I really miss the days of Steve Jobs at Apple. While Apple is still the leader in the quality of hardware products, their Internet services can be a struggle at times.
I’m trying to manage my Apple ID two-factor authentication settings this morning. The resulting webpage looks like this.
I noticed this video on Facebook earlier today and I can’t agree more with Stevie Nicks on this. Honestly, I could be better at being present in the moment. Stevie makes some valid points.
After watching the movie “Wonder Woman” last night, I felt like watching a few clips from the 1970s television series with Lynda Carter. I’ve always gotten a kick out of the way Wonder Woman takes care of this woman trying to booby-trap a car.
So Earl and I looked at a couple of places to live today. One in particular caught our eye.
Now we wait.
My love of road trips and roads in general goes back to my elementary school days. I’ve always been fascinated with the view from a roadway. I vividly remember riding in the back seat of my parents’ vehicles. The first one I remember was a VW Beetle. I don’t remember where we went in it, as I was just a toddler, but I remember riding in it and watching the scenery whizz by.
Earl and I are currently on the Indiana Toll Road headed for Chicago. We’ve passed a couple of cars with video monitors installed in the backseat, movies or cartoons playing. I peer in the windows as we go by and see kids fixated on the electronic gizmo. The world is literally passing them by as they’re being entertained by electronics.
I find the surrounding world so entertaining. I am so happy these electronic gadgets weren’t around when I was a kid. I love discovering the world from the road just as much as I love discovering the world from the air.
Earl handles the drives to Chicago and back because he has more of a lead foot than I do, plus I worked from the passenger seat for the first 4 1/2 hours. Once we were out of New York and Pennsylvania I put the work computer away and started watching the world go by.
I nod to truck drivers. I smile to kids and parents. I see all the different types of utility poles and high tension wire towers. I spot difference in road signs, I compare fuel prices, I wave to cattle and I smirk at horse and sheep.
The world is out there waiting for us to explore it. Take the opportunity to see it whenever you can.
You might appreciate your surroundings much more when you’re in their presence.
Some days, especially when it’s cold and rainy outside, I opt out of listening to music when I work and look for a TED Talk to watch or listen to as a source of inspiration for the task at hand. Today, I chose a TED Talk from 2013 by Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple since 2014. Prior to Apple she worked for Burberry.
A quote from the talk made me stop, rewind and listen again. Twice.
Trust, since the creation of man, is where we all derive our greatest strength and power. It’s like the exterior heart that all energy flows through.
-Angela Ahrendts, 2013
This quote, this statement really struck a chord within me today. The quote was surrounded by a discussion about turmoil in the world at that time. That was 2013 and quite frankly, 2013 has nothing on where we are today in 2017. It all suddenly clicked in my head: I’ve lost trust in the world. I don’t trust our government, I certainly don’t trust the president, I don’t really trust corporations and I’m finding it more and more difficult to trust that people will do the right thing. Without trust we have nothing. As Ms. Ahrendts stated, it’s the exterior heart that all energy flows through. Without trust, there’s no heart, there’s no energy flowing.
One of the most important things about our marriage and our little family is that I have absolute, unwavering trust in both Earl and Jamie. It’s the very foundation upon which my life has been built. We have no secrets from one another and I don’t think I could function if that changed. There may be hesitation for someone to share something but I trust that I will never be deceived and I will never, ever do anything to lose their trust. It’s bedrock. It’s what allows us to stand tall.
If we are truly going to Make America Great Again, we need to start with putting people we trust into positions of leadership. We need to trust our leaders and more importantly, we need to trust one another. There’s not a lot of trust going on in society today.
Here’s the entire TED Talk called “The Power of Human Energy”. Angela Ahrendts is one woman I’d like to meet in person, shake her hand and thank her for the inspiration.
I was looking for a photo from my heavy blogging days and stumbled across this video from nine-ish years ago. It’s me dancing around the studio and doing some mixing on my Apple PowerBook G4.
Here’s the video that was featured on that post. The two songs in the mix:
“I’m Gonna Get You” by Lonnie Gordon
“Don’t You Love Me” by the 49ers (sampling Jody Watley)
I keep saying that someday I’m going to attend WWDC, or the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. This is a yearly event where developers for Apple’s various platforms get together and Apple shares with the developers as to why Apple has the greatest platform in the world to develop for. They have workshops, product announcements, platform upgrade announcements and sneak peeks and basically a great opportunity for software developers from all over the world to get together and geek out on Apple products together.
Yesterday Apple kicked off WWDC 2017 with their annual Special Event, in which they took the opportunity to announce a few new products and their planned upgrades to their operating systems (macOS for the Macintosh, iOS for iPhone and iPad, etc.)
As much as I wretch about Apple and their Quality Control practices of late, after exploring other options that are out there I’m still fully committed to the Apple line of products for a myriad of reasons. When compared to other platforms, I find that Apple’s approach to computing works best for my needs. The fit and finish of their devices meet my expectations (long gone are my days of using cheap, plastic technology that breaks down in less than a year). And, probably most importantly, Apple is not funded by ad revenue that is gleaned from my data. In the wide scope of things I don’t really care if Search Company X cares if brush my teeth with Colgate or Crest but I absolutely, positively despise advertising, especially ads embedded in software I’m trying to use. Forget about web pages that have dancing ads or autoplaying videos about Athlete’s Foot or whatever. I am always willing to pay that little bit extra to keep the ads out of my computing experience.
Apple’s experience is the best way to accomplish that task.
I totally get that there is a wide array of folks out there that absolutely despise Apple and everything that they stand for. I’ve heard everything from “they force you to upgrade every year” (they don’t, in fact, Apple’s MacBook Pro line usually lasts longer than anything belched out by one of the PC Notebook companies), “I shouldn’t have to pay for a grounded spaceship in the middle of Northern California” (honestly, I hope the new Apple Campus becomes a beacon of how environmentally friendly a company, and any person, should be these days) and “Pffff, who cares, Android has been doing that forever” (which I think is wonderful. I’ve used Android before, it feels like a second rate, kitchen-sink operating system to me that could fall apart at any given moment, but if it works for you, use it. I’m not going to evangelize why you shouldn’t use Android, that’s your business).
The Special Event yesterday has a bunch of announcements that pretty much followed the script predicted by the rumors that have been floating about. iPhone and iPads will get iOS 11. Macs will get macOS High Sierra, which sounds like it’s going to follow the same precedent that Mac OS X Leopard followed years ago when they added refinements and tweaks to Leopard to give us Snow Leopard. Getting totally geeky, macOS will get a new filesystem that will immensely speed up file operations on the hard drive and as a person that copies a lot of video that’s a very cool thing. Apple also announced the new HomePod (not completely a fan of the name) which brings Siri to the smart speaker paradigm currently led by Amazon with the Echo and Google with Google Home. It’s pricey but apparently it has amazing sound. Siri is built in. Everyone tells me how awful Siri is and that it’s worthless but I use Siri all the time, especially to control our Philips Hue lights when Amazon Echo’s Alexa responds with “I can’t find the device you’re looking for” after every other request. Siri always knows how to turn off the lights on dining room hutch. Alexa can turn them on but forgets how to turn them off.
The two standout features that really grabbed my attention had to do with mobile and are both in iOS 11. The first one is safety oriented and is called “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode. Basically, iOS 11 now has the ability to detect while you’re driving and will put your phone in a Do Not Disturb mode, replying automatically to messages on your behalf indicating what you’re doing. The screen will remain dark and when you get to your destination everything will unlock and you can catch up on your activity then. You can build a VIP list that allows select users to reply to the alert with “Urgent” and it will force your iPhone to display the message.
I think this is exactly what they driving American public needs in a smartphone right now and I am eager to use it.
The second update to iOS 11 that really got my attention was the vast improvements to using iOS on the iPad. Apple made great strides in making the iPad Pro more of a content generation device and less of a content consumption device. The addition of Drag and Drop to the interface, along with a more familiar Mac-like dock along the bottom is a welcomed enhancement. I have always wanted to use my iPad Pro as my primary computing device, especially when traveling, but I’ve always felt boxed in by the experience. While not perfect, iOS 11 takes a hearty step forward in making this possible, at least within my realm, and I’m eager to try it out.
The hardware upgrades announced were a welcomed addition to the event, and one that should calm folks screaming about Apple being behind the curve on processing power in their MacBook Pro line, at bat for a bit. One of the hardware announcements, the new iMac Pro coming in December, really grabbed my eye. This is an iMac designed to be a powerhouse of a machine and to be used in professional environments (photo editing, graphic design, video creation, etc). It’s pricey but the specs are out of this world. And the best part it, while it is amazing, it’s NOT a replacement for the Mac Pro, which is going to be updated in 2018.
It also comes in Space Gray with all new Space Gray accessories. It looks bad ass.
All in all, I’m a very happy and content Apple Geek. I purchased a couple of things yesterday (tell my husband to calm down as I didn’t spend a great deal of money at all) and I’m looking forward to watching some of the workshops at WWDC 2017 online in my spare time this week.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
