Rose Cantine » Apple

Posts of the week

esme — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:08:55 +0000

Pagolac: delicious inexpensive Vietnamese food in downtown San Francisco

Mapplr’s favorite ryokans in Japan

Macworld: traditional conference trade show format is dead, what’s next?

Will VC funds produce the next Madoff?

No Exit: venture capital firms struggle to sell startups

Make Skype calls from your iPhone and iPod Touch via Truphone

My Mac Book Pro is back

esme — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:04:20 +0000

Fiona has returned from a long absence. After one week of being Mac-less, I am so happy that my laptop arrived today from the Apple repair center. I banished Wilbur (the ancient Dell) back into the closet and I hope I never have to go through this harrowing experience again. I learned one lesson: keep all contacts and my calendar online.

Day 2 without my Mac Book Pro: severe withdrawal symptoms

esme — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:51:33 +0000

This is Day 2 without Fiona (my Mac Book Pro) which is in intensive care somewhere in Texas. I was about to post on Day 1 but was too traumatized to write anything. And were it not for Obama’s victory, which I’m savoring today, I would not be functioning at all. There’s something about being deprived of the thing that keeps you company, entertains you, maintains your calendar, processes communications between you and your friends, every day. I briefly thought about running down to the Apple store to get a new Mac Book Pro or even a Mac Book Air. I spent half an hour spinning this fantasy in my mind, imagining myself with the latest Apple gear and maybe, even throwing in a new iPod or the 3G iPhone. Alas, budgetary pressures kept my fantasy in check. I will simply have to await the return of Fiona.

So I am writing this post on an ancient Dell that uses Windows XP. This Dell (which I’ve named Wilbur) is the perfect example of why I moved to the Mac platform back in 2002 and why I got a Mac Book Pro in June 2007. It’s too heavy to drag down to Peet’s Coffee, but if you are ever contemplating suicide, you can strap it to your chest and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. It is guaranteed to sink you.

What unnerves me most is this: I keep half of my appointments on Google calendar, but have made entries in Apple’s calendar software on my Mac. Never again!

Lesson 1: keep your calendar online.

I don’t think I’ve got any appointments this week (which aren’t on Google calendar), but I won’t know until I get a call from the offended person yelling at me for not showing up.

So while I’m waiting for the return of Fiona, I’m stuck with Wilbur. My only consolation is that Wilbur is too old to have upgraded to Vista.

Technology bits: an entrepreneur tells all; Apple has 66 percent market share

esme — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:28:08 +0000

An entrepreneurâ€™s honest assessment of what went wrong

Apple has 66 percent of market for $1000-plus computers

[Tech news] World's thinnest laptop, Apple kills cable TV

esme — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:11:15 +0000

If you have been living in a cave for the past 24 hours, you just missed Apple’s release of the world’s thinnest laptop (no CD or DVD drive, finally) and the beginning of the end of the cable TV industry. Read these posts on Pajama Entrepreneur:

Unfortunately, what Steve did not announce was: unlocked iPhone with 3G available everywhere in the world. That is what I was waiting for. That’s the last monopolistic monolith to crack: the telecom industry.

[Tip of the day] Super fast Wi-Fi using 802.11n on 5GHz

esme — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 08:32:03 +0000

Here’s a little tip I’d like to share with you. If you live in a city and use Wi-Fi at home, you will probably encounter interference from a lot of neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. The intereference can have a significant effect on the performance of your network, slowing down the speeds at which you send files around (internally among various devices in your house or office), or download/upload files on the Internet.

If you upgrade your Wi-Fi access point to one that uses 802.11n and upgrade your computer and other devices to ones that have 802.11n (or at least get an 802.11n adapter card for older devices), then set your new 802.11n base station to use the 5GHz frequency, you will find that your network’s performance will improve because there’s very little interference on that frequency. Most people do not have 802.11n yet.

My setup: I bought an Apple Airport Extreme base station (with 802.11n) two weeks ago. The Mac Book Pro that I bought last June already has 802.11n built in, so all I had to do was to set the base station to send and receive at 5GHz. The network is now very fast because there’s no interference from my neighbors who are all using 2.4 GHz.

Glenn Fleishman, who wrote the book Take Control of your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network, says he is still waiting for inexpensive 802.11n adapters for the older devices (laptops, etc.) in his house so he can have all of them use 5GHz. I’m waiting, too.

My experience upgrading to Leopard and the Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n base station

esme — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:11:15 +0000

A few days ago I broke down and bought Apple’s latest operating system, Leopard, and the new Airport Extreme 802.11n base station. I’ve been thinking about upgrading for several months but reports of problems experienced by other users who upgraded, scared me into sitting on the sidelines. I have been fortunate in that I experienced no problems doing the upgrade. Indeed, my Mac Book Pro (purchased in June 2007) is running all applications, especially Mail, much faster. What I like most about Leopard is the Quick Look feature which allows me to see what’s inside a file (document, video, slides) without having to open an application.

Faster wireless networking with 802.11n

Because I am in the center of Amsterdam where a lot of people have wireless networks, there’s a lot of interference which noticeably slowed down my network. Hence, I set the Airport Extreme 802.11n base station to use 5 GHz, instead of 2.4 GHz. Since my Mac Book Pro has 802.11n built in, no problem sending and receiving over 5 GHz. Moving files around the network is so much faster! Of course, all the other computers in the house are still on 802.11b or g, so I hooked up the old Airport base station to provide them with wireless access.

Setting up the base station and the network were very easy using Glenn Fleishman’s excellent guide, Take Control of Your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network.

Apple rumor site Think Secret shuts down

esme — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:38:14 +0000

Think Secret, the popular Apple rumor site that once ruined Steve Jobs Mac Mini surprise, is shutting down after coming to a settlement with the company. Apple claims Think Secret violated Apple’s trade secrets by leaking out news of upcoming products and sadly, a judge agreed with Apple two years ago when the ompany sued Nick Ciarelli, who runs Think Secret. Ciarelli says that under the settlement, *at least* he does not have to divulge his sources. At least. Yeah, at least he isn’t in prison getting his fingernails pulled out.

Apparently, bloggers like Ciarelli are not entitled to the same protection that journalists have under the California reporter’s shield law (which says journalists do not have to divulge their sources).

What does this mean for bloggers who do investigative reporting on corporate fraud or dangerous materials in the things that corporations sell, the environmental damage they do?

It’s a tragic day for freedom of the press and investigative reporting, but will anyone in Mac-obsessed Silicon Valley even notice?

iPhone has 0.09 percent of Web usage within 6 months of launch

esme — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:12:39 +0000

Stats: iPhone has 0.09 percent of Web usage — yes, that’s a lot: In this post Valleywag points out that iPhone users tend to use the Web more than non-iPhone users. Excerpt:

Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research’s Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.

My take is that it has everything to do with the user interface and how easy it is to visit sites, check maps, look for information online. A lot of phones are clunky (terrible design) with the typical phone dialing pads or have ugly, impossibly small screens. Who would want to browse a website on that?

Macs are really cheaper than PCs, resale value higher

esme — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:56:48 +0000

Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s tech columnist, did quite a bit of research and showed that Macs are indeed cheaper than PCs. Moreover, their eBay resale value is higher:

Even for computers, brand matters. This week I compared prices of several machines from Dell, Gateway and other PC vendors against Apple’s lineup of Macs. In most cases comparable Macs sold for within $100 more than the PCs. But the Apples had something extra: that logo, the design, the history . . .

I switched to the Mac in 2002 and I don’t understand why people still use Windows PCs.