Posted by Don Kruse on Jan 20, 2008 in Apple, Commentary | 0 comments
I finished all the seminars and toured the two show floors one more time and found a few more things to share.
In the opening day MacIT Administrator session we learned is that starting in 2009 two new ships of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line will be outfitted with 2905 Apple Mac minis and 2200 Apple TVs. Um, yes that is not a typo. The Mac mini and Apple TVs will be used to drive HDTV displays used throughout the new ships to provide helpful information as well as entertainment. This set up also includes 50 Mac Xserves on the back end serving up all the content. The tech guy from Royal Caribbean says going this route over using a Windows based system is saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars (mostly in licensing fees paid to Microsoft). If you want to know more about this just head over to TUAW.
Need to take a nap? Need to take a high tech nap?
Each Pod has a Mac mini inside that plays ambient music, colored lights that glow across the dome as you nap, and it even controls the temperature of the bed.
This guy drew the picture on the display seen in the photo in about 20 seconds. It is a very good sketch of the guy speaking a few feet away. He drew it directly on the screen on this highly modified (“modded”) MacBook. These modded MacBooks are from Axiotron.
I decided that actually the new MacBook Air is thinner than my iPhone.
I’m going to have to take out a second mortgage to pay for all these gadgets. 
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Posted by Don Kruse on Jan 18, 2008 in Apple, Commentary | 0 comments
I’d like to thank a few people: My mom for buying me lunch on Tuesday, Junsong Xue for taking care of dinner with my parents and I at the restaurant he manages after our service got a bit slow Joseph Cohen, his lovely assistant and dad for some great geek talk over breakfast on Wednesday, and my friend Chris Colvin for buying me dinner on Thursday night and of course the partners for sending me on this trip to expand my knowledge and learn about cool gadgets.
Speaking of cool gadgets: The Incline laptop support. It weighs seemingly nothing yet supports a laptop in style and keeps it cool while being cool.
I thought it was really impresive that when I asked if they had any good pictures of this laptop support they simply handed me a CD with all their PR images. I was impressed with how well prepared they were. Especially with such a small niche product from a small company.
Also Griffin Technology has many nice iPod accessories for you, your car, and your home. I also liked KB Covers at last years show and they had even more nice keyboard covers at this year’s show (the whole business just seems to be run by one guy). Tunewear for having the widest selection of covers and cases for iPhones, iPods, and the iTouch and for selling me one for really really cheap. Microsoft finally released their updated Microsoft Office for Mac and it is much better than the Windows version they released last year. And don’t forget about Apple for introducing six new incredible products:
There was only one session on Friday as the other one I wanted to attend was cancelled.
IT864: Version Control via Workgroup Services – Tracking File Changes Automatically
This session explains specifically how to setup and use the Wiki server, augmented accounts, group sites, and group calendaring to enable versioning control in a variety of departments-for example a Catalog department, to automatically extract accounts out of AD, assign them to custom groups, and allow management of each group to manage the Wiki and calendars. This permits users to view and edit various versions of documents and can be used to track each version for legal or auditing purposes. This methodology applies to any area users require version control, good calendaring, and can be applied across almost any platform.
Sara Porter, Musician’s Friend
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Posted by Don Kruse on Jan 17, 2008 in Apple, Commentary | 0 comments
Some time ago I decided the best thing for the firm I support and its Knowledge Management would be to kill it’s legacy network share. The way we they use their network share is like a free for all library. Imagine if your local library changed the way it organized the books – everyday! Or the librarian du jour moved everything based on what he/she felt like at that moment. That is what they have now. Imagine instead if they had a system that was easy to use, completely searchable, and organized like a proper library (think Dewey Decimal System). I hope that sounds as good to you as it does to me. So your challenge for this week is to learn what a Wiki is because that is what I am going to use to correct these issues. All the tools to create a wiki that is integrated with the Directory in Mac OS X Server is included in the latest version so this is a very cost effective implementation for any business that is less than Enterprise or Fortune 500 size.
And now more pictures:
Very cool skins for your MacBook, iPod, iPhone, iTouch and whatever else you have that is Mac or i something.
The show is in two separate buildings at the SF Moscone Center so you have to walk between the two frequently. All the people on the sidewalks in the photo are making that walk. Sometimes it is so thick with people you can’t see the sidewalk or the crosswalks.
This is the Apple Store in SF. It is about five blocks from the MacWorld show. It was mobbed on Tuesday as nearby financial district workers flocked to the store to see the new MacBook Air.
Speaking of the new Macbook Air it is about as thick as my iPhone, it weighs seemingly nothing, and the screen is seriously bright due to the LED backlighting. Also the Apple ads are telling the truth when they say the screen comes to life immediately when the lid is flipped open. It really does and that is seriously cool to a geek like me.
A reporter from Peru interviews a spanish speaking MacBook Air expert.
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Posted by Don Kruse on Jan 16, 2008 in Apple, Commentary | 0 comments
My favorite quote heard from the show floor:
I think being Steve Jobs is just like a license to print money
So if you’re wondering why I didn’t post more stuff from the show yesterday or why there aren’t more photos here’s my quote:
Think of a seething mass of frenzied zombies all moving without any idea of where they are going but when they see the next shiny box they’ll all lung for it at the same time
It’s like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I have no idea how many people attending the show yesterday but there was no elbow room at all. My left elbow in fact has a bruise from all the people who kept bumping into me.
The new MacBook Air laptops are cool, and I mean that in the sense of they are as cool as cool can get. There are many other products I will spend time looking at as some of them could save us money in the future or they are just really cool.
And last but not least the two trailers that held all of the stuff used for Steve Job’s keynote. That’s all the stuff one man needs to make a speech. Nuts.
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Posted by Don Kruse on Jan 15, 2008 in Apple, Tech | 0 comments
I am at MacWorld this year both to see the show floor as well as attend the MacIT Administrator sessions. The show started like this for me:
I flew in to SFO the same morning as the Keynote so it was somewhat of a crap shoot whether I would be able to make it to MacWorld in time. The line was so ridiculously long when I arrived that when they opened the doors to let people in for the keynote and I dutifully marched forward it became clear that by the time I got to the doors the speech might be over. In fact what happened is that I made it inside the building but they wouldn’t let anymore people into the auditorium.
The line for Macworld went around and around the huge city block that is Moscone West. It was nuts. I actually made it on time – 8:45 AM – but as I suspected the line would be huge this year and it was. It was well after 9 AM before they started letting people in and they stopped before I even made it around half the block.
The line kept going and going.
And it kept going around the corner and up to the next street and it just kept going. I’m not sure how many people actually got let in but I heard it was about 5,000.
Trying to get internet access is also extremely difficult, it’s not that it’s not available but that there are 40,000 other people like me all within a few hundred feet of each other sucking down all the available bandwidth. And ‘yes’ absolutely everyone I can see has an iPhone so that means AT&T’s EDGE network is saturated too.
I’ll be in soon enought and get to see what all the fuss is about.
MacBook Air – This was the big announcement from Apple. A new laptop that is about as thick as an iPhone but still has a 13-inch display like a MacBook but under 3 pounds. Less than 1 inch thick (0.8 inches), and the touch pad works like an iPhone/iTouch display. You can zoom, rotate, do all kinds of things with the trackpad with no need for additional keystrokes. You pretty much have to see one of these in person to appreciate just how stylish it is. I’ve seen some very nice looking small laptops but this really is way way beyond what any other manufacture has introduced so far.
Apple TV Take 2 – Price reduced to $229 and it connects directly to iTunes Store without the need for an additional computer. Upgraded specs too.
iPhone/iTouch – New software which adds several new features.
Time Capsule – Neat wireless connected hard drive that backs up all the computers in your home, apartment, RV, whatever. Apple claims this is a “server class” hard drive and not a consumer drive (I’ll be the judge of that).
When you add in the massive hardware improvements already announced last week to the Mac Pro, Xserve, and MacBook Pro this is an incredible line up of product introductions, both hardware and software, for a single company. Along with this there are new products out from Microsoft, Adobe, and many others so this is going to be a really really big show.
I’ll have more later. I have some pictures from the show but I’m writing this at 9 PM and I need to get some sleep as I got up at 3:30 AM Tuesday morning to make my flight.
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