Amazon Will Finally Pass Best Buy

in revenue this year&hellip.   And Apple is in the game at about 1/3.   From Dan Frommer.

Andy Ihnatko's Ipad Review

At the Chicago Sun-Times, here's Andy Ihnatko's full review of the iPad.

My favorite line has nothing to do with the iPad:  “Well, look, if you want your mind blown, go and watch the original Star Wars trilogy again while pondering the question ‘Is Artoo Detoo using The Force?’”

Top 10 Data Center Stories

for 2011 from Datacenter Knowledge.

Siri Security Flaw

from Business Insider, SAI: Tools by Dylan Love.

Even if you have a passcode set to keep your phone inaccessible to other people, Siri's default setting is to ignore this. By holding the home button to activate Siri, anyone can bypass whatever preventative measures you have in place.

Don't despair—it's a simple fix. Start up Settings and navigate to General/Passcode Lock. Make sure that the “Siri” option is set to “Off.” That's all it takes to disable Siri while a passcode is in place.

The iPhone 4S

by John Gruber, Daring Fireball.

Steve Wozniak Talks about Steve Jobs

http://youtu.be/dK_XEGrzHUo

Snapshots of Life in a World with Steve Jobs

In 1977, I drove up Peachtree Street to Datamart on Pharr Road in Buckhead.  At the time it may have been the only computer store in Atlanta.  If it wasn't, there weren't many.  I clearly remember, not long after, when only three were listed in the Yellow Pages.  The IMSAI and North Star computers there were wonderful to see, but the star of the store I came for was the Apple II.

I remember seeing a lunar lander game, probably the first time I'd seen computer graphics on a screen and certainly the first time for color graphics.   I also recall a screen filled with BASIC code.  At some point I probably keyed in and ran a bit.

A few years later, my wife and I went to another computer store to see the Apple Lisa.  This was the first time I'd experienced a mouse and windows.  The simple icons on a black and white screen, with a menu at the top, were compelling.

When I started work at Emory University in 1985 we had two Macintosh computers in a computer lab that was two doors down the hall from my office.  In an handful of days we were unboxing a new LaserWriter.  The big three-ring binder, “Inside the LaserWriter,”  filled with loose leaf pages, and Adobe PostScript were a joy.

Just a few years later, my boss' boss had come from serving on the committee representing 25 universities that helped design the NeXT machine.  We received two of first NeXTcubes produced and kept one in our office.  My team named it Rubick.  Not long after that, I had a NeXTslab on my desk.  I was very fortunate to be able to put a NeXTslab, along with a PC and Mac, on the desktop of each of the five full-time professionals in my group.

The NeXT machines and NeXTSTEP were among the most delightful experiences I've ever had using and programming a computer.

Today, the Macbook Pro 13-in is one of the most beautiful computers ever made.  That's the portable system I use now.

I'll miss the moments like these.


Photo by Marie Matthews.

The Knowledge Navigator was set in 2011

@arnoldkim RT.  [VIDEO]    I was quite taken with this Apple video that came out in 1987.  At Emory, Jim will remember, we used to show it to freshmen during their computer technology orientation.

(An article is cited from 2006 as “five years ago.”)

Why Apple and Google Need to Stalk You

from cnnmoney.com.

Watch This Impressive Forerunner Of The iPad From 1994

[VIDEO] From Business Insider.

The 11-in Macbook Air

I saw the 11-in Macbook Air at the Apple Store last night.  My first impression is, Wow!  My second impression is, Yeah, Apple is right on this one, this is the future of the netbook/laptop computer.

Additional impressions:

• This is better than the iPad.  Yeah, I've finally played with iPads on a few occasions and it's compelling and amazing, but I'm not sure how practical.  The enthusiasts I listen to on podcasts are starting talk about migrating back to their laptops and refer to the pad as always a second computer that you want to use, but that it's maybe even a luxury.
• The 11-in screen is sufficient and the resolution is the same as on the 13.
• My 13-in Macbook Pro seems big now.   8-/  And heavy.  !!
• I've been expecting the end-of-media for a few years now and I'm starting to embrace it.  I'm resisting buying CDs, DVDs and Bluray discs, and a Bluray player, so far.  So, no so-called optical drive is okay, I think.
• The 11-in has exactly the ports I use, USB for a mouse and keyboard, video for external monitor or TV, audio for speakers or headphone.
• The wider aspect screen seems shorter and is a bit off-putting.  I don't know if it would actually be bothersome but that's something to take a second look at.

More later.

Basically I've had nothing but reservations about the iPad from the start, in spite of being excited about the idea of a computing pad for decades.  I have no reservations and I'm pretty excited about this computer.

MacPaint

Many of you will remember MacPaint as being one of the applications bundled with the first Macintosh computers.  Apple has made the source code available via the Computer History Museum.   It was written in beautiful Pascal (the wonderful language that I loved!) by Bill Atkinson.

Enjoy!

(If you want to read more Macintosh history and anecdotes, check out Folklore.org by Andy Herzfeld).

Andy Ihnatko on the iPad One Month Later

As usual, his review is well-balanced and well-said.  I finally got around to reading Andy Ihnatko's column in the Chicago Sun-Times on the iPad after one month of use.  It's quite good.

Trendistic Apple and Google

It's interesting to look at Apple and Google trends on Twitter via on Trendistic.  You can clearly see China, the iPad and Buzz.

It looks like Apple's announcement on 18 Jan of their upcoming press conference completely killed the China buzz.  You can also see the little blip from Google's superbowl add before the Buzz announcement yesterday.

The iPad

Some folks have asked me what I think about the iPad.  I'm still thinking about it but here's a brief snapshot of what I've thought so far.

Is it the pad device, dare I say tablet?, that I've thought about for decades?  I'm not sure.  My Nexus One fills that niche really well:

• It's portable
• I can watch movies and TV.
• I read nearly everything I read on it.  That can include books, news.  Twitter, email.  Even the dreaded Facebook.
• I can play an occasional game.  I could even play chess if I was playing much at the moment.
• My task list and all of my organizational information is on it.
• It's a fairly decent still image and video camera.
• I can use it to find the answer to just about any question I can think of and do this many times during the day.
• It also does a pretty decent job of understanding what I'm saying.  I can type into any input field in any application (a property of the Android OS) by talking to it.

So with all of that, what do I need a pad for?  I think that's a critical question many folks are asking.

About the only thing my phone doesn't do is allow me to type quickly and see more than the small screen of information at one time.  My favorite device for that is the laptop, which has a keyboard, and my favorite laptop is the 13-in Macbook.  (So, Apple hasn't lost my business).

Here's one advantage of a laptop that I haven't heard anyone mention yet:  It holds the larger screen up for you at the most ideal viewing angle.  With this big (compared to a phone) iPad, you have to hold the thing up yourself.  That seems like it would be annoying to me.  I wonder if anyone will eventually complain about that.

It's shocking to me, but I do think the need for any more than caching storage on these devices is on the verge of evaporating.  By that I mean no disk drive and not even a CD or DVD slot.

So, with all of that, I supposed I should prefer something like the Macbook Air  or one of the netbooks.

There's no question about one thing:  Apple is clearly targeting the netbook market.

Here's another thing that I'm sure of.  The nature of using what we call computers has shifted in a major way.  Basically, if you have a working browser, you're pretty much done.  I think this will become more true and, in this sense, the iPad is more than you need.  

Netbooks do fill a niche.  

I think Chrome OS is going to be quite interesting to watch.

Finally, I've read an account or two where people say, yeah all of that seems true until you hold the thing in your hands.  Then, the experience is so amazing and so compelling, you realize that this is something completely new.  I'm not in a position to argue against that and I won't be surprised if its true.  If it is, then like the iPhone, the trail will have been blazed for a new class of device to be built and sold, and less expensive but functional versions will follow.  Even if they aren't quite as amazing.

One more thing:  Convergence.  That is the notion that everything we use, our phone, TV, computer, music player, etc., is evolving toward a single something that is one thing we all carry around.  I've often thought that was true and I haven't dismissed the idea.  It could be, though, that we end up with multiple devices, like we have now but different ones, that serve different purposes.

Regardless of where things are going, it's certainly interesting.  

There's one other aspect of the world that I live in.  The 21st century.  The current world has just about caught up with my imagination.  Granted, robots aren't too common, no one goes to the relatively small space station but astronauts, and there are no off-world colonies where people shuttle off to, work and live.  There aren't any flying cars to speak of.  But, the rest of it is pretty much there.  I'm just about out of expectations now.  I guess whatever happens next will be a surprise.

Talk by Wozniak

While perusing iPad stuff on-line over the past couple of days, I came upon this nice talk by Steve Wozniak (co-inventor of Apple with Steve Jobs).

How I Learned to Quite the iPhone and Love Google Voice

RT TechCrunch How I Learned To Quit The iPhone And Love Google Voice http://tcrn.ch/4IFB by @arrington

Apple Trumps Windows PC

From the Apple Insider: Apple trumps Windows PC makers in customer experience study.

Old Apple Promos

I suddenly wondered if some of the old Apple promos presenting a vision of the future were on YouTube.

The classroom of the future:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgZQhSESM-g

And this one!  We used to show this to freshmen students during their IT orientation at Emory University in the 80s.  Interestingly, the video implies that it's 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8