A great picture of Steve Jobs has been circulating the Internet this week after it was released by The Steve Jobs Archive in a newsletter. (You can see the picture here.) It was taken in February 1984 when Steve Jobs was in New Orleans on O'Keefe Avenue, just a few blocks from my law office, and the picture shows Jobs peering into a store window to try to figure out what a woman was doing as she worked on a Macintosh computer. The Macintosh was brand new at the time. As Apple's famous Super Bowl commercial announced, it was introduced on January 24, 1984. What was Steve Jobs doing in New Orleans just weeks after the Mac was introduced? Despite all of the coverage of that photo over the past week, I haven't seen anyone else report on that, but I think I have it figured out. According to an old issue of Inc., there was a software convention at the Superdome in New Orleans on February 21-23, 1984, that featured "more than 1,000 exhibits of software products for home, school, and office computers, as well as seminars and workshops on new software techniques, emerging trends, and hot topics in the industry." And apparently, this was the first computer convention at which the Macintosh was shown off, according to a fantastic story that I located on a blog written by Tom Evslin, a pioneer in the computer industry. His short story is full of great nuggets and I don't want to spoil it for you, so instead I just encourage you to read the three-part story yourself (1, 2, and 3) to learn about how Tom and his wife Mary ended up doing work for Dow Jones on the first Macintosh. It's a fantastic read. While all of this was going on in the Superdome, I was just a few miles away, being a Ninth Grade student at the same school where my daughter is currently in Ninth Grade. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- You would think that at some point during the recording of 88 episodes of a tech podcast with Brett Burney I would have learned that he has two folders on his iPhone home screen with clever icons, but no, he doesn't tell me about that, and instead Brett saves that for California attorney David Sparks, who reports on Burney's home screen in this post that is worth reading. I also see that Brett shared with that guy in California—not yours truly, who lives in New Orleans—that Brett has a nice picture of the French Quarter on his home screen, even though the picture shows the actual New Orleans French Quarter, not the pretend version in Disneyland close to where David lives.
- Earlier this week, I discussed critical security issues and recommended that folks consider using 1Password. Later this week, I came across this article in PC World that picks Dashlane as the best password manager. While I still prefer 1Password, especially on the iPhone/iPad, if you are currently picking a password manager, you should look at Dashlane too to see if it seems like a better fit for you. For example, while Wirecutter picks 1Password as its favorite password manager, the authors say that Dashlane is "as polished as 1Password" so that is something.
- Earlier this year, I reviewed Belkin's iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Desktops and Displays, and I really like it. Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote this review of the Belkin mount.
- One thing I like about the Apple Watch is that it does a good job of encouraging you to be more active. While that alone is unlikely to translate into losing weight, Kristen Rogers of CNN reports on a new study that finds that 11 minutes of aerobic activity per day could lower your risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.
- If you were a paying subscriber of the Tweetbot or Twitterific apps, you are about to get a partial refund because Twitter abruptly banned those apps. But most of the refund is coming not from Apple but from the small indie developers. Attorney John Voorhees of MacStories encourages you to take a simple step to show some support for all that those developers did over the years by declining the refund, and I second his recommendation.
- There have been reports this week—such as this one by D. Griffin Jones of Cult of Mac—that Microsoft is coming out with a way that you can use Apple's iMessage text messaging system on a Windows computer. But the limitations are severe: no pictures, no videos, no file attachments, no group chats, and you can only see messages sent and received while special software is running on the Windows computer, so you don't see earlier messages in the conversation. Nevertheless, if you are just awaiting a notification and want to do so on a Windows computer instead of an Apple device, I guess this could work.
- Lance Whitney of PC Magazine has tips for getting the most out of AirPods Pro.
- If you have a HomePod or HomePod mini, you know that different lights are sometimes displayed on the top of the product. Until this week, I didn't know exactly what the different lights meant, but Zac Hall of 9to5Mac wrote a great post that shows off and explains the different status lights.
- Fernando Silva of 9to5Mac reviewed an interesting dock for the iPad made by Plugable. It holds your iPad in various angles, provides lots of different ports (USB-A, headphone jack, HDMI, USB-C, SD card slot, MicroSD card slot), and looks nice.
- Reuters conducted an investigation of whether a program that was supposed to turn old sneakers into playgrounds was actually doing what was advertised. To do the investigation, Reuters put AirTags into sneakers and then contributed the sneakers to the recycling bin so that it could track where they ended up months later. Spoiler alert: the sneakers did not end up where they were supposed to go. It's an interesting use of AirTags to do a journalist investigation.
- And finally, in less than two weeks, one of my favorite Apple TV+ shows returns: Ted Lasso. A trailer was released this week, and it looks like this season—which is likely to be the last for the series—is going to be a lot of fun.
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