Apple!
WWDC is Sold Out!
I gots my ticket, but I have yet to find a hotel.
I am not looking forward to the line for the Keynote. Kelly held a place for me last year and she got there at 7 AM.
Mac's in the Workplace
An interesting article I read on the plane about Mac’s entering the workplace. They didn’t really get too much into the Mac OS’ strengths in its update frequency, lack of vulnerabilities and the lower cost of total ownership, but they hint at it.
Those client access licenses (CAL’s) for Windows and all the Windows related products, like Windows Server, Exchange can cost a small fortune. Add the price of equipment and support for Windows-based hardware and it is pretty easy to justify Mac’s in the workplace.
All you have to do is run the numbers.
This Tuesday, May 6 will mark the 10th Anniversary of the very first iMac. While no one knew it at the time, it would mark the beginning of the return of Apple, one of the greatest resurrections in computing industry.
The original iMac shipped with the following technical specs:
- Introduced May 6, 1998
- 233 MHz PowerPC 750 (G3) Processor
- 66 MHz System Bus Speed
- 117 MHz Cache Bus Speed
- 64k L1 Cache / 512k L2/L3 Backside Cache
- 32 MB Standard PC66 SDRAM (128 MB Maximum RAM)
- ATI Rage IIc Video with 2 MB of VRAM
- 15.0” Built-in Display (13.8” viewable)
- 800 x 600 pixel Native Resolution
- 4.0 GB Standard Hard Drive
- 24X tray-loading CD-ROM drive
- 56.6k Internal Modem
- 10/100Base-T Ethernet
- 2 USB (1.1) Ports
- Apple USB Keyboard
- Apple USB “Puck” Mouse
- Color: “Bondi” Blue
- All-in-One Form Factor
- MacOS: 8.1 Pre-Installed
- Price: $1,299
The original iMac page on the Apple.com.
A decade later, it is apparent that the iMac dramatically shifted consumers perceptions in what to expect in personal computing that continues today. You can’t go to a single coffee shop without seeing several white Apple logos illuminated. Hell, you can walk into most businesses and spot a Mac within 10 minutes.
It went from being a joke with computer nerds ten years ago, to today where just about everyone I know, even the biggest skeptics, are using Mac’s and loving every minute of it.
Apple stock was worth $7.46 per share on May 6, 1998. Today it worth $180 having three 2-for-1 stock splits.
Using the [MacBook] Air is like Christmas, your birthday, and Valentine’s Day all rolled into one.
CNNMoney.com (I couldn’t agree more)
I debated it for most the month, but I decided to go to WWDC instead of speaking at three events in Europe happening the same week.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak back to back at a Monotype event in London, Handsets World in Berlin and Mobile Web 2.0 back in London. I had planned on taking the family and seeing a bit of Europe, although the trip would have been a little crazy with me having to leave my family in London to go to Berlin and then back again the same day, I was all for it.
But given that my focus is shifting more and more toward the iPhone, I started feeling a pull toward San Francisco instead.
I was invited to WWDC last year, which as a Mac guy was great experience, but as a mobile guy is was pretty lame. In the few iPhone related talks offered last year very little information was being shared prior to its release. (however it did give birth to the idea that would become Leaflets.) But this year an entire mobile track has been added to discuss both native apps and web apps.
It may seem like an odd choice to pay $1,300 to attend an event that will only be talking about one device instead of being paid to spend time with my peers in the mobile community, but I truly feel that the iPhone is driving the future of mobile right now. And I would rather look forward than look behind.
My earlier inclinations that my errant SyncServer process was being caused by some sort of cross Atlantic technical glitch proved to be incorrect. When I returned home, the SyncServer process kept reaching into the 90-100% range of my CPU on a regular basis, making my MacBook Air unusable.
I couldn’t even open the .Mac Preferences to turn off syncing without System Preferences crashing. The only fix was to turn off all Internet connections.
So I decided to just do a complete wipe and reinstall and now of course the problem is solved. Incredibly lame, but at least the reinstall didn’t take too long.
So I learned the hard way (the hard way being my MacBook Air locking up right before when I get on stage to present), that .Mac and the UK just don’t mix. The SyncServer process seems to run the CPU cycles up, taking up to 99%. I kill it and it would keep popping back up. So far it has locked up my MacBook about a half a dozen times in just three days.
Daniel (who is UK-based) mentioned that he has suffered from the same problem on his G4 PowerBook. I wonder if there is an issue with connecting to the .Mac servers while overseas?
Note to self: turn off iDisk and .Mac syncing before heading to the UK again.
Problems with your Mac? Just re-install the Apple Security Update
My MacBook Air started freaking out late last week. A bunch of services weren’t working as expected after I installed the most recent security update. I spent hours trolling Apple support for any hints of a fix. Not finding anything, I figured my only salvation would be to do a re-install or something drastic.
But thanks to the help of Garrett and his regular readership of Daring Fireball, he pointed out the easiest of fixes:
Just download and re-install the last Security Update.
Like magic, everything is back to normal.
Leopard has a very annoying bug that if you delete a calendar in iCal it will notify everyone you have ever invited to an event… that’s everyone. So if you have a years worth of events, expect to send out a couple hundred emails. This makes it very problematic if you want to migrate a static calendar to say Google Apps, or… I don’t know, just want to delete an old calendar!
I’ve tried to go in and delete the calendar files and iCal cache, but since I use .Mac syncing they keep popping back in, even after I have turned off .Mac syncing they still come back.
The only way I figured I could do it without sending a million meeting cancelations was to delete the calendars while unplugging my Mac from the network. Then trying to delete the messages while offline. Due to bad timing on my part I missed a few before they got sent out.
Its not often when you notice such a bad usability bug in Apple’s products, but this one is a doozy, since it isn’t just an annoyance to you, but to others who get your cancelation spam.
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