Apple This

So Apple’s annual developers conference is coming up, but don’t bother looking up tickets because Apple sold out of them on Monday. Yeah, they sold out already, and in record time nonetheless. With fast ticket sellouts come quick scalpers and that is definitely the story here. Many people are scalping tickets to the event on sites such as eBay and Craigslist with prices reaching as high as $4,599, which is nearly triple the sticker price of $1,599.

The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) runs from June 6th to June 10th, 2011  and was sold out as of Monday, March 28th, 2011 in less than 12 hours which was dramatically faster than last year when it took a lousy eight days to sell out. 2009 wasn’t even close when it took almost a month to sell out. Tickets for this year’s WWDC were priced at $1,599, the same as they were for the 2010 edition.

Apple allows developers to buy multiple tickets with extra activation codes in order to hand them out to colleagues. However, some of these developers are taking advantage of the sellout and are selling their extra tickets at extremely high prices. The ticket with the highest bid that I have seen so far stood at $3,000.

A pair of tickets seen on the New York and San Francisco editions of Craigslist have been priced at $2,400 and $2,500. A seller in California had priced his extra ticket at $2,000 and increased the price by $500 a few hours later.

According to Rohit Sethi, the man in California selling the ticket, “I can deal for $2,500 only and by bank transfer. If you have any friends in the bay area, I can give them the code in person and they can activate on the spot too for authenticity by giving money in person.”

The only people allowed to attend the event are Apple-registered developers but the entry bar is low. Programmers only have to pay $99 for a one-year membership to Apple’s developer program and that’s it, there are no other eligibility requirements.

One good thing, for developers that is, is that Apple does not explicitly restrict the resale of WWDC tickets. Apple has not immediately replied to questions about their resale policy or whether or not they will take any action against people who resell WWDC tickets.

Scott Schwarzhoff, Vice President of Marketing for Appcelerator, the company known best for their multi-platform Titanium development tool, was not surprised about how fast the tickets for the event sold out. According to him, “The message from Jobs at the launch of the iPad 2, that this is the ‘post-PC world’ is hitting home. If you want to be part of that post-PC world, as a developer you need a ticket, and that ticket is WWDC.”

Schwarzhoff also argued that even though the iPod and iPhone have been successes for Apple, the iPad is the first device that has really grabbed the attention of business software developers. “You’re seeing demand from the more traditional IT and computing industry because of the iPad,” said Schwarzhoff. “The iPad is affecting areas that previously weren’t affected by a pure consumer device.”

It has already been noted that this year’s conference is expected to focus primarily on software as opposed to hardware and that the iPhone 5 will most likely not be in attendance. This intrigues me. With one of the most anticipated devices since the iPad 2 not coming out at the conference it surprises me that the conference sold out so fast.

But if you want a ticket to the show, you had better hit up eBay or Craigslist, and you must also be ready to part with about $2,000 to $3,000 at least.

Source: ComputerWorld – Apple’s WWDC sells out; scalpers price tickets up to $4,600

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Apple has just recently announced the departure of Bertrand Serlet, a senior software engineer at the company since Steve Jobs returned as CEO in 1997. Serlet was also a main architect of the Mac operating system. The 50 year old, who was also Senior Vice President for Computer-Software engineering, is leaving to focus more on research, according to a statement from Apple. Serlet’s position will be taken over by the division’s Vice President Craig Federighi.

According to a statement from Serlet, “I’ve worked with Steve for 22 years and have had an incredible time developing products at both NeXT and Apple, but at this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science.”

Serlet has a doctorate in computer science that he acquired from the University of Orsay, France and joined Apple in 1997 when they first acquired NeXT, which was the computer company Steve Jobs founded in 1985 after leaving Apple.

There haven’t been a lot of departures lately among Jobs’ top executives which is why this one is surprising. Jobs has kept a core team intact  that includes COO Tim Cook who is currently running Apple in Jobs’ absence. Other parts of the team include CFO Peter Oppenheimer, Marketing Chief Phil Schiller, Head of Retail Ron Johnson, Head of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield, Head of iPhone Software Scott Forstall and Head of Design Jonathan Ive.

One of the most recent departures was Mark Papermaster, a senior vice president hired by Apple in 2008 to run the company’s mobile-device engineering unit. Papermaster left last year and now works at Cisco System Inc.

Serlet was one person who helped develop the Mac OS X operating system that runs Apple’s Macintosh computers. Lion, which is the newest version of the Mac OS X, is set to be released later this year.

Federighi, who worked at NeXT as well, has led Mac software engineering at Apple since 2009. He previously spent 10 years at Ariba Inc. based in Sunnyvale, California. His roles included vice president of Internet Services as well as Chief Technology Officer.

Source: Bloomberg – Apple Says Computer-Software Chief Serlet Is Stepping Down

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One of the premier cyber security companies in the world, LIGATT Security International, has just announced that their flagship product LocatePC, which just so happens to be the most downloaded computer tracking program on the internet, is now available for all Mac computers under Apple.

LocateMac, as it is being called, will allow a user to track their Apple laptop or PC in the extremely unfortunate event that it gets stolen. Apple users will be able to track their computer anywhere in the world with the LocateMac tracker. The tracker runs unobtrusively in the background without the need of any icons or pop-ups. This invisible software is designed to work on all Apple computers and will run you $29.95 for a one year subscription.

LIGATT Security International creates and designs affordable products primarily for business structures as well as the average consumer. Security on laptops is a growing issue and LIGATT is dedicated to minimizing laptop and computer theft. One thing that LIGATT has discovered is that it is far more important to individuals to retrieve and protect sensitive data on their laptops or computer as opposed to retrieving the physical device.

According to Director of Marketing for LocatePC and LocateMac Tialer Maxwell, “We have received more requests from our retailers for the Macintosh version of LocatePC. We expect LocateMac to surpass sales of all our other products.”

In a recent study conducted by The New York Times, the largest percentage of business laptops that are stolen or lost  occur when an employee is either working out of the office or traveling. The study also showed that about 40% of laptops were lost off-site while another third were lost in transit or travel.

LocateMac has every feature that comes with LocatePC including:

• Geolocation – Using the mobile tracker apps for the iPad or iPhone, you won’t have to depend on any outside party during recovery. You can receive alerts each time your computer’s IP address changes.
• Video Snap Shot – If there is a webcam connected to your laptop or computer, LocateMac will take a snap shot every 30 seconds of the person or everything in the room. These photos will then be automatically updated to the LocateMac database with a date and time stamp.
• Key Logging – This records all the keystrokes made on your laptop or computer by the thief. If the thief logs into a social media site, you will have access to their real name, username, password etc…
• Text Message – This allows your computer to text you or email you every time the IP address changes on your computer.
• Inventory – Takes a complete inventory of all of your devices like iPod, iPhone etc…
• Police/Insurance Report – Click a single button to have a detailed PDF report generated for you to send to the police or insurance company.
• Unlimited Monitoring – Monitor as many devices as you need to from a single account.
• Text to Screen – Send a message to your computer screen that the thief can visibly see.
• File Recovery – Allows you to have constant access to certain files for added security.
• iPad/iPhone – Track your stolen device directly from your mobile Apple devices.

With this tracker it seems like even if your Apple computer or laptop is stolen, you will be able to find it immediately, relieving some of the stress of a stolen device.

Source: PR Newswire – Locate Stolen or Missing Apple Computers With LocateMac

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Hey, does anybody remember the tablet PC? Yeah, you remember, the device that had the ability to seamlessly transform from a fully portable tablet into a highly functioning desktop PC. Well, as cool an idea as it sounded like, the device became a relatively obscure PC product category that was pretty much passed over by consumers. Well, the hits don’t stop there because CEO of Apple Steve Jobs had a few “interesting” words to say about the product.

What is surprising is that while there is a long history of the device and this category, there is not a concrete definition on what exactly this device is. I guess the best definition you can muster up would come from looking at hybrids of the device like the EliteBook 2570p from HP or the Lifebook T900 Tablet PC from Fujitsu, which cost $1,599 and $1,899 respectively.

The tablet PC has been a lackluster attempt, especially if you compare it to Apple’s tablet juggernaut known as the iPad. Apple’s attempt to fuse a laptop with a tablet is clearly one of the most popular pieces of technology to hit the market in the last five years, and the introduction of the iPad 2 yesterday is only going to make the device more popular.

Jobs made it a point to tell the crowd at the iPad 2 press event yesterday just how crappy tablet PCs are and how awesome his iPad 2 is. According to Jobs’ statement, “We sold almost 15 million iPads in 2010. And remember that’s just nine months. That’s April through September. That’s more than every tablet PC ever sold. The tablet PC crashed and burned. The modern tablet PC is the iPad.”

Obviously Jobs is going to think that his product is the best, but he does have a point. The Windows interface that you maneuvered via a stylus never quite caught fire, not to mention the fact that the Windows 7 tablet interface is not as user-friendly as Apple’s iPad UI.

Apple isn’t the only company that is hitting the tablet PC with a few shots. The demise of the tablet PC market will come swiftly as PC makers like ASUS, Dell, HP and others do their part in expanding the tablet market with such devices as the HP TouchPad and the Dell Streak.

Source: cnet – Apple’s Jobs: The Tablet PC ‘crashed and burned’

Projector Rentals
Are Great for Business Meetings

Most business class projectors will do a good job displaying your PowerPoint presentation. If you have a small presentation group, a 2000 lumen LCD projector will be able to produce a nice and clear picture. For larger audiences you should consider a 5000 lumen LCD projector.