apple juice

Interesting to me that I have not received the push notification that the update was even available, and I hadn’t taken the time invoke it manually…

→ iOS 5.1.1 upgrade stats

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David Smith’s iOS version stats from his apps:

The data for 4 days shows a clear and very consistent progression. Users are updating at a rate of roughly 7.5%/day, leading to a total adoption of around 30% so far.

30% of his userbase has upgraded to the four-day-old, no-new-features, not-marketed iOS 5.1.1 release. That’s incredible.

Also, if you’re a developer, listen to his podcast.

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(Via Marco.org.)

I used to loathe going to the apple store. I feel as though I know one or two things about technology, and I felt the apple store employees were unwilling to acknowledge that and treat me like an advanced user.

Recently I’ve noticed a change, the last few experiences were very pleasant. I’m not sure if new training occurred for the employees, but the employees I have worked with are quick to assess my skill level and respond appropriately.

Over the past month, my iPhone’s home button stopped responding consistently. This morning, I made a genius bar appointment (via the Apple Store app), came in, was promptly helped, she quickly verified the problem, and I walked out with a new / (refurbished?) iPhone within 10 minutes.

To make the whole process even smoother, after syncing my phone, it’s as if nothing ever changed. It’s set up exactly as it was before. (I did have to enter numerous passwords for all of the cloud-synced services)

This article on TechDirt gives the best overview I’ve found yet about the problems with the language in SOPA and PIPA.

Advertising giant GroupM recently asked its entertainment industry customers to compile a list of “sites dedicated to infringement,” not unlike what’s found under PROTECT IP. Universal Music, Warner Bros. and Paramount were three key providers to that list, which ended up covering a large number of perfectly legitimate sites including the famed Internet Archive (widely recognized as the library for the internet). It also included numerous innovative startups that are frequently used by content creators to get their works out, such as SoundCloud and Vimeo. Even more worrisome, it included a variety of publications and blogs, including Vibe Magazine, the quintessential hip hop and R&B magazine founded by Quincy Jones, as well as Complex, a popular lifestyle magazine recently recognized as one of the most valuable startups in New York.

This is my favorite example in the article:

Even worse, it appears that Universal Music also included the personal website of one of its own top artists, 50Cent. The hiphop star has a personal website as well as a website owned by Universal Music. The personal website is much more popular… and it appeared on the infringement list.

I really hope that there is a side effect of this bill: creative people will realize that they don’t need their publishers to get their work out there. (Or if they already realize it, they will act!) What Louis C.K. recently did on his own site serves as a model for any person looking to sell their work – you don’t need the middle man! I think you’ll increasingly see artists of all types reject the existing structure and go directly to the people via the internet. Radiohead, in 2007 did this as well with the album In Rainbows:

In Rainbows is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download self-released, that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007

I just received my Blackbox laptop case for my 15″ MacBook Pro – full disclosure, the company was started by a good friend from college, but I wanted to share a few things about this case that make it pretty awesome.

1. It is lightweight and durable. It’s made out of bamboo, so it is pretty tough. I feel comfortable throwing it in my bag with other junk. I’m not worried about anything crushing the laptop.
2. You can use it as a lap desk. Take the laptop out, flip the case over and set your laptop on it. Voila, your lap is not burning up because a hot laptop computer is sitting there.
3. The aesthetic is clean, elegant, simple. Perfect for a Macintosh.

They have a full line of cases for the Apple products, and even though they are more expensive than your average case, I think the extra protection is worth it.

Thanks Greg and Blackbox!

good point from Dave Winer – Relying on Facebook, Google and Twitter – it’s like vegans who wear leather.

I’ve just had the stressful experience of losing a hard drive. In fact, the main internal drive in my MacBook Pro. This is never fun, even if you are 100% sure that your backup solution is going to work when you need it. Luckily, mine did work, and I just wanted to document the process for any friends or family who might not have a backup solution in place. This is critical! All your pictures, your music, your movies, documents, etc are on your laptop, and you need to have it backed up on a second drive somewhere. (Remember also that having important data only on an external drive is not sufficient!)

If you have a Mac, you should know about Time Machine. It is easy to set up, and as long as you remember to connect the drive, easy to keep up to date. If you buy a new machine, having an up-to-date Time Machine backup makes that process almost anti-climatic.

I’ve gone one step further with my backup system and purchased CrashPlan+ from Code42 (a local Minneapolis company!). I decided to go this route for a few reasons:

1. By purchasing the family plan, you can back up all your families’ machines to their cloud backup service.
2. The cloud backup service works from any location, so your computer is always backing up the latest files to their system.
3. If your local backup drive dies, you have the piece of mind of the backup on someone else’s servers.

So my hard drive went down, and the Apple Store quickly replaced it under warranty. My backup drive was working and up to date, so when I returned home, I started the restore process:

1. Install Crashplan on the new blank system
2. Log in to my Crashplan account
3. Attach my backup drive directly to the machine for a faster restore (I typically have it connected to a “server” in the house)
4. Started the restore of my entire home folder choosing to overwrite any existing files.
5. After about 12 hours of copying data (I have a pretty full 500GB internal drive), I restarted and found all of my data back in place, preferences, desktops, dock, everything.
6. I told the CrashPlan app that I wanted to adopt a previous computer (as it thought that this was a completely new system)
7. Completely back up and running!

CrashPlan has picked up exactly where it left off, backing up the new pictures I just downloaded.

Now admittedly, I did NOT have an up to date Time Machine backup. If I had, I would have used that to do the restore since it is baked right in to the operating system. But I do feel safer knowing that all of my backup data is in two places. I’ve had more than one drive die in the past year, and it is a bad, bad feeling.

The moral of the story… pick a backup solution and use it. Whether it be CrashPlan, Time Machine, or something like Carbon Copy Cloner, always have an up-to-date backup of your data.

“Money is like gasoline during a road trip, you don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.”

–Tim O’Reilly profiled in inc.com magazine

(Via kottke.org.)