To Apple fanboys/girls Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, is a god. But where does Jony draw his inspiration? Meet german industrial designer, Dieter Rams:

Dieter Rams: Less and More Interview from Gestalten on Vimeo.

MacDailyNews – Apple iPads takeover CNBC’s Fast Money set (with stills): “MacDailyNews reader ‘Joe Architect’ alerted us to flip on CNBC a few minutes ago and we noticed right away that Apple’s iPads have taken over the set on CNBC’s ‘Fast Money’ set. They may have been there for some time, but we just noticed them today”

Secretly Monitor Employees Using Their Macs | Tips and Tricks | Mac360: “Andrew Grove, one of the founders of chip giant Intel, is credited with saying that ‘only the paranoid survive.’ Many in positions of authority believe it to be true.

If you have an office or school full or Macs, or just a family of Mac users, do you know what they’re doing on their Macs? Macs can be guarded with secret monitoring and recording apps that capture everything a user does on their Macs. Everything.”

So you forgot your Mac password… uh oh. Don’t worry, it happens and you aren’t out of luck. You’ll need to reset the forgotten password and there’s several ways to do this, we’ll focus on the two best methods; one does not require a Mac OS X installer CD and is a great hack, and the other is much more simple if you happen to have a Mac OS X DVD laying around.

[From Forgot Mac Password? How to Reset Your Mac Password (with or without CD) - OS X Daily]

iPhone Explorer lets you use an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad as if it were in disk mode or a flash drive. iPhone Explorer is an iPhone browser for Mac & PC that lets you browse the files and folders on your iPhone as if it were a normal USB flash drive or pen drive. You can use the easy drag-and-drop methods to add or remove files and folders from the iPhone. Compatible with all iPhones and iPod Touches including the new iPhone 4 and iOS 4 firmware.

[From iPhone Explorer - A USB iPhone browser for Mac and PC]

Leopard and Snow Leopard have the ability to edit pdf files, move pages around, and even merge two pdf documents together. It’s built right in. In OS X combining pdf documents is now easy and you don’t need a third party program to do it! Here is how to join two or more pdf files together into one.

[From How to merge pdf files with preview in Leopard | Macintosh How To]

Style Sheets, easy and quick

Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit’s intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!
Everyone is welcome: CSS newbies and power users

Because of CSSEdit’s unique focus on style sheets, it offers a wide range of features for any level of expertise. Starting out? Selector Builder and advanced visual editors will gradually help you understand CSS instead of dumbing you down.

For anyone well-versed in CSS, the Live Preview and intelligent source environment are invaluable tools to get your website or application styled in a fraction of the time it took before. Add powerful X-Ray web page inspection, and you’ve got an unbeatable CSS debugging suite.

[From MacRabbit - CSSEdit - Web 2.0 in Style]

[From One iPhone, Two Different Numbers, Courtesy Of Toktumi’s Line2 App [Review] | Cult of Mac]

“Don’t mean to be alarmist, but the odds are increasing that Microsoft’s business will just completely collapse,” Henry Blodget writes for Business Insider. “The market still thinks Microsoft’s long-term prospects are pretty good, though. The stock is trading at a respectable 14X P/E. The company has cash flow gushing out of its ears. The consensus is that Microsoft will keep growing, just more slowly. But the odds are increasing that even this will prove to be wishful thinking.”

[From MacDailyNews - Blodget: The odds are increasing that Microsoft's business will just completely collapse]

Apple products often spawn ecosystems of product categories to facilitate their existence. The iPod and iPhone, for instance, gave birth to speaker docks, FM transmitters and protective cases. And now an ecosystem of products is materializing for the iPad: they include cases of all sorts, bean bag lap rests and, yes, clothes. Suits, to be specific.

Upscale Manhattan tailor Mohan’s Tailor Shop, which boasts a clientele including Barry Bonds, Walt Frazier and Gary Carter, recently unveiled a custom made suit with a jacket pocket to accommodate the iPad (as reported in the WSJ). The impetus for it was the result of several customer requests for the feature; since its unveiling, the tailor says it has received about “100 calls and scheduled several dozen appointments with customers over the next several weeks” for a fitting.

Mohan’s must be pulling off some magic of its own to fit Apple’s “magical” device in a jacket pocket. At 1.6 pounds, I’m guessing the iPad may pull one side of the jacket lower than the other, thus necessitating some kind of counterbalance.

Personally, I’d rather just use a bag.

[From Pocket protector, meet your cousin: the iPad suit]

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.–There is one clear star emerging at this year’s D: All Things Digital conference: Apple’s iPad.
In addition to all the stage time that the tablet got during Steve Jobs’ talk last night, it is also dominating the discussion with other presenters.
Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg sang Jobs praises for several minutes, before declaring: “His greatest accomplishment is going to be this tablet.”
“As Steve said last night, there is something indescribable about the connection,” Katzenberg said. “Our children are going to get educated on it. They are going to play on it. They are going to consume more media on that than any other (device).”
Katzenberg said he now only carries his BlackBerry and iPad and not a traditional laptop.
“The laptop is yesterday’s news,” he said.

[From At D, all hail the iPad | Beyond Binary - CNET News]

The Windows era is over announces Joe Wilcox at Betanews. Is it?

He certainly makes a compelling argument. Like other tech behemoths before it, Microsoft’s products are simply being rendered irrelevant by new technologies, new ideas, and new products that have come out of the blue and swept them aside.

Largely thanks to Apple’s innovation and success in the consumer space, mobile computing is no longer a niche product. It’s mass market, and the iPad is going to spawn so many copycat products that the stores will be swimming with them. Apple showed the way, and everyone else in the tech business saw instantly that they should follow along, as fast as possible.

Or as Joe puts it: “A new era dawns.”

What’s more, Joe says Microsoft no longer has the loyalty of its partners. Intel sells chips to Apple now. HP has purchased Palm and is working furiously to make new tablet devices. It’s as if the industry has seen Microsoft’s future, and wants to distance itself from it, to break the connections.

So as Apple breezes past Microsoft in the market cap stakes, where next for Windows? Are the improvements made in Windows 7 enough to turn things around, and slow the momentum? Is Joe right to say the Windows era is over?

[From Joe Wilcox: “The Windows Era Is Over” | Cult of Mac]

WELL I GUESS THAT ANSWERS THAT!

SEATTLE — Apple has surpassed Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world by market capitalization.

Apple’s move comes as the company’s iPhone, and now its iPad tablet computer, have taken on more of the personal computing tasks once handled by computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system and other programs.

Market cap is the dollar value of a company’s outstanding shares. On Wednesday, Apple Inc.’s shares slipped $1.11 to close at $244.11, making its market cap about $222 billion.

But Microsoft Corp.’s stock fell $1.06, or 4.1 percent, to close at $25.01, for market cap of about $219 billion.

The only U.S. business with a higher market value is Exxon Mobil Corp. The oil company’s market cap is about $279 billion, based on Wednesday’s closing price of $59.31.

(This version CORRECTS the spelling of Exxon Mobil)

[From Apple Dethrones Microsoft As World's Biggest Tech Company]

[From MacDailyNews - AutoCAD returns to Mac; first screenshots posted online (with image)]

Cupidtino is a beautiful new dating site created for fans of Apple products by fans of Apple products! Why? Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and of course a love for technology. We believe these are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love, and so we created the first Mac-inspired dating site to help you find other Machearts around you.
Cupidtino will launch in June 2010 exclusively on Apple platforms – Safari, iPhone and iPad apps. It’s time to share the love.

[From Cupidtino ]

Perian calls itself “the Swiss Army knife for QuickTime,” a description that’s pretty much spot-on.

Technically, Perian is a “QuickTime component” and it’s a preference pane rather than an application (which means that after installing, you’ll find it in System Preferences, not in your Applications folder).

But if the technical details leave you blurry-eyed, all you need to know what what Perian actually does. It gives QuickTime – the video player that comes built into your Mac – additional super powers, enabling it to play video files it would otherwise have refused to play.

That means you can watch AVI files from Windows-using friends. You can watch bits of video in dozens of formats (here’s a list) and it will all Just Work. Once you’ve got Perian installed, you won’t have to worry about it, nor will you be troubled by pesky conversions from one format to another just to view the latest hilarious lolcat.

Perian is free (so you don’t have to pay for it, though donations are welcome), and it’s open source (so you can take it to pieces to see how it works, if you wish), and it’s a really good idea to have it installed on your Mac. You’ll need 10.4.7 or higher.

(You’re reading the 4th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps we at the Cult value most. Read more.)

[From 50 Mac Essentials #4: Perian | Cult of Mac]

Back in December, I reviewed LogMeIn Ignition for the iPhone. For the uninitiated, LogMeIn is a service that allows you to sign onto your computer remotely to access the desktop. They had just released the Mac client, and the iPhone version was a great way to get to your files over a 3G connection. Ultimately, the only problem was the size. It’s a touch difficult navigating around on the tiny screen, but it’s better than nothing, right?

Well now they’ve released an iPad version of the app and here’s the good news: If you already have the iPhone version, just install the App onto your iPad via iTunes, and check for an update. That’s what I did, and 10 minutes later I was surfing my computer using the iPad.

The extended real estate of the iPad makes using your desktop remotely substantially easier than on the iPhone. Your finger becomes the mouse, with one tap becoming a left click, and all of the typical multi-touch features still working the same way. As is to be expected with a program like this, the connection isn’t as fast as it would be if you were in front of your computer. But it’s not like you’re going to hammer out a presentation on your desktop via your iPad. For me, I see this as being a great program for those “Oh Crap” moments when you’ve forgotten a file at home and need it immediately, or if you just want to show a buddy something you have at your other computer.

The iPad’s big screen makes programs like this shine. Yes, LogMeIn works on the iPhone, and it works pretty well. But adding those extra inches of room on the screen with the iPad makes it much, much better.

[From LogMeIn Ignition for the iPad - Apple Gazette]

Introduction
When we ordered a Time Capsule, we chose the 500 GB model, since this was sufficient and also less expensive than the 1 TB. However we had in mind that as the price of large disks came down, we would one day change the disk for a larger one.

[From Hardmac.com : Le "Macbidouille" in English - Changing a disk in the Time Capsule]

Adobe Platform Evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’
Friday, April 09, 2010 – 05:27 PM EDT
“By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms,” Lee Brimelow, Adobe Platform Evangelist, blogs for The Flash Blog. “Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion.”

MacDailyNews Take: Brimelow then inexplicably proceeds to comment further. This marks just the first of his many lies.

Brimelow continues, “What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.”

MacDailyNews Take: Whiners whine and liars lie and sometimes they’re one and same. We already explained this quite clearly earlier today: “Flash is a proprietary, resource-hogging, browser-crashing abomination and we don’t want ported software; software designed for the lowest common denominator is inferior to software designed to take advantage of individual platforms’ strengths.” Adobe should understand this implicitly because they long ago turned their backs on the very platform that made their company in order to design their apps for Windows, the lowest common denominator. That is why Mac users suffer with inferior Adobe software today.

Brimelow continues, “The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible.”

MacDailyNews Take: So, Adobe doesn’t want to own the proprietary toolset to generate profits by controlling the Web’s multimedia platform. The angels just want to provide creative professionals with blah, blah, blah. Well then, Adobe should drop Flash into the dumpster where it belongs, and embrace the creation of cross-platform tools that enable people to deploy open standards, such as HTML5, that will work on as many devices as possible, including 85+ million iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

Brimelow continues, “Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.”

MacDailyNews Take: Adobe won’t do that because they’d go under. Real creative professionals use Macs. Adobe can’t live off Window sufferers trying to use pirated Photoshop or Adobe’s craptastic Premiere.

Brimelow continues, “Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.”

MacDailyNews Take: Adobe’s Platform Evangelist relegates himself to second-rate media services and that’s supposed to be some big statement?

Brimelow continues, “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.”

MacDailyNews Take: Pure class and absolutely nothing new; it’s exactly what Adobe’s been saying to Apple Mac users for the last 15 years.

In the end, only one of these two companies will be screwed. It isn’t Apple.

[From MacDailyNews - Adobe Platform Evangelist: 'Go screw yourself Apple']

To kick start Apple Week here at CotyGonzales.com, I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of Apple T-Shirt suitable for any Apple Fanboy or MacHead! And chances are, if you’re a MacAddict like me, you probably own a few of these shirts already! Later in the week I’ll be posting a list of Official Apple Released T-Shirts. They have a long history of releasing T-Shirts to members of specific Apple projects – be on the lookout for that coming sometime this week!

[From 101 T-Shirts for Apple Fanboys and the Mac Faithful! | Coty Gonzales | T-Shirt Reviews, Interviews and Coupon Codes]

The vast selection of free 3rd party applications available for Mac OS X always surprises people when they’re new to the platform. Among that abundance of software is a collection of free Mac video converters which can cover nearly any situation you could find yourself in.

[From 6 best free Mac video converters to handle nearly any file format | MacYourself]

BookBook is a one-of-a-kind, hardback leather case designed exclusively for MacBook and MacBook Pro. Available in Classic Black or Vibrant Red, BookBook brings three levels of security to your prized Mac. First, the hardback cover and spine provide solid protection from the rigors of the road. Second, the vintage book design disguises MacBook for superior security. And third, the stylish case protects you from being like everyone else because BookBook is totally original, just like you.

[From BookBook - BookBook - Twelve South]

Free & open-source DVD decryption

Fairmount is a free tool which allows on-the-fly decryption of DVD content for convenient access. Fairmount does not perform the actual decryption, it simply forwards the data to VLC Media Player, which is used for the decryption. Hence, VLC Media Player must be installed for Fairmount to work.

[From Metakine - Fairmount]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs hit the star-studded red carpet at the 82nd Academy Awards yesterday evening.

Oscar night was big for Jobs. He not only traded in his trademark turtleneck for his tux, but his company also debuted its first-ever iPad ad, which was aired twice during the three-and-a-half-hour Academy Award broadcast. (Watch it here).

See photos of Steve Jobs, famous for his California-casual uniform of jeans and New Balance sneakers, in his black-tie ensemble.

Twitter user @WayneSutton was one of the first on the blogosphere to remark of Steve Jobs’ attendance at the awards. ‘OMG it’s Steve Jobs! I’m the only one yelling at him! #oscars #kodakredcarpet,’ Sutton tweeted.

[From Steve Jobs' Oscar Cameo: PICTURES Of Tux-Wearing Apple CEO On The Red Carpet]

If you are a smoker, you can’t help but know the health hazards that come along with the habit. If you are an Apple owner who smokes, you need to be aware that Apple frowns on smoking and is now stating that smoking voids the warranty of Apple computers.

The problem is that the residue that smoking leaves inside the computer is being termed a health risk. One consumer claims that when he took his MacBook into an Apple store for repairs related to an overheating issue the store refused to work on the computer.

[From Apple won't work on Macs owned by smokers]

There are several situations where you might want to dump a DVD to your hard drive to watch later. For instance, I get significantly better battery life when watching a video from my hard drive than I get when watching it from a DVD. If I’m stuck in a plane for several hours, having my movie on the hard drive can be the difference between finishing the show, or running out of power halfway through. I use a PowerBook and in OS X 10.3 and earlier you could just use the built in Disk Utility to copy a DVD to your disk, but it stopped working in 10.4. However with a few free tools you can accomplish the same thing and more.

[From » Travelling with Movies on a Mac]