Apple released iOS 5.0.1 yesterday, mainly to address battery issues and add multi-touch gestures to the original iPad. The most remarkable feature of the update, though, had nothing to do with what it contained and everything to do with how it was delivered: the update was the first to be delivered and installed over the air (OTA), with no tethering to a computer (indeed, no computer at all) required.

This is not new to Android users, but it was a welcome event for iOS users. Since I heard about the update on Twitter before my devices notified me, I didn’t get to see how the update might have announced itself (it at all.) Once I knew about it, though, it was a simple matter to go to Settings: General: Software Update, where my iPhone 4 — and, later, iPad 1 — dutifully notified me there was an update available. Both my devices were almost fully charged, so I ignored the warning about plugging into a power source, and the updates downloaded and installed without a hitch.

Another new update method got considerably less attention yesterday. Apple released version 7.6 of its Airport software. Just for fun, I fired up the new iOS Airport Utility on my iPad, and sure enough, the app informed me of the available update and allowed me to install it without having to go to my Mac at all.

I suppose the Airport update shouldn’t have seemed all that amazing — after all, it’s a remote update whether it’s done from the iPad or a Mac. But this is the one that gave me the bigger “living in the future” feeling. One that reinforced the notion that my iPhone and iPad are not just satellite device for my Mac. They are peers, and in more and more instances, provide a better experience than those “real” computers.

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has died, according to a statement released by Apple’s Board of Directors:

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

Earlier this evening, his family issued this statement:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.

In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.

We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

In recent years, Jobs has battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer and underwent a liver transplant and took two medical leaves from the company. In late September, he stepped down as CEO of Apple, saying “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.” He was named Chairman of Apple’s Board of Directors, a position he held at the time of his death.

Jobs famously asked John Sculley if he wanted to “sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” and he did just that, transforming entire industries with visionary devices and software including the original Macintosh, the iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. He took Apple from a startup that assembled computers in a garage to arguably the most successful company in history, and along the way lead the company through one of the most dramatic turnarounds in corporate history.

In addition to running Apple, Jobs also ran NeXT, whose NeXTSTEP operating system became the basis for MacOS X; and Pixar, a computer animation company that produced such hits as “Toy Story,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Up” and others. When Pixar was acquired by Disney, Jobs was named to Disney’s Board of Directors.

Apple’s website offers a tribute to Jobs, a single black and white photo with the text “Steve Jobs 1955-2011.” The company is encouraging the public to share their “thoughts, memories, and condolences” by sending an email to rememberingsteve@apple.com.

Bill Gates, founder and former CEO of Microsoft and sometimes-partner/sometimes-nemesis of Jobs, posted a statement on his personal blog:

I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.

Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

From Job’s bio on the Apple website:

Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the Board of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. Apple is leading the consumer technology world with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, its family of iPod media players and iTunes media store, and its Mac computers and iLife and iWork application suites. Apple recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Steve also co-founded and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on Disney’s board of directors.

Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.

(The) fact that the recent spate of Mac attacks could be worse doesn’t mean that Apple types don’t need to think about their computing safety. It’s not just the possibility of more OS X malware. Instead of putting a particular operating system in the crosshairs, nogoodniks are turning their attention to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where they spam users, steal identities, and generally do their best to wreak havoc. They don’t care whether you use Windows or a Mac, as long as your guard is down.

Like me, Harry does not run any anti-virus software on his Mac, noting “security software isn’t without its own downsides. Even the best packages require a certain amount of babysitting; the worst ones get in your face, bog down your system, and teeter on the brink of being more of a hassle than the dangers they’re meant to protect you against.”

Until and unless Mac malware gets a lot more sophisticated, I’ll continue focusing my defenses on the social engineering side of the issue. Don’t open attachments unless you know what they are, be careful about where you surf and never—never—install a program you’re not absolutely confident came from a safe source.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

Apple rarely — very rarely — tips its hand about keynotes and is generally even more tight-lipped about upcoming products and services. The only time I can recall them doing so is when they feel the need to manage rumors and keep a handle on expectations, which I think is what’s going on here. They want to emphasize that there will be no hardware announcements (read: no iPhone 5 or “4GS”).

Noted in passing: advert for the Dell XPS-15, containing the phrase

Finally, the power you crave in the thinnest 15″ PC on the planet*.

Wow, the thinnest? But wait, what’s the asterisk?

Small print time: “Based on Dell internal analysis as at February 2011. Based on a thickness comparison (front and rear measurements) of other 15″ laptop PCs manufactured by HP, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony, MSI. No comparison made with Apple or other manufacturers not listed.”

In other words, “we’re going to lie in the big type, then explain that we’re lying in teeny tiny type that we hope no one will actually read.”

Appalling. (Charles Arthur via Glenn Fleishman.)

Photo courtesy of Engadget. Click to view the full article.

The phenomenon of other brands’ products “coincidentally” beginning to look like Apple products is nothing new, (think about cellphones before and after the iPhone or tablets after the iPad, for instance) so it’s not surprising to see that Dell’s new XPS 15z laptop bears a striking resemblance to the MacBook Pro. They’ve even copied Apple’s packaging, which includes a downright Freudian admission in the arrangement of photos of the laptop in an arrangement that practically screams “Mac OS X.”

But what’s particularly embarrassing is the pretense that it’s not happening. Dell described their new laptop as having an “innovative new form factor” for crying out loud.

I wonder if the PR flack who wrote that was even able to keep a straight face.

Absolutely embarrassing. (via Engadget.)

Image courtesy of TechCrunch

Compare that with this screenshot of the Mac App Store (also via TechCrunch):

Image courtesy of TechCrunch

Now consider what smartphones looked like after the iPhone; tablets after the iPad; and now this. Seriously, isn’t anyone even trying to be original anymore?

By Chuck La Tournous | First published January 24, 2004

Yes, this column is about Apple and the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh, but I promise it won’t be another of those walks down memory lane, where we talk about how Apple had it all only to bungle its way into irrelevance against the mighty onslaught of Microsoft. Sheesh. There are enough Monday-morning quarterbacks opining Apple’s “should-woulda-couldas” to fill a football stadium.

In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons Apple itself has kept so low-key about its milestone. How does the company talk about its history without touching on those issues? For those only following the Mac since Steve Jobs returned to Apple’s helm, it’s easy to forget that Apple had its Dark Ages — and some pretty pitch-black ones at that. And even if the company were to dance its way around issues of licensing and shrinking market share and a zillion and one different models of Performas and spin it into a lovely little fairy tale — that’s just not Steve Jobs.

Jobs has always struck me as someone who looks forward, not back. He plots his course by seeing what’s ahead, not lingering on what he’s done. Even the nod to the past in his keynote was more of a statement of where the company is now than where it was then. Jobs played the famous “1984″ commercial, which aired as a paid spot just once — during the 1984 Superbowl. But in this rendition, the freespirited revolutionary heroine rushes past the legions of listless masses ready to shatter the status quo — wearing an iPod. The spot is no longer about the original Macintosh, but about Apple and what it represents today.

So what does Apple represent today? It’s a big question, and certainly a bigger one that can be fully answered here. Jobs has given the “sound bite” answer himself; he want the Macintosh to be the hub of your “digital lifestyle.” When he first said that, it seemed a pretty vague statement, but what Apple’s done since then has made it a lot clearer. The Mac, then, is more than a just a traditional computer. It’s not just the place to bang away on your word processor, plan your family budget and let your kids play a game or two. As heretical as this may sound, the Mac isn’t the best way to do any of those things. You can write letters and spreadsheets on a cheap PC just as well as on a Mac, and with the money you save, you can buy a console system that will do a much better job of playing games than a PC or a Mac.

But think beyond those traditional computing tasks, and imagine what someone on Star Trek would do with a sort of computerized assistant. “Computer — display the pictures of Alex and James’ baseball games; put them in an email addressed to grandma.” iPhoto. “Computer, take the movies of Nicole’s birthday party. Delete the part where the neighbor kid picks his nose. Add some nice music from my selection of songs from the 1950s. Assemble the movie and put it on a disc so I can send it to Aunt Patty in Florida to watch on her TV.” iMovie & iDVD. “Computer — play a random selection of my top-rated songs — but no slow ones. And don’t play anything by The Beatles — I’ve been listening to them a lot lately.” iTunes. “Computer — My friend David has a new email address. I’ve changed it in my Address Book, but make sure my work computer, cell phone, PDA and iPod are all updated with the new information.” iSync.

I could go on and on. My daughter asked me once, (OK, more than once) why I spend so much time on the computer. I told her that I was actually doing a lot of different things — it just so happened that now, most of them can be done better and faster on the computer. I night be reading the news on the Internet; downloading photos from my camera and printing or sharing them with family and friends; scanning and restoring photos of family members who lived a hundred or more years ago; helping her do research for her homework; making a movie of the apple-picking trip we just took; chatting with a friend who lives in California; or writing a song for her mom. A lot of these are things I couldn’t have done a few years ago; some are things that would’ve taken me much longer or been so hard I might not have tried them.

The image of the woman in the 1984 ad remains a potent and fitting symbol for Apple and the Mac. Because distilled down to one word, the Macintosh is about revolution. It’s what the old slogan “the computer for the rest of us” really means. None of what the Mac allows us to do is impossible without the Mac. But it is beyond the reach of most of us, reserved for the rich or very gifted. The revolution is that these abilities are now in the hands of us — the masses. The revolution that started with the power to create professional-looking documents and spreadsheets continues to this day in GarageBand, which lets the most tone-deaf among us make “real” music. And in between, we’ve been given other tools to do what was once, if not impossible, then highly impractical.

I, for one, am glad Apple’s not devoting a whole lot of its time and energy looking at the past. I’d much rather they keep working on bringing me the future.

On the tenth anniversary of the introduction of Mac OS X, I thought it would be fun to take a look at this RandomMaccess column from April 1, 2003 — an April Fool’s Day look at an imagined reception of Apple’s then still-nascent operating system:

“I blew it. It’s as simple as that,” said a visibly upset Steve Jobs as he announced he would step down as head of Apple, the company he co-founded on this day over 25 years ago.

CFO Fred Anderson quickly announced the company would end its two-year-long transition to the UNIX-based Mac OS X and would release Mac OS 9.5 within the month.

“Our customers have told us they while there are a lot of things they like about OS X, they feel more productive in the Classic Environment, so that’s what we’re going to give them,” Anderson said. “Hell, Quark was never going to release a native version, anyway,” he admitted.

While stopping short of calling the OS X rollout a mistake, Jobs said he “underestimated the loyalty people felt for the Classic Mac OS.” Jobs told the audience of reporters, analysts and investors they could think of OS X as “the ‘New Coke’ of the computer industry. We all think Aqua tastes better,” he said, motioning to the Apple executives behind him on stage. “But if our customers want to drink Classic, let ‘em drink it ’till they float.”

To run the new version of OS 9, Jobs unveiled a new line of computers to replace both the iMac and Power Mac lineups. “If our customers want a return to the past, we’re going to accommodate them all the way,” said Jobs, with a tone this reporter could almost swear was sarcasm. “Our new Mac is more than a regular Mac,” said Jobs, “so we’re calling it the ‘Mac Plus.’ It’s got a full four megabytes of RAM, and a 68020 processor more than powerful enough to drive the OS you dimwitted, er, discerning customers seem to want.”

To make it compact and able to fit into just about any décor, Jobs says the Mac Plus will have a nine-inch monitor, built right into the computer, “just like the original Mac — I mean iMac,” he said. The form factor for the new machine is slightly taller, but was apparently based on the failed G4 Cube, although a sporty beige color has replaced the clear Lucite casing. “In addition,” he said, “since you people all seem to think the colorful Aqua interface was too distracting, we’ve eliminated color from the OS entirely. The monitor on the Mac Plus will display a soothing, elegant 256 shades of grey.”

Just as Apple’s recent computer models have eliminated things like fans and floppy drives, Jobs said the Mac Plus eliminates something that “has given our users no end of trouble: the hard drive.” All programs, he said, including the operating system, will run on another Apple innovation: 3.5″ floppy disks. “That’s another thing you people seem to have some sort of ungodly affection for,” he said, with what we’re really becoming convinced is a sarcastic tone.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Jobs said, bringing a cheer of anticipation from the audience who had not heard them utter those words in his last several keynotes. “To complete the feeling of ‘nostalgia,’” he said, making quote mark gestures in the air, “we’re pricing the new Mac at $3,500.”

“Any questions can be directed to our new CEO, John Sculley,” said Jobs, as he walked off the stage extending his middle finger to the audience, presumably meant to say “we’re number one.”