Want to buy my 15″ 2011 MacBook Pro? October 6, 2011
Posted by johnthrasher in Apple.Tags: Apple, buying a new mac, MacBook Pro, Steve Jobs
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So much Apple-related stuff on my blog lately, but that’s just how I roll.
I am offering up my 15″ 2011 MacBook Pro to my Facebook, Twitter and blog followers in hopes that I can help someone out. If no one on said accounts is interested, I’m going to put it on eBay as a last option! I just bought this MacBook like 2 weeks after it was updated in February, so it’s brand spanking new. I absolutely LOVE it, but won’t be traveling for work as much so I want to switch up my computer situation. It runs like a million dollars and is far and beyond the best computer I’ve ever owned. It’s in “New” condition and is cosmetically in really great shape. There is a tiny bit of wear next to the trackpad where your wrist would rest, but it’s a lot more visible in photos (like below) than in real life. I’ve taken great care of this thing!
Below are the details on the MacBook Pro. It comes with the original boxing, power cord, literature, DVDs and even the original Apple stickers!
15″ MacBook Pro
- 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (SO fast)
- 4GB ram
- 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive
- Intel HD Graphics 3000
- AMD Radeon HD 6490M with 256MB GDDR5
- Thunderbolt port
- SD card slot
- 7 hour battery life
- MagSafe Power Adapter
- OS X 10.7 Lion
Here’s a screen shot of the specs straight from the computer itself:
So how much am I asking for it, you ask? Currently, you can buy this exact computer from Apple for $1,800. After tax I paid almost $2,000 for this machine. I am offering it to Facebook, Twitter and my blog readers for $1,400. This price is semi-negotiable. This is a huge discount considering the price of a brand new one.
If you would like to contact me regarding purchasing this beauty of a machine, or have any questions you can e-mail me at jthrasher5@gmail.com. Please, serious inquiries only!
Goodbye Steve Jobs October 5, 2011
Posted by johnthrasher in Apple.Tags: Apple, death, Steve Jobs
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Tonight, the world found out that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died. After battling pancreatic cancer, and apparently liver cancer as well, Steve’s untimely death comes as a shock to me and so many others.
Yes, I am an Apple fan boy, but I am because of the brilliant mind and genius of Steve. Steve has truly changed my life, and in some capacity, so many more across this planet.
Steve gave the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford and one part of it really blew me away:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
If those aren’t words to live by, I don’t know what are.
So many people have spoken out about Steve’s death, but New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg had one of the most eloquent quotes that I’ve ever read in the wake of someone’s death:
Tonight, America lost a genius who will be remembered with Edison and Einstein, and whose ideas will shape the world for generations to come. Again and again over the last four decades, Steve Jobs saw the future and brought it to life long before most people could even see the horizon. And Steve’s passionate belief in the power of technology to transform the way we live brought us more than smart phones and iPads: it brought knowledge and power that is reshaping the face of civilization. In New York City’s government, everyone from street construction inspectors to NYPD detectives have harnessed Apple’s products to do their jobs more efficiently and intuitively. Tonight our City – a city that has always had such respect and admiration for creative genius – joins with people around the planet in remembering a great man and keeping Laurene and the rest of the Jobs family in our thoughts and prayers.
Steve was our generation’s Henry Ford, and an American who turned his idea in his garage in to the most powerful and successful company on the planet. What a life.
Rest in peace, Steve, wherever you may be.
WWDC Recap: Details about Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud June 6, 2011
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple.Tags: Apple, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Lion, Mac, OS X, Steve Jobs, World Wide Developers Conference, WWDC
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Today was the annual WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) where Steve Jobs gave the Keynote to debut new products from Apple. Below are a few bullet points you’ll want to know about today’s event!
Steve Jobs gave the Keynote – This might not seem like a big deal to some. He’s the CEO of Apple, right? If you’re not an Apple fanboy or fangirl, then you should know that Steve Jobs had taken a medical leave of absence from Apple a few months ago. He has done this before while he battled pancreatic cancer. This time, we don’t know what the cause of his absence is, but he looked his typical skinny self during today’s Keynote. (See photo above) Congratulations to Steve for pulling through, and I hope he gets 100% healthy if he’s not already!
10 new features for Mac OS X Lion - Available exclusively on the Mac App Store for only $29.99 sometime in July.
- Multitouch Gestures – Self explanatory.
- Mission Control - Mission Control brings together full-screen apps, Dashboard, Exposé, and Spaces in one new feature that gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything on your system. With a single swipe on the trackpad, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. Think of it as the hub of your system: View everything and go anywhere with just a click.
- Full Screen Applications – FaceTime can now track facial features.
- Mac App Store – Built in to Lion. In App purchasing.
- Launchpad – A simple pinch gesture, and you can have all of your apps available instantly.
- Resume – When you close an application in Lion, it takes you right back to where you were. System-wide function.
- Versions - Versions is a new feature that charts the history of your documents, taking snapshots in time, and displaying them side by side with the latest versions in an easily browsable timeline. You can review the past iterations of your compositions, restore a previous version, or copy and paste from old versions to new ones.
- Auto Save – Lion saves every document automatically so that you never lose work.
- AirDrop – The replacement of the thumb drive. Go into AirDrop and you’ll see all the other users who are running AirDrop. To share a file, just drop a file onto the user in question. They then receive a notification and, hey presto, file exchanged. There’s nothing to discover, auto setup.
- New Mail – Looks like it has a new icon. Tons of new search features, and built in conversation lines.
Introducing iOS 5 – Available to developers today, everyone else “this Fall.”
- Notification Center – Brand new notifications interface. See picture below!
- Newsstand – A lot like iBooks, but used with subscription based magazines and newspapers.
- Twitter – Built in to iOS 5. You can tweet articles from Safari, videos from YouTube, locations from Maps.
- Safari – Safari Reader, looks like Instapaper. Faster. Has tabbed browsing. Reading List – Save stories from Safari to read for later. Syncs across multiple devices.
- Reminders – Built in list making app. Allows for storage of multiple lists, with dates to remind you. Can assign location. Reminds you when you cross a “geo-fence.”
- Camera – Now a camera button on the lock screen. You can click the button and go right in to the camera. You can now press volume up and down to take pictures. Photos can now be edited directly on the device. You can crop, rotate, reduce red-eye, and you can do a one click enhance.
- Mail - Rich-text formatting, indentation control, draggable addresses (from To: to Cc: or Bcc:), flagging so you can mark them as unread, and now you can search the entire contents of messages. Built in dictionary.
- PC Free – You can now buy and set up any iOS device out of the box. No need to connect cables to existing PCs. Software updates will now be over the air. You can now create and delete calendars from iOS.
- Game Center – Download games right from Game Center. Find friends of friends.
- iMessages – New messaging service between iOS regardless of device. Lets you send text messages, photos, videos, contacts, and even do group messaging. Can also get delivery receipts, read receipts, and real-time typing notification.
- Wifi Sync to iTunes! – You can set your iOS device to find your iTunes and sync. You can also sync your iTunes library over WiFi! You can now completely cut the cord!
- Documents in the Cloud – Create a project on Pages, Numbers or Keynote, it will upload to iCloud and then sync across devices.
- Photo Stream – Take a picture, uploads to iCloud, downloads to “Photo Stream” album across iDevices and iPhoto.
- iTunes in the Cloud – Download media from iTunes on one device, go to iTunes on other iOS devices and sync same media for no additional charge.
- Sync new devices via WiFi (or cable)
- Buy songs you’re missing on iTunes
- iTunes Match service – Finds the songs you’ve ripped from CDs and replaces them with iTunes high quality version. $24.99 p/year.
- New iPad music app
- Smart Playlist sync from iTunes
- Option to speak text selection
- iTunes Tone Store
- Built-in dictionary
- Emoji emoticons
- Personal dictionary
- Alternate routes in Maps
- Improved FaceTime video quality
iPad 2 and iPhone 5 to Lose Home Button? January 13, 2011
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple, Geek Talk, iPhone, technology, ThrasherTechnoTrash.Tags: Apple, iPad 2, iPhone 5, Steve Jobs
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There is a very high liklihood that the next iPad and iPhone will ship without a home button!
Will these mockups of home button free iPads and iPhones be the next models from Apple?
Steve Jobs has mentioned in the past that he didn’t want any buttons on the iPhone when it was first announced back in 2007. Now, with the video below surfacing of iOS 4.3 for iPad featuring home screen and multitasking gesture support, it looks like the home buttonless iPads and iPhones may be a reality in 2011.
I personally don’t think I would like to use gestures only to navigate my way through these devices…in particular the iPhone where 5 fingers barely even fit. Do you think it would be awkward? Watch the video below to see how you may be using an iPad in the future…
iTunes Announcement Coming Tomorrow! November 15, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple, Personally John, technology, ThrasherTechnoTrash.Tags: Apple, iTunes, John Thrasher, Steve Jobs
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This morning we all woke up to this announcement on Apple’s homepage. It seems awfully dramatic, even for Apple. Unless you’re giving me $1,000 in iTunes gift cards, I doubt that it’s a day I’ll never forget.
ANYWHO…
Being many people’s go-to Apple guy, everyone has been asking me what it means. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!?
From what I gather it could be one of two things (or both).
1 – It’s long been rumored that Apple is working on cloud-based iTunes. What does that mean? It means your music would stream to your iPod/iPad/iPod touch/any other web device from the internet. Rather than downloading your music to your 16GB iPhone, why not download to your 60GB iTunes cloud online? Not only will this save you space to download native apps but it will make managing and syncing your music a lot easier.
My thoughts? – While this is a cool idea, the end user experience could suffer as a result of a couple of things: people not always being connected to the internet when they want to listen to music (traveling), people expecting their music to be on their devices and then thinking it was deleted when really it’s in the cloud storage, streaming music will cause huge data bills for those who don’t have unlimited data (all new iPhone 4 users) and so on and so forth. Maybe Apple will find a way around some of these issues
2 – Subscription based iTunes has long been rumored as well. Apple recently acquired a company from the U.K. who was successfully implementing this very service. With this feature, you would pay X amount of dollars per month to stream all of iTunes catalog. Though that seems nice, I don’t see the subscription being anything under $25. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow!
Or it could be something completely off the wall. Seeing as we’re officially in the holiday season, these expensive subscriptions sound more likely. I’ll be excited to see what it is!
“Be Like Steve” For Halloween This Year with iWear October 28, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in Apple, Geek Talk.Tags: Apple, John Thrasher, Steve Jobs
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LOLLERSKATES! I almost didn’t believe the story I read saying that Apple is actually the company launching this campaign. But lo and behold, Apple has actually launched a Halloween costume so you can look like Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
I’m still trying to figure out if this is a joke. Update coming later.
Last Minute Predictions for Today’s “Back To The Mac” Event October 20, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple, iPhone, technology, ThrasherTechnoTrash.Tags: Apple, John Thrasher, Mac, Steve Jobs
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I’m usually so anxious for the Apple events that it seems like they take forever to get here, but this one kind of snuck up on me like a lion. Get it?
Anyway I’ve read the blogs and watched the news even more so over the last week since this invitation was sent out. Here are some things I think you can expect from today’s “Back to the Mac” event, which starts at 10am Pacific time:
- New MacBook Airs – I doubt that we’ll see the discontinuation of the 13″ model, but a new 11″ model is heavily rumored. Apparently these new MacBook Airs won’t have hard drives (don’t freak out!), but they WILL have SD card like slots for flash memory. This probably doesn’t make sense to most people, but what it does is add extra battery life, cut down the cost of the computer itself and gives you the chance to customize your hard drive to your liking. I would expect the long-awaited black bezel and an even sleeker, thinner design.
- New MacBooks – I don’t think we’ll see a design update, but upgraded specs is almost inevitable with the introduction of new MacBook Airs.
- iLife ’11 – Earlier this morning discussion topics on Apple’s official website for Garageband ’11, iPhoto ’11, and iMovie ’11 were noticed by popular Apple blogs, and then immediately taken down. This pretty much confirms we’ll be seeing this all today. Notably missing from that discussion board? iDVD. Apparently there were 2 other placeholder titles for the discussion board: “Reserved 10 20″ and “MBA (Needs official name).” MBA, presumably means MacBook Air, but no one is certain why it “needs official name.” People are assuming the “Reserved 10 20″ is for the “iLife ’11″ topic.
- Mac OS X 10.7 Lion – This one is pretty much a given after seeing the invitation (above). We’re probably getting a sneak peak of Lion today (a la the invitation). Not much has been said about new features at this point. The only things rumored to be coming are iOS-like scrollbars (here’s a pic if you’re confused), likely FaceTime integration, and a new “Dropbox-killer” – a feature that would allow Mac users to easily share files across computers! I would be very happy about that last feature, that’s for sure.
- iPhone 4 Coming to Verizon – The rumors are stronger than ever, though I don’t see this happening today, especially if there are new products to talk about. An iPhone announcement like that would be surprising because of the product cycle (typically iPhone info is announced in May/June), and because it would definitely be all over the news outshadowing any other product announcement today.
I doubt that we are going to see anything beyond this. Steve is going to spend his time talking about the new MacBooks and a glimmer in to 10.7 and making developers drool. The Mac events are usually very focused and specific to Macs only.
Do you think we’ll see anything besides this?
New Apple TVs Have 8GB Flash Memory September 29, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple, Geek Talk, iPhone, technology, Television, ThrasherTechnoTrash.Tags: Apple, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod, John Thrasher, Steve Jobs
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Remember when Apple announced that the new Apple TV didn’t have a hard drive, and that you could only stream content to it? Well they were kind of lying.
New Apple TVs have started arriving in the hands of their loyal customers, and a brief teardown over on MacRumors shows an 8GB NAND Flash chip – the same that you would find across the 8GB iPods and iPhones.
Why does this matter you may be asking?
It’s a pretty clear indication that Apple is going to be opening up an App store for Apple TVs in the near future. And instead of filling that sucker up with videos, pictures, and other online media, they want you to fill it with apps!
I’m not sure how this will go over when an App store is announced for Apple TV…
Steve Jobs: “Oh by the way, you have 8GB of internal storage on your ‘streaming-only’ AppleTV! Sorry we lied, but at least you can have neat AppleTV apps!”
Though I knew that TV would be the next big push in technology/media hybrid experimentation, the whole device + apps = revenue motif that Apple has been churning out is starting to be a bit overkill. I don’t need 43209438 devices all running the same app.
Apple should go back to that pesky old clunker known as …the Mac, and get Mac OS 10.7 out before people start forgetting that they’re in the computer business.
My Predictions for Tomorrow’s Apple Music Event August 31, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in App Talk, Apple, technology, ThrasherTechnoTrash.Tags: Apple, FaceTime, iPods, Steve Jobs
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I have a lot of thoughts and ideas about what tomorrow’s Apple music event will reveal. So without further ado:
- New iPod nano that looks like this
- Retiring iPod shuffle
- New iPod touch with retina display, front and back cameras, A4 chip, and FaceTime (Coming in 32, 64, and 128GB)
- Retiring of iPod classic – but won’t really get mentioned
- Ultimately, retiring the click wheel from the iPod line - which will make pop culture news
- iLife ’11 would be nice – with new “mystery application” that I predicted a while back to be FaceTime
- Cloud-based iTunes streaming (though I wouldn’t put my chips on the table for this one – at least for right now)
- ONE MORE THING: AppleTV changing to iTV, resembles iPhone without a screen, .99 cent TV show rentals
That’s all I got for now. Check back here tomorrow for an update on the new Apple stuff!
My Top 5 Pop Culture Moments I’ll Never Forget June 30, 2010
Posted by johnthrasher in Geek Talk, iPhone, Movies/Film, MTV TJ, Music, Personally John, Political, technology, Television, Travel.Tags: Apple, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, iPhone, Michael Jackson, New York, New York City, Steve Jobs, This Is it, Washington D.C.
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5. Original Apple iPhone Release – Though I didn’t end up buying the original iPhone for about 2 months after it came out, it was still EXTREMELY exclusive to have one at the time. Back then, when I showed people the pinch to zoom feature, it always ended in “oohs” and “ahhs.” 
The iPhone really changed more than just the way people use the internet, it changed entire industries. Music, internet, email, in your pocket really ended up paving the way for the app store and many third party companies to become filthy rich overnight. The iPhone set the new standard for what a smart phone was and currently is.
4. Christina Aguilera’s “Back to Basics” Album and Tour – I still owe Johnny $50 for the extra ticket he had for this show, but frankly, I should pay him $5,000 because this show was far and beyond the best pop music experience I have ever seen. 
I haven’t been to a ton of concerts in my life, but this one has still held its spot as “Most Mind Blowing Talent in a Concert Ever.” I think Christina lip-synched a few songs, but definitely not all. The overall feel of the 20s throwback, the soul in the music on this album, and the experience of seeing it all with my best friend really changed my perception of what pop music could be. This album wasn’t her most radio friendly, but in my opinion it’s one of the best of the last decade.
3. Britney Spears “Circus” Tour – To the same degree Christina blew my mind out of the water with Back to Basics, Britney actually made a perfect example of what drugs can really do to someone’s entertainment career. I went to this concert with my friend C’Anna, both excited to see some classic Britney before we die.
Britney freaking out at a show when a fan ran up on stage to dance with her.
We both left Pittsburgh that night lethargic and unimpressed. This was a train wreck from the moment she stepped on to the stage until the moment she left…and even after that. Besides not singing an entire song, her choreography seemed lethargic and dizzy – not exactly something you would expect from a Britney Spears concert. I wasn’t heading in to the concert expecting a HUGE spectacle (I read reviews before I went), but I was expecting to be entertained, and I wasn’t. I learned to just jam to Britney on the radio, and enjoy all the work the producers must put in to making her music sound worthwhile.
2. The Inauguration of Barack Obama – I am lucky enough to live 2 hours from Washington, D.C. Because of this I am able to experience historic things like the Inauguration of Barack Obama. I actually went on the eve of his inauguration for the concert that was held on the National Mall. I stood in a sea of people from literally all over the world. The people to my right were from Ireland, and the people to my life were from Africa. There was a feeling of camaraderie and joy that I’ve only read about in history books. I knew when I was there that I was really experiencing something life-changing.
1. Michael Jackson’s Death – Michael Jackson’s name is synonymous with success. He was the example of pure talent. Though his death was very tragic, it actually wasn’t his death that affected me – it was being in New York City when it happened, and experiencing so many people lifting him up and celebrating his life. I’ve written about this before on my site, just the other day, on the one year anniversary of his death. Being in the city he was discovered the day he passed away was surreal. Everyone was remembering him, some people mourned, others celebrated his music. However, it was very clear on the streets of Manhattan that Michael’s legacy was going to live on. To be a part of the soul of New York City and this pop culture phenomenon was something I’ll never forget.
