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Unless Apple is planning on unveiling an iCar, an iHome or an iBrain at Tuesday's Macworld Expo in San Francisco, the media focus will remain squarely on Steve Jobs; his absence, his health, his successors. That's as it should be, even with the "Dear Apple Community" letter from Jobs that the company released Monday, and an accompanying statement of support from Apple's board of directors.
Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs generally has the latest and greatest cell phones. But he's never owned the uber-trendy Apple iPhone. "Not until they put a Qualcomm chip in it," Jacobs said in a September interview. It could soon be time for Jacobs' first Apple phone. The company is widely rumored to be planning an iPhone nano, a smaller touchscreen version of its popular phone.
After several months of macabre speculation in the tech industry and on Wall Street, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has set the record straight. Yes, the cancer survivor has been losing weight. The reason is a hormone imbalance for which he is now receiving treatment. Jobs made the announcement via a letter that was posted to the Apple Web site.
Building an application for today's Web is a balancing act. Potential users use several competing browsers. Yet the user experience must be uniform for everyone, regardless of his/her browser of choice. And you can't support one or two browsers because you'll cut out major portions of the market. The problem is further compounded if your application is social.
The human personality is as complex and diverse a system as anything that can be found in this world. Everyone ticks in their own way. While some can mask their inner selves and emotions well enough to win the World Series of Poker, others wear their hearts -- and even more -- on their sleeves. Either way, if you want to get a good snapshot of someone's personality, a peek at their iPod's playlist might just be the way there.
One of the main reasons Windows users switch to the Macintosh is to escape the constant onslaught of malware. Viruses, Trojans and spyware are a constant threat to the Windows ecosystem. Apple touts the Mac as being a haven from malware, and certainly in the past that's been the case. But the past is no guarantee of what will happen in the future.
Adam Parks is an avid reader of digital books, but you won't find him downloading the 20 or so titles he reads each year onto an electronic book device like Amazon's Kindle. Instead, Parks flips through pages -- Web-site design manuals and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" are recent favorites -- on his trusted iPhone.
Getting video out of your iPod and onto a television screen is often both easy and difficult at the same time. It's easy because Apple's proprietary cables are plug-and-play, and hard because early iPod-to-TV options were somewhat easier -- some early models of iPods would deliver TV out via the iPod Universal Dock and a cheap S-video cable.
For Internet junkies with high-speed access, there's a growing set of options for viewing online TV shows and movies. Sites like Hulu.com, Joost.com and even YouTube.com are showing full-length TV shows online. While YouTube is far behind Hulu and Joost in that regard, at least iPhone owners can watch YouTube videos on their mobile screens.
