Posts in Linked

The General-Purpose iPad→

Ben Thompson has a good post about the differences between “computing” tasks on the Mac and the general-purpose nature of the iPad. I agree with his conclusion:

Ultimately, it is the iPad that is in fact general purpose. It does lots of things in an approachable way, albeit not as well as something that is built specifically for the task at hand. The Mac or PC, on the other hand, is a specialized device, best compared to the grand piano in the living room: unrivaled in the hands of a master, and increasingly ignored by everyone else.

Forget about this stuff and forget about “convergence”. My question is: for the future, does Apple think that the iPad – and by extension, iOS – will become suitable for traditional computing tasks?

Right now, Apple’s answer is that the Mac and iPad can coexist, each in a different space – and I believe that’s accurate. But as more people will choose tablets and smartphones as their primary computers in the coming years (with Mac sales further shrinking alongside the rest of the PC industry), will they start wondering whether spreadsheets, layouts, and photo management can be done on a multitouch display?

Does Apple think that their customers will want more from the iPad? And how would they deliver more without making the iPad more complex and less “magical”?

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How The “Lost” Mac Intro Video Was Found→

On January 24, 2005, Majo posted the video on his site for the Mac’s 21st birthday. The traffic was overwhelming. To watch, you had to download the 20MB file, and majo’s site soon crashed. We were SlashDotted, kottke.orged, and etc. He begged for mirror sites, and a bunch of other people helped out. I wrote a blog post about the video. I watched the comments come in from around the world as people woke up and discovered the “lost” video (that I didn’t realize had been lost). The comments show how excited people were to discover the video, and how eager they were to help by mirroring it. It was a pretty cool day.

Like many other “lost videos”, there’s a good story behind Jobs’ Macintosh intro (via Daring Fireball).

See also: how the original Macintosh demo was actually put together, by Andy Hertzfeld.

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Macminicolo Launches Mac Pro Colocation Service→

Macminicolo, the first Mac mini colocation service that has been hosting Mac mini servers for over 9 years, has today announced a Mac Pro colocation service, called MacProColo. The service will allow users to send their new Mac Pros to take advantage of the benefits of a data center to have powerful, dedicated hosting with all the benefits of OS X and the Mac Pro’s advanced technologies.

From the company’s blog post:

We tested the Mac Pro quite a bit in the data center. It performs incredible and there is no issue with heat. The Pro does pull quite a bit more power though. (And in a data center, power is one of the biggest expenses.)

For most people, the Mac mini will easily do the job and will also be less expensive for purchase and for colocation. In my opinion, I think most people will want the Mac Pro on their desk and the Mac mini in the data center.

Speaking to MacRumors’ Jordan Golson, Macminicolo’s Brian Stucki noted that the fan of the new Mac Pro makes it easy to get air through the machine, and he added that heat dissipation won’t be an issue in most data centers.

We’ve been running MacStories on Macminicolo for over a year now, and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the service’s uptime and the company’s support. We’ve changed a few hosting providers over the years, and while setting up a dedicated Mac server for our needs required some time, it was absolutely worth it. We won’t need a Mac Pro upgrade (at least not for the time being), but I can personally vouch for Macminicolo and I’m looking forward to reading about other websites switching to MacProColo.

Details about pricing are available here.

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iFixit Tears Down The Original Macintosh→

iFixit:

Join us as we live the time-traveler’s dream—the deep, lucid, Orwellian vision of hope, fear, and nostalgia that is 1984. Just in time for its 30th anniversary, we laid hands on an ‘84 original: the Macintosh 128K. And, you guessed it—we’re tearing it down like it’s the Berlin Wall.

They give it a repairability score of 7/10. Don’t miss the face-to-face photo of Old vs New in Step 7.

Also worth checking out: Macworld’s unboxing of the Macintosh (via John Siracusa).

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Celebrate The Mac→

Jonathan Zufi:

To celebrate Mac’s 30th birthday, I’ve created this micro site for all the world to enjoy. In 2009, I started taking photos of every Apple product ever made since 1976. Then I turned them into a really big photo site. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, and I hope that the Macintosh’s anniversary brings your happy memories of your own experience with Apple.

Beautiful photos. Jonathan is also the author of ICONIC, a fantastic photo book about Apple products. Make sure to check out the PowerBooks page and then look down at your new MacBook’s trackpad.

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Apple Executives On The Mac At 30→

Macworld’s Jason Snell has an interview with Apple executives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble about the 30 years of the Mac (Tribble was part of the original Macintosh team). It’s a great interview, and this part about convergence of OS X and iOS stood out to me:

The reason OS X has a different interface than iOS isn’t because one came after the other or because this one’s old and this one’s new,” Federighi said. Instead, it’s because using a mouse and keyboard just isn’t the same as tapping with your finger. “This device,” Federighi said, pointing at a MacBook Air screen, “has been honed over 30 years to be optimal” for keyboards and mice. Schiller and Federighi both made clear that Apple believes that competitors who try to attach a touchscreen to a PC or a clamshell keyboard onto a tablet are barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience?” Federighi said. “We believe, no.

Later in the article, Snell included other quotes by Federighi and Schiller about how each device in Apple’s lineup fills a specific role. The message is clear, but I’m sure that it still won’t convince analysts to better understand the company they’re covering.

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Workflow Requests #1→

Earlier today, I asked:

I had some free time, and decided to provide a solution to some of the requests I received. I don’t know if I will repeat this experiment in the future (although it’s likely, because I had fun), but if you have questions, feel free to ask. I don’t see why you shouldn’t speed up that tedious task you’ve been doing over and over on your iPad or iPhone with an action, workflow, or script.

The best part – you can download the actions below and skip this step entirely.


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