I’ve become a YouTube addict lately, and I’ve come across a really cool lady who’s got everything I believe a man could want: looks, style, a great sense of humor, and tech know-how. She also has something I really admire in any woman: pride in her country and culture.
This lady I’m talking about is HappySlip, a YouTube star. She is on the Top 10 of YouTube’s Most Subscribed list, and has been nominated for the Best Comedy category of the 2006 YouTube Video Awards.
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With the amount of craze built around the public sale of the much anticipated iPhone currently dominating the headlines and RSS feeds of the internet, another timely news that would even boost the love wave Apple has been getting this past few weeks.
International eco-watchers Greenpeace has praised Apple, Inc. for its recent moves and efforts to make its electronic products cleaner and more friendly to mother nature.
Greenpeace has moved Apple up its green electronics rankings thanks to Steve Job’s promises to phase out PVCs and other chemical nasties from its products, but the top spot goes to Nokia.
Greenpeace takes an aggressive tone in criticizing electronics manufacturers for e-waste, stating: ‘The electronics ranking guide has been our answer to getting the electronics industry to face up to the problem of e-waste. We want manufacturers to take responsibility for the unprotected child laborers who scavenge the mountains of cast-off gadgets created by our gizmo-loving ways.’
It all started when Greenpeace launched the Green my Apple Campaign. A cyber campaign that aimed to increase the awareness among consumers and Mac users that the Macs they so love could be harboring environmentally-dangerous chemicals like brominated flame retardants (BFR) and vinyl plastics (PVC). It also called on for a more active participation of Apple in managing and handling old, discarded Macs so that their processing as ‘e-junk’ doesn’t do any harm to the environment, the people who process them and the community that surrounds the waste processing facilities.
Greenpeace rates the big electronics companies on the following criteria:
Chemicals policy and practice (5 criteria)
Policy and practice on Producer Responsibility for taking back their discarded products and recycling (4 criteria)
Enthusiasm and support from the community particularly Mac users proved to be effective as Steve Jobs finally made some announcements for a Greener Apple.
It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple’s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they’re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we’re changing our policy.
Wonderful news indeed. And thanks to this, Apple has moved up the green charts of eco-friendly electronics companies. From the languishing in the bottom of the list last year, Apple has moved up the field into 10th position and Greenpeace has the details:
Apple has finally moved off the bottom of the scorecard and is now in 10th position with improvements on many criteria. The company has committed to eliminate all uses of PVC and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in their products by the end of 2008. They now provide
examples of additional substances that they plan to eliminate with timelines, such as arsenic in LCDs and mercury, and Material Safety Data Sheets for all their products. But, Apple has yet to give consumers products free of PVC and BFRs.Top marks to Apple for reporting on its recycling rate as a percentage (9.5%) of sales 7 years ago and for setting goals to recycle nearly 30% by 2010. It could score better by supporting the principle of individual producer responsibility for its end of life products globally.
Kudos to Apple! Mac users worldwide must be really proud of their Macs right now and even more ecstatic that the iPhone is now available to the masses.
Speaking of the iPhone, here’s one nagging question; How green is that iPhone?
Photo by Outbreaker
Amidst all the cries of ecstasy over Mac OS X Leopard at the WWDC07, we have a little surpsrise: Safari is released for Windows. It’s a public beta, to be exact.
That’s great news, coming not from someone who wants Apple to take over the world, but as a web designer who wants to test web pages in all kinds of browsers. I haven’t been able to do that on Safari since it’s always been released on the Mac exclusively.
It’s also a great idea to discover a new browser every once in a while. Find out which one has features that best suit your taste. After all, Steve Jobs claims it’s twice as fast as Internet Explorer and 1.6 times as fast as Firefox.
Problem is, right after downloading and installing Safari for Windows I ran into two major problems right away.
Short version of the title story: Engadget reports “they have it on authority” that the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard will be delayed; Apple’s stocks go down; the whole thing was found to be a kludge; Apple’s stocks shot right back up.
The story doesn’t end there, however. The debacle stirred the Mac faithful, and illogical, inconsistent, and irrelevant attacks were all there was to find among rabid Mac fanboys’ podcasts and blogs (no need for a link there, that’s a whole lot of pimping work). Surprised? You must have been sitting duck with your Windows 98 machine without an internet connection, but that’s just because you’re careful of catching the latest attacks against the NT kernel and how the whole thing succumbs to a sneaky little mouse cursor like a house of cards.
While on the topic of Mac fanboys polling against the NT kernel employed in Windows 2000, XP and now Vista (albeit reworked every step up): it’s amusing how they still use the eons-dated argument about Windows being so much less stable than Macs. There is not even need for technical knowledge to understand what’s going on here: the more factors that come into play, the better flexibility there is to the system, and the more odds there are that something will go wrong. We suddenly begin to wonder, is the world lacking common sense nowadays?
Which leads me to a bit wisdom my girlfriend taught me: if one finds something seemingly too expensive, he is not the market segment targeted at, and the call at which price point products and services are offered does not fall on the consumer. The only one consideration on pricing is how much the consumer is willing to pay for the products – nothing more, nothing less.
There is something utterly disgusting about all forms of fanboy-ism and reality distortion. (Yes, the earth is flat and I would not have it any other way if the authorities say so.) Members of the religion I instituted that is Tech Agnosticism also do not understand how is it logical to attribute abhorrence of a certain technology to the personalities that run the companies that make them. Finally, there is something utterly shammy about using strong language against the anti-fanboys in the public space that is the Internet, and then taking offense when one is dealt with in the same unfriendly manner.
I had posted an article on what I hated about Sayuri, and I guess it’s time I say what I love, nay, lurve about her.
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I’ve been rabidly anti-Windows lately, and with reason. But this time, I will gripe on my Macbook, Sayuri. I had gotten her from my aunt just this March. Its price on Apple was at $1099. Its specs are: 60GB hard drive, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and 512MB RAM, combo drive. Today, Apple’s $1099 has an 80GB hard drive, 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, and still a combo drive. Whoa, look at the difference.
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There were many interesting things to discover and enjoy at this year’s D conference, D5. One such example was Microsoft Surface. But surely the biggest highlight of the event was the interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for the first time in twenty years.
Before turning into the two icons representing the two biggest rivals in the computer industry, Bill and Steve were first and foremost pioneers and visionaries whose work catapulted them and their companies into great success. D5’s interview quickly reminds us to cease the hostilities if at least for one night, and simply be in awe of their presence.
Kara: So let’s get started. I wanted to ask, there’s been a lot of mano-a-mano/catfight kind of thing in a lot of the blogs and the press and stuff like that, and we wanted to–the first question I was interested in asking is what you think each has contributed to the computer and technology industry, starting with you, Steve, for Bill, and vice versa.
Steve: Well, you know, Bill built the first software company in the industry and I think he built the first software company before anybody really in our industry knew what a software company was, except for these guys. And that was huge. That was really huge. And the business model that they ended up pursuing turned out to be the one that worked really well, you know, for the industry. I think the biggest thing was, Bill was really focused on software before almost anybody else had a clue that it was really the software.
Walt: Bill, how about the contribution of Steve and Apple?
Bill: Well, first, I want to clarify: I’m not Fake Steve Jobs.
What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal, and if you look back to 1977, that Apple II computer, the idea that it would be a mass-market machine, you know, the bet that was made there by Apple uniquely–there were other people with products, but the idea that this could be an incredible empowering phenomenon, Apple pursued that dream.
Source: TRANSCRIPT–Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at D5, Amber Israelson
That’s not even half of it. Imagine dropping everything else for that occasion just to reminisce. Stories of how Bill and Steve worked together were essentially tributes to each other’s achievements—some even complementary to each other. Apple asked for Microsoft’s help in adding floating point support to the Apple II BASIC, which it lacked. Bill got paid $31,000.
Soon Microsoft would create software for the Macintosh to penetrate the Lotus-dominated industry. The graphical user interface (GUI) would debut, Apple would survive the slump, Steve Jobs would return, and Windows 95 would become a hit.
Bill: And since that time, we’ve had a team that’s fairly dedicated to doing the Mac applications and they’ve always been treated kind of in a unique way so that they can have a pretty special relationship with Apple. And that’s worked out very well. In fact, every couple years or so, there’s been something new that we’ve been able to do on the Mac and it’s been a great business for us.
Steve: And it’s actually–the relationship between the Mac development team at Microsoft and Apple is a great relationship. It’s one of our best developer relationships.
Source: TRANSCRIPT–Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at D5, Amber Israelson
These days, the Microsoft Zune is going head to head against the Apple iPod, but there’s more. Bill confirms he used Macs to develop software for the Xbox 360 during its early years. “And we never ran an ad on that,” quips Steve.
They go on to infer what computers will be like in five years. Which form factors work and which won’t? Bill still believes in his tablet PC despite its relatively low popularity, as well as several other screen sizes that won’t necessarily compete with one another: you still won’t want to edit your homework or edit a movie on the screen of that size. And so you’ll have something else that lets you do the reading and editing and those things.
Steve brings up Google Maps on the iPhone as a great example of an application that works much better on a specialized client (rather than the broweser). Phones and iPods will become post-PC devices.
The interview goes further to cover their thoughts on the Internet, entertainment, and even 3D. At this point Steve Jobs has kept mum about the Apple products that are still under wraps.
Walt: Bill discusses all his secret plans. You don’t discuss any.
Steve: I know, it’s not fair. But I think the question is a very simple one, which is how much of the really revolutionary things people are going to do in the next five years are done on the PCs or how much of it is really focused on the post-PC devices. And there’s a real temptation to focus it on the post-PC devices because it’s a clean slate and because they’re more focused devices and because, you know, they don’t have the legacy of these zillions of apps that have to run in zillions of markets.
And so I think there’s going to be tremendous revolution, you know, in the experiences of the post-PC devices…
I could go on and on and on, but this post won’t do the whole interview justice. You can read the full transcript and the live coverage notes, but do yourself a favor and watch the videos for the real experience. Teasers can be found here, as well as the rest of the clips.
And here’s the answer to perhaps the biggest question of the night, “About your relationship. I mean, you’re obviously going to go down in history–history books already say it kind of thing. But what’s the greatest misunderstanding in your relationship and about each other? What would you say would be–this idea of cat fight? Which one of the many?”
Steve: We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade now.
Applause!
Steve: No, that wasn’t my answer. You know, when Bill and I first met each other and worked together in the early days, generally, we were both the youngest guys in the room, right? Individually or together. I’m about six months older than he is, but roughly the same age. And now when we’re working at our respective companies, I don’t know about you, but I’m the oldest guy in the room most of the time. And that’s why I love being here.
Walt: Happy to oblige. Happy to oblige.
Steve: And, you know, I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there’s that one line in that one Beatles song, “you and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And that’s clearly true here.
And that got a standing ovation. Well done, you two.
Now you have the chance to not only read online books but you can rent textbooks or access any PDF file you download.
Well, sort of; it’s not free in the Limewire or Bearshare sense. Today is the big day Apple ups the anté: iTunes 7.2 is released and one of the “Big Four” labels, EMI Music, and other independent artists’ music breaks free from the shackles of DRM, or Digital Rights Management.
(With 1300 artists under its wing, EMI writes history with easily recognizable names (EMI and iTunes) offering DRM-free music for sale online. EMI is home to Norah Jones, Ben Harper, Alicia Keys, Kanye West and Usher, among others.)
In case you’ve been living under a rock, DRM is the stuff that locks the music you rip from CDs and music that you buy from online stores such as iTunes or Musicmatch online and Real/Rhapsody to the computers where you purchased them and to the devices those companies let you transfer them to. My first taste of DRM came around during the glory days of MP3.com and AOL Radio, when this one song I downloaded (John Mayer, No Such Thing, Sessions@AOL), supposedly “free”, asked for my email address, which I willingly gave out, and then I received a message saying the song will “expire” and stop playing after 30 days. Studio album for sale for only 20 AOL points, ergo, 19 US dollars. Bah.
I have to admit, when Jobs wrote his open letter rebuking DRM and its evil roots, I was the least bit convinced. So were the other anti-Mac pundits. I especially like the conspiracy theory going around on how Jobs (and Apple) want come out as the good guy and take all credit when we finally live in a DRM-free epoch. Like any other keen industry observer, Jobs knew we’ll sooner or later get there. The announcement back in April knocked my socks off. Today, two days to go before Apple is overdue of their “May” announcement, WE FINALLY HAVE IT.
TODAY, true to the spirit of tech agnosticism, I’d like to be fair and give credit where it is due: the greater part of which is to EMI for doing the right thing (the way to go DRM-less is not exclusive to Apple; EMI says other online dealers will also go DRM-free), and also to Apple for being taking advantage of the leverage only Steve Jobs has in moving the music industry. Bravo.
Will the iTunes Music Store’s free picks of the week go DRM-less free from hereon too? I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Today, cold fire flashed through me as I saw that after using iSync to synchronize my Motorola SLVR L7 contacts with my Macbook’s AddressBook, all the data in my AddressBook disappeared.
I recently had the privilege of unboxing one of my most treasured possessions ever: an Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium. It’s not a gadget, but it’s tangible, and costs more than any other thing I own (other than Risk, my laptop).
What is unboxing? It’s one thing to pick out a tech toy and become its proud owner. But it’s a whole other matter to do the honors of unboxing it. Unboxing, as the word suggests, is the geeky ceremony of taking your beloved gadget, toy, or whatnot, out of its box, piece by piece. Enthusiasts who engage themselves in such an activity pay attention to the packaging and other accessories that come with the box. Also, they make sure they take several pictures or even a video of the whole process.
The psychology behind unboxing. Unboxing isn’t exactly a groundbreaking or alien concept. But to bloggers, especially techie and gadget bloggers, it’s become addictive. Aside from basking in the fact that you’ve gotten your hands on a much-coveted item, I dare say that companies like Apple have done so well with packaging and product design that we’ve learned to appreciate their efforts through unboxing. And then of course there’s the very real possibility that we’ll never be able to own certain gadgets and have to be content with seeing others do the unboxing instead.
Get your unboxing fix! There are several sites out there solely dedicated to unboxing gadgets. There’s even a site that shows the Apple iPhone being unboxed, yet it hasn’t even shipped yet. Here’s an even better idea: the next time you have your hands on a gadget (literally, it need not be your own!), why not do an unboxing of your own?