Apple issued its quarterly report yesterday showing a $1.21 billion profit and an increase in iPhone and iPod sales. However, Mac sales were down three percent compared to the same quarter last year. More than 2 million Macs were sold in the quarter, with a majority being laptops.
iPod sales continue to be strong, with more then 11 million sold and a 70 percent market share. Almost 800,000 iPhones were sold as well, with more then 21 million iPhones in use today. Apple also had more than $1 billion in revenue from music and related products, probably mostly iTunes music sales.
In other news, several news agencies are re-reporting the existence of a trojan horse virus that was discovered months ago. The trojan came with hacked versions of iWork 09 found on bit torrent networks. While the trojan is real, it is only a concern if you downloaded an infected illegal copy of iWork 09. Those purchasing iWork from Apple or downloading the demo from Apple are not affected. This makes it a very different situation from Windows users getting infected with viruses through innocent acts of surfing or downloading seemingly legitimate software.
Everyone in the Mac Twitterverse has been talking about Tweetie for Mac this week. It has been a favorite on the iPhone for a while, and is now also on the Mac. This desktop version has more features than the iPhone one, naturally. However, it still lacks some of the advanced features of other Twitter clients like groups. But it makes up for that with a clean Mac-like design.
A simple travel and trading game would seem a natural for the iPhone, and Space Trader: Moon Madness fits the bill there. But it goes beyond that, with excellent 3D graphics that enhance the game without getting in the way. Basically, you travel around in space buying and selling goods and taking on missions. Great for a quick game or for extended multi-session play.
Officially, you can use Time Machine to back up to a connected hard drive, or to a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme hard drive. But an unsupported mode allows you to back up to a drive connected to another computer on your network. You’ll need to run the Terminal program and execute the line “defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1”. Then mount the network drive you wish to use. Then you should see it turn up in the drives you can select in the Time Machine preferences.
The most interesting thing about Twitterrific is that it isn’t an application. At least not in the traditional sense. The Twitterrific window floats above everything else in a semi-transparent state and has no menu bar. So it is very useful for people who don’t want a Twitter application at all, but want it to be part of their desktop.
Beyond that it shows your recent incoming tweets and that’s it. So it is missing deep functionality, but it may be more suitable for simply keeping up with what is going on.
Get Twitterrific
Twhirl requires Adobe AIR to run, and features a crowded interface with the usual Twitter options. The default interface has very small text and even smaller buttons.
These drawbacks are tempered by the fact that Twhirl has a lot that can be customized. You can change fonts, colors, and so on. You can even choose from many themes.
Get Twhirl
Lounge has a very Mac-like interface, using a single window with a left sidebar. It makes it very clear and easy to get caught up and send new tweets.
You can have multiple accounts, search, and view lists of your friends and followers. But there are deeper functions hidden in the interface as well. For instance, click on the user’s icon and you’ll get their profile and buttons to view their tweets, friends and followers.
Lounge is a native Mac application, not needing Adobe AIR or anything else. It is listed as still in beta and is free to download.
Get Lounge
If you want to immerse yourself in Twitter, then TweetDeck might be your best bet. Three or four columns are the standard, and you’ll often find TweetDeck users with their entire screen taken up with TweetDeck.
The standard columns are All Friends, Replies and Direct Messages. But you can also view tweets almost any way you want by creating groups and viewing only tweets by the people in those groups. You can filter any column by keywords as well, including and even excluding tweets with certain words. That makes ignoring an event or topic easy.
An interesting StockTwits column can zero in on tweets about a stock symbol from your friends or all over Twitter. You can also connect to the 12seconds service to view short tweet-like videos.
TweetDeck also have the ability to look at Facebook status messages in a column, something that most other Twitter applications cannot do.
All in all TweetDeck could be the most powerful of all Twitter applications. Plus, its free.
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Nobody cares what you had for breakfast.
But if you are cooking breakfast for the person you met last night at the bar, then that’s worth tweeting about.
Or, if you are meeting the inventor of the widget for breakfast at a diner and want to know what to ask him, then that’s worth tweeting about too.
Once you have some followers on Twitter, you have a responsibility to keep your tweets interesting to your audience.
Yes, that’s right, you have an audience. It could just be your mom and some friends, but it is an audience nonetheless. Don’t bore them with the mundane details of your life. That’s a waste of tweets. You’ve got a chance to make them laugh, make them smile, teach them something, or simply deepen your friendships.
A good Twitterer is always interesting and sometimes funny. He or she asks questions and answers them.
For instance, say you are an expert at widgets. That’s what you’re known for, and that’s why many people are following you. Well you had better make sure that most of your tweets are about widgets. That will keep people following you and keep then interested.
Now its OK to tweet about some personal stuff, or make some observations. That could be considered part of connecting to your audience. But just make sure you balance it.
So here are some rules you may want to follow:
Keep Mostly To Topic: Tweet mostly about the topic got people following you in the first place.
All Tweets Must Be Interesting: Even personal items and observations should be “newsworthy.”
Funny Is Fine: If you are sure something is funny, go ahead. If you are not sure, test it on a friend first.
Keep It Constant: Tweet at least once per day and keep it steady. Don’t suddenly send 15 tweets in an hour unless something very interesting is going on.
Ask Questions: Keep it a two-way street. Ask questions about the topic you are known for.
Answer Questions: When your friends as questions, answer if you have an opinion.
Stay Away From Issues: Unless your topic is politics, sex or religion, then don’t tweet about those things. You’ll always alienate someone. Though for some people, polarizing their audience from time-to-time can be a worthwhile thing.
Logical Links: Don’t just post a link. Describe the site and why your followers may want to click the link.
Make Sense: It is easy sometimes to post a few words that are out of context. Make sure each tweet can be understood on its own.
Be Yourself: Be genuine and say how you really feel and think. It is easy to spot a fake, even with just 140 characters.
What’s the point of tweeting if no one if listening? Getting people to follow you on Twitter is a great way to expand your network of friends or make a name for yourself. You can use a variety of techniques to get more followers.
Of course it goes without saying that you have already contacted your real friends and made sure that they are all following you on Twitter. This will make up your Twitter base and get you started. Then you probably want to expand by contacting business associates and people you work with. But after that, you’ve got to reach out beyond your current circles. Here are some techniques to use to get people to follow you.
Work on Your Profile: You can’t expect people to find or follow you without a good, informative profile and a nice profile image. Make sure you have both in place before trying anything else. Also include a Web link in your profile to your blog or personal home page. If you don’t have one, make one. Let interested people find out more about you.
Follow Them: When you find someone you want to follow you, the first thing you should be is follow them. Chances are that they will get an email notifying them that you are a follower, and they will check you out. Then, hopefully they will follow you back.
Reply to Them: Even if someone isn’t following you, but you are following them, you can send a tweet starting with their Twitter ID as a reply to something they’ve said. This works well if they ask a question, like “What’s your favorite Twitter client” and you hit the reply button and tweet back “@rosenz Favorite Twitter client is X”. Chances are that they will see your reply and maybe check you out to see if you are worth following.
Tweet About Hot Topics: If you want people who like a topic to follow you, tweet about that topic. People performing searches on topics will find you and will end up following you back.
Ask a Friend: If you have a really good friend on Twitter that has a lot of followers, ask them to tweet about you and include your ID. Note that this is a really big favor and you should only ask if you feel you are close enough to the friend for them to help you out.
Show Your ID: If you have a blog or Web site make sure you put your Twitter ID with a link to your Twitter account page on that site. Seems obvious, but there are many people who don’t do this.
There are many other ways to find followers as well. But remember that it is quality, not quantity, that you really want. Better to have 500 engaged and interested followers than 50,000 who don’t even notice your tweets.
Nambu may be the most powerful Mac Twitter client out there. But it can boil itself down to a simple window if that is all you want. In fact, you get three different ways to view your information: a simple window, a window with a sidebar (pictured) and a multi-columned window.
There are all sorts of extra features in Nambu, such as the ability to group your friends and only view tweets from a group. You can also list all of your friends or followers inside the interface. You can open up a friend’s info in a separate window and view their recent tweets there. You can even dig down and see who they are following and who is following them. Things like the current trends are easily accessible, as well as searching.
Nambu is a free native Mac application, not requiring Adobe AIR or anything else. It also promises future support for Twitter-related services like FriendFeed and Ping.fm.
Get Nambu
Tweetie features a very simple and fast interface that mimic Twitter’s Web site functionality. You can view tweets from people you are following or just replies to you. You can also view direct messages, sorted by the sender. Searches are the fourth type of screen you can bring up.
The best thing about Tweetie is it is fast and clean. It is a native Mac application, not relying on Adobe AIR. It doesn’t include many advanced features like other clients, but you can watch tweets roll in live. There is a paid $15 version and a free version that will show advertising.
Get Tweetie.
If you aren't using Time Machine to back up your Mac, then it is time to start. Here are some options for a Time Machine backup drive.
In news this week there are reports that Steve Jobs is still very much in charge at Apple, just like he said he would be. Apparently he approves anything major and is involved in design decisions for new and updated products.
One of those might be the upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.5.7, which seems like it could happen any moment now. Reports are that new beta versions are coming out quite often and the new version is expected to appear in Software Update very soon.
Conflicting reports suggest that Mac sales slowed a bit in the first quarter. One report states that market share dropped from 8 to 7.4 percent, while another claims a growth of 7.4 to 7.6 percent. Everyone seems to agree that Apple didn’t gain any ground on its PC rivals. The difference may be in the continued strong sales of netbooks, of which Apple doesn’t have a competitor.
In iPhone news, reports say that Apple and AT&T are working on an update to their original exclusive contract. Some suggest that Apple may make the iPhone non-exclusive to AT&T, while other reports say that the exclusivity will be extended.
If you are looking for a quick way to make a complete copy of your hard drive, then the free Carbon Copy Cloner will get the job done. It isn’t as robust of a solution as some, but it is a useful tool to have in your Utilities folder. You can also schedule updates, allowing you to have a completely bootable backup version of your hard drive always on the ready.
If you ever get a disk or disk image that will not unmount, you can force it with a Terminal command. Run Terminal and use “df” to list the drives. Find the one you want to unmount, such as /dev/disk3s2. Then use “diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/disk3s2” to force it to unmount.
There’s finally a good way to use Skype on your iPhone to make calls, and it is causing a bit of a stir. The Skype iPhone app is free, but you get the most out of it with a paid Skype account. Of course you can only use it to make calls over WiFi, not the 3G network. Some are complaining that AT&T shouldn’t restrict data in that way. Regardless, it is still a must-have application for anyone who uses Skype.
