According to Reuters and posted on the Huffington Post, Apple gave six of its top executives around $60 million in company stock bonuses EACH after the company recorded a record revenue of $108.25 billion last fiscal year.
The executives include the chief of software Scott Forstall, CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and marketing lead Phil Schiller, and three others that the article did not name. Each received 150,000 restricted Apple shares that fully vest on 2016, or about $60 Million based on Friday’s closing share price of $400.24, or about $360 Million going to just 6 people. These are not options that they have to buy, but restricted stock, that becomes fully theirs in 5 years.
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Let’s talk Mobile Navigators. Those wonderful little programs you pop on your mobile phone, and they tell you how to get from where you are to where you want to go. I love them. No longer do I have to think about how I get to where I am going, I just ask my iPhone to get me there, and I am off. It is just that easy, right?
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As I sit here with my MacBook Pro and iPhone at my side, I was shocked to hear the news just go by. Steve Jobs has passed away. What really surprised me was just how much of a shock it was to me, and how sad it made me feel. This was not a surprise, we all knew it was coming, but it still hurts just the same.
As someone who worked at Apple, I got a chance to see his brilliant mind first hand in the products that Apple designed. And although I have not worked there for some time, I still felt an attachment to Steve and Apple every day as I use Apple products.
I even remember the introduction of the Next Cube, and how my wife’s magazine got the exclusive. Even back then, I thought he was an amazing man.
A brilliant man, Steve changed the way the world looks at technology, and made technology fun. He changed the music business for the better with the iPod, and brought music into the modern world. Then he also did what everyone said could not be done, and changed the cell phone industry for the better as well with the amazing iPhone. Then his amazing iPad created a whole new product category, and no one yet has come close to making something as cool and beautiful. And did I forget to mention the amazing Pixar? This list could go on and on.
Steve Jobs was 56. His style, his products, his brilliance, and he charisma will be very much missed.
Rest in peace Steve. We will all miss you.
It was a typical Sunday afternoon, lazing around the house, watching some TV, and doing some chores, when the phone rang. “Hello Mr. Rubin, this is KGO News calling.”
“Really?”
“Are you aware that the BART website MyBart had been hacked into?”
Nope! I was not aware.
From the KGO news story, BART site hacked.
For those of you who use Quicken for Mac versions 2005, 2006, or 2007 (2007 was the last “REAL” full version of Quicken), Intuit has some important news for you: Don’t upgrade to Lion (10.7)! In an official message from Intuit on Quicken, full versions of Quicken for Mac will no longer work with the next release of the Mac OS. PERIOD!
But there is Quicken Essentials you say, I will just upgrade? You are correct, that is an option, and that version will indeed work on Lion. But be aware that this is, in my opinion, a very poor crippled version of Quicken for those who only need the most basic of Quicken functions. Lost in Essentials is ANY ability to track investments. Also missing is the ability to create a good number of the financial reports you might need to do your taxes at the end of the year, or just track your financial status. And bill pay from the app is gone! Also, Essentials was essentially written from the ground up, they started over, so things are not the same as you are used to, and it just does not feel the same to me. In my opinion, Intuit made it quite clear that supporting the Mac with a full version of Quicken was off the table. After all, their last full version came out in 2007.
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Microsoft Word 2011 Macintosh (Version 14 if you are counting)
$149.99 for Home and Student version of Office
$279.99 for Business and IT Pros version of Office
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
For as long as I have been using both versions of Word, one for Mac and one for Windows (yes, I use a Windows computer too), I have often wondered if they truly came from the same company. While they can read and write compatible files (mostly), their user interfaces have always been quite different, making it difficult to go from one version to the other and remember where all the commands are. Additionally, the two programs would leapfrog each other in features, almost as if they were competing with each other to see which could outdo the other with their latest features. And Word 2008 for the Mac seemed to completely miss the boat when it came to using some of the newer and cooler interface design elements of Mac OSX, almost as if the designers had never seen such a system. With Word 2011 for the Mac (Intel Macs only), most of that has changed.
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While MyMac typically does not publish press releases, I thought the information from one I received today to be important enough to post here, given the crisis in Japan.
The international calling iPhone app ChatTime today announced that they are making all calls to Japan, from all the countries that they support, free until the end of March in response to the international crisis.
While AT&T and Verizon have announced that they are also allowing free calls, the ChatTime app is not just for US users, but for users all over the world that have friends and family there that they are worried about.
ChatTime is a unique third party calling app for the iPhone that allows you to call international numbers at drastically reduced rates. ChatTime does not use VoIP, a system plagued with connection problems, but rather uses the carrier networks themselves. This means that the call has the same quality as one placed directly through your carrier, at a fraction of the price. It does this by making a local call instead of an international one, and then passing it through a private high speed network to the country of origin, where it makes another local call. In countries that incoming calls are free, the outbound call can be converted to an incoming one in order to prevent minute usage.
Eye-Fi X2 Cards:
Pro X2: $149.99
Explorer S2: $99.00
Geo X2: $69.00
Connect X2: $49.00
iPhone App: FREE
The Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB WiFi enabled SD Memory Card
When I reviewed my first Eye-Fi card almost two years ago in February of 2009, I was amazed at what I saw. A tiny little SD memory card with a WiFi radio inside. Inside! How did they do that? I hardly believed they could squeeze it all in to that tiny little space, and I am still amazed when I see it now, with an even better radio and even more memory capacity.
If you have been hiding in a cave for the last few years or simply not paying attention to new things, Eye-Fi is exactly that, a standard SD sized flash memory card with a built-in WiFi 802.11 b/n/g radio inside the SD case. When this device is inside your camera (or powered up in a SD card reader), and in the range of either an open WiFi, or even your own locked (keyed) WiFi, the card will upload images stored in its memory onto the Eye-Fi service.
Orb has three products:
Orb Live: $9.99
Orb Music Player: $69.00
Orb TV: $99.00
http://www.orb.com
Orb Video On Many Devices
Orb has three different products which are quite similar in operation, and work together to offer up your content where you want it and when you want it. Orb’s first product, Orb Live, is an app for iPhone or Android that includes a second piece of software (Orb Caster) that runs on your Mac or PC. Together, these two pieces of software let you “take” the music, videos and photos that live on your computer with you as you travel, without having to move anything to your mobile device, and regardless of their file format or size. You can also watch live TV on your mobile device if your computer has a TV Tuner (like a USB tuner) as well as view any web cameras attached to your computer. Orb Caster transcodes
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Commuter 2.0 Messenger Bag
Company: Rickshaw Bagworks
Price: $150.00
http://www.rickshawbags.com
Owen's custom made messenger bag
I took my custom Rickshaw Bagworks’ Commuter 2.0 Messenger Bag for a extended travel spin into Canada recently. I tested the previous incarnation of this bag exactly 3 years ago, (see that review here with LOTS of pictures) and liked it so much it became my every day bag, replacing my much loved and well worn-out Timbuk2 bag. The first incarnation of Rickshaw’s messenger bag was excellent, but still had a few issues I thought. But now, this bag is nearly perfect…
Speck Cases for iPhone 4
Company: Speck
Price: $24.95 – $29.95
http://www.speck.com
No surprise to anyone by now, your iPhone 4 probably needs a case, if not only to keep it from suffering connection and reception errors, but to protect the finish as well. And you might just want to protect that glass from drops and bumps too. Yes, I know, you can get one for free from Apple (for a short time), but personally, I did not see one in their free collection that I actually liked.
So I went looking for other cases, and the first place I went was Speck! I have one of their cases on my MacBook Pro, and another on my iPod touch, and really like them both, so what better place to start. Speck has a few new designs out for the iPhone 4, and I looked at three different cases.
As smart phones get smarter, the chance that a malicious piece of software could sneak into one was bound to happen. And if you have an Android phone, it may already have one!
Review: You Gotta See This
Company: Boinx Software
Price: $1.99
You Gotta See This. That is not only the name of the product, but what I said to others when I saw this. If you have an iPhone 4 (it does not run on anything but the iPhone 4), for only $1.99 you can get one of the coolest photo products I have seen in a long time, especially on a cell phone.
MP300 Plus Multimedia Speaker System
Company: Edifier
Price: $99.95 (search for them, I have seen them for as low as $75)
Company Website
Product Page
MP300 Plus in black
CS5: Dreamweaver
Company: Adobe
PRICE:
- Dreamweaver CS5: Upgrade: $199, New: $399
- CS5 Web Premium (which includes Dreamweaver): Upgrade: $599, New: $1799
- CS5 Master Collection (which includes Dreamweaver) : Upgrade: from $899, New: $2599
Adobe continues to improve its entire CS suite of products with CS5, and I had the chance to have a quick first look of Dreamweaver CS5′s new features. This is not a simple product, and it was already packed with features. And now there is even more, with a few older features tossed out if they were replaced with even better ones. I will give a brief overview and comments on the new features here.
Upon launching, I have to say, the user interface has not changed drastically from my previous version,
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Taking the Plunge and Finally Going iPhone — or not!
So I have wanted an iPhone for a long time. I have watched with envy as the first, second, and third generation phones came, and many of my friends were having a great time playing with them, while I sat with my trusty old Treo, trying to convince myself that it was just as good.
It was not! Oh, it did what it needed to do, and had most of the same functions actually, but it was just no where near as fun. So I got an iPod touch, but that was still not an iPhone.
AT&T has announced new data plans for mobile Internet, claiming these plans will make it “more affordable to more people…”, but this is just not so. One giant hole in this make it more affordable idea is there is no longer an unlimited data plan for iPad customers. That kind of makes this a LOT more expensive actually, not more affordable as AT&T claims.
AT&T now offers two mobile data plans: DataPlus, which provides 200 MB of data for $15 per month, with additional 200 MB chunks (or part thereof) costing another $15, and the DataPro plan, which gives 2 GB of data for $25 per month, with each additional GB (or part thereof) costing another $10.
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MyMac Podcast #385
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