MacWorld without Apple? December 16, 2008
Posted by Matsu in Apple, Business, Information Technology, Mac, Technology.2 comments
Yes, it’s a little strange to think of it, but Apple announced that the MacWorld Conference in January 2009 will be their last one.
What will this mean for the must anticipated and often exploited (by Apple) product announcements each year at MacWorld? Is this also the end of the Steve Jobs show and big product announcements? Or, will he just perform them for a closed audience of invited guests and media as he needs to roll out new products in the future? Probably so.
What affect will Apple’s absence have on the MacWorld conference? It will most likely kill it. If not immediately, it will die in less than two years. How can I say that? Do you remember that there used to be a MacWorld conference on the East coast? Do you remember what happened when Apple had a disagreement with the conference organizers and so Apple pulled out? Well, that conference quickly died. So will the West coast MacWorld conference.
Here’s what Cnet wrote about that event:
IDG and Apple have had a rocky relationship in the past. Apple used to participate in far more Macworld events than the San Francisco event, and a rift developed between the companies when IDG made the decision to move the Macworld event in New York to Boston, near the company’s Framingham, Mass., headquarters. Apple promptly pulled out of that event, and the East Coast Macworld was canceled in 2005 due to lack of interest without the star attraction.
Gone are the days of Apple trade shows and announcements for the rest of us.
Running out of cell phone numbers September 27, 2008
Posted by Matsu in Apple, Business, Humor, Information Technology, Technology, Web.Tags: AT&T, cell phone, iPhone
2 comments
Seeing this article about the upcoming IP number shortage reminded me of a recent experience I had with cell phones and cell phone numbers.
A couple of weeks ago I (with the help of my wonderful assistant) ordered about eight iPhones for a department where I work. Two of the phones were just upgrades to existing plans, but the other six were new service, so we were expanding the number of corporate cell phones on our account. That would seem to be a normal not-so-exciting routine process. Well, you’d be surprised at what a chore it was to get the vendor (AT&T) to ship the new phones.
Right away, after ordering the new phones through AT&T’s corporate customer website, we received e-mail confirmation of the phone order. Then, in about 24 hours we received several e-mail notices as the first of the eight phones were shipped. About two days after the order, all but three iPhones were on their way to me. But, three days later, we still had not received notice that the last three phones were shipped. When we called AT&T they told us those last three iPhone orders were “stuck” in the website. WHAT does that mean? They said to just wait and see if they will get “unstuck” on their own. I had a very tight deadline to roll out these phones and didn’t have time to wait for sticky websites. So, after much pressure on our AT&T account rep. and after many calls to the AT&T corporate support call center, they finally got the idea that we couldn’t wait any longer. After all, the rest of the cell phones part of the same order had already been received so it wasn’t a problem with the way we ordered the phones.
Finally, one of the people we spoke to shed some light on the problem — AT&T has run out of phone numbers, so the new iPhones that were added to our account had no phone number and couldn’t ship until AT&T could go wherever they go to ask for additional phone numbers for this part of the country. Isn’t that the wackiest thing you ever heard? I was really surprised that they had not seen this problem coming as they use up and assigned phone numbers to new phones every day. Surely, they have systems in place to monitor things like the amount of spare (unassigned) phone numbers left in their pool of numbers. It should not have caught them off guard the way it did.
So, the next time you are told by AT&T that your cell phone order is “stuck” in the website, know that they really mean they are stuck without any phone numbers and are scrambling to get more telephone numbers to assign their new cell phone customers.
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The following YouTube video has nothing to do with this post, other than the fact that I just purchased eight iPhone 3G phones from AT&T. The “will it blend” series cracks me up and I thought I’d share the video where they guy puts a new iPhone 3G into the blender to see what happens.
Apple website outage August 1, 2008
Posted by Matsu in Apple, Web.1 comment so far
This afternoon I was in a meeting when I needed to look something up on the Internet. I launched my Safari web browser, which defaults to Apple’s website, and got the above error. I immediately thought it was my laptop or the wireless network I was using, but all of the other websites (Amazon, Google, MSN, etc.) loaded just fine. I went back to the Apple webiste and it sitll wouldn’t load. The person I was meeting with is a database programmer and he was so currious he went and tried his computer, and his computer was unable to reach Apple.
So, my question is, did anyone else notice that Apple’s website was down for 15 or 20 minutes this afternoon?
Where did July go? July 31, 2008
Posted by Matsu in Apple, Information Technology, Random, Technology.add a comment
One of my three new years resolutions is to post to this blog an average of once a week. I don’t think I’m quite there, but I’ve still got five months to catch up and improve my average. This month I only posted twice and I’m posting this just so I have a third post in July. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Well, I’ve been busy!
On a totally different note, I continue to be amazed with and dependent on the new iPod Touch 2.0 system. It is more natural for me to reach for it to check my e-mail or schedule than it is to either use my laptop or my PDA/smart phone. Weird, isn’t it?
Now, there is an iPod Touch application for posting to WordPress. I didn’t use it to post this entry, but I will be trying it out this weekend. Fun!
iPod Touch – The best new PDA on the market July 24, 2008
Posted by Matsu in Apple, Business, Information Technology, Mac, Technology, Uncategorized.17 comments
Almost two weeks ago I downloaded Apple’s new update to the iPod Touch (known as version 2.0). The release of the 2.0 software occurred at the same time Apple released the new iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software.
It took me more than a day to actually get the software update (through the iTunes application) because Apple has some major problems with their update serves. They still have not fully disclosed exactly what happened, but industry experts think that a combination of crashing servers and high demand caused the significant delay in people being able to update their iPhones and iPod Touches (they essentially use the same software). But, after a full day of trying to download the update, I was finally successful and an hour later, I had an updated iPod Touch running the new 2.0 software.
My greatest interest in getting my iPod Touch upgraded was to test the new “enterprise” support, which simply meant that it would work with the Exchange server. Second to that, I was curious about the many different applications that would be released through the new Apple App Store, which is essentially the iTunes store but instead of music, you download programs for the iPod Touch (and iPhone).
I work at a college and I was off campus when I first set up my iPod Touch 2.0 to connect to the Exchange server. I don’t know if that was the reason it didn’t work at first or if it was something else. But, after playing around with the settings, I started to get login errors. So, I went to my laptop computer and tried to log into my Exchange account and discovered that I inadvertently locked out my Exchange account by attempting to log into it with the wrong password too many times.
That was a frustrating delay because it was on a Saturday and I didn’t want to either drive the 20 miles (one way) to reset my account (unlock it) nor did I feel it was urgent enough to ask someone on my staff to stop by the office to take care of my Exchange account. I knew it would reset itself in a few hours, so I shut down everything (the e-mail client on my Mac laptop, my iPod Touch, and my cell phone/PDA that accesses my e-mail and synchs to the Exchange server). About 24 hours later I was able to get into the Exchange server from my laptop, so I stopped experimenting with my iPod Touch setup for Exchange and spent the rest of the weekend just testing the new App Store function and downloading various free applications.
Once I was back in my office after the weekend, I once again tried to set up my iPod Touch to synch with the Exchange server and it worked flawlessly. Ever since then, it has just worked. In fact, it’s worked exceptionally well.
Between the clarity of the screen and the ease of use factor that Apple engineers into every one of their products, I find that the iPod Touch is THE best PDA on the market. I have had this iPod Touch for more than six months. And, while I used it from time to time for listening to music or podcasts, I didn’t really use it all that much. That all changed the minute it began to provide me with easy access to my e-mail, calendar, and contacts. Now, it has become a great new productivity tool that I am becoming dependent on for my work.
You might think that there is nothing special about the iPod Touch when it comes to synchronizing data with the Exchange server. You would be wrong. The experience of reading and responding to e-mail on the iPod Touch is significantly better than using any of the PDA’s on the market. I’ve been using PDA’s since the mid-1990’s and this is different. I don’t know if it’s the way the software looks and works or if it’s the user interface and the large touch surface that makes the difference. Maybe it’s both. But, the entire experience is different — better.
If you have no interest in changing cell phones or for some other reason don’t want to consider buying an iPhone, then look seriously at getting an iPod Touch. If you use an exchange server where you work, it is definitely worth it, but even if you just use it for personal e-mail, it works well with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, etc.
But wait, there’s more! While the main value of the iPod Touch for me is compatibility with the Exchange server, there is also growing value and significance that it can be expanded to do new things by downloading applications through the Apple App Store. I have downloaded dozens of free games, utilities, news aggregators, etc. Some of them have been very powerful and I think are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the iPod Touch and iPhone can or will be used in the future. It’s easy to predict that the iPod Touch and iPhone will become THE portable appliance of choice for custom applications and niche programs used in many industries. I can’t wait to see where the next innovative application will come from, but I would guess that there will be a version for the iPod Touch or a special client that will allow people to access the data from an iPod Touch.
My recommendation for anyone looking to replace or update their old PDA is to get an iPhone Touch. You will be glad you did.
This is not an advertisement for Apple. And, no, I don’t own any Apple stock, but I am tracking their stock price using the Bloomberg software on my iPod.
