Apple announced the iPad 2 yesterday. It looks amazing.

If you don’t already own one and were waiting until the announcement to decide which tablet to buy, this is the one. Order it now and you won’t regret it.

If you do already own an iPad, keep the one you already have. I don’t think the changes were enough to justify upgrading for most existing owners.

We’ve been hearing about the coming of Thunderbolt – previously known as Light Peak – for what seems like a long time now, and it finally came to market today on the MacBook Pro refresh.

This looks like it has a lot of potential, for a number of reasons.

Aesthetically the plug is a nice shape, and this is more important than most people realize. It’s impossible to insert into the port the wrong way, either breaking something or getting it stuck. Anybody who has tried to plug in a USB device without having a good view of the port knows what I’m talking about here.

It’s fast. Capable of 10 Gbps in both directions is 20 times faster than the current standard – USB 2.0. My current preferred method of transferring data is the very fast Firewire 800, and Thunderbolt is 12 times faster than that!

Like Firewire, it can be chained between devices. This means no more ugly hubs taking up space on the desk.

Most importantly, Intel were a major part of the design process. This gives it a greater chance of becoming the default choice among all hardware manufacturers, instead of being mostly restricted to Apple like Firewire.

I’m making a prediction now – Thunderbolt will be the next standard, leaving USB to die the slow death it deserves. It will take a few years while they wait for everybody’s upgrade cycle to catch up, but it will happen.

MG Siegler on checking his phone while at dinner with his mother…

I’d pretend to read the menu or fix my napkin to just be slyly looking straight down at my device beneath her line of sight — you know the drill. And while I was doing that, I would look around. Sure enough, there were a half dozen other people at the tables around me doing the same thing.

Sorry MG. Playing with your phone while out to dinner with people is downright rude. Other people may be doing it as well, but that doesn’t make it right.

If you really must use the phone to improve your experience, put it into flight mode first.

From The New York Times…

Tim, like Steve, is like a metronome who sets the pace for the rest of Apple.

I’ve been saying this for a long time now – Apple is in good hands under Tim Cook’s control. He’s done it before and he can do it again.

From /Film…

From The Loop…

In September 2010 RIM announced the PlayBook, an iPad competitor running the BlackBerry OS. That hasn’t shipped yet.

In January 2011 RIM announced the PlayBook 4G, upping the ante on its competition by including the next generation data connection. That hasn’t shipped yet.

In February 2011, RIM outdid itself and announced the PlayBook 4G LTE, HSPA+ and Mobile WiMAX models. They haven’t shipped.

There must be a limit to the number of times a company can announce vaporware in their lifetime…

At this point, it looks like Ben Brooks is the only person to have “seen” a prototype.

I’ve heard a lot of podcasts recently that outline the importance of backing up data. This is something I’ve been paranoid about since losing all of my data in a massive hard drive failure about 20 years ago, so I thought I would share my strategy.

The Data
All of my regular data resides in Dropbox[1. I can hear a cacophony of both groans and shouts of joy already. Folks, Dropbox is not a backup strategy. It merely helps to distribute data between different machines. I repeat - Dropbox is not a backup strategy. Please don't use it as one.]. This means that all of my data appears on my main machine, my server and my Air almost instantaneously. More on that later.

The Main Machine
My main machine – an iMac – gets a full drive clone every Friday night using SuperDuper!

The Travel Machine
My travel machine – a Macbook Air – doesn’t get backed up. It only accesses data from the Dropbox and I worry about that elsewhere.

The Server
I have a Mac Mini sitting in a closet with 2 Drobos connected to it. Its primary purpose initially was serving media to our Apple TVs and syncing to iPods and iPads, but now it also serves as an important part of my backup strategy.

The first Drobo contains all of our music, movies and other media. This unit gets backed up monthly by doing a direct copy to a series of hard drives. I feel that monthly is enough because the data on there really doesn’t change very much.

The second Drobo contains all of my work files, and is mainly accessed from my main machine over the network. In addition to a monthly direct copy at the same time as the other unit, it’s constantly backed up using Backblaze[2. A caution with Backblaze. It's terrific for regular use, but be wary if you have a directory containing thousands of sub-directories containing thousands of files. Even if the individual files are tiny, Backblaze baulks (it literally panics and stops) at the number of directories and files needed to be referenced. In my case, that particular directory never, ever changes so I exclude it in the Backblaze settings.].

All data on this machine is included in the Backblaze service, and this is where the Dropbox magic aids the backup strategy because it means Backblaze also gets my data from the main machine while not actually being connected to it.

The computer also gets the SuperDuper! treatment each month.

Summary

• Operating Systems, Applications and settings are covered by SuperDuper!
• Data by separate hard drive and Backblaze.

I’d ideally like to store my extra hard drives offsite, but this isn’t possible at the moment[3. There must be a market for the various storage facilities to rent out climate controlled lockers to people who just want to store a box and not an entire room. Am I really the only person who wants this?].

From TechCrunch…

Luckily for Apple, there’s a new rumor on the block; this time from Digitimes, and it’s about the next iPhone’s screen size.

Yep. I bet they throw a little party in the boardroom at Cupertino every time a new rumor starts.