After 16+ Years of Nearly Continuous Development, My New Online Course — Working Smarter for Mac Users: Improve Your Efficiency — is Now Open for Enrollment!
This has been a dream of mine for over a decade and I’m just getting started! Working Smarter for Mac Users: Improve Your Efficiencyis merely the first in a series of video training courses; I expect to have three or four more available next year.
This new venture got me thinking about when, exactly, I was first bitten by the video teaching bug… So, I’ve been poring through my archives to determine the very first time I wrote about teaching via video and I’m pretty sure I’ve discovered the oldest known artifact:
So, here is the story of how it all began way back in 2001…
Working Smarter for Mac Users: Improve Your Efficiency — The Origin Story
The NBT (“Next Big Thing”) Recording Company never came to be, and all that remains of that proposal today is the cover page and a low-resolution QuickTime demo.
I’d love to share that demo with you, but I was consumed with such incredible hubris in 2001 that I used Survivor’s, “Eye of the Tiger” as background music.
What can I say? I was dead certain that Bob-O-Vision was going to be “the next big thing,” and our millions of dollars of VC funding would let me license any music I cared to.
Boy, was I wrong.
I sent the proposal and demo to every vulture capitalist I could find, as well as book publishers, CD and DVD-ROM publishers, movie studios, television networks, and everyone else I thought might, “get it.”
But, nobody got it.
The demo infringes on Survivor’s rights and the silent version sucks eggs. So, here’s the next best thing—a series of screen shots from the Bob-O-Vision demo circa 2001 (click to enlarge):
Bob LeVitus, often referred to as “Dr. Mac,” is a well-known authority on all things Macintosh, OS X, and Apple devices including the iPad and iPhone. One of the Apple community’s most trusted advisors for almost thirty years, he’s known for his trademark humorous style and unerring ability to translate “techie” jargon into usable and fun advice for regular folks.
He's written more than 80 books including macOS Sierra For Dummies, iPhone For Dummies, and iPad For Dummies. And, for the past 20 years, he's written the Dr. Mac column for the Houston Chronicle (which he still does). He's also been writing for The Mac Observer for almost as long (he still does that, too).
Bob has been published in more than a dozen computer magazines over the past thirty years including: a three-year stint as Editor-in-Chief of the irreverent and unpredictable MACazine and four different columns in MacUser magazine: Beating the System, Personal Best, Game Room, and the Help Folder (with Andy Ihnatko, and later, Chris Breen).
Though best known for writing, he’s also dabbled in broadcasting with a radio show (Inside Mac Radio, CNET Radio, 2001-2002) and hosted a popular television series (Mac Today, Syndicated, 1992–1993).
Another of Bob’s loves is teaching, which he's been doing at University of Texas Informal Classes for over a decade, with well-loved courses including, iPhone for Smart People, Making Music with GarageBand, and soon, Working Smarter for Mac Users.
Always in-demand as a speaker, Bob has presented more than 200 seminars, workshops, conferences, and training sessions in the U.S. and abroad, and given Macworld Expo keynotes in three countries, He's also done presentations at countless Apple Stores, and at least three world-famous Geek Cruises. Last but not least, Bob won the Macworld Expo MacJeopardy World Championship three times before retiring his crown. He did not, however, return the Rocket J. Squirrel Memorial Cup, which is still displayed prominently in his office.
Prior to giving in to his obsessions with Apple technology and productivity, Bob worked in advertising, producing television commercials, radio spots, and print ads for Kresser & Robbins and SelecTV, in Los Angeles. Bob holds a B.S. in Marketing from California State University and lives in beautiful (and over-crowded) Austin, Texas with his beautiful wife, Lisa, and Zeke the Wonder Vizsla, with occasional visits from now-adult children Allison and Jacob.
