The State of the (Apple) Union

 

Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and Phil Schiller doing a Q&A

First off, let me just say that the State of the (Apple) Union, isn’t the strongest its been in the past. Now before all the Mac fanboys (and fangirls) start sharpening their iPitchforks, let me at least explain why, you might even agree.

Apple has grown a significant amount in the last few years, just look at the last ten, when Apple was almost bankrupt! It wasn’t until Jobs came in and reinvented the company, before it started to take off. There were four parts to this reinvention: the complete revamp of the Apple Board of Directors, the development of Mac OS X, a complete hardware overhaul of the Mac product line, and the iPod. It was through that small little mp3 player, that Apple captured the market. Amazingly, that’s all it took, Apple had quickly established itself as a “brand name,” and people started to recognize that Apple also made computers. The simplicity and ease of use that users found with their iPods, could also be found on a computer. (Just ask some of the people who have switched in recent years, they probably started off by having an iPod.)

However, something worried me about the way Apple worked when dealing with the iPod, it seemed like the baby in the family that got all the attention, and I feared that this might mean some slack in the Mac department, fortunately this never happened. Tiger came on the scene, blew us all away, and was (and is) the most stable version of Mac OS X I’ve ever used. 

Now fast forward to the summer of 2007, the release of the renowned first generation iPhone. The phone that caused Apple to delay the release of their new version of OS X. When I herd of the delay, I was thankful for it, it made me realize they didn’t want a pre-mature release for their OS and cared about the Mac platform. However, now as I look back at it, it was the beginning of what I had originally predicted for the iPod. The iPhone was slowly starting to grab all of Apple’s attention. Yes, the iPhone’s immense popularity has helped the Mac in terms of sales. However, some of the stability I had come to know and love for the last two years in Tiger, seemed to have almost disappeared. Leopard, compared to Tiger can seem like a disaster. Some of the errors others and I have gotten, have been things you would expect from other operating systems, but not one from Apple. Yes, disaster is probably too strong of a word, but still the best way to describe it. Don’t get me wrong, Leopard has been a very welcome addition to the OS X platform. When I found myself on machines running Tiger I ended up wishing I could be back on my Leopard system because of the continued innovation Apple brings with each of its products. Nonetheless, Leopard is at times, a let down to those who have been on the Mac platform for more than two years. To be specific, I’ve found myself doing more system maintenance and troubleshooting within Leopard then I ever did in Tiger (and I know other users feel the same way). Thankfully, the people who have switched post-Tiger, don’t realize the issues as much, because Leopard in their eye is phenomenally more stable than their previous OS.

So if I could give the folks at Apple any piece of advice, I’d say to make sure that they don’t get caught up in the phenomenon that the iPhone has become (even though the iPhone needs some work too), and to make sure they’re equally dividing up their attention among their three product branches. (The three branches I’m referring to are the ones that Steve Jobs has pointed out: The Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone.) Apple is an amazing company, which makes me have no problem saying that I believe that they’ll have no problem sorting things out.

Jon4Lakers.com

Hey everyone, I recently joined up with a tech blog, and that’s www.jon4lakers.com It’s a fantastic blog, and I definitely recommend checking it out! I’m going to try and continue to post on here alongside jon4lakers, however I think you’ll all understand why I’m going to be giving my devotion to jon4lakers over this blog. What I’ll most likely do, is simply re-post what I post on jon4lakers, here on Tech Talk.

Thanks,

Chris

MacBook Unboxing

So yeah my school macbook came today, and I figured it was about time I started doing unboxing videos. Also, stay tuned because I know its been a little while since I last posted, and I apologize.

Click here to watch the unboxing

Coming Soon!

Hey guys I wanted to keep you guys up to date by letting you know what’s coming up. I haven’t been taking a break, I’ve been working on some big articles that I hope you’ll enjoy.

However, the next few articles (about 4 or so) all relate to each other – so stay tuned because I’m going to give you some tips on what’s out there and some cheaper alternatives. It’s some pretty cool stuff if you’re trying to sync and organize your life. These articles will begin to roll out next Monday (July 21, 2008).

So once again, stay tuned, and be sure to read some past articles if you want –  leave comments – that kinda thing

~Chris~

PS – I’m going to keep this series of articles in their own category so you can find them easily :)

Just a thought: Mobile-Me/Dot Mac

I’ve always thought that the whole $99 a year bill for Dot-Mac (now Mobile Me) was dredfully expensive, however Apple could REALLY improve their customer base if they advirtised it as $8.25 a month instaed of $99 dollars a year it would just seem a WHOLE LOT CHEAPER for example $8 is cheaper than a normal montly texting plan (most are about $10 a month). So yeah that’s not acutally a bad deal Apple, I’d just change the way you advirtise it

How Leopard Changed Me

So I wanted to just take a moment to talk about Leopard, and how it’s changed the way I use my computer. There are a good amount of things I could mention on this subject, but there’s one in particular I wanted to talk about today in particular, and that’s backing up. Before getting leopard I never backed up, for 2 reasons: 1. I didn’t have an external hard drive until right before I upgraded to Leopard 2. It was too much work. However, enter Time Machine, and I now have backups back until November 07’ (I’m typing this in July of 08’). Before then I knew that I should backup and that I’d be totally done for if my laptop were to die (considering I have a 13GB/3,000 song music library, and a few irreplaceable files). However, it never really made a large difference because I didn’t know how much having a backup would change the way I feel about them. Now that I have backups, its made me feel so secure in the way I compute. Having the security in knowing that if something were to ever happen (God-forbid) I’d be secure and within a few hours having everything back. Unfortunately, with technology it goes bad after time and hard disks fail, so if you ever have some cash that you can spare, definitely get a external hard drive (I got my 500GB Western Digital MyBook for about $129) and start backing up. It’s definitely worth it, and Time Machine makes it so that you don’t even have to do anything, it takes care of it all for you.

I hope all of you had a great 4th of July weekend, and will continue to read and comment on “Tech Talk” as I get back into the swing of things.

BTW – I might right more on how Leopard has improved my computing experience, but who knows we’ll see.

Hello

Sorry about the random absenses, I got finished with a large amount of work, like two weeks ago. Then left for vacation the week after. So, thats why I came back for about of week, and then dissapeared. Sorry.

Anyways I’m greatly considering a little test-project. Instead of posting throughout the month, creating a mini-magazine. That will be realeased at the end of the month.

So I NEED your feedback desparately, I know there are readers, so you better start commenting. So leave your thoughts, if you guys accept, I’ll release that around mid/end July. Then you guys can read it, and tel me if I should go back to normal blogging or keep doing the magazine.

My only worry is that some things will have become outdated. :-\ So, let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Chris

My Day…

First off this guy is totally trying to copy Hannah Montana:

Also, got a new case for my iPod (for when I want it skinny), I think it makes the back look like an iPhone

 

 

 

So mwhahahah, PS – WordPress lets you insert video, but the uploader only allows JPGS and Powerpoints!

So whats up with that? Well hopefully it’ll be up soon