Let's be realistic

While it's interesting that AT&T may be marketing the iPhone to businesses (I think business people might be more plausible), I thought the reasons a Gartner analyst used in warning against such action was somewhat amusing.

Business customers should also be weary of the iPhone's various other shortcomings, the Gartner analyst said. For instance, he notes that it lacks a physical keyboard, which will make it difficult to dial while driving.

Dial while driving? On second thought, as long as a New Jersey state governor can get seriously hurt in a car accidentcollision while not wearing a seat belt, Ken (the analyst) was just being a realist.

SOURCE: Apple Insider

Something you didn't know about Robert Jordan

Amazing war stories from author Robert Jordan:

I think I need to put a few things straight about this whole shooting down an rpg in flight thing...

SOURCE: Dragonmount

Apple's new product mix delivers not so much differently... yet

Apple is seeing certainly greater growth in Mac sales than iPod sales despite shedding the Computer part of their name. The iPod family's year over year growth was 24% whereas Mac sales grew 36%. To put that into perspective, this is including the new aluminum iPod shuffle (#2 in Apple's Top Sellers list) and the Apple TV (last in the same). I still think this is due to the lack of substantively new iPods since the iPod nano and video enabled iPod in Fall 2005 as well as the impending iPhone release in June. I stand by my emphasis on Apple's downplaying of record iPod sales last quarter as due to a meeting of supply and demand.

Although I haven't finished the conference call, other tidbits of interesting info from the conference call includes the following: 1) commitment by Apple to provide software updates to both Apple TV and iPhone [. That means more functionality is coming at no cost!], 2) Still no restatement of past earnings due to options backdating!, 3) iPod still key in Apple's amazing profits (despite probably not growing much faster than the market), 4) Mac grew 9-10 times faster than PC market in US...

SOURCE: Apple 2007 Q2 Results

Last updated: Fri 4/27/2006 12:54 AM EDT

So we're even?

Today I discovered that my check to the US Treasury was deposited into an account at Bank of America. I had owed 38 dollars as the result of capital gains in 2005 that I failed to report. Thanks to sharp reminders from my accountant friend Jehangir, I finally am square with the IRS. I figured I shouldn't guess how much interest they wanted.

The schedule d is surprisingly simple, but not intuitive. I'm glad I got a discounted old version of TaxCut for a couple dollars. That, in turn, made it easier to file taxes for 2006 as you can import last year's data into TaxCut.

Video podcast from inside the CIA

I was sick with a fever late last week and downloaded a bunch of cooking videos from iTunes. My favorite is Epicurious.com's Inside the CIA (iTunes link) series. You know, the Culinary Institute of America. The mini-series includes 10 episodes so far, plus a weekly video blog for each of four principle characters. Some are getting associates degrees while others are getting bachelors degrees. They don't provide recipes but gives you insight into the history of the CIA and how chefs are trained. That, along with interesting tidbits about cooking.

I highly recommend these except for Markos' video blog in which he jokes about young Chinese hos. I really don't know where people get that idea.