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The rumors of Adobe being bought by Apple come up every so often. Apple could easily afford such a purchase and the results would be interesting. I would love to see Adobe restructured by a company like Apple. Adobe has many applications that are the gold standard but it seems to lack focus. These are my thoughts on what Apple could do with Adobe’s biggest apps and make everyone’s life a lot easier.

Video

Adobe’s video market could be trimmed down. Anything that can already be done in Final Cut Studio should be gone, including Premiere and Soundbooth. I’m not sure if After Effects would even be worth it in the end. Most believe that Final Cut is a very nice video suite on the Mac platform and in the PC world, AVID holds the crown. Why is a program like Premiere needed? It’s not quite AVID but way better than Windows Movie Maker. Now throw Sony Vegas in there and it’s starting to get crowded. Apple could create Final Cut for the PC or forget about them altogether. This would come down to money in the long run. I personally don’t think Apple needs to worry about the PC side unless they are going to legitimately compete against AVID for dominance.

Design

Photoshop and Illustrator go hand in hand with Apple. The general public thinks of Apple when Photoshop is mentioned and vice versa. This is known as one of Apple’s strongest markets. Most believe that these design apps run better on a Mac but as we know, Adobe is slow in keeping these flagship apps on the cutting edge. Apple could force them to be designed for the latest and greatest environments. While they’re at it, stop releasing new versions every year that don’t have any significant improvements. Adobe needs the money to keep rolling in through yearly revisions but Apple wouldn’t have this problem. Make a new version when real features are created. In an educational environment, we are forced to upgrade every year because the textbooks only cover the newest versions. This puts a large strain on software budgets.

Documents

Acrobat should also be restructured and brought back to its core purpose. Every other week we hear of an exploit in PDF’s and it’s because they don’t do the simple task they were conceived to do. Strip out all the extra junk and just make PDF’s do what they need to do. Reader should be killed for the Mac OS also, Preview is way quicker and does the job just fine.

Flash

Then there’s the elephant in the room, Flash. Oh my dear old friend, you were once so cool. Animations, games, crazy navigation menus and long site intros were such a treat. Now I have grown bored with you.

The problem is that Flash is so ubiquitous with the web that it can’t just be tossed out into the street. Apple would need to clean it up significantly and keep it around until HTML5 took over. They should only provide security fixes but no new features. This would allow it a peaceful death.

Adobe has so many products that it’s kind of ridiculous. Most of them could either be worked into existing Apple products or forgotten forever. If Apple did purchase Adobe, what about the PC side of Adobe’s business? They would have to crunch the numbers to see what products are worth the extra cost of development, but Apple could really limit what’s available for Windows. Whether that would that be a good or bad thing, I’m not really sure. In Apple’s mind, if it sells more Macs then it’s worth doing.

I believe Apple could really improve Adobe’s products and make them more reliable than they ever have been. It would end the grudge that they have against each other and hopefully get applications like Acrobat and Flash back to their roots. Adding useless features just to sell a different version every year will not win you any fans. Make it a worthwhile upgrade or inexpensive and I will gladly support you.

The Zune was never the iPod killer. Even now it is a faint pretender.  So can the Microsoft Courier out-do iPad? If you watch this video it seems a more compelling proposition than the "iPad is just a big iPhone" approach by Apple.

 

But there are some questions still.  

 

- Can the product actually LOOK and FEEL cool?  Not just black/chrome but "Apple-cool".  Remember the first Zunes were shit-brown. 

 

- Is the price compelling enough? SteveB was quoted as 

"You can't be high-priced," Ballmer told a group of analysts at Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting back in June 2009. "That doesn't get us to the high volume that we aspire to."

 

- How are Microsoft going to get apps available to run on it?Remember the iPad has all those iPhone apps ready to go.  The initial views is the device will run WinMobile7 and not Win7. 

 

Finally, when will it be available? 

 

 

A year after the launch of FileMaker Pro 10, the Apple-owned database company is back to debut the latest version of its franchise product. FileMaker Pro 11 introduces long-awaited features and builds on the interface and engine improvements to create new capabilities. I have been taking the product through its paces for the last few weeks and I am left with the impression that this is what FileMaker Pro 10 should have been because the changes made to the interface and the scripting engine are really evident in 11. The update includes a variety of improvements that will benefit both users and developers.

A New Start

When greeted by the redesigned Start Screen, among the starter solutions offered as a template is a new Invoices solution. This solution allows you to track customers, products, and invoices in a single database. Invoices implements multiple tables and relationships on multiple keys and provides a great introduction to a moderately complex database. I recommend peaking under the hood to get a feel for how things are done if you are new to FileMaker. Beyond the starter solutions, you can also create a new database by starting with data from Bento, XML files, Excel spreadsheets and other sources.

Once you are up and running in a database, there are a few interface changes that will jump out at you immediately. First up is the new Quick Find feature. Quick Find adds a Spotlight-like search field to your toolbar that will search through multiple fields on the current layout.

This feature is handy if you are looking for something like a phone number, but are not sure if the number is in the home, office, mobile, or fax fields. You can set which fields are included in the Quick Find index to limit the search and the size of the indexes. Quick Find works like an “AND” search across multiple fields and matches on the start of strings only. It does not do partial string matching so a search on “maker” will not match “FileMaker” at this time.

Layouts

One small refinement is Text Highlighting. You can mark text with a yellow background in a field to bring attention to the highlighted section. More significant changes have been made to improve the ease of working with layouts. The new layout assistant makes setting up table-based report layouts a breeze. The assistant walks you through choosing fields, setting the sort order and adding sub-summaries. In the table view itself, you can now directly add fields and records with convenient + buttons and change the sort by clicking on column headers. Layouts themselves can now be organized into layout folders to make it simpler for both users and developers to work in a database with a large number of layouts.

Another layout option is Portal filtering. Portal filters allow you to limit related records that are displayed in a portal by either fixed or calculated criteria.

When designing layouts, new Inspector palettes grant immediate access to common formatting functions and settings. The Inspector has three tabs, but you can open up multiple inspectors and have each tab visible. The addition of the Inspector may seem a minor change, but it does bring the database product into better alignment with the iWork applications. Inspectors are packed with detail that might be overwhelming to some users, but they do add a bit of convenience and expose some features to discovery that may have been hidden deep in menu options.

Charting

The biggest visual change to Filemaker Pro 11 is the addition of the new charting feature. You can create pie charts, bar charts (vertical and horizontal), line graphs, and area charts and include those directly in your layouts. The charts provide an opportunity to not only create better reports but also design completely new interfaces for dashboard views and other ideas.

Snapshot Links

Another new user-focused feature that takes a bit of explaining is Snapshot Links. You can take a snapshot of the current records that you are viewing and send those to a co-worker with access to the same database. The snapshot includes the current found set, but also remembers the selected record, the current layout, the focused tab on a layout and other information. Previously, you may have printed a report to PDF or saved a search in FMP 10. The problem with those approaches is that the PDF is completely static and the results of the saved search may change between the time you look at the records and send those to someone else. The snapshot link always shows the current information in the database, and keeps the found set intact even if the underlying data changes. It took me a while to fully grasp the implications, but the more I think about it, the more uses I find to use this feature in a workgroup environment.

Other Improvements

Recurring import will watch an external file like an Excel spreadsheet and update the data in FileMaker as the watched spreadsheet changes. You can set script triggers on this file as well to have it update every 15 minutes or some other interval.

You can copy and paste scripts to make it simpler to bring tricks over from other solutions. External file protection improves the security of Filemaker databases. The server version has new diagnostics to help find out which user has issued the query that is bringing the system to a crawl. Filemaker Pro 11 Server Advanced also removes user limits in this version.

System requirements are substantially the same.

Pricing

All FileMaker 11 products are immediately available. FileMaker Pro 11 is $299/$179 upgrade (U.S. suggested list price) and FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced is $499/$299 upgrade. FileMaker Server 11 is $999/$599 upgrade and FileMaker Server 11 Advanced is $2,999/$1,799 upgrade.

For a limited time, FileMaker extends upgrade pricing to licensed users of FileMaker 8 and 8.5 products. This offer expires September 23, 2010, and details are online.

Recommendation

There is something for everyone in this update to FileMaker Pro. Users will love the convenience of Quick Find, the visual enhancements in charting and layouts, and sharing snapshots. Developers will love the Inspector for quickly making layout changes, the scripting improvements, and the flexibility of using portal filtering and charting to create great layouts and reports without extra plugins.

I see great possibilities to use these new features to create solutions with FileMaker Pro and I am probably more excited about the future of the product now than I have been over the last few years. It feels like the investment in previous versions has paid off and everything is firing on all cylinders to move ahead.

Via Apple 2.0, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner asserts in a research note that Apple’s lawsuit with HTC over the iPhone interface was the culmination of “blunt talks” with other phone manufacturers.

According to Reiner, starting in January Apple began closed-door discussions with OEMs regarding the company’s “growing displeasure” with the theft of Apple’s intellectual property.

That displeasure was first noted a year earlier at a conference call. Apple COO Tim Cook responded to a question about the Palm Pre by stating that “we will not stand for having our IP ripped off,” though Cook wasn’t necessarily talking about Palm, or just Palm, anyway. Earlier this month, Steve Jobs publicly accused HTC of theft in a press release associated with the iPhone lawsuit. Unfortunately, that lawsuit may not ultimately protect the iPhone the way Steve Jobs thinks.

However, in the short term tough talk and legal action has, according to “industry checks” by Reiner, resulted in hardware manufacturers reassessing their positions regarding Google’s Android operating system.

Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.

Ignoring the negative impact on consumers from stifling innovation in the name of intellectual property rights, the real-world implications of driving hardware manufacturers away from Google is that they will be going towards Microsoft. With Windows Mobile as good as dead, and Windows Phone Series 7 not to be released until the end of the year, it could have been argued that Microsoft was close to being pushed out of the mobile market entirely. Don’t count on that now.

Microsoft has been quick to sniff out this burgeoning opportunity and has begun to aggressively promote the strength of its own IP portfolio, as well as its willingness to join battle with customers that come under IP attack.

It’s one thing to threaten a relatively small company like HTC, but quite another to go after Microsoft, as Apple found out once before. While temporarily disrupting Android through lawsuits isn’t going to make that problem go away, it might just help Microsoft get back in the mobile business.

Apple has a default set of apps that come with every iPhone and iPod touch that you can’t remove from the device, and that provide some basic features that are likely to appeal to a wide swath of users. The iPad will have a default set, too, but it won’t necessarily include all the familiar apps you know and possibly love.

According to John Gruber of Daring Fireball, apps that Apple didn’t show off during its iPad unveiling event weren’t just left out because there weren’t many major changes made to them, they actually won’t appear on the platform at all. Or, if they do, they won’t ship with the product and instead will be downloadable after the fact via the App Store.

The apps in question are Calculator, Stocks, Weather, Clock and Voice Memos. According to Gruber’s sources, the apps won’t be included not because Apple has deemed them any less useful or appealing to consumers in terms of function, but because Cupertino couldn’t come up with iPad-complementary large-format designs for their user interfaces.

Personally, I’m not too upset about the omissions. I barely ever use Calculator and Voice Memos, and I’ve opened Stocks maybe once or twice. Weather I’ve replaced with a much more functional third-party app. Clock is the only one I use regularly, but I suspect it won’t be that hard to replace it via third-party sources if necessary, either, and I probably won’t have the iPad at the gym anyway, which is where I use Clock the most for its stopwatch functions.

I’m still of the opinion that Apple should make all of its native apps downloadable content, aside from the iPod and phone-related apps on the iPhone, so this is probably as close as I’ll get to that coming true. But it raises an interesting question about third-party apps: if Apple can’t see a way to make some of its content work on the iPad, how are developers going to be expected to cope?

Changing screen size doesn’t only change the amount of space you have in which to display things. It changes a user’s expectation of what a piece of software will be able to do, and the way in which the program will do it. Games may be able to escape this expectation gap, since they provide roughly the same thing whether portable or not (hence the success of PS ports on the PSP), but utilities and other apps likely won’t.

It’s fine for existing iPhone and iPod touch owners, who will probably just find using old apps dissatisfying, but know to wait for iPad-specific programs. But what about users new not only to the platform, but to iPhone OS as a whole? Ill-fitting apps could sour these new customers against the iPad right out of the gate, conceivably alienating some so strongly that they might not return to Apple for future products.

There’s two ways Apple can fight this: from launch, it should highlight and drive new customers to an iPad-specific section of the App Store, possibly through a modification to the App Store application itself on the device. I’m almost certain this will happen anyway, but the app should default to iPad-only titles at launch to make certain that inexperienced users will only be exposed to those if they don’t understand App Store navigation fully off the bat.

Finally, Apple needs to better encourage developers to convert existing apps to the iPad’s dimensions, and alter their UIs accordingly. I’m not sure yet how Apple is planning to deal with developers wanting to offer iPad and iPhone-specific versions of the same app, but making that process as simple as possible for consumers looking to choose one over the other will be key to establishing developer good faith, and convincing users that the iPad isn’t jut the big iPod many detractors are making it out to be.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits the Right Notes
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

When it was first unveiled, Apple’s new iTunes LP format -– codenamed “Cocktail” and introduced at a “rock and roll event” in San Francisco -– promised to give consumers a new reason to buy albums instead of individual songs. Offering expanded cover art, lyrics, videos, animation and other digital goodies, iTunes LP was intended to evoke the feeling of spinning an LP record and holding the jacket in your hands. Especially when paired with a tablet computer (then rumored, now real) that would provide a new way to view large-format art, consumers were promised a digital experience that mimicked a physical one.

Six months later, however, iTunes LP doesn’t prompt much consumer recognition, and none of the industry sources with whom I spoke said they viewed it as being anywhere close to game-changing from a format perspective. Rather, it’s considered more of a curiosity. Read the full article on GigaOM →

Watching the iPad’s first television spot on the Oscars Sunday night, I got giddy all over again in anticipation of getting my hands on this hot new product. Though it’s still a few weeks away, I’m even more excited for the applications that will be coming to the platform. Here’s my top 10 list of apps that I want to see developed for the iPad.

Coda

As a graphic designer and web developer, Coda is a staple in my workflow. It features a built-in FTP system, which could be problematic to port to a mobile device, considering there isn’t a traditional file structure to store data. However, perhaps the iPad’s new file storage system will provide an adequate solution. Regardless, as someone who codes, it would be awesome to sit next to a client and modify code and push changes to a site all from my iPad while they load and test the revisions on their own desktop.

Photoshop

Before you laugh, remember that Adobe has already released Photoshop Mobile for the iPhone, and all things considered, it’s not such a bad application. A larger iPad version could allow support for opening and manipulating native Photoshop files as well as working between multiple files. CS4 introduced a new tabbed approach to viewing multiple documents at once. A similar setup could easily be implemented on the iPad.

Katamari Damacy

What’s a fun touchscreen device without a fun game? Katamari already exists as an iPhone app so it’ll scale up decently on the iPad. But given the advanced graphics of the iPad and the larger screen, a native iPad version is a must. If you’ve never played Katamari, check out this clip below.

iMovie

Call me crazy (it doesn’t hurt to be wishful) but the feasibility of an iMovie-like app is certainly within the realm of possibility. I would have never expected Apple to introduce video editing on the iPhone. Nevertheless, along with a video camera, the iPhone 3GS allows for simple video edits. Why couldn’t we have a larger implementation of this on the iPad, provided it gains a video camera at some point? With the larger screen, there’s plenty of room to view a larger timeline, add transitions or effects and with one tap, upload your masterpiece to YouTube.

iChat

I’m actually quite surprised this app still hasn’t made it to the iPhone yet, but as a platform that’s designed to be “the best way to experience the web, email, photos and video,” the iPad seems like the perfect device for iChat, especially if a future model gains a video camera.

Screen Sharing or Remote Desktop

There have been a number of third-party developers that have created similar apps for the iPhone, but I’m honestly shocked to see that Apple hasn’t implemented its own solution yet. With a larger screen and almost full-size keyboard, remotely accessing and interacting with other Macs on my network would be a breeze on the iPad.

Preview

While the iBooks application will open books that are in EPUB format, I’d love to see a more robust implementation of Preview available on the iPad (and iPhone). Specifically, an app that is capable of annotating PDF files and provides support for links within PDFs. Since I’m also an academic, some of the journals I read (as PDFs) contain bookmarks to other articles or chapters and currently, none of the built-in applications on the iPhone support interacting with them.

Hulu

I don’t care how it has to happen or if it involves Flash or not. Who doesn’t want Hulu on the iPad? Even if it required a small subscription, I would love to be able to access my Hulu queue on the go. Better yet, since the iPad is a closed system, the app could download and cache content so it wouldn’t necessarily have to be streamed in real time. This could be a great solution to save AT&T’s crowded bandwidth for 3G models and allow WiFi-only models to still play even if a network isn’t around. I’d pay for that; would you?

Bento/Filemaker

Now that we have iWork, how about a real implementation of Bento (or FileMaker if that’s not too much to ask)? The current iPhone version is pretty pathetic and really hard to use to manipulate larger databases. While FileMaker may be a stretch, I’d put serious money on seeing an iPad version of Bento before the year is out.

An Improved iTunes App

It looks as though the new iTunes app represents a step ahead of the current iPhone version, but there are still some missing features that would make this app a rock star on the iPad. Adding support for Internet radio, browsing my other libraries by Home Sharing or support for iTunes Extras and LPs would be amazing. Honestly, why hasn’t Apple announced support of iTunes Extras and LPs? The specs call for a viewing area of 1280×720 (the 720p high definition standard). They also call for building your iTunes Extras with what’s called a bleed graphic, or a graphic that can “fill in the extra space” if you’re viewing it at a size greater than 1280×720. Now given that as a way to compensate for a difference in aspect ratios, if you were to scale down an iTunes Extra for the 1024×768 display, wouldn’t it just make sense? Come on, if the Apple TV can do it (and we all know how excited Apple gets about that product), shouldn’t the iPad as well?

What are your thoughts on apps you’d like to see? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The great thing about Apple’s developer community is that they keep up with what’s discussed in the blogosphere. You never know; a developer might see your suggestions. So, share what you’d like to see on the iPad!

It may be a little early to say this, but to me it seems like Microsoft took all the disappointment and fear resulting from Apple’s dominance of the mobile devices category over its own products through the years and used that energy to create the Courier. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen another company’s product and thought “That seems like something Apple would’ve made.”

Engadget posted more details about the device late last week, including two lengthy HD interface videos. Microsoft isn’t yet officially saying anything about whether or not this will become a production device, but Engadget seems very confident in its sources, and I’d be inclined to believe them since it seems more than likely Redmond is taking a page out of Apple’s marketing playbook by keeping things somewhat hush-hush but using “leaks” to steal focus.

Microsoft gets a lot of flak for doing a tablet the wrong way, as demonstrated by the HP model it unveiled ahead of the iPad to grab some of the attention away from that spotlight hog. But the Courier doesn’t have the same shortcomings. For one, it’s not based on Windows 7, but on a version of Windows CE 6, which also provides the basis for the Zune HD’s interface and the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 OS. It also runs on the Tegra 2, an impressive mobile processor.

It also has some considerable advantages over its Apple rival, especially if the hype is actually representative of what a production version will look like. First, there’s the size. The clamshell design allows it to be smaller than the iPad, while providing more screen real estate. Closed, it’s said to measure five by seven inches, and still remain less than an inch thick. It should also weigh less than a pound. It should take up just a little less space than the Amazon Kindle, for reference, which goes a long way toward making it truly, conveniently portable.

The Courier’s big advantage over the iPad, for me, isn’t the dual-screen design (although that helps), but the combination of pen and touch input. If I had to choose one, I’d go with touch, as Apple’s done with the iPad, but the opportunity to have both is a major selling point. Viewing the UI videos emphasizes why, and if you’ve ever used a tablet with a computer, especially those with a built-in display, you’ll know why a pen is a much better option than trying to learn to write or draw with your clumsy finger.

Microsoft’s notebook tablet is also refreshing because of its emphasis on interactivity between components and hardware features of the device. The software seems designed from the start to work perfectly not only with the specific features of the device, but also with every other software component of the OS, and all through a brilliantly intuitive UI. Nor is it a closed system despite this sharp focus, since the sharing features appear to be rich and varied.

Apple, for its part, emphasizes the apps. Apps are great, and they provide some pretty useful functions and terrific distractions, but they don’t really seem to work as well or with the same degree of interconnection as the Courier’s software promises to. Even Apple’s own built-in apps don’t have anywhere near as much potential for communication between and across each other.

In my opinion, where Apple got lazy with the iPad, Microsoft is throwing its entire mobile future behind the Courier. Not only that, but these previews are emphasizing the Courier’s strengths over the iPad without addressing things like media playback. The impression I get isn’t that the Courier is bad at those things, just that they’re taken as given. Instead, Redmond’s project is all about what a tablet can do that a media player can’t, something I’ve yet to really see illustrated by Apple regarding the iPad.

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits the Right Notes
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

Swapping turtleneck for tuxedo, Steve Jobs made a rare public appearance when he took to the red carpet at the Academy Awards last night, spotted first by eagle-eyed social media maven Wayne Sutton who posted to his blog; OMG it’s Steve Jobs! I’m the only one yelling at him! #oscars #kodakredcarpet

Sutton doesn’t mention whether his yells went unnoticed by His Steveness, but he posted a fantastic snapshot of the event to his blog — take a look and see if you can spot El Jobso for yourself (it’s not immediately easy to find him in the crowd, but once you see him, he’s hard to miss!)

Image courtesy of Wayne Sutton

The Theme Begins (Prequel to The Oscar Theme)

Now why would the normally shy and retiring Steve Jobs be at the Academy Awards Oscar ceremony? Well, he is the largest individual shareholder in the Walt Disney Company, to whom he sold Pixar Animation Studios in 2006. Pixar is the legendary computer animation studio responsible for the box office hits Toy Story and Finding Nemo (to name only two of many others) and its latest CG offering, Up, was nominated for an impressive five Academy Awards (and was the first Pixar film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture).

On the night, Up received two of those Oscars; Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score. Steve didn’t take to the stage to receive the awards, but I’m sure he was grinning from ear to ear like a proud father at his child’s first music recital.

The Oscar Theme

If you’re interested in the mechanics of modern movie making, you’ll find this fascinating; Macworld UK reports that a staggering nine out of ten of the Oscar-nominated Documentaries (across both the Short and Feature Documentary categories) were edited on Macs using Final Cut Pro.

If you’re not a movie maker, you might not know that Final Cut Pro is Apple’s pro-level film editing software. Speaking from personal experience of many hours spent in many darkened editing suites all around the world, there are (broadly speaking) three dominant software editing tools; Avid, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro. (There are others, of course, but they’re far less commonly used in the film and TV industry.)

Avid has traditionally been the editing platform of choice and still reigns supreme, though mostly because it has been around since the Stone Age and many long-established editing facilities using Avid suites have long-term service contracts tying them to that platform. But Final Cut Pro (and the Final Cut Studio suite of film making tools) has been gaining ground in recent years, due in part to its relative affordability and Apple’s amazingly progressive efforts to develop and promote new HD codecs and standards, such as the ProRes family. (For more on this, you can watch a video on Apple’s Final Cut product pages.)

That almost all the Award-nominated Short and Feature Documentaries were edited using Final Cut (and, therefore, made on Macs) speaks volumes about filmmakers’ faith in, and trust for, Apple’s technologies.

The Oscar Theme Part 2: The Theme Continues

The impressive numbers continue. I almost missed this one, but last week The Awl’s Abe Sauer penned Why Apple Deserves and Oscar Too, which started with this remarkable tidbit;

In the 44 films in 2009 that topped the box office for at least one weekend, an Apple logo or device could be seen in at least 18 of them. (That’s almost 41%.) In some, Apple products even eclipsed their human scene partners. This high appearance rate does not include the heap of mass-market films from 2009 that did not own a weekend but also featured Apple product placement.

Sauer has done his homework. He goes on to list a fair number of those movies (you can read the list for yourself here) and, if you’ve got the time to spare, (7 minutes and 25 seconds, to be precise) there’s even a Ken Burns-tastic video slideshow of screenshots from movies and TV shows through the years featuring Apple products. Sauer adds;

…Brandcameo shows that Apple has appeared in 102 of the 302 weekly number one U.S. box office films from 2001 to 2009—more than 33% of them. Apple’s number is actually higher when period and fantasy/scifi films, in which Apple could not appear, are removed (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars prequels 3:10 to Yuma, etc.).

Right then, don’t let it be said that Apple’s brand managers aren’t doing good work.

The Oscar Theme Part 3: Oscar’s Revenge

During the ad break (presumably while Oscar winners were busy phoning their Moms with the good news) the first ever iPad television commercial was broadcast. The ad itself is a bit “meh,” to be honest; it didn’t light the world on fire and teach us anything we didn’t already know. But that’s OK, because what really matters, I suppose, is that a very large audience not normally exposed to tech/gadget news saw the iPad for the first time. You can watch the ad on Apple’s website here.

I’m still wondering what Apple was up to in that diner back in August last year. At this rate, I think we’ll have to wait for next year’s Oscars to find out.

So here we are, just past the six month mark since Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard was sprung last August 28, and I’m still using OS 10.5 Leopard.

I have lots of company. The NetApplications HitsLink Market Share data for February 2010 shows that Leopard is still the most widely-used OS X version, with a 2.21 percent global market share compared to 1.8 percent for Snow Leopard, and good old OS 10.4 Tiger still hanging in at 0.72 percent.

Why the Procrastination?

So, why the procrastination about upgrading? It’s certainly not the cost holding me back. Snow Leopard is the cheapest Mac OS version upgrade in history, other than complete freebies.

Well, for one thing, Leopard works so darned well, and making a major OS upgrade always involves time investment and the hassle of upgrading at least some of your software and utilities (more about that in a moment), and I’ve been short of spare time the last several months. I also tend to be of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” persuasion, and haven’t been convinced there’s anything Snow Leopard has to offer that’s a genuine must-have for me.

Some of the improvements — things like a more responsive Finder rewritten from scratch in Cocoa, faster Time Machine backups, a more powerful version of the Preview application — sound like welcome tweaks, but nothing I find compelling. Stuff like enhanced Microsoft Exchange Server support for Mail, iCal, and Address Book have zero appeal for me since I don’t use that service or any of those features, preferring third-party alternatives. Nor do Snow Leopard’s Safari upgrades fizz me much since I favor other browsers with Safari being my fourth or fifth choice, if that.

Bitten Once…

There is also the bitten once; twice shy factor. I ordered OS 10.5 Leopard from Amazon.com a day or two after it was released on October 26, 2007, and immediately installed it on my then main production machine, a 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4. I’m not by nature or temperament an enthusiastic early adopter, but Leopard, hyped by Apple as being “the largest update of Mac OS X” yet, incorporating more than 300 new features, had so much cool stuff I really wanted to check out. Especially the Spaces and QuickLook features, which were every bit as good or even better than I had anticipated, and what I miss most on the two old G4 upgraded Pismo PowerBooks I still have in daily service running OS 10.4.

However, there was pain associated with my early move to Leopard, notwithstanding all the good stuff. I’m a windowshading junkie, and I simply can’t abide not having that feature, for which no function built into any version of OS X comes remotely close to being a satisfactory substitute. Windowshading’s been integrated into my work habits for more than a decade. Typically I may have two dozen or so windows open, scattered amongst nine Spaces views, mostly windowshaded, conveniently identifiable by their full title bars being visible.

Unfortunately, OS 10.5 upgrade broke third-party WindowShade X, and I was obliged to struggle along for several months without windowshading until its developer, Unsanity Software, got a Leopard-compatible version of its proprietary and required system add-on Application Enhancer (APE) out the door in February 2008, mercifully restoring WindowShade X support to Leopard.

Withdrawal too Painful to Repeat

Snow Leopard broke Windowshade X and Application Enhancer redux, and I’m not willing to go through that form of addiction withdrawal again.

Unsanity say they’re busily rewriting their more popular “haxie” add-ons to support Snow Leopard, the latest word being that WindowShade X is largely redone, its MIP system rewritten from scratch, and currently at internal beta status, a new build seeded to testers on February 13. A public beta should be released any day now. Until it is, I’m sticking with Leopard.

How about you? If you’re among the plurality of Mac users still running Leopard, and not because you’re on a PowerPC Mac, is something else in particular holding you back?

This past Thursday Apple announced sweeping changes to the Developer Program. The old Select and Premiere programs have been replaced by a $99/year Mac Developer Program that is similar to the iPhone Developer Program. The old ADC programs were substantially more expensive ($499 and $3,499) and the program benefits have been simplified to match the new lower cost.

Apple had this to say…

Modeled after the highly successful iPhone Developer Program, we’ve relaunched the Mac Developer Program to offer members technical resources, support, access to pre-release software, developer forums and more, all for just $99 per year. As our developer base continues to grow in leaps and bounds, we’re working hard to ensure we provide our developers with everything they need to create innovative applications for both the iPhone OS and Mac OS X

Benefits

Developers that enroll in the new Mac Developer Program have access to pre-release builds of Mac OS X, OS X Server, tools, and SDKs. Xcode was always available for free, but access to Snow Leopard for development will encourage developers to begin incorporating the unique technology available in 10.6 (Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, etc.) into their applications. OS X Server, even for development testing, is a nice plus.

The annual subscription includes two technical support incidents where Apple will assign an engineer from the developer support team to help track down a problem and recommend a solution. Additional support incidents are still available for purchase as they were under the old program. Incidents are $99 for a two-pack or $499 for a five-pack.

Members also have access to developer forums and video training. The forums are a great resource because they are filled with posts from registered developers, including many recognizable names from well-known Mac shops. The videos do not include the WWDC session videos, which are still available for purchase separately ($299 for a Mac session, or $499 for the complete collection).

It appears that access to the compatibility labs and the ADC Hardware Purchase discounts are not available in the new Mac Developer program. Existing members can continue to access their ADC benefits until their subscription expires.

Apple has not made any changes to its current programs for Support and Pro Apps certifications to expand into developer certifications.

The iPhone SDK Halo Effect

The new pricing and web site modeled after the iPhone program should serve to bring more developers over to the Mac side. With all the interest in iPhone apps, there are a number of developers that are now familiar with Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks. There may be a sort of programming halo effect similar to the phenomenon seen on the consumer side where customers happy with the iPod or iPhone are convinced to try the Mac for their next computer. Gedeon Maheux co-founder of the successful design and development outfit Iconfactory had this to say:

The lower entry price and the ability to use knowledge learned for their mobile platforms both seem like a logical evolution of what they’ve done in the last few years.

The Mac has been out of the lime light for quite some time and I think Apple is rightfully attempting to put the focus back on the platform. It sure is exciting!

With the new file-sharing support in the iPad, desktop companion apps will be a great benefit to iPhone/iPad apps. Of course, designing apps for the iPad with its large screen is getting awfully close to designing an app for the Mac. I am hopeful that the new program will encourage even more development on the Mac OS platform. For example, casual games have made a huge splash in the App Store and bringing over some of these titles to the Mac might be great fun for those without iPhones, and an alternate revenue stream for publishers. The $99 price might be just enough to convince some iPhone developers to give it a go on the Mac as well.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

Mac users are missing out on cheap (read: free), social customer relationship management. Windows users have xobni, a simple tool that integrates with Outlook, and Microsoft will also be releasing a solution in Office 2010 called Outlook Social Connector. But what if you have a Mac? Xobni doesn’t support Entourage or Mail.app, and who knows when Entourage will receive features its cousin on Windows has.

Now there’s a solution for the Mac: Rapportive. It takes over the advertisements area in Gmail, and provides basic information about your email correspondents: occupation, Twitter/Flickr/LinkedIn links, age, location and custom notes. Yes, it supports Google Apps accounts, and the preview version of Mailplane now has an option to view Rapportive data. The experience definitely feels like a beta, with occasional inaccurate or missing information, but it’s great having so much additional context inside my email.

The problem? Rapportive so far only works in Google Chrome and Firefox as an extension. Safari is missing out since it doesn’t support simple extension development. Now that Chrome has overtaken Safari in market share, Apple needs to step up its game in terms of features. Both Safari and Mail.app need extension support to integrate all of these new social products. I am aware that some important extensions like Evernote and 1Password exist for Safari, but there is no official Apple documentation or support on how to build extensions. This needs to change. Unfortunately for Apple, Google and Mozilla already have thousands of extensions available.

Yesterday Apple announced the arrival date of its much-ballyhooed tablet, the iPad. It will have a staggered release throughout April, beginning on the 3rd in the U.S. Once it does arrive, we’ll see what effect it has on the mobile landscape. But right now, Apple has other things to worry about if it wants to keep its newly minted status as a leading mobile device company.

The recent threats are at least twofold, one of immediate concern and one potentially dangerous down the road. First, there’s Android’s continued growth in terms of mobile marketshare, compared to Apple’s shrinking slice of the pie. Second, there’s Sony’s potential expansion of its mobile operations into direct competition with the iPhone.

Web analytics firm Quantcast released figures this week that show iPhone OS is still the dominant force in terms of mobile web usage, but the trend is working slowly against it. It lost 3.2 percent of its market share last month, while RIM and Google’s Android both gained ground. Over the past quarter, Android has gained a whopping 44 percent, while Apple has lost between five and 10 percent during the same period.

That’s only market share percentage, though. Apple is still showing positive growth in terms of mobile users and pageviews, but Google is just doing it that much faster. Which should be worrying to the current king of mobile web. The Nexus One may have been a relatively innocuous volley in the ongoing war, but Google is gaining steam, and quickly.

Another competitor is said to be waiting in the wings, too. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sony is gearing up to offer an iPhone competitor that could have one key advantage: the ability to play PSP and PlayStation games downloaded directly to the advice. That would be in addition to music, video and e-book content that it would also offer for sale through digital distribution.

Sony is not inexperienced in the cell phone market, and it already has a successful digital distribution framework operating as the PlayStation Network store. A PSP with smartphone features could be a very attractive proposition for young customers just entering the market.

Long story short, Apple has enjoyed a lengthy head start in the mobile web generation of smartphones, but after many, many failed attempts, a few competitors are beginning to realize exactly what it will take to catch up to Cupertino. And at this crucial point, Apple is focusing on jumpstarting a brand new market that many aren’t sure even has much potential.

The danger is that the iPhone isn’t being given sufficient attention thanks to the iPad’s imminent launch. If the next generation iPhone only gets some minor incremental updates, like the iPhone 3GS did, then I will seriously begin to question Apple’s sense of prioritization. Resting on its laurels for another year won’t help the company widen the closing gap between it and its competitors, whether or not the iPad succeeds.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Is an iPhone- and Android-Only World the Best We Can Do?

Woo hoo! Now we know when we get to buy the iPad. However, we haven’t been told where we get to buy it. Of course the Apple Stores (both online and off) will carry it, but the end of the press release has a cryptic statement that the iPad will be sold at select (emphasis added) Apple Authorized Resellers.

That probably means not every place that can sell Apple products will be allowed to sell iPads. This is a curious position for Apple and its distribution strategy. Which model does it choose?

Let’s take the iPhone. It’s very limited in distribution. Apple and AT&T controlled sales at the beginning and then eventually allowed places such as Wal-Mart and BestBuy to carry it. Apple COO Tim Cook confirmed BestBuy would sell the iPad but didn’t say who else would have that capability. Logically, anywhere you can buy an iPhone you should be able to buy an iPad, right?

What about any place you can buy an iMac? Only time will tell, but here is what I think will happen. Cue the special effects.

First to get the iPad will be campus bookstores. Education is a key market and I’m sure many parents want to give iPads to their kids before they go off to college. Traditionally in the fall Apple has promotions for education consumers that give away a free iPod when you buy a Mac. That might fall by the wayside to be replaced with a discount deal on an iPad. Most likely the iPad 3G won’t be sold there because campuses already have wireless and campus bookstores won’t have the staff to deal with the nuances of selling AT&T wireless service.

AT&T stores will obviously carry the iPad 3G, but probably not the iPad Wi-Fi. Space is at a premium at AT&T stores and the margins on the iPad are going to be relatively low. I’m going to conjecture it will allow you to buy the iPad without buying a data plan, but will do a hard sell for it. I don’t think AT&T will discount the iPad if you buy a data plan however.

Apple Specialists, who according to Apple “are independent Apple Dealers and Service Providers with a strong commitment to the Mac platform” have also been unofficially slated to sell the iPad Wi-Fi. The Specialist I spoke with could neither confirm nor deny the rumor, but simply smiled at me, which is a good sign. I doubt they’ll get the iPad 3G. Many Specialists often have retail locations that could compete with sales at AT&T locations. Apple will want to protect the AT&T stores as much as possible.

Traditional catalog retailers will also get the iPad Wi-Fi. These places already sell the entire Apple product line except for the iPhone. Unlike the other channels, I think Apple will experiment with allowing these resellers to sell the 3G versions. Catalog companies often sell mobile phones so they have the support to deal with this type of sale. Apple will want to directly compete with the other netbook offerings from these resellers and will want the iPad 3G sales from these vendors.

Left up in the air are the places you can buy an iPod and iPod touch, but not a Mac, such as department stores and even vending machines. These retailers probably won’t be invited to the iPad party. To keep Apple’s brand image going strong, Apple will want some degree of exclusivity as to who gets to sell the iPad. Too many returns and salespeople who aren’t properly trained could sour people on the Apple brand. iPads won’t be sold in vending machines like iPod nanos.

Not mentioned in the press release is the role of the highly profitable AppleCare for these devices. Anyone who sells AppleCare will be able to sell AppleCare for the iPad, but pricing will likely be more expensive than for an iPod or iPhone.

Where do you think you’ll be able to buy an iPad?

Related Research from GigaOM Pro:

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits the Right Notes
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

This morning, Apple finally announced the release date for its anticipated iPad, detailing that the tablet device will be available starting Saturday, April 3.

The early April weekend launch will see only the Wi-Fi model of the touch-screen device being made available, starting at $499, with the 3G model being introduced later that month. Apple detailed that these dates only apply to the U.S., with international releases in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom to come towards the end of April. Sadly no specific dates or pricing for the international launch have been confirmed as of yet, however Macworld UK has been speculating about the price for British customers.

In the lead up to the official launch, Apple will be running a pre-order scheme, which starts March 12. Then on April 3, customers based in the U.S. will have their Wi-Fi iPad delivered to their doorstep or to their local Apple Store for pickup, whichever they choose. No word yet on the official launch or delivery date for the 3G model.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who revealed the iPad back in January, said the following about the upcoming launch: “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

Reports popped up early this week hinting that the iPad would launch on March 26, with further rumors suggesting that iPad’s would be arriving in stores for staff training as early as March 10. Of course word from Apple regarding the launch has now set the record straight, confirming the speculated delay until April.

So with the iPad launch details now laid bare, will you be picking one up at launch? If so are you opting for the Wi-Fi or 3G model? Let us know in the comments.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic
• With The iPad, Apple Takes Google To the Mat
• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes

If you’ve ever Control-clicked (also known as ‘right click’) a file, you’ve seen a listing of actions presented to you that can be carried out on that file. This menu is called a contextual menu, but that’s not the point of this exercise. What is the point, is the item called ‘Get Info’. Today, I’d like to show you some of the hidden gems that can be found within this screen.

Get Info is a function of the Finder, and displays properties about a file or folder. To follow along at home, open the Finder and simply right-click any file on your computer, and then choose ‘Get Info’. We’ll start from the top, and work our way down.

1: Title Bar (of Get Info Window)
If you Control-click the icon in the title bar of this window, you’ll see a hierarchy that represents the location of this file on your computer’s hard drive. If you then click on any of the higher level locations listed, a Finder window opens to that folder. This can be useful for files nested many folders deep in a hierarchy.

2: Change the File’s Icon
Below the Title Bar, is a larger icon which represents the file we’re looking at. If you click (just once) on that larger icon, you’ll notice a slight glow outlines it. This is a hint that you can do something with that icon. If you want to change the icon of this file, here’s what you do:

1. Select the icon you want to duplicate and copy it. You can do this simply by locating it in the Finder, clicking it, and copying it with a Command+C keyboard shortcut.
2. Click the large icon in the Get Info window of the file who’s icon you want to change. When the colored glow shows around the icon, use Command+V to paste the icon you copied in step 1. That’s it. Now the Finder will display this file’s new icon.

3: Spotlight Comments
I’ve covered this extensively in years past. Spotlight Comments are sort of keywords that you can manually add to a file. They are indexed by Spotlight for searching.

4: General
(If the arrow next to the name General is pointing to the right, click on it and it will drop down the contents of this section of the window.) There is some general information found here — hence the name. But below the information are two items with check boxes beside them: Stationary Pad, and Locked.

• Stationary Pad – Checking this box makes the current file a template file. Once you’ve checked this box, and then open the file again, a duplicate of this file will be made and opened, so the original will be protected from edits. It’s a nice way to make a template, or keep a pristine version of any kind of file in OS X.
• Locked – If you check the Locked box (I just got a flashback of an Al Gore skit on SNL), you are effectively protecting the file against deletion, or against being moved from its current location.

5: More Info
Brilliantly named, you get more info here. Document Author and a last opened date.

6: Name & Extension
You can alter the name here. Of course you can do that without opening Get Info, so you’re better off doing it from the file location in Finder. But you can also choose to show or hide the file’s extension using the check box here.

7: Open With
This one’s got some power under the hood. I’ll illustrate the usefulness of this part with a personal example:
I’ve got several Text Editors installed on my Mac. I prefer for .txt files to always open into TextMate. I can accomplish this by doing a Get Info on any .txt file, and choosing TextMate as the ‘open with’ option. Once I’ve done that, by clicking the “Change All…” button, all .txt files will automatically open with TextMate rather than any of the other apps that also handle .txt files. If the application you want to use doesn’t show in the drop down list, select ‘Other’ and browse to the application you want. This is a huge time saver for many folks.

8: Preview
Not much to see here. It’s a preview of the document file. But you can’t read it — although it is an exact replica of the actual document’s contents. You can drag the preview image and hold Option to create a copy of the file, if that’s something that’s exciting for you.

9: Sharing & Permissions
If you ever run into problems with being able to read or change a file — or someone else is — then you might check here. Though as fair warning, fiddling with permissions can have adverse affects, so unless you know what you’re changing, you may want to avoid changing these details.

So that concludes our tour. Some of the items within Get Info are obvious. But there are some gems worth knowing. My hope is that you found something you had been looking for, or had not previously known about.

Over at Patently Apple, Jack Burcher Purcher reports that Apple is applying for a trademark called “Joint Venture.” The trademark application indicates that this will most likely be some kind of new service offering by Apple. Might Apple start providing on-site service just like Best Buy’s Geek Squad?

The key clauses in the patent application seem to indicate this just might be the case:

“International Class 037: Maintenance, installation and repair of computer hardware, computer peripherals, computer networks, and consumer electronic devices; information, advisory and consultancy services relating to all the aforesaid.”

“International Class 042: Technical support and consulting services pertaining to computer hardware, computer peripherals, computer software and consumer electronics; troubleshooting and computer diagnostic services for computer hardware, computer peripherals, computer software and consumer electronic devices; consulting services in the field of selection, implementation and use of computer hardware and software systems for others.”

Would this be a good thing for Apple customers? Certainly being able to purchase additional on-site services directly from an Apple Store would be convenient. The Geniuses stay locked behind the bar (pun intended) and Apple relies on independent third-party sources who are often part of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN) or Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASP) to provide on-site service to Apple’s customers. For many of them, paying Apple directly to set up their Xserve or Airport Extreme may be a great idea and would be consistent with the offerings of big PC companies that provide end-to-end support for larger installations. Joint Venture members would be people trained by Apple, and specializing in Macs (unlike Best Buy’s on-site squad). It’s always possible that Apple could decide to have Joint Venture members be existing members of the ACN and AASP programs and the trademark could all be about branding.

If Apple opts for its own on-site “Genius Squad,” it would likely be biased towards Apple-approved solutions, utilizing equipment that Cupertino sells. This may limit the choice of customers and marginalize third-party vendors that don’t sell items in the Apple Store or web site. Currently AASPs and ACNs don’t work for Apple and don’t always recommend pure Apple solutions for their customers. If Apple entered into this territory, it could put some of these smaller independent companies out of business just as the Apple Stores did for independent Apple resellers.

Which is better? Independent support by non-Apple employees or on-site consultants who work for Apple? My vote, of course, is for independent solutions, but that’s because I’m a member of the ACN.

Then again, Apple may just be covering its bases should it ever decided to compete with, or limit, the AASP or ACN program. Apple’s silent on what it intends to do; the trademark filing is the only clue. Of course, I’m not sure which color shirt a potential “Genius Squad” would wear, either. Black turtlenecks would be too obvious.

Penguin doesn’t want to just continue releasing your standard, garden-variety e-books on a new platform with the iPad. CEO John Makinson showed off what his company had in mind for the platform at a presentation earlier this week, as reported by paidContent.

Penguin is apparently looking to sidestep the iBookstore altogether and sell content through the regular App Store, at least unless Apple has additional formats beyond .epub to offer for the iBook app. The publisher wants to offer embedded interactive content in its titles, including audio, video and device-to-device functions.

Looking at what Penguin is planning, I’m reminded of those elaborate electronic reading learning systems designed for children, or the original electronic books, which included simple noisemakers alongside traditional paper texts. In other words, it’s kind of neat, especially if you’re a five-year old, but it doesn’t really strike me as the exciting future of books Penguin is making it out to be. Besides, I don’t want a five-year old getting my iPad all grubby and sticky. Here’s a video of what the publisher was showing off:

The books demoed that were aimed at a more mature audience were a little more impressive, but I was mostly struck by how much they resembled regular apps more than anything else. They seemed like slightly less capable apps, in fact, in that they were still trying to look like books despite there being no point to that. People have developed great medical and astronomy apps for the iPhone (and iPad, by extension) platform. Why would I choose a book that’s been somewhat awkwardly made into an app instead of something designed, from concept to finished product, specifically for the platform?

As someone who avidly enjoys reading, and also buys more iPhone apps than is probably wise or justifiable, even if I do write for an Apple-centric blog, I’m not sold on Penguin’s vision of the future of books on the iPad. I don’t read books for the same reason that I use software applications or interact with rich media, and I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of mixing the two concepts. I think in doing so, you run the risk of losing the value of one or both of these activities.

A quote by Makinson illustrates exactly what scares me about Penguin’s plans:

We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.

Cool stuff? Books aren’t cool. They don’t need to be, and your desperate attempts at staying relevant won’t change that.

Us Mac gamers are a much abused, much maligned lot. We get titles late, and most never at all. By the time most titles do come to the Mac, we’ve probably already broken down and played them using Boot Camp or that gaming PC we hide in the closet that we bought specifically for the purpose. Today, things are looking up.

PC game maker and distributor Valve is dropping all kinds of hints, which are by no means ambiguous, that Steam and many of its titles are headed to the Mac sometime in the near future. MacRumors and various other Mac news sites received teaser images direct from Valve themselves, all of which point to that very same conclusion.

The teaser received by MacRumors features Half-Life protagonist Gordon Freeman wielding a crowbar and wearing an Apple logo on his chest. The image was sent “in anticipation of an upcoming announcement from Valve.” No timeframe or additional details about this announcement were included, however, so we’re left to speculate about that, although next week sees the annual Game Developers Conference taking place in San Francisco, so that’s a good candidate for a potential date.

Other sites also received tantalizing teaser images in a similar vein, which, when you notice the iPhone-like selector control at the bottom of the images, gives a pretty good indication that all are from the same series and further evidence of a Mac connection. MacNN received one using turrets from Team Fortress 2 and Portal acting as Mac and PC from the Justin Long/John Hodgman series of ads:

Shacknews got this image of a Team Fortress 2 Heavy class character as an iPod silhouette:

Eurogamer received this one, featuring a Left 4 Dead character and the “Hate Different” twist on Apple’s longtime slogan:

Rock, Paper, Shotgun got another promo, which plays off of the ad for the first Mac and seems the most clear about Valve’s intentions:

Finally, Macworld received this picture of Half-Life 2’s Alyx Vance character reenacting Apple’s instantly recognizable 1984 commercial:

Additional evidence for the introduction of some kind of Mac version of Steam can be found in the inclusion of Mac elements in the latest beta builds of the game marketplace software. For Mac users who’ve maybe shut out all gaming news out of bitterness or jealousy, Steam is Valve’s digital game distribution software for the PC. It also provides digital rights management (DRM) services for developers, and multiplayer services for users. So far, only Mac Games Arcade provides a similar service for the Mac, but that’s honestly like comparing an aircraft carrier (Steam) to a dinghy (Mac Games Arcade).

You know what’s a bummer? Being tied to an office answering to the man. After all, getting work done on a beach, at a café or at home is still getting work done.

That’s why LogMeIn Free is perfect for the remote or flex-time worker. It provides free remote control to your Mac or PC from any Internet-connected device. So you can get whatever you need to get done anytime, anywhere.

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It’s as if you are sitting right in front of the remote Mac or PC. And, as it turns out, all this freedom also makes you more productive since you are no longer “away” from your computers. No matter where you happen to be.

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