Dear Friends,
It is a beautiful summer day here in the Green Mountains and I rode my motorcycle to work today, as I had some errands to do around the area, including Small Dog Speaks, our weekly radio show on WDEV radio. We are having some fun with the show and have visions of it being the next Car Talk, except with technology and dogs! My co-host is Rebecca, and it is a good thing because she can answer the toughest questions from our listeners (all 3 of them!).
The announcements from Apple this week were the topic of discussion around the office and on the radio show. Certainly the star of the show was the new MacBook Pro with Retina display which I’ll be testing as soon as we get it (soon!), but I really think that the software announcements were even more outstanding. iOS6, coming this fall, will bring turn-by-turn navigation in Apple’s new Maps program (with some help from TomTom, among others) as well as enhanced Siri features, Facebook integration throughout and Passbook. I really like the new phone features that give you more options than Answer and Ignore when a call comes in.
Mountain Lion, the next Mac OS (v10.8), will be released in July and will be available as a download for only $19.99 from the App Store. For those of you who are buying Macs now, you will qualify for a free upgrade to Mountain Lion. My favorite feature of this new OS is AirPlay mirroring. It is something that you very well may find yourself using.
I had to prepare for a presentation a couple of weeks ago that involved a lot of photos and video clips. With Dawn’s help, we built a Keynote presentation, and I wanted to use my TV at home to practice. While you can stream Keynote presentations from your iPad to your Apple TV, you cannot do that with your Mac. With a huge Keynote file it was not feasible to move it to the iPad, so I ended up having to use a cable. Not any more!
Once Mountain Lion is available, you will have the capability to wirelessly stream anything on your Mac to your TV and all you have to have is an Apple TV. I have a feeling we will be selling a lot more Apple TVs once Mountain Lion is roaming.
This just in: Congratulations to Karen B., winner of the Bob Dylan “Think Different” poster! She won with the following classic Dylan lyrics (and got 110 “Likes” in the process!):
“Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile/Why wait any longer for the world to begin/You can have your cake and eat it too/Why wait any longer for the one you love/When he’s standing in front of you.”
Thanks to all who entered. Check out the other entries on our Facebook page!