More and more people are choosing to use iPads instead of “PCs” because of shit like this.

When’s the last time your iPad had to do an ‘Automatic Repair’?

Yesterday a friend posted something great on Facebook:

First I decided to turn myself into an 8-bit character, and then illustrate what this might look like:

img alt=”Michael_Mulvey_Coffee_PowerUP.gif” src=”/images/Michael_Mulvey_Coffee_PowerUP.gif” />

It’s great to see RIM validating Apple’s product design strategy.

Influencer: iPhone 5, launched September 2012

Influenced: BlackBerry 10 L-Series, leaked December 2012

There’s many places in my life where I need more organization. My desk. My closet. The stacks of books accumulating in my office.

The opposite is true for my computers (read: MacBook, iPad, iPhone).

My digital life wasn’t always organized, but now I border on obsessive-compulsive. When I see people’s iPhones scattered with banks and banks of unordered app icons I start to twitch. It takes all my mental strength to not grab their phone from them and organize their icons. “It’s for your own good!”

Last night I reorganized my own iPhone. The first home screen contains only apps I use on a daily basis. My essential apps. The second bank of apps are folders of apps labels with verbs indicating the action applied to those apps: Buy, Play, Help, Read, Look, Listen, Travel, Socialize, Note (and Newsstand).

Update: Hat tip to Shawn Blanc for the slick, subtle wallpapers of Marcelo Marfil.

Peter Bright at Ars Technica on Microsoft bringing Office to the iPad:

It’s still not official, but the evidence that Microsoft is bringing Office to the iPad and iPhone is growing in abundance. At this point, it seems to be an inevitability that Redmond will release Office apps for iOS in some form in early 2013, with Android apps following soon after.

In so doing, the company stands a good chance of cementing the role of the iPad as a business tool, eroding the advantages of Windows Phone 8 and undermining the entire value proposition of Windows RT. It will also hole Microsoft’s argument that the iPad is “just” for content consumption below the waterline. The upside of Office on iOS? That’s harder to fathom.

You know when you’re playing chess and it you realize you only have one more move left before you’re checkmated?

Microsoft is already there.

They can release Office for iOS and further cement the iPad’s position as the tablet contender with the upper hand (No, I don’t think there will be one marketshare winner in tablets like the Mac/PC war with a 95-to-5-percent ratio) and let Surface fall to the wayside…

or

…not release Office for the iPad and continue to watch Surface not become the hit that Windows was and fall to the wayside.

Either way, Apple is going to follow them around the board until they lose their king.

And Microsoft has run out of moves.

How stupid is Comcast for appending the NBC peacock to their logo?

As stupid as Volkswagen appending the Lamborghini emblem to their logo (VW owns Lamborghini, Ducati, Audi, Porsche, Bentley and others).

Or as stupid as Pepsico slapping mister Quaker Oats dude on top of their logo:

*Note: The Comcast logo is the only real logo in this post. If you didn’t figure it out, I made up the Volkswagen and Pepsico versions for demonstration purposes.

taken from The Combustion Chamber

Trotify—A bike attachment that makes your bike sound like a trotting horse.

I guess I can relieve Patsy of his duties now.

via Maria Popova

Do the companies Apple is competing with understand how making money works?

via Philip Elmer-Dewitt

I woke up this morning, started reading my RSS feeds, ran into this nightmare and puked a little inside my mouth:

Yes, you’re seeing that correctly. Comcast has co-opted the NBC peacock. No, this isn’t a prank.

I know companies aren’t people and don’t have feelings, and while I’m not going to necessarily lose sleep over this abomination, it does bother me. Like many guys and gals my age who grew up in the New York, tri-state area, I have a soft spot for NBC. The 3-note jingle, Saturday Night Live, Chuck Scarborough & Sue Simmons, Rockefeller Center, Seinfeld. I grew up with NBC, so in a sense, it’s part of me. Let’s not mention my wife has worked for NBC for over 10 years.

General Electric has never tried to incorporate the NBC logo into it’s own identity since it took a controlling share of the company in 1986. Comcast obviously doesn’t have the level of brand cachet that GE has. Comcast is Kabletown (note: Comcast is referred to as Kabletown internally too, not just by Tina Fey).

Business is business and life will go on, but moves like this just look pathetic. It’s the equivalent of pulling a Mercedes-Benz emblem off the hood of a car and wearing it around your neck.

Hey Comcast, putting a peacock on top of your head doesn’t make you look cool. It makes you look like a jackass.

Update: Perhaps a better analogy is if you ripped off a Mercedes-Benz emblem and stuck it on the hood of a 1982 Chevrolet Chevette.

I’m not sure why I didn’t do this earlier, but I’ve turned on the Do Not Disturb switch on both my iPad and my iPhone. I think many of us grow used to (dare I say addicted?) alerts and notifications.

Given that most of the day I’m working on my laptop, getting notifications from every device on my desk is too much. It’s not enough to just turn the ringer/sound switch off.

My guess is I’m going to quickly get used to this change.

ZDNet: Micro>soft pulls the plug on its Silverlight.Net site

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p>Maybe Microsoft realizes the war is over afterall.</p

via GoodShit