John Martellaro

There are writers who understand Apple. They've been covering Apple for years, decades.  Some of them are very smart and accomplished at research and analysis. Other writers just write about Apple to earn some money and see their name in lights. Is there a war emerging between the two?

The Cally app for iOS is a units and currency converter plus a scientific calculator. It is brilliant at conversions, but flubs badly as a calculator. John Martellaro explains why the calculator part needs a complete overhaul.

It's one thing to get attention and create a desire for a great product, but Apple's latest, frenetic iPad ads, in John Martellaro's opinion, smack of a baser motive. We can irritate you. So we do.

While Java remains an important tool for the Enterprise, its fate on the personal computer for home users is all but sealed. John Martellaro explains.

Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) was an American science fiction writer who, amongst his many achievements, also noted that "ninety percent of everything is crap." Coined as "Sturgeon's Law", it applies to fiction, but has come to be applied to most anything else. From what John Martellaro has been reading, it also applies to current day writing about Apple.

Sometimes an iOS app is so nicely done for a particular discipline that it becomes, perhaps, the quintessential app of its kind.  Nav Clock is one of those. No pilot, astronomer, photographer, journalist, hiker or anyone interested in location coordinates, time and weather should be without it.

There is definitely an art to naming products -- as any Microsoft or Apple executive knows. Today, we learned about some candidate names Apple had for what we now call the iPhone. Some seemed oh-so rational at the time and now seem, well, just crazy.

There are several working theories about why Marissa Mayer no longer allows Yahoo employees to work at home. In any case, in principle, working at home is very doable for these kinds of technical jobs.  John Martellaro, who worked out of a home office for Apple, explains what may be going on at Yahoo.
 

You can run Java apps in two ways. The first is to run applets inside your Web browser with a plug-in.  The second is to run native Java 6 apps on your Mac. This how-to discusses procedures to uninstall/disable each of those two Java systems on your Mac.

It requires a clear, articulate presentation to properly enumerate the perils of Facebook. A CNN author, who has quit Facebook, has done just that. He tells a story that's worse than you ever could have thought.