Goodbye, Steve.

Today’s post is dedicated to my personal hero, Steven Paul Jobs, who thought me to believe in design and quality. As we all know by now, Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple Inc, the world’s biggest technology company and makers of the Mac, iPhone, iPad and other great products. 

The news about Steve’s departure although saddens me was inevitable. Steve’s health has forced him to be on medical leave since January. In 2009, he had a liver transplant and he has been reported dead several times. 

As Walt Mossberg of All Things D writes; Steve Jobs’ resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general and I agree with him.

I however have no doubt his successor, Tim Cook (The Apprentice as some of us refer to him as) can run Apple Inc. as well as Steve Jobs did. Tim Cook has been with Apple since 1998 and is decried as an operational genius. He served as iCEO in 2009 and has been running Apple for the past 8 months.

I wish Steve Jobs good health and the very very best on his new position as Apple Board Chairman.

You are forever my idol!

App Store Now Available for Ghana!

Apple Inc. has added 33 additional countries to its Mac & iTunes App Store. New to the list are 5 African countries; Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Tanzania raises the number of African countries to 16.This means users in these countries can create an App Store Account with their Apple IDs, link it to their VISA, MasterCard or AMEX credit/debit cards and purchase apps. It also means developers can sell their apps in these countries (new territories) by adding them to their sales territory lists in the iTunes Connect web application. 
A lot of people have been yearning to see the flag of Ghana on the App Store and with Apple aggressively expanding its international reach, Mac OS X Lion only available in the App Store and iCloud set to go live in fall, there is the need to add more territories. What users will find disappointing is purchases cannot be made with App Store vouchers. Users will also not be able to purchase music, movies, tv shows or iBooks in the iTunes Store (which is not surprising because there a lot of copyright hurdles to clear first). I have provided a few screenshots from the Mac & iTunes App Stores. I dare say the iPhone & iPad will launch in Ghana soon.

Dropbox: Best App of 2010

Dropbox is my 2010 best app hands down! I am so in love with this app.

What is Dropbox? You remember when we used to attach files and save them as drafts in our emails so we don’t lose them? Well, those days belong to the last decade. Dropbox is an online backup/sync service/software offering 2GB for free. Bigger space is available for a monthly fee.

Dropbox is like your hard disk in the clouds. I use it for backing all my important data; office documents, iOS apps, eBooks, pictures, bookmarks, 1password backup files, reports, etc.

Once, I had a bad malware on my office pc. It ate up my files but since it had it all backed up on Dropbox, I didn’t panic. A few clicks and I had my files back. What if you mistakenly delete a file from your device and want it back, it is simple. Dropbox by default keeps deleted files for 30 days. All you have to do is undelete.

It is also a good tool for sharing files. If you are working on a document with a group or you want to share a file with your twitter friends, just use Dropbox.

Dropbox is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, Blackberry and Web. Your files are always in sync with Dropbox. Once you work on your mac and save a file, it syncs it to your iPad and other devices. Isn’t that cool enough?

Finally, let me tell you about Dropbox’s really cool referral package. Once you refer someone and the person joins and activates his/her Dropbox, you get 256MB additional space. The referred user also gets 256MB more space. So, if you don’t have a dropbox yet, use the referral link for 256MB more space: http://db.tt/lpd1aHl