The power cable on my laptop bit the dust last year, but it wasn’t the transformer that failed; it was the thin cable that connects the transformer to the laptop. From reading the (really angry) reviews of this power cable on Apple’s online store it became obvious that it was a design flaw and not Continue reading The Service Loop
I’ve been a Mac fanboy since my college days in the late 1980’s, back when but a few of those gloriously graphical machines were sprinkled in labs around Georgia Tech. Many were the days that I circled the unobtainable Macintosh IIFX at Tech’s computer store, a machine unimaginable potential (40 megahertz processor!!). Of course I couldn’t afford a $12,000 computer then (or now!), but I did eventually join that miniscule minority of Mac users, none of whom would have guessed that ten years down the road we’d be entering into a “post-Platform”, Web 2.0 era, or that Windows users would eagerly become “Switchers”, migrating to the Macintosh because of their experience with a little thing called the iPod. But then, you already know that story. What you may not know is that there’s a new kind of Switcher on the scene: the Resista-Switcher. Continue reading The New Switchers
Old magazines are awesome. Frozen snapshots of singular points in history, within the context of the age in which they were published. Take for example this 1966 issue of the magazine Science & Mechanics (which would later become ‘Creative Computers’, ultimately absorbed by ‘Creative Computing’, which ceased publication the year I graduated high school). This issue provides a glimpse of the future of birth control using a battery-powered radio transmitter and a strongly argued case by Brigadier General J. H. Rothschild for the use of gas warfare in the ongoing Vietnam War.
Continue reading Battery-Powered Birth Control
To date the MP3 player-buying public has voted with their wallets, showing that they prefer the clean user interface, no-fuss hardware/software handshaking and pure style points of Apple’s iPod. But if Microsoft can force a price war with Apple by selling their new Zune at fire sale prices, Apple will be forced to drop the prices on their hardware to meet market forces. Is this media player merely a shield, a stalking horse meant to clear the decks for Microsoft’s .Net future? Or do I need to stop being an armchair analyst? Don’t answer that.
Continue reading Is Zune Microsoft’s .Net Stalking Horse?
