“Judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” — Mulla Nasrudin It'll be some time before Tim Cook is ready to step down as Apple's CEO, but I'm thinking ahead about the process for selecting the next Apple CEO. _____________________________ Back when there was some discussion about who would replace Steve Jobs at Apple,…
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Hone's Keyring Device & App Help Anyone Find Their Misplaced Keys
The Hone device attaches to your key or keychain and can be activated through a free iPad or iPhone app, activating a beep, letting you know where your key can be found. The device works within a 160 foot (49 m.) range. A look at the size comparison of the Hone This device works…
Rare Mineral Pushes Tech to Find New Touchscreen Materials
So get this: there's a ceramic developed from a rare mineral that makes our smartphones and tablets touch-sensitive. The mineral used to make that substance is rare, and known sources could run out in the next ten years. According to GigaOM, the search for a replacement involves new nanomaterials developments. The mineral is indium, and…
OS X: Un-Group Mission Control Windows for Quicker Window Switching
Just like earlier versions of OS X, Lion and Mountain Lion lets users see all of their Mac's open windows with the press of a button. Mission Control groups all of those windows by application, but some long-time Mac users prefer the old show-ever-open-window-in-a-grid style view instead. Long-time users of OS X may remember when Exposé…
Bruno Virlet at WWDC: Apple is Taking a Big Risk with iOS 7
Each year at WWDC, TMO interviews a few Apple developers who want to tell their story. The result is usually a number of serious insights into the state of mind of the developer community. In our fourth interview, Dave Hamilton chats with Bruno Virlet of The Grizzly Labs. _________________________________ Dave Hamilton: I’m here with Bruno…
The State of Magazines on the iPad: a Giant Mess
About a year ago, I decided, perhaps like many others, to go all digital with my magazine subscriptions. All the paper magazines my wife and I subscribed to were cluttering up the house and becoming a pain to dispose of in plastic trash bags. It was a grand experiment, and eco-friendly, to convert almost all…
It's Okay Mr. Cook. Apple Customers Can Also Dream
One of the things that fascinated me about Tim Cook's AllThingsD interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher was one of the questions after the interview. The question was posed by Dan Benton of Indoor Capital. The Q&A went roughly like this: Mr. Benton. Why won't you let us dream? The guys at Google are…
3 Free iOS Games - Zombies, Zombies, and More Zombies
If you mention zombies to most learned folks they will likely roll their eyes and sigh with sympathy for another mind given over to the current fringe fad. They may offer a few patronizing words about the origin of the zombie lore and something to the affect that the undead are no more real than…
An iPhone Veteran Evaluates a Samsung Galaxy Note II
Introduction If there's one thing that I have learned from the evaluation of different Android devices, like the Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus, it's that the Android 4.x OS is a technical, pleasantly geeky, often beautiful OS that will appeal to many different people. On the 5.5-inch display of the Samsung Galaxy Note…
Bill Gates: I Wish I Had Steve Jobs's Sense of Design
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was recently interviewed by Charlie Rose for 60 Minutes, and one of the topics of discussion was the late Steve Jobs. Mr. Gates became quite emotional when thinking back to his last meeting with Mr. Jobs, and he said he wished he had Mr. Jobs's sense of design. Bill Gates Thinking…
Time Names Apple's Jony Ive Among Most Influential Artists, Writeup by Bono
Time magazine has released its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Apple's designer-in-chief, Jony Ive, was named one of the most influential artists. U2's Bono, who counted the late Steve Jobs as a friend, did the write up on Sir Jony for the magazine. Sir Jonathan Ive Bono's description…
Download TiVo Content To Your Mac & iDevices with cTiVo
For years the best option for us Mac-using TiVo owners to get content off of our TiVos and on to our iDevices was iTiVo. But iTiVo, built largely in AppleScript Studio, has always had a buggy user interface, and with Mountain Lion it originally required some Terminal fu to get it to work at all.…
Oh, What We Could do With a Mac That's 1,000 Times Faster
Over the decades, personal computers have made enormous gains in speeds. But in the short term, not much has happened. On the other hand, the maintenance burdens on customers just kept increasing. That's why customers have moved briskly to the tablet. In a sense, the PC industry failed its original vision, and customers moved on.…
Project Your Image With ipico Handheld Projector for iPhone
Those mostly awesome tabletop optical projectors that are used for presentations are bright but are still fairly expensive. For certain uses, it's often handy to have a handheld device that can attach to an iPhone. The ipico projector is about the size of the iPhone itself and can throw an image over 6 ft. with…
Follow the Sun with the Fabulous Sun Seeker for iOS
There are occasions when a photographer, cinematographer, astronomer, pilot, or architect needs to know a lot more about the Sun's position than simply sunrise and sunset. Sun Seeker by Ajnaware Pty Ltd in Sydney, Australia tells you almost everything you can know about the position of the Sun for any day of the year. Plus,…
iPhones, Phablets & iPads: Does Size Really Matter? [UPDATED]
A Flurry Analytics report recently suggested that display size and OS choice has all kinds of implications for the popularltiy of small devices, smartphones and tablets. The survey data suggests that phablets are a fad for now and that Android customers aren't really enthusiastic about full-size tablets. I'd like to assess that report. The article…
Reading Apple's Tea Leaves from the GarageBand & Podcasts Updates
Apple did two things last week that have stuck in my mind: it radically redesigned its Podcasts app and added support for a third-party music routing system, called Audiobus, to GarageBand. I try not to get too optimistic when watching Apple’s moves, but I can’t help but wonder if these tea leaves speak of what’s…
How to Manage Exposure & Focus On Your iPhone Camera
In this article, I am going to show you how to avoid getting those under- or over-exposed and out-of-focus photos you sometimes capture using the camera built into your device. I will refer to the iPhone 5 in this article, but much of what I cover can be done starting with the iPhone 4S running…
The GM Corvette and the Apple Mac Pro Have Much in Common
Companies that claim they make the very best product of its kind but then waffle on selling low volume, premium, awe inspiring, likely very expensive high end products will implicitly lose credibility. That seems to be the discussion around the Mac Pro lately. Will Apple's next Mac Pro light the world on fire? Or just…
Samsung's Awkward Launch Event Distances Galaxy S4 from Android
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…
Mophie's iPhone 5 Juice Pack Helium: Thin & Good Looking
Although a few battery power cases have been released for the iPhone 5, most have done so without Apple approved lightning connectors, and it has been a frequent problem. It is easy to identify those cases because the base of the connectors are white, rather than the approved black. (Here's some explanation.) The Juice Pack…
Yahoo, Marissa Mayer & Understanding Work at Home
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…
Worry About Facebook, Not Skynet
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…
3 Free Must-Have E-Mags for iOS
E-Magazines have certainly come a long way since first appearing on the original iPad. The sparse or rehashed content, user interface problems and bugaboos, and the sheer variety of newly created formats made them as gangly, unsteady, and energetic as a day-old colt. But colts learn to trot, then gallop with speed and grace as…