The Macworld iWorld exhibition was just held January 26-28, in San Francisco at the scaled-down Moscone Center West venue. I remember it being a big exciting show, with attendees eager to see the new offerings from Apple and third-party vendors. The exhibition is much smaller now, without the enthusiasm of the past, and has devolved into the iAccessory show. Although this year’s expo featured over 300 exhibitors, there hardly seemed to be enough booths to need to attend more than one day. The show is dominated by iPhone and iPad apps, accessories, especially cases of all styles but there was lots of other interesting stuff too. Few vendors had items that you could purchase and take away – many items were just on display, but could be ordered online. My purchases there were minor, mostly inspired by the convenience and low cost. I got the Invisible Shield for my iPhone – they put the screen protector on the front and back faces for $10 – and they do it well, with no bubbles on the surface. The retail price would have been $24.95, and I would have had to do it myself. They also gave me some Zagg Gadget Clean foam. I also picked up an iPhone 4S grey silicone case from Proof for $10.
Coming up on World Tech Update this week, protestors rally against SOPA and PIPA, Yahoo’s Yang resigns, Sony teases a universal remote gadget, the heated battle between Apple and Samsung rages on, the AR Drone 2 gets easier to fly and a small company makes a big splash at CES. Macworld is coming to San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 26-28, 2012.
Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself — at the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.
Transcript of Steve Jobs’ address:
‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
What is different? The next Mac operation system isn’t available at the Apple Store or BestBuy. You can’t order it on CD or DVD disc. You have to buy it from a Mac running Snow Leopard and the App Store (screen shot above). You hopefully have a fast internet connection, because you have to download a 3.76 GB software installer package. Purchasing and downloading it was a bit of a fumble at first. I presume it is because of the changes announced about moving from me.com to iCloud. After logging into the changing Apple ID account interface, and updating the credit card on file, I was able to get the buy button to begin the software download.
Apple says that you can run the installer on more than one of your Macs. My experience was that the Lion OS installer downloaded itself into the Applications folder (rather than the Downloads folder). When I ran it to install Lion, I checked back and the installation package had been deleted. Luckily I had backed the Lion installer package onto a USB flash drive, so I still had the installer for my second Mac installation.
What’s different? The UI interface is heavily influenced by the iPad iOS. Application windows go all the way out to the edges. Top menu bars disappear, and move off the top edge. Scroll bars are gone. You have to click and push in the column that you want to scrolling. Now scrolling is the opposite direction that you have been used to going.
Warning: Do not jump into Lion (OS 10.7) if you use any older applications that rely on PowerPC libraries. Lion does not support Rhapsody (legacy PowerPC software). In the screen shot below, an older Phostoshop CS application has a symbol on it that indicates that it no longer works on this OS. Adobe CS Suite, Discus 3.16, Mac the Ripper, and other older programs would no longer work after the upgrade. Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) is better for those users that still have a few legacy applications they would rather not lose.
More information will be posted as I have a chance to test drive more of the new features in OS X Lion.
~ Ed Ellsworth
When the new Mail application is launched for the first time in Lion, it needs to upgrade the database, which takes some time. While you are waiting for the update process, Read More… takes you to an empty Help Page.
The Mail icons are smaller, and the columns and viewing browser are configured differently than the previous version. After I get used to the new three column look, I will let you know now functional it is.
I recently acquired a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E laptop computer. It was running Windows Vista, and had the stock hardware. Turning it over, I could see a hatch cover for the memory and the hard disk, so I decided to see if I could upgrade it. I replaced the 512 MB DDR2 memory modules with two 1 GB DDR2 memory modules removed from a MacBook Pro that was already upgraded. I removed the 200 GB 5400 rpm 2.5 inch SATA internal stock drive and replaced it with a 500 GB Seagate 7200 rpm 2.5 inch SATA drive. Okay, this was looking good. I had been able to double the memory and should have better performance.
Then I booted up and started the Sony Vaio with a Windows 7 64-bit installer disc. I installed the Windows 7 and downloaded and installed all the updates. Then I discovered that the NVIDIA graphics card was not recogniczed. The HDMI port did not work to drive an external Sony LCD monitor. The Sony and SD memory card slots did not recognize media. There was no software to play Blu Ray discs in the BD drive.
Frustrated, I decided to the original Sony Windows Vista discs, thinking that would give me all of the basic hardware drivers, then I could upgrade that installation to Windows 7. Re-installation of the original 3 discs went smoothly, Then I ran as many Windows updates as possible. For some reason, I was unable to successfully instal Windows Service Pack 1 (and I noticed that Microsoft had already discontinued support for Service Pack 2). I found that Windows 7 would not update the Vista installation until Service Pack 1 was installed. Not having fun at this point.
So, instead of re-formatting the 500 GB Seagate drive, I decided to try a Hard Disk Partition utility. I set aside 300 GB for a new partition for Windows 7. The partition utility took some time to move some files around, and then I restarted the computer. I booted on the Windows 7 installation disc. I formatted the partition and installed the 32-bit version of Windows 7. Then I went to the Sony Vaio update site, and found my model number and its driver updates. I reinstalled one-by-one each of the graphics, sound, and other system drivers. I found to my delight, that by adding the original 32-bit Vista Sony drivers to my 32-bit Windows 7 installation that everything worked! The graphics and audio drivers worked. The HDMI cable played video and audio to the 32 inch Sony LCD monitor. The media card readers worked. The Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse worked.
Sinbad, actor, comedian and long-time supporter of Macworld, comes to Macworld 2011 to share his views and humor on all things Mac!
iFixit live! The Teardown Experts Show Off Apple’s Hardware – From the Inside Out
Kyle Wiens, CEO, iFixit
Friday, January 28th / 9:00AM – 10:00AM
The world-renowned repair experts at iFixit take you on a tour inside Apple’s gorgeous electronics. See what’s inside everything from the original iPod touch to the latest MacBook Air, and discuss the tradeoffs and decisions made by Apple’s product designers.
Why is the iPad so heavy? How do other tablets like the Kindle and Galaxy Tab stack up to the iPad’s hardware? Are Macs getting harder to fix? Can you replace the battery in the latest MacBooks? Satisfy your geekiest desires as we answer all of your burning hardware questions.
TechGirlz: Women in Technology, Making a Difference
Shellie Hall, Consultant, Ducktype Digital
Dani Deahl, DJ
Cali Lewis, Host, GeekBeat.TV
Amber MacArthur, New Media Specialist/Host, Webnation, CP24
Natali Morris, News Anchor, Loaded, CNET TV
Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis, Consultant, W3Conversions
Friday, January 28th / 4:30PM – 5:30PM
High-profile women in technology-driven roles are hard to find in this primarily male-dominated industry. However, there is an elite group of women who have been able to breakthrough the glass ceiling to become trusted and relied upon voices in technology. Women are becoming an ever-growing force in the world of technology, social media, blogging, digital music and videocasting. This group of TechGirlz is here to tell you how it’s done.
TechGirlz focuses on women who are taking technology to a different level and making all of us take a closer look at how we use, and depend on technology in our everyday lives. This feature event will include some of the top women in our industry.
My, how Macworld has grown – smaller. The exhibition hall has condensed into the smallest building of the Moscone complex. The conference and office segments were on the second and third floors of Moscone West.
Other World Computing (OWC) announced the release of an 8x external Blu-ray Disc drive compatible with Macs and PCs. The drive costs $400.
The Mercury Pro Blu-ray External Drive features four interfaces to connect to a Mac or PC—USB 2.0, FireWire 800 and FireWire 400, and External Serial ATA (eSATA). The drive can burn up to 50GB of data on a single dual-layer BD-R disc.
Blu-ray Disc is a high-capacity optical media format used by new High Definition (HD) media players. Although the Mac isn’t capable of playing Blu-ray Disc movies, it can use such devices for storage. The drive also works with DVD-RAM, DVD Dual-Layer and Single-Layer discs, DVD R/RW and CD-R/RW media.
The $400 package includes the drive, connection cables and two 25GB BD-R discs. OWC also offers a $480 package that adds includes the full retail version of Roxio Toast 10 Titanium, a CD and DVD burning application for Mac OS X.
Impersonator had a Marilyn Monroe impersonator mugging for pictures taken with her and guests.
Impersonator software impersonate Windows. Run Windows apps on Mac? Yeah, it’s kind of incredible. Software that marches on Troy… It only seems illegal…
It’s a stone cold ringer for Windows! It’s an I/O device. It’s your Mac, in sheep’s clothing… Runs Windows software on a Mac! Thank ya. Thank ya vera much!
“I know some good Windows games we could play on your Mac,” said the Cat. Gimme an ‘M!’ Gimme an ‘A!’ Gimme a ‘C!’ Beat Windows! Runs Windows software, and fights bad guys with a sword. It’s like running Windows. Without the handcuffs.
At Macworld there were booths with inexpensive Chinese after-market accessories for the Apple market. There were a number of iPad and iPhone stands and cases. I spent less than $10 for accessories at one booth. I got this iPad stand for $5.99 and an iPad screen protector for $1.99!
Macworld has become a show of accessories and peripherals, with less than 300 vendors, and is no longer the platform for new product announcements from Apple. It is still worthwhile for a couple of hours, but probably not interesting enough for a couple of days.
Apple unveiled a new line of MacBook Pro laptops that include Intel’s Sandy Bridge chip technology. These new models come with Intel i5 dual-core and i7 quad-core processors, and a new technology called Thunderbolt.
Intel’s new Thunderbolt technology is a big part of the new Macs. Imagine accessing multiple streams of uncompressed HD video from your notebook, at speeds that let you edit an HD feature film in real time. That’s how Thunderbolt technology will connect the next generation of high-performance peripherals to the next generation of computers — starting with MacBook Pro. Ultrafast and ultraflexible, the Thunderbolt pipeline is more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0, and it offers unprecedented expansion capabilities.
The Thunderbolt port will give you plug-and-play performance with a whole new world of Thunderbolt peripherals, as well as with the Apple LED Cinema Display and other Mini DisplayPort peripherals. You can daisy-chain as many as six devices, including your display. And with support for video and eight-channel audio, it’s easy to connect HDMI-compatible devices — like your TV and home stereo — using the HDMI adapter you already have. Current VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort adapters are also supported.
With the new Thunderbolt port, you can daisy-chain as many as six devices, including your display, to create a full-fledged workstation. Two USB 2.0 ports (three on the 17-inch MacBook Pro) and a FireWire 800 port let you connect your iPad, iPod, iPhone, digital cameras, and external hard drives.
The integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor is now included across the MacBook Pro lineup. The graphics processor decodes efficiently, so you get long playback time for DVDs and iTunes movies. The new FaceTime HD camera gives you three times the resolution of the previous camera along with improved low-light performance. You and your friends can make 720p HD calls from one new MacBook Pro to another. You can also make video calls to other Intel-based Mac computers, the iPhone 4, or the new iPod touch.
For graphics-intensive applications, the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro models automatically switch to new high-performance AMD Radeon graphics processors. With up to 3x the performance of the previous models, they let you see more frames per second in 3D games, or work on HD video projects with more speed and responsiveness than before.
The new SDXC card slot on the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro models supports up to 64GB cards and makes it a snap to transfer all those photos to and from your MacBook Pro, so you can edit and share them on the spot. And the ExpressCard/34 slot on the 17-inch MacBook Pro is perfect for an eSATA adapter, or even a 4G wireless card for times when no Wi-Fi network is available.
The Multi-Touch trackpad is the most natural way to interact with what’s on your screen, and the smooth glass surface gives you plenty of room for gestures. Pinch to zoom in and out, swipe to flip through photos, rotate to adjust an image, and much more. The buttonless design lets you click anywhere. And if you’re coming from a right-click world, you can right-click with two fingers or configure a right-click area on the trackpad.
The new MacBook Pro delivers amazing battery life. And that’s with more powerful processors and faster graphics. An energy-efficient processor architecture with an integrated video encoder, along with automatic graphics switching in the 15- and 17-inch models, all help improve battery life. So you can expect to surf the web wirelessly for up to 7 hours on a single charge. Or take your entire creative studio on the road for live performances or a location shoot. Advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging give you up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycle, nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries.
The iPad 2, announced by Apple March 2 (to be released March 11), offers several improvements over the first iPad.
The iPad 2, like the original, starts at $499. Apple says that since it introduced the iPad last April, it has sold 15 million of the devices, generating $9.5 billion in revenue. Analysts say this is only the start of a lucrative market for tablet computers, which could soar as high as $35 billion by 2012.
In the also-ran categories, Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab were introduced last fall, both to generally good reviews but at higher prices. Other hardware manufacturers are scrambling to bring their own tablets to market: Hewlett-Packard with the TouchPad, HTC with the Flyer, LG with the G-Slate and BlackBerry with the PlayBook.
Analysts and industry experts point to a number of reasons. Primarily, they say, Apple’s deep pockets (a staggering $60 billion in cash reserves) have allowed it to form strategic partnerships with other companies to buy large supplies of components, like expensive flash memory. By doing this, Apple secures a lower price from suppliers, creating a lower manufacturing cost.
Apple has sidestepped high licensing fees for other items it needs, like the A4 and A5 processors within the iPads. Those parts, designed in-house at Apple by a company that Apple bought, are among the costlier components needed to make a tablet computer.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, who took the stage during the Apple press conference March 2 in San Francisco to announce the iPad 2, posed the question “Is 2011 going to be the year of the copycats? Most of these tablets are not even catching up to our first iPad,” he said.
Over time, analysts say, efficiency in production will help bring down costs for competitors.
The Macworld iWorld exhibition was just held January 26-28, in San Francisco at the scaled-down Moscone Center West venue. I remember it being a big exciting show, with attendees eager to see the new offerings from Apple and third-party vendors. The exhibition is much smaller now, without the enthusiasm of the past, and has devolved into the iAccessory show. Although this year’s expo featured over 300 exhibitors, there hardly seemed to be enough booths to need to attend more than one day. The show is dominated by iPhone and iPad apps, accessories, especially cases of all styles but there was lots of other interesting stuff too. Few vendors had items that you could purchase and take away – many items were just on display, but could be ordered online. My purchases there were minor, mostly inspired by the convenience and low cost. I got the Invisible Shield for my iPhone – they put the screen protector on the front and back faces for $10 – and they do it well, with no bubbles on the surface. The retail price would have been $24.95, and I would have had to do it myself. They also gave me some Zagg Gadget Clean foam. I also picked up an iPhone 4S grey silicone case from Proof for $10.
