Many great pieces will be written about Steve Jobs today, as his death becomes widely known while people watch or listen to the morning news. At least a few (if not many) will probably hit upon some of these thoughts, my thoughts. Many things have inspired me. Some are obvious: my wife, my kids, my friends, my passions, my pains. Others aren’t quite so obvious, like the feel of a seemingly perfect pen gracefully marking seemingly perfect paper, as if my very soul was flowing through the tip. An outstanding piece a friend wrote late yesterday inspired me to write [...]
Apple
Minority shareholder
I’ll bet you didn’t know I owned Apple. No, not AN apple. This isn’t a post about an epic journey to the grocery store. This is the story of something I wanted to do for a long time: buy stock in my favorite computer company. This isn’t a story of buying low and selling high, of market savvy, or mad money. This is a love story. If you’ve been on Apple train for the whole Jobs reunion tour – you get it. If you’ve been on the wagon since ’84, when the first Macs rolled off the lines, you definitely [...]
It’s 5:19 and I still have my MacBook
My MacBook wasn’t well. Its trackpad wasn’t quite right. I made an appointment with the folks at the local Apple Store to give it a look. That was at four this afternoon. I was expecting I’d have to leave it there – possibly for days. I did have to leave it there, after talking to the Apple tech and diagnosing the problem (and the solution: replacing the trackpad) – but it was less than an hour. Oh my, I think I’m gonna swoon…
The cash stampede
I didn’t even know it had a name. I’d never seen it before my Beth’s PowerBook started having problems last month. Apparently there is a screen of death on a Mac, the dread blue-screen equivalent: the GSOD, or grayed-out screen of death. I can’t blame you if you’ve never heard of it. It’s rarely seen in the wild, confined mostly to secret labs, under highly controlled circumstances, with experts trained in the clandestine arts of infiltration and subversion. But sometimes it does find it’s way out. Even the experts don’t know how. Anyway, I’ve run hardware tests and software tests. [...]
Keyboards, revisited
A while back I questioned the wisdom of the redesigned Apple keyboard, shipping with the (then and now) new iMacs. The Aluminum Apple Pro Keyboard If you’ve been with me for a few years and you’ve got a keen mind (allowing you to remember the most pedestrian of posts from a mediocre blogger) you may recall this post – post chemotherapy. Well since then Apple has gone all bluetooth, all the time… but the look, and more importantly – the feel – has remained the same. I picked up one of the bluetooth beauties to use my MacBook as an [...]
