Digitivity » Apple/Mac

iPhone iOS 4 Features a Teslameter

Digitivity — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:25:00 +0000

It amazes me how much stuff Apple has been able to stuff into the iPhone: accelerometer, compass, GPS all seem old today.

The latest addition is a teslameter, a device for measuring magnetic fields using the iPhone 3GS or 4′s magetometer. I don’t know exactly what use there’ll be for that, but I’m sure people will come up with apps that exercise that function.

Steve Jobs Dies An American Hero

Digitivity — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:14:42 +0000

Steve Jobs passed away at his home. Regardless of your preference in computers or phones, he had an amazing record of innovation over the years:

He changed personal computers from a hobby to a practical reality with the original Apple computer.
He revolutionized graphic design and brought forth desktop publishing with the Macintosh.
The iMac brought the Internet to many people for the first time.
MP3 players existed before the iPod, but the iPod made playing MP3′s easy.
The iPhone was many people’s first smartphone.
Finally, the iPad made tablets practical and easy to use without a stylus.

People view him as a hero because he went from nothing to being one of the richest men in the world, all the while letting people do computing tasks they weren’t able to before.

Most people don’t know that Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant named Abdulfattah John Jandali. He was adopted into a working-class California family. His birth sister was writer Mona Simpson, also considered a genius in her field.

Steve Jobs Quits Apple: New CEO Tim Cook

Digitivity — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:15:37 +0000

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This just in: Steve Jobs quits Apple! The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Here’s the entire text of his short press release:

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

His chosen successor would be Tim Cook. Not having been in the spotlight, not a lot is know about him at this time. His Wikipedia page is pretty sparse, a good measure of his anonymity. He’s worked for Compaq and IBM before coming to Apple and outsourcing all manufacturing to China.

What does this mean for the future of Apple, the iPhone, and the iPad?

Via

iPad Productivity Tools: The Shopping List

Digitivity — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:30:19 +0000

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This great app provides the iPad user with an easy to manage shopping list that can be taken everywhere. Shopping items may also be placed in different categories, which make it easier to plan your trip to multiple stores throughout the day. This app has a very fast learning curve because of the easy to use and simple user interface. The best part about this app is that it is only $2.99!

ShoppingList App

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find internet service providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your wireless internet necessities.

Top 5 Productivity Tools for the Apple iPad

Digitivity — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:51:00 +0000

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Apple’s iPad has grown in popularity amongst tech-savvy people and gadget-lovers alike. There are thousands of apps available on the market for the iPad, some of which are meant for entertainment purposes, many of which have an aim towards productivity. The best thing about the iPad is that all of these apps may be downloaded and installed via wireless internet. Here, we will concentrate on the top 5 productivity apps.

It’ll be presented in a series of 5 posts, so watch this space.

Prior Art for the iPad: From 1994

Digitivity — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:39:00 +0000

So Apple’s suing everyone left and right who’s selling anything that looks remotely like an iPad, including getting an injunction preventing Samsung from selling its Tab in Europe.

It’s amazing to me the way Apple thinks they own the very concept of a tablet.

So here’s a video from 1994 talking about Knight-Ridder’s tablet-based electronic newspaper initiative (1994!)

-It talks about multimedia integrated into electronic newspaper articles, like clicking on a picture of a ballgame to see a videoclip from it.
-It talks about clicking on newspaper headlines and summaries to go to the full article.
-It even talks about clicking ads; if you’re interested in it, you can go to the advertiser’s site (called “space” in the documentary).
-It talks about voice commands to operate the device.
So, what do you think: is Samsung the copycat, or Apple?

Install Free Software on Mac OS/X with Darwin Ports

Digitivity — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:11:50 +0000

In case you didn’t know, Mac OS/X is a complete UNIX environment underneath the hood. What this means for you is that there’s a lot of free and open source (F/OSS) software that you can install on on your Mac.

Darwin Ports is a system that lets you do that easily.

A “port” is a migration of software from one platform (like Windows) to another (like Linux).

Normally, you’d have to ask/beg a software company to release Mac versions (like Microsoft deigns to do for Office). And sometimes they don’t (as in Internet Explorer for Mac, now discontinued).

But with open source software, you have the software’s source code, so you can build it into a runnable program yourself. Needless to say, that can be complicated, so some folks have created a system to let you build selected programs easily.

Darwin Ports is a (growing) collection of software which has been tweaked to run on the Mac. You enter a command, and it builds both your desired program, and any other programs which yours may depend upon.

Installing Darwin Ports

First, download the Darwin Ports installer.

Note: the download page asks for your e-mail address. I can’t vouch for how it’s used, so use a throwaway address if you’re antsy.

You may or may not need to install XCode from the Optional Installs folder on your OS/X disc.

After running the installer, update your Darwin Ports by entering the following in a terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal):

sudo port -d selfupdate

Hit Enter and type your password when prompted (hit Enter again). Note: “sudo” means “execute this command as the admin user”.

Installing software with Darwin Ports

Once Darwin Ports is installed, you can install software packages. You can either search for a package in the search box at the Darwin Ports homepage or you can browse the list of ports in categories (also on the Darwin homepage).

To install a software package, you generally change to the directory of that package and use the "port install" command:

cd /opt/local/bin/portslocation/dports/frozenbubble2
sudo port install frozenbubble2

The Darwin Ports site has a little two-line command summary that tells you exactly what to type on each software package’s webpage, for example, see the one for Frozen Bubble.

Other OS/X ports systems

Other Mac ports systems include MacPorts and Fink.

Like many competing open source projects, there’s a fair amount of sparring among them. The MacPorts people think of themselves as the original ports for Mac, and Darwin Ports as an interloper. I can’t settle that, but generally:

MacPorts seems to have more ports than Darwin Ports
Darwin Ports seems a little easier to work with
Fink is supposed to have the most ports of all, but the versions are somewhat older.

One in Ten Computers is a Mac

Digitivity — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:04:44 +0000

People like to say that Apple only has a few percent market share.

But Quantcast has a new survey out that says 11% of online users are using Macintoshes.

The reason for the difference lies in what’s being measured.

Market share means what percent of all the computers (or operating systems) sold in a given year are a particular OS. Quantcast is measuring the installed base, though. Since it’s thought that Macs are higher quality than most PCs, it’s possible they last longer, and people don’t need to buy so often. Since they’re not buying replacements every year, the market share for Macs might be smaller.

Interestingly, Apple has a higher share in North America: 10.9%. (That’s where the 11% is coming from.) It’s installed base in Asia is 2.5%, and even lower in Africa and Latin America.

The fall of Windows

Microsoft Windows is still the biggest OS, but it’s come down over the past few years under 90% to 86% now.

With Windows going down, and at one out of every 8 customers being on a non-Windows platform, it’s going to get increasingly more difficult for Microsoft to lock down the web and the computing world into a Microsoft-only scene. After all, why would you voluntarily give up one of every eight paying customers?

Most businesses don’t have the margins to ignore that number of clients, so I think, going forward, we’ll see more and more cross-platform software applications. Since most cross-platform programming environments (like Java, Python, and Qt) support Windows, Linux, and Mac, we’ll probably see an increase in applications available for Linux/Ubuntu.

I think that’s a good thing regardless of which OS you like to use because, anymore, people are going to demand that their data not be locked up into any one OS or application data format.

Resources

Ars Digita: Mac OS X North American installed base almost 11%

Quantcast Blog: Operating System Share