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154 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 10 ratingsThe Mac Observer: You'll Hear Your Mac News Here From Now On...
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Episodes
TMO Background Mode Special Edition #5 With Former Apple Executive Michael Gartenberg
December 10, 2018 21:02 - 41 minutes - 19.1 MBMichael Gartenberg spent three years as Apple’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, reporting directly to Senior VP Phil Schiller. In his fifth encore appearance on Background Mode, Michael and I chat about Apple’s 2018 fall lineup of products. We talked about the Apple AirPower, still MIA. We examined the new 2018 MacBook Air and how the 2015 McBook was supposed to be the MBA successor—and failed. We looked at the new iPad Pros and how they may have broken through a computational barrier ...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Smile Software Evangelist Jeff Gamet
December 03, 2018 20:56 - 35 minutes - 16.6 MBJeff Gamet is the former Managing Editor of The Mac Observer (TMO), a position he held for 13 years. He’s also a book author and noted podcaster. Recently, he left TMO to become the Smile Software TextExpander Evangelist. I asked Jeff to tell the TextExpander story, what it does, why it’s essential, and how to get it. Then we chatted at length about his job transition process. That meant new tools, new logins, a new daily routine, a new team and new boss. I asked Jeff about the biggest chal...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Science Fiction Author Darren Beyer
November 26, 2018 22:55 - 31 minutes - 14.7 MBDarren Beyer is a former NASA Space Shuttle engineer at Kennedy Space Center who worked on launching and recovering more than a dozen missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope. He also conducted astronaut training and had the honor of working onboard every Space Shuttle orbiter except Challenger. In late 1998, he left NASA to become an entrepreneur, and, lately, an author. The first result was the Anghazi series of novels, Casimir Bridge, released in 2016 to rave reviews thanks largely...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Climate Scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
November 19, 2018 21:31 - 36 minutes - 17 MBDr. Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is the director of the Climate Science Center. She is also the CEO of the consulting firm ATMOS Research and Consulting. She received her undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and a masters and Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We started from basics in this chat and defined how science works via o...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Planetary Scientist Dr. Pascal Lee, Part II
November 12, 2018 23:17 - 54 minutes - 25 MBThis is Part II. Dr. Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute. He’s also Chairman of the Mars Institute, and Director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center. His research includes the history of water on Mars and planning future human exploration of Mars. Pascal has a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Space Sciences from Cornell University. In Part I, we chatted about his background and how he became a planetary scientist. We had just started discussing the S...
TMO Background Mode Encore #2 Interview with Tidbits Managing Editor Josh Centers
November 05, 2018 21:45 - 36 minutes - 16.8 MBJosh Centers is the Managing Editor of Tidbits.com and has published several Take Control (TC) books. He’s the author of Take Control of Apple TV and Take Control of Home Automation. He’s been writing the Take Control books for iOS since version 8, and his latest book is Take Control of iOS 12. I invited Josh to return to Background Mode to chat about this latest iOS version that has many new features. After a brief story about how Josh got started in his tech writing career, we had a very i...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Indiana University Astronomer Dr. Catherine Pilachowski
October 29, 2018 20:53 - 32 minutes - 15.3 MBDr. Catherine Pilachowski is a professor of astronomy at Indiana University in Bloomington. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii. Her principal research interests include the evolution of stars and the chemical history of the Milky Way Galaxy from studies of chemical composition of star clusters. “Caty” got excited about astronomy as a youth reading the books of Asimov, Hoyle and Gamow. She told me about her serendipitous decision to attend graduate scho...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Science Fiction Writer & Biographer Alec Nevala-Lee
October 22, 2018 21:49 - 29 minutes - 13.9 MBAlec Nevala-Lee is a science fiction novelist, essayist and biographer. He’s known for the scifi novels: The Icon Thief, City of Exiles, and Eternal Empire. He’s written for Analog Science Fiction, and he’s had essays and non-fiction published in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Daily Beast and more. We chatted about growing up in California, the influential book that inspired him to become a writer, his early career, life at Harvard, and quitting his job to become a struggling – then succe...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Planetary Scientist Dr. Pascal Lee
October 15, 2018 21:18 - 32 minutes - 15.1 MBDr. Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute. He’s also Chairman of the Mars Institute, and Director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center. His research includes the history of water on Mars and planning future human exploration of Mars. Pascal has a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Space Sciences from Cornell University. We chatted about how he spent his very early years in Hong Kong, inspired by American and British SciFi TV shows. Later, he migrated to Pa...
TMO Background Mode Encore #5 Interview with Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford
October 08, 2018 20:47 - 39 minutes - 18.1 MBDr. Kiki Sanford makes her fifth appearance on Background Mode. Kiki is a neurophysiologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California. She’s a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show. In this episode, we chat about some some recent topics discussed on TWIS that fascinated me. 1) Yale roboticists have developed skins with embedded actuators that can turn just about anything into robots. 2) A 127 million year old fossil was discovered...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Former Apple Software Engineer James Dempsey
October 01, 2018 22:28 - 38 minutes - 17.6 MBJames Dempsey worked at Apple for fifteen years before setting out on his own in August 2011. As a software engineer at Apple, he worked on iOS, Aperture, and macOS releases Leopard through Lion, including half a decade on the Cocoa frameworks team. He’s the founder of Tapas Software, developer of iOS and Mac software. We talked abut his “aha” moments in life starting with his college roommate’s Mac Plus in 1986. His dream to work for Apple was eventually fulfilled in 1996, and James describ...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Technology Journalist Ryan Faas
September 24, 2018 19:33 - 42 minutes - 19.6 MBRyan Faas is a technology journalist and author who has been writing about Apple, business, enterprise IT topics, and the mobile industry for over a decade. He also spent a large portion of the past 15 years in the systems/network engineering and IT management fields as an IT director and systems administrator. He’s worked for MTV Networks as well as being a former Apple Genius. Today, he is also a Contributing Writer for Computerworld. We chatted about how he became such an expert in enterp...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Early Apple Podcaster Victor Cajiao
September 17, 2018 21:42 - 38 minutes - 18 MBVictor Cajiao was born in Havana, Cuba, grew up in the U.S. and became well known in the Apple world for several different podcasts. He’s an Apple tech geek as well as a musician (saxophone) and hobby photographer. Victor told me the story about how he came to the U.S. via a special initiative started by President Kennedy. The fascinating story continues as he eventually worked his way into a job with AT&T rising to the level of IT Technical Director. He also told me the story about how he f...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Academic Director of IT Bradley Chambers
September 10, 2018 21:10 - 33 minutes - 15.4 MBBradley Chambers has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Currently he’s the IT director at a school in Chattanooga, and he’s also a contributor to 9to5Mac via his weekly column: “Making the Grade.” Bradley told me about his work as an IT administrator, how iPads and Macs are deployed, configured and repaired. There are some good tools for doing that, but they’re also supplemented with Google docs and JAMF tools. His kids are taught programming at an early age ...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Backblaze Director of Product Marketing Skip Levens
September 04, 2018 21:10 - 40 minutes - 18.9 MBSkip Levens is currently the Director of Product Marketing at Backblaze, the cloud storage and backup company. He’s very experienced in brand marketing and technology evangelism. Skip is a former U.S. Marine. After leaving the Marines, Skip went to work for Alain Pinel, a real estate company that embraced the NeXT computer, and that launched his successful crusade to work for Apple. We chatted about Skip’s work at Apple in early internet technologies, then Developer Relations that involved h...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Sr. Mobile & Networking Developer Alf Watt
August 27, 2018 22:58 - 35 minutes - 16.6 MBAlf Watt is an experienced software developer with expertise in macOS, iOS and wireless technology. He operates iStumbler Labs, most notably the Wi-Fi monitoring app iStumbler. He’s also a former Apple employee. As a youth, Alf’s first computer was a Commodore 64, and he leaned how to enter the code for computer games. Later, with a Mac plus, Alf learned HyperCard. Alf’s first serious language, however, was Perl. At Apple, Alf became deeply in involved with Wi-Fi and Apple’s AirPort technolo...
TMO Background Mode Interview with macOS Software Developer Sander Berents
August 20, 2018 23:44 - 34 minutes - 15.9 MBSander Berents has been fascinated by astronomy since childhood when he started using his older brother’s telescope. In his teens, he also became immersed in BASIC and assembly language programming with his TRS-80. Later, he earned an M.S. in astrophysics. His earliest jobs involved computer programming, and nowadays, he’s an independent, professional macOS software developer and the developer of the macOS app called Observatory. Version 1.0 was released in April 2016. We chatted about the d...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Host of The Carson Podcast Mark Malkoff
August 13, 2018 20:30 - 36 minutes - 17.1 MBMark Malkoff is a comedian, filmaker, and the host of The Carson Podcast in which he talks with guests about legendary talk show host Johnny Carson. His guests include stand-up comics who debuted on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, individuals who worked on the show, and entertainers who were influenced by Carson. I chatted with Mark about his early jobs on various TV shows, sketch comedy, and video projects. As a comedian, he’d always been fascinated by Johnny Carson. It was Peter J...
TMO Background Mode Interview with NightCap Camera Developer Chris Wood
August 06, 2018 18:25 - 34 minutes - 15.9 MBChris Wood is the developer of the iOS photography app called NightCap Camera, an app that specializes in low-light photography, be it terrestrial or astronomical. Chris told me the story about his technial evolution as a developer, coming out of a M.S. degree and the IT, database and network world. It was the allure of the original iPhone’s graphics that whetted his appetite for programming in Objective-C . His big break came with the iPad 2 which had a fairly strong graphics processor (for...
TMO Background Mode Special Edition Chat with Kelly Guimont: TV Mysteries
July 30, 2018 21:36 - 39 minutes - 18.2 MBKelly Guimont is a Contributing Editor for The Mac Observer and Social Media Manager for Smile Software. She first appeared here in December, 2015 to tell her career story and has returned several times for interesting technical discussions. In this special edition, we chat about our favorite movie or two, and how, for some movies, the music has become a thing in itself, the soundtrack of our lives. Then we delved into the legendary BBC/CBC mysteries: Foyle’s War, Murdoch Mysteries, Shetland...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Novelist and Freelance Tech Writer Dan Moren
July 23, 2018 21:32 - 37 minutes - 17.6 MBDan Moren is a novelist, freelance tech writer and prolific podcaster. He’s written for Tidbits, Fast Company, Popular Science, Yahoo Tech, and Tom’s Guide. He was a senior editor at Macworld for many years and continues to write the excellent Stay Foolish column there every Friday. Today he also writes for Six Colors and hosts severable popular podcasts, including Clockwise and Inconceivable! We chatted about his years before Macworld and how he launched his career by writing about Star War...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Amateur Astronomer Mike Weasner
July 16, 2018 20:44 - 42 minutes - 19.7 MBMike Weasner is a noted amateur astronomer, known for his book on the Meade ETX telescopes, early iPhone astrophotography and work with the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) in Arizona. Very early in life, Mike fell in love with astronomy, and that led to a B.S. in astrophysics. Via ROTC, Mike later joined the United States Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot (A-7D), instructor (T-38), and a manager in the Air Force’s Space Shuttle Program Office. After his USAF duty, Mike s...
TMO Background Mode Interview with University Psychologist and Podcaster Dr. Robert Carter
July 09, 2018 22:00 - 38 minutes - 18 MBDr. Robert Carter is a Ph.D. Psychologist at Texas A&M, a long-time Apple enthusiast, and the co-host of the Tech Doctor podcast. He’s very well versed in assistive technologies, having been blind since birth. Robert tells an amazing story about he’s coped with his disability through the years. It started with using a portable typewriter in grade school, discovering the Apple II at age 18 and a speech synthesizer plug-in card, and ultimately using Apple’s extraordinary VoiceOver technology o...
TMO Background Mode Encore Interview with Freelance Tech Jounalist Kirk McElhearn
July 02, 2018 21:41 - 36 minutes - 16.9 MBKirk McElhearn is an expert technical journalist for all things Apple. He was a Senior Contributor at Macworld for 15 years, is known as “The iTunes Guy,” and writes about Macs, security, iTunes, books and music. Kirk has also written several “Take Control Books,” including tutorials on iTunes, Audio Hijack and Scrivener. In this encore appearance, Kirk and I chatted about the evolution of photography at Apple, the emergence of the iPhone as a pocket supercomputer-camera, AI technologies and...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Science Fiction Novelist Steven Brust
June 25, 2018 21:53 - 36 minutes - 17 MBSteven Brust is a popular science fiction author with 31 novels to his credit. He’s known for the Vlad Taltos series as well as the Khaavren romances. He’s also a musician: drummer, guitarist and banjo player, and he has a solo record out, A Rose For Iconoclastes. Like many writers, as we pondered on the show, he has a cat. We chatted about his early career as a computer programmer and the life-changing event that launched him into writing science fiction. Steven’s career has been filled wit...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Georgia Tech Roboticist Dr. Ayanna Howard
June 18, 2018 23:23 - 37 minutes - 17.6 MBDr. Ayanna Howard is a professor of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. She’s also in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Ayanna received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. I asked Ayanna how she became inspired by robot technology. Like many of us, it was via science fiction on TV. In graduate school, robotics was still immature, so she wisely elected to pursue electrical engineering. Her first job was at NASA’s...
TMO Background Mode Interview with IDA Astronomer Dr. John Barentine
June 11, 2018 20:02 - 28 minutes - 13.4 MBDr. John C. Barentine is an astronomer, historian, author and science communicator. He is currently the Director of Conservation for the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) in Tucson, Arizona. He earned his master’s degree in physics at Colorado State University and his Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout his career, he’s been involved in education efforts to help increase the public understanding of science. We started with a brief segment on his early c...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Freelance Tech Journalist Rob Pegoraro
June 05, 2018 23:12 - 38 minutes - 18 MBRob Pegoraro is a freelance technical journalist who writes about interesting problems and possibilities in consumer technology. Previously, he was a technical columnist for the Washington Post from 1999 to 2011. Lately he has written for Yahoo Finance, USA Today and The Wirecutter. Rob graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1993 with a degree in international relations without taking a single course in journalism or computer science. But along the way he discove...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Mobile Nations Editor Russell Holly
May 29, 2018 21:42 - 39 minutes - 18.2 MBRussell Holly is a Contributing and Managing Editor at Android Central, under the Mobile Nations umbrella. Formerly, he was with geek.com. Over the years Russell has become an Android expert with focus on mobility, smartphones, tablets … and iOS as well. He also writes about Virtual and Augmented Reality. I took the opportunity to ask Russell about the security aspects of Android, and he had some unexpected answers that will be of interest to Apple-centric listeners. (Get the scoop on Androi...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Founder, CEO of StaceyHankeInc, Stacey Hanke
May 22, 2018 00:30 - 39 minutes - 18.3 MBStacey Hanke is the CEO and founder of StaceyHankeInc. She specializes in training business leaders in leadership, body language habits and how to choose words wisely. Her clients include those in finance, health care, government and the military. She’s the author of Influence Redefined – Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be, Monday to Monday. She’s also co-author of Yes You Can! Everything You Need From A To Z To Influence Others To Take Action. I asked Stacey to be on the show because of her...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Music Composer John Lunn
May 14, 2018 21:39 - 36 minutes - 17.1 MBJohn Lunn is a classically trained music composer in London. He’s probably best known for scoring the TV drama Downton Abbey — for which he received two Primetime Emmy awards. His recent work includes the scoring of the feature film Electricity and the hit TV shows: The Grantchester Mysteries, Shetland, and The White Queen—for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination. John and I chatted about how he always wanted to be a music composer and the journey that made his dream a reality. I as...
TMO Background Mode Special Edition #4 With Former Apple Executive Michael Gartenberg
May 07, 2018 20:47 - 42 minutes - 19.5 MBMichael Gartenberg spent three years as Apple’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, reporting directly to Senior VP Phil Schiller. In his fourth encore appearance on Background Mode, Michael and I chat about expectations for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) to be held June 4-8, 2018. We delved into potential improvements to HomePod, the state-of-the-art of Siri, the competition with Amazon’s Alexa, possible changes to iOS and watchOS, the state of the Mac, the much anticipated...
TMO Background Mode Encore #4 Interview with Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford
April 30, 2018 19:47 - 38 minutes - 18 MBDr. Kiki Sanford is a neurophysiologist, a popular science communicator and creator of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show. This is her fourth appearance here. In this episode, we chat about some some very interesting recent topics on TWIS. 1) Researchers showed that mini human brains implanted into mouse brains survived and functionally integrated into the host tissue. 2) Magnetoreception in birds is possible thanks to a protein in their eyes. They may actually have a heads-u...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Astrophysicist Dr. Brian Keating
April 23, 2018 21:20 - 33 minutes - 15.8 MBDr. Brian Keating is an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. His specialty is cosmology, and he is the father of the original BICEP project (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) that sought to unravel one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Big Bang. He is also the author of over 100 scientific publications. We chatted about his early years at age 12 in New York and the spark that ignited his int...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Gravitational Wave Astrophysicist Dr. Chiara Mingarelli
April 16, 2018 21:37 - 26 minutes - 12.3 MBDr. Chiara Mingarelli is an astrophysicist currently working at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics where she’s a Flatiron Fellow. Chiara received her Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2014, and her specialty is the study of gravitational waves: ripples in spacetime born of a cataclysmic collision of distant, super-massive objects. She’s been a Marie Curie International Fellow at Cal Tech and has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy....
TMO Background Mode Interview with Ruby Receptionists CTO Katharine Nester
April 09, 2018 21:24 - 36 minutes - 17.1 MBKatharine Nester is the CTO and Chief Product Officer for Ruby Receptionists, a virtual receptionist service. She owes early influence to her father, a computer engineer, and that led to her B.S. degree in computer science from the Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley. Her first job was as a Hewlett Packard software engineer. Katharine is an active member of Portland’s growing tech community where she advocates for more inclusive environments to support women and minorities in the field and is a bene...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Tidbits Security Editor Rich Mogull
April 02, 2018 22:54 - 35 minutes - 16.4 MBRich Mogull has twenty years experience in information security, physical security, and risk management. He specializes in data security, application security, emerging security technologies, and security management. Prior to founding Securosis, Rich was a Research Vice President at Gartner on the security team where he also served as research co-chair for the Gartner Security Summit. Currently, he is the security editor at Tidbits. We chatted about Rich’s career, then delved into some secu...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Kelly Guimont and Jeff Gamet - Everything 4K/UHD TV
March 26, 2018 18:35 - 39 minutes - 18.5 MBIn this very special edition of Background Mode, The Mac Observer’s Kelly Guimont and Jeff Gamet joined me to continue a previous discussion we’d been having about 4K/UHD television. It all started when I published an article, an adventure actually, about my project to get all my home video components working together to achieve 4K/UHD and Dolby Vision. One TMO Daily Observations podcast wasn’t enough to answer all the questions, and so we just kept on chatting, laughing and recording. Herei...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Apple World Today's News Editor Dennis Sellers
March 19, 2018 22:00 - 32 minutes - 15 MBDennis Sellers is a seasoned journalist, reporter and news editor. He knew at a very early age that he wanted to become a journalist and that led to his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Tennessee. He worked in the newspaper business for over 20 years, wrote freelance while he taught, earned his Master’s degree, signed on with MacCentral in the 1990s. After MacCentral was assimilated, he launched Macsimum News, an online newspaper covering the Mac industry and Apple news...
TMO Background Mode Encore Interview with Tidbits Managing Editor Josh Centers
March 12, 2018 21:41 - 38 minutes - 17.7 MBJosh Centers is the Managing Editor of Tidbits.com and has published several Take Control Books. His latest book is “Take Control of Apple Home Automation.” And so, I invited him to make a return appearance on Background Mode to chat about that very subject. The book is a complete guide and starts from the very beginning of the design and wiring process and the use of various hubs. Josh clearly explained how to use Apple’s HomeKit home automation platform to control smart devices in the home...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Take Control Books Publisher Joe Kissell
March 06, 2018 01:04 - 40 minutes - 18.8 MBJoe Kissell is a writer and author with over 60 technical books to his credit. He’s a contributing editor with Tidbits, and recently became the owner and publisher of the Take Control series of eBooks. Early in his career, Joe had a strong interest in language and holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics. Along the way, however, he also got very technical with computers, and that landed him a job as a product manager with Nisus. Subsequently, Joe was a software developer for Kensington. In 201...
TMO Background Mode Interview with VP of Marketing for Mayfield Robotics Chris Matthews
February 27, 2018 22:26 - 37 minutes - 17.6 MBChris Matthews is the VP of Marketing for Mayfield Robotics. They make the companion robot called Kuri that was recently shown to our Jeff Gamet at CES 2018. Having been a very interested observer of emerging robot technology, I invited Chris to be on the show. We talked about how Mayfield Robotics was formed, the founders, how the company got its name, the human and engineering design principles behind Kuri, what mistakes were avoided, how Kuri protects family privacy and security, the nuan...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Axios Energy & Climate Reporter Amy Harder
February 19, 2018 22:02 - 35 minutes - 16.7 MBAmy Harder covers energy and climate change for Axios. She writes a weekly column called the Harder Line that reports on trends, has exclusive scoops and analyzes the news driving the debate about energy and climate. Her coverage includes congressional legislation, regulations, lobbying, and international policy actions affecting the United States. Amy holds a B.A. in Journalism with honors. In our interview, I asked Amy about some of the most important issues of her coverage: what is “clean...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Legislative Counsel for the EFF Ernesto Falcon
February 12, 2018 22:48 - 33 minutes - 15.6 MBErnesto Falcon is Legislative Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). His primary focus is on intellectual property and open internet issues. Ernesto and I chatted about the key issues surrounding net neutrality, the stakes for business and consumers, how the FCC’s recent ruling might be combatted, ongoing legal efforts to restore net neutrality, the key players, potential legislation, and what consumers can do to help. But before we got into all that, Ernesto talked about how ...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Architosh Founder & EIC Anthony Frausto-Robledo
February 05, 2018 23:38 - 34 minutes - 15.8 MBAnthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP is a practicing architect and the founder and editor of the award-winning Architosh.com website. Educated in Boston, he has been an architectural professional for over 30 years and was a senior designer with the distinguished Boston architectural firm Koetter Kim & Associates before launching his web consultancy, BritasMedia. Anthony and I chatted about Apple’s ups and downs with technical professionals, his creation of architosh.com, the state of archit...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Tech.pinions Technical Journalist John Kirk
January 29, 2018 22:33 - 36 minutes - 16.8 MBJohn Kirk is a former trial attorney, financial advisor and business coach. About a decade ago, he burst on the scene with the most delightful, literary, and informed opinions and analysis of Apple, its foundations, customer approach, and products. His writing became legendary for its literary references and his ability to punch through to the real heart of all Apple matters. We chatted about how he first embraced the Mac, successfully used the Mac in his law practice, earned his gig at tech...
TMO Background Mode Interview with WUOT Morning Radio Host Victor Agreda
January 22, 2018 19:44 - 35 minutes - 16.5 MBVictor Agreda is a freelance voice actor, WUOT (Knoxville) Radio Morning Edition Host, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Unofficial Apple Weblog, affectionately known as “TUAW.” Early on, as a student at the University of Tennessee, he had an equal interest in English and electrical & computer engineering. By and by, he discovered that writing and journalism were what he was really good at. And yet, thanks to his engineering background, his first job out of college was as a Webmaster. We cha...
TMO Background Mode Interview with Asst. Dir. of Operations at NWRDC John Welch
January 15, 2018 22:21 - 40 minutes - 18.9 MBJohn Welch is the Assistant Director of Operations at the Northwest Regional Data Center at Florida State University. Over the last 30 years, he’s become an expert Mac IT administrator, using UNIX systems and the UNIX-based Mac to work with them. He’s worked for the military, major businesses and several universities such as MIT and FSU. John told me about the incredibly serendipitous events that led to each of his many IT jobs. In the second segment, we chatted about macOS server, Apple in ...
TMO Background Mode Special Edition #3 With Former Apple Executive Michael Gartenberg
January 08, 2018 20:44 - 31 minutes - 14.6 MBMichael Gartenberg spent three years as Apple’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, reporting directly to Senior VP Phil Schiller. In this very special edition, Michael and I chat about what we think Apple will ship in 2018. We go from certain, HomePod, to very speculative, a new Mac mini, and everything in between. iPhone 11? iPhone 9? Coffee Lake MacBook Pros? At the end of the show we also offer up some fantasies about what we’d personally like Apple to do.
TMO Background Mode Interview with Technical Journalist Dr. Gina Smith
December 18, 2017 18:47 - 37 minutes - 17.2 MBDr. Gina Smith is a technical journalist and author. She’s well-known for her biography of Steve Wozniak: iWOZ: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Doing It which was a New York Times bestseller. And she’s written several other science books. She is also a former correspondent for several ABC News shows including Good Morning America. Gina also hosted a nationally syndicated talk radio show with co-host Leo Laporte for more than a decade. Recently, she earned a Ph.D. in Clinical...