I follow Apple closely every day. I own multiple Macs, an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2. The biggest chunk of my income comes from building software and custom systems with FileMaker Pro – also owned by Apple. I was pretty thrilled last July when FileMaker announced FileMaker Go for iPhone and iPad. The latest upgrade to my Studio Manager product supports iPhone and iPad access.

The second biggest chunk of income comes from advising and consulting with my Mac clients on technology decisions. Apple is my home team. I’ve been writing about Apple since System 7 came out in the early nineties. Here’s what’s going on now:

1. iPad 2. The iPad 2 and enormous success of the first iPad last year is the biggest thing. The iPad is the third big industry-changing new device after the iPod and iPhone. This triple play puts Apple in the catbird seat in the technology scene. They are making truckloads of revenues and profits and their biggest problem is figuring out what to do with all the cash they are accumulating.

I love the iPad and and am on cloud 9 with the new thinner, lighter and faster iPad 2. The iPad is such an easy device to use. iPhone delivered the wonders of multi-touch in an exquisite little package. iPad raises the ante by expanding the screen to handle most digital documents at full size and doesn’t do half bad with video. There’s plenty of room for controls and content.

Apple is building for the future though. Things we are used to like USB and the Finder aren’t in iOS. Apple views the iPad as a game changer. They are reinventing the PC and are very serious about it. Expect to see better replacements for these standards as they get completed to the satisfaction of Steve Jobs. Apple made a judgement call on how far they could get us to stretch into new territory with the iPhone (no copy and paste?) and now with the iPad. They gave us all sorts of inducements to make the missing pieces worth waiting for. See more on this in yesterday’s post Have iPad, Will Travel on my Independent Knowledge Professional blog.

You may want to get an iPad just so you can start the new multi-touch *pad* learning curve. Gestures are in and they are being phased in over time. It helps to get on board so that you don’t have to learn 15 gestures all at once 2 years from now. There are rumors of a possible, more cloud-based iPad 3 this Fall. I’m so happy with iPad 2 that I don’t care one way or the other. But, of course, you would probably find me waiting in line then too. Apple hasn’t disappointed me for quite a few years now.

2. iPhone 4 and 5. Apple finally delivered a Verizon iPhone in February. The iPhone 4 is a killer device with its absolutely gorgeous 960 x 640 pixel screen. The early hubbub about the antenna had little to no negative impact on this juggernaut. However, the iPhone 5 may not be released in June. In fact, it seems pretty clear that an Autumn release is the earliest we can expect. I guess Apple isn’t done yet with whatever they are cooking up. So far we are hearing more cloud-based, a very powerful voice control component based on Apple’s acquisition of Siri. Apparently Apple wants to keep ahead of the pack so expect more on this next iPhone. By the way, the iPod touch should continue to gain iPhone features as time goes on and be an incredible wi-fi-only device. As free wi-fi spreads further, which it has been doing quite nicely lately at places like Starbucks, Peet’s and even MacDonalds, the iPod touch increases its value.

3. OS X Lion is nearing completion. We’ve already seen a preview and it will be morphing closer to iOS, taking on various inventions there. More gesture-based. An app store already out. A bunch of little icons on the home screen too. And more. The Mac and OS X look to be in a great position to continue their long upward climb in marketshare. It’s getting to the point where some people are starting to think that adopting the Mac platform is a step on the way to the future rather than a step off the path onto a niche OS. Many are saying Microsoft’s days in the sun are numbered. I think OS X and Mac will continue to grow. That’s all that matters from my perspective. If the PC platform is plateauing and Mobile and Cloud are ascending, it may not matter too much which way that goes.

All these three initiatives are selling like hotcakes. Apple’s massive multi-billion dollar server farm facility in North Carolina may be completed this Spring. Rumors of a new, much-improved MobileMe are afoot. Rumors of iPhones and iPads that depend more and integrate with an Apple Cloud are gaining traction.

There used to be a solitary Macintosh platform that worked pretty well with Windows. Now we have a different ball game with the two new iOS offerings on iPhone and iPad. I think it is clear there is room between the Mac and iPhone and that spot is being forged with great promise with the iPad and now the iPad 2. You need to be thinking in terms of all three working together. Apps need to be purchased in that context in many cases. Prefer the App that can interoperate all else being equal.

I didn’t mention the continuing success of Apple stores. The 4 in China have proven exceptional. It seems that retail presence is one of Apple’s strategic advantages vis a vis Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

And what about the livingroom and Apple TV? That’s still a hobby as Steve calls it. Apple is probably going to find a way there as well. The latest moves look like they may hold promise. Things like Apple TV 2.0, iPad 2 mirroring to HDTV, home sharing and streaming between iDevices, Macs and Apple TV 2 look good. There are serious obstacles on this front. Google TV ran straight into them in the Fall. Sooner or later things will open up here or a mitigation of differences will be struck between Cable and Digital. Don’t hold your breath but keep an eye out.

Nokia’s new alliance with Microsoft and adoption of the Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform has little relevance to Apple. Microsoft and Nokia are fighting for 2nd place against Android. Android has the lead now with its free OS and endless accommodations to carriers and manufacturers. Android has no enterprise presence.

Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and now iPad usurped the old cell phone and PDA markets and created a third pad market (otherwise known as tablet). Apple is delivering better tech than anyone else. They market hard. They are incredibly efficient and single-minded. Their aesthetics and design are awesome. Apple has nothing to worry about.

But Android hasn’t distinguished itself as a great OS. It’s just the 2nd entrant, free alternative to Apple/iPhone. Both Windows Phone 7 (simpler and more polished) and WebOS (better at the web than Android) are better tech. Google knows that Android is *old* tech cobbled together – that’s why Chrome OS is around — it’s future leaning but has no marketshare at all except as a browser. The Android market is a mess with its openness, lack of app sales, incompatibilities, bloatware etc.

There’s some truth to Google Gundotra’s 2 turkeys don’t make an Eagle tweet. It will be hard to gain traction. But these are still early days in mobile and digitization.

Windows Phone 7 is cool software (maybe not as cool as WebOS but certainly no worse than Android). MS has a great developer program and lots of good feelings from developers — way better than Apple’s rapport with developers.

MS has the sprawling Windows market and a solid Windows 7 OS. Windows has utter dominance in the enterprise. MS even has cool tech and technologists which they can demonstrate when not hampered by having to stay compatible with legacy technologies – see Kinect.

Nokia has great hardware design. Incredible European loyalty. Amazing distribution channels for cell phones. This alliance boosts Microsoft and Nokia in Mobile.

These are early days for great mobile devices. It won’t be easy, but if Microsoft can really focus and Nokia can work with them and play well with others, they can carve out a spot for themselves leaning towards (1) enterprise and (2) simple for ordinary consumers — the silent majority who don’t want to load their devices with endless apps.

I’ve moved this post over to my new sister site Independent Knowledge Professional blog. And it is dated August 4, 2010 there. See the meat of the post there. This topic seems to fit better there.

Hi folks. Just a quick news item. I wanted to play with WordPress 3 and thought the best way would be to create a new blog to try it out. Conversion can have its issues, so I thought I would wait a little longer and do some research before upgrading my tokerud.com and studio-manager.com sites to WordPress 3.

Having fun over at janet.tokerud.com where I’ve started my personal blog called The Janet Tokerud Blog. This name may not last more than a couple more days as I didn’t want to wait for a good blog name to come to me. So I’m going with it for now. I like being able to use janet.tokerud.com as a URL. Better than a whole new domain called janettokerud.com. Not crazy about the double t’s in the middle.

I just wrote a post about WordPress 3 you might be interested in. I may write a few more posts shortly as I learn new things about WordPress 3. So far I like it a lot and really enjoy the new default theme called Twenty Ten. The site is currently using the default without modifications. I’m sure we’ll find lots of things to tweak but I’m impressed with the theme right out of the box.

I didn’t use 3G on day 1. Didn’t even sign up. I was home with my wi-fi and 3G didn’t cross my mind. I was planning to use the $15/month, 256 mb plan. So I actually turned on 3G on day 2. Easy and no obligation except to prepay $15.

My iPad arrived at 1:42 pm. I was waiting in anticipation near the door. I heard a truck and ran up 3 flights of stairs to see if it was UPS. False alarm. A few minutes later Spinner, my dog, barked excitedly as the man in brown arrived. I was thrilled to have my brand new iPad in hand on a Friday at 1:42 with lots of time left in the day to explore.

I didn’t sync right away. I chose the fresh blank iPad option in iTunes which immediately left me free to try out the standard apps. I quickly opened and sampled a few standard apps then rushed to the App store. I had almost a month to think about and read about apps while waiting for my 3G after all. My first two apps were Twittelator for iPad for $1.99 and Instapaper Pro for $4.99. I wanted to be on twitter looking for iPad info as it was reported by citizen journalists on twitter.

Instapaper is great if you like to save links for later perusal – I do. Second thing about Instapaper, it has excellent font controls and even lets you darken or brighten right within the app so you can read in bed or read in a fairly dark room while watching TV and see just fine without straining your eyes. It also allows sizing the type and setting the margins. It’s fabulous, a must-have for news junkies of any stripe.

In order to read things in Instapaper, though, you need to have something there. I did but I wanted all the hottest current iPad information coming out on iPad 3G release day. I fashioned a search string like so: “iPad -win -free -contest -gangstaz” to get as much iPad news / comments as possible while filtering out a lot of the spam.

Twittelator for iPad was a surprisingly good compliment to Instapaper. Stone Design put a lot more effort into making the UI attractive and enjoyable than they have on the iPhone version. The landscape view is delightful with your friend stream in one column and another column of your choice beside it. The right column accommodated my iPad Search string, my iPad Enthusiasts list or the Tech & Science/Apple channel. I alternated between columns switching back and forth to check the latest tweets in each. Much fun for any healthy iPad fanatic on iPad 3G day!

Holding the iPad can be a conundrum. Sideways or portrait, tilted or flat? I found it no problem on day 1 but I did keep moving it and holding it differently from one period (say 15 minutes) to the next. Resting it on something is your best bet so if you have your knees up on the couch, you are set. You may want to rest the iPad on something like a thin pillow or folded towel in bed so it doesn’t dig into your stomach after a while.

The iPad New York Times Editor’s Choice is another promising app and worked perfectly on day 1. In subsequent days, I’ve become less satisfied as it isn’t the whole NY Times so it’s only good when the article you want is in there.

I was struck by how much you can do with an iPad. I liked Newsy with all its high quality video clips. But since the novelty wore off a day or two later, I’m not all that excited about it as it serves up the news a couple days late. That’s not so bad if you haven’t been in touch with big stories and want to catch up but otherwise it is slim pickings.

On day one I was elated. I tweeted that I felt stoned and I don’t do that sort of thing any more but did at one time and the feeling was similar. It’s kind of that being in love feeling turned towards a stellar and game changing new gadget. Also, I predicted the iPad might be like a Linus blanket. You never want to be without it.

Finally around 7:30 pm I decided I needed my photos on my iPad. That led me to sync to my Mac’s 3000-image iPhoto library. Too bad as that stole at least 45 minutes of my wonderful first iPad day. I love the photos on iPad and wished mightily I could organize them right there and then. Please hurry up on that upgrade, Apple!

Next up was finding a mind mapping app for iPad since I was already using a mind mapping tool, SimpleMind, on my iPhone. I did a bunch of research on my iPad with Google in Safari and discovered that one iPhone app maker decided on January 27 to go for it and do an iPad version of his mind mapping app. That app is iThoughtsHD and it is compatible with Mindjet MindManager on Mac so I sprung for the $7.99. I am so very pleased about being able to move all my mind maps from my Mac to my iPad as well as being able to move new mind maps created on iPad to my Mac. The map appearance is not up to Mindjet, but it is quite full-featured.

Next project was to get some Kindle and iBooks going. I downloaded the Kindle app and pretty soon was totally set with my Kindle library. Fantastic!!! Then I went over to iBooks and uh, nothing. I could see from looking at Winnie that I needed to get more ebooks quick. I had heard on twitter that people were putting PDFs in there using the GoodReader app which is an absolutely awesome app for $1 and does a lot for you.

So I downloaded a fresh copy of Calibre and worked on getting a user manual in there. Calibre will take a PDF and turn it into an ePub book for you. Sometimes this is pretty and sometimes not. You can select the Books icon in iTunes and then drag ePub ebooks into iTunes. Then sync. It works.

I researched a bit and found that I was entitled to download some ePub versions of my Take Control ebooks. Yay! I found the Take Control ebooks waaay better than reading PDFs on my Macbook screen. Wonderful and I can even bookmark stuff which I did a lot of and got yellow highlights for my trouble.

With the exception of that long iTunes sync, I explored, experimented, expanded and otherwise played incessantly with my amazing new tool/toy until midnight. What a great day!

I just blogged about my iPad choice this morning on my sister Tech Ronin blog. It includes why I chose the 3G option, how I plan to use my new iPad when it comes and where my Kindle will fit in. I’m hoping the iPad will be a perfect fit between my iPhone and Macbook Air allowing me to leave the Air at home more often. There are still lots of questions that won’t be answered until the product is released next month and apps that take advantage of the larger screen and faster processor become available.

Samsung is a big player in the cell phone market. But, they excel in the feature phone space. The writing is on the wall and feature phones are rapidly losing ground to smartphones. Samsung has to get into this game with their own OS.

Bada can come in all about the lower end of the smartphone market and match up well to feature phone users who are thinking of switching to a smartphone.

Samsung has developed bada to make these exclusive smartphone experiences available to everyone. – Samsung

If you are one the biggest companies in the world, you can afford to make the effort to create a niche for yourself that favors your agenda rather than forever playing second fiddle to Google, Microsoft, Nokia or Apple.

Apple has shown all the other players the way. Half the battle with software development is seeing how something can work. Everyone gets to play with an iPhone and all the accompanying iPhone apps and see for themselves what works and what doesn’t.

Apple paid for all the prototyping and market testing and made smartphones worth having. Now Samsung can imitate, extend and perhaps favor both Samsung and the Asian market — which, by the way, it going to be huge.

Why not? Consider the resources they have. They can afford to do their own OS to control their own destiny in this increasingly mobile, constantly connected world. Don’t run out and buy the first Samsung Bada phone, but eventually all the big phone makers will learn to play in the mobile web space.

And, yes, I’m sticking with my iPhone for the foreseeable future.

Time is flying by as usual and it is time to give you my take on what’s up at Apple. This is easy since they are doing so well. I’ve been writing about Apple in one way or another since the early nineties. Back then I was writing a paper newsletter once or twice a year.

Snow Leopard has been great for me. The only hassle was that quite a few things broke and weren’t fixed for a few weeks. Apple had said Snow Leopard in September and all the developers thought that meant September 30. Apple got crazy and introduced Snow Leopard on August 28. How rude!

The main thing to know about Snow Leopard if you haven’t upgraded yet is that (1) it makes your machine noticeably faster and (2) the screen pops and dazzles in a way Leopard doesn’t. Apple rewrote the Finder in Cocoa and put the full horsepower of their core graphics engine under it. Now windows pop like you’ve never seen them. As soon as you install Snow Leopard there’s no going back. It’s too lush and enjoyable — and did I say fast!

Then in September we had the new iPod touch and iPod nano. I covered them in my last post, so will skip those here. I still think the Nano makes a fantastic Christmas gift for anyone who likes music or gadgets the least bit. The iPod touch is for all those people who can’t do iPhone due to contracts, crumby reception or exhorbitant data plan charges. iPhone-less college students are perfect mates for the iPod touch because wi-fi runs rampant on a college campus and money isn’t all that plentiful in most cases when you are a student.

Then came a *mightier* Mac mini upgrade, a fast, battery-laden $995 white Macbook with everything but firewire and a crazily ginormous iMac 27. Apple rocks! They do not let up. They drive the tech world.

I only have two tiny complaints at the moment. I wish Apple had knocked Mac prices down a little more somewhere to increase Mac marketshare. But if they did, they could not wow us as well with things like the 7-hour battery life of the white Macbook. Second, where’s my iPad? Lots of people have shiny little netbooks and I want a mini-tablet as an alternative. Lots of Apple owners *had to* go out and buy netbook PCs. Since I have a Macbook Air, I held the line. I highly recommend Apple’s video about the new iMac – there’s a lot of Apple’s amazing industrial designer, Jonathan Ive, on there.

Windows 7 is here. As an after thought, I’ll mention the big W from the North country. I haven’t seen a screen with Windows 7 on it. I go by my tech reading. What I see is that Windows 7 is a great boon to Microsoft’s bottom line. Since a lot of the good things about it are already in OS X, Mac lovers need not be concerned. We know who the innovator is between Apple and Microsoft. Since there is an incredible inertia in favor of Windows, Apple will have to hustle. Glad of that.

We are disappointed with Apple’s decision to leave the camera out on the iPod touch. On the other hand the 64gb model looks pretty nice. The little nanos with video cam, microphone and fm radio look like great Christmas gifts this year.

Lots of goodies in iTunes 9 – finally better design so you can find what you want faster and a wishlist! Being able to organize your iPhone and iPod touch apps in iTunes looks really good.

Couldn’t resist this pic. I’ve got iTunes 9 running and both iPhone and iPod touch running OS 3.1.

Photo compliments of Gizmodo.

Even though it is going to take a while to figure out how to take care of every single minor issue that occurred moving from our static website to this blog-driven WordPress site, we are sure it is a great move.

We’ve got the basic pages of our tokerud.com site up now with tabs across the top for navigation. Switching web hosts is about as hard as switching from static to blog-based, so we are not sure doing both at once was such a bright idea.

About a week ago, we committed to using the Thesis Theme for our tokerud.com WordPress site. That cost us $87. We had so much fun and are so enthused, that we’ve now started building up the studio-manager.com site as a WordPress site. Our $87 license for Thesis Theme is a one blog deal, so we limped along since last Thursday on the studio-manager site with the Kubrick theme. Not pretty!

Today, I decided to use Thesis on my new studio-manager wordpress site. So, that cost $77 more. Now, though, I have a license that lets me use thesis theme on as many sites as I want for my own use. If you value your time and you think you have a good theme, it saves time to use the same theme. You learn once and apply twice. And, since these are both related sites, the resemblance is a good thing.

We have over 25 pages to migrate on the studio-manager.com site, so it is going to be a while before we transfer the studio-manager.com domain to our new blog-based site. More to follow.