Tomorrow is a big day for Apple.  the rumor site are buzzing about the potential of an unannounced tablet device that could be a Kindle killer or the next handheld television or this or that.

What if…

Apple does to the book publishing business what they did to the music business with iTunes and to some extent the application business with the iPhone.  What if Apple all anyone to publish the own ebook and put it on iTunes for purchase on a Mac through iTunes or downloadable on the new tablet device.  Now anyone can bypass the rejection process and stranglehold of the big publishers and go straight to Apple and publish.

Of course Apple will get their 30%, but the writer will now get more than they got before from a publisher with the hassle of the contract or rejection.

Today anyone could write an e-book and market it on their website, but they could also have written an app for the Blackberry or Palm device too.  Few did until the iPhone came along.  The promise and simplicity of the iTunes clearinghouse could change the publishing business and completely upset the publishing apple cart.

What do you think?

Tags: iPhone, tablet ipad itunes ebook

…via its software update utility.  This update enables existing Macs to take advantage of the new Magic Mouse capabilities, as some have reported problems since the mouse hit shelves earlier today.

Today the developer of the popular GTD application for the Mac, iGTD, annouced he is ceasing development as his new role at Cultured Code will take up all his time.  As you may remember, Cultured Code is the developer of a competing application, and the one I use, Things.

Here is the email we received…

(more…)

Apple software consumes 4 of the top 10 spots on Amazon’s top 10 bestseller software list.  With the upcoming release of the latest OS update, Snow Leopard 10.6, taking number 1 and 2 on the list with Microsoft Office for Mac at number 5 and iLife ‘09 coming in a number 9.

Is this just hype around the release of a new OS or is Microsoft really slipping as much as the Mac zealots hope.  The release of Windows 7 will give us a better insight upon its release in October, but for now Apple is the star of the show.

All the while we are hearing more clients asking and consider Mac’s for the their businesses.  We are constantly doing research on moving proprietary businesses application to the Mac or even web platforms to allow them to use Mac’s.

The popularity of the iPhone, the lowered resistance to the Mac in business and the ubiquity of the web is making the switch easier than ever.

Would the Drobo, “data storage robot”, be the next great product from Apple?

Let’s pretend for a moment that Apple acquired the entire Data Robotics company.  The Drobo could get a case redesign and be released as a compliment to the Time Machine, Time Capsule line perhaps as the “Apple Space Station”.  After all, that is what the device really is.  A big storage device full of empty space.  We could use the whole space lingo thing.  We could “dock” and “undock” new drives.  

The product already has Apple-like ease of use.  Just plug it in and it works.  That is Apple to the letter.

The company is small now, but lets not wait too long.  If the rumors are correct these units are flying off the shelf.  Especially now with the release of the new Firewire enabled units and software developer kits.  

I can envision us here at AIB moving our web server data, mail server data and database server databases all to an external “Space Station”.  What an administrator’s dream.  If I want to upgrade a server…prep it offline, unplug the old machine, plug in the new one, point the software to the “Space Station” data and we’re up and running.

Hope Apple is listening.  What do you think? 

Maybe.  Lets review the known issues.  At WWDC, CEO Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple consists of three parts, the Mac, Music and the iPhone.  Obviously, if Apple owned AT&T it could better control the iPhone future without being dependant on a third party, in the US anyway.  It could improve music, and video, downloading. It could own a piece of the “cloud”.  AT&T does operate one of the largest backbone segments of the internet and this would give Apple a huge advantage over any other vendor, whether it be Microsoft or NBC.

But what about the disadvantages of owning a wireless provider?  First, they would have to fix the horrible customer service issues many complain about the not only AT&T, but every other wireless provider.  Consensus is, there are no good carriers, just varying degrees of poor.  Could Apple resolve such a tough issue? What about all the other phones carried by AT&T? Motorola, Palm, Samsung, etc.  Would Apple just drop them?  Of course it would be nice to have a nationwide network of “iPhone Stores” to augment it network of Apple Stores. Maybe by the time such a deal does transpire, Apple will have a suite of iPhones to complete its product line.  The iPhone 3G, the iPhone Nano, the iPhone this and iPhone that.

This idea is a stretch, but think about the possibilities if they could figure out how to resolve the customer service issues. Isn’t Skype up for sale? What would this do to the Apple TV? Would I be able to download music, the second part of the triangle, from anywhere. 

This gives MobileMe a whole new meaning.

Tags: iPhone

Zoomdex, a new local business search engine designed for small and home based businesses, has launched using Mac OSX Server at the foundation of their site.  Zoomdex decided to do their own hosting to allow for more flexibility and to meet the high demand and better facilitate future capabilities.

“Mac OSX Server allowed us to get up and running quickier than a Linux or Windows solution.  It also allows us to make whatever modifications and upgrades we feel necessary to meet the high demand expected.”

Zoomdex allows businesses to list specific products and services and allows visitors to search for those specific selections.  Phone book sites only allow searches by categories such as hardware stores or computer programming.  Zoomdex allows the user to search for Baldwin Brass doorknobs  or php programming.  This is of course dependant on the business entering those items into the list of products or services they offer.

Zoomdex also touts the ability for small and home based businesses with limited advertising budgets to get online within minutes.  Getting listed in the phone book can require months and newspaper ads are very expensive.

Use of the Mac server platform is another indication of small businesses beginning to adopt the Mac for serious business applications.

If you have a business that need low cost advertising, visit www.zoomdex.com and claim your listing.  During the beta, inclusion in the index is free.

Apple has announced that the next version of Safari will be much faster than the current version in one specific area.  JavaScript execution. Why?  MobileMe is based on SproutCore. A JavaScript framework for developing web applications that look and feel like real desktop applications.

With Apple actually delivering these applications and Microsoft just talking about it, can developers afford to wait for Redmond to ship IE 8?  Will there applications be cross browser capatible? Apple says theirs will be. Of course, Safari will run them faster, but they will be open standard compliant, so any browser should run them exactly the same.

We will see if Apple delivers on it’s promise by the end of July.  Let’s hope that MobileMe doesn’t turn into another Vista.  It needs to be stable, fast and reliable when it hits the street.  Apple seems to be trying to create an image of fast, lightweight and reliable and a black eye called MobileMe would be a serious setback.

Tags: javascript, MobileMe, ria, sproutcore

With the recent announcement about Snow Leopard Server having Exchange support and it’s own Contact Server, updates to calendar server and other Exchange like features it would seem obvious that Apple is positioning itself for a move into the enterprise.  

Apple has historically not directly marketed itself as an alternative to business, but has chosen to let business find it. Vista has certainly helped and the PC vs Mac tv ads could be argued as business ads.  Either way, with all the recent activity about “Exchange” this and “Exchange” that, it seems clear Apple is primed for a ninja like attack.  First release MobileMe, then a suite of online applications like iWork, then hit them with a lean, clean, fast and secure Snow Leopard.  

Look at some of the client’s that Apple touts on stage at the 2008 WWDC.  The Army! Really? The US ARMY?

What are the troops going to do with a iPhone in the field?  Is there signal in the Sahari?

If I worked in Redmond, I would be updating my resume before next years MacWorld.

Tags: business

A client of ours has a simple request.  They needed to copy the content of a web page, via cut and paste, then edit it by removing some unneeded portions, then print it.  Guess what?  You can’t do that on a Mac!  

Before the switch to Mac, in Windows, they would load up Firefox or IE, select a section of the web page with the mouse, copy it, paste it into Microsoft Word, delete a few rows from the table, change some text and print it.  All of this was to eliminate some unneeded data on the page which caused the print to span more than one sheet when printed.

Now on the Mac, same thing… select, copy, paste into Pages ‘08 or Microsoft Word and POW! Junk! A mangle of unformatted, misaligned, table stripped data.  What a mess!  A quick web search reports that because Apple had so much trouble getting Pages to act as an HTML editor in the ‘06 version, that they removed the capability entirely from the latest ‘08 edition.  Then why doesn’t MS Word work the way the Windows version does?  Don’t know.  Just doesn’t.  

So now the only option is to paste the page into Dreamweaver, a real HTML editor, and do it the right way.  That’s fine and all, but the average office worker doesn’t have and doesn’t need a professionals HTML editor just to do something they have been doing for years in Windows.  

The only option that “kinda” worked was to paste it into TextEdit in rich text mode. However, when printed it is very small and doesn’t fill the page and it still can not be moved from there into a Pages or Word document for presentation.

They can’t be the only one who has ever used web content in a printed document.  Sure, copying text is fine, but if that text is in a table…good luck.

I really hate hearing, “the Mac can’t do this…”.

Got any ideas? I’m all ears.