Wow, pegged. I was born about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, raised in that area through high school, and went to college about 200 miles to the north.

MacWorld SF 2007 is now over, and my take away is that Apple is betting its future on iTunes becoming the center of your entertainment universe.

1. The Apple iPhone is an iPod with a far better UI and screen than previous generation iPods. Oh, and by the way, it has a GSM phone as well as EDGE and WiFi networks so you can enhance your entertainment experience by communicating with your friends and researching what's entertaining you.
2. The Apple TV is an iPod that gets your iTunes content to your home theater; especially video to your TV. And that is all it does.
3. Like Dell before it, Apple has dropped the word "computer" from its corporate identity. Apple, Inc. is now a consumer electronics firm.

What will this mean for MacOSX, and the computers that run it? Well, TiVo's product is software and a web service running on Linux. They've been proving for a decade that there is room for a computer in your home theater system. They haven't provided other computing experiences that might enhance your enjoyment of the show you're watching, as I still need another computer to give me Firefox in a PiP window on my TV.

It took Roxio, in Toast 8 Titanium to bring TiVo to Go to Mac. Apple TV goes the other direction and brings iTunes video to your TV. I can get TiVo to Go on my Palm Lifedrive, and TiVo to Go is available for iPods [though TiVo desktop for Windows or MacOSX and/or Roxio Toast for the Mac is required]. Perhaps one of the blank spaces on the iPhone home screen will be some version of TiVo to Go, but likely you'll just get it through a playlist like any other iPod.

Even with its great new xServe though, it would seem that Apple, Inc. isn't very interested in the business market, except perhaps as servers for video-on-demand, iTunes music stores, and becoming the TelCo backend infrastructure Apple might need to sew this all up very neatly.

The consumer converged entertainment/communication market is Apple's direction, and with its great sense of style and design, innovative interface, and market panache, I think Apple, Inc. will be a booming [pun intended] success in that space.

To bring a point to my thoughts, imagine an Apple home with entertainment, communication and computing converged through various Apple devices: an Apple grid of Mac Minis [maybe a laptop or two, maybe not] and iMacs, Apple TVs, iPods and iPhones; TiVo to Go or similar Apple branded service, and VoIP to supplement your current video and phone carriers. At the center of it all is iTunes - your entertainment source, and maybe, to a lesser extent, some version of .Mac [dot-mac] separately or integrated into iTunes, as the hub for all your other online needs.

This could truly help to bring the converged experience to the non-geek.

Looked at in this light, the iPhone isn't as bad as I originally had thought. It still won't replace my Lifedrive. Where would I read my eBooks? The scenario imagined above doesn't help me live the TeleInterActive Lifestyle. It doesn't help free work from geography, nor integrate access to and management of both business and personal data. It won't let me renew a prescription from anywhere, any time, nor access a productivity dashboard or customer history whenever, wherever. Though it might, to an extent, through Safari. I'm not the target market.

If my analysis is correct, Apple is more completely focused on the consumer than ever, and has completed its withdraw from the business battlefront.

When I originally wrote my post on setting up Mail.app for IMAP, I hadn't found a way to set up multiple identities for one user account. There is a way. I found it by accident. I was setting up another account, and my mouse cursor was hovering over the email addresses input box when this appeared: "Enter one of more email addresses, separated by commas." So, I added some aliases that I have for that account and now they appear in the drop down box for Account when composing a new mail message. So, if I've set up an alias for dealing with an online service, and I need to contact that service, I no longer need to expose my "real" email address. Cool.

Here's a some screen shots.

Click to view original size

Click to view original size

BTW, the "Edit email aliases" button that appears on the first screen shot, only appears for dot-Mac accounts, as the second screen shot for an IMAP account shows.

Click to view original size

The head of one of the steel dowels that is grabbed by the cam in the twist-lock fastener system used by the bookboxes that I'm building into the stairwell railing system broke off when I was screwing it into the nylon insert. [If you read this blog, you know this project led to my downfall.] The bookbox company wanted me to send back the whole bookbox and wait for a replacement. So, I was out looking for a replacement dowel. I finally , at my fourth stop, found one that's the right length and thread, but the diameter of the cut in the dowel that fits into the slot of the cam was thicker than my original. I had discovered this after getting back home. So I went back to the OSH to get a cam. They're sold in little plastic bags, so you can't really see them. When I got this one home, I saw that while it had a larger slot than my original, it wasn't large enough. So, I went back to OSH. They were very unhelpful. Basically, the clerk who was "helping" me said "some guy" restocks the bins, and what they have is what they have. They weren't willing to contact the manufacturer to get the right cam. I had already found the manufacturers web site, but it was geared towards selling their stock and display system to retailers, without any information on individual items. Bad customer service, and really stupid that they sell a dowel without the matching cam-lock.

Then my Wells Fargo ATM ate my card. It completed the deposit, and then said remove card - but my card never appeared so that I could take it. I tried using a business card to see if it was just not clearing the edge of the slot, but couldn't feel it. It kept beeping "remove card" and I kept saying "show my frelling card and I'll remove it". Then it went to "Thank you" and then "Insert Card". I called WFB's 800 number, but all they could do was suggest that I go back to the branch when it's open, and see if they have my card. If not, I'll have to report it lost/stolen and WFB will send a replacement to me. They have no technician on-call to repair it, or retrieve my card, and they have no way to contact the branch manager so someone can at least deactivate that ATM. I wonder how many cards will stack up?

Update: My ATM card wasn't in the Wells-Fargo ATM. So much for their customer support's assurance that my card couldn't be removed from the machine by anyone else. There was no activity on our account other than what I or my partner had done, and now the card is canceled. All that's left is waiting to see if there is any other fallout from this.

I believe that Mark Twain said that a man with two watches never knows what time it is. Segal's Law: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." Like that man, I have no idea what the CPU operating temperature of my MacBook Pro is, as I have three monitors now: CoreDuoTemp, Fan Control and iStat Pro. In °C, here are five readings from those three monitors, in the order listed, over a 15 minute span.

50,57,48
48,52,48
48,54,51
50,56,52
51,57,52

Some of this may be due to different sampling rates and display changes, as the three change at different times, wtih iStat Pro seeming to have the longest interval between changes, and Fan Control having the shortest. You many also notice that there isn't any consistency in the difference from one monitor to another, or in which monitor reports the lowest CPU temperature, though Fan Control is consistently the highest.

Based on this, I changed my set points in Fan Control so that the lower threshold is now 53°C and the higher being 79°C, so as the fans don't come on too often, which they seemed to be doing when Fan Control's lower threshold was set to 50°C, but they stay on a bit longer if things really heat up. Fan Control has been a big help in optimizing the performance of my MacBook Pro.

Update: I see that Clarise took the quiz. I'm not sure I see her as spidey? Though, "a little bit geeky" - definitely a very intelligent IT geek; as well as a powerful PMP who takes on great responsibility - absolutely. Of course, being strong willed, I went over to the quiz and answered it as I think of her. Check out her post for my addition.

Sometimes I just can't resist the silliness.

Your results: You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 80% Superman 75% Batman 60% Robin 57% Supergirl 55% Spider-Man 50% Iron Man 50% Hulk 45% The Flash 40% Wonder Woman 35% Catwoman 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

I've never been described as "hot-headed" before though; "stubborn" or "obstinate" is how I'm usually tagged. I do like the rest of the description though.

Update: I (Clarise) too snuck in and did the superhero quiz on how I see Joseph... I did confirm that he is Green Lantern ...

You are Green Lantern

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz