This morning I did some research and it turns out there’s a simple little trick to force empty the trash on a Mac!

All you have to do is hold the Option key down when clicking on Empty Trash. A problem on my back burner was solved in under a minute, and I gained a lot of much needed storage space.

You can also use Terminal and the command:  rm -rf ~/.Trash/* t

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

Who knows if Apple and Lytro reached a deal, but a Lytro can take an immediate photo without the need to focus so it makes sense that Apple would want that tech in future iPhones.

Adam Lashinsky’s new book about Apple is based on interviews with Apple insiders. In 2008 Fortune cover story, Lashinsky predicted Tim Cook would succeed Steve Jobs as Apple CEO. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

But THIS! This idea from a design firm called Les Forges MDK is the only external case for the iPhone 4 or 4S that can be justified.

No single person, living or dead has had a more important impact on my life than Steve Jobs. I’m just learning animation. This is my second one. I wanted to do something in memory of Steve Jobs. Some people like to listen to Linus quote Luke 2 on Christmas. I want to hear Steve Jobs toast The Crazy Ones who change things.

I uploaded in 1080p so watch full-screen.

Today he started his show talking about an amazing new App for iPhone 4S called Vocal. It works with a companion Mac App and give you the ability vocally control a Mac and dictate into writing applications from the iPhone. Rush spent a good fifteen minutes raving about how great it is. Listeners were emailing asking questions because they couldn’t find it in the App Store. Rush talked about the App more and referred listeners to the developer’s website, spelling out the URL: http://mtrbts.me/vocal. To help listeners find the right App, Rush told listeners it was developed by Matt Roberts. He said, “You’ll know you’ve found the right App if it’s by Matt Roberts. He also recommended listeners go to Matt’s site to watch the demo video I’ve embedded below.

In all, Vocal probably got about 20-minutes of air time on a show with 20-Million listeners.

I watched the video planning to write a post about the App. I had no plans to include details about Rush, until I clicked on Matt Roberts Twitter link. Matt is a 17-year-old student in Australia who had never heard of Limbaugh until today. Matt says, Limbaugh’s listeners are making up a majority of his support requests.

http://twitter.com/#!/ma_ttie/status/149623075246313472

I think it’s very cool that we live in a world where a 17-year-old can build an App that can get 20 minutes of praise on a show that is supposed to be about conservative politics!

I’m sitting at the Genius Bar waiting for Time Machine to restore the Mac Pro from a Drobo. I’m not sure it’s going to happen before the Apple Store closes. My backup is on a first generation USB Drobo which doesn’t exactly do snappy data transfers.

My Genius has been fun. He’s done some work with Leo Laporte during South by Southwest and makes appearances on the NSFW Show.

Over the last week, Apple ran a battery of tests on the Mac Pro and can’t find a problem with the hardware. They wiped the boot drive and the new goal is to start from scratch. I fear this isn’t going to fix the problems I’ve experienced with this Mac since the very beginning. It has (4) 15,000 rpm SAS drives I’ve never been able to write to. I always end up working around the drives that should be AWESOME by writing to Drobo Pro.

Since getting this Mac, which we paid over $10,000 for, it’s been a constant source of frustration. I made Genius Bar appointments, took it in and I’ve been told to change some configuration or another. I believe they replaced the RAID card twice. I get the very heavy and hard to carry Mac Pro back and try to produce a video on it. It fails and I go back to the Drobo Pro work around. Then I’m focused on a project and live with the work around until the frustration becomes too much. I make another Genius Bar appointment and the circle of frustration continues. I even tried emailing Steve Jobs about it, but it was after he was so sick.

My gut says this Mac has a bus problem. Data doesn’t make its way through the machine like it should, but the tests don’t reveal a problem so I’m discouraged. It’s kind of like those stories you hear about a person going to doctors over and over again because they have a problem. They know something is wrong with them, but it isn’t something doctors are able to diagnose.

My goal was to restore the software and attempt to edit video here to try and replicate the problem after they’ve attempted to fix it, but I doubt the restore from Time Machine will finish today. I’ve been here three hours and it’s still Preparing to copy.

This Mac Pro should sing when processing video, but instead it makes me cry. I think it’s a lemon, but I’m not pushy enough to convince the Genius Bar to replace it.

He said, “What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone. Also, many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security. So we do increasing see that the youth that wants to be on the cutting edge and try something new are turning to the Windows phone platform.”

Before, iPhone I was a Nokia guy and I want to see Nokia offer compelling alternatives to Apple products, but this analysis sounds more like artificial political spin than anything based on any kind of reality. According to Nielsen research, kids between 6 and 12 years of age have iDevices at the top of their 2011 Christmas wish lists.

• 44% want iPad
• 30% want iPod Touch
• 27% want iPhone

Kids 13+ want iDevices too.

• 24% want iPad
• 15% want iPhone
• 8% want iPod Touch
• 14% want non-iPhone smartphone

Windows Phones made by Nokia may very well attract youth gadget buyers, but not because they’re “fed up with iPhone” or confused by Android. The Nokia Lumia 800 is certainly a sexy looking piece of gear, but it will depend on Windows Phone having cool features unavailable on other phones that young buyers want before it can shake iPhone’s desirability dominance.

Apple took advantage of the gyroscopes it put in recent iDevices to show off how the store fits in the gigantic train terminal. If you have an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G, take a minute to open Safari and go to apple.com/retail/grandcentral/ and click the litte box on the bottom left of the photo you see of the new store … the one that says “view more photos.” A photo window will pop up. You can click through photos, but the coolest one is the last one that says 360°.

Tap that on an  iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G and when you move your phone, you’ll get a 360° look at the new Grand Central Apple Store. Pan up and you can look at the constellations on the blue ceiling. It’s like a one-minute mini-vacation for Apple fans.

Some of the most well-known Steve Jobs quotes actually come from people Steve was quoting. “Great artists steal,” is one of those quotes. Steve quotes Picaso, and Picaso was adapting his quote from T.S. Eliot

Here’s the T.S. Eliot version…

One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

All that came to mind when Andrew UK, the most frequent commenter on this blog, pointed out the new Apple HQ, The Click Wheel of Cupertino, looks a lot like the new GCHQ in the UK.

Like everything Apple steals, borrows or however you like to frame it, the new Apple HQ improves on this existing circular GCHQ building. The lack of visible parking lots and abundant orchards of blooming fruit trees improves on the GCHQ campus and then there’s all that innovation in the way Apple will use curved glass. Apple’s building will do what Steve Jobs describes in the video embedded above…

“It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done, and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picaso had a saying. He said, ‘Good artists copy. Great artists steal,’ and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

The Click Wheel will be magnificent and it makes me smile to know it improves on something that kind of already exists.

To tell you what Instagram has meant to me in the past several months would seem like so much hyperbole, you’d just respond with a big, fat, “Nuh uh!” Let me try though…

When I’ve been stressed or worried about my future, I’ve tapped the Instagram icon on my phone, iPod Touch or iPad. I follow some geeks, but mostly I follow people who post pictures of pretty things, or at least make pretty pictures of ugly things. Call it a Flinch if you’d like, but I call it peace. With all due respect to John Stewart, Instagram provides my daily moments of zen. I open the App, and all of a sudden, I’m on a 5 minute vacation. That’s why I love it.

Today Apple named Instagram App of the Year. It’s certainly been my App of the year. For me it’s the place I go to experience a constant stream of prettiness.

You can say, “Nuh uh!” I’ll just say, “Uh huh!” Let’s not argue. Congratulations Instagram! Well deserved!