I didn’t fair much better in junior or senior high school, either. More dates and events meant more sad grades. The stuff I wanted to know about, The Black Plague, The Crusades, Greek and Roman culture were glossed over. Even the things that were covered in some detail, like World Wars 1 and 2, were…
Search: iPhone 17
iPad Asks: Can I Squeeze In Here?
In the few days that have passed since the iPad announcement, I have spent a good deal of time pondering these two points. Although I reserve my final judgment until the iPad is released, I am ready to take an initial look at how well the iPad squeezes in to its middle seat. The iPad…
USPS Mobile, Stick It and More
The book and the movie are very different, but the basic premise is the same: after some devastating apocalypse pockets of people try to rebuild. In what’s left of the midwestern United States an army led by a mad copy machine salesman turn general harasses the populace. A drifter, cold, hungry, and desperate stumbles on…
RedLaser
How can you not love an iPhone app that costs less than $2 but can save you a lot more than that every time you use it? That app is called RedLaser and it uses your iPhone camera to scan barcodes and get you prices for the item from Google Product Search and TheFind. Here’s…
Will a Tablet Replace My MacBook?
The big still-wide-open question is what market demand will this new device meet? Of special interest to me in this regard is: Will the tablet be capable of acting as a smaller lighter-weight replacement for my MacBook Pro? I hope so. I’d love it if I no longer needed to lug along my MacBook. But…
Close Call, Flashlight, Alarm Clock Free and More
I use to want to do stuff like that, and I’m still fascinated by the internal goings on in tech, but I just don’t have the time to tinker. I want my gadgets to work. End of story. When they don’t work, I want them fixed. I can and have tinkered to fix my stuff…
The One Where I Interview a Porn Star
However, I was contacted by one of the exhibitors, Digital Playground. They were interested in having me do a few interviews with their “talent.” To make it more convenient for me to do so, they offered to get me a press press to AEE. I told them that my journalistic interests ran more towards computers…
The Year When Apple's Tablet Means Good Enough Isn't
Consider the following chart that compares a conventional PC to a possible Apple tablet.What jumps out at me in this chart is that refinement, user interface, user experience, and low maintenance will be of paramount importance. A system dedicated to the user, always available on demand, must reach yet a higher level of excellence, even…
CES Highlights: From iLounge Pavilion to 3D Televisions
Next, I was finally off to the main hub of CES: the multi-hall Las Vegas Convention Center. iPod and iPhone products My first stop: the iLounge Pavilion, occupying a moderately-sized section of the North Hall. With over 100 vendors, the Pavilion was billed as “an exhibition of new iPod, iPhone, and Mac hardware and software.”…
Slow Times in the Apple Universe
As for the other locations in the Apple universe, things are as quiet as 2:00 AM in a one traffic light town at the far end of nowhere. Both Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and iPhone OS 3 have been out for months. It’s even been some time since either one has had a…
Cooking Mama Lite, Olive Garden Demos, Spam iCan and More
Food, I mean the good stuff, is a huge part of any holiday gathering regardless of what the occasion. Of course, this isn’t Star Trek or Hogwarts so food does not magically appear before us when we sit down to dine (unless you are rich enough to not have to deal with such trifling concerns)…
Apple Chronology for July through December 2010
–Scott Adams. I am not a big fan of prediction articles for the new year. They require lot of hubris, and, honestly, no one can really make good technical predictions, even us who follow Apple very closely. If one tries, the author and the readers waste time fretting about how good the predictions were. As…
War? Raytheon Has an App For That
OFT taps into the iPhone’s abilities and features, including the built-in compass, global positioning system, accelerometer, 3G networks, WiFi, and multitouch screen. The company also said it has designed, “disruptive-tolerant networking, content-centric networking and augmented reality, incorporating security guards for tactical operations.” In the screenshot to the left, a battlefield map is shown with soldiers…
Apple Chronology for January through June 2010
14 Jan 2010. Apple stock (AAPL) reaches an all time high of $228.61. 26 Jan 2010. Apple announces its earnings for the holiday (1st Fiscal) quarter. 13.5 million iPhones, 3.3 million Macs, US$14B in revenue, profit of US$2.1B. “The best Apple quarter ever,” says Peter Oppenheimer. 09 Feb 2010. On the eve of Macworld, Apple…
And the Winner Is…Apple
With all of that in place, what device would I pick? It took me almost no time to come up with the answer: an iPhone. For me, the iPhone unquestionably and undeniably emerges as the device of the decade. Nothing else comes close. Checking online for “gadget of the decade” lists, I found one from…
Surviving High School
NOTE: While the Mac Observer content management system says that I wrote this review, it was mostly written by my 17-year old son Jacob. As a junior in high school I think he has a much better handle on what high school is like, how well this simulation/game emulates the real deal, and how much…
Dragon Dictation
That may be, but if you have 100,000 plus applications available for a platform there are bound to be some absolute gems in the pile. This week one such gem appeared and it was my initial opinion that this one app will do for smartphones, and for the iPhone in particular, what Apple has done…
Predicting the Future
I was reminded of this recently when, via some chatter on Twitter, I was alerted to aaplinvestors.net’s iPhone Death Watch. The page consists simply of a collection of quotes — from a variety of journalists, analysts and corporate executives — all predicting bad things for the iPhone’s future. The most fun quotes to read are the ones…
TMO Holiday Gift Guide Part 2
Technocel PowerPak Sometimes you’re lucky enough to grab an iPhone and hit the road. But sometimes you have to travel with a whole collection of gadgets, any one of which might run out of charge at the wrong time. Technocel’s PowerPak is the answer: it’s a wall charger and external battery pack rolled into one.…
USB Feature Returns to FileApp
FileApp 1.6 (not yet available in the App Store as I write this) restores the removed USB feature! However, there’s a catch. It only restores the option for people who owned and used FileAid (the older version of the app that includes the USB support). If you never had FileAid on your iPhone, the new…
Musée du Louvre, Art Lite, SketchBook Mobile X and More.
We, the viewer, see things far differently than the person who creates art. A suspicious husband viewing Mona Lisa for the first time may think Mona’s hiding something. Maybe she’s just come from a secret rendezvous where she had wild buck-nakid sex with Leo, hence the enigmatic smile. Of course, others see something different in…
Dictionary, Dictionary, Dictionary, And More
Take the word ‘pour’ for instance. It lists typical synonyms like ‘flow’ and ‘stream’, and also more arcane words like ‘gush’ and ‘sluice’, and it also offers up the often vague differences. Pour means to bring forth, usually a liquid, the act of bringing forth or dispensing a liquid, as in, “Pour more coffee for…
The Multiple Personalities of TweetMyMac
Imagine sending a Twitter message from wherever you happen to be, containing a command such as “open Safari,” and having the requested command carried out on your Mac back home. That’s the way TweetMyMac works. To get this set up, you need two Twitter accounts: your main one and a special one set up just…
The Weather Channel, TED, Dr. Tran, & more
By that time it’s usually Wednesday or Thursday, and I’m scrambling to write the article, format the photos, then put it all together in Dreamweaver before publishing it for edit and review. As Bryan or Jeff will attest, I often don’t get the article finished until late Friday afternoon. This Friday will be a bit…