Apple Grrl

Even as people in the tech world deride the iPad, newly released by Apple this week, I see it as a first step to a variety of things.

Yes, it’s true that the techies were hoping it would basically be the Air without a keyboard. It’s also true that to many it seems like a giant glowing paper weight right now. It’s even true that right now it is just a glorified reader – an Apple Kindle meets Internet, if you will. I think those expectations and that initial concept are limiting what Apple has in mind for this device, which is not so much innovation now, but innovation to come.

First, I think the iPad may be set to replace the iPod Touch in future, as the iPod Touch is hurting iPhone sales and the iPhone may be more available on other carriers sooner rather than later. Apple has always been about maximizing their bottom line while still creating beautiful, intuitive products – one reason why they have the ready cash to innovate.

Second, I think the iPad is the first baby step toward a new type of computing altogether. One where we leave folders, files and boundaries behind. I’d written a whole post detailing that, then I read this one and decided it was much better than I could produce, giving a much clearer picture of computer and tech advancement, so I highly suggest you go read it.

Am I going to buy an iPad right now? No. Do I like the name? No (iTablet might have been better – iTouch and iPad both lend themselves to too many sophomoric jokes online). Do I see myself owning a future generation of this product? Yes – I think we all will, we just don’t know it yet.

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Love this video, and the pointers are all true. Of course, you can’t replace his charisma, which is the other 80% of his speaking success – you either have that or not. But this will help even the most mousy person give better speeches at work or publicly:

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As Macs get more popular and more people use them, hackers and other malcontents will inevitably turn their attention to them to create viruses, worms, malware, and trojans.

In the news today is the discovery of an exploitable buffer overflow problem in Mac OS 10.5 and OS 10.6.

You don’t need to know what a buffer overflow is, as long as you make sure to protect your Mac from viruses and avoid opening emails from people you don’t know (or from some you do that are careless about attachments). Safari has some automatic protection built in now in Snow Leopard, but I also use ClamXAV as an added layer of protection.

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