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Last month I started this column with the announcement

that I will be stepping away from my role as leader of

GAAB.

I have been the Program Coordinator for GAAB for at

least 20 years and it is time to step down after the June

meeting. In addition, I have been the Apple Ambassador,

the webmaster, and the writer for three columns each month

including this column.

I have greatly appreciated the time I have spent as part of

the GAAB Leadership. I am also greatly appreciative of

the work that other members have done over the years.

Roger Mazula has done a wonderful job as the editor of

the GAABer for at least as long as I have been Program

Coordinator and probably adds a whole additional

dimension to the group.

Cecilia MacDonald has served as the Treasurer and

Mebership Coordinator keeping us nancially solvent with

our small amount of income.

Volume 29, Number 9 - May 2013

Coordinators

Cornerby John Buckley

Next GAAB MeetingMay 8, 2013

Using Windows on Mac

7:00 p.m.St. Marys Hospital

Troy, NY

Featured in this Issue

Adobe Creative Cloud............................................................... 1

Program Coordinator ................................................................ 1

Apple Ambassador .................................................................... 2

Internet SIG ............................................................................... 3

Education SIG ........................................................................... 4

QWERTY Keyboard ................................................................. 9

GAAB Internet Addresses....................................................... 12

The GABerThe Newsletter of the Greater Albany Apple Byters

Continued on page 7.

Serving the Apple Computer User Community Since May 1984

Continued on page 6.

Adobe Announces New

Creative Cloud Apps,

Abandons Creative Suiteby Juli Clover, MacRumors

Adobe has decided to focus its resources

on Creative Cloud and will not continue

development on its Creative Suite

software, reports The Next Web. While

Creative Suite 6 will continue to be

supported in regards to bug xes, there

will be no further updates and no Creative Suite 7.

Instead, the company announced several Creative Cloud

apps at its Adobe MAX conference, including Photoshop

CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, and

Premiere Pro CC.

Each of the apps has seen notable upgrades, as detailed

by The Next Web. For example, Photoshop CC offers

new features like Camera Shake reduction and Behance

integration, which can be seen in the Adobe promo video.

Adobes Creative Cloud applications will launch this

June. The company plans to offer current users of CS 3

and beyond a year of Creative Cloud at a discounted price.

http://-/?-http://-/?-http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/after-nearly-10-years-adobe-abandons-its-creative-suite-entirely-to-focus-on-creative-cloud/http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/after-nearly-10-years-adobe-abandons-its-creative-suite-entirely-to-focus-on-creative-cloud/http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/adobe-launches-new-creative-cloud-only-apps-and-services-photoshop-cc-indesign-cc-illustrator-cc-dreamweaver-cc-and-more/http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/adobe-launches-new-creative-cloud-only-apps-and-services-photoshop-cc-indesign-cc-illustrator-cc-dreamweaver-cc-and-more/http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/photoshop-cc-for-creative-cloud-members-coming-soon.htmlhttp://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/photoshop-cc-for-creative-cloud-members-coming-soon.htmlhttp://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/photoshop-cc-for-creative-cloud-members-coming-soon.htmlhttp://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/adobe-launches-new-creative-cloud-only-apps-and-services-photoshop-cc-indesign-cc-illustrator-cc-dreamweaver-cc-and-more/http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/06/after-nearly-10-years-adobe-abandons-its-creative-suite-entirely-to-focus-on-creative-cloud/http://-/?-

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The Greater Albany Apple Byters is an Apple

Computer User Group. Meetings are held the second

Wednesday of each month (except July and August)

in Room 212 of Troy High School, located on Burdett

Avenue, Troy, NY.

Annual membership fee is $10.00. Membership privi-leges include this newsletter, access to a large public

domain software and video/audio tape library, local

vendor discounts, special interest groups, and other

special offers.

Contents of The GABer are copywriten, all rights

reserved. Original articles may be reprinted by not-

for-prot organizations, provided that proper credit

is given to the author, The GABer, and a copy of the

publication sent to The GABer editor.

The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility

of each author, and do not necessarily represent the

views of the Greater Albany Apple Byters.

Note: Trademarks used in this newsletter are recog-

nized as trademarks of the representative companies.

Ofcers & Special Interest Group Leaders

Program Coordinator

John Buckley

272-7128

Membership Director

Cecilia MacDonald872-0823

Treasurer

Cecilia MacDonald

872-0823

Public Domain Librarian

Bill Shuff

393-9753

Newsletter Editor

Roger Mazula

466-7492

Education SIG

John Buckley

272-7128

Internet SIG

Lou Wozniak

465-2873

Apple

Ambassador

by John Buckley

Continued on page 7.

What Is Happening with Broadband

and WiFi in the US?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported the follow on US

bandwidth speeds.

The good news? The Internet is getting faster, or at least

average connection speeds in the United States are,

according toAkamais latest State of the Internet report.

The bad news? Our speeds are half those enjoyed in South

Korea. In fact, were ninth on the list among nations,

limping along behind Latvia and the Czech Republic. And

we drop to 14th when it comes to average peak speeds,

according to the study from the Cambridge, Mass., rm,

which helps websites accelerate content delivery.

Its troubling news, because studies repeatedly link fasterInternet connections to improved economic development

and education outcomes. To the degree that were lagging

other nations, were forgoing opportunities.

The U.S. average of 7.2 megabits per second, after all,

means lots of people, particularly in rural areas and low-

income neighborhoods, are grappling with speeds far below

that. And those are people who need access to information,

Mike Haug prepares Verizon ber-optic cables for

installation in New York. Verizons FiOS network

advertises download speeds up to 300 Mbps. Photo: JinLee, Bloomberg News

http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Akamai%22http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Akamai%22http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Akamai%22http://www.sfgate.com/education-guide/http://www.sfgate.com/education-guide/http://www.sfgate.com/education-guide/http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Akamai%22

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On a given day, an estimated 144

billion email messages are sent and

received around the world. This

doesnt even include spam!

Compare that with an average of 175

million tweets per day, and its clear

most folks and companies still prefer

email when it comes to exchanging

messages.

As someone who receives more email than I can count,

Ive had to cook up special strategies for dealing with it.

Experts say up to a quarter of a persons work week is

spent dealing with email!

To lighten your load, here are 5 email tricks I use every

day. Use these and youll shave serious time off of your

inbox management.

1. Send less (and better) email

Email follows one law youve probably heard before:

You get what you give. If youre sending out dozens of

messages, youre going to receive that many back and

more. If the email you send isnt clear, youll end up

sending more messages to clarify. It all adds up.

Instead, look for other ways to communicate. If a quick

text, call or IM can get your message across faster, use

that instead. If youre dealing with a co-worker, taking a

trip to their ofce might be easier and more productive.

With the email you cant avoid sending out, make it clear

and concise. Anticipate questions and answer them before

theyre asked. Try to keep it as short as possible, as well.

If a list or short sentence will do, dont stretch things out

into paragraphs.

5 Email Tricks Every Person

Needs to Knowby Kim Komando

Internet SIG

Continued on page 6.

If youre frequently sending the same message to multiple

people, save time with a template you can copy and paste.

These can be customized as you go so they dont look as

much like form letters.

2. Filter and Automate

Nearly every email program or service lets you set up some

form of automated message ltering. This can be as simple

as setting up folders to separate important mail from the

clutter. Advanced systems can color code and label email

for you based on sender and other rules.

Start by routing messages from important contacts to a

folder labeled Urgent or something similar. Create a

Read later folder for routine or subscription messages.

You can create as many subfolders and folders as you need,

so set up a system that works best for you.

Act on the email you receive, and then either archive or

delete the messages. The quicker it is out of your inbox,

the better. Remember, your inbox is a delivery system, not

a storage system!

If you want even more advanced ltering options, use

programs like Outlook or the free Thunderbird. These

are a must for anyone with multiple email accounts. They

add all sorts of management features that most Webmail

cant touch.

3. Use temporary email

Im sure at some point youve made the mistake of giving

out your real email address online. Shortly afterward, a

ood of email you dont care about appears in your inbox.

In most cases, you just needed to give it to a site so you

can receive a conrmation email proving you are who

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Editorial: What Will Apple Do with

the Macintosh?by Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider

After a decade of signicant growth, Apples Mac sales

have attened out as the larger market for PCs has begun

to collapse. What future is there in the Mac business, and

why is the company now designing a new Mac Pro?

Apples recent history with

iOS has been nothing short of

unprecedented and incredible.

The iPhone has sold so well

that critics have all shifted

from complaining that Steve

Jobs was unrealistically

optimistic when he said he

hoped Apple could account

for 1 percent of all phones

sold within its second year to

a complete 180, demandingthat the company make a cheaper model capable of eating

up the portion of sales in developing countries that Apple

doesnt already dominate.

And at the same time, Wall Street is now concerned that

too many people are choosing to buy the more affordable,

two and a half year old iPhone 4. Theres no worries, of

Education SIG

A Learning Experience for Us All:

The Mac Pro

The Mac Pro should be a learning experience for us all including executives at Apple.

One of the real selling points about Macs has always been the fact that they were and excellent graphics machine and

represented a higher standard for computers than the competing PC computers. This has been true for a number of

years, however Apple has failed to maintain this history over the past few years.

While desktop computers have decline in sales compared to laptops and tablets, Apple has continued to improve the

iMac and its laptops over the years. This has not been true for the top of the line Mac Pro which is the Work Station

meant to be used by high-end graphic artists and video producers.

The Mac Pro, not having an update in two years, has fallen behind a number of PCs especially the HP Z820 Workstation.

In order for Apple to continue to regain their status as the graphic and video production leader, they will have to introduce

a new Mac Pro or replacement for the Mac Pro that incorporates the latest

course, that Android licensees, including Samsung, have

been achieving their market share numbers largely by

selling not just outdated hardware but outdated versions

of Android, too, at much lower prot margins than Apple

has been earning.

While Apples success with iOS gives it the luxury of

being cursed for not having cheap enough products and

at the same time lamented for not selling a mix favoringmore expensive models,

its Mac business is simply

plugging along as the only

PC maker left that isnt

losing its sales to iPad. IDC

noted that global PC sales

fell 14 percent in the rst

quarter of 2013, twice the

drop it had predicted.

Unlike the iPhone, Apple

cant simply sell 2 year old

Mac designs at a subsidizeddiscount to a hungry audience. Apple released the cheaper

Mac mini in 2005 without stoking intense new demand.

The majority of Apples Mac sales are notebooks, all of

which are now premium models precision crafted from

thin wedges of aluminum. Compared to iPods, iPhones and

iPads, Apples Mac sales volumes are relatively minimal.

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But Apples Macs are premium machines in an industry

that has been specializing in low end, disposable hardware

for decades. This has allowed Apple to collect the lions

share of prots in the PC industry. According to a report

by Asymco, Apples Mac generates more prots that the

top ve PC makers combined.

From All-Mac to Also-Mac

Its not hard to see why Apple has been focusing much of

its attention on mobile devices: thats where the money is.

At the beginning of 2001, the year the iPod debuted, Apple

announced winter quarter sales of just 659,000 Macs. Five

years later, Apple was up to selling about twice as many

Macs (1.254 million) but was now selling more than 14

million iPods, too.

The tremendous success of the iPod caused some pundits

to speculate that Apple would (or perhaps should) drop the

Mac and focus on just selling iPods. What they didnt know

was that Apple was planning to use Mac technologies to

develop an iPod successor.

Five years later at the start of 2010, Apple reported sales of

3.36 million Macs, 21 million iPods and 8.7 million new

iPhones. It then released the new iPad.

Three years later (just last week) Apple announced sales

of just under 4 million Macs, 37.4 million iPhones and

19.5 million iPads. Thats nearly 57 million iOS devices

(not including iPod touch) being sold per quarter, far

outpacing Macs.

Same but different

Of course, iOS devices are actually compact Macs, sharing

a nearly identical core os, development frameworks and

app code (including their Safari WebKit browser). Whats

different is the user interface: Macs use an advanced

version of the windowing, mouse-driven environment

it debuted with back in 1984. In 2007, Apple introduced

a new multitouch user interface designed expressly for

handheld mobile devices.

Over the past few years, Apple has cross pollinated the Macand iOS devices, introducing many common user interface

and usability concepts ranging from multitouch gestures

and Dictation to an App Store for desktop software. Apples

next big push in services, iCloud, appeared with support

for both Macs and iOS.

Despite sharing lots of technology and features between the

Mac and iOS, Apple hasnt pursued Microsofts strategy

of melding its desktop and mobile device platforms with

a common, hybrid user interface. Instead, the Mac has

remained a conventional computer without a touchscreen.

How long can Apple afford to devote signicant resources

to maintaining the Mac when theres so much moreopportunity for growth and revenues on the iOS side?

Mac Pro now a fraction of the Macs fraction

Macs have steadily become more mobile. Over the past

decade, desktop Macs have shrunk from the majority of

Apples computer sales, to being tied with notebooks, to

now being a small minority. Most of Apples desktop Macs

are iMacs, leaving its Mac Pro a tiny island within quarterly

sales of around 4 million machines.

As a workstation class system, the Mac Pro now makes up

such a small percentage of Apples Mac sales that it hasntbeen signicantly updated since 2010. And in Europe, sales

haveceased entirely because the existing design no longer

meets stringent manufacturing standards related to exposed

fan blades and other features.

If Apples chief executive Tim Cook hadnt already

promised an update to the companys full sized desktop

this year, it would be very believable to think it might just

ride into the sunset with the discontinued Xserve.

Unlike the Xserve, which was speculatively designed to

serve a market that was already well served, the Mac Pro

(and before that, the Power Mac) was built for Apples

mainstream desktop professional users. Over the past

decade however, a number of shifts in technology have

enabled more and more of the Mac Pros potential audience

to be better served by speedy notebooks with large displays

or, in some cases, the simplicity of the iMac.

The central core audience of Apples power users, including

professionals in print, audio and video production as well

http://www.asymco.com/2013/04/16/escaping-pcs/http://www.asymco.com/2013/04/16/escaping-pcs/http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/18/mac-pro-no-longer-available-from-european-apple-online-storeshttp://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/18/mac-pro-no-longer-available-from-european-apple-online-storeshttp://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/18/mac-pro-no-longer-available-from-european-apple-online-storeshttp://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013.htmlhttp://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013.htmlhttp://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013.htmlhttp://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013.htmlhttp://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013.htmlhttp://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/18/mac-pro-no-longer-available-from-european-apple-online-storeshttp://www.asymco.com/2013/04/16/escaping-pcs/

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Internet SIGContinued from page 3.

Adobe Creative CloudContinued from page 1.

as science and engineering, are often still looking for more

computing power than a notebook can deliver. Rather than

beeng up the iMac to accommodate such users, Apple

made it more stylish and thin last fall.

This has left a place open for a future new Mac Pro, even

if its target demographic is relatively small. Apple couldseek to broaden the appeal of the desktop computer, or it

can instead simply deliver a really high end, attention

getting workstation just for bragging rights. Apple did

something similar last fall when it introduced the Retina

Display MacBook Pro, an extremely high end luxury

notebook that was so expensive that it needed last years

models to stick around in order to provide more affordable

alternatives.

you say you are. For those situations, its better to use a

temporary email account.Mailinator is a good site for this.

Its email addresses only last for an hour or so and then allthe email is erased.

Some people create a second email address. Thats the

one they give out to new or questionable sites. Their main

email is reserved for friends, family and reputable sites.

You should also keep business and personal email accounts

separate.

4. When to use BCC

There are many ways to send email to multiple people.

Usually, people simply use To: or CC: and ll in all

the email addresses. For most mass mailings, however,BCC: is a better option.

Using it means recipients only see their own email address.

Thats a plus when they might not know other people on

the list, or your email might be forwarded to strangers. You

dont want a spammer getting their hands on a large list of

your friends names and addresses.

Click here to learn even more tips for polite, secure email.

BCC can backre, though. In an ofce setting, using BCC

on an email makes you the only target for replies. If the

email is about a project with a team, include other teammembers addresses in a To: eld to help you carry the

weight.

Whenever you include multiple people in an email - ofce

or personal - make sure each knows why theyre included.

Dont be afraid to explain that in the body of the email.

5. Turn off notications

One of the biggest email annoyances is notications. These

come from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites.

You might get an email every time someone interacts with

your prole. If youre an avid social networker, these

notications can take over your inbox.

Go into your settings on each site to turn off notications.

Ive got tips to do it for Facebook here. Twitter, LinkedIn,

Pinterest and the rest arent much different. You can even

keep a few types of notications active if you think theyre

important.

For creatives that rely on the companys upgrade paths,

some will be pleased to nd that anyone with a CS 3 or later

serial number will get their rst Creative Cloud year for

$29.99 per month. For everyone else, the complete version

of Creative Cloud will set you back $49.99 per month,

or you can purchase a single app license subscription for

$19.99 per month.

For teams, the same applies, but youll pay $69.99 per

month per user or $39.99 if youve purchased CS 3 or later

added perks include signicantly more cloud storage.

For students, CC will set you back $19.99 per month for

the complete version, and there is also now a Teams forEducation offering at $39.99 per month per user.

With a standard Creative Cloud subscription, users can

access the full library of Adobe apps, making it an attractive

choice for subscribers that plan to access multiple Adobe

products.

According to Scott Morris (via TechCrunch), head of

Adobes Creative Cloud and Creative Suite teams, the

shift will allow Adobes engineers the ability to focus,

providing quicker updates and more innovative features

in the future.

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Apple AmbassadorContinued from page 2.

In addition, I would like to thank Les Goldstein for his help

in securing the Leonard Board Room at St. Marys Hospital

for our meetings and the hospital for the use of the room.

We discussed the future of GAAB at last months meeting

and will continue this discussion at the May meeting.

Please try to be there for these discussions.

This months demo will feature how to run Windows and

other operating systems on the Mac. We will look at the

alternatives and what is the best way depending on your

needs.

To nd out whats happening, GAAB is the place to be.

So be sure to be at our May meeting and every meeting

to nd out the best information about the Mac and other

Apple products.

The May meeting will be held at St. Marys Hospital in the

Leonard Board Room on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. The

meeting will begin at 7 p.m. St. Marys Hospital is located

at 1300 Massachusetts Avenue in Troy NY.

However, the best route to take from the Northway is the

following:1. Merge onto NY-7 East from the Northway.

2. Follow Route 7 to Troy where it becomes Hoosick Street.

3. Turn left on Oakwood Avenue (10 Street/NY-40) which

is the rst light after the bridge and bare right.4. Turn right on Sausse Avenue. Turn left onto Lindenwood

Court. When you come to the rst entrance to the hospital

parking lot, turn left and park.

Program CoordinatorContinued from page 1.

online tutoring and job opportunities as much, or more,

than anyone.

A 2011 report concluded that doubling broadband speeds

can increase a nations gross domestic product by 0.3

percent. That would add up to $126 billion in the United

States, noted the paper by networking equipment company

Ericsson, consulting rm Arthur D. Little and Chalmers

University of Technology in Sweden.

Next-generation apps

Its also bad news because faster Internet connections

enable next-generation applications, the things we might

not even know we need or want yet. When the Internet

transitioned from dial-up to broadband, we went fromhappily waiting for still images to load to streaming movies

on Netix and Hulu - and learning about physics and math

from Khan Academy videos. The acceleration of Internet

speeds has transformed countless industries, upending

the way we learn, play, shop, date and much, much more.

So what will the next 10 Mbps bring? Or 50? Who knows?

It could be ultra HD or 3-D television and movies.

It could be entirely new kinds of virtual reality and

immersive games.

It could also be virtual classrooms, with high-resolution

video, interactive tools and simultaneous translations

across multiple languages, linking students and teachers

around the globe.

It could represent the infrastructure upgrade necessary to

usher in a new era of connected homes and the Internet

of Things, where all our products are connected and

talking, in ways that could make our lives easier and use

of resources more efcient.

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Its difcult to predict what becomes possible, but in

general, faster broadband access with less restrictive data

caps is likely to result in better things for consumers,

said Dane Jasper, chief executive of Sonic.net, an Internet

service provider in Santa Rosa.

Indeed, its clear from both the short history of the Internetand the long history of civilization that information

technology matters, reshufing the winners and losers in

politics, economics, arts and culture. So, its probably a

good idea to keep up.

But South Korea is consistently winning the race, clocking

in with average connection speeds of 14.7 Mbps during the

third quarter, according to Akamai. Japan came in second

at 10.5 Mbps, while Hong Kong ranked third at 9.

Lack of competition

There are a variety of reasons why the United States fallsnear the bottom of the top 10 nations, but much of it boils

down to the lack of competition - specically the continuing

reign of dominant legacy players in telecommunications

like AT&T and Comcast, despite otherwise vast changes

throughout the tech sector.

The government of South Korea has actively promoted

fast and plentiful Internet access through a series of policy

initiatives, including forcing its public power utility and

dominant telecom company to open up their networks to

rivals, according to Wired.

As reported in a Motorola White Paper, faster broadbandwill be especially important with the new WIFI routers

that are now coming on the market. They are using the

new 802.11ac standard which commonly call gigabit wi

will replace the 802.11n routers we are currently using.

802.11ac represents the fth generation of IEEE 802.11

WLAN standards and is expected to deliver a data rate

connection of at least three times that of 802.11n. Many of

the algorithms of 802.11n are being reused, but enhanced,

with 802.11ac, which should make the technology easy to

fold into existing networks.

802.11ac will be backward-compatible with 802.11n

networks operating in the 5GHz range and is expected

to offer dramatic improvements in Wi-Fi reliability,

throughput and range. 801.11ac is expected to be ratied

by IEEE late 2013. The earliest, pre-ratied products were

in stores in late 2012 and will likely ship for the home/

consumer market. From there, its expected that the rollout

of new IEEE 802.11ac devices will take between one and

three years. By 2015, according to experts, all new Wi-Fi

products coming to market are expected to be based on

802.11ac technology.

Enterprise-class products will ship with variations on the

number of antennas, spatial streams and channel widths,

and the most important education for enterprises to seek

at this time is how wider channels, but fewer of them, willaffect the organizations channel plan. This is particularly

relevant for early enterprise adopters, who will likely be

supporting large volumes of single-stream handset clients

for a couple of years, as well as clients that use the 2.4GHz

band, which will be obsolete in 802.11ac. Theres a ne

balance between accommodating the high density of

these devices with enough channels to avoid co- channel

interference and reaping the aggregate throughput benets

of the greater channel widths of 80MHz and, eventually,

160MHz, that have been specied by 802.11ac standards.

9 to 5 Mac reports that code in the latest 10.8.4 beta version

of Mountain Lion discovered by a 9to5 Mac tipster showsOS X support for 802.11ac WiFi, meaning next-gen Macs

might contain the tech. Also dubbed 5G, 802.11ac brings

speeds as high as 1.3Gbps thanks tobeamforming, while

also offering more range and robustness compared to its

802.11n predecessor. To date weve seen oodles ofrouters

packing the still-uncertied wireless format, but only a

single notebook with the tech has passed through our doors

-- theAsus G75VW gaming notebook. That might change

with a reference to the standard in the WiFi-frameworks

folder in Mountain Lions latest beta, 10.8.4, which was

recently sent to developers. Of course, until we see a

real Cupertino product packing such a radio, its just that

-- code.

http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Dane+Jasper%22http://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Dane+Jasper%22http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=0CLEBEBYwDg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motorola.com%2Fweb%2FBusiness%2F_Documents%2FWhite%20Paper%2F_Static%20files%2F80211ac_White_Paper_0712-web.pdf&ei=Pt-GUd-rItTG4APfm4GIBw&usg=AFQjCNG59QnzNjFHy9oAg9ZG6L3_v7S-nQ&sig2=MzrXwgue8Ox3eLgLnYJ0DQhttp://9to5mac.com/2013/04/09/os-x-10-8-4-code-confirms-new-macs-incoming-with-super-fast-802-11ac-gigabit-wireless-support/http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/linksys-reveals-a-trio-of-802-11ac-wifi-routers-with-beamforming/http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/linksys-reveals-a-trio-of-802-11ac-wifi-routers-with-beamforming/http://www.engadget.com/tag/802.11ac,router/http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/study-802-11ac-devices-to-hit-the-one-billion-mark-in-2015-get/http://www.engadget.com/tag/802.11ac,router/http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/study-802-11ac-devices-to-hit-the-one-billion-mark-in-2015-get/http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/07/asus-g75vw-broadcom-80211ac/http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/07/asus-g75vw-broadcom-80211ac/http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/07/asus-g75vw-broadcom-80211ac/http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/07/asus-g75vw-broadcom-80211ac/http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/study-802-11ac-devices-to-hit-the-one-billion-mark-in-2015-get/http://www.engadget.com/tag/802.11ac,router/http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/linksys-reveals-a-trio-of-802-11ac-wifi-routers-with-beamforming/http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/09/os-x-10-8-4-code-confirms-new-macs-incoming-with-super-fast-802-11ac-gigabit-wireless-support/http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=0CLEBEBYwDg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motorola.com%2Fweb%2FBusiness%2F_Documents%2FWhite%20Paper%2F_Static%20files%2F80211ac_White_Paper_0712-web.pdf&ei=Pt-GUd-rItTG4APfm4GIBw&usg=AFQjCNG59QnzNjFHy9oAg9ZG6L3_v7S-nQ&sig2=MzrXwgue8Ox3eLgLnYJ0DQhttp://www.sfgate.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=technology%2Fdotcommentary&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Dane+Jasper%22

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Fact or Fiction? The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboardfrom Smithsonian.com

What came rst: the typist or the keyboard? The answer

depends on the keyboard. A recent article in Smithsonians

news blog, Smart News, described an innovative new

keyboard system that proposes a more efcient alternative

to the ubiquitous universal keyboard best known as

QWERTY named for the rst six letters in the top

row of keys. The new keyboard, known as KALQ, is

designed specically for thumb-typing on todays smart

phones and tablets. Its an interesting and by all accounts

commercially viable design that got me thinking about the

rationale behind the QWERTY keyboard. Unlike KALQ,

it couldnt have been designed to accommodate a specic

typing technique because, well, the idea of typing touch

typing, at least hadnt been invented yet. It turns out that

there is a lot of myth and misinformation surrounding the

development of QWERTY, but these various theories all

seem to agree that the QWERTY layout was developed

along with, and inextricably linked to, early typewriters.

In the 1860s, a politician, printer, newspaper man, and

amateur inventor in Milwaukee by the name ofChristopher

Latham Sholes spent his free time developing various

machines to make his businesses more efcient. One such

invention was an early typewriter, which he developed with

Samuel W. Soul, James Densmore, and Carlos Glidden,and rstpatented in 1868. The earliest typewriter keyboard

resembled a piano and was built with an alphabetical

arrangement of 28 keys. The team surely assumed it would

be the most efcient arrangement. After all, anyone who

used the keyboard would know immediately where to nd

each letter; hunting would be reduced, pecking would be

increased. Why change things? This is where the origin of

QWERTY gets a little foggy.

U.S. Patent No. 207,559. The rst appearance of the QWERTYkeyboard. (image: Google patents)

The popular theory states that Sholes had to redesign

the keyboard in response to the mechanical failings of

early typewriters, which were slightly different from the

models most often seen in thrift stores and ea markets.

The type bars connecting the key and the letter plate hung

in a cycle beneath the paper. If a user quickly typed asuccession of letters whose type bars were near each other,

the delicate machinery would get jammed. So, it is said,

Sholes redesigned the arrangement to separate the most

common sequences of letters like th or he. In theory

then, the QWERTY system should maximize the separation

of common letter pairings. This theory could be easily

debunked for the simple reason that er is the fourth most

common letter pairing in the English language. However,

one of the typewriter prototypes had a slightly different

keyboard that was only changed at the last minute. If it

had been put into production this article would have been

about the QWE.TY keyboard:

By 1873, the typewriter had 43 keys and a decidedly

counter-intuitive arrangement of letters that supposedly

helped ensure the expensive machines wouldnt break

down. Form follows function and the keyboard trains the

Experimental Sholes & Glidden typewriters circa 1873. (originalimage: The World of Typewriters)

The 1873 prototype used to demonstrate the technology toRemington (original image: The World of Typewriters)

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTYhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTYhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://www.google.com/patents/US79265http://www.google.com/patents/US79265http://www.google.com/patents/US79265http://www.howstuffworks.com/question458.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigram#Bigram_Frequency_in_the_English_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigram#Bigram_Frequency_in_the_English_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigram#Bigram_Frequency_in_the_English_languagehttp://www.howstuffworks.com/question458.htmhttp://www.google.com/patents/US79265http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/541481/Christopher-Latham-Sholeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTYhttp://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-is-the-new-non-qwerty-keyboard-you-will-use-to-compose-your-iphone-opus/

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typist. That same year, Sholes and his cohorts entered into

a manufacturing agreement with gun-maker Remington, a

well-equipped company familiar with producing precision

machinery and, in the wake of the Cilvil War, no doubt

looking to turn their swords into plowshares. However,

right before their machine, dubbed the Sholes & Glidden,

went into production, Sholes led another patent, whichincluded a new keyboard arrangement. Issued in 1878,

U.S. Patent No. 207,559 (top image) marked the rst

documented appearance of the QWERTY layout. The

deal with Remington proved to be an enormous success.

By 1890, there were more than 100,000 QWERTY-based

Remington produced typewriters in use across the country.

The fate of the keyboard was decided in 1893 when the ve

largest typewriter manufacturers Remington, Caligraph,

Yost, Densmore, and Smith-Premier merged to form the

Union Typewriter Company and agreed to adopt QWERTY

as the de facto standard that we know and love today.

Theres a somewhatrelated theory that credits Remingtonspre-merger business tactics with the popularization of

QWERTY. Remington didnt just produce typewriters,

they also provided training courses for a small fee, of

course. Typists who learned on their proprietary system

would have to stay loyal to the brand, so companies that

wanted to hire trained typists had to stock their desks with

Remington typewriters. Its a system thats still works

today, as illustrated by the devout following Apple built

through the ecosystem created by iTunes, the iTunes store,

and the iPod.

While it cant be argued that deal with Remington helped

popularize the QWERTY system, its development as aresponse to mechanical error, has been questioned by

Kyoto University Researchers Koichi Yasuoka and Motoko

Yasuoka. In a 2011 paper, the researchers tracked the

evolution of the typewriter keyboard alongside a record

of its early professional users. They conclude that the

mechanics of the typewriter did not inuence the keyboard

design. Rather, the QWERTY system emerged as a result of

how the rst typewriters were being used. Early adopters

and beta-testers included telegraph operators who needed

to quickly transcribe messages. However, the operators

found the alphabetical arrangement to be confusing and

inefcient for translating morse code. The Kyoto paper

suggests that the typewriter keyboard evolved over several

years as a direct result of input provided by these telegraph

operators. For example;

The code represents Z as which is often

confused with the digram SE, more frequently-used than

Z. Sometimes Morse receivers in United States cannot

determine whether Z or SE is applicable, especially in

the rst letter(s) of a word, before they receive following

letters. Thus S ought to be placed near by both Z and E

on the keyboard for Morse receivers to type them quickly

(by the same reason C ought to be placed near by IE. But,

in fact, C was more often confused with S).

In this scenario, the typist came before the keyboard. The

Kyoto paper also cites the Morse lineage to further debunkthe theory that Sholes wanted to protect his machine from

jamming by rearranged the keys with the specic intent

to slow down typists:

The speed of Morse receiver should be equal to the Morse

sender, of course. If Sholes really arranged the keyboard

to slow down the operator, the operator became unable to

catch up the Morse sender. We dont believe that Sholes

had such a nonsense intention during his development of

Type-Writer.

Regardless of how he developed it, Sholes himself wasnt

convinced that QWERTY was the best system. Althoughhe sold his designs to Remington early on, he continued to

invent improvements and alternatives to the typewriter for

the rest of his life, including several keyboard layouts that

he determined to be more efcient, such as the following

patent, led by Sholes in 1889, a year before he died, and

issued posthumously:

But the biggest rivals to ever challenge QWERTY is the

Dvorak Simplied Keyboard, developed by Dr. August

Dvorak in the 1930s.

U.S. Patent No. 568,630, issued to C.L. Sholes after his death(image: google patents)

http://www.google.com/patents/US207559?dq=U.S.+Patent+No.+207,559&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nqmCUZWKEubr0gGN5YGgAw&ved=0CDYQ6wEwAAhttp://www.google.com/patents/US207559?dq=U.S.+Patent+No.+207,559&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nqmCUZWKEubr0gGN5YGgAw&ved=0CDYQ6wEwAAhttp://books.google.com/books?id=jlmVKZ1psCkC&pg=PA45&dq=qwerty+remington&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8LCCUdm8K_GX0gHqjoDADA&ved=0CDkQ6wEwAQ#v=onepage&q=qwerty%20remington&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=jlmVKZ1psCkC&pg=PA45&dq=qwerty+remington&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8LCCUdm8K_GX0gHqjoDADA&ved=0CDkQ6wEwAQ#v=onepage&q=qwerty%20remington&f=falsehttp://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.htmlhttp://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.htmlhttp://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboardhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboardhttp://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.htmlhttp://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.htmlhttp://books.google.com/books?id=jlmVKZ1psCkC&pg=PA45&dq=qwerty+remington&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8LCCUdm8K_GX0gHqjoDADA&ved=0CDkQ6wEwAQ#v=onepage&q=qwerty%20remington&f=falsehttp://www.google.com/patents/US207559?dq=U.S.+Patent+No.+207,559&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nqmCUZWKEubr0gGN5YGgAw&ved=0CDYQ6wEwAA

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Dvorak users reported faster and more accurate typing, in

part because the system dramatically increases the number

of words that can be typed using the home row of keys

where your ngers naturally rest also known as the keys

you type when youre just trying ll space. asjdfkal; sdfjkl;

asdfjkl; asdfjkl; dkadsf. asdfjklasdfjk. Morerecent research

has debunked any claims that Dvorak is more efcient, but

it hardly matters. Even in 1930 it was already too late for

a new system to gain a foothold. While Dvorak certainly

has its champions, it never gained enough of a following

to overthrow King QWERTY. After all, the world learned

to type using Remingtons keyboard.

When the rst generation of computer keyboards emerged,

there was no longer any technical reason to use the system

computers didnt get jammed. But of course, theres

the minor fact that millions of people learned to type on

the QWERTY keyboards. It had become truly ubiquitous

in countries that used the Latin alphabet. Not only that,

but way back in 1910, the system had been adopted by

Teletype, a company that would go on to produce electronic

typewriters and computer terminals widely used around

the world, thereby ensuring QWERTYs place as the newtechnological standard.

When a design depends on a previous innovation too

entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist to change, its known as

a path dependency. And this why the new KALQ proposal

is so interesting. It attempts to break from the tyranny of

The Dvorak Simplied Keyboard (image: wikipedia)

The KALQ keyboard layout (image: Outlasvirta et al.)

Christopher Latham Sholes, whose QWERTY system

makes even less sense on the virtual keyboards of tablets

and smartphones than it does on a computer keyboards. Is

the new KALQ system any different? In some ways, the

answer is obviously yes. It has been designed around a

very specic, very modern behavior typing with thumbs.

Like the telegraph operator QWERTY theory, the user isdetermining the structure of the keyboard. But it could still

be argued that the KALQ system, or any similar system

that may be developed in the future, is also a product of

path dependency. Because no matter how the letters are

arranged, they basic notion of individually separated letters

distributed across a grid dates back to Sholes and co.

tinkering away in their Milwaukee workshops. But its just

not necessary in a tablet. If you gave an iPad to someone

who had never used a keyboard and told them to develop

a writing system, chances are they would eventually invent

a faster, more intuitive system. Perhaps a gesture based

system based on shorthand? Or some sort of swipe-to-type

system? This is not to say that such a system would bebetter, its merely an observation that our most bleeding

edge communication technology still dates back more than

150 years to some guys tinkering in their garage. Truly, the

more things change, the more they stay the same.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/18/210216/dvorak-layout-claimed-not-superior-to-qwertyhttp://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/18/210216/dvorak-layout-claimed-not-superior-to-qwertyhttp://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/18/210216/dvorak-layout-claimed-not-superior-to-qwertyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Corporationhttp://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/01/18/210216/dvorak-layout-claimed-not-superior-to-qwerty

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GAAB Internet Addresses To start or renew your GAABmembership, see Cecilia MacDonald

or send your fees payable to her at

the following address:

Cecilia MacDonald

260 Sever Road

Delanson, NY 12053

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