It all started last fall, after my dad passed away. I’m not sure if that’s related, but it definitely had an effect on my state of mind. In December I had my yearly physical. I like my family doctor, and I’ve been seeing her for many years. Every year, I get the talk about needing to lose some weight. Not last year. At the end of my appointment, I asked her about it, and she said something like “It’s taken a few years for this 100 lbs, and every 100 lbs after this will come even faster.” I was speechless. I went away, and thought about it, and decided to make some changes:

1. I started Weight Watchers the first Saturday in January.
   1. Dana joined with me, and I know that I could not stay on track without her.
2. I started doing 45 minutes of aerobics in the morning.
   1. I get up an hour earlier, and work out for 45 minutes before we start to get the kids up for school.

After about 30 days I got nervous about what would happen on a day where I couldn’t work out in the morning. Using my Apple Watch, now set with a goal of 1000 active calories a day, I just make sure that I do something that fills in that circle. If I can’t fit aerobics in, I fall back on bike riding, walking, and recently running with Couch 2 5k.
I’m kind of obsessed with tracking with the Apple Watch. I sometimes get an eye roll when I say “I’m going to work out” but I know it’s worth it.
8 months later, and I’ve lost 70 lbs. I’ve got a long way to go, but it’s a great start.

The iOttie One Touch 2 is on sale for $17 today. Dana and I both use an iOttie Easy View 2 which can be regularly found for around $15 on Amazon. The One Touch looks to be a bit more robust, and I can only assume that the build quality is as good as if not better than the Easy View 2.
I had tried a cheap solution for Five Below about a year ago, and in the extremely cold temperatures we’ve had, the cheap plastic became way too brittle, and broke the second or third time that I used it. I use the Easy View 2 daily, and have had no issues at all.

According to Gartner (via Electronista) Apple is once again the #1 smartphone seller, worldwide. This speaks volumes to me. I assume that the iPhone 6 Plus is a key factor here. It would seem that adding larger models has helped Apple regain the top stop. As I’ve said before, I think that Apple has a good shot of being at or near the top right after the new model release (iPhone 4, iPhone 5, and iPhone 6 / 6 Plus) as there is a) pent up demand, and b) a larger number of current iPhone users eligible for upgrade. While it’s still possible for them to gain ground on the speed bump release (iPhone 4s, iPhone 5s, etc.), my gut says that it’s less likely because the pool of those eligible for upgrade seems to be lower (again, just a gut feeling.)
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to Apple. They entered the iPhone market looking to become a niche player, and I’m sure they’re very happy with the way things have turned out.

To me, the biggest news about Metallica releasing No Life ‘Til Leather is that this looks to be the start of them revisiting the catalog, and remastering / re-releasing all of their albums. I for one would love to hear a re-mixed and re-mastered …And Justice For All, St. Anger, and Death Magnetic!

It’s been 20 years since Apple has promoted the upgradeability of their products. Back in the 68K to PPC transition, Apple sold computers which touted upgradeability as a feature. Apple even made some PPC upgrades (I have one in a Performa 636CD that I keep around.) If I recall correctly, a problem arose when Apple listed a product as upgradeable, but never shipped any upgrades. I don’t think Apple will offer upgrades for the Apple Watch or Apple Watch Sport, but I don’t think it’s out of the question for them to do so for the Apple Watch Edition. If the Edition version of the watch is indeed priced close to $10,000, the question may be “If someone is willing to pay $10,000 for a watch, will they be willing to pay $10,000 a year or two later for a replacement?”. I don’t think it’s out of the question to think that they might be willing to do so. On the low end, if Apple can keep the prices on most of the regular and Sport models under $500, I think there might be no need to offer an upgrade path.
Either way, I don’t think this part of the story will be told until Fall 2015 or maybe even Spring 2016 (when the next Apple Watch is introduced.)

After many years of autonomy when it comes to specing and purchasing my work computer, things have started to change. There seems to be a concerted effort to move to a homogeneous (Windows) environment. Here’s how it’s being done:

1. A deal has been negotiated with Dell to “standardize” on one configuration. A condition of this agreement calls for 80% of all purchased machines to be this standard configuration.
2. Allow non-standard configurations, but limit them to the price of the standard configuration.

What this effectively means is that new Mac purchases are limited to the price that was negotiated for a bottom or middle of the line Dell.
All I keep thinking is that BYOD can’t come soon enough.

We are about a week away from what appears will be the Apple Watch announcement, and I have some (crazy) predictions about how it will be priced. At the Fall 2014 iPhone event, Tim Cook said that the Apple Watch:

• was curated into three collections
• would start at $349

Based on this information, and the order the Apple Watch is presented in the , Here’s what I think the prices will look like:

• Apple Watch – $349 for the model with the plastic bands. $399 for the models with leather or metal bands.
• Apple Watch Sport – $349 (assuming these all come with plastic bands.) This could be higher if there are more sensors in the Sport edition of the watch.
• Apple Watch Edition – To be honest, I have no idea. I think these will be at least a few thousand dollars, but I don’t have any problem entertaining the possibility that it could be $10,000 or more.

The more I think about it, the less I think that there will be a price difference between the 38mm and the 42mm versions. This assumes that they have the same screen resolution, just in different sizes. I could be completely wrong on this (this is all just a Wild Ass Guess at this point,) and it’s possible that there will be a $20 – $50 difference between the two sizes.
At this point, I’ve moved from the “Not interested” to the “Tell me more” camp since the introduction. I’m looking forward to the announcement next week, and assuming an Apple Watch (non Sport version) is available for less than $449, I’ll probably order one. If it’s more than that, I think I’ll wait.

I’m not sure where I heard it, but I remember being shocked when I heard someone say that after Apple Computer, Inc. purchased NeXT the reality inside of Apple was more like NeXT taking over Apple. For those of us who are long time Apple users / fans / followers /etc., there was a certain “sprit” that surrounded Apple. Some call it the spirit of the Macintosh, or the spirit of the Apple ][. It is this spirit that kept the employees of Apple and the users of their platforms committed, even though the company was almost bankrupt. It is also the reason why Steve Jobs used the Think Different campaign to rally the troops shortly after his return. From my perspective, a lot of that spirit remained inside of Apple right up until the switch to Intel CPUs was announced. I’ll never forget the first time that I visited  1 Infinite Loop. This was in May of 2000, way before OS X had even shipped. The icon garden was still in place, and you could still feel the spirit of the Macintosh flowing all around the campus. On each subsequent trip to 1 Infinite Loop, that feeling diminished. In 2005, when Apple announced that they were transitioning to Intel CPUs, the last remnants of the old Apple computer were put to rest, and a new era began. I hope that the management inside of Apple is able to manage the company more effectively than John Sculley, Michael Spindler, and Gil Amelio did back in the ’90s.

Piracy is not the reason for the downfall of the music business. It is a scapegoat, in much the same way as the VCR was blamed for problems in the  movie industry. The real problem with the music business has more to do with the fact that music labels have, for the most part, stopped developing artists. The labels have fallen into a trap of pushing easily marketable crap, by throw away artists, and then wondering why they aren’t having long term success. What has to make this even more frustrating for the labels is that they were able to stall the effects of this for a decade or more as a result of the format shifts in the late ’80s and early ’90s. While the 8-track never really took off, the move from vinyl to cassette to cd caused many consumers to buy the albums of the last round of “developed artists” more than once. As an example, I think I’ve owned six or seven copies of Metallica’s debut album Kill Em All. I had it on cassette, one or two versions of vinyl re-releases, two different visions on CD, and an original pressing on vinyl. Many of the albums that I owned in the 90s were purchased on vinyl and cassette, and then CD and cassette until I was able to put a cd player into my car.
The transition from CD to digital copies is where these sins started to come home to roost for the cord companies. When we, as consumers, were able to easily shift formats ourselves, by using iTunes to rip our CDs for use on iPods, the labels felt left out. Even though it is completely legal for users to format shift their CDs, if you ask the labels, they still consider them to be two separate products