Tag: Apple Posts

One of the downsides to always having the latest and greatest iPhone is that most places outside of North America and Europe seriously lag behind in terms of adoption rates. For places like Brazil and Argentina, that’s even more true because the cost of picking up a new iPhone is nearly twice as much as we would pay in North America. When I went to Argentina in 2012, I couldn’t find a Micro SIM card anywhere, and was forced to buy a normal full-sized SIM card and perform surgery on it to make it fit into a Micro SIM holder. I had to do that twice while travelling around the world with my iPhone 4/4S, and thankfully it worked both times. Not that long ago I picked up an iPhone 5 which uses an even smaller SIM card known as the Nano SIM. I was told that in theory it […]

I’ve been a pretty loyal user of Apple’s Macbook Pro line for the last few years. I purchased my first one after Northern Voice in 2007, mostly because the laptop that I recently had Vista installed on failed to work for me during a presentation. Since then I’ve probably been through three or four of them, often upgrading every year or so to keep up with technology. The first few were the 15″ model, and the last Macbook Pro I purchased was a 13″ model. While the Macbook Pro is a great computer, the Macbook Air has always intrigued me. Most of my uber techie friends have one, and I’ve always thought it was cool how small and light it was. But other than its startling good looks, the Macbook Air line has always been underpowered compared to the Macbook Pro line. And while I don’t really do anything computationally […]

One of the hardest parts about traveling with technology is lugging all of your gear around with you. Once you arrive at a destination and rent an apartment, you can store some items and only carry along a few things at a time. But when you’re in the process of traveling to or from a destination, you have to have all your items on your person for a period of time. I’m actually using the MEC Pangea 40 litre backpack as my main travel bag. For small trips I only bring the backpack with me, but for my major travel between destinations that I plan to live at for more than a week, I store everything that isn’t technology related in a suitcase and bring that along on the plane. My Backpack In terms of technology, I currently have the following items in my backpack when I travel. 13″ Apple […]

Yes sports fans, it’s almost that time. On Friday the highly anticipated successor to the iPhone 3GS is released. My experience so far with Rogers wireless this last week, as well as on launch days in the past, seems to indicate that Friday is going to be a complete gong show for everyone involved. Unlike the previous launches, we now have an interesting option in Canada: we can purchase an unlocked phone from the Apple store. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t believe we’ve ever had that luxury in Canada, at least not with Rogers. I remember getting my first Motorola phone back in 2000 – the guy at the counter had to punch in the 6 digit subsidy code simply to activate it. Of course, without that code it is impossible to change carriers, which is one of the ways carriers try to keep you locked to their service. My […]

As of October of 2007, Apple has sold approximately 120 million iPods worldwide. At approximately $250 each, that’s $30 billion dollars in revenue. It is without a doubt one of Apple’s crowning technical achievements, both for the ingenuity of the hardware and for the revolutionary integration with software on several platforms. And yet lately, as I’ve trekked the 30 minute walk between my home and work with my iPod blaring away, I’ve started to wonder what the impact of this technology really is. For starters, those of us who listen to iPods frequently are subjecting ourselves to potential hearing damage. Even at my age, I find myself frequently asking people to repeat themselves. I’ve also found that I have a great deal of difficulty hearing individuals in crowded places or bars with lots of chatter. And while my hearing has never been perfect (thanks to an uncle that went a […]