Apple’s October 16th product announcement begins at 10am PST; 1pm EST. My guesses? Definitely: OS X Yosemite, iTunes 12, and the next-gen iPad Air and iPad mini. Maybe: Updated Thunderbolt 2 + Retina display (I’d guessed at this last year and was wrong), iMac with Retina display, updates to the MacBook Pro line, Apple TV 4 with support for third-party apps. Not a chance: An HDTV, more info about Apple Watch, a mega-sized iPad, or a pull-string-to-talk Steve Jobs doll.

Last month, when writing about Apple’s Fall 2013 Product Announcement, I’d guessed at a few announcements that they didn’t end up making. Today, Apple announced all of those things and more. OS X Mavericks OS X 10.9 ”Mavericks”. Available today. Free (down from $19.99 last year). MacBook Air Lighter and faster than the last model. Faster 802.11ac wireless networking, Bluetooth 4.0 and Thunderbolt 2. Available today. Starting at $999. MacBook Pro with Retina Display Lighter and faster than the last model.

I’ve been spending time with iOS 7 since WWDC this year, and I wanted to post a few notes. I installed Beta 1 on my iPhone 5 the day it was available at WWDC. I toyed with it for an hour before returning to 6.1.4. It was appallingly ugly and very, very slow. The icons looked garish, and the typography was unrefined. Not surprising for a Beta 1, but it was still pretty bad. I installed Beta 2 on my iPad mini, just so that I had one device that was running the latest beta.

Apple’s fall product announcement begins at 10am PST; 1pm EST. My guesses? Definitely: Next-gen iPhone 5S, iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, iTunes 11 (with iTunes Radio), updated MacBook Pro. Maybe: New iPads (though I’d bet on spring instead), lower unsubsidized-cost iPhone for other (non-American) countries, updated iMac, updated Thunderbolt 2 display (with USB 3.0). Not a chance: An HDTV, a wrist-watch, a pull-string-to-talk Steve Jobs doll. How’d I do? How good were my predictions?

A recent editorial on Business Insider layer out a number of reasons why the author, Ed Conway, was “leaving Apple”. This is my response. Self-Indulgent Weiner In his editorial, Ed Conway wrote: Dear Tim, There’s no easy way to put this so I’ll just come right out with it. I’m leaving you. It’s been great (mostly) but it’s over. I figured the least I could do is to explain my decision in full – I like to think it might help protect you from nasty break-ups like this in the future.

The iPhone 5 was announced just moments ago, along with updates to iPod touch, iPod nano and iTunes. How close were my recent guesses? Naming I was way off. I did not think that they would call it “iPhone 5”, but here we are. They did the complete opposite of what I’d anticipated. Louie Mantia had the following to say about the name: God dammit Apple. “5”? Really? YOU HAD ONE JOB!! Let’s see how The Infamous They did with their predictions.

Many people have questioned what the next iPhone — widely expected to be released in under a month’s time — will be called? Let’s look at our options. iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 “iPhone 5” is the name that people have most commonly assigned to the upcoming iPhone, but there are a number of problems with that guess. The first of which is that it’s not the fifth iPhone — it’s the sixth. We’ve had (in order): The original iPhone The iPhone 3G The iPhone 3GS The iPhone 4 And the iPhone 4S.

Wayne Gretzky is often credited as being the single greatest hockey player of all time. It is said that his father, Walter Gretzky, taught him the most important thing to learn in hockey: “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” This quote in particular is one that Steve Jobs has brought up on numerous occasions, and is far more revealing about Apple’s internal culture than I think most of us realize. It is certainly the most salient explanation for Apple’s intense focus at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

One of the best pieces on Steve Jobs’ retirement I’ve read so far. “At the 25th hour, Jobs returned. He quickly re-installed his vision. And this time, the timing was exactly right. His vision seemed perfectly in line with the world at large. The result was a 14-year run that took Apple from near-death to the most valuable company on the planet. It wasn’t just hit after hit after hit. It was homerun after homerun after home run.” One More Thing… by M.

I currently own and love my iPad 2, but with HP slashing the prices on the new TouchPads this weekend, I decided to pick one up after calling around and finding some at my local Best Buy. Preface I feel that I should start by saying that I’m an Apple guy; or more specifically that I’ve always been an Apple guy. I was converted to the Mac platform back in the early 90’s when my Junior High school’s library got a new shipment of Apple Macintosh LC IIs.

Neither I nor anybody I know cares all that much for 3D movies. The picture is muddy, colors are messed up, and the movies made with it are far too gimmicky for my tastes. The technology is still too new for the movie industry to have learned how to make compelling films with it yet. However, the 3D snake oil salesmen from Hollywood want you to believe that Apple is going to build this low-quality tech into their next iPad. Sylvie Barak, writing for RCRWireless, reporting about a rumored “glasses-free 3D” iPad 3:

I’ve spent much of the last 10 years evangelizing for Apple, Apple’s products, and Apple’s PowerPC architecture. Even during the darkest times (1994 through 1997-ish), I remained one of “the faithful” to the Mac platform (along with hacking up System 7 with ResEdit =) ). I have tons of clippings from old Mac magazines like MacAddict (back when they were still edgy and cool) still plastered on walls and binders left over from high school. To name a few: [MacAddict] Fighting back for the Mac - 225 MHz!

I decided to revisit this topic again as first impressions aren’t always the best or most accurate impressions, and frankly, a lot can change in a month. After spending quite a bit more time exploring, I’ve learned quite a bit more about our beloved Mac OS X Tiger. Since the last time I talked about my Tiger experience, I’ve reinstalled Tiger using the “Archive and Install” option as opposed to the “Simple Install” option I used the first time. This cleared up my problem of the phantom ClamAV user account I’d mentioned before.

I’ve just spent about 3 hours reading over these old (and new) articles about Mac OS X. I remember back in 1999, reading about how Rhapsody was being renamed as Mac OS X, and how it would be the future of the Mac platform. After reading MacWorld articles about the new system back in 2000, I actually remember seeing these screenshots. Does this look familiar to you? Heh… old skool. Just for copyright’s sake, these images are from Ars Technica.

iTunes 4.8 is now available! It’s pretty much exactly the same as 4.7 with a couple of minor things that are cool. Video Playback Option: In the advanced preferences, there’s an option for how video files should be displayed. Can we look forward to movies in iTunes 5? “Now Playing” Artwork: I’ve been looking for an AppleScript to do this for a while, but never found one. In the album art preview pane, there’s a little arrow that allows you to see the album art of the currently playing track (assuming you’ve added it of course).

I just installed Tiger 2 nights ago. I did a basic Simple Install, with no backup or disk checking or anything… just crossed fingers. Bad idea, I know. I guess my excitement just got the best of me. Luckily I didn’t have any kind of earth-shattering problems. The only problems I’ve had so far are minor annoyances — nothing I wouldn’t expect from a point-oh release… but I’ll get to those later. Let’s go over some of the features. Discussion of Features Here’s my experience with the most notable new “features” of Tiger.

Normally, I don’t post about the latest updates to the Mac operating system, but this time is special. This is the most special of all updates because it fixes the two major problems that I’ve had ever since I bought my Powerbook G4 over the summer. “…a problem in which, on rare occasions, a PowerBook G4 would wake from sleep with a black screen and not respond to keyboard or mouse input” which I have been a victim of at least 50 times since June, and…

As I was digging through all of the MacWorld keynote coverage this morning, I came across the page for the new iPod shuffle. While I was reading, I saw this: …which was rather clever, I thought. As I got towards the bottom of the page however, I began to laugh out loud much to my co-workers’ bewilderment. This is what I read: It’s an amazing world we live in, isn’t it?

This year’s WWDC “Stevenote” is over. Among the more notable points: Tiger is a fully 64-bit OS… which is gonna allow the PowerMac G5’s to move so fast that they catch fire. “Expose for Widgets”, which is super similar to Konfabulator “Spotlight” which sounds an awful lot like the planned database-style search integration in Longhorn. 30-inch (wipe off your drool) displays RSS integration in Safari I was able to keep up with the play-by-play via Mac Minute, Apple-X, and Mac Update.

This morning, I have two computers sitting in front of me: The first is the one that I built from scratch a few months ago. That one has been almost completely unused (as of late) except for trying to get Windows XP re-installed from a scratched disc. My best friend is coming up this week, and I’m having him bring his Windows CD so I can use my serial. Once I get XP re-installed, I can finally begin the process of re-installing the rest of my applications, and getting my digital life back in order.

After several months of hard work, I was finally able to shakedown my wife enough to agree to allow me to spend the money to get a 15GB iPod. I’ve read about, as well as seen images of Apple’s extraordinarily close attention to detail when it comes to a person’s experience of opening up one of their products. No wonder I’ve always been an avid Mac fanatic. I opened up the box, and meticulously examined every piece that came in the box.

I first came across news that Apple and HP were teaming up to release an HP-branded iPod over the summer from Douglas Bowman’s site, Stop Design. I then decided to read more about it at some of the Mac News sites. I must admit that I was suprised to hear something like this, but I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair when I read this over at As the Apple Turns: And when we say “stunned the world,” believe it: faithful viewer Mike referred us to a New York Times article which describes Microsoft as the proverbial deer in the headlights yesterday: “Thursday the company appeared unprepared for the Apple-Hewlett agreement, which clearly stung Microsoft executives.

Apple has finally released iTunes 4.1 for Windows bundled with the shiny-new QuickTime 6.4. I got home, downloaded and installed it, and decided to give it a whirl. I whisked through the iTunes Store… I wasn’t planning on buying anything just yet. Mainly, I just did some searches for bands and record labels that I wasn’t too sure would be there. Some were, some weren’t. That’s alright… that’s what KaZaA’s for anyways, right? Bands who would rather have people steal a single track from their album, rather than to make it possible for people to pay for that same single track (not naming any names, Metallica, Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers…)

I was reading an article entitled “Soon Available In Six-Packs (8/20/03)” over at As the Apple Turns. It plays on the idea of “What happens to Apple if Steve Jobs dies?” On the other hand, do you honestly think that Apple hasn’t prepared for that doomsday scenario? Well, it’s easy enough to find out; frankly, we lack the attention span to get through more than six words of Apple’s quarterly 10-Q without downing a couple of bottles of Focusyn first, but even we get a kick out of the “What If?

This is a snippet of a short article that was posted on As The Apple Turns… a mock-soap-opera-esque e-zine about the latest goings-on of Apple Computer. Here’s what they had to say: Speaking of Apple retail stores, more and more sources are climbing on board with reports that Apple’s own outlets and third party resellers alike have received Big, Mysterious Boxes labeled “Do Not Open Until Monday Or We’ll Wear Your Entrails As A Grisly Feather Boa-Like Thingy (Only Without The Feathers).