Though it never stopped me, I always thought using a higher-wattage power adapter for my laptop was a bad idea. Turns out, according to this Apple knowledge base article, it’s no big deal at all.
Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple portable, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.
Also, the AC plug that can be used in place of the cord? It’s called a “Duckhead”. You learn something new every day.
Though personally I think the the vast array of Batmobile designs are far cooler.
Greg McKeown writing at the HBR blog:
Apple doesn’t enjoy product and customer clarity because they’re lucky. They didn’t drift into simplicity: they selected it by design. And by ‘selected,’ I mean they wrestled with the complexity, debated the issues, threw out hundreds of possible directions, and eventually arrived on the other side of complexity with the kind of sophisticated simplicity people know and love.
His article is about CEOs and big companies, but it’s just as relevant for department heads, small companies, and even sole proprietorships.
Today, Randy Murray also wrote about saying no, or at least saying not right now:
Why say no? Because I have other great ideas in play and actively being worked on. If I say yes to something else, everything will suffer.
As a company of one, what I like about saying “not right now” to my ideas and/or opportunities is that it requires less mental energy than saying “no”. When an idea comes I let myself flesh out all the concepts, details, bunny trails, and other possibilities related to it, and then let it sit in my digital notebook until it resurfaces for whatever reason (if it ever does).
Relatedly, I learned a lot about simplicity and focus in business by reading Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great.
Nate Jackson, a former Denver Bronco, wrote an open letter to Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III (the number 1 and 2 draft picks this year) about what life is like as a football player in the NFL:
Once the whistle blows on Sundays, you’ll be released from captivity, and you’ll be free for three hours to truly live your dreams on the grandest scale you can imagine, against the best athletes on the planet. You will win or you will lose, but then the football game will end. The NFL game never will. Godspeed, boys.
Marco Arment, back in 2010:
A common fallacy is assuming that any new platform in an exciting market — recently, smartphones and tablet computers — will be flooded with developers as soon as it’s released, as if developers are just waiting outside the gates, hungrily waiting to storm in.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
RIM handed out alpha prototype phones of BlackBerry 10 to 2,000 developers today. The prototypes can’t yet make phone calls or connect to Wi-Fi. The hardware is still “pokey” and there is still much software optimization to do.
So why give out these devices in their current sad state? Alec Saunders, VP of Dev. Relations, has the answer:
The reason why we’re doing this — which is unprecedented for us and it’s quite uncommon in the industry — is because we want to create a wave of application support behind the new BlackBerrys before we bring them to market. If we launch without applications, well, it will be slow.
What else is odd is that the operating system on the phones isn’t even BlackBerry 10. As Dieter Bohn reports with his hands on review of the device:
As far as the OS goes, this is almost entirely the PlayBook OS, not BlackBerry 10. Although RIM says that it has built-in some of the hooks and calls that will be part of BB10. The idea is for developers to begin building their apps now and test them on phone hardware so they’re ready when RIM releases actual hardware.
The Verge has the sneak peek video from today’s keynote, along with some screenshots of the new BlackBerry 10 OS.
Lex Friedman’s review of the new Big Jambox from Jawbone:
When I reviewed the original Jambox, I marveled at the volume such a small speaker could generate. The airtight Big Jambox houses a pair of proprietary active drivers along with a passive bass radiator, and when it comes to audio, blows its predecessor out of the water. Compared to the basic Jambox, the new version can play much, much louder than the original, and produces audio with a well implemented balance between lows and highs. And while I was impressed by the original Jambox’s bass, the Big Jambox really kicks out impressive low-end presence. In addition, at lower volumes the Big Jambox uses a loudness-compensation algorithm so that sounds we perceive as quieter, such as bass frequencies, sound relatively balanced. In my listening tests, this worked well.
See also Lex’s hands-on video of the Big Jambox over at the TechHive Beta Blog.
Did you know NASA has been posting an astronomy picture every day since June 16, 1995? Prepare to spend some time here. Like here, and here, and here. Oh, and here. (Via Coudal.)
You learn something new (from Brett Terpstra) every day.
Peter Bregman’s approach to email is very similar to the new routine I established for myself about 2 weeks ago. And I’ll say this: after 14 days it seems to be working very well.
The whole article is an ultra-geeky rundown of all the various apps and services he uses for writing. Personally, I can’t get enough from this stuff. Since I too write for a living, I learn something new every time I read about other people’s setups.
What I especially liked was Viticci’s concluding paragraph:
In thinking about a proper conclusion for this post, it occurred to me that the best way to sum up the possibilities offered by Dropbox to writers and note-takers is this: with just a folder, you can fine-tune your workflow using the apps you prefer. It’s a liberating effect: the text is there, and it will be there no matter how many apps you try or how much you tinker.
As detailed and geeky as the Dropbox-connected-writing-apps discussion may get, it’s still just plain text files saved in a folder.
Reminds me of my high school math class.
Nothing internet-related at all, starting today:
In my wild fantasies, leaving the internet will make me better with my time, vastly more creative, a better friend, a better son and brother… a better Paul. In reality, I’ll still be the same person, just with a huge professional and personal handicap.
It sounds fun and challenging. I love his reasoning behind the trek:
Now I want to see the internet at a distance. By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I’m so “adept” at the internet that I’ve found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I’m pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn’t belong.
Growing up, my best friend’s family and my family would do what we called “Pilgrim Month” every November. For 30 days we used electricity as little as possible (considering we lived in a suburban home). We kept the refrigerator plugged in, but otherwise we used no lights, no microwave, no stereo, no television, no computer, etc. It took only a few days to adapt, and the month was filled with much reading and playing of board games by candlelight.
There is no way I could get by without the internet for a year because my entire career is tied to the Web. Giving up the Internet would mean quitting my job.
If, however, that were not the case, the challenge and change of pace to give up the Internet for a year, or even just a month, sounds fun. It would be a lot like giving up electricity.