Steve Jobs

The book I read to research this post was Steve Jobs: The Einstein Of The 21st Century by Albert Redfield which is a fairly good that I read at kindle unlimited. This book is only around 10 pages and I find it hard to believe the author couldn’t find more to write on this subject. Steve Jobs of course died recently and the author argues in his lifetime had the kind of impact on our lives in the 21st Century that can only be matched by Einstein in the 20th Century. He shaped how we define things like computers and telephones. These devices nowadays often come with a touch screen which we have to thank him for. Like Einstein they both came from a fairly poor background and were obsessive about learning subjects that interested them. Apple now is the largest company in the world and almost anyone can learn to write apps for their devices. Many people are getting very rich from selling apps. Many of these apps also are free or at least have a similar but free version. Steve famously started building his early computers in a garage and never completed higher education. I think like Bill Gates he realized there was an opportunity there and then and if either went to university they would miss out. Steve stayed abreast of the latest technology. Apparently he read so much it took up too much of his time so he didn’t have time to do other things. It does look like tablets are the computers of the near future and smartphones will become the mobile phones of the near future with their vastly expanded capabilities. I did enjoy this book but it could have done with being longer. I’d suggest reading it on kindle unlimited rather than buying. Really it ought to be free.

The iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus

The book I read to research this post was The iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus Ultimate Guide by Brian S which is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. This book is only an overview of the 2 new smartphones from Apple and I think it is best if you have experience of one of the earlier versions to be able to follow it. The book is only around 20 pages so is interesting but brief. The main differences between the basic phone and the Plus are the respective 4.7 and 5.5 inch screens and also the latter has a higher screen resolution. The Plus is mainly to help people with larger hands. Apple have increased the screen sizes for both over the iPhone 5 and they have a glass cover and rounded edges in keeping with trends in smartphone development. They have done away with the beveled edge. The iPhone can recognize you by your thumbprint and also you don’t have to worry about someone chopping it off because there is a heat sensor to make sure it is living. You can enable payments using this with an iPhone 6 or if you have it can be done with an iWatch. Another new product from Apple. There is an upgraded version of Siri the voice activated personal assistant. There is an improved messaging system where it is easier to place things like Facetime calls – Apple’s video call service – and other messaging services can be found more easily under the person’s name. It is also easier to find information regarding a message in this way. Although this book doesn’t cover it there is technology to control things like your television and microwave etc from your smartphone. Technology is going that way with phones now. I think if you have a new iPhone and just want something to get you started in using the latest features this book is great and let’s face it, it’s free. I think I’d recommend it and it is an interesting read.

Inside Apple

The book I read to research this post was Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky which is an excellent book that I bought from a local bookstore. This book is about how Apple does business primarily in the period of 1997 onwards when Steve Jobs returned as Apple CEO. Apple became the biggest firm in the world in 2011 and since Steve Jobs died Tim Cook has been CEO. Many of the Apple employees and ex-employees were reluctant to talk to the author and many of those who did, did so off the record as they didn’t want to burn that bridge. Most of them were very complimentary about their time at Apple. The first time Steve left Apple he formed NeXt & Pixar and the latter was sold to Disney for $7.5 billion. Apple often will have disputes with its suppliers although it will continue working with them. An example of this is with Samsung whom they say is using iPhone technology in their smartphones although they continue to buy components for their iPhones from them. There is a term in the technology industry called frenemies and this kind of thing is common in that kind of business. Apple nowadays concentrates on things like the iPhones, iPads & iPods and the computers take a back seat. They had a dispute with Cisco over the IOS which stood for Iinternet Operating System and was particularly used with many of there network devices. In the end it was agreed Apple could use iOS for things like the iPad & iPhone to try and distinguish it. Another interesting thing is Apple will often take people from one department with appropriate experience in something rather than train people even in another geographical region to do the job. I think that makes a lot of sense as then they know they will do a satisfactory job. An example given was trade shows being first in America then Europe. Also as in the case of Siri the virtual assistant on the iPhone they cover every eventuality even providing answers to things like profound questions like the meaning of life although often in a jokey kind of way. I really enjoyed this book and would undoubtedly recommend it. I was lucky I bought this brand new from a £1 shop where it must have been surplus stock they bought cheap and resold. This is definitely a book worth reading.

Scrivener

The book I read to research this post was Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Scrivener is a writing software initially released for the Apple Macintosh and particularly for the OS X Lion operating system and I think the version in this book is a previous version which at the time had a cut down Windows version although in future both versions will have similar features. I did look on Google to see how much this software is and it is free for 30 days and $40 thereafter. The company that make it is literature and latte. It is particularly suited to writers as they can keep all there work in one place which it does with folders and subfolders. It also allows you to do e-books particularly in pdf and you can import your work including notes and annotations into Microsoft Word. There is a kind of add on at http://crowl.info which is a word counter useful for editing for things like magazines and newspapers. The book does a decent job of explaining how to use it although this software has been superceded by Scrivener 2 which hopefully there will be a follow up book on. The book explains where there are differences between the windows and mac versions although in the later version the features in the windows version are comparable. I really enjoyed reading it and think the price of the software does sound quite reasonable. I’d never heard of this software prior to reading this book and apparently the word scrivener is a fancy word meaning writer. It’s an interesting book.

Steve Job’s Presentation Secrets

The book I read to research this post was The Presentation Secrets Of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Steve jobs was the CEO of Apple Computers until his untimely death and made it into a bigger company than Microsoft but he had been earlier forced out of the same position at the age of 30 despite at that time Apple being a company he had founded and had become a major player in the computer industry. Let’s focus on his presentation skills anyway. He never used bullet points in his presentations and normally substituted pictures. He would often have a kind of stage background and people would often say if you were at one of his presentations you didn’t forget it in a hurry. He would use headline that were short, simple and to the point, often like tweets on twitter. At one of his presentations he used an actor who had played him in a tv movie and from a distance looked just like him to introduce him. On another occasion he had the CEO of Intel come on stage in a protective suit like they use in the manufacture of processors. He was very much a showman and would typically pose a problem to the audience and them the gadget and explain how it solved it. When he introduced the Apple TV he told them it is a dvd player for the 21st century. His presentations would consist of 3 products and would be displayed in 3 acts and apparently the US Marine corp has done research in how we remember things and found 3 is more effective than 2 or 4 strange as it sounds and is a kind of magic number for anything like presentations. There are technology events where they typically invite a CEO from a technology to do something like a 6 minute talk on a new product launch and they often limit how long it can be because they say if you can’t explain its features in that time it’s isn’t worth explaining. At one technology launch they charge $3,000 per minute for somebody from a company to do a talk and you can imagine they are eager to make it quick. I did really enjoy this book which is hugely informative although only around 210 pages so only short. Finally Steve Jobs also used to take technical facts about his products and translate it into something we’d understand like the first iPod was 5 GB of storage so he explained that’s about 1,000 songs.

Digital Wars

The book I read to research this post was Digital Wars by Charles Arthur which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. This book is about the war for market share & control of the internet by Microsoft, Google & Apple. Bill Gates the owner of Microsoft was once asked what company he feared the most & said what he feared the most was someone building something in a garage in Silicon Valley & selling it much like how Apple started because a small firm like that could respond to market forces much more readily than Microsoft ever could. Apparently out of the established companies he fears Google the most because they are a software company as well as a search engine & are run along similiar lines to Microsoft. He fears if he doesn’t watch Google very carefully they could put Microsoft out of business. Nowadays Bill has handed over much of the running of his company & concentrates on his charity work, stopping preventable illnesses in developing countries. When Apple brought back Steve Jobs to run the company they were almost out of business. Apple had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft because the Windows interface of using the mouse was quite similiar to the Apple Lisa which I think used a touch screen. Bill bought $150 million of non voting shares in Apple & agreed that he would continue to support an AppleMac version of Microsoft Office. Without all that Apple would have gone out of business. Nowadays Apple makes more revenue from iPods than from computers aside from the iPad. In 2011 Apple overtook Exxon to become the highest valued company on the stock exchange. Apparently Toshiba came up with a very tiny hard drive which was incorporated into the 1st generation iPod. Also they originally only worked with iMac computers & were seen as a way to increase Apples share of the computer market. It was inspired of Jobs to see that if they made iTunes compatible with Windows they could sell a lot more iPods. A lot of Apple fans saw it as sacrilege. A lot of the iPods competitors were much bulkier than the iPod & Jobs was instrumental in insisting it be as tiny as possible. Microsoft brought out the Zune which was a capable machine but was inferior to the iPod. It shared features with the Xbox & Xbox Live. I think if you had the wireless adaptor you could stream music from the Xbox to your Zune which was quite nifty.

Using the iPad & iPad2 With YouTube

The book I read to research this post was iPad for Dummies 2nd Edition by Edward C Baig which is an excellent book I got from the library. This book covers both the iPad & iPad 2. YouTube has become one of the most famous websites & with an iPad you can both watch videos & upload them. When you are searching for a particular type of video it’s a good idea to type in a keyword. The videos are grouped according to featured-by YouTube staff- most viewed, favourites- selected by you- subscriptions- ones you have subscribed to because you like them & get updates- my videos- ones you have uploaded- & finally history- ones you have viewed recently. You can only directly watch YouTube on an iPad that has 3G or internet access but if you have a wi-fi one you can stream it from your computer. When you watch a video you can add it to your favourites, share or email someone a link, rate it out of 5 or flag it as inappropriate where it will be checked by YouTube staff. You can view the videos full screen on an iPad & also if you have children you can age restrict the content they watch.

 

More iPad2

The book I read to research this post was Teach Yourself Visually iPad 2 by Lonzell Watson which is an excellent book which I got from the library. iWork is the iPad 2’s equivalent of microsoft office. You can buy the components for$9.99 or buy the whole suite together. The first component is keynote which is a presentations program & lets you print out slides and leaflets to accompany it. Then there is pages which is a word processor. There is numbers which is a spreadsheet program although it does things like graphs as well. iDisk lets you store stuff on your iPad 2 as though it was a laptop with a hard drive.

Next we will look at some of the hardware you can buy for your iPad 2. You can buy a smart cover which protects the screen or a case which offers more protection. Theres an iPad dock which lets you charge it and also has powered speakers. Theres the camera connection kit which lets you upload photos. Theres the AV lead which connects it to your television. The HDMI adaptor does a similiar job. It’s self explanatory what the USB power adaptor although it’s 6 feet long. The Airprint enabled printer is a printer which is wireless and compatible with the iPad 2.

 

iTunes

The book I read to research this post was iPod & iTunes – Portable Genius – Second Edition by Jesse David Hollington and it’s quite a good book. I got it from the library and the reason I’m writing about it in my computing blog instead of my technology blog is because the book is mostly about iTunes.

Apparently the 6th generation nano stopped supporting video playback but it does slideshows.The 5th generation ipods can use an ordinary av cable plugged into the headphone socket and then you reverse the yellow and red cables. Apple with the 6th generation or classic ipods and also the touch  made you get a special cable.

If you are transferring iTunes and your connected data to a new computer. Do it directly from your old computer. If you do it from the iPod you will lose your settings.