Apple news

Apple's WWDC

I live-streamed Apple's presentation on September 12th, and in the first hour and 50 minutes of the presentation, there was no mention of a Mac or macOS. It was all about the Apple Watch and iPhones. In the last 5 minutes Tim Cook briefly mentioned the Home Pod and macOS Mojave. Then Tim thanked me for watching...😊...

To possibly summarize what I saw: lots of health and exercise apps, gaming apps, design improvements, advanced technology, and pretty looks. They mentioned that a prior chip performed 600 million operations per second (Wow!), and the new one 6 trillion operations per second. Unbelievable.

If you weren't able to watch the conference, I'm sure you'll still be able to watch it, should you have an interest. I enjoyed parts of it, and some not so much. I'm not into gaming, for example. But, lots of new stuff on the watch and iPhone.

Jim Hamm

Apple Worth a Trillion $

You've probably read that the market value of Apple, Inc. is worth a trillion dollars. It's difficult to visualize what a trillion is, but here are some examples that might help.

Go back a billion seconds and you'd be in 1995; go back a trillion seconds and you'd be around 30,000 B.C.; a dollar bill weighs about a gram, thus a trillion of those dollar bills would weigh 2.2 billion pounds; 

It's estimated that all the money in circulation today in the U.S. is about a trillion dollars.

Some years ago Gizmodo put together a conceptualization of what a huge pallet of a trillion dollars would look like. Take a look here, and remember -- each pallet is $100 million.

This might be more understandable: if you'd invested $10,000 in Apple stock 10 years ago you'd have $92,000 today, excluding dividends.

Jim Hamm

Apple File System (APFS)

If you are a Mac user, you have probably heard that Apple is updating their file system to the APFS. Ho hum, you might say, and do you even care? Yes, you do, and this article explains why. 

What is not so clear at this time is how long it will take your Mac to upgrade to this new file system. This must be a daunting task for the program. I guess we will find out when we upgrade to Apple's new release: macOS High Sierra, which is coming later this year.

Jim Hamm

Apple's Investment

Yes, Apple's products are considered on the expensive side, and there are many reasons for that.  Recently Apple invested $200 million in one of its suppliers. Can you imagine a company using its money to help one of its suppliers, to the tune of two hundred million dollars? For more information read this article.

Additionally, Apple has established a $1 billion fund to promote U.S. manufacturing. Article here. Ironically, although Apple has over $250 billion in cash, most of that is sitting overseas, and they had to borrow the $1 billion locally to establish the fund.

Jim Hamm

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Apple News

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There's speculation that Apple will be releasing some new products in March, like an iPad Air 3, and more. And recently two Apple executives met with blogger John Gruber to discuss various subjects relating to Apple. If you're interested in reading more about this, here is a summary article. Jim Hamm found the following quote from the article to be quite interesting. Just look at the numbers. Can you imagine the iTunes Store and App Store processing 750 million transactions a week? Even if each transaction were only for a dollar, the money rolls in.

"Cue backed up Federighi’s point about scale with some more stats: Apple has 782 million iCloud users, Apple Music has racked up 11 million subscribers, the iTunes Store and App Store process 750 million transactions a week, and users send 200,000 iMessages a second at the peak."

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9to5Mac: 13 tips for getting the best results from your iPhone camera

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While these tips are nominally for the iPhone, Jim Hamm suspects they will work equally well for the iPad.13 tips for getting the best results from your iPhone camera 9to5Mac

Tim Cook’s embarrassment at the Super Bowl seems a timely opportunity to put together something that’s been on my to-do list for a while now: a quick guide to getting the best results from your iPhone’s camera. As a keen photographer, I’ve been amazed just how far cameras have come in the past few years. Where I once used to carry a compact camera with me everywhere just in case, my iPhone has for several years now been my ‘always on me’ camera (currently the iPhone 6s). And where I used to... Read the full story

El Capitan Installed

Jim Hamm installed OS X 10.11 -- El Capitan -- on his MacBook Air on September 30, when it was released. It took about 30 minutes to download the 6 GB program, and another 40 minutes to complete the install. All went well as far as he could tell at the time. His MacBook Air has an SSD, and it must have been working hard as the cooling fans were blowing hard to cool the Mac down during the install. Normally he does not hear the fans. According to Gizmodo (here) there are 11 things that can now be done that could not be done with Yosemite.  Another recap of the new features of El Capitan is given here from  MacRumors.

One new feature is the ability to find the cursor by just shaking the Mouse.  It is sometimes difficult to see where the cursor is located.

Microsoft has said there will be no more major updates to Windows 10 -- just continuous improvements.  Will Apple follow their lead?

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Got an Old Apple Computer?

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        In the Silicon Valley they're looking for a woman who was cleaning out the garage and came over to a recycling center and dropped off an old Apple computer.  It turned out to be a collectible item worth $2000,000.  Wow!  Read this news story dated 5-31-15.   http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/05/31/woman-tosses-apple-computer-that-turns-out-to-be-worth-200g/?intcmp=latestnews.  

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"Freak" Bug Update

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        John Carter passes along some VERY important info.  "Both Microsoft and Apple have announced that they have released a patch for the FREAK bug. See full article here.
        "In this article, it explains a lot more about the 'Freak' bug and what you can do to find out if your browser is safe to use and even if a website you want to visit is safe to use. The article is written for Mac users, but the method for determining if your browser is safe is essentially the same." 

        John continues, "For all users, check this site to determine if the website you want to visit is secure. The sad news is that your favorite website may fail. It could be only because the site does not have an updated security certificate, or it may be vulnerable to an attack by some issue other than FREAK, so you’re just going to have to take your chances if you insist on going there. For example, my personal website is vulnerable because the hosting service is vulnerable.
        "I have tested the latest Safari browser and have determined that it is safe to use - and this was confirmed after the latest Apple security updates have been installed. I have also just updated Windows 8.1 and tested MSIE and found it to be safe. 
        "The Win 10 Beta with the latest updates is secure for MSIE, Firefox, and Chrome.
        "However, Windows 7, even with the latest update, still has the vulnerable MSIE, and this also applies to both the latest Firefox and Chrome browsers on Win 7. Please continue to monitor your Windows 7 update for updates.
        "It is still recommended that Firefox be the browser to use (instead of MSIE or Safari)."
        John concludes with this, "In addition, Apple has just release iOS 8.2 for the iPhone and iPad, and this release fixes the FREAK bug for those devices. See full article here."
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First Look: Apple Watch May Be All It's Clocked Up To Be

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        "Although an Apple watch isn't my future (I prefer the older, mechanical, auto-wind watches), perhaps someone in PMUG will buy one and give a presentation on it," says Jim Hamm.  
        Check out this article from USA TODAY:
        First look: Apple Watch may be all it is clocked up to be
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2015/03/09/first-look-baig-apple-watch-ticks-closer/24665289/
        "I've heard that one of our active and geeky members (hint: John C) has money he hasn't spent yet, so maybe...(grin)….."  Jim

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Apple Store in Turkey Wins Supreme Award

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        On Cult of Mac, dated Dec. 12  we find fascinating facts about the amazing Apple Store in Istanbul, Turkey which just won a Supreme Engineering Award.  Called an "impossibly perfect glass lantern" the top consists of four glass panels seamlessly joined on site with structural silicone.  You'll want to see the photos here: http://www.cultofmac.com/305967/apple-wins-supreme-engineering-award-glass-lantern-store-turkey/   and here: http://architizer.com/blog/istanbul-apple-now-open/