Smoking Apples would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

May 2009 be a year of peace, and prosperity, and awesome Apple products! We would also like to wish Steve Jobs the best of health, and see him at a lot more Apple keynotes. And of course, if he doesn’t want to do any more keynotes, his choice is fine by us.

Once again, thank you for visiting Smoking Apples this past year, and hope you continue to do so in the new. Now let’s hope for an awesome Macworld 09!

[Image courtesy Drumsnwhistles]

We would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas (Hanukkah to those special ones), and happy holidays ahead. I know what you’re thinking, Christmas is yet to come? Well, sure we have that unimportant date on the 6th of Jan, but we’ll see to that when the time comes. 

Till then, thanks so much for visiting Smoking Apples, and bringing to where we are right now. You guys are the best!

Doing your christmas shopping at Amazon? Thinking of buying yourself a MacBook? Why if you are, do use the Smoking Apples aStore.

We’ve collected hardware and software that a Mac users might want and put it in our own little store. It is the same Amazon.com that you trust, with the same rock-bottom prices, except this way you also support the Smoking Apples team. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in our store, continue on to the main store, and whatever you purchase within 24 hours will still be counted as a SA referral. 

Note: The products bought are from Amazon. We do not stock any products nor can we provide support for them. Everything is handled by Amazon.com.

Don’t worry though, we will refuse to crowd our website with ugly ads flashing all over the place. We will never let our product reviews interfere with the hope of making a quick buck. We hope you don’t mind this little way of us getting an income from our dedicated work.

If you ever find our referral links getting in the way of your Smoking Apples reading experience, don’t hesitate in letting us know. Our readers always come first. 

The Smoking Apples Team.

A month ago, we introduced our first issue of the Smoking Apples Magazine, and it was a huge success for us. We received a tremendous response for the first issue and the download counter currently reads 3700+. We’d like to thank you all for making it happen for us. 

Today, we announce the availability of the second issue of the Smoking Apples Magazine for the month of December.

We’re certain that this issue is even better than the first one that we brought out to you. We’ve increased our page count to almost two-fold, with a lot more reviews and even some exclusive content. This issue also contains some awesome discounts for EventBox, Plasq as well as 1Password. A special thanks to Mailplaneapp for sponsoring this month’s issue of the magazine. 

Our exclusive content includes a Parallels vs Fusion shootout, a survey of MobileMe customers and a whole lot of other reviews which you might have missed on the blog. 

Like last time, the magazine remains a free download and we have a free distribution policy, so spread it around, upload it to your server, or tweet about it on twitter. The issue weighs in at a shade below 10MB due to the additional content.

So go on and Download the PDF right away.

As always, please leave us your feedback on the issue and let us know how we can better ourselves. 

The Smoking Apples Team.

A few days ago we included our first poll right there in the sidebar, and the topic in question was the whole Antivirus issue. We’re pleased to note that over 62%, of the total 200 votes as of this moment, think that there’s absolutely no need to worry about viruses on our Macs. That’s the spirit! 

30% of the voters however think that while the story was blown out of proportion, we need to be warned. Of course, you can check out Andy’s article on what to make of the whole virus scene on the Mac. We do need to be more careful this year than we were last year though. 

I was surprised to find that 8% of the voters actually liked the idea of having an antivirus on their Macs. I didn’t think this demographic would include more than 2% of the users. Still, 92% not having an antivirus is in stark contrast to what happens in the other world that most people are familiar with.

[Update: Issue 2 is out now! Grab it from this link]

Back in October, when we launched the new design, we said we were taking this to the next level. Well today we build upon that, with another feature of Smoking Apples. I’m so very pleased to introduce to you, the Smoking Apples Magazine. 

When we launched the new design, it became apparent to us that people wanted to dig through our content looking for more interesting articles. However, due to the nature of the internet, and problems with making that information easily  accessible, the most that users went through were the featured posts. So we decided that every month, we compile our best posts, in a stunning professional quality eMag would solve this problem. A little over two weeks later, we’re out with our first issue.

So what’s the deal with the magazine then? Here’s a little disclaimer from the magazine itself:

“This eMag is free to distribute by any medium. You can print it, email it, upload it on your web server, or share it on a p2p network if you will. You may however not edit any part of this PDF, copy the content, or split the pages. This PDF must remain whole at all times.

Smoking Apples is in no way associated with Apple, Inc., any software company, or person mentioned in this magazine, the website, or anywhere else. We are a totally independent in our news, views, and hold our journalistic integrity to the highest. Our views cannot be bought.”

So please download it, share it with your friends, and give us any feedback you can throw at us. This is our first issue, and we definitely want to get better next time. 

Choose your download option:
[Direct Download] [Email Subscription] [Report Problem]

It’s been a while since we’ve shared some personal words with you. Today is a big occasion for us, as we take this blog to the next level. Starting today, this is going to be the Apple blog you want to visit. It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to our new face on the web, Smoking Apples 2.0.

Continue Reading »

Hello again, dear friends.

It has been a while since we had a nice, friendly chat. How have you been? We’ve been doing well, thanks for asking.

I just wanted to drop in and give you an update on these ‘Linked’ posts you’ve been seeing cropping up all over the place. You might have noticed that they behave a little differently from your regular, old fashioned blog posts. The descriptions are tiny, both in terms of font size and length, and they do not contain any links to whatever it is that’s being described. Weird, huh?

Well, not so much. Unlike our normal blog posts, each one of which we put a lot of effort into to make them as well rounded and informative as possible, linked items are basically articles, pictures, videos, and other related stuff that we find on the Internet and deem interesting enough to bring to the attention of our readers (yes, you included).

Therefore, instead of posting a link somewhere in the description, we link to them directly from the title of such items. You’re supposed to read our little description and then click on the title to go to the content we’re talking about. There is, however, a permalink in the form of a small symbol («), whatever it’s called, to the left of the post titles.

I hope the concept is clear now. You’re supposed to scroll through the page, reading along whatever we’ve written and skimming over the descriptions for the linked items, and click on the titles of any that might interest you. We hope this will serve as a one-stop solution for you to subscribe to our website and read our posts and also keep in touch with interesting content being published by others in the meanwhile.

Since we’re on the subject of subscription (well, not really, but this is kinda important so I gotta mention it), let me introduce you to our feeds today. Therefore, we’re offering you two individual RSS feeds (click on the titles to subscribe¹). You might notice that the linked list and sans-linked list feeds are removed. We were having some problems with those feeds have temporarily removed them from our list. 

The Smoking Apples RSS feed: If you want to experience our website in all its glory, this is the feed to go for. It contains both our posts and linked items, so you almost never have to visit the website using a web browser (unless you want to leave us some juicy comments, of course, which are always welcome). Linked list items however will get you to our site before you having to click on the title. 

Keep up with the comments: You know what’s even more interesting than our posts? It’s the reader reactions to them. Subscribe to this feed if you want to keep up with the latest from readerland.

And that’s all there is to it, folks. We knew some of you were having trouble with the concept of linked items and I hope it’s all clear now. If you still have any questions, feel free to fire them at us in the comments thread and we’ll try to answer them to the best of our abilities.

Thank you for the audience and we look forward to and count on your continued patronage.

Welcome, my dear friends, to Smoking Apples, the premier source of Apple news, views and reviews in the neighbourhood! As you should have by now guessed, we intend to cover all the interesting (and sometimes not so much) happenings revolving around our favourite fruity company. From the Mac to the iPod and the iPhone to the Apple TV, you’ll find it all here, information from a cacophony of sources that has been distilled into pure, readable form and lovingly handcrafted for you. (Wow, we could be artists!)

This site is run by a group of five talented youngsters located in various parts of India including Chennai, Goa, Mumbai and Siliguri (in West Bengal). Milind and I were the ones who originally came up with the idea of starting an Apple related website but one that was distinguished from the thousands of others in the same category by its characteristic Indian charm. However, the lazy procrastinating bums that we are, the idea never really took to flight. It took Ashwin’s determination, and his confidence and experience from already running a successful blog, to get us all into gear and register the domain name. Once the engines had been fired up, there was no stopping us.

Right now, we intend to have at least one new post for you to read every weekday and a bimonthly podcast that will be released on alternate Fridays, starting from the next one. Eventually, we hope to hire more authors and increase the frequency of our posts. Once the details are mapped out, we’ll have more information for you on this subject. Stay tuned.

In the spirit of launch day, we’re having a giveaway of sorts. We invite all of you to post a comment below and we’ll randomly select three people from the group and each of them will be entitled to a free T-shirt. There are no rules apart from the obvious one, that you cannot post more than one comment, and that you must be situated in India. Keep those in mind and post away.

And while you’re here, make sure you check out the posts we’ve already published in anticipation of your visit and subscribe to the blog if you like what you see.

Thank you!