Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful and attached it to Mac devotion. Wonder no more:
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This little production was put on by Happy Slip Productions and you can find her blog post about it on the site as well.
I found this through MacStanbury who in turn found it through TUAW.
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) saw the introduction of Dashboard and Widgets. Dashboard is the name for the holder of the widgets. Widgets are small applications and utilities that perform common tasks and can display information from the Web in a quick matter.
If I am being honest I really do not use widgets all that often. I occasionally use the calculator, use the weather widget and I have downloaded a to do widget which I will review in a future post.
To access your widgets you can either click the Dashboard icon found in your dock or use the key or mouse option that you set in System Preferences. Simply go into System Preferences, select Dashboard and Exposé and choose the appropriate options under the Dashboard section. For myself Dashboard set to launch on F12 (I believe this is the default).
On Tuesday, January 9th Apple announced iPhone. Everyone went crazy. All of the top tech blogs were posting about it and Digg was having stories appear at an alarming rate. If you were involved in a tech job I’m sure coworkers didn’t stop talking about it and would ask anyone else new into the area if they heard the news.
Apple iPhone seems innovative and is the new must have for all tech enthusiasts — who use cell phones — personally I’m not too found of cell phones and have never owned one, maybe one day but for now I’m fine without it.
Being a Mac site I felt I had to post on this. Yes I’m here for the switchers but news like this is hard to pass up.
But let’s rewind to just under a month before Apple’s announcement. Cisco announced its iPhone on December 18th, 2006. This iPhone launced as not a single phone but as a complete VoIP phone lineup. Speculation then arose that maybe Cisco tried selling the name to Apple and talks fell through so now Cisco was capitalizing on the name recognition — and why not. Heck I’m capitalizing on the I’m A Mac slogan or trying to anyway.
But jump ahead to January 9th again. Mention of Cisco’s iPhone disappeared, everyone forgot about it as they were in awe of the new capabilities of Apple’s new iPhone. But Cisco didn’t forget.
It seems that Apple and Cisco were still in negotiations for the name. Which brings up two scenarios, one being a theory provided by myself and the other what is currently happen.
My theory.
We’ll assume Cisco announce their iPhone line up with full intentions of selling the name to Apple. Now maybe they were trying to make a quick buck in the short time before Apple released their phone and before all the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. Maybe they were hoping that Apple would announce their iPhone and people not knowing the difference would buy Cisco’s iPhone’s sitting on the shelf (sure they could return them but what if they liked them? — it’s a theory let’s pretend for a bit here).
Also what if Apple suggested that Cisco put out a line of phones with the iPhone brand assuming that the proper paper work would be complete before Apple’s announcement. This would get most people off of the Apple iPhone trail and make for a bigger surprise announcement when Jobs announced the iPhone at MacWorld.
Once again, this is all speculation and theory.
Moving on to what is currently happening. Cisco filed a law suit against Apple the very next day for infringing on its iPhone trademark. Now news has broke that Cisco’s own trade mark may be in jeopardy. The Economic Times has a nice write up of the current situation (Cisco’s trademark issues) as well as stating that Apple may alter the name of the phone to Apple Phone. The Register also lends its online space to a story regarding the trade mark in the US.
In any scenario the next few months should be interesting in regards to who will hold the iPhone trade mark. If Apple loses the battle it will be interesting to see if they go with the simple Apple Phone or come up with another “i” brand.
In my last post I stated why I switched to the Mac and how my year has gone so far. I got away from the original idea I had for the post so this follow up will try to tie up the loose ends. In my opinion the Mac has had a strong year in 2006 and the opportunity for more growth in 2007.
What a year this has been for Apple Computer and the Mac. The switch to the Intel based machines which began at the start of the year has brought a large audience to Macland.
I am in no situation to document the full steps and events that occurred throughout 2006, there are many Mac specific sites which can/will do a better job than I could even fathom. My Mac Year In Review will be based on my opinions as a switcher and maybe other switchers out there share my thoughts/ideas.
