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The Idea Of Steve Jobs Existed Alongside - Superseded - The Actual Jobs
For The 5th Year In A Row, Apple Wins CES. Before It Starts. Without Showing Up.
The Story Of CES 2012: Catching Up With Apple
Apple Legal Threat To Steve Jobs Doll Deemed 'Bogus'
Steve Jobs Doll Legal In Most States
Happy 10th Birthday, 'Luxo Jr' iMac G4!
Adventures in Intel MacBook Land
Windows 8 To Get Self-Healing 'Storage Spaces'
Virtualizing Storage For Scale, Resiliency, And Efficiency In Windows 8
Wondershare Free PDF to Word
ClamXav Open Source Mac Anti Virus Reviewed
SnapHeal Inexpensive Photo Enhancement App
USB 3.0 Roundup - Storage Scenarios For Mac Users
Apple May Have Jumped The Shark And Reached Its Zenith
Microsoft Signature: PCs Without Crapware, Just Like Macs
Microsoft Signature. Performance Tuned, Handcrafted, Youll Love It!
What To Do When An App Hangs In OS X
Bean 3.0.4 Free Word Processor Update Released
Lenovo Unveils First ThinkPad Hybrid Laptop and Company’s First Business Ultrabook
CES Outing For 'World's Thinnest' Tablet, Ultrabook, Says Toshiba
The Idea Of Steve Jobs Existed Alongside - Superseded - The Actual Jobs
Stanton Peele in Addiction in Society contends that we react to people - even in our most intimate relationships - as ideas rather than as people, our friends occuring to us primarily as images and associations, rather than as actual, living human beings, and this is is quadruply true with famous people.
Peele cites as a prominent example - Steve Jobs, asserting that Jobs's greatest magic act of all has been his emergence as our consumer electronics era's idea of the guru genius - an image that hides "a horrible set of secrets about his personality" - that Jobs was cruel, totally selfish, and incapable of considering others' feelings, and no amount of success, of efforts by those closest to Jobs, of awareness of his impending death could change this about him.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://bit.ly/AF4CQW
For The 5th Year In A Row, Apple Wins CES. Before It Starts. Without Showing Up.
TechCrunch's MG Siegler says far as he can tell, every person that I know who is going to CES views it as a chore - They're not excited to go; they dread it.
He further notes that as everyone is well aware, Apple never has any presence at CES, but actually, thinking back to the past few CES conventions, all he seems to recall is people talking about is Apple anyway. If Sony announced something, it was compared to what Apple was doing in the space. Each keynote was compared to a Steve Jobs keynote. If LG sneezed, a thousand bloggers would check the tissue for Apple snot. Everyone else was consumed with what Apple was always just about to announce.
To read more, click here:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/05/best-ces-ever/
The Story Of CES 2012: Catching Up With Apple
San Francisco Chronicle Columnist James Temple says one theme dominating this year's International Consumer Electronics Show: catching up with Apple.
For example the big news this year is ultrabooks - Intel-based PCs that strive to match the weight, thinness and power of the MacBook Air.
So, to put it another way, says Temple, the big news is that PC makers have caught up to Apple, 15 months late - assuming, of course, the devices are any good.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://bit.ly/zLzCn9
Apple Legal Threat To Steve Jobs Doll Deemed 'Bogus'
The Register's Rik Myslewski says it appears that Apple's threatened lawsuit against the Chinese manufacturer of a Steve Jobs action figure may be baseless. At least in most US states.
On Thursday The Telegraph had reported that Apple had sent a letter to the doll-making firm, In Icons, declaring in part that the company's use of late Apple cofounder's likeness was a "criminal offense".
However, he cites expert opinion that while the living own the rights to their own likenessess, under American law so-called 'personality rights' exist only at the state level there is no federal law, and only about a dozen states recognize image rights after death, although one of those states is Jobs' birthplace of California.
Also, Apple may have no rights to Jobs' name anyway.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/zgZHra
Steve Jobs Doll Legal In Most States
PaidContent says that while Apple's lawyers have a fearsome reputation for defending the company's intellectual property, it sure like theyre bluffing in the controversy over a new Steve Jobs doll.
The report notes that while the Daily Telegraph reported Apple claiming to own rights to Jobs's likeness, its legal claim is largely bogus, because while people can indeed own rights to their likeness, those rights usually apply only to living people. Unlike other forms of intellectual property like patents or copyrights, image rights do not survive beyond the grave in most U.S. states.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/wKcc4b
You can check out an order the Steve Jobs Doll on Amazon.com:
http://bit.ly/wfyppu
Happy 10th Birthday, 'Luxo Jr' iMac G4!
Low End Mac's Dan Knight sasays: at while the original iMac seemed like a radical departure from modular beige computers in 1998, it really amounted to little more than building the computer into the monitor and adding some color. The iMac G4, on the other hand, was a radical design departure with its computer in a hemispheric white base and a flat panel display practically floating in the air above it. The novel design was unexpected, and Steve Jobs even managed to get the iMac G4 on the cover of Time magazine the week it was announced.
In their latest round table discussion, Low End Mac's staff take a look at the iMac's design legacy, paying particular attention to the pros and cons of the G4 "Luxo Jr" design.
You can check it out at:
http://bit.ly/zfLOy8
Adventures in Intel MacBook Land
Low End Mac's John Hatchett ponders now that he's replaced his old, dead 867 MHz 12" PowerBook G4 with a black MacBook, what really stands out about the Intel experience on the Mac platform.
First, the Internet is a happier place, where he can now run embedded videos on sites, and things happen a lot faster now. He notes that OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard still allows him to run PowerPC applications with Intel speed on his side, noting that while it used to take overnight for his PowerPC Mac to make a digital copy of an average movie, it's just a couple of hours with the Intel MacBook.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/Anu4pv
Windows 8 To Get Self-Healing 'Storage Spaces'
The Register's Chris Mellor reports that Microsoft will introduce in Windows 8 what it calls "Storage Spaces" - a method of putting drives into a virtual pool from which self-healing virtual disks can be created, with some resemblance to ZFS features.
As described in a 4,400-word deep-dive blog post on Thursday, introduced by Microsoft Windows Division head, Steven Sinofsky, and written by a member of Redmond's Storage and File System team, Rajeev Nagar, Storage Spaces are being added to the coming Windows 8 Beta and can be tried out in the Windows 8 Developer Preview. The basic idea is to provide automated data protection and resiliency against physical drive failures, and a storage volume that is actually larger than individual physical drives.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/AgNG9Q
Virtualizing Storage For Scale, Resiliency, And Efficiency In Windows 8
Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky dives into a feature in the Windows 8 Developer Preview, affirming that Storage Spaces are going to dramatically improve how you manage large volumes of storage at home (and work).
Sinofsky notes that we've all tried the gamut of storage solutions from JBOD arrays, to RAID boxes, or NAS boxes. Many have been using Windows Home Server Drive Extender and have been hoping for an approach architected more closely as part of NTFS and integrated with Windows more directly. In building the Windows 8 storage improvements, Microsoft developers set out to do just that and developed Storage Spaces. Of course, the existing solutions you already use will continue to work fine in Windows 8, but they think you'll appreciate this new feature and the flexible architecture. In the post, Rajeev Nagar, a group program manager on Microsoft's Storage and File System team, details this new feature.
In a nutshell, Storage Spaces allow:
• Organization of physical disks into storage pools, which can be easily expanded by simply adding disks. These disks can be connected either through USB, SATA (Serial ATA), or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). A storage pool can be composed of heterogeneous physical disks different sized physical disks accessible via different storage interconnects.
• Usage of virtual disks (also known as spaces), which behave just like physical disks for all purposes. However, spaces also have powerful new capabilities associated with them such as thin provisioning (more about that later), as well as resiliency to failures of underlying physical media.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/A43k23
Wondershare Free PDF to Word
Wondershare has announced a new Free PDF to Word Online service, providing users a new, fast, free service to convert PDF to Word 100% online.
Convert your PDF to editable Word documents for free: Convert PDFs to Word online one at a time, or try Wondershare's PDF Converter on Desktop app to convert all of your files in one fell swoop. Exclusive features for the desktop app include:
• Batch convert up to 200 PDF files at one go.
• Convert a 100-page PDF file within 1 minute.
• Select to convert PDF pages or page ranges.
Wondershare Free PDF to Word Online, enables users to convert native and encrypted PDF files to Microsoft Word 2003/2007 and RTF while preserving 100% of original formatting and layout.
For more information, visit:
http://free-pdftoword.com/
ClamXav Open Source Mac Anti Virus Reviewed
AppStorm's Jorge Rodriguez remembers from when he used a Windows machine how annoying the anti-virus apps used to be, noting that it was kind of a can't live with them, or without them relationship. In short, if you ran a Windows machine, you had to have an anti-virus app if you wanted it to remain functional, but most of the anti-virus apps were annoying and slowed down the computer a lot. "It almost felt like installing a virus that would keep away even worse viruses away from my computer," says Rodriguez.
Consequently, when he made the switch to Mac, one of the big factors that influenced his decision were all the people telling him that Mac OS is safe out of the box, and that he didnt need an anti-virus. On the other hand, many users don't feel safe running their Mac without an anti-virus installed, so he's reviewing a free alternative to the popular paid anti-virus Mac apps called ClamXav, and endeavours to answer the question: "do you really need an antivirus" on a Mac? He concludes not, but suggests that if having one makes you sleep better, a free one like ClamXav is the way to go, since you won't be using it much anyway.
For the full review visit here:
http://bit.ly/Al2Pzp
SnapHeal Inexpensive Photo Enhancement App
Snapheal is a new photo app for Mac and it can do magic. In a matter of minutes and just few clicks you can dramatically enhance your photos. Snapheal allows you to erase unwanted objects from the photo, make skin imperfections vanish, delete text, enhance images with clone & stamp tool and much more at a rocking price.
Here is what you can do:
• Remove unwanted objects from the image
• Make skin imperfections vanish
• Erase unwanted text (watermarks, etc)
• Dramatically enhance photos with clone & stamp tool
• Lighten dark areas
• Sharpen images
• Add blur
• Adjust saturation, gamma, light levels, shadows and much more
Snapheal uses three unique patented technologies to help you achieve excellent results in deleting unwanted objects from an image. There are special algorithms for erasing big and small objects, for skin healing, for deleting text, and so forth. Choose the algorithm, paint over the area you want to delete and Snapheal will do the same.
You can also lighten dark images, reduce noise, sharpen images, add shadows and more. Snapheal features over 20 different tools to enhance and fix images and lets you edit the whole image or just a specific part of it.
Erase Tool
Erase objects, which look unnecessary; remove skin imperfections; delete unwanted text and more.
Clone & Stamp
The tool that every photographer needs. Clone & Stamp lets you dramatically enhance image by painting one part of the image over another. You can duplicate objects or fix imperfections on the photo. If you need help, check the built-in video tutorials. Snapheal gives you video tips on how to use each and every tool.
Retouch Studio
A set of handy tools to enhance specific parts of the image. You can adjust contrast and saturation, sharpen specific area, lighten dark images or fix the pictures with too much light on them. All is done in seconds: you pick the adjustment, set the brush size and paint over the area that needs improvements. Snapheal lets you preview the result live.
Image Adjust Toolbox
10 most essential tools to make your photos look perfect. Use sliders to adjust brightness, contrast, exposure, color temperature, hue and saturation. You can also lighten shadows, darken highlights, sharpen image or reduce noise on the photo. Unlike in retouch studio, where you apply enhancements to a specific area of the image, tools in this panel help you fix the whole image at once.
• Crop, rotate and flip functions
• Support of practically all image formats, including RAW
• Support of resolution up to 32 megapixels
• Built-in video tutorials and tips
• Possibility to import pics from Aperture and iPhoto albums
• Possibility to export images to iPhoto or share via most popular social networks (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc)
Snapheal is an excellent tool to get rid of skin imperfections. You can Import photos from your Aperture or iPhoto albums, quickly fix them and send back to iPhoto. Plus you can share your creations via popular social networks - Facebook, Tumbrl, Twitter, Flickr and more.
The most essential tools are fit into the program's user interface, which lets you preview the results, compare the resulting image with the original, switch between tool panels with a click and was created to help you make perfect photos easy.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Limited time - 70% OFF - $5.99
For more information, visit:
http://www.macphun.com/snapheal
App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapheal/id480623975?mt=12
USB 3.0 Roundup - Storage Scenarios For Mac Users
BareFeats' rob-ART morgan says that alhough Thunderbolt is the new storage 'darling,' there is still interest in USB 3.0 with its 5Gb/s theoretical bandwidth, and that third party storage makers are certainly providing USB 3.0 products as an option to Mac owners thanks to various host adapters. Morgan suggests that at some point it would seem to make sense for Apple to switch the multiple USB 2.0 ports on all models of Mac to USB 3.0.
In the meantime Morgan gathered up various USB 3.0 enclosures and tested them using both the HighPoint RocketU Quad installed in the 2010 Mac Pro hex-core and the CalDigit SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ExpressCard installed in the 2011 MacBook Pro. When possible, he installed a fast 6Gb/s SSD so that the drive can't be accused of being the bottleneck. Finally, he included one Thunderbolt and one 6Gb/s eSATA example to provide perspective.
Takeaway: none of the USB 3.0 enclosure/host adapter combos came close to the 5Gb/s (500MB/s) theoretical transfer speed of a single USB 3.0 data channel, and the Thunderbolt and 6Gb/s eSATA examples were twice as fast as the fastest USB 3.0 example.
You can check it out at:
http://barefeats.com/hard145.html
Apple May Have Jumped The Shark And Reached Its Zenith
SeekingAlpha ponders whether Apple Inc. may have jumped the shark and reached its zenith. How so?
Steve Jobs Is Gone - May He Rest In Peace
Parabolic Trends Are Unsustainable
Competitive Environment Is Intense And Vicious
Moving from Growth to Value
Contrarian Phenomenon - "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain
The essay concludes that Apple is a great company with solid prospects and a bulging balance sheet, but so is Microsoft and it has been dead money for a decade.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://bit.ly/xmMSEk
Microsoft Signature: PCs Without Crapware, Just Like Macs
Wired's Charlie Sorrel observes:
Microsoft has announced the Signature, a range of PCs which come without any crapware, and carefully [tuned] to help achieve maximum performance.
Mac users: stop me here if this sounds familiar.
To read more, click here.
http://bit.ly/zyyq0Q
Microsoft Signature. Performance Tuned, Handcrafted, Youll Love It!
So says Microsoft, noting its engineers have spent time carefully tuning your PC to help achieve maximum performance, as well as including software that makes it really fly. They've added world-class antivirus security software with no renewal fees along with 90 days of technical support directly from Microsoft.
Microsoft says PCs with Microsoft Signature are designed to be lightning fast from the moment you turn it on the very first time, and that while many PC computers require significant configuration to get them to work the way you want, but with a PC and Microsoft Signature, you won't spend hours configuring it. It comes ready to go and as a result, it will help save you time and lots of it.
You can check it out at:
http://signature.microsoft.com/Default.aspx
What To Do When An App Hangs In OS X
MacFixIt's Topher Kessler notes that when an application hangs in OS X, you'll most likely see the mouse cursor turn into a spinning color wheel or "beach ball" when hovered over the application's window. He explains what causes this sort of behavior and provides suggestions for what to do when hangs occur, for example forcing the program to quit and then relaunching it, and option that he observes is even more convenient in OS X 10.7 Lion thanks to its autosave and resume features that usually allow you to restore the program to its last working state. However, Kessler cautions that this is not always a desired approach, especially when you have unsaved changes to documents or settings.
You can check it out at:
http://cnet.co/AdDmSl
Bean 3.0.4 Free Word Processor Update Released
Bean 3 is a small, easy-to-use and free rich text editor and lightweight word processor designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. A features tweak version 3.0.3 is now available.
Lean, fast and uncluttered, Bean starts up quickly, has a live word count, page layout mode, full-screen mode, regular expression search/replace, multi-column text, inline graphics, detailed statistics, and much more, and its user interface is easy on the eyes. While MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people, sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That's Bean's niche. For example, Bean doesn't do footnotes or use stylesheets and is only partially compatible with Word's file formats. Also, it allows in-line graphics, but not floating graphics.
New in Version 3 are an optional single-window tabbed interface layout, template documents with boilerplate text, a split view, a two-up layout view, freeform headers and footers, plain text editing, and other improvements.
Bean features:
live word count
make template documents with boilerplate text
free-form headers and footers
page layout view (optional 2-up)
alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)
split-window editing
full screen editing
date-stamped backups
selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, etc.
find panel allows regular expressions (pattern matching)
all of Cocoa's good stuff (dictionary, word completion, etc.)
Bean natively reads and writes these file formats:
.rtf format (rich text)
.rtfd format (rich text with graphics)
.bean format (identical to .rtfd)
plain text (Unicode and legacy)
.webarchive format (Apple's web archive format)
Bean transparently imports and exports these formats:
.doc format (MS Word '97, minus images, margins, and page size)...more info here
.docx format (Word 2007, minus images and some formatting)...more info here
.odt format (OpenDocument, minus images, margins, and page size)
Bean can export all of the above formats to these formats:
.html (web page format)
.doc compatible (with images intact)
New in version 3.0.4:
Bugfixes:
Fixed a problem where help files would not display for some users (20120102-1).
Fixed a problem where Styles > Paste Font & Ruler into a zero-length selection just ahead of paragraph break would lose typing attributes (20120103-1).
Localized the "Do you want to save the changes you made to the document?" alert panel and fixed a few other localization issues (20120102-4).
Changes:
Opening Beans help files no longer causes the initial unchanged Untitled document to close (20120102-2).
Increased area that triggers visibility of scroller in full screen mode (OS X 10.5-10.6) (20120102-3).
Additions:
Added Styles > Paste Font Family & Ruler menu item (this retains italic, bold, etc. if possible) (20120103-2).
New in Version 3.0.3:
Replaced the toolbar icons with a more colorful set.
Added Slovak localization
New in Version 3.0.2:
Fixed a problem where text fields did not accept digits after ',' used as a decimal.
New in Version 3.0.1:
Totally rewritten, with many new features. Requires OS X 10.5+
Drag-resize of edit view in draft mode now works (oops).
Tabbed editing
Ability to resize the width of the draft edit view within its window
Plain text editing
System requirements:
Bean requires a Mac with a PPC or Intel processor running OS X 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard, or 10.7 Lion
An older version (2.4.5) is still available compatible with OS X Tiger 10.4+
For more information, visit:
http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html
Lenovo Unveils First ThinkPad Hybrid Laptop and Company’s First Business Ultrabook
Lenovo has announced the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid laptop, combining the thin, light and performance benefits of its predecessor - the X1 – claiming double the battery life, up to 10 hours, via the hybrid’s Instant Media Mode, powered by a second processor and operating system. Lenovo also announced the ThinkPad T430u Ultrabook, the company’s first business ultrabook giving professionals exceptionally thin and light design without sacrificing performance and productivity.
"The ThinkPad X1 Hybrid and T430u ultrabook represent the next generation in thin and light computing," says Dilip Bhatia, vice president, ThinkPad Business Unit, Lenovo. "From small businesses that literally live their business on the road to corporate professionals working in a managed environment, these new crossover laptops fundamentally change the way people think about mobile computing technology."
Instant Media Mode – Double Battery Life, Instantly
The hybrid doubles as a second PC thanks to its battery-stretching Instant Media Mode (IMM). IMM includes a Qualcomm dual core processor, up to 16 GB of memory and a custom Linux-based operating system. To switch to IMM from Windows, users simply click on an icon on the laptop’s home screen. With IMM, the laptop operates much like a smart phone, remaining turned on and requiring fewer charging sessions.
Via IMM, users can watch videos, view photos, listen to music and browse the web while preserving precious battery life. Pioneered by ThinkPad, the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid laptop also includes Rapid Charge2, technology that charges the battery up to 80 percent in just 30 minutes.
The Best of ThinkPad X1
Measuring less than 0.6-inches and weighing less than four pounds, the 13.3-inch ThinkPad X1 Hybrid goes heavy on performance by doubling the CPU performance and quadrupling the graphics performance of previous Lenovo 13-inch laptops. The hybrid comes equipped with choices of the latest Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and the Windows 7 operating system.
A great crossover PC, the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid also remains a business-class laptop first with features like optional mobile broadband, a high definition display that includes Corning Gorilla Glass and a high definition web camera and microphones for video and voice calling. It also has robust security layered with Intel vPro3 technology, encrypted hard drives with remote management support and a fingerprint reader. Content on the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid looks good and sounds good in both Windows and IMM. The laptop features Dolby Home Theater v4 sound, an HDMI port and Intel Wireless Display technology to connect and stream 1080p video wirelessly to a TV or projector.
Ultrabook That’s All Business
Lenovo’s first business ultrabook, the ThinkPad T430u, equips business users with the same thin and light designs found in consumer ultrabooks without sacrificing business-class performance, and it comes at a mainstream price starting at $849.
The stylish ThinkPad T430u ultrabook borrows some of the elements typically found on premium laptops, such as a matte finish that’s soft to the touch and an aluminum top cover that complement its small - less than 0.8-inches and less than four pound - frame. It also sports ThinkPad’s new modern and minimalist island-style keyboard.
The 14-inch laptop has business-primed features including:
• Choices of the latest Intel Core processors and Intel integrated or NVIDIA graphics
• Choice of SSD storage or up to 1 TB of HD storage
• Up to six hours of battery life
• Quick resume and fast boot up
• Lenovo Solution Center powered by Intel Small Business Advantage, a set of productivity and security tools helping to enable overnight energy savings and automatic patch updates
The ThinkPad X1 Hybrid laptop and ThinkPad T430u ultrabook will be available starting in Q2 2012 and Q3 2012, respectively, through business partners and online at:
http://www.lenovo.com
Pricing for models starts at approximately $1,599 and $849, respectively
.
CES Outing For 'World's Thinnest' Tablet, Ultrabook, Says Toshiba
The Register's Tony Smith reports that Toshiba seems keen to continue offering netbooks in spite of the rise of the tablet, showing off a new model at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
Smith cites a Notebook Italia report the new machine sports the usual 10.1in, 1024 x 600 display but is based on Intel's new Atom N2800 chip. It'll have 1GB of 800MHz DDR 3 and a 320GB hard drive.
For the full report visit here:
http://bit.ly/AthoJ8
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