I owe a lot to Steve Jobs. My family got an Apple IIc computer when I was in the 1st grade (thanks Mom and Dad!) and it defined my entire career. I was an early card-carrying member of the cult of Apple. It wasn’t just about being cool or different. There are hundreds of tangible reasons why that platform was and is superior. Not just for artists, but for everyone. An evangelist was born.

In the 2nd grade, my 1st grade teacher came to get me out of class to help her “fix” her Apple IIe. Remember those guys with the green and black monitors? Turns out she just didn’t have the monitor on, but I found it remarkable that she came to me rather than any other adult in the school.

That was my first consulting gig.

I often don’t write about “big news” since I figure everyone is doing it and the world probably doesn’t need one more blog post. But in this case, this isn’t just news. This is the end of an era.

But it’s not all sadness. Steve’s legacy is so strong, inspiring, and lasting that his untimely passing also marks the beginning of a new era — for Apple and all technology companies and geeks.

We’ve seen social media take hold in the past few years, and I believe we have yet to realize the true potential of that technology. In its infant state of exploration, experimentation and fundamental learning, social media remain anyone’s game.

Apple fueled the growth of new technologies such as social media by exploding the potential of open mobile app distribution. I clamor to ideas like this — philosophies, frameworks, and factories working together to empower everyone and level the playing field.

At the center of all this was Steve, whose singular vision and demanding standards merged artistry and technology into some of the most empowering devices and software ever created.

Being a life-long Apple fanatic means I’ve been there in good times and bad. I saw Steve get booted from Apple, and then triumphantly return to save the company from disappearing altogether. I painfully tried to help my college buddies with their late-90’s Mac’s that just weren’t very well-built.

When the Mac came about in 1984, I became mesmerized by desktop publishing and later PageMaker. The Mac made that world possible at the time, and once again I found it easy to dazzle people by doing what I enjoyed most – using the things that came out of Steve’s mind to solve problems and create.

This lead me to pursue journalism through high school and college. I was also an Apple Student Rep at Northwestern, which is the only time I received a paycheck from Apple. While I didn’t specifically pursue journalism as a career, my life has led me along the path of the new journalism in the form of social media and communication technologies. I apply these lessons on behalf of my company and clients every day.

And yes, I still use a Mac. Now I have several. I feel like much of the world has come to understand what I’ve known all my life. Vision like this is rare and deserves to be revered.

Steve would be the first to tell you that his path was not without mistakes. Whose life isn’t? But his journey is an extraordinary one worthy of reflection. He had a unique way of bringing teams of varied talent together to create something profound around a singular vision. It’s no surprise that Pixar is one of most successful film studios and business success stories in any industry.

Five years ago, who would have thought that thousands of executives would be walking around with an Apple logo on their phones?

If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes to watch Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford graduates in 2005. These words continue to inspire me.

Thanks Steve for all you’ve given me and the world. We’ll never forget what you did and we’ll do our very best to carry your torch of innovation.

Update:
I was going through some old Apple memorabilia (yes, I have a lot of it), and found this photo of the rock we painted at Northwestern University in April 1997 before they changed to a single color logo. We made the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, the next day. However, the article was titled “Macintosh Misery” due to our decision to create hopeful art during a dark chapter in Apple’s life. Steve’s return and recovery of the company shortly thereafter thankfully make these mere anecdotes of history.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Gadget, Technology

You might have heard about Google’s announcement to purchase Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion. On the surface this would seem to be a move to solidify the Android ecosystem and cult by starting to build and distribute their own mobile hardware (cell phones and tablets).

That’s part of it. Apple has demonstrated the market power and profitability that a proper cult following can generate and continues to demonstrate this commitment by practically giving away their newest operating system, Lion ($29), and actually giving away their upcoming iCloud service to all Lion users. Not a bad way to get people to buy the latest and greatest.

Not too far beneath Google’s surface brews a tempest that has significant implications for all mobile technology innovation in the years to come. Google’s main interest in Motorola is 17,000-plus patents that allow them to enter the patent wars currently underway. In this war, patents are conglomerated legal cards to be played as part of an ongoing legal strategy for each company vying for market share.

Patents were designed to fuel innovation by rewarding someone’s original idea, allowing him or her a specific period of time to capitalize monetarily on that idea. Technology moves much faster than the law, and we’re quickly seeing the limitations of copyright, trademark, and patent law as they currently stand.

On the heels of reports saying Android phones occupy nearly half the market, one might wonder how such a deal could get through anti-trust court. To Google’s credit, this does represent a new business sector for them as they wisely licensed the Android OS (classic Microsoft strategy) rather than building hardware (Apple). Now how do you think those dozens of hardware manufactures feel about competing directly with a company owned by their licensor?

While Larry Page states that the deal will “enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater choice, and wonderful user experiences,” I’m not convinced. The little guy doesn’t have the legal muscle to enter the patent wars, and is often only brought in unknowingly after he’s had some success.

Certainly Google has offered much innovation to the world, and some see as a defensive move. I have a limited amount of trust for any large corporation, and these days that includes Google and even Apple. If you’ve been watching this game awhile, it may seem somewhat ironic to see Apple and Microsoft banding together to sue Google. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

This situation makes me squirm the way much of our stock market does. What was created as an institution to allow anyone to invest in a company, hitching his or her star to the success and failure of that company, has become an abstraction that allows people to place bets on the success or failure of anything or nothing. We’ve seen how well that played out in recent years.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Gadget, Technology

While I’m a frequent traveler to Austin, TX, for music events and family, this was my first time at South By Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). SXSW is divided into Interactive, Film, and Music festivals, each world-renowned for the quality of talent, content, and fun.

SXSWi is the height of Tech geekery, mostly focused around Web and mobile apps related to social media, such as Foursquare or Twitter. This is my crowd, for sure, and our social media guru Rachel Yeomans was even more plugged in than me due to her incessant and productive use of Twitter.

I dusted off my Twitter account just for the occasion. While I was one of the first people on it three years ago, I’ve found it difficult to keep up, which is a common issue for our clients to which I can relate! I’m glad I brought it out, though, as much of SXSW takes place on Twitter. This isn’t a surprise considering that Twitter essentially launched at SXSW years ago, but what did surprise me was the advanced and consistent use of hash tags to create interactive audience feedback for every session. Moderators would monitor the Twitter traffic for that session and involve the audience as they could.

Most of the big tech brands were present, as were most of the geek celebrities. A highlight for me was getting to meet a childhood geek hero, Guy Kawasaki, who was there supporting his new book, Enchantment. I fondly remember reading Guy’s column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. As Chief Evangelist for the Mac when it was first released in 1984, he was there right at the beginning. Now he turns much of his attention to helping entrepreneurs, writing, speaking, and VC’ing. I got to meet him at his book signing, pictured below!

The learning, networking, funning, eating, and yes… drinking, all made for a dense and highly worthwhile experience, starting with legos. When we first arrived at the conference center, I found three huge tables full of legos, which immediately put me in a five-year-old state of mind. Perfect! No, we didn’t spend the whole time there, but it was a good way to get the juices flowing.

Me and my amazing creation…

And our friend Miguel Cano, from JSH&A, working on his own…

Presenter highlights included Chicago friend Jenni Prokopy (ChronicBabe) talking about building better health communities. An interview with publisher Tim O’Reilly gave us a glimpse into the future of digital. I learned about everything from social media metrics to text donations for nonprofits to web typography to mobile optimization to user experience process and more. I did make it one film event — a panel with Rainn Wilson for his new movie, Super. And somewhere in there we even made it to a couple of parties!

The food trucks are a highlight of Austin, particularly in the downtown area. Rachel, Miguel, and I walked until we found one with a short line — Turf N’ Surf Poboys. Yum…

Major sponsor and Foursquare competitor Gowalla was heavily represented, though I stuck to Foursquare personally. And vowel-challenged startup SCVNGR had everyone running around finding things for various types of rewards. All this served as real world preview of what is being largely hailed as the “next big thing” — the gamification of pretty much everything. What’s that? Well, it basically means that technologies with built-in game mechanics are more successful at getting people to actually use the technology. The best app in the world is useless if nobody uses it.

Foursquare, in my opinion, is the most successful example of merging game motivation with real-world advertising. While I’ve been using the mobile app for nearly two years, I’ve never seen such an intense concentration as I did at SXSW. People were checking in to everything, everywhere. Every room, event, party, and sometimes cars. I hit a new week record of 403 points! They released a big update to the app for SXSW, so it now tells you lots of good tidbits related to your own data, such as how long it’s been since you were at that location. This intrigues me since I purposefully choose not to broadcast my location to very many people.

The Foursquare people were everywhere as well. Forty of them came to SXSW, including co-founder Dennis Crowley, who I saw interviewed by Mashable SEO Pete Cashmore. In a particularly humbling moment for Dennis, an enormous print of his GAP ad was brought on stage and offered up to the audience member with the best question.

Dennis spoke about the future of Foursquare, and his vision to help you remember and find that coffee shop your friends were telling you to visit when you go to San Francisco, for instance. I also had a nice chat with Foursquare General Manager Evan Cohen after a smaller discussion he led with Lisa Bradner of Geomentum about the future of geo-related marketing and advertising.

Saving one of the most amazing moments for last, Rachel suggested we check out a live recording of The Nerdist with Chris Hardwick podcast at Esther’s Follies, a really fun local venue with lots of history. Fifteen minutes into the recording, Chris said it was time to bring out their special guest, who was none other than John Oliver from The Daily Show! Rach and I just about fell out of our chairs, as we’re both HUGE fans. We were treated to more than an hour of John hamming it up with the guys.

We’re looking forward to next year! Hope to see you there, too.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, ePiphany Featured Story, Fun, Gadget, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

The Astek team is pleased as punch about our latest iPhone app, a flashlight that takes advantage of the new LED camera light in the iPhone 4.

But Light Beam is much more than just a flashlight! It’s the app that could save your party AND your life!

Light Beam is the iPhone 4’s brightest and easiest flashlight using the built-in LED flash! It includes a strobe light and SOS emergency beacon.

Features:

• Uses iPhone 4 built-in LED for brightest light possible.
• Intuitive, elegant design.
• Flashlight: Auto-on when app is opened for quickest access.
• Strobe Light: Bring the party with this ultra-bright strobe light. Or increase visibility for extra safety on your bike at night. Easy-touch slider allows you to control the speed.
• Emergency SOS Signal: Activate with the tap of a button. Beams a repeating SOS Morse code signal via the LED light.

Download Light Beam for iPhone 4 now!

Here’s a screenshot of Light Beam:

Check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone 4 please tell your friends!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Technology

While I applaud Apple’s effort to bring the iPhone notes onto my desktop through Mail sync, the implementation leaves a bit to be desired. Twice now I have lost a significant amount of information due to the way Apple syncs the notes.

If you use your iPhone to take notes on the fly as much as I do, you know how painful it is to think about losing any of those precious bits of data. Mark/Sync used to work pretty well, or just emailing them one by one. Generally Apple’s sync works, with one notable exception:

If you leave a note open (that is, you don’t press “Done” or go back to the main notes menu) and then sync with your computer, for some crazy reason Apple will actually pull the old version of the note from your computer and erase any recent additions you’ve made to the note on your phone. Worse yet, even if you’ve saved the note (pressed “Done”) since your last sync, it will STILL grab the one from the computer rather than even reverting back to your last mobile version, which would be slightly less catastrophic.

Lessons learned here until Apple fixes this: 1) Always press “Done” on your note before syncing with your computer. Always! 2) Generally if you are in the habit of putting new thoughts on new notes instead of updating an old one, you’ll probably be better off.

I love my iPhone, but every once in awhile Apple just really gets it wrong. It’s surprising since I’m so used to everything else working so well. No one should have to close/save anything that seems to do so automatically and worry about losing information. I might look into switching app’s, and have Evernote installed. But Apple’s notes are just quick and easy. The screenshot below is from Apple’s Web site. I only wish “Never leave a note behind” were true in this case.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Gadget, Technology

Hey there! Been a while since I posted anything. I’m back with another tech tip I hope will help somebody out. I’ve encountered a situation a few times now where I can’t rename any folders anywhere in the Finder. First time around I rebooted and the problem went away. This time I googled a bit and got the recommendation to restart the Finder, which worked. I couldn’t get an explanation for what’s actually going wrong, but this is an easy enough fix to make me not care, especially since it doesn’t seem to happen very often. FYI you restart the Finder in the Force Quit screen:

I also discovered something in my googling that most Mac people probably already know. You can quickly rename a folder by clicking it, then hitting enter. Previously I only knew how to do that by clicking, waiting a second, and then clicking again. Which is annoying. But I was used to the rename option being in the context menu a la Windows.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: Technology

Over the past couple of weeks a series of unfortunate events has led me to spread my computing across two laptops and a Mac Mini (Long story starting with a flat tire and drowned MacBook Pro). We typically use SuperDuper to move the information on computer into another as part of our regular backup strategy. In this case, I’ve been using Apple’s built-in function to transfer the files and settings, which works incredibly well.

Through all this I realized that the love and personal attachment I’ve always felt for my Mac’s has transferred from the physical machine to the “soul” of the machine. Before I get too spooky, let me explain. I’ve been using Mac’s for two decades. They’ve always been a significant purchase (most computers are), but I really used to geek out on the machine itself. Apple has almost always excelled at merging beauty of form with the highest practicality of industrial design (longevity, durability, easy access to replace parts, etc.). Since I lean on the side of function in design, nothing impresses me more than artists and designers who truly innovate and move the industry forward by creating brilliant art without sacrificing practicality. (And yes, even at current prices Mac’s are still practical over the long haul if you compare their average lifespan to equivalent PC’s)

The new MacBook Pro is no different in continuing the practical work-of-art tradition, but the software has evolved to make moving from one computer to another painless and simple. So simple, in fact, that it’s not difficult to imagine that what you’re actually doing is moving the soul of the computer (that is, everything you do to make it uniquely your own) to another body. Taken a step further, it’s not hard to imagine that this soul will one day live in the cloud and that you’ll be able to access it from any computer or mobile device. Let’s not talk about Matrix-esque hard-wiring quite yet.

At first I was slightly disappointed in myself for losing this enamor for my computer. I wrote it off to growing up, or just the fact that with the business I now own several computers when I used to hold onto just the one. But then I realized all I’ve done is stopped caring so much about the physical body of the tool, and now focus entirely on how I use the tool. I still love my Mac. It’s just that now “my Mac” isn’t really a computer, it’s some transient pile of ubiquitous bits and bytes that have a diminishing relationship to the body they inhabit. I guess you really can’t judge a MacBook by its cover.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Technology

In the Woodfield Apple Store last night, I noticed that Apple is now displaying ads for Yelp and Twitter on their walls. This is part of the huge campaign to promote iPhone apps, but I was encouraged that these services (especially Twitter considering the benefit of using it on a mobile device) are now considered mainstream enough to get people’s attention in such a heavily branded environment.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

It’s time to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Macintosh. I was pretty young, but remember this time well. We had an Apple IIc in my house for several years before our first Mac IIsi. What a sweet machine! When Apple (the company) turned 20, they released a special edition 20th Anniversary Mac. It was pretty sweet at the time, but wholeheartedly over-priced if you’re not nuts about this kind of thing. I doubt they’ll do anything to commemorate it this year with product, but you never know.

Here is a great photo of nearly every Apple computer ever made. It’s like looking at a family photo album.

Every once in a while I meet someone who isn’t familiar with the famous 1984 Super Bowl XVIII commercial Ridley Scott directed to launch the Mac. If you are one of those people, you need to check this out:

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Gadget, Green, Marketing, Technology

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Gadget, Technology