Jumsoft has released a new collection of ten free email stationery templates for mail.app.

Opinions are divided on whether HTML stationery is a good idea, but you will remember from the 2006 WWDC Keynote presentation that Steve Job is a fan. Like he said, “You can drop your own photos in here and move things around. Birthday announcements, dinners, you name it.”

The templates cover a range of possibilities — birthdays, the birth of a boy or girl, party invitations, and so on:

They all contain place-holders for your own photos and text. Creating your own masterpiece is just a few keystrokes away:

The templates are free and easy to install. You can get them from the Downloads section of Apple’s web site.

The launch of the iPhone was not the biggest news yesterday.

The big story was tucked away towards the end of the Keynote, underlining a shift of which the iPhone is only a part. Apple Computer, Inc became Apple, Inc.

I don’t know how I feel about this; my heart and mind are pulled in two different directions. One the one hand, I have always been wary of iPods and the whole “digital lifestyle” thing. It seems instinctively an enormous distraction from what is really important about Apple (for me)–innovative, beautiful computers that are simply streets ahead of anything else on offer.

So, as you can imagine, I was already feeling grumpy that there was nothing about Leopard or new computer hardware or anything that I fondly imagine to be Apple’s core business in the Keynote. Then this came up, feeding all my worst fears.

On the other hand, I understand the argument that iPods, TV and iPhones are all good for Apple’s bottom line, garner it extra market share and clout and end up benefiting the part of Apple’s product line that I really care about. A kind of “trickle up” effect.

How did you feel when you saw this?

Image nicked from Engadget without permission but with thanks

I was speaking to a couple of Apple gurus via iChat today who both told me not to worry so much. The computer side of the business is ticking along nicely, the engineers are churning out the same amount of great software at the same rate and so forth. Just because Steve Jobs is so energised by the digital gadgets doesn’t mean that he is not interested in hard-core computing.

I know they must be right. But it’s so hard not to worry… apple, computers, apple inc, name change, digital lifestyle, steve jobs

Here’s something you don’t stumble across everyday. Jim Puls is a engineer on the Apple Mail Team (hence a kind of demi-god) and he has a blog!

Given the much-hyped culture of secrecy at Cupertino and much-hyped stories of Steve Jobs’ views about communication with the outside world, anyone who sticks their head above the parapet (NDA or not) is admirable. (See further extended commentary on Apple and blogging here ).

In his latest post , he takes issue with a recent list of scandalous problems in mail.app.

He rates the poster at rtfa.net as “better than most of the trolls you find on anonymous blogs” but has some robust and forthright things to say in Mail.app’s defence.

Jim describes himself as a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, who survived a graduation address from Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser al-Missned and went on to work for the Apple Mail Team (perhaps as a result of the advertisement for Mail Team engineers earlier this year? Perhaps earlier.)mail.app, apple mail, apple mail development team, engineer, steve jobs, cupertino cone of silence, bugs

Someone has unearthed a video on YouTube of Steve Jobs demonstrating NeXTSTEP way back in 1992.

The video is long (35 minutes) but begins with Steve talking up how NeXTSTEP has “much, much better productivity apps” than other operating systems.

That includes NeXTMail, the precursor of Apple Mail, which Steve puts through its paces after demonstrating the revolutionary NeXTSTEP Dock:

After watching how far ahead of the pack NeXTMail was, you can read more about Mail in NeXTSTEP (Apple Mail: The Early Years) and about the origin of bundles, which live on in today’s Mail.app as plugins.

[Via Global Nerdy ]steve jobs, apple, nextstep, nextmail, productivity, mail.app, apple mail

Yesterday Apple Australia kindly flew me up to Sydney for a look around its corporate headquarters and for a very interesting two-hour press presentation from Mr iPod and Mr Hardware. (Mr Software is at WWDC, so I didn’t hear from him.)

In the course of the day, I discovered four new things about Apple that I didn’t know before.

1. The black MacBook is intended to be a 12″ PowerBook replacement

I had the chance to ask Mr Hardware as he was presenting the now complete range of Intel Macs whether anything was coming to replace the 12″ PowerBook.

He told me that Apple has received a lot of feedback from users about the need for a small notebook with a “more professional look”. Apple made a conscious decision to meet that demand with the black MacBook, giving those users the look they wanted at the cost of a slight hit in performance and features. Is that why they cost more?

2. Only 26% of Mac users do backups, 4% use automated solutions.

Of course, you know at one level that the numbers are low, but it is still a shock to see just how low they are.

Those who have watched the keynote will know that Leopard’s Time Machine is designed to increase these numbers dramatically.

Will it work? I don’t think so. The current ability to automate backups with Backup 3.0 and the plethora of third-party automated backup options haven’t brought large numbers of users to the party. This won’t either. It’s not the technical ability that’s missing; it’s the personal habit.

Dear reader, for the love of God get yourself into that 4%. Don’t read the other two things I didn’t know about Apple. Go now and check out Dejà Vu or BackityMac or SuperDuper! or, if you have a .Mac account, Apple’s own Backup.

3. iTunes prints really nice CD covers.

I use iTunes a lot, but it never occurred to me to visit its Print menu. Mr iPod demonstrated how easy it is to make jewel case covers in iTunes and how nice the final result looks:

4. Steve Jobs doesn’t trust people who use words as a tool of their trade

At the airport I picked up a copy of Jeffrey Young and William Simon’s iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2005) (Amazon ) to read on the plane.

On the homeward flight I discovered an answer to the mystery about the lack of communication between engineers and development teams at Apple and journalists, bloggers and third-party developers (after all, code is words).

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and became Interim CEO in 1997, he

…quickly saw things that he didn’t like. His predecessors in the CEO’s office has never figured out how to take the reins in a commanding manner…. He set about changing the culture of Apple. Some of the changes were small (no dogs at work, no smoking), and some where whoppers, such as the absolute ban on talking to anyone outside the company who uses words as a tool of his trade. (The one exception: it was okay as long as you has a public relations dog-watcher sitting at your side and yanking your leash whenever she wanted you to stop talking.)

apple, steve jobs, itunes, not apple mail, macbook, words, culture change, backup, thanks Fiona, iPod

Are you a geek or a nerd?

If you are reading this post on Hawk Wings, you are one or the other.

A blog about a niche email client within a niche OS within the niche market of computing (a niche of a niche of a niche) pretty well meets the criteria of obsession and narrow focus that has defined these two words.

A post on progressive: what the blog? explores the semantics of geeks and nerds.

After pointing out that dictionary definitions confuse the two, the writer attempts a distinction:

A geek has a narrower interest span than a nerd. A geek is extremely good at one thing and also knows a bit more than average about many other interests he or she might have. A geek is also more outgoing and more social than nerds. A geek is more ’self oriented’ while a nerd is ‘interest oriented’. A geek may give up or switch to some other interest if thre are benifits in it, but a nerd will not – if he did he would fall under the geek definition.

Australia must follow the UK on this, I think, where the usage differs. As a commentator on the progressive post points out, people in the UK ‘tend to use “geek” to mean “one who has keen interest in computers, telephony, science fiction etc” and “nerd” to mean “a geek too far”‘.

That seems to fit. Geeks can at least see normality in the middle distance, whilst for nerds it is already lost over the horizon.

It’s a better distinction than my first thought: Steve Jobs is a geek, but Bill Gates is a nerd. And than my second: Geeks are GUI (Mail.app, Thunderbird) and nerds are command line (mutt, pine). Life is more complicated than that.

[Via the excellent Daring Fireball Linked List ]nerds, geeks, stigma, tribalism, semantics, obsession, niche interests, computers, Steve jobs, bill gates

Ankit Sud has posted a list of the stories behind some top IT companies and brands.

You can read how RedHat got its name from a Cornell University lacrosse cap. Learn how apples are Steve Jobs’ favourite fruit and how he “threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 o’clock”. Find out – or even remember – that Hotmail was once called “HoTMaiL”.

Ponder how things would be if Intel had ended up being called “‘Moore Noyce”.

Marvel that the whole post, packed with pop-up clicksor ads, is ripped off without attribution from a longer list on day2day activities.

What is it with some Indian bloggers ? A cultural thing for which I should show more respect or something else?apple, steve jobs, intel, hotmail, redhat, cornell, lacrosse, it companies, Internet, email