This has all got me thinking, the iPhone is no longer this mystical object that only the snobby Mac guys have.  When it was first announced, other phone companies and critics said that no one would want an all touch screen phone.  Now, every company is making one.  In that sense you could say that Apple really led the way in innovation to create something new, which they did.  And the mobile phone industry is forever changed.  But the other thing that is changed is what I do when I see someone else with an iPhone.  I used to be like, “hey look, they have an iPhone too.”  But when it seemed like I could no longer be in a room without someone else having one I stopped saying that.  

Now, it’s just a phone, just like every other phone.  Yes, it still does great stuff.  And whenever a new person gets one, it’s fun and exciting for a while, and you spend time downloading apps, and coming up with excuses to use the new level program you just downloaded.  But eventually, you become like me, and realized it’s just like that new TV, or New Car, or New Computer you bought.  After a while, it’s not new, it’s the same, and it has a purpose, and that is what you are going to use it for.  I still have my iPhone (the original) and I am going to keep it till it breaks, or AT&T disconnects the EDGE network and I have to get the new one.  

As for the Apple elitist group (which I am not a part of, but I do buy Apple stuff), they day that only creative artist bought Apple products is coming to a fast end.  With popularity of the iPod and now the iPhone, Apple has really come back to the mainstream, and as more and more people head to Apple for computers, we could see the price of Macs coming down, allowing even more to own a Mac, and then the computer world will really have to learn to live together.

Update 2.2 promises some nice things for the iPhone user. The first thing that I noticed was Safari was a little different. The address and search bar are on the same line similar to how Safari looks on my computer.

The next thing I really noticed was the Maps App. Now when you go to look up directions, you can get walking directions (very handy when walking through the city. I could have used this last year). You can also get mass transit schedule/directions which I find very cool. I just did a test from work back to my apartment and showed me where to get the bus, where I would transfer, and when where the destination will take me along with times for the next available bus and I can also see the schedule for the rest of the day. Again, I imagine this would be really awesome in the city.

Another great thing that I look forward to playing with later is the ability to download podcasts right on the phone. I enjoy a podcast or two, but I am not one that syncs my phone everyday, and as a result, I end up with a lot of podcasts not being enjoyed. However, now that I can download them right to my phone, I may find myself listening to podcasts while driving everywhere. I can’t wait to test this out in the car. Now I’m off to find a good Podcast…

For full details on the update, visit Apple.com

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This is where Boxee comes in. Still in it’s Alpha testing phase (that is before beta testing), Boxee is a replacement for the Front Row software found on most new Macintosh Computers. It allows you to do many of the same things, browse your content, stream it over the network, watch it on your computer, etc… They even have a version to install onto Apple TV, which will add itself as a menu item on your Apple TV menu. What sets Boxee apart from Front Row aside from its GUI, is that its latest update has added the ability to stream from the internet many popular streaming sources, such as CBS, Comedy Central, CNN, NBC, YouTube, Flickr, and my favorite, HULU. You could go to all of these sites on your own, and watch the various shows, but now they have been gathered together in one convenient program that will currently allow you to watch them on your Mac or Apple TV. Not a fan of Apple? Don’t worry, they are coming out with a PC version very soon.

The real question is, could you ditch your cable company for an internet streaming medium? Well, it depends on what you are watching. If you like to watch live news and sports, or some of the things you watch aren’t streamed on these sites, than chances are you aren’t there. However, if you are a person who barely watches TV, or only watches a handfull of shows, and you rather watch them when you have the time, then this could be the move for you. Your major cost will be your media box, whether it be an Apple TV (purchased from eBay), or a Mac Mini, and in the future, a mini PC. You can load this software on, and be up and running in no time (as long as you have a good connection to the Internet).

The current downside I see with this technology is that you are going to plug in this box that is streaming Internet Flash video into your nice big HDTV. The quality may not be what you are looking for. Then again, it is still in Alpha stage, they could be adding the option so that you are able to stream the High Quality version of the video. On the other hand, if you are in college, or only have a small TV, or may just want to watch TV in your bed room on your Lappy, while laying in bed, this could be the answer for you, and save you a bundle on cable costs every month.

Please note: because this is still in the Alpha test phase, it is not available for wide spread download just yet. You have to sign up and they may or may not send you a download link and allow to create an account.

I wonder if Mr. Jobs is really fuming about how frequent these leaks are, or if these are coordinated leaks by apple to build excitement and try and level out the stock fluctuations that happen around Apple product announcements.

But let’s talk about Safari 4.0 and what I find to be different from previous versions. First, speed. The fact sheets say it’s faster than anything out there. In fact, every time a new Safari comes out, Steve Jobs stands on the stage and claims how much faster Safari is than any other browser. And this may be true, but truth be told, I’m not sitting here with a stop watch timing. I am going to review from pure perception. After all, or satisfaction with a product is how we perceive it to work and not what some fact sheet says.

First of all, it doesn’t feel any faster. The programmers should be proud of the milliseconds they have gained. To me, pages seem to load just as fast, especially when you are browsing for fun in the background while still doing your work. So congrats on making it faster on paper.

Second, forms. Any Mac user knows about this. When you are filling out an online form on a mac and you get to a drop down menu you have to grab the mouse and click and select what you want with the mouse. On Windows, you just tab over to the drop down menu for your state and hit the first letter of your state on your keyboard till your state appears. When filling out forms, I much prefer to keep my hands on the keyboard than having to grab for the mouse. Well, this is something that Safari and Apple have finally gotten right.You no longer have to move your hand to the mouse (come on Firefox team, why haven’t you figured this out yet?).

On the surface for the average user, that is all you are going to really notice as being different. One thing that I was hoping would be different of how Safari handles pages that are designed for Internet Explorer. At work, we use a system for logging tickets that will only work with IE and I was really hoping that this version of Safari was going to correct that issue, but I was sadly mistaken.

To sum up my opinion on Safari 4.0 … I’m going back to Firefox 3.0. Sorry Apple, but you just don’t have the best web browser.

1. Always post your story in the form of a numbered list.

When writing your post, realize you aren’t writing for the New Yorker. While long, researched, quality posts are great for upholding editorial standards of your little blog or web site, that stuff don’t fly out in Digg-land. This isn’t an insult directed at the Digg readership, it is simply a fact. Most of the time, when people visit Digg they are on stolen time at work, waiting for a bus, or having sex with their spouse, meaning they have mere minutes to consume the information that you are providing them with. A numbered list means that not only can they read short, bulleted information, but they can also pick up where they left off if they have to switch back to an important-looking spreadsheet or discreetly hide their iPhone under a pillow.

2. Look through the stories with the most Diggs from 2 months ago. Emulate, paraphrase or simply copy the story.

Like the aforementioned spousal intercourse, why try something new when you know exactly what works? Someone else has already done the hard work or research to create a post that was popular with the Digg audience. Why not just steal it! Take several clever pictures posted in the photo section and post them to your blog in a megapost with a clever title! Take the news story and paraphrase it, or simply write a blurb and link to it! Copy the entire post and just reformat it to fit your blog! Chances are with the number of people that visit Digg daily, someone hasn’t seen it yet. At the very least you’ll get tens of visitors and boost your search rankings!

3. Mention any of the following topics in a critical or laudatory manner: Apple, Nintendo, Ron Paul, Microsoft, The United States, Family Guy, Al Gore.

If Digg were a shopping mall, it would be like cult classic movie The Warriors, with gangs of nerdy fanboys roaming the halls menacingly.

Some would be politics nerds, some audio nerds, some video game nerds, and even a few muscle car geeks. All would be brandishing their “nuanced” opinions like blunt weapons. Most of this mall would be empty except for the food court, which would have 5 taco bells, an organic vegan burrito store, and a massive “board” where they would all gather and bicker until they caught fire. See, Digg users will risk death to defend their candidate, computing platform, economic system, video game device or otherworldly deity. And by death I mean tired fingers and sore eyes from staying up posting all night. The good news is, angry flame wars= more Diggs.

It is funny, but it is also true. Nice-guy content doesn’t get nearly the attention that controversial content does. Try and experiment. Submit the same article twice, one with the title “5 Reasons Apple Sucks” and another with the title “5 Fair Observations About Apple Computer”. See which is more popular.

4. Get a job with Cracked.com. Write a somewhat humorous article. Submit

I don’t know what it is with these guys. They’ve had a few funny posts, but they have the Digg Midas touch. They could write an article called the “6 Things You Might Find in an Infant’s Diaper” and it would make the front page. Riveting content from Cracked that has oddly done well on Digg includes: 6 Singers Who Are Mistaken About Their Raw Sexuality , The 7 Greatest Home Shopping Screw Ups of All Time , and The Top 7 Secrets to Writing a Cracked.com Top 7 List. Go ahead, click the links, I’m sure they could use the traffic. I’m not bitter or anything. Maybe I should just man up and read the last one.

5. Create a tie-in to a celebrity death, holiday, tragedy or other calendar-appropriate occasion.

Is it too soon? Is it in good taste? That’s not for you to decide. Let the history books judge you. The truth is, no one cares about the aged until they are gone. I don’t recommend putting that in your Grandparent’s Day card, but the truth is that posthumously, celebrities are as sanctified as relatives. As soon as someone dies (Tim Russert, George Burns, Johnny Grant, Sir Edmund Hillary) suddenly everyone remembers they exist and wants to remember why they were famous. A good webmaster/editor should have stories on hand for anyone that seems scheduled to kick the bucket in the next 6 months, including Liz Taylor, Magic Johnson, Jeff Wiggle and Lindsey Lohan. You can do your research at http://www.deathlist.net/ .

Similarly, calendar events are looked at with that level of importance. No one cares about the history of Independence Day, Veterans Day or Arbor Day until they are sitting in their cubicles with their briefcases packed like elementary school kids at 12:30 waiting for the early dismissal email from the big boss lady before the three day weekend. Even if the holiday is associated with a tragedy, you can write a humorous post. Hey, if they can build a giant titanic slide, why can’t I profit from a disaster? (side note, I know it is way off topic, but you can check out the titanic slide here. WTF?

“Measuring 33 feet in height and 50 feet in length, this awesome slide captures the feeling of the real giant. Adding to the realism of this ride are the famed triple screw propellers and rudder. One could almost believe the ship is sinking! Who will survive the slide down?”

This was a major disaster! 1,500 dead! I can’t wait until I’m an old codger shaking my head and disbelief as my grandchildren ask me for tickets to ride the World Trade Center Drop of Terror ©. )

6. Mention Digg, The Digg Community, Kevin Rose, etc.

You know how when your friends show you their dumb photos and the whole time you are just hoping there is a picture of you so you can see how your new haircut looks? Well, everyone is like that. And there is nothing Digg users love more than scandal about their own community.

If there’s nothing interesting to report, it’s okay to make it up—it will take hours for it to be “buried as inaccurate”, and by that time you’ll be rolling in the adsense dough. You can write about how unfair the ranking system is, lament the lack of tech news on the site, or criticize the level of discourse.

So there it is, six simple ways to game Digg. Now, I’m off to write my next article, In Memory of Tim Russert, Cracked.com’s Top 6 Apple Events That Changed the World and Didn’t Make the Front Page of Digg.

Now I am not going to go into any kind of detailed history about these companies as that would take far too much time, however, if you don’t want to read but are interested in a movie style history, rent “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” It’s a great little movie about the rise of Microsoft and Apple.

Before these men, computers were tinker toys for hobbyists and tools for some scientists. But they were not mass produced, they didn’t even have screens, but then some college slacker who had no luck with the ladies spent way too much time with a computer. This would of course be Bill Gates. Thanks to his superior nerdiness, he eventually created his company which promise to create DOS (Disk Operating System) for IBM computers (actually purchasing it from a programmer for a few k), and then convincing them to let them also sell it to IBM’s competitors. Meanwhile, Steve and Steve were in the garage creating their own computers, and then trying to sell them. It wasn’t long before the Steves and Bill eventually ran into each other, and a somewhat up and down relationship ensued between Gates and Jobs. And of course, the two companies blossomed into what we see today, but what would life be like had these great men became plumbers instead?

Aside from the facts that the Internet would be different, computers would be different, I have looked passed that to surmise how my life would be different on a personal level. In fact, I know that all of my friends that I have made since high school would not be my friends because I would never of met them, and as a result, I would never of met my wife. Sounds drastic? Well, not really and I’ll tell you how I came to this conclusion. I chose my college because they had a laptop program where each student is given a laptop. Had Gates, Jobs, and Woz not started their companies when they did, and pushed to bring computers into the consumer sector there is little chance that my college would have a laptop program, therefore I would have gone somewhere else. And since all of the friends that I have met since high school are a direct result of people I knew in college, then I would never of met any of them, including AAVR co-founder Justin.

Here is a fun exercise for everyone to try. Pretend that Microsoft and Apple never existed, and think about how your life would be different. Who would you have never met, what books would you have read because you needed something to do. Maybe you wouldn’t have the job you have now because Monster.com was never created or you didn’t buy or sell that piece of junk on eBay. Go ahead, give it a shot, and post your thoughts in the comments area.

The first thing you will notice that is different are two more account types in side mail.app that you can choose from. You can now choose Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007, as seen below I have elected 2007 as that is what we use at work. There is also an option to share this with iCal and the Address book. I left them checked.

After what seemed to be a successful setup, the mail began to load. It was exciting for about 10 seconds until I noticed something strange. The received dates for every mail item was the same. They were all showing today at the time that I started syncing with the server.

As you can see in the right column they all loaded at 9:23 AM. This just isn’t true since I have mail in there from October. I then tried to delete some e-mail. Click, nothing? Click, Nothing! CLICK!!! still nothing. Open up an e-mail and try to delete, nothing. Use the delete button on the keyboard… nothing. Let’s try a test send… but the send button is grayed out. Then I finally noticed it, those two annoying words that always appear when you want to modify something, READ ONLY. Look at the top of my inbox next to the account name and you will see that is says read only.

I tested mail.app with other accounts, like my gmail and that worked (well except for the out going because that port is blocked here). And then I tried my business account and that worked, and is still working perfectly. So the problem is Exchange, or at least how we are interfacing with it at some level. It could be that since this is a developer release that it is not fully functional yet, and they just want to show that it can talk to the server. Perhaps something has to happen on the server end? I don’t know because I’m not a server expert. All I know is that right now, it’s not working and I still have to use Microsoft Entourage (man that leaves a bad taste in my mouth).

Another thing that you will notice about mail.app and a lot of other apps in Snow Leopard is that they are going on a diet. In OS X 10.5 Leopard, mail.app is 287 MB compared to its size in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard where it is only 91 MB. That is a difference of 196 MB. And across the board apps are losing weight. To see more weight loss visit Apple Insider.

Keep checking back, I will be reviewing Safari 4 in the next couple days. I am using it right now, and so far so good.

When Apple released OS X 10.5 Leopard less than a year ago, it boasted over 300 new features, some small,  and some big like Time Machine. However, this latest creation does not boast any of this, nor is it being accompanied by any major fan fare like the new iPhone. Some might even wonder why this OS release is a full release and not just a version update (aside from the fact that they can make money off of it). Well, there are two major changes in this OS.

OS X 10.6 will be the first Apple OS since the introduction of the Intel chip to the Macintosh that will not work on a Power PC. So for everyone out there that was hanging onto their G5, or G4 or your PowerBook, etc, this will NOT work for you. 10.5 will be the last OS you will see from Apple. Some people are upset about this, I say that it was only a matter of time. And honestly, if you have an older computer, running a newer OS is not the smartest thing for you to do anyway.

The other major update that this brings to the table is Exchange. Well, Exchange support that is. For years Apple has been trying to break into the office market, the only problem was that everyone was in bed with Microsoft, and any who had a Mac that wanted to play with the others still had to load Microsoft Office to be able to use office e-mail that was on an Exchange server. Then Apple released the iPhone, and something weird happened. For the first time, Microsoft was forced by the demands of the market to license the coveted Exchange technology to Apple to allow Exchange e-mail to work on the iPhone. The official release of iPhone Software 2.0 isn’t out just yet, but as I mentioned a couple of months ago, I am a beta tester for the software, and it finally works well. And now that an iPhone can have Exchange support for e-mail, calendar and contacts, soon, OS X will too. No longer will Macintosh users have to install Microsoft office for the Mac to be able to use Exchange Servers. Now, a Mac user will be able to use the Mail, Contact, and Calendar apps that are part of the OS. This is a huge step for a partnership between Apple and Microsoft (since Microsoft ’stole’ their first OS from Apple), and an even bigger step for Apple breaking into the office market.

After I install the new OS, I will give a review of how it performs, how it installs, and what is wrong.

Update- Review of mail.app