Macintosh

To appreciate the scope of what Steve Jobs accomplished during his second stint as Apple's chief executive, you have to rewind the tape - or rather, spin back the iPod's wheel - to an August morning in Boston 14 years ago. More than 1,500 of the Apple faithful filled the Park Plaza Castle to hear Jobs deliver his first MacWorld Expo keynote since returning to the company the year before. I was in the front of the hall, covering the event for Wired magazine's website. It felt like a conclave of Shakers, devout but dwindling.

MP3 Wireless Doorbell,by Swann Communications USA Inc. $45.08 at Amazon.com At last, our doorbells are catching up with our phones. For years, we have had cellphones that can be programmed to play an infinite variety of ringtones: Top 40 hits, movie sound effects, or snarky comments from a favorite comedian. Now the engineers at Swann have come up with a doorbell that's just as versatile. You mount a small battery-powered pushbutton device outside your front door. Inside the house, there is a larger device, powered by three AA batteries.

MP3 Wireless Doorbell,by Swann Communications USA Inc. $45.08 at Amazon.com At last, our doorbells are catching up with our phones. For years, we have had cellphones that can be programmed to play an infinite variety of ringtones: Top 40 hits, movie sound effects, or snarky comments from a favorite comedian. Now the engineers at Swann have come up with a doorbell that's just as versatile. You mount a small battery-powered pushbutton device outside your front door. Inside the house, there is a larger device, powered by three AA batteries.

Jubilee Café & Catering 22 Court St., Plymouth 508-747-3700 www.jubileefood.com Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Major credit cards accepted The cozy Jubilee Café, on the corner of Court and South Russell streets in downtown Plymouth, is a great place to grab a sandwich, read a newspaper, and watch people walk past the large storefront windows. From those seats, you can see the blue water of Plymouth Harbor in the distance. The staff at Jubilee is friendly, and inside, the atmosphere is sunny, warm, and inviting.

DEPARTING APPLE Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs is being celebrated as the tech magician who brought you the iPod, but his tenure with the company is just as notable for the alternative vision it offers for American businesses. His embrace of elegantly designed, high-price, high-value products looks like a radical statement in a bottom-line-oriented world. Jobs, who is fighting cancer, announced his resignation Wednesday. His leadership at Apple is the stuff of legend: After co-founding the company out of a garage in Silicon Valley and popularizing the idea of the...

Steve Jobs had no formal schooling in engineering, yet he is listed as the inventor or coinventor on more than 200 US patents. These are some of the significant products that were created under his direction: ■ Apple I (1976) - Apple's first product was a computer for hobbyists and engineers, made in small numbers. Steve Wozniak designed it, while Jobs orchestrated the funding and handled the marketing. ■ Apple II (1977) - One of the first successful personal computers, the Apple II was designed as a mass-market product rather than something for engineers or enthusiasts.

Steve Jobs's greatest gift was an extraordinary ability to imagine new products that would completely capture the public's heart. Jobs proved himself many times on that score; as a young man, with the creation of the Macintosh computer, and later, with products like the iPhone and the iPad. Talent like that is extraordinarily rare. But Jobs clearly saw similar qualities in another kind of innovator from another generation: Edwin Land, the late founder of Polaroid Corp. As it happened, both men met at Land's office in Cambridge in the mid-1980s and talked at length about that creative...

"Steve Jobs" (Simon & Schuster), by Walter Isaacson: "Steve Jobs" takes off the rose-colored glasses that often follow an icon's untimely death and instead offers something far more valuable: The chronicle of a complex, brash genius who was crazy enough to think he could change the world — and did. Through unprecedented access to Jobs with more than 40 conversations, including long sessions sitting in the Apple co-founder's living room, walks...

FOXBOROUGH — With its white walls and bare concrete floor, the new Tech Superpowers Inc. store at Patriot Place looks vaguely like one of Apple Inc.’s hugely successful retail outlets. And sure enough, you can buy an iPad tablet or Macintosh computer here. But you can also buy $6,000 widescreen TVs, advanced home theater systems, or sophisticated office furniture, all designed to interact with Apple’s electronic gear. Tech Superpowers is even showing off a Lexus luxury car, with back seat Macs and an iPad embedded in the dashboard, to demonstrate mobile multimedia...

Nobody's better at failure than Steve Jobs. Jobs, who stunned the computer industry on Wednesday with his resignation as chief executive of computer giant Apple Inc., has failed time and again, occasionally in spectacular fashion. He's introduced products that bombed. He sent his companies in directions that went nowhere. And once, he was kicked out of Apple itself, an event that led to one of the greatest second acts in American business. Fifteen years after he returned as chief executive, he's lifted Apple from near-bankruptcy to a stock market value of $300 billion, second-highest of...

The history of Christmas carols: Why have they endured, if they're so weird? "While other popular tunes arise from passion or desire, heroism or defeat, the Yuletide songbook is a catalog of modest thrills and postindustrial neuroses. A quick survey turns up portraits of manic stress release ('Jingle Bells'), overwrought hallucination ('Do You Hear What I Hear?'), complex Freudian trauma ('I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'), desperate midlife lechery ('Baby, It's Cold Outside')

Apple is allowing the general public to get a look at a heartfelt and star-studded memorial service it held for employees to celebrate the life of Steve Jobs at its Cupertino headquarters last week. Apple Inc. posted a link on its website late Sunday to a video of the service, which was held on Wednesday morning in an outdoor amphitheater in the center of the company's campus. The ceremony was intensely private. It was closed to the public and media handlers shooed reporters away from Apple's buildings at the time.

"Steve Jobs" (Simon & Schuster), by Walter Isaacson: "Steve Jobs" takes off the rose-colored glasses that often follow an icon's untimely death and instead offers something far more valuable: The chronicle of a complex, brash genius who was crazy enough to think he could change the world — and did. Through unprecedented access to Jobs with more than 40 conversations, including long sessions sitting in the Apple co-founder's living room, walks...

Steve Jobs's greatest gift was an extraordinary ability to imagine new products that would completely capture the public's heart. Jobs proved himself many times on that score; as a young man, with the creation of the Macintosh computer, and later, with products like the iPhone and the iPad. Talent like that is extraordinarily rare. But Jobs clearly saw similar qualities in another kind of innovator from another generation: Edwin Land, the late founder of Polaroid Corp. As it happened, both men met at Land's office in Cambridge in the mid-1980s and talked at length...

In dark suit and bowtie, he is a computing-era carnival barker — eyebrows bouncing, hands gesturing, smile seductive and coy and a bit annoying. It's as if he's on his first date with an entire generation of consumers. And, in a way, he is. It is Jan. 24, 1984, and a young Steve Jobs is standing at center stage, introducing to shareholders of Apple Computer Inc. the "insanely great" machine that he's certain will change the world: a beige plastic box called the Macintosh. Here is the Wizard of Cupertino at the threshold of it all, years before...

Steve Jobs had no formal schooling in engineering, yet he's listed as the inventor or co-inventor on more than 300 U.S. patents. These are some of the significant products that were created under his direction: 1. Apple I (1976) — Apple's first product was a computer for hobbyists and engineers, made in small numbers. Steve Wozniak designed it, while Jobs orchestrated the funding and handled the marketing. 2. Apple II (1977) — One of the first successful personal computers, the Apple II was designed as a mass-market product rather than something...