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Happy Birthday, Mac!

And thanks for this.

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Businesses: Keep using Windows. I need the money!

I just finished with a visit to one of my clients. We were investigating why several users could not use a specific invoicing site. The first thing I did was connect my MBP to their wireless network and try the site in question. Bing! Everything worked great. That eliminated the possibility of there being a systemic network/firewall problem preventing the site from functioning properly. Next I went to the user who submitted the problem. When I sat down at his desk and tried to get to the same site that just worked fine on my Mac I was deluged with popups, redirects and more ads than I could sift through. Holy crap! I wondered how this guy gets anything done on this machine. He had TrendMicro installed as his security suite so I decided to run a quick scan of his C drive. Within 5 minutes with only 10% of the drive scanned, TrendMicro found 18 threats. I immediately went to the next room and shut down my Mac. This network was completely compromised.

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Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB: One Mic Fits All

I was listening to MacBreak Weekly a few days ago when Alex Lindsay recommended the ATR2100-USB as his “pick of the week”. He accurately described the mic’s features and when I heard about its dual USB & XLR connectivity I knew I had to have it. I’ve been looking for a good mic that’s versatile enough to use in-studio and/or on the road. It was too late to ask for one for Christmas so I did what I often do, went to amazon.com and bought it for 40 bucks. Am I ever pleased!

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The MacTexan Family: Understood

As my family and I sit in the living room of our lake house watching Christmas movies and enjoying a warm fire, I can't help but notice five of six people have an Apple product in their hand/lap. There's three iPhones, a MacBook Pro and the iPad Air I'm writing this on. We are a very close-knit family and we're not being self-absorbed screen zombies, ignoring each other while surfing or perusing Facebook. We're actually sharing pictures and videos, Googling actor and movie information and communicating with family members who can't be with us. Unlike the new "Misunderstood" Apple commercial featuring one family member apparently isolating himself from the rest of his family's Christmas activities by focusing solely on his iPhone, we are using our devices to AirDrop photos and share other media we created (usually with one of us as the subject) or found on-line.

This all started in 2005 when I gave iPod Nanos to all three of my daughters for Christmas. A few months later, envy got the better of me and I purchased a standard iPod (5th gen) for myself. I loved it so much I ditched my Dell laptop and bought a new MacBook Pro three months later. The “halo effect” had firmly taken hold of my family. I was the 10th in line at my nearby Apple store to purchase the original iPhone the day it went on sale in 2007. Owning that truly revolutionary device made me the envy of my entire clan (not to mention my boisterous but now curiously silent Blackberry-toting friends). When I upgraded to the 3G the next year, there was a near fight among my daughters to determine who would get my hand-me-down. Gazelle.com settled the argument. When my oldest graduated from college she requested (and received) the [then] recently announced MacBook Air as a graduation gift to complement her new iPhone 3GS. Now, my entire brood is Mac + iPhone + iPad equipped. It’s like we all took a trip to Cupertino and got exposed to some weird Apple-craving bacteria.

The fact is, Apple devices enhance our family interactions. Though we all live hours apart, iMessage, FaceTime and email keep us in constant contact. Our Apple devices make sharing daily events and family news easy and enjoyable. In fact, we all use “Find My iPhone” and readily share our locations amongst ourselves, so keeping tabs on each other has become a way of life. It’s not creepy, it’s just another way for us to stay connected. You could say the Kelley family ties are strengthened by the wi-fi and LTE connections of their Apple devices. Apple may not be the only company providing this capability, but they were the first and by our measure, still the very best. 

Here's hoping your family is as happy and connected as ours this holiday season.

Merry Christmas