards, chalk or classrooms, homeroom teachers, formal classes, lesson plans, seating charts, pens, teachers teaching from the front of the room, schedules, parent-teacher meetings, grades, recess bells, fixed school days and school vacations. If a child would rather play on his or her iPad instead of learning, it’ll be okay. And the children will choose what they wish to learn based on what they happen to be curious about.”

More at Spiegel Online

How Apple accidentally revolutionized health care

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ipad

“A study by Manhattan Research in 2011 found that 75% of physicians owned at least one Apple product. Vitera Healthcare’s 2012 survey of health-care professionals backed up this high number. The company’s study found that 60% of respondents used an iPhone and 45% owned an iPad.”

“Yale University’s School of Medicine even did away with paper materials for training upcoming physicians. The school provided iPads and wireless keyboards to all of its medical students. Other schools followed suit.”

“By April 2012, the (Apple) App Store included more than 13,600 health-related applications.“

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