PJM Lifestyle
The 5 Best Security and Privacy Tools for Your Mac
I’ve been using Apple computers since the 1980s, and I’ve lost track of how many I’ve owned.
(Right now I have two — an iMac desktop and a MacBook Air for travel/emergencies.)
I’m not an expert, just a (very) longtime user. And a smug one.
Yes, I’m one of those Mac groupies.
One thing we brag about is that viruses don’t tend to affect us.
That’s why installing anti-virus programs is not only unnecessary (most of the time), but can actually mess up your machine.
The last time I brought my (previous) iMac to the Genius Bar, complaining of slow performance, the Apple Store guys just trashed the anti-virus software and my machine was back to normal.
As far as viruses are concerned, Macs:
a) represent such small market share that malicious pranksters usually don’t bother targeting them, and
b) Apple continues to “harden” its hardware, operating system, and apps to keep invasions to a minimum.
That’s why it’s especially important for Mac users to download the very latest version of the OS X and other Apple software and apps.
(Here’s a great and very recent article about Macs and viruses that covers the special circumstances when you might want to install anti-virus software.)
So I Decided To Write This Blog Post By Hand And Then Just Photograph It
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
The Plan So I Don’t Waste the Last Year of My 20s
Can iPad + iPhone + Macbook Pro + Real Book = An Organized Life?
5 Technology Books To Read This Year
Can iPad + iPhone + Macbook Pro + Real Book = An Organized Life?
My “10 Secret Reasons Why The Avengers Is the Best Superhero Film” mini-ebook concluded with this image depicting my attempt to organize my intellectual preoccupations and professional pursuits for 2013. Now to begin exploring how to utilize the technology to bring about this harmonic balance.
(New Year’s Resolution #2 – More Diligence About Sticking to a Schedule and Organizing the Life)
Three weeks after publicly proclaiming seven self-improvement goals for the new year, my quest for more disciplined time management still remains the most elusive. Some of the problem is that I have not yet figured out how best to utilize the four tools that will navigate me through the combination of my personal and professional lives:
*** Laptop
*** iPad
*** Cell phone – currently a Motorola Droid but soon to switch to an iPhone… Finally!
*** Extra large Moleskine journal
Part of this I can blame on not having all the puzzle pieces yet. My new journal — a birthday present from The Wife — arrived on Friday. And our new phones won’t appear until the end of the week. But soon I’ll have only myself to blame for those all-too-familiar feelings of anxiety and frustration that still arrive some days when I fail to achieve all the goals set.
I suspect that part of the problem is my tendency to multitask. As much as I want to focus on just writing a blog post or just editing an article or just reading a book from the stack of to-review titles, it’s so easy for interruptions — a phone call from a writer, an instant message from another PJM editor — and stray thoughts to lead me astray. And then before I know it I’m juggling numerous tabs across devices, drowning in a sea of emails, tweets, and YouTube videos. And then I’ll have half a dozen tasks part of the way done. Then Maura, our Siberian Husky, comes and asks for me to take her out.
75% there. The Wife thinks the new iPhones she ordered for us will arrive by Friday. The Moleskine sits under the mousepad. I’m now discovering too that it’s big enough to double as a decent lap-board…
Part of the problem is the nature of the technology itself. For most of the tasks that I do throughout the day I can technically use either my laptop, phone, or iPad. And often even within the same program. Writing emails, reading news reports, and publishing PJM articles through WordPress — these all happen in a single program on one device, and thus end up intermingling together. I haven’t figured out yet which devices and programs are the best.
A few areas that I’ll investigate on in the next few weeks and then report on:
1. Is it easiest to keep track of and respond to emails the traditional way with a computer or primarily on ipad, or phone?
2. Can I really get to the point where it’s possible to publish and edit WordPress articles from the iPad? Can one blog more efficiently and effectively from iPad instead of laptop?
3. What possibilities do the cameras on the iPad and iPhone allow for increasing organization? Am I the only one who has gotten in the habit of casually taking photos of bits of information I’d rather not forget?
4. Maybe I should experiment with this as a “division of powers” of sorts: A) To encourage concise communication, email primarily on the iPhone or iPad B) Use laptop for serious writing and editing, work C) The iPad should be utilized for consuming and sharing media (keeping up with news, blogs, and Kindle books) and social networking.
But what I’m definitely going to start doing:
5. With my new Moleskine journal (volume 15) I’m going to get in the habit of early EVERY day, taking the time to write down a quick summary — perhaps a bullet list — of my goals and plans for the day. If I can visualize the ideal day first thing can I then project an image of it through the visual reminders on the iPad and cell phone? Can I program my technology to help program me into a more organized, more focused person? We shall find out…
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Related at PJ LIfestyle:
Are You Grateful for the Products That Make Your Life Better?
An Old Fashioned Secret For Injecting Some Life Back Into Your Writing
What Are the Best Technologies of 2012?
via iPhone 5, Workflowy, Google Voice Search: The eight best technologies of 2012. – Slate Magazine.
In March, just after Apple announced what many people called a slight upgrade of its tablet—adding a high-definition screen and faster cellular networking—I called the iPad “unbeatable.” I argued that, in the same way that it had dominated the market for music players with the iPod, Apple was improving its product, lowering its prices, and broadening its lineup just fast enough to keep its rivals in the dust.
Then, in the fall, Apple strengthened my argument. Not only did it launch a fantastic, smaller, cheaper iPad—the Mini—to capture the low end of the market, it also put out a new, faster, regular-size iPad. In a year of intense competition in tablets, with better devices from Google, Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft, the iPad remains by far the best on the market, especially if you take into account its dominant App Store. If Apple keeps doing what it’s doing, it’s hard to see how anyone can catch up to the iPad now.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Where Does the iPad Mini Line Up Amongst Apple’s Other Offerings?
Have You Seen the Ghost of Steve Jobs?
via Have You Seen the Ghost of Steven Jobs? « Jeanette Pryor.
Dear Apple Public Relations,
I hope this note finds you well. My name is Jeanette and I would like to take one minute of your time to tell a story about the way Mr. Jobs changed my life and why my first contact with Apple this morning was so sad.
When I was 13, my family became affiliated with a religious organization that we later came to realize was a cult. I spent ten years in two convents, first in France and then in the US. When I left the convent, I taught in a small school, spent some time in college and started a family. Eight years ago, my husband, five children and I began the long and arduous process of leaving the cult and trying to construct new lives. Imagine being a 13 year-old in a 30 year-old body with all the responsibilities of a wife and mother and so little knowledge of who I really was and how to live in the world.
I finished college at night and, after 12 years, walked across the stage and proudly accepted my diploma. Profoundly passionate about public speaking and helping people to overcome the fear of addressing large audiences, I want to start a small business teaching the ideas and techniques that helped me to rebuild my identity after the destruction of nearly three decades in a cult.
I was scared to try to present my workshops until I found Steven Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address. It changed my life because it inspired me to get serious about launching a communications service that specifically targets fear of public speaking.
This morning I found a You Tube of Mr. Jobs telling the story of when, at the age of twelve, he called Mr. Hewlett of HP and asked for spare parts to build an electrical device. Mr. Hewlett gave Steve the parts and a job in his factory during the summer. Would Apple be here today were it not for those acts of vision, creativity and belief in the dreams of a little boy? Steve told us all to pick up the phone, dare to fail, reach out for help because, if we have the courage and the determination, good people will always offer to help.
So I did it! I called Apple to talk with Mr. Schiller, director of Marketing, about fear of speaking and employee training. This is the number one fear in America and seventy-five percent of those polled by the World Health Organization listed this as the greatest terror in their lives.
What if Apple used innovative approaches to help their own employees overcome this fear and unlock the power of identity as Mr. Jobs inspired me to do in a very real way? The phone rang and Mr. Schiller’s administrative assistant answered. It was a special moment for me. My little voice reached across a thousand miles to my beloved former home of California, to the very temple of entrepreneurial essence. I knew that the Ghost of Mr. Jobs must walk those halls, perpetuating the belief that when a company helps new talent, amazing world-changing things can happen. Okay, so I’m an incurable romantic, but that’s what created Apple in the first place, wasn’t it?
Continue Reading…
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Steve Jobs: The Other Man in My Marriage
Cults: The Mind Enslaved
Are Star Wars, Hunger Games, and Pride and Prejudice Anti-Cult Cult Movies?
PJ Lifestyle Seeking Freelance Technology Writers
PJ Lifestyle plans to continue expanding in many directions after the election — hopefully along with the rest of the economy! Over the coming months we’ll be seeking out new voices to complement our usual team of humorists and cultural critics. (Keep an eye out for future openings for new writers and bloggers.) Today we’re looking for freelance writers with experience and skills to review products.
Gadget Gurus and Tech Thinkers.
With the holiday season approaching we’re looking for people who can highlight the must-have gadgets and gifts: laptops, phones, tablets, stereos, cameras, TVs, and all manner of electronics. Can you compare and contrast different products? Rank which is the best to worst TV, phone, or tablet? Also seeking software and video games reviewers.
We’re also interested in people who can look at the tech industry in the broader perspective, arguing not just if you should buy the new Apple or Google product, but whether either company’s new move is good or bad, and what the future holds as the two contend with Amazon.
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Please email your resume, introductory letter, and urls of writing samples to PJ Lifestyle’s managing editor David Swindle: DaveSwindlePJM@gmail.com
Click here for more writing positions open at PJ Lifestyle
Where Does the iPad Mini Line Up Amongst Apple’s Other Offerings?
Last month, when Apple announced the iPhone 5 and the new iPod Touch, their pricing seemed to preclude the long-rumored 7.85″ iPad “Mini” or “Air” or whatever they end up calling it. I even went so far as to ask if Tim Cook had killed the iPad Mini in the crib. And yet the rumors persist, some incredibly detailed.
But let’s take a look at the iOS universe and see if there’s really a place for a smaller tablet. I’ve prepared a chart to show all the devices, excluding the iPad’s optional 3G or LTE feature, because that doesn’t really matter here.
Apple hits every price from $0 to $699 in hundred-dollar increments, with one $50 increment at the 32GB 4th generation iPod Touch. The overlapping prices are what interest us here. A company can offer similar products at the same price, but only if there is enough differentiation between them to make sense to the consumer. Otherwise, the product line is just a huge, jumbled mess — and that isn’t how Apple operates.
The iOS line doesn’t have many price overlaps, but they are instructive. For $199, you can get either a 16GB iPhone 5, or an iPod Touch with the same memory. What’s the difference? The phone gives you, duh, a phone — but it also locks you into an expensive contract. Also, the iPod uses a cheaper (but still “Retina” density) screen, and an older, slower processor. So we have three points of differentiation.
$299 gets you an iPhone 5 with 32GB, or the new 5th generation iPod Touch. Again, same memory on both devices. Same screen on both devices, too. And the same A6 processor. The only differentiation is that one is a phone that comes with an expensive contract.
At $399 is where things get interesting. You can have the 64GB phone, the 64GB iPod, or the 16GB iPad tablet. We have two tiny devices with tons of storage versus a bigger device with comparatively little storage. You get the bigger screen, but you lose memory, the Retina Display, and the new A6 processor.
Where do you squeeze in a smaller iPad?
First off, two assumptions. The iPad Mini/Air/Nano/Whatevs will have the same 1024×768 resolution as the iPad 2. Those pixels would be packed into a smaller space, so the screen would be damn sharp — but not Retina Display sharp. We also have to assume that it would use the same A5 processor and the same 16GB of storage space, so as not to destroy the buying case for the iPad 2. Apple might be tempted to cheap-out and limit the Mini to 8GB, but that’s just not enough memory for a tablet.
At $249, Apple will already sell you the iPad Touch with the old processor. What is there to differentiate between the two devices? Buy the Mini you’d lose half the memory, but you’d gain the bigger-but-not-Retina screen and a faster A5 CPU — is that a good model? It just might be.
IMAGE: The iPhone 5 Officially Announced
Via Twitter / iansherr: The #iPhone 5, officially ….
via Media camps outside Apple’s Fifth Ave store as world awaits iPhone 5.
Apple’s Web store went offline early Wednesday morning, only hours before the company is set to kick off a media presentation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Calif. The company is widely expected to unveil the iPhone 5, a device with a larger 4-inch display and a redesigned exterior.
In New York City, Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue store has already become a gathering place for media looking to report on the buzz surrounding today’s event. Inside the Fifth Avenue store, it’s business as usual thus far, with no signs yet of any new products potentially going on sale immediately.
Beyond the next iPhone, Apple is believed to be prepared to introduce a number of new products this fall. Perhaps the most anticipated among them, a new 7.85-inch tablet known colloquially as the “iPad mini,” is not expected to debut today. Instead, Apple is rumored to hold another media event in October to expand the iPad lineup.
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Updated:
via How the iPhone 5 Stacks Up – Digits – WSJ.
Price: The iPhone 5 will start at $199 for a model with 16GB of storage and a two-year contract, the same starting price as its predecessor. The price on the iPhone 4S will drop to $99, with a contract. The new phone will be available starting Sept. 21 in the U.S.
Measurements: The new phone is thinner and longer than the iPhone 4S but weighs less. It weighs 112 grams, compared with 140 grams.
Screen: The new iPhone has a 4-inch screen, measured diagonally, compared with 3.5 inches for the 4S. That’s smaller than some of Samsung’s and Motorola MSI +0.78%’s newest Android phones. The screen has 326 pixels per inch, the same as the iPhone 4S, but because it is longer has 1136 by 640 resolution.
When Did it Become a Sin to Invest in Guns, a So-Called ‘Vice Stock’?
via Is Apple A Sin Stock?” by Susannah Breslin – Forbes.
Is Apple (AAPL) a sin stock?
That’s the question Gerry Sullivan, portfolio manager of the Vice Fund (VICEX), raised in his interview with Forbes capital market reporter Abram Brown in “Guns, Booze and Gambling: Sinful Stocks for a Recession-Proof Portfolio.”
Brown asked Sullivan if the vice industries-focused fund was considering adding any new sin stocks.
Here’s Sullivan’s response:
I’d consider video games an addiction. Apple products too. We’ve actually gone through and asked, is Apple a vice stock?
So, is it?
I asked tech experts, sin stock specialists, and a Jesuit priest.
What’s a sin stock?
The Vice Fund concentrates on four sectors: alcohol, tobacco, gaming, and weapons/defense. Investopedia defines a “sinful stock” as “Stock from companies that are associated with (or are directly involved in) activities that are widely considered to be unethical or immoral.” More broadly, vice industries tend to have higher barriers to entry, may or may not produce products that are harmful or addictive, and could have complex legal and tax issues.
The way investor James Altucher sees it, Apple is a “spice stock,” somewhere between a vice stock and not.
“I would not think of [Apple] as a vice fund, but I certainly use the iPad as an escape, so it depends on how we define vice,” Altucher says in an email. “Although I guess the best thing would be if I just meditated on planes, instead of played Temple Run the entire time.”
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
The Third Bullet: Concluding the Saga of Bob Lee Swagger, American Gunman
Beware the Wrath of the Apple Fanboys
‘What if Blowing One’s Nose into Soft Disposable Paper Were Owned by Kleenex?’
via Douglas Rushkoff – Blog – Apple v Samsung: What if they had Patented the Alphabet?.
Imagine we were just developing spoken language for the first time. And someone came up with a new word to describe an action, thought, or feeling – like “magnify” or “dreadful.” But in this strange world, the person who came up with the word demanded anyone else who used it to pay him a dollar every time the word was uttered. That would make it pretty difficult for us to negotiate our way to a society that communicated through speech.
That’s the way the patent wars on smartphone and tablet advances are beginning to feel to me.
As a human being, I do not particularly care about Apple’s recent victory in the US version of its patent lawsuit against Samsung for copying its iPhone and iPad’s form and features. Now that Apple is demanding that Samsung pull eight of its products off the shelf, my only personal interest is whether the Samsung products, once banned, will become collectors’ items. Will I one day want to show my grandchild the phone that dared to mimic the iPhone?
But while the details of legalities and impact to share prices and even consumer choice don’t keep me or any of my friends up at night, there is nonetheless something creepy about Apple’s suit. It’s not so much that Apple – the biggest company in the world – has turned into a competitive monster; it’s the territory that Apple’s fighting over. It feels as if the technology innovation wars are no longer over one piece of technology or another, but over us humans.
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More on technology from PJ Lifestyle:
The 5 Most Fantastic Technical Advances Coming in Our Future of Abundance
Will Microsoft Surface Complete Me?
Why Your Phone Battery Dies So Fast
Beware the Wrath of the Apple Fanboys
While the WWDC dust was settling on Tuesday, Tim Cook took a ton of heat from disgruntled Mac Pro users who didn’t get an updated machine, so he announced that they would be seeing a new one early next year. Considering this is the guy who just said he’s “doubling down on secrecy,” it must have taken some serious raging from Apple loyalists to change his stance so abruptly.
But I’m not that surprised. Apple fanboys are infamous, and even the best of us can lose our resolve when faced with crowds of rabid zealots. Like a marketing team that works for free, Apple fanatics are a mystery wrapped in a phenomenon, like an IKEA version of pigs in a blanket. Scientologists are the only other people so bloody excited about their electronic gadgets and reality-distortion-field-creating gods.
Don’t get me wrong — I have more Apple equipment than the set of 30 Rock, but the fanboys I can do without. As a long-time reviewer of Mac hardware and software for Ars Technica, I’m all too familiar with fanboys on either side of the fence, but Mac ones can be particularly painful.
Ashton Kutcher Dressed As Steve Jobs
Ashton Kutcher As Steve Jobs, People.com:
Seems clothes do make the man – at least when you’re portraying Steve Jobs.
Photos of Ashton Kutcher on his way to the set of Jobs – the forthcoming indie movie about late Apple visionary Steve Jobs – emerged Friday and the resemblance between the two is undeniable. At least in the wardrobe department.
Kutcher, 34, sports long hair, a black mock turtleneck, jeans and sneakers in the photo.