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HISTORY OF MACINTOSHThe now famous Macintosh computer has just turned 30. When Apple President Steve Jobs launched this computer at the Flint Center on De Anza College campus on January 24, 1984 to the theme from Chariots of Fire he called it “insanely great!” The $1.5M “1984″ Superbowl commercial filmed by Sir Ridley Scott had appeared on TV two days before Macintosh went on sale and the world was holding its breath.When IBM released the so-called IBM PC in 1981, I remember saying at the time that it “legitimized the desktop microcomputer market,” at least for business. Though it...

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

MOSCOW—The space race may be over but Russia hopes the smartphone race has just begun. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among the first to receive a YotaPhone—the country’s first foray into the hyper-competitive smartphone market—and was told industry pace-setter Apple Inc. better watch its back. “Is Apple concerned about our smartphone?” he asked Sergey Chemezov, the head of Russia’s state-run defense corporation, Rostec, who gave him the phone on Wednesday hours after it hit the market. “Definitely,” Mr. Chemezov replied, according to a transcript of the exchange posted on the government’s website.....

Texas Instruments just put a chip through the heart of Intel’s Thunderbolt folly with their new HD3SS2521 DockPort controller. This little $1.85 chip both vastly simplifies the user experience and shines a harsh light on what Intel can’t do with a closed and 75x more expensive solution. If you haven’t been paying attention, DockPort is the sane and open answer to Intel’s still broken and anti-user Light Peak/Thunderbolt interface. Formerly called Lightning Bolt, DockPort was AMD’s answer to the non-solution that Intel tried to spin Thunderbolt as. Several years in Thunderbolt is achieving some of the features promised at release...

Gnome project cofounder and current Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza says he's done wrestling with Linux on the desktop, and that he now uses Apple kit exclusively for all of his workstation needs. De Icaza is well known in the open source community for developing a number of client-side technologies for Linux, including the Midnight Commander file shell, the Gnome desktop environment, and the Mono project. But in a blog post on Tuesday, de Icaza wrote that not only does he no longer use Linux for his day-to-day computing needs, but he hasn't actually booted his Linux workstation since October...

The activist actor who campaigned against working conditions at Chinese factories that make iPads and iPhones now admits he fabricated much of his "reporting." Mike Daisey went on NPR's This American Life and theater stages and TV talk shows with emotional tales of shocking hardships. Now Tim Minton says moral outrage is against him.VIDEO

Some professional journalists enjoy pooh pooh-ing the blogosphere because we lowly citizens simply don't have the required "layers and layers of fact checkers" that Real Journalists have to vett their articles though. But what happens when a Real Journalist organization really really really wants something to be true? Well then those layers of fact checking can go by the wayside like they did with this "expose" of Big Greedy Capitalist Apple and Demon Western Materialism (the iPhone). My favorite bit is where the author of the piece so desperately wants to paint Westerners as being so Greedy That Workers Must...

This American Life is airing a new episode today titled "Retraction." The title and show are a direct response to the January 6th edition of the popular public radio program titled "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory," an adaptation of a one-man show that helped put Cupertino's involvement with Foxconn back in the public spotlight. "Regrettably," the show's producers write in the description of this week's episode, "we have discovered that one of our most popular episodes was partially fabricated." The hour-long show has been dedicated to clearing up some of the misconceptions, including an interview with Mike Daisey to...

The public radio show This American Life has retracted an entire storyline told by comedian and self-described Apple fanboy Mike Daisey that aired in early January after Daisey's translator said he made up significant details of the tale. In a press release, the show says the episode was the most popular in its history and was downloaded 888,000 times. The episode also sparked a petition for Apple to improve its working conditions that was signed by a quarter of a million people.

Racial segregation is no longer staring us down on the streets of Birmingham and Jackson. But has it positioned itself in a most unlikely locale: Silicon Valley. Related:We Must Draw More Blacks to Tech

The multitude of mysteries revealed following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' death now includes one that puzzled car enthusiasts for years: How did Jobs get away with driving without a license plate? It was common knowledge that Jobs would park his Mercedes SL55 AMG in a handicapped spot at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, with nothing to identify his vehicle other than the tiny barcode that usually rests behind the rear license plate. According to Walter Isaacson's new biography, Jobs wanted to avoid having a plate for privacy reasons; and yet when having a license-less silver Mercedes became a...

Tech bigwigs in love with Apple's iPad, push business case By Larry Dignan May 20, 2010, 2:20am PDT Talk to any technology head honcho and you’ll likely have them fawning over the Apple iPad somehow. It’s almost comical how these executives  — schooled in the art of war and talking strategy — can turn into your every day gadget freak when talking about the iPad. To wit: Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s wireless unit, said “I’m addicted to it” when talking about the iPad. “It’s really changed the way that I work. But where I primarily use it...

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- The popularity of Apple Inc.’s iPad will spur a sixfold increase in industrywide shipments of tablet computers by 2014, research firm IDC said.

Nothing sucks more than being on stage in front of a bunch of techies and having your demo crash on you twice. Actually, the only way that sucks more is if you’re Adobe and it’s Flash that’s crashing on a mobile device, forcing folks to wonder if Steve Jobs was right about the stability of Flash. This incident happened last week at FlashCamp Seattle, according to a blog post by Jeff Croft, a Seattle developer who also moderated a panel at the event.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential list (with cover photo). • Leaders: Sarah Palin, Manmohan Singh and other global movers and shakers • Heroes: The inspiring feats of an urban farmer, an air-traffic controller in Haiti and icons like Bill Clinton • Artists: Lady Gaga, Conan O'Brien and others who make us dance, giggle and retweet • Thinkers: Steve Jobs plus scientists, statesmen and a Supreme Court Justice

Found Footage: The Story of Macintosh by Steven Sande on Jan 18th 2010 at 9:30AM Denver-area Mac consultant Mike Kimble is no stranger to Apple; he worked at an Apple reseller prior to the introduction of the Mac in 1984, and he's been involved with Macs and other Apple products ever since. Mike recently found several old Apple tapes that were sent to his business back around the Mac intro, and his description of one of them says it all: "I found this VHS cassette while cleaning my office this week. This "Found Footage" comes from a video tape I...

Why Apple succeeds, and always will By Joe Wilcox Published December 9, 2009, 9:45 AM Simply put: Apple doesn't play by the rules. It reinvents them. Apple applies what I call "David Thinking" to its broader business, product development and marketing. Apple is David to Microsoft Goliath -- and other ones, too. Goliath plays by one set of rules. David choses to change the rules, which favor his strengths rather than those of Goliath. David Thinking is most provocative and surprising when Goliath acts like David. After all, David sometimes becomes Goliath; Apple is a giant in music with iPod...

Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow. by Mel Martin on Dec 8th 2009 at 12:00AM Put this into the 'I didn't think they could ever get this to work on an iPhone' category. I'm talking about Dragon Dictation [iTunes link] from Nuance, the developers of the very popular Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance also provides the speech recognition engine for MacSpeech Dictate on the Mac platform. To dictate on the iPhone you just launch the app, press the record button, and start talking. Your dictation can be a brief sentence, or a much longer treatise. Once the...

Lala purchase may hint at the coming of the rumored iTunes Replay service Posted by Dennis Sellers Dec 8, 2009 at 7:00am As you’ve doubtless heard by now Apple has officially bought Lala (purportedly for US$80 million [Star Traveler comment: LaLa Was Bought By Apple For $17 Million, Not $80 Million], less what half of what investors valued the company at in 2008), which, last September, unveiled “the first and only free fully licensed service to instantly provide anywhere web access to an existing music library such as iTunes.” Which begs the question: what is Apple going to do with...

All Hail the iPod touch By Om Malik December 6, 2009 As the competition for smartphone domination starts to heat up, it is becoming increasingly clear that the iPod touch is Apple’s ace up its sleeve, and according to a report by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company, 24 million iPod touches represent about 40 percent of the total 58 million iPhone OS devices. From the time I first laid my hands on the iPod touch, I have been a big fan of it — after all, it is just like an iPhone except that it has more storage, is...