The Wall Street Journal has shared an article that tells us what we all know already. Apple is doomed, profits are down, marketshare slipping, Foxconn moving on to bigger/better things, blah, blah, blah.
Tagged: Apple
Dear Apple, let’s talk about photos
Peter Nixey talks about 5 things that would make managing photos better in the Apple ecosystem. I agree with all five points.
Possibly the most important documents in Apple’s corporate history
“For $13,000 — $5,200 up front, and $7,800 on delivery, and no additional royalties — Shepardson Microsystems would build Apple’s first DOS. For its money, Apple would get a file manager, an interface for integer BASIC and Applesoft BASIC, and utilities that would allow disk backup, disk recovery, and file copying.”
It’s always fun to look back on computing history.
Apple and Adobe make Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list
Adobe has been ranked #2 on Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Software Companies list this past week, while Apple topped the list of overall Most Admired Companies, followed by Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks.
The iMac 27″ for graphic designers: part 2
In part one of The iMac 27″ for graphic designers, I covered the reasons for choosing the late 2012 iMac 27” to replace my 2006 Mac Pro. As a graphic designer who works in Adobe Creative Suite apps all day long, with file sizes pushing the 1GB range, power is important. But as I found out with my MacBook Air, the Mac Pro just isn’t necessary anymore. Not only does the iMac have all the power you need, but it’s a much more elegant hardware solution, and significantly easier on the pocketbook. I also listed some of the pros and cons of the iMac.
Now I’m going to talk a bit about my experience actually using the iMac for the last two months. (more…)
Does a Company Like Apple Need a Genius Like Steve Jobs?
But now, over the last six months, in ways little and large, Apple has begun to stumble.
That’s about where they lost me.
The New Yorker: Does a Company Like Apple Need a Genius Like Steve Jobs?
Manually change the default interval of Apple’s Time Machine backups
By default, Apple’s Time Machine performs backups every hour. For many people, this simply isn’t necessary. And for those who actually do alter numerous files (especially large ones) every hour, your probably don’t want the system using resources for backups every hour.
Apple really should offer a way to adjust the backup time in the System Preferences, but they don’t. Fortunately, you can still do it using the Terminal app in your Utilities folder.
Open Terminal and paste the code below into the Terminal window and hit the Return key (make sure you copy the exact text below.) Enter your Admin password when it asks and hit return again:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 7200
The number at the end of that line is the amount of seconds between backups. By default, it’s 3600 (one hour). In the code above, I have it set to two hours, but you can enter any amount of seconds you wish, such as 10800 for three hours, or 14400 for four hours, etc.
The iMac 27″ for graphic designers: part 1
After six years of using the original Mac Pro as my main workhorse, I finally took the plunge this past Christmas and upgraded to Apple’s latest 27” iMac. It’s the first Mac I’ve owned since the Quadra 650 back in the mid 90s that wasn’t a tower model. It was a scary decision for me, but one I’ve been delighted with so far.
The first thing I had to come to grips with is the revelation that I don’t NEED all the expansion that the Mac Pro has to offer. In the distant past, the days when a 16GB stick of RAM took you a year or so to save-up for, the Mac tower models were the only way to go for pro designers. The desktop models simply weren’t made for people like us.
But times have changed. With NO exception, every Mac model available today can easily be used by the most demanding print and web designers—this includes the MacBook Air and the MacMini. If you think you NEED more, you’re most likely overestimating your needs. Today’s Macs are powerful enough for working with Gigabyte sized files with as little as 8GB of RAM.
Now I didn’t say that every Mac model is a perfect fit, far from it. And that’s where my decision got difficult. (more…)
Jony Ive isn’t killing the Mac, and Apple’s core isn’t rotten
I came across an article at ZDNet this past week that just drove me absolutely crazy. It serves me right for reading anything from ZDNet—because with little exception, they have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to Apple and the Mac. But when I saw the headline: “Is Jony Ive killing the Mac?” I just couldn’t resist clicking through.
The first thing that got my hair up about the article is that other than the headline and the summary at the top, the article makes no mention of Ive, or why the author seems to think the Mac is being systematically killed off by him. I’ve spoken to Jony Ive personally, and he assures me that he isn’t a killer.
Disclaimer: I haven’t spoken to Jony Ive, but I’m willing to bet the only thing he’s killed at his time at Apple is a mountain of bad ideas.
Even if you don’t bother to read the rest of the article, or actually believe that Mac OS X has gone to hell, most Mac users know that Jony Ive has had absolutely nothing to do with OS X up to this point. Obviously the headline is click-bait in an effort to gather more page views.
Now the reason the article is so short is because it simply points out another blog post titled Core Rot at Apple. It is here that I found myself throwing my hands in the air in surrender at the feet of nitpicking at the least, or in many cases, outright stupidity. My thoughts on a few of his points below.
“iTunes — a nightmarish kitchen sink design cluttered with dozens of tabs and modes and animations and clutter, all mixing highly variant purposes Fortunately, Walter Mossberg likes it (but it’s time for him to hang up his jockstrap).”
This is perhaps the only thing in the entire article that I could somewhat sympathize with. iTunes DOES do much more than it should. But “dozens of tabs?” Where are there dozens of tabs? Modes, animations and clutter? If anything, I think Apple has done a decent job of hiding what a mess iTunes is. The dig at Walter Mossberg just goes to show he had nothing of substance to say about it.
Still, at this point in the article, I thought perhaps it had some merit because I know iTunes is a sore spot for many, many people. I’m not in love with it either, so I read on with anticipation. Unfortunately, it got worse. Here are further thoughts… (more…)
‘Almost Everything That Apple Does That Involves The Internet Is A Mess’
Former Apple engineer Patrick B. Gibson has a provocative post on Tumblr arguing that the power balance between Apple and Google is shifting in Google’s favor.
Specifically, Gibson suggests, Google is getting better at gadget design faster than Apple is getting better at Internet services.
I’m not sure I don’t agree. While Apple has certainly been improving in the area of cloud computing, it still seems like they’re only providing half-efforts. On the other hand, Google has made a living off of offering half-baked services for free.