Macintosh - page 4

Another Apple announcement, another de-emphasis on the Mac brand. It seems that every time Apple opens its corporate pie-hole, the venerable Macintosh brand drops down a notch in importance, and the Mac’s future demise seems more likely.

I was on a recent episode of Leo Laporte’s MacBreak Weekly, and after an hour and 45 minutes on a show with “Mac” in the name, the M-word was scarcely mentioned.

No, the Mac brand isn’t going away soon. I’m sure they’ll be upgraded and improved and sold for years to come. And they’re not failing in the market.

But it’s clear that the Mac will die. Sort of. Here’s what I’m talking about. 

One of the design geniuses behind the original Macintosh software now works at Google, and led the team responsible for interaction design and implementation of the Google+ circle editor, according to a public post on — what else? — Google+.

Andy Hertzfeld “conceived, designed and implemented a compelling prototype for it almost single-handedly, and then wrote a fair percentage of the production javascript code with lots of help” from other Google engineers.

Hertzfeld’s post is meant to spread the credit around. But the truth is that the “circle editor” is the single coolest thing in Google+.

(Photo courtesy of the Computer History Museum)

We went bonkers last week and gave out more free hardware in seven days than we ever have before. To mix things up this week we’re going to be giving out some beautiful software to enhance your Apple experience. Today we’re teaming up with the great people behind StackSocial who have given us three promo codes for their latest Mac Essentials Bundle. With eleven Mac apps worth $333 that we’re giving away for free, this is one of the best software giveaways we’ve ever had. You’ve got to play to win though, so here are the details on what you’ll win and how to qualify for the giveaway:

Classic Mac collectors are a creative bunch. Where others see digital trash, we see potential. Steve Abbott, curator of MacAbbott’s Mac Museum in Charlotte NC, has just created an innovative coffee table using those five-flavored candy-colored original iMacs in the style of Apple’s iconic Yum advertisement.

Steve stripped the guts out of five systems – blueberry, grape, tangerine, lime, and strawberry – added opaque white paper and light fixtures inside, then fashioned a table around them with a glass top and birch base. Reminds me of the kids tables inside Apple retail stores, with the retro glow of high tech lifesavers. The Yum coffee table is one-of-a-kind and for sale, bids start at $5,000; contact MacAbbott for details.

It’s happened to us all: You delete a file, folder or entire disk, then realize you’ve made a mistake.  You reach for your backup – and you don’t have a backup. What now?

There are several utilities available to help recover deleted files under Mac OS X.  Your chances of success depend on how the file was deleted and what you’ve done since then.  Unfortunately you will also lose your original filenames, though some reconstruction is possible.

One of the biggest problems with physical media is that it breaks. As soon as your DVD gets a couple scratches it’s rendered un-usable and worthless. Copying a DVD with encryption isn’t as easy as it should be. The good news is that with this walkthrough Cult of Mac will show you how to do it.

After scratching his head for awhile and wondering what to do with a Macintosh Classic II , Maker Matteo from Ithaca, New York repurposed his old faithful Mac into a shelf-top clock.

From appearances, it looks like the clock — which Matteo rather laughably calls “steampunk” in style — only came into being after its creator accidentally doused his Mac Classic in acid then shot with a bazooka, but the innards of the admittedly ugly timepiece work well enough: a 16MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive running MacOS 7 and a dozen different shareware and freeware clock programs, including one that counts down the seconds to Matteo’s death.

Yeah, it’s hideous, but we love it: this is just the kind of bizarro clock I can imagine discovering thirty years from now in the basement of an elderly and now quite eccentric Steve Wozniak. Great work, Matteo!

Ever been singing along to a new song and wondered just what the heck the lyrics really are? Searching for the lyrics on the internet isn’t the fastest of solutions to avoid lyric confusion. Here we’re going to show you how to utilize scripts and a widget to search out the lyrics for all of the songs in your iTunes library and automatically save them to song’s meta data, so that next time you can correct your friend when they sing “where’s my Asian friend,” when the lyrics really are, “what’s my age again.”

Tired of having to keep that browser tab open to Facebook just so you can keep chatting with your friends? It only takes five Quick Steps to integrate iChat with Facebook’s web-chat client and because Facebook uses the Jabber protocol it’s incredibly easy to set up and use.

Travel back in time with this classy look at the History of Apple Design.  Matt’s Macintosh offers a loving paean to Cupertino’s Industrial Design trends through the decades.

Theatrically filmed and scored, it’s like Christmas Past and Present!  [via RetroMacCast]

Where would the Macintosh (and Computing) World be without Bill Atkinson?  MacPaint, QuickDraw, HyperCard – Atkinson stands with the Giants.  In homage of his recent donation of the MacPaint source code to the Computer History Museum, flickr artist anoved offers this portrait of Bill Atkinson created entirely in MacPaint.  With tools like these, who needs Photoshop?  Well done!

Thanks Bill, for Everything!

Does your small- or medium-sized business run on Macs? Are you a Mac IT-manager?

If so, we’ve got a new weekly feature for you: Macs at Work. Every week, we’ll answer your business-related questions, from setting up servers to running iPads in the enterprise. Macs at Work is brought to by Macuity, a Mac-focused IT consulting group located in Boston, MA.

This week, we have a question about Snow Leopard server for group calendar and contact sharing.

In this highly-entertaining final installment of his series about Steve Jobs, Macworld founder David Bunnell is taken by Jobs to his favorite lunch spot (you’ll never guess where it is). And for once, Jobs changes his parking habits.

At Steve Jobs 30th birthday party, the jazz great Ella Fitzgerald sings him happy birthday. She seems to have no idea who he is.

Part 14 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell’s personal history of the Mac.

At a posh dinner party, Steve Jobs eats a plate of raw vegetables with a blonde bombshell sitting on his knee. Instead of going to Macworld and plugging the Mac, he’s too busy partying with Tina the nymphette.

Part 13 of Macworld founder David Bunnell’s personal history of the first Mac: “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs.”

In part 12 of Macworld founder David Bunnell’s story of the early Mac, Bill Gates is the only developer to actually deliver on his promises of software for the Mac. Microsoft’s Excel literally saves the Mac just when sales drop to nil, but at the same time Gates’ engineers are reverse engineering the GUI for the first version of Windows.

In Part 11 of Macworld founder David Bunnell’s memoirs, Steve Jobs triumphantly introduces the Mac to the world. “It sang to us. It performed mathematical calculations with the blinding speed of a Cray mainframe. It drew beautiful pictures. It communicated with other computers. It bounced rays off satellites and sent a subversive message to the Soviet Union.”

Steve Wozniak is unhappy at the Mac launch, which resembles “Woodstock for nerds.” Part 10 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” a personal history of the original Mac by Macworld founder David Bunnell.

In part 9 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell tells how he shouted “Steve Jobs is a fucking genius!” in front of a bunch of kids at a Super Bowl party.

Note: This is a guest column by David Yoken, founder of Macuity, a Boston Apple consultancy, who discusses the joys of providing IT and repair services to machines that “just work.”

Just got off a call with an architectural firm for whom we set up a brand new server last week. The typical conversation I have with clients is amusingly formulaic, and this one was much of the same:

Me: How’s everything going with your new server?

Customer: It’s really wonderful. We haven’t had any problems, and the transition has been nearly seamless.

Me: Super! I’m glad things are working out. I suppose now would be a good time to talk about a service and maintenance contract and schedule for your new equipment.

Customer: Well, we probably can handle most everything on our own. Apple makes it so easy, so we’ll be fine!

Me: Oh, umm…, absolutely! How about remote monitoring or help desk services?

Customer: Yeah, sure, but you probably won’t hear from us much on that end either. I think we can take it from here, but thanks!

The world’s most advanced music AI runs on a rickety old Power Mac 7500.

Called Emily Howell by its creator, music professor David Cope, the program just released “her” first album, From Darkness, Light, in January.

On Friday, Pete called our attention to a lovely poem by Beat poet Gary Snyder called “Why I Take Good Care of My Macitosh,” which features lovely stanzas like:

And puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;

And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,

Based on Snyder’s poem, you might be tempted to conclude that the Apple experience is synonymous with the zen and jazz inspired wanderlust of the Beat Generation as a whole. You might be right.

Although Guy Day is, as pictured, about as far away from the har- boozing, womanizing, red-meat-eating Don Draper type as a 70s-style pompadour will get you, he was one of the country’s quintessential ad men for decades.

Everyone reading this blog knows his work: as the president of the acclaimed Chiat / Day advertising agency, Day was responsible for bringing together the team that created the hyper-Orwellian 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh ad.

Sadly, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Day on Saturday, died in his sleep of natural causes. The timing is particularly depressing: a self-described “life-long agency ad man” who revolutionized Apple’s advertising strategies, Day, of all people, would be delighted by the marketing possibilities of the forthcoming Tablet.

Rest in peace, Mr. Day. You’ll always be remembered by this Mac fan for your art and for your work.

If astronaut Leroy Chiao has anything to say about it, Apple’s iPhone may be the first smartphone in space.

The former NASA astronaut, who has four missions in space under his belt, including a six and a half month stint on the international space station, has been a Mac nut since 1985. Today he is the Executive Vice President of Excalibur Almaz, a commercial venture that hopes to be putting space tourists into true space journeys by sometime in the next few years.

Chiao was disappointed to have to abandon his preference for Macs during his time as a NASA employee (because NASA was a PC-only shop) but says his first purchase after leaving the US government space program was a new Mac.

He’s an iPhone user, too — although he relies mostly on his 3 year-old twins for app selection so far — but he’s confident Mac and iPhone both have roles in his company’s plans — as long as they “play well with the systems on board.”

What it is:  BumpTop for Mac is OS X software that gives you a whole new way of looking at and using your desktop, one that brings your computer screen into the realm of 3D imaging and instantly grows your monitor’s real estate – no matter how large or small – into a more productive palette than anything you’ve seen before.

Why it’s cool:  BumpTop represents a total re-thinking of the 20 year-old design artifact that is the standard desktop UI.

Now you can view your computer screen as a real desk, or more accurately perhaps, as the floor of a four walled room – and use all the space to put your stuff in piles, tack important things on the walls and slap sticky notes on everything – just like in real life.

Desktop minimalists are hereby free to skip the rest of this post.