If there was ever any doubt that Apple is on the right course with its notebook philosophy, which is most of its Mac sales, this Earnings Report removed that doubt. Apple sold 2.6 million Macs, just shy of its record of 2.611 million sold just before the economic collapse in the fall of 2008. Today,…
John Martellaro
John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.
Articles by John Martellaro
Chess Database for iPhone Showcases 500,000 Games [UPDATED]
Splash PageThis program is intended for serious chess fans who are familiar with the game, its players, and nomenclature, such as the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings (ECO). Once you have a goal in mind, such as studying the games of, say, Alexander Alekhine, or the games he played against specific other players, say, Max Euwe,…
Batter Up: Safari -- OmniWeb on Deck
I’m in a good position to comment on Mr. Gamet’s blog because I too was seduced by OmniWeb. I particularly like the vertical drawer of thumbnails instead of scrunched titles in Safari tabs. I found it much easier to jump between working pages just by looking at the thumbnails. OmniWeb with its drawer of thumbnails for…
Should Apple Employees Read the Mac Websites?
Apple’s senior executives like to believe that there is no value in reading the Mac and iPhone related Websites, and they tell their staff that. After all, Apple employees are too busy to dabble in rumors and speculation. So it’s just a time waster. Or is it? I was in an Apple retail store recently,…
Welcome Back, Mister Jobs
The very first thing I ever had published on the Internet was in late 1997. It was called “Always Apple” and spoke to the dire straights Apple was in and tried to express how the community of Apple followers felt. It was later republished at 32-bits Online (long since gone). Here is an excerpt. Where…
Does the New Tech Make Old School Journalism Obsolete?
What got me thinking about this issue more deeply was an article, and if you’ll forgive the bluntness, more of a rant, at TechCrunch by Robin Wauters about how the “Mainstream Media Still has Eyes Wide Shut.” The gist of this essay was that the old time media is blind to the new realities of…
OWC's New Qx2 Brings RAID 5 to the Home Desktop
The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 is a consumer-grade RAID storage system that can support RAID levels 0,1,5 and 10. It’s a modest sized, handsome aluminum enclosure that has slots for four user-replaceable drives. It’s one of the first consumer RAID 5 or better systems, and the benefit is that a failed drive can be…
TMO Interviews Em Software: Perils of the Niche iPhone Developer
Ryland: I guess, when the iPhone SDK was released last year, we were looking to move on to other markets. Our idea was to look at replacing hardware that the iPhone is going to replace – for example graphing calculators. And my junior partner is a math and graphics programming whiz, so he did the…
TMO Interviews GroupLogic: WWDC is Eye Opener for Executives
Lewis: Let me just start by saying that GroupLogic is a 21 year old vendor. We’ve always developed for the Mac and we always will. We started coming to WWDC in 1989. In fact, my co-founder, Derick Naef [the Chief Technology Officer], got his first Mac in 1984, and we’ve been programming the Mac since…
TMO Interviews Vito Tech: iPhone Apps, From Russia with Stars
Erika Torazzina, Head of Business Development, Vito Technologies TMO: Tell me about the Vito technology developers and where they are. Torazzina: The founder, who is Russian, and a few other staff are in Alexandria, Virginia. But the development team is based in Novosibirsk, Russia. It’s the capital city of Siberia and is the third largest…
TMO Interviews Storyist: The Story Behind the Story
TMO: Tell us how you got into the business of creating novel writing software? Were there precursor apps that you warmed up with? Or is this your first big venture? Steve Shepard, Founder, Storyist Software Shepard: Well, I worked for Apple for awhile in the 1990s, then I did the Silicon Valley thing. I joined a…
TMO Interviews Double Encore: Boosting the Nextgen iPhone Developers
TMO: We’re here on the second level of Moscone West, in front of the giant windows, chatting with CEO Dan Burcaw and his new partner, Joe Pezzillo from Boulder, Colorado. Dan, I’ll start with you. How many companies do you work with at Double Encore? Dan Burcaw, CEO of Double Encore Burcaw: It’s about a dozen.…
TMO Interviews John Chaffee: BusyCal Designed to Replace iCal
We met on the second level of Moscone West during WWDC, and Mr. Chaffee (pronounced Chay’-fee) gave us a sneak preview of BusyCal before we started recording the interview.John Chaffee, President, BusyMac TMO: Is this a new product? Chaffee: Yeah, it’s kind of the successor to BusySync, although BusySync will continue to be available. That’s…
TMO Interviews Neil Ticktin: Secrets of the Print Magazine
TMO: Neil, what’s new in your universe? Ticktin: I do have some interesting things to tell you about the magazine, but first I want to tell you about something very exciting we’re working on. It’s a technology strategy for a school district. We’re helping them out with a plan for all the way from operations…
WWDC is Changing Fast, but Traditions Also Carry On
This is my 16th WWDC since 1993. During that time, I’ve only missed one. So I can’t help noticing that some things have changed dramatically — and some not so much, both good and bad. First, it seems that every year, there are fewer and fewer women, by percent, attending WWDC. This year, with 5,200…
TMO Interviews Parallels: The Best is Yet To Come
We’re here at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco with Mr. Belloussov as well as Laura Ciekot with Allison & Partners, the public relations agency that works with Parallels. Serguei Beloussov TMO: How would you characterize the development of Parallels? Beloussov: Well, we have definitely come a long way since we started, but there is…
TMO Interviews Andrew Stone: Developing For the iPhone for 20 Years
We’re here at Moscone West with Andrew Stone of Stone Design Software located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Andrew StoneTMO: Mr Stone, let’s talk about all things Mac and iPhone software at Stone Design. Stone: What I think’s interesting is that, in fact, I was getting into the iPhone twenty years ago [laughs] with the NeXT computer.…
WWDC TMO Interviews: MRR Software
Mickey Roberson TMO: We’re here with Mickey Roberson in the WWDC dining hall. (I’m using Recorder v 7.1 for the iPhone from Retronyms Software.) Mickey, how did you get started doing a Twitter client? Roberson: When I started doing this a few months ago, I didn’t really like the look of any of the Twitter…
A TMO iTunes Video Mystery Solved
By now, the word has gotten out that on new MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Mac mini with DisplayPort protected video content, typically HD TV shows and movies, purchased in iTunes need an HDCP compliant display. The easiest way to achieve that with the new Apple LED Cinema Display (24-inch). It also has DisplayPort and is…
Zero Panic Migration to a New Mac, Part II
Step #3: Multiple Drives My old Power Mac G5 had two internal SATA drives. One was the factory original and one was an add-on. Because the new Mac is an Intel Mac with, for now, just one internal drive, I selected an external drive to receive all the files from the PMG5’s second internal drive.…
Rebuttal: Apple is Already Selling a Netbook
The logic I used to forecast an Apple netbook, MacNetBook, is that it’s a growing market that Apple can’t afford to ignore. It is illogical to argue that if Asus, Acer and MSI can make some money on a US$250 netbook that Apple cannot make money on a $699, 10-inch MacNetBook. I’ll go even further…
Zero Panic Migration to a New Mac, Part I
Step #1: Preserving Your Data The first thing to remember is that there are two kinds of backups. The first is a static backup such as, in the case of a Mac, a Finder copy to an external drive. Specifically, I’m talking about copying /Users and /Applications. Every time you do that, you create a…
Apple Netbook Makes More Sense than iTablet -- For Now
— David Ogilvy There is a known market for notebook computers, and that market had been soaring until the economy went bonkers. There is a known and growing market for netbooks, and Apple can, if it wishes, carve out a piece of that market as well. But what is the market for an iTablet? When…
Particle Debris (week ending 5/22) Racing, Racy Apps and Russian Ruckus
After years of winning (and losing), a car company learns an awful lot about engines, why and how they fail, and that expertise seeps into their regular product line for consumers — making for better products. I’ve always believed that the same applies to Apple. The analog for computing is the High Performance Computing (HPC)…