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ECBC's Poseidon Messenger Bag for 13-inch notebooks, part of their K7 series, has a casual look, but hidden inside are a number of features that make this bag a workhorse for busy people who need both their computers and their iPads at the ready.  There is a lot to like about this bag. The outside,…

Samsung launched the Galaxy S4 on Thursday at a launch event called SamsungUnpacked. The event featured awkward plays, bad executive presentations, and a celebrity MC, but the takeaway is that the company is distancing itself from Google and Android with the new device. SamsungUnpacked was packed full of awful, awkward mini-plays Samsung introduced a variety…

Those familiar with external storage and storage controllers will recognize the name CalDigit. For years, the California-based company has offered a variety of storage products aimed primarily at the professional market, including a new update to its “AV” line of external drives, the AV Pro. CalDigit sent us a review sample and we’ve spent the…

 Phil Schiller Apple vice president Phil Schiller took the offense on Wednesday, the day before Samsung launches its long-awaited Galaxy S4 smartphone. Mr. Schiller gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal where he dismissed the user experience on Android and called fragmentation on the platform a fact, “plain and simple.” Speaking of The Wall…

There are writers who understand Apple. They've been covering Apple for years, decades. Some of them are very smart and accomplished at research and analysis. Other writers just write about Apple to earn some money and see their name in lights. Is there a war emerging between the two? One can't help but notice that…

Apple can't make its Paris store employees work past 9PM, and to back that up a Paris court has ordered the Mac, iPhone and iPad maker to pay €10,000 fine to unions for working its staff after closing their stores at night. The fine came as part of a lawsuit brought by labor unions, and…

We'd like to thank Go Daddy for sponsoring us here at TMO this week. Go Daddy has long sold domain names at discount prices, as you probably know, but what you may not realize is that they also can be your web host. And they're not just a web host for geeks who know how…

Everyone knows that Android has all the market share in smartphones and has achieved near parity or parity with Apple's iPad in tablets, but I want to know what the heck people are doing with those devices. Every single data point that I've seen shows again and again that at the very least Apple's iOS…

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) was an American science fiction writer who, amongst his many achievements, also noted that “ninety percent of everything is crap.” Coined as “Sturgeon's Law”, it applies to fiction, but has come to be applied to most anything else. From what I've been reading, it also applies to current day writing about Apple.…

There is definitely an art to naming products — as any Microsoft or Apple executive knows. Today, we learned about some candidate names Apple had for what we now call the iPhone, thanks to an article at 9to5 Mac. Some seemed oh-so rational at the time and now seem, well, just crazy. Candidate names for…

There are several working theories about why Marissa Mayer no longer allows Yahoo employees to work at home. In any case, in principle, working at home is very doable for these kinds of technical jobs. I worked out of a home office for Apple, and I have some thoughts on the whole affair. The fundamental…

It requires a clear, articulate presentation to properly enumerate the perils of Facebook. A CNN author, who has quit Facebook, has done just that. He tells a story that's worse than you ever could have thought. Preamble You won't find me on Facebook. You might find someone with the same name there. There are several…

Recently we learned the details of how the “Six Strikes” punishments will work. For those who don't already know, the production studios made a deal with your ISP to notify — and then punish — you if you're caught using BitTorrent to (illegally) share movies online. Your ISP doesn't really care about this, but they…

A UK judge who was very critical of Apple, going so far as to question the company's integrity, has invited controversy by taking a job from the firm that benefitted from his ruling. The situation is complex and nuanced, but it begs the question, “WTF were you thinking?” The situation began when another judge ordered…

If you need to add a field to someone's contact card—such as “spouse's name” or “nickname”—there are a couple of ways you could go about it. First of all, you could add that field only to a few specific cards and leave the template alone. Do that by selecting someone within the Contacts program and…

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) used Apple's annual shareholder meeting Wednesday to protest an Apple contractor. Members picketed, chanted, played drums, and shook rattles in protest of Security Industry Specialists, Inc. (SIS), which provides some security services to Apple. A representative of three unions with stakes in Apple also used the question and answer…

Samsung showed off its latest innovation for its Android OS-based smartphone lineup on Wednesday: An app that manages movie tickets, boarding passes and more, and bears more than a striking resemblance to Apple's Passbook. The app, dubbed Wallet, even relies on barcodes instead of NFC technology, just like Apple's Passbook. Wallet was unveiled during the…

This is probably the most unique messenger bag you will ever see. The Platforma Convertible Messenger Bag for iPad from Strotter won an Editor’s Choice Award at Macworld/iWorld 2013. It holds your stuff, including your iPad, but it will also turn into a mobile desk anywhere, any time in just a few seconds. Platforma Convertible iPad Messenger…

The U.S. Department of Defense is either losing or gaining religion—depending on your viewpoint—and is abandoning its BlackBerry-only, top-down smart device approach in favor of a “device-agnostic” approach that will include iOS and Android. The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it was rolling out its Commercial Mobile Device Implementation Plan, an effort to get the…

In a Vanity Fair article about Google's new headquarters, the civil engineer in charge of the effort used ideas and language Steve Jobs developed at Pixar and was implementing at Apple's own Spaceship HQ to describe the building's intent. Google Bay View Renderings Credit: NBBJ Googleplex Times Two Google is building a new built-to-order headquarters…

This week I'm happy to welcome Smile back as our sponsor here at TMO. Smile makes a several fantastic software packages for us Mac users, and this week our focus is on one of my personal favorites, TextExpander. For those of you who don't know about TextExpander, you're in for a real treat. In short,…

A federal court issued an injunction blocking a vote on an Apple shareholder proposal originally scheduled to take place on February 27th, according to Reuters. The proposal would have prevented Apple from issued preferred stocks without shareholder approval. Apple's management backed the shareholder proposal, arguing that it empowered the company's shareholders by giving them say…

Google on Thursday unveiled the Chromebook Pixel, the latest in its line of unique laptops powered by the company’s browser-based Chrome OS. But is this powerful piece of hardware a waste on an immature operating system, or can Google expand Chrome OS's usefulness before the Pixel's hardware is obsolete? When first released in June 2011, the…

I have never yet reviewed an item from Booq that was not both beautiful and exquisitely made. The Python Sling camera bag lives up to my expectations while also being an extremely useful product.  It is designed for serious photographers who need to have one or two Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras, multiple lenses, and…