Tag Archives: apple
In my second Christmas list I was trying to be helpful in setting out what people boys might like for Christmas – with a sort of Apple flavour. I didn’t get any of these things – mainly because, as it has been observed, I already own them…
I have already bought the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson – although it is on my Kindle. I am still to start it – at over 650 pages, I am waiting for the right moment! But I did get another book for Christmas – “Inside Steve’s brain“. It isn’t quite the undertaking of the autobiography.
I have just finished it and it is a fascinating insight into the genius that was Steve Jobs. It focuses on the way in which he operated – mostly from interviews with people who were around him. Although some of the book feels a bit ‘padded’ in parts (I suspect there was no real access to the man by the author, Leander Kahney) there are some really interesting nuggets about how Apple worked.
In summary, it worked because of the drive of Steve Jobs. It worked because he had single-mindedness and an absolute belief in what he was doing. His attention to detail was legendary. His was a world of product differentiation. He was fascinated by materials and the way in which they could be used.
He had another skill – he surrounded himself with exceptionally talented people (like Jonathan Ive) (Sir Jonathan that should be!). The best of the best. I think this is a great business lesson. As he was employing the most talented people he could track down this raised the bar – the rest of the team had to aim a little higher. The opposite of this (and I saw this with one person I worked with in my days in a plc) is that you employ someone to make you look better – this just drags the quality down – not up.
The book is partly business coaching, part biography. It works better on the level of business lessons.
The autobiography is next … I don’t expect the review too soon though!
52.941294
-1.166237
1 comment | tags: apple, autobiography, business, Design, Jonathan Ives, lessons, Steve Jobs | posted in Business
It seems that I may have made some glaring omissions from yesterdays ‘ideas list’. I apologise, but my colleague and fellow blogger Simon Dare hit the nail on the head (as did Mr Baker) in observing that there were no Apple goodies. Mr Dare was probably right in that I probably have more Apple kit than most…
But, for the sake of you beige-box people out there who don’t mind staring at those little egg-timer things, there are some pretty brilliant bits of kit with little Apple logos. In no particular order ladies, your blokes might like…
1. An iPad2 – superb bit of kit that has allowed me to lose my notebook. Writing is so last Century!
2. A MacBook Air – 11.6″ screen is fantastic. And it doesn’t break your arm carrying it.
3. IMac 27 – for the desktop. Eyewatering display. Like a razor.
4. Iphone 4 – simply the best.
5. Apple TV – great for streaming images from your laptop or iPad onto your HD TV screen.
6. Ipods – you could go for a shuffle, nano, touch or classic.
7. Magic Mouse – unbelievably good and very clever with gestures (not rude ones)
Having looked down the list, I seem to have one of each of these, except that I don’t have the current line up of iPods. In any event Apple don’t have an iPod big enough to carry all of my music (322Gb at the last count)
I hope this helps…
And tomorrows blog is a very special edition – ideas for blokes. From Mrs G – and ‘just in time’ methinks!
52.941294
-1.166237
5 comments | tags: apple, Christmas, Lists, Presents, Santa | posted in Business, Grumpy Old Man!
When you have been to New York 17 times there are some things you can afford to miss (the tourist attractions!). But there are some essentials. Having just got back to Blighty I thought I would scribble my recommendations!
Breakfast – The Cupping Room Cafe on West Broadway. Just great food and a great atmosphere. The way your day should start. And if not The Cupping Rooms – Edwards on west Broadway is a close second.
Boys Toys – the best shop on the planet – B&H Photo – just near to Madison Square Garden. Acres of ‘toys’ – and not all Apple. A photographers nirvana. When you have done that – the Apple Store – there’s a few of them. The one at the south-eastern corner of Central Park is quite cool – but the one in the Meatpacking District on 14th is pretty good too. The original one in Soho is being refurbished – so has a temporary home around the corner.
Neighbourhoods – Soho and The Meatpacking District are great fun to explore. The scale of the buildings here is more ‘normal’ and you can find some really interesting places.
Pizza – It has to be John’s Pizza on Bleeker Street, They don’t do slices and you have to pay cash – but $30 for two is great value – and this is where The Ramones had their Sunday lunch.
Star Spotting – you have to look carefully as the reason the celebs love the place is that they blend in. But I have seen Eddy Izzard, Ricky Gervais, Bill Murray and Charlize Theron (twice).
Humbling moment – go to Ground Zero. It makes you realise the devastation on that 9/11 fateful day. The new Freedom Tower is now a significant landmark – which you can see for some distance – and it’s not quite there yet!
Coffee – The New Yorkers do coffee shops rather well. There are hundreds of them. Often accompanied by Cup Cakes – clearly the healthy types. There’s a Starbucks on nearly every corner. But the independents are pretty good too.
Music – Bleeker Street Records is just a gold-mine of music. It has been there for ever and stocks an amazing range of CD, vinyl and even cassettes (remember those). The new vinyl is reasonably priced too – $15-20. Downtown at J&R you can pick up some bargains too.
So that’s this trip over – I guess we’ll have to wait for another couple of months to get back here…
52.941294
-1.166237
2 comments | tags: apple, B&H, Bleeker Street, Charlize Theron, Cupping Room, Edwards, Ground Zero, John's Pizza, Meatpacking District, New York, Soho, The Ramones | posted in Grumpy Old Man!
It was a few years ago that this phrase was born, a sort of utopian world where you no longer needed a pen and paper. We would speak at computers or type away. It wasn’t something that I could do easily. I like scribbling ideas and notes in my Moleskine books.
Latterly I had settled on a squared book, which contained pages of sketches, notes, to-do lists and minutes of meetings. It was a great aide-memoire.
But I have seen the light. And gone paperless (well almost).
I have had an iPad for some time (actually since the day they were launched) – but a few weeks ago, I got an iPad2 – and swapped my old machine with a colleague. I found that I wasn’t using the 3G capabilities – and he wanted that facility.
The new bit of kit spurred me into action and I decided to see if I could manage without my notebook. And since 10th October I haven’t scribbled anything in it. It is partly because I have discovered Evernote – which is a free App – and one that synchronises with my iPad, macbook air, iPhone and iMac. It is really clever – it lets me clip things to it – web addresses, PDF files and the like. All of my projects are in one place. I can add to notes and they are sorted by project.
Alongside this I am using DropBox and Iprocrastinate for my to-do list and for sharing documents respectively.
It was interesting to be at a clients office last week – and be able to discuss some land with him – by showing him a crystal clear OS map on my iPad – rather than one of my sketches! Of course, I could have printed the plan off, but I didn’t know I was going to be discussing this particular matter when I went to see him. As I build up the notes and database, I can see this method of working becoming more useful.
And just in case, for the moment, I am carrying my notebook around… I wonder what a psychiatrist would make of that! Safety Net?
52.941294
-1.166237
Leave a comment | tags: app store, apple, DropBox, Evernote, iMac, ipad, iphone, Portable Document Format | posted in Business, Green stuff, Nottingham
I thought I would monitor my cars performance during October and have observed the following:
1. I worked 21 full days (some of them longer than others) and then some Saturdays.
2. I drove 1,767 miles
3. My car says I spend 61 hours and 45 minutes attached to it – thats just over 8 days in English money!
4. It also says I averaged 29mph – not exactly fast! But quicker than a chicken.
5. I spent £335 on diesel – ouch.
6. We managed an average mpg of 33.8mpg – much better than my RS4.
7. I went to Guildford, Wakefield, The Isle of Wight, Manchester as well as lots of places around Nottingham and the East Midlands. I can’t recall them all as I lost my diary when I upgraded to the Cloud… thanks Apple.
8. I drank more Costa Coffee than can really be considered healthy, and managed only one Starbucks - which is a volte face.
I need to spend less time attached to the car I think?
52.941294
-1.166237
1 comment | tags: apple, averages, East Midlands, Guildford, Isle of Wight, Manchester, MPG, MPH, Nottingham, Starbucks, Wakefield | posted in Business, Green stuff, Grumpy Old Man!, Nottingham
Most people know that I am a huge fan of Apple. I have the full range of kit, an iMac, Macbook Air, ipad2, iPod, apple TV, iphone4 etc. I like it because it works. And having had years of staring at Microsoft egg-timers it was a refreshing change to plug and play!
The new iCloud?
The new iOS launched last week was going to be really interesting as it shifts much of the connectivity up onto the Apple Cloud and thus allows you to share everything you have between devices. On the face of it this sounds great (although I have used idisk for a couple of years quite successfully – and that is to become defunct next year).
But the transition has not all been good. I can forgive the long download times, because what Apple do most of the time is not provide sticky plasters – but rather the whole programme refreshed.
But in my move to the iCloud (I have an Apple Mac account) I must have pressed the wrong button. I allowed ical (the electronic diary) to merge with my work (outlook) diary. This it turns out was a mistake. Over the next few hours my work diary was reduced to blank pages. My ical is now beautifully full – and looks ugh prettier than the Microsoft system.
This is great – except that my office uses Microsoft. My PA books my appointments on her PC.
This morning that has all changed. I spent a frustrating two hours yesterday trying to undo the damage, but alas, you can’t go backwards. My guess is that Apple are just trying to educe Microsoft’s hold…
The technical forums are full of questions, but have no answers!
Sometimes Apple can be just a little bit frustrating…
52.941294
-1.166237
3 comments | tags: apple, icloud, iMac, ios, iphone, ipod, Macintosh, Microsoft | posted in Nottingham
This week Blackberry has hit the news, but not in a good way. They have been having major connection issues with users left without email or browsing. And this spread all over the world. Thankfully we are iPhone users, so we were / are feeling very pleased with ourselves.
I am a keen advocate of the use of technology in business. I know that sometimes this ‘always on’ stuff can be a bit of a distraction. But I hope it means that we can offer a better and faster service to clients. It seems incredible sometimes to step back and realise what we are capable of. From taking digital images, dictating digitally, producing professional looking documents – from home, the office or a train. In my case this blog is being written in a hotel room on the Isle of Wight!
In simple, we have become completely reliant on our tech-toys. Who could really live without a mobile telephone now? I can’t imagine life without Google. The information you can draw upon, in seconds, is mind blowing. In my professional life it is amazing how we have progressed in such a short space of time.
But all of this goodness comes with a downside. When the internet fails – or the Blackberry world falls apart – we are stumped. People flood twitter with their frustrations! They stop functioning…
It isn’t until things go wrong that we stop to think how reliant we have become. In my office if we lose our email for a few hours, people start swearing and asking (demanding?) to know when it is going to be fixed. Appendages feel like they have been removed!
In God we may have trusted before, but I think it is the technology is our new God? Let us pray.
52.941294
-1.166237
Leave a comment | tags: apple, Blackberry, Google, Handhelds, iphone, Isle of Wight, Mobile phone, Research In Motion | posted in Business, Grumpy Old Man!
It doesn’t seem five minutes ago since I was ‘collecting’ slides for presentations to clients. In those days, really good presentations would use two Kodak projectors , synchronised and ordered to fade in and out. That was really high tech! I even had some slides commissions with some text on.
Then came Powerpoint – and put a presentation at everyones disposal – the advent of the laptop call us all huddle around a screen to be amazed at this ‘tranny’ replacement. And digital photography (another Kodak ‘first’) let us show images.
Next Apple showed us how Powerpoint could be made twice as good – with Keynote. I have used Keynote for the last 4 years or so – it is (was?) brilliant. I learned a lot from Steve Jobs presentation style – very little content – one word or one picture. That makes people listen to you. 32 bullet points is not good! Especially with my eyes…
Then suddenly I have come full circle. I gave a presentation last week and decided to go retro. I started by saying that I wouldn’t do ‘death by Powerpoint’. There was a palpable sigh of relief. What we did was hand out some short, bound documents – with six pages. They were A3 sized and full of images and key messages.
It was, in my view much better than a darkened room. We were able to talk to the people on the other side – not shout into a black box.
I have a feeling that this week has been all a bit retro – what with my longing for my LPs…
What next I wonder?
52.941294
-1.166237
Leave a comment | tags: apple, Keynote, Microsoft PowerPoint, Photography, Powerpoint, Presentation, SlideShare, Steve Jobs | posted in Grumpy Old Man!, Nottingham
I didn’t get a chance yesterday to blog about the very sad passing of Steve Jobs. I was a sad day.
I can’t add much new but there were three quotes I saw in the day – which I thought summed things up really well, so my contribution is to shamelessly steal these..
Firstly, President Obama, “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”
Secondly, the phrase he borrowed from Wayne Gretzky, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
And finally, an unattributed comment, “There are three apples that changed the world. The one in the Adam & Eve story, the one that fell on Newtons head and the one that Steve Job invented.”
All so very true of the genius of this man.
I think the world has genuinely lost one of the most influential people of our time. RIP Steve Jobs.
52.941294
-1.166237
Leave a comment | tags: apple, Apple founder, Barack Obama, History, Pancreatic Cancer, Pioneers, RIP Steve Jobs, Steve, Steve Job, Steve Jobs, United States, Wayne Gretzky | posted in Business
I am a mac fan as you probably know and I upgraded my various laptops / desktop machines to Mac OS (Operating system) Lion more or less as soon as it was released.
On the whole I like it. Mac does stuff that works – and this holds a big appeal for me. I like the lack of discs! The new App store is really good too. Apple have moved further away from CD’s to load your software. You buy programs in the App Store and they download. That’s it.
I love the finger gestures as well – you can switch between screens easily on the trackpads. And as I have a baby MacBook Air 11″ – the full screen Apps are great. Hopefully all programs will soon be full screen enabled (hint to Microsoft here).
The Launcher is a good place to find everything. Files are easily sorted by date or name.
I also love the autosave feature – where you can swipe between older versions if you have made a real mess of what you are working on.
As with most Apple products for their machines the best features are the ones you don’t notice. The start-up from cold on my Air machine is about 9 seconds. It’s only when I see other people with windows machines I realise the benefit of this. One of my friends has a machine which you need to go and make tea whilst it cranks up. Of course, I rarely turn the machines off – they sleep, to be awoken by opening the lid!
The only downside I have found it that at my office we have some significant Canon color printers – and the Mac won’t talk to it anymore. They have found a workaround, but it’s not great. I’m told that I have to wait for 4 months for an updated driver…
That sounds like a Windows expression?
52.941294
-1.166237
2 comments | tags: app store, apple, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Lion, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system | posted in Business
