I don’t write about iPhone Apps too often – a roundup of my favourite apps has been requested for a while – there’s just so many! However, I came across one called Siri today. Alas, it is only available at the moment in the US iTunes Store – so if you have an American iTunes account you can get it. For the rest of us the following video will give you an idea…
For those of you looking for an App of the day type of fix – there are quite a few sites out there. One is called funnily enough: App Of The Day. For App reviews try iPhone App Review or Appvee.
Other News: The first of the iPad accessories have been announced – by Griffin. A whole new iPad accessory ecosystem is coming to a store near you: Giffin iPad Stuff
One more thing: A link to an interesting take on the current state of Microsoft and why it is leaving itself out of the innovation game these days: Op-Ed On Microsoft
Happy October everyone. For some reason, October has always been my favourite month and time of year. Perhaps it’s the vibrant palate of the trees, the crispness in the air, the sense of change all around. In the southern hemisphere they’re getting ready for Spring – another major transition. I know, for us in the North, winter is approaching and for many it can seem a darker period is ascending. However, there are glorious days ahead (minus the shoveling of course!). To start off the month I wanted to provide this link to Wisdombook.org.The Wisdom Project is based on the idea:
…that one of the greatest gifts one generation can pass to another is the wisdom it has gained from experience.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu helped produce the project which is made up of a multicultural group of people who have ‘made their mark’. A good friend passed it on to me and I wanted to share it with others who might find it interesting.
I wanted to start the new month with a link to a really great site called Cool Tools. It has all kinds of hands-on reviews of and links to hardware, software, books, videos, ideas, other websites – just a ton of interesting stuff. Enjoy!
You just bought a new iMac or MacBook (Pro). You unpack it – it smells so new. It looks so beautiful. Those Apple people are so clever! You plug it in, press the power button. Nice chime (C-Chord actually). You choose your language. A cosmic movie plays welcoming you to your new computer in a plethora of the world’s languages. Yea! Now what?!
Apple portrays their computers as very easy to use – just plug it in and go. We all know, however, that as elegant as Apple’s operating system and applications are most people need help in navigating the many useful applications and services that come with every Mac. Making music, organizing pictures, editing movies, making DVD’s, syncing our machines, navigating OS X, backing up our data – so much to know. There are a lot of books out there – some are very graphic, some wordy, books for professionals and books for dummies.
As I get asked all the time about training I wanted to bring to people’s attention a series of training material I highly recommend. These are the Take Control series of eBooks. On offer are wonderful manuals on topics ranging from how to use .Mac (soon to be MobileMe), using a digital camera, backup practices, using Apple Mail, wireless networking 101, customizing Leopard, running Windows on your Mac, using Microsoft Office, iPod and iPhone manuals – just a ton of great information in an easy to use format and style. Please visit the website and check it out.
So, some interesting announcements today that will affect both the consumer level user and some great tools for business and enterprise users:
iPhone
New iPhones debuting July 11 in 22 countries – It looks like Canada will be getting the mobile wonder along with 22 other countries on July 11th – see the press release here. The devices will have capacities of 8GB and 16GB respectively and their price is coming down: $199 & $299US. New applications, games, GPS functions are all coming as well with the new iPhone 2.0 system upgrade for both iPhone and iPod Touch. I think this is great news for the Mac, Mac users and the mobile platform in general. I love my iPhone and the new ones are going to be even better.
Basically the evolution of Apple’s .Mac service making it what it should always have been. Users will now have the ability to truly keep our desktops, laptops and iPhones in sync with our calendars, contacts, email and more. Current .Mac users will be upgraded to the new service for free and basic capacity will increase to 20GB. From what I can gather this is not a collaborative service i.e. I don’t see where other users can join it – subscribe to someone else’s calendars etc…There are ways to sync iCal to Google Calendar and other iCal calendars so these could potentially be shared among others that way. This is going to be a wonderful tool for small businesses and users with multiple machines. More on MobileMe will be forthcoming.
a.k.a Mac OS 10.6 was announced – this won’t be a major system change as 10.5 has been – more of a consolidation of the operating system in general. Again, I’ll be commenting on this as details become public.
So, where can I go when I’m stumped or just want to keep up with what’s going on in the Apple world? I’m often asked this question and there are few amazing sites around the web definitely worth visiting and bookmarking. These are listed on my website, but I will provide some here as well:
Macintouch - I go here everyday – it’s my homepage.
Appleinsider - great news and rumour site with excellent and in-depth reviews
