This app runs in the background on your app and makes typewriter noises while you type. It picks up keyboard input from any app your working in, meaning that you can be sure and annoy the heck out of everyone around you no matter what you are doing! Seriously, though, we think this is a…
Bryan Chaffin
Bryan Chaffin is the cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and co-authored the last two updates of iPad and iPad Pro for Dummies with Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus and Ed Baig. You can find out more about Bryan at his personal site, GeekTells, or find his Twitter link below.
Articles by Bryan Chaffin
Yahoo! Scores Coup by Tapping Google Exec for CEO
“I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet’s premier destinations for more than 700 million users,” Ms. Mayer said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the Company’s dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world.” Marissa Mayer Credit:…
Apple Calls EPEAT Pullout Mistake in Open Letter
Apple VP Bob Mansfield Apple pulled its Mac product line from EPEAT last weekend. EPEAT measures recyclability in computers, and all of Apple’s Mac line had top EPEAT ratings, with the exception of the company’s new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Speculation is that because the battery in that model is glued in, it wouldn’t…
IDC & Gartner Show Q2 Mac Share Gains for Apple
Both companies said Apple was the third largest PC company in the U.S. Chart by The Mac Observer from Gartner Data In addition to the differing share and unit sales figures from the two research companies, they also differed with their relative performance numbers for Apple. IDC said that Apple’s Mac unit sales declined from…
iPad Newspaper ‘The Daily’ Could Face Chopping Block
Launched in February of 2011, The Daily was a big gamble by News Corp. when it was envisioned in 2010. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch bought into then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s vision of the iPad as the future of media consumption long before the iPad was the massive success it is today. The company built…
San Francisco Blocks Mac Purchases After Apple EPEAT Pull Out
EPEAT is an environmental organization that certifies products based on their recyclability, among other criteria. Apple was one of the founding companies that established those criteria in 2006, and EPEAT certification is now required for purchases by some institutions, including cities like San Francisco. The news that Apple had pulled its Mac products from EPEAT…
UN Standards Body to Host Patent Litigation Round Table
Standards-essential patents are patents that have been pledged by the patent holder to be included within a standard. This includes everything from SIM cards to radio chipsets to what constitutes various flavors of 3G, 4G, and other wireless protocols. In exchange for being part of the standard, the patent holder agrees to charge fair, reasonable,…
Samsung Galaxy Nexus Phone Pulled, Google Plans Workaround
Apple won an injunction in June after a federal judge ruled that Apple was likely to prove that Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab 10.1 both infringed on an Apple patent, and that the validity of the patent would be upheld. It was the first significant win for any of the Apple vs. Android court…
Steve Jobs: ‘The Lost Interview’ Available on iTunes
According to Mr. Cringely, some ten minutes of the interview was used in Triumph, which is an excellent look at early history of Silicon Valley and the birth of the personal computer. When announcing this project, he said that the rest of the interview was long considered lost until the passing of Steve Jobs in…
Patent Office Expands with Silicon Valley Office
New Patent Office Locations The move comes amidst a major expansion in the number of patents being applied for, especially by companies based in Silicon Valley. The USPTO said that it hopes the new offices will help cut down on the backlog of patent applications being generated every year. The agency has heretofore been based…
Apple OS X Veteran Bertrand Serlet Shows Up There
Bertrand Serlet & Upthere in the Cloud Bertrand Serlet worked at Xerox PARC, and went to work with Steve Jobs when he founded NeXT computer. When Apple bought NeXT, Mr. Serlet went with Steve Jobs to work at Apple—Wired described him as legendary within Apple when he left the company in 2011—and eventually took the…
Spec Comparison: New iPad v. Nexus 7 v. Kindle Fire v. Surface
Accordingly, we offer you the following spec shootout between the new iPad, Surface for Windows RT, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and the Google Nexus 7. Due to limitations in space, we have to omit the Nook Color Tablet, though that device is popular with the same market that is also interested in the Kindle Fire. The…
Apple Publishes Retina Display FAQ for MacBook Pro
Display Preferences for the MacBook Pro with Retina Display The name of the FAQ is called “MacBook Pro: Frequently asked questions about using a Retina display.” Other questions include how to deal with apps that want to take over the screen and supply their own resolution, how to handle external displays, and an explanation of…
Yojimbo iCloud Syncing Near, Requires MAS Purchase
Yojimbo and iCloud Yojimbo is a popular information organizer app, and one of the key features for the software has been seamless integration between multiple Macs using Apple’s MobileMe service. MobileMe is being shuttered by Apple on Saturday, June 30th, and that means that Bare Bones has to move the app’s syncing abilities to iCloud…
Apple Tweaks Antivirus Marketing Message
Apple made the move earlier in June, but is just now gaining attention. Sophos’s NakedSecurity blog noted the difference on June 14th, and that comment was widely picked on Monday. Writing for the site, Graham Cluley said, “A recent analysis by Sophos found that 2.7% (one in 36) of Macs which downloaded our free anti-virus…
Microsoft’s Surface Result of Lost Faith in Partners, Report
You Gotta Have Faith… Apple’s whole widget business model, wherein it owns the hardware and the software, was, for a long time, a disadvantage in the PC market. In the 1990s, Apple lost market share quarter after quarter, and year after year, in part because Microsoft’s open licensing ecosystem allowed PC licensees to clobber Apple…
Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Apple TV’s On the Way
The panels are being produced by Sharp, a company in which Hon Hai Precision invested US$800 million in March. Many have speculated, including analyst Brian White, that Hon Hai Precision was making this investment in order to secure panels for Apple’s television. “A holiday launch would make for a very merry holiday season for Apple…
Acer Founder: Microsoft Has No Real Intention to Make Tablets
Acer Founder Stan Shih Photo Credit: Rico Shen under Creative Common License Speech bubble courtesy of Shutterstock Smart-ass mock quote courtesy of Bryan Chaffin DigiTimes reported that Mr. Shih posited that Microsoft is merely trying to help expand demand for Windows 8-powered tablets, and that once it has done so by investing untold millions into…
NIAC Accuses Apple Stores of Racial Profiling
WSB-TV News Report Apple has not released a statement on the issue, and it has so far not commented to NPR, the above-mentioned Atlanta TV station, and other mainstream media outlets looking for comment. According to Sahar Sabet, the Atlanta resident who was refused sale of an iPad, the Apple Store employee cited Apple’s Export…
Apple Agrees to Pay $2.29 Million Fine for Aussie iPad Ads
Apple was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission after it introduced its new iPad with WiFi + 4G in the Australian market. While the device works on some 4G networks in the U.S. and some other countries, it does not work with any of the 4G networks Down Under. Apple was found guilty…
Video Offers Side-by-Side Look at Microsoft & Steve Jobs Keynotes
Looking at pieces of Steve Jobs’s January 2010 keynote introducing the original iPad to Monday’s keynote by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives side by side, it’s easy to see that over the last 28 months, Microsoft has been taking some detailed notes. Send in the clones! Whether or not the company made good…
Senator Asks Apple & Google for Privacy Priority in Maps
Senator Charles Schumer Apple announced a new mapping service on June 11th during the company’s annual World Wide Developer Conference. That service includes impressive 3D aerial views the company has been developing. Knowing that Apple’s announcement was coming, Google announced the week before its own enhancements to Google Maps, one of the world’s most popular…
Apple Updates Software for MacBook Pro (Mid 2012)
MacBook Pro (mid 2012)Apple’s sparse patch notes say simply, “The update includes fixes that improve graphics stability, external display support, and USB 3 device support.” For those who already have one of the new laptops, the update should show up in Software Update. You can also download it directly from Apple’s Downloads site as a…
Apple Seeks Ban on Samsung Galaxy S III Smartphone
“I just don’t have the human bandwidth [for the escalating complaints between the two companies],” Judge Lucy Koh said, according to Bloomberg. “I wanted to give some notice that I cannot be an Apple v. Samsung judge.” Josh Krevitt, an Apple attorney, said that Apple was being aggressive with its ban requests because Samsung’s tactic…