Category: Apple

Buy Nothing Day – Nov 26th

On By Rick McIn Apple, economics, philosophyLeave a comment

Kate reminded me to do what I do most Fridays. Buy nothing.

Buy Nothing Day (BND) is an international day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. Typically celebrated the Friday after American Thanksgiving in North America and the following day internationally, in 2010 the dates are November 26 and 27 respectively.

It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine …

Wikipedia – Buy Nothing Day 2010

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But if you’re the kind of scumbag who buys gifts for loved ones, Amazon, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls are the place to shop USA.

Know that TJ Maxx and Marshalls are offering brand new iPads for $399 — a savings of $100 on an item that is rarely ever discounted.

It’s a Black Friday American Thanksgiving promotion. … Those will sell out quick. Not every location has them.

But all day, every day, you can save money on EVERYTHING at Amazon.com.

Why? … No sales tax.

… Unless you live in Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington state, you’ll pay no sales tax on many purchases from Amazon. (There are exceptions for goods that other merchants, like Target and Dow Jones, sell through Amazon.) …

You’ll get an especially good deal at Amazon if you’re making big purchases and you live in an area with high taxes. In Chicago and Los Angeles, for instance, state and local taxes add up to 9.75 percent, the highest in the nation. Sales tax is 9.5 percent in San Francisco, 9 percent in New Orleans, and it’s above 8 percent in Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. In those areas, a … 64-gigabyte iPod Touch, which sells for $399 at Apple, $395 at Target, $387.99 at Best Buy, and $382.54 at Wal-Mart is cheapest of all at Amazon—$382.54, without the $30 you’d pay in taxes at other stores. …

Slate – Every Day’s a Tax Holiday

You can buy from Amazon.com if you live outside the USA. But there’s some chance your shipment will be stopped at your border. You might be asked to pay duty in excess of the savings on the buy.

MacBook Air – my review

On By Rick McIn Apple, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I’ve been switching from my old MacBook to a MacBook Air.

LOVE IT.

I can’t say that I’ve any complaints.

The perfect computer for 95% of people 95% of the time. Perfect for Facebook, email, browsing, photos, music, video.

Perfect for anyone who needs more than a phone when away from their main computer. If your smart phone is good enough, don’t bother. If you only need something like this at home, the cheapest iPad using wifi is a better solution.

My advice is to get the least expensive 11 inch. Unless you have some special requirements. It gets about 4hrs in real life use on a new battery. The idea is that you will only plug it in at night, with your phone.

On top of that you’ll need a USB card reader for your camera. Either Microsoft Office or the Apple iWork suite. And an external hard drive for storing data. And a USB to ethernet adapter if you want to plug in. … Leave a comment if you have questions.

detailed review

iPod Nano watch

On By Rick McIn Apple, books, music, product endorsementsLeave a comment

This is the best watch band designed to fit the new Nano I’ve yet seen.

It’s not available now. But I’m expecting to see them in the Apple store by early 2011. $40.

I’ll be back to wearing a “wrist watch” after many years wrist naked.

details

I bought a MacBook Air

On By Rick McIn Apple, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Went with the smaller 11” model, but bumped up the memory to 4GB and the flash memory hard drive to 128GB.

Click PLAY or watch a review video on YouTube.

I’m projecting that this will be enough for me 90% of the time. (For the other 10% I’ll need to plug in an external drive. Or go back to my old MacBook laptop.)

If you are thinking about an Air for yourself, check the detailed review on ars technica.

new MacBook Air getting RAVE reviews

On By Rick McIn Apple, product endorsements1 Comment

MG Siegler on TechCrunch:

… I’ve used it almost everywhere I’ve been for just about a week now. There’s no question in my mind that this has replaced my MacBook Pro as my go-to machine.

But here’s the really crazy thing. It’s not just the size of the thing that I love so much (I have the 13-inch model) — which is amazing — it’s the speed. This thing boots up in less than 15 seconds, ready to go. My i7 iMac with 8 GB of RAM takes something like 2 minutes. My i7 MacBook Pro takes at least 30-45 seconds, and it has an SSD drive.

Applications seem to load quicker. Files transfer quicker. The thing shuts down in about 3 seconds. Macworld has the initial benchmarks. They don’t lie. It just screams. …

Goodbye, MacBook Pro. The New MacBook Air Is That Good.

Turns out the aging Core 2 Duo processor is not a problem. An all Flash memory machine makes up for any loss of speed.

Click PLAY or drink the Apple Kool-Aid on YouTube.

Having played with a couple now, I can’t believe any woman could resist. They are ideal for ladies that only want to carry a purse.

The $999 base price looks great. But I’d recommend more memory. And a number of accessories, including adapter cables. It only has 2 USB ports and a video out port.

If I bought one, I’d end up spending around $1400

The newest version of MS Office for Mac is getting praised, as well. No reason not to switch to Mac.

the new MacBook Air …

On By Rick McIn Apple, product endorsements1 Comment

I’m tempted.

The latest, greatest home run being hit out of the park by Apple. Starts at $999.

Click PLAY or watch a user generated ad on YouTube.

Details on Apple.

Upsides: less than 3lbs, long battery life, all flash memory storage, more …

Tempting. But likely a 5lb full-featured laptop is better for me.

Daring Fireball linked to this amazing statistic – 60 percent of Apple’s sales are from products that did not exist three years ago

funny Windows Phone 7 ad

On By Rick McIn Apple, GoogleLeave a comment

Love it.

… our culture of mobile distraction …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Here’s another – Season of the Witch. (VIDEO)

I love it because this is the way you phone addicts look to those of us not yet addicted.

Microsoft is desperate to stop their bleeding in the smart phone market. They’ve announced 10 new phones with an all new operating system.

So far, so good, MS.

But the future is Google Android.

(via TechFlash – Windows Phone challenges us to pull our heads out of our phones)

Chrome vs Safari

On By Rick McIn Apple, Google, product endorsements3 Comments

In June, one test found that Chrome was only slightly faster than Safari on the Mac.

… I saw no compelling reason to switch to Chrome.

But in a real world wifi test on my personal Mac, Chrome was more than twice as fast as Safari downloading measured by speedtest.net.

Loading a YouTube video in both, the speed advantage of Chrome was obvious.

I’ll start using Chrome for video starting now. (With FlashBlock installed, of course.)

Because I use LastPass, it would be easy for me to switch over completely. … But using different browsers for different purposes might be the best solution of all.

UPDATE – I’ve switched permanently. Chrome is now my primary browser.

NEW iPod Touch …

On By Rick McIn AppleLeave a comment

Seems to me that this is Apple’s most used product these days. I use my (last generation) Touch non-stop. Love it.

Until Sept. 7th Apple has the usual back-to-school deal: MacBook with iPod CHEAP

… I was tempted to upgrade on both my laptop and Touch …

But the Touch is the old model, not the new. Too bad.

Click through to Apple if you want to see details on the new Touch. It’s petty sweet.

… In terms of battery life, Jobs declared the iPod touch will have 40 hours of playback.

The iPod touch will be available next week in 8GB, 32GB, and 64GB models at prices of $229, $299, and $399 respectively. …

The camera is NOT the same as the one in the iPhone though. Too bad, yet again.

So close, but so far.