Believe it or not, it was Jan. 24, 1984, when Apple started selling Macintosh computers to the public. The ads for the computer also came out during the NFL Superbowl.
The computer was originally named after the fruit, which you might know is spelled with an Mc, not Mac. But some of you may know the appropriately spelled McIntosh, a company that manufactures high-end audio equipment (yes, it's still around). At the time the Mac was under development, Apple approached McIntosh in hopes of using the name with permission. Apple was denied and had to buy rights to do so. Whether this early episode explains Apple's aggressive protection of its copyrights is a mystery.
Another mystery is whose idea it was to add the "a" to Mc, a mystery that I couldn't solve via the typical Google search.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/24/2011 at 11:59 AM1 comments
Your job just got tougher, especially if you've got a mandate to support mobile devices that are being used more frequently by information workers at your company.
Chris Paoli reports on a Cisco survey indicating that attacks on Windows PCs are declining, to the detriment of growing attacks on less secure smart phones and tablets. The report mentions Android and Apple-related devices as key targets.
If you're supporting more mobile devices, is security a concern? Tell us here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/20/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Must be the weather. The news last week that
Muglia was leaving Microsoft still had pundits' lips a-flapping, and already this week
we learned of another move: Brad Brooks jumping to Juniper Networks. Brooks is responsible for consumer marketing for Windows, and maybe he's getting out while he's on top of the world -- unlike what's happened to many key execs at the company recently.
Bigger news, though, is that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping aside come April 4, with cofounder Larry Page taking the reins. Schmidt will remain as a strategist (whatever that means), although some pundits believe this to be akin to ousting him from the company.
And, of course, there's the issue of Steve Jobs and his health that tops all. Apple COO Tim Cook takes over, and that has pundits all atwitter whether the company can run Jobs-less, at least for what's being called a temporary basis.
As an IT pro, do these exec moves have any bearing on your IT decisions? Comment here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/20/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Imagine a project that Steve Jobs wasn't the center of, and you've got the Apple Lisa, which debuted Jan. 19, 1983. The Lisa, as it was often called by those internal to the company, was Apple's first PC to sport a GUI interface and a mouse. Jobs had been involved at the outset and was instrumental in developing The Lisa's mission after having seen a demo of Xerox Parc's GUI technology (so the story goes), but he eventually went to work with the team developing the early Macintosh system.
Unlike the Macintosh that would prevail at Apple, The Lisa was built and priced for business: an entry-level system was more than $10K at the time.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/18/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Tip of the cap to Jeffery Hicks, my Professor PowerShell columnist, who alerted me via Facebook to a Zero Day: A Novel, penned by Mark Russinovich. Yes, it's that Mark Russinovich, who you might know if you've bought one of his well-regarded Windows Internals books to help you through an exam or two. Zero Day is a crime novel of sorts, with cybersecurity intrigue in the middle of it all.
I'm not planning on taking on Mark's novel, as I've got a full reading list at the moment (part of my 2011 resolution to get through at least 10 of the books on my shelf before year's end). If anyone decides to get it -- it's out March 15; you can pre-order it here -- let me know what you think. I know it's gotta be better than some of the other Microsoft fiction I'm familiar with.
Who's planning on reading Mark's book? What's on your reading list, technical-related or otherwise? Chime in here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/18/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Windows application developers who plan on taking
Exam 70-511, a requirement for earning an MCTS: .NET 4-Windows Application Development (as well as the MCPD Windows Developer 4 on Visual Studio 2010), can find a new self-paced training guide from MS Press
coming in February.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/13/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
We're still scratching our heads at MCPmag, wondering if Muglia got the boot in a nice way from Ballmer, or if it was Muglia's idea to leave. We're still betting it's the former. The fallout from the news is that it seems as though pundits everywhere are calling next for Ballmer to step down from the throne.
It won't happen (if I may be so bold to predict). Rather, what's more likely to happen is that he'll retire. But it won't be soon -- I give it five more years, and by that time he'll be looking like the king again when his vision of Windows everywhere comes to fruition. (Cue evil laughter...)
Am I crazy? Probably. Tell me why here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/13/2011 at 11:59 AM3 comments
What wasn't in this week's patch release from Microsoft seemed to make more news that what was in it. So the IE fixes weren't there, so what? Oh, you need them? As my mom used to say when was a flared-jeans-wearing-10-year-old, "Oh, you'll live."
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/12/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Outside of Google, Wikipedia is probably one of the more popular starting points on the Internet for ending an argument between two people. It's not always accurate (blame that on the open editing policy), but it's usually thorough enough as well as free, much to
Encyclopedia Brittanica's chagrin. The online resource went online on Jan. 15, 2001.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/10/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
It was this week in 1977 that the company filed incorporation papers. The company was founded about nine months earlier, on April Fools' Day, which we believe to be purely coincidental.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
The Wall Street Journal has a
trend piece on CareerCast, a Web site that did a study listing 200 of the best and worst jobs in the U.S. Among the top 9 are two tech-related jobs: software engineer at numero uno and computer systems analyst at 5. The groups says it based its findings on Labor Dept. data, U.S. Census data, and the researcher's own data; you can read the details of all the professions
here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
The Consumer Electronics Show got into high gear (ahem) yesterday, with Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer delivering a fairly low-key keynote showing off some new goodies: the next-gen Surface, dual touch-screen PC-or-notebook-I-dunno-which, the next Kinect, and a version of Windows to support system-on-a-chip or SoC architectures.
It all sounds interesting, but nothing had the sparkle of an iPad or shininess of Android -- that is, I didn't come away from the news thinking, "I gotta have that." And at this show, isn't that what why we're there in the first place? [Editorial disclosure: Actually, I'm not at the show; by "we," I mean the collective we.]
Posted by Michael Domingo on 01/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments