Must say this would look really well in my downstairs loo.

The new Boss is really trying a different approach with his staff. The is only one of many displays of affection/respect Tim Cook has shown his flock.Obviously this will help sell more products but its a serious discount for those people already lucky enough to be working at Apple.

Mac Mini is excluded which is only fair but its a great incentive for those employees looking to buy MacBook/iMacs for themselves or their family.

I say myself the Goal is $100 Billion. Just to say they have it Nice round number.

Obviously they are using the cash at the moment to block buy parts such as RAM,Screens etc but i saw yesterday it is estimated that they have spent $100 million alone so far on legal costs fighting the patent wars. But in the scale of $97.6 Billion what is $100 million but just a drop in the ocean.

Question is on everyones lips will they use a sizable chunk of that cash to buy one of their competitors ?

From all the extracts i have read it seems like it will be a good read.

INSIDE APPLE reveals the secret systems, tactics and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for its products.

If Apple is Silicon Valley’s answer to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, then author Adam Lashinsky provides readers with a golden ticket to step inside. In this primer on leadership and innovation, the author will introduce readers to concepts like the “DRI” (Apple’s practice of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task) and the Top 100 (an annual ritual in which 100 up-and-coming executives are tapped a la Skull & Bones for a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs).

Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era. Lashinsky, a Senior Editor at Large for Fortune, knows the subject cold: In a 2008 cover story for the magazine entitled The Genius Behind Steve: Could Operations Whiz Tim Cook Run The Company Someday he predicted that Tim Cook, then an unknown, would eventually succeed Steve Jobs as CEO.

While Inside Apple is ostensibly a deep dive into one, unique company (and its ecosystem of suppliers, investors, employees and competitors), the lessons about Jobs, leadership, product design and marketing are universal. They should appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of that Apple magic to their own company, career, or creative endeavor.

Available to download on the iBook Store now.

How many of you have been there ! Working away and step away from the MacBook for 20 mins and come back to the blank screen “oh MacBook asleep no probs hit a button and off we go again…………………………………….. nope not always. Bloody thing won’t wake.

I kinda figured out what was happening to me anyway. It seems that what was causing the issues the devices connected to my MacBook we causing the Mac to hang. So if it happens to you again plug out any usb device plugged into your Mac or in my case the VGA connector that is hooked up to my external display. It worked for me so try it the next time before you hit the power button to force the Mac to shutdown.

So if your like me and you aren’t as loaded as you were and need to hang onto your Mac‘s longer than expected this might come in handy

I have an Alu MacBook and use it daily for work. Its a work horse as i run Parallels on the Machine for XP “dirty word”. As you can imagine days go by when it brilliant but some days i do get to see the spinning ball of misery a good bit. As i can’t just buy a new one next best thing is give the system a good clean out and buy some RAM. There are lots of sites for this such as Crucial but a friend on Twitter that installs and repairs Macs recommend OWC in the States, he maintains the quality of the products are far superior and there is a very small difference in price.

Put it this way. Crucial says my MacBook is Maxed out at 4GB but OWC supports up to 8GB on Lion. And in that example i can transform my machine for $48. Best money you could spend. And i have. my nearly 4yr old machine will be rocking 8GB Ram in a few days.

So anyone looking to see serious improvements with their Mac have a look on OWC site and see if the cost is worth it to you.

Its early days but i think the signs are pointing towards a good start into Apples latest adventure. Would be interesting to see when Apple launched the iTunes music store how many downloads where there in the first 3 days to compare like for like?

So lots to get through so i am just going to give you the direct links to the the best people to explain what the new Apps/Features etc actually are. As i thought Apple is going all guns blazing into the TextBooks/Education market. They seem to have the key players in the market behind them so all depends now on the uptake from the Schools/Universities/Governments

1. iBooks 2
2. iBooks Author
3. iTunes U App
4. iTunes 10.5.3

iBooks 2 Explained on Apple.com Link

iBooks Author Explained on Apple.com Link

iTunes U Explained on Apple.com Link

Makes a whole lot of sense that iWork 12 is announced today. If you really think about it is a very clever way of Apple getting people over to using Pages if its going to be a very simple way of publishing documents to the iBooks Store.

Obviously we are going to see iBooks 2 today for iOS and Mac maybe even Windows.

Source of rumor Jason O’Grady from ZDNet

Update: Well looks like i was off the mark with iWorks 12 and iBooks “reader” for the Mac. Apple do like to drip feed us stuff so we will probably see iWork 12 drop next mth but i cant see it being a big announcement probably just arrive on the Mac App Store out of the blue. As for the iBook reader for the Mac Apple will have to offer this soon as it makes loads of sense particularly for the likes of the small portables like the 11′ MacBook Air.

Apple HQ,Hollyhill,Cork,Ireland

I came across an interresting  piece written by ”An American in Ireland by The Yank John Fay” about when Apple came to Ireland first. Link

If you take out or ignore the kind of offensive piece about how 3rd world Ireland was in the 80′s and read the rest its very interesting.

I have taken the article that the writer found in his father-in-laws boxes put it below Click here for bigger image

Via (Irish Central & American In Ireland by The Yank)

A real little piece of history.

The writer also wrote a funny piece as to why Cork,Apple & Steve Jobs was the right fit. In Cork Steve Jobs found the perfect match for Apple Read more: