Archive for the 'Apple' category
10,000 feet with Steve Jobs
June 16, 2010 10:31 pmA highlight every year for me is the All Things Digital Conference hosted by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. For those of you not familiar it is a four-day conference where many of the “who’s who” from the technology and entertainment industry sit for some great in-depth interviews. While there are some product related interview, most notably this year is Microsoft’s Project Natal, the majority of substance isn’t the usual march of gadgets and upgrades cycles. This conference focuses on the leaders themselves talking about them, their vision and the big picture of how they captain their enterprises. It is some of the most fascinating content I find generated all year not filtered though a PR department. That is the key, the unfiltered content. Even when that breaks from the standard, the heavily coached Mark Zuckerberg’s interview was entertaining to watch him squirm. I’m someone who takes a very macro focus on my business, our industry and the tech world in general; I find these interviews more entertaining and stimulating than any keynote ever given.
Kicking off this year’s event was a great interview with Apple CEO, Steve Jobs (link for non-flash video). Now it’s no secret that Steve is one of the best presenters and public speakers to ever grace a stage. From the interview you can really tell how passionate he is for what he does. As a founder that should come as no surprise, but compared on some other technology CEO interviews, there is a very different tone and feeling to what they do and how they see their mission.
Fast Company has a great article on this interview that visually represents the interview in one of those great word clouds where the frequency of a word is represented by the words size in the cloud. The result: Steve is a “people” person. This highlights a belief I hold true to our philosophy: technology is not about technology, technology is about people.
Time Machine for Windows
June 3, 2010 9:33 am“Time Machine for Windows” is what I’m sure Genie-Soft would love to call their backup software, Timeline (in both Home & Professional flavors) if it wasn’t for those pesky Apple lawyers or a huge royalty payout. Genie-soft may not be able to, but after using this software for some clients running Windows, that’s basically what it is. We’re very happy Windows users can now enjoy many of the benefits Mac users have enjoyed for years.
With so much of our personal and business data on our systems it’s no surprise that in the area of 45% of all systems lose unrecoverable data each year to some form of data loss. That is a lot of vacation photos, financial documents and wedding videos. Time Machine is focused toward the consumer and SoHo market and it’s been a HUGE asset to many Mac users having a super simple and automatic backup solution built-in as part of the Mac OS for nearly 3 years now (it has saved yours truly twice). Just like Time Machine, Timeline is drop dead simple setup with nearly zero maintenance, it passes the test for even the most luddite of computer users. Added to the local backup, they have the pending release of their online backup that makes this tool a true disaster recovery platform with offsite hosting of your backup.
For those of you Mac users with a Windows system still lingering around the home or office, I highly recommend Timeline as a very familiar cousin to what you already enjoy on your Mac.
How the “Ken Burns Effect” came to iPhoto
November 11, 2009 7:15 pmFor those of you who love using iPhoto to manage, create and share your digital photography you’ll really enjoy this video. It is an excerpt from a talk The Oxonian Society where Ken Burns personally tells a the story of how the “Ken Burns Effect” became to be a part of pretty much every iPhoto slide show you see. I particularly love the impression at the end of a happy iPhoto user; dead on. To all our Apple users, i hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.
Brian @ MacWorld 2008
January 21, 2008 7:09 pmI was fortunate enough this past January to have the opportunity to invest furhter in DP’s relatinship with Apple by attending this year’s MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Form the first class trainign at the conference to connecting with current and new partners at the Expo (and cocktail hours) is was an amazing trip. The traditional highlight of the week is Steve’s Keynote where I was able to grab this snapshot from my 5th row seat.
Brian @ 5th Row at Keynote 2008
iWaited… iGot!
June 30, 2007 9:47 pmNow that I’ve fully recovered from the 12 hour marathon wait (I forgot how much energy sitting can take out of you) I’m please to say iGot what i wanted. A very beautiful 8 GB iPhone. I even made it in the newspaper (see full story) as the shot below shows. (I’m the tired looking guy in the top left).
I have to give a big thanks to Dirk (Short Hills Apple Store Manager) and the rest of the amazing staff at the Apple store for everything. Around 8 AM, two hours before the mall even opened, Dirk came out to personally meet everyone in line and thank us for coming. All throughout the day Dirk and other staffers were continually coming out and talking to everyone in line. Water and coffee was routinely handed out and they made every effort to make us all as comfortable as possible. Apple defiantly learned from the mistakes of others (PS3) and I’ve heard overwhelmingly good things from the AT&T stores too.
At launch time everything was very organized. Dirk made announcements at 5:30 and 5:45 regarding how things would work when the doors opened. The front of the store was roped off and about 6 of their biggest associates were managing the line and the appreciable crowd that gathered to watch the line and the opening.
A good time was had by all!
